I started out being a Chemistry major. My Physical Chemistry course introduced me to computers as an applications tool (as opposed to the abstracted hulking piece of equipment it had previously been.) I only took two computer courses during my bachelor's curriculum. When I got into grad school, my major professor (i.e. assigned mentor) wanted to do some online computer stuff so I agreed. That's when I learned about data acquisition techniques including real-time gathering and subsequent processing, display, and export. My dissertation was about 70% chemistry and about 30% about the computer program that did the real-time data gathering. Remember, this was the early 1970s so the PC was still years away. In terms of the history of real-time monitoring, I was in what was later called the "second wave" of computer data monitoring. The biggest factor of the 2nd wave was that the computer actually could have an operating system rather than a home-grown dedicated program that had to do all of the I/O on its own.
When I graduated, I joined a company that did something called SCADA - Supervisor Control and Data Acquisition - which in practical terms meant automated data gathering but manual control operations. I was their "materials" guy because I knew about sensors that returned properties of the materials in the petroleum pipeline. I eventually became their chief program designer, became a services department head, and almost became the vice-president of programming for them. But at that time, my mother was descending into the abyss of Alzheimer's Disease. I had to turn down the promotion but the company president let me stay on. He understood the stress I was already handling.
Time passed and the company got bought out by a conglomerate that wanted to move everyone to Baltimore. But Mom was pretty much immobile and I was her sole family member to monitor her treatment. I couldn't leave her, so I had to find other work - which I did, with a company that did navigation software. No more chemistry for me, because three years earlier all of the oil companies moved out of New Orleans and went to Houston. So for a few years, until Mom finally passed, I created navigation software for the company including complex navigation functions, plotter device drivers, and some statistical functions they needed for some of their mixed-source (i.e. fixed-point beacons and orbiting satellites) navigation. Mom passed and I was free to move where I want.
Fate opened up the Navy job so for 28 1/2 years I was a system admin for the U.S. Navy Reserve and later for SPAWAR - the Space and Naval Warfare Command. I had diddled around with some PC databases by that time and casually mentioned that in passing to my boss. That is when I got my first "official" Access DB, which was held together with baling wire and spit. This forum was a lifeline of answers, and eventually I reached the point that I could start answering at least as often as I asked. My security action tracker (you could call it a "patch tracker" if you like) was when I learned how to integrate Access, Excel, Word, and Outlook into a single application and was also the time frame in which I received my MVP award.
I'm retired now and my databases are related to my home projects including a genealogy DB I'm building for my grandsons and a rather bizarre DB I use for my fantasy novels to track the phase of the moons in my stories (because of course in magic societies, the phase of the moon is a vary important portent.)
When I look back, I don't miss the chemistry work and enjoyed the computer work because of the intellectual challenge it represented. My career was never solely about Access but resource and activity-related databases were a big part of what I did for the Navy, even if my DBs were always behind the scenes.
