The Ivory Tower

Online, people know me as JohnGuru. In real life, my name is John Valley. I live in Michigan with one kitty cat named Sam and, now that I’m retired, spend my time doing what I want. I’m 59 years old, going on 60.

Educational background is varied and spotty. I dropped out of college twice, never having been able to get the hang of the academic grindstone. Finding that some sort of employment would be useful, I fell into the underworld of computer software, the worst kind of software: operating system development. I had fun for seventeen years until the company folded, and then turned to consulting, and even wrote some books for McMillan on computer programming.

Philosophy has caught my eye, though, and now that I’m free of all that tech stuff, I do try to spend time figuring out the nature of the universe and Just What The Hell Is Going On. You would think there would be a lot of clues.

I came by the nick JohnGuru almost by accident. People began to call me the Guru around the shop. I didn’t much care for the nickname, since I didn’t pretend to have all the answers–but they never asked me, did they. So when I joined AOL and had to pick a nickname, I decided now was the time for revenge, and ever since then, everyone has had to call me Guru.

Let that be a lesson to yas.