About Lee Robinson

My business card shows my name as "H. Lee Robinson" with the "H" expanding for "Harold" when I write it all out.  In my mind Harold was my father who shared his name with me as his father had done with him and his father's father had done.  I am proud to be the fourth in a line of Harold Lee Robinson but most people know me as Lee.

I am an independent software contractor who also enjoys doing training and user support.  When someone asks me what I do for a living, I like to answer that I build tools to help people be more productive in their jobs and I help them learn how to use their tools. My projects have included a wide range of subjects from sales and marketing to robots and CNC machines.  My clients have included small offices as well as corporations such as General Electric and Sherwin Williams.

History

My undergraduate degree, a Bachelor of Arts with majors in Mathematics and Chemical Physics, led me naturally to computers and working with people.  The advantage of earning a BA is that I had to be able to write and communicate in order to graduate.  The two majors gave me training in varied methods of logical thinking besides being a lot of fun.

One of the perks of being a contractor is that I have gotten to see the insides of lots of companies and factories.  I am fascinated by manufacturing processes.  When I first entered the work force it was as a quality control technician in a manufacturing plant.  Even though my status (and pay) was a little below a file clerk, I did get to see everything and ask questions.  For various reasons I eventually transferred to the corporate headquarters and the data processing department of corporation.  There I worked as night-shift computer operator, then as an applications programmer and eventually a technical systems programmer.

At this point I decided more education was in order and took the next few years to earn my Masters Degree in Computing and Engineering Science at Case Western Reserve University.  So that I could afford the tuition at Case, I began to work as a contract programmer for a software company, then moved to one of their customers, a manufacturing company, as a Systems Manager.  After five years or so I decided it would be more interesting to develop the software rather than manage it and went to work for a company that developed software for manufacturers.  It was fun being involved in a large system and helping it evolve to solve the problems of our customers.  I especially enjoyed working with the customers to help them figure out how the software could make them more productive and we could improve the software to make it even more useful to them.

When the market slowed for the type of package I was working on I decided to do what I enjoyed and become a contractor with a small company, working directly with the customers on software custom to them.  In the year 2000 I began the millennium as an independent software contractor.

The software market changed over the years and I adapted.  Starting out working on a mainframe computer, I moved to mini-computers and then to software running on micro (or personal) computers.  My experience on each of them gave me a useful perspective on the others.

You can reach me in any one of the variety of ways shown on my contact page .