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Photo taken when I was 4 years old (1975)
This is probably going to be very boring, but you have asked for it … J J J
I will try to keep it as short as possible…
Here it goes:
I was born in a city called Beira, in Mozambique (ex-Portuguese colony in East-Africa), the 25th September 1971. My (late) father's name was José Custódio Dias and my mother's name is Maria Manuela Colaço Dias. Our origin is a place called Goa (another lovely ex-Portuguese colony, integrated in the Indian Union since 1961 and a state of India since 1987).
My parents always worked for the Portuguese Government. After the independence of Mozambique, in 1974, my entire family moved to Portugal, where we started a new life in Queluz (a city in the suburbs of Lisbon, not far from Sintra and Cascais).
My interest for computers and programming started in 1986, when I first started programming in Basic, Pascal and C at D. Pedro V High School - Sete Rios, Lisbon.
In September 1990, I got admission to the best College of Engineering of Portugal - IST - Instituto Superior Técnico, UTL - Technical University of Lisbon, where I obtained my first Degree in Computer Science Engineering and Information Technology (5 years full time Degree known in Portugal as "LEIC-Licenciatura em Engenharia Informática e de Computadores"), with the overall classification of 15 valores (75 % - 1st Class Honours).
By the end of 1993 and until 1995, I worked as a part-time researcher at INESC - Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e de Computadores, under supervision of Prof. Dr. Mário Rui Gomes, to whom I submitted my first Degree dissertation, in 1995, which was a «Multimedia Timeline Editor», programmed in Visual C++ for the MS-Windows platform. My dissertation is now available from the IST/UTL main library and from INESC main library, both in Lisbon, Portugal.
In 1995, I got admission to one of the best Departments of Computing of Europe - The Department of Computing of Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of London, where I successfully obtained a MSc. Degree In Advanced Computing and Information Technology and the Diploma of Imperial College. My MSc. Thesis was «ACNFS - A Compressed File System for UNIX», supervised by Dr. Paul Kelly. I developed one of the first world prototypes of automatic compression and decompression in a UNIX file system. My thesis is now available from the main library of Imperial College/Science Museum in South Kensigton - London, UK.
In October 1996, I joined RedBox Technologies - London, as a Senior Software Development Engineer, where I developed Windows NT 32 bit Applications using Microsoft Visual C++. I gained vast experience detecting code leaks (memory leaks, handle leaks, resources not freed, etc.) using tools such as Bounds Checker and Purify. My most important project at RedBox Technologies was an Algorithm and a Method to improve the use of Multithreading Mechanisms in a Multiprocessor Environment. This project was awarded a United States Patent: « Method and Apparatus for Performance Tuning Threads of Execution by Processor Affinity in a Multiprocessor Environment » , filed with the US Patent Office on August 29, 1997 (patent now pending in the state of California). I then implemented this Algorithm and Method for a Multiprocessor PC with 4 Intel Pentium processors running Windows NT 4.0, and managed to improve Microsoft Windows NT performance by 15%. I also handled the RedBox Technologies Clients team, developing friendly User Interface Applications according to some specific requests from customers, receiving bug reports from customers and fixing crisis and high priority problems found at customer's sites.
In March 1998, I decided to move on and joined Sterling Software to work as a Technical Consultant (level 2) for the Cool:Plex product (formerly Synon Obsydian product), handling worldwide customers. In March 2000, Sterling Software was acquired by the 3rd largest Software Company of the world: Computer Associates (CA). I now work as a Software Developer in CA, developing in Java and C++ in the COOL:Plex London Labs.
I love my country, Portugal, and I love my origin, Goa, but I decided to remain here in London for some more time. After some time of staying here I already got used to it. And I really think now that London is cool!
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