I was born in 1955, in Glen Ridge, NJ. I made the mistake of surviving my childhood diseases, and still exhibit that same error. In 1966, I moved to Glastonbury, CT (well, my family moved here, and I perforce went with them), where, after a 12 ˝ year stint on the other side of the Connecticut River (evidence of my gypsy blood) I returned. I've been married since 1978 to the same woman (whom I call wagimoko, Japanese for "my wife", in my writings, since she doesn't want her name spread all over the Internet). We currently have a budgie, Chippy VI, that we bought deliberately, and a cat, Patches (whom I usually call Nezumi-chan, "Little Miss Rat"), that we found abandoned in the woods near our house.

I was an IT consultant from 1977 until 2002. In 1995 I showed the first symptoms of multiple sclerosis. In April 2002, it was decided by my managers and I that I was too badly handicapped to carry on (I have a paralyzed arm, a bad limp, and a speech impediment, all attributable to my MS; those are the things relevant to my job). I was on disability pay from April to October of that year, and have been on unpaid disability since. I'm technically still available to do consulting work; I've done everything from COBOL programming to project management to development and maintnance of general ledger systems. If you want a complete resumé, feel free to e-mail me at braue@ratsnest.win.net or fax a request to me at 011-001-860-657-2659.

The nickname "Akatsukami" comes a couple of incidents at a client back in the early '90s. If you really want to read the story, I relate it here.

Oh, yes, did I mention that I'm a paranoid depressive, largely (although not entirely) due to the meds that I need to control my MS? No? Well, you've probably figured that out already.