How Baseball Led to a Quest for Software Coding Optimization

Randy C. Finch has a Masters degree in Chemical Engineering and worked in that capacity for several years after graduating from the University of Louisville in 1978. However, when the personal computer revolution hit in the early 1980's his interests shifted. Fortunately, he was able to move into computer work at the company for which he worked. Over the past 35 years he has programmed computers both at his job and at home. He became very proficient at Visual Basic, VBA, C, and C++. He also spent many years writing programs for the SAS System. He presented many papers at SAS conferences and eventually became a member of the Executive Council of the SouthEast SAS Users Group, co-chairing a conference in 1998. He spent many years writing Microsoft Office applications, mostly in Excel and Access. He has had over 50 papers published in journals and magazines, some work-related and others personal. He also wrote a regular column about Amiga computers in a computer journal for two years. Apart from his writing about computers, he has written poetry and has three published books; one humor book, one novel, and one non-fiction book. He enjoys photography and has won several awards for his photos as well as having many published. In his retirement years, he has recently become interested in programming with Visual Basic.NET.