About Me — Steve Ford
AKA MalamuteMan or, simply and preferably, Mal
Brief Summary
Born in 1950 to American parents living in Dhahran Saudi Arabia. Lived in various other places around the world including Manila, the Canary Islands, Madrid, Barstow California, and for the last 49 years, the Pacific Northwest (37 years on south Whidbey Island).
Studied Psychology at the University of California, Riverside, then dropped out for a few years and moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1973. In 1978 I graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Worked for Boeing for about 5 years, and then started my own company creating CAD software.
I have been a lover of all animals for most of my life, especially dogs, and most especially Malamutes. I’ve had friendships with 8 Mals, who, by the way, have taken very good care of me over the years. I’ve done my best to reciprocate.
I’m retired now. I started writing in 2008 on a site called Newsvine, where I honed my writing skills. The Vine was a great forum, and I had many extensive and very interesting conversations with other Viners for several years. Unfortunately, the Vine was overwhelmed by people whose only goal was to sew acrimony, which ruined the site and it was subsequently subsumed by MSNBC. After the Vine died, I went looking for a similar site. Medium is the closest thing I’ve found. Sadly, there is a very little dialog on Medium. Lots of stories, but very very little interaction. Medium seems to be a place for writers and readers, but not conversationalists… sigh.
Well… that pretty much covers it… in a brief summary kinda way. I am currently working on an autobiography, but that may be a bit too much for this forum. However, I may publish some excerpts in this forum… which does bring up a question that I’d like to pose to Quy Ma…
I think there is some sort of Medium policy prohibition on republishing things that have already been published on Medium. If that is the case, that I cannot resubmit things I have already published, then, sadly, I will not be much of a contributor to About Me Stories. In the 5+ years that I have been on Medium, I have posted more than 200 articles… Granted, many of them rehash the same themes over and over… And many of them are not really appropriate for an autobiography forum. Almost all of them have garnered just 2 or three reads, and maybe one comment… if I’m lucky. But there are a few that I think would be nice contributions to this forum. So Quy Ma, what say you? To re-publish or not to re-publish, that is the question.
PS -
Quy Ma, I love your Medium photo. Is that a Husky or a Malamute??? Looks like a Mal to me… :o)
