MLMUG Member of the Month
An Occasional Look at the Person Behind the Member

By Maria O. Arguello,
MLMUG Member-at-Large
& Occasional Ace Reporter

Deivy Petrescu

You will enjoy reading Deivy Petrescu's autobiography this month. He is our Member of the Month for June. His rich heritage is a great read in our newsletter. He has suffered from wanderlust too but it looks like he's here to stay...for a while, I hope. His contribution as co-chair of the MLMUG's Programming SIG is an asset to MLMUG plus a welcome and enriching contribution. It is members like Deivy who know how to give back to a group which knows how to give so much, that makes us all so proud to be members of the greatest Macintosh User Group on the Main Line.
— Maria O. Arguello


Deivy Petrescu

Deivy Petrescu

Born in São Paulo, Brazil, son of a Romanian father (from Bucharest) and a Bulgarian Mother (from Sofia), I came to the States to study for my PhD. I studied Mathematics at the New York University, where I met my wife Carol. My first child, Ilana, was born within days of the defense of two PhD dissertations, my wife's and mine. We moved to Brazil, first to Recife and then to São Paulo, where my second child, Alexandre, was born. Eventually my wife and I decided to move back to the US. Apparently, we like to move. We initially settled in Florida, after 5 years we've moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where I currently teach. I got my Bachelor and Masters degree in Physics in Brazil. It was as an undergrad physics student that I had my first contact with computers. Fortran before Fortran 77. During my Ph.D I was again introduced to computers, this time for other reasons. VMS, Unix and eventually Solaris where the OS that I became familiar with. Computers, for me, were mostly used for communications and for word processing, since my thesis was purely theoretical. This was the Internet before browsers, just email and newsgroups. Eventually, I bought a computer, a TANDY HX-1000. 640 KB of memory, two 3.5' drives, one 5 and 1/4' "external" drive, and a 1200-baud modem. It was a mean machine. Mean to me, that is.

The Mac in my life
When I moved to Brazil, the Tandy came along; it was sufficient to do what I needed to do. Eventually I got involved in an applied Mathematics project in Medicine. I needed to do some numerical analysis. I needed a new computer! I wanted Linux, but felt my family needed a nice GUI interface. Just before I went to buy my windows box (I needed Linux!), a friend asked me to help him install a modem in his windows box... after that, I decided, that Macintosh was the way to go. Windows never more! Brazil, if you are not aware, is where the first Mac clone was made! However, I did not buy the clone, I bought a Mac. A Performa 6230 CD. The best Mac you could officially buy in Brazil at that time, June 15, 1996. It was love at first sight. What a wonderful Operating System, Mac OS 7.5! From someone used to Command Line Interface, the Mac was an incredible alternative. And then AppleScript... I was so impressed with AppleScript. What a powerful tool. I instantly started to write scripts that displayed dialog cursing all my friends. Imagine the power, �You are... and you are not smart either� and they have to press �OK�! Do I need to say more? I liked the OS, I liked its tool, and I started to read about Mac and AppleScript. From these readings, "dica" (http://www.dicas.com) came to life. Dica, means hot-tips in Portuguese, it is also the initials of all my family. Nice touch, huh? If you haven't visited, let me tell you that there are some nice scripts for your use and some good, albeit old, information. After AppleScript, I found HyperCard, one of the most impressive software there is. Unfortunately, Apple let go of it. Letting it slowly die. Slowly because there are a bunch of people that still hang on to it. In dica's site, there is HyperCard stack that you can download too. It is an agenda that kept me abreast of all my bills before iCal. Need an agenda? It is free!

MLMUG
Having started with a Mac it was only normal to look for a MUG. When I lived in Florida, occasionally I'd try to go to certain meetings. There were various active groups but something was missing. When I moved to Wilmington I checked Apple's site for all the MUGs in the area. My first visit to MLMUG's meeting told me that this was the MUG I was looking for. Joining was the next logical step. It was a good decision. I have access to people of caliber and, together with John Ashmead, I was able to get the Programming SIG started, an old dream come true. Need something? Check MLMUG's Programming SIG, we will make a lot of noise!

Ah! In spite of some new additions, the Performa is still alive and kicking.

— Deivy Petrescu


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© 2003 by Maria O. Arguello, Deivy Petrescu, & MLMUG
Posted 06/02/03