If Michael Pickard had been born in the 15th Century, he would have hung out with Leonardo da Vinci, who didn’t choose between art and science. Mike doesn’t care to make that choice either, despite being born in the mid 1900's. Rather than struggle or choose between them, Mike has spanned the two disciplines, adding creative arts to his professional work, and embedding current and imagined technologies in his creative writing. Mike has been an information technology practitioner for over a quarter of a century, covering all aspects of computing hardware and software, except for soldering. He has written many published technical reports and position papers. In addition, he was lead columnist for a microcomputer club newsletter for over ten years, lacing his articles with humorous vignettes describing his trials and tribulations as an end user. Mike has expressed himself creatively in diverse ways. He was editorial cartoonist for the student newspaper at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where he attended school. His other exploits include acting in amateur theater, co-authoring a comedic play, sculpting in clay and paper mache', and inventing a narrowly distributed board game.   

U. S. Patent Number 6,154,528