To put it simply - it's about the grandkids. As anyone who is a grandparent may understand, once you have grandkids you spend time reflecting back on your own life and no matter where you've been, or what you've done, you always want them to have the opportunity to do better.

Having left school at 15 years of age    ( for somewhat noble reasons )   I never learned or had the opportunity to learn the math that I later always wished I had. My life has been so busy raising my family and working the kinds of jobs that many who use Maple will never have to work, that I never had the opportunity to spend the time to further my education.

About ten years ago, after my kids had grown I made a commitment to make a career change. While working a day job, I would spend everyday during my lunch hour, early mornings, and evening hours studying to become a programmer. I'll have to agree with those who say the brain is like a muscle that grows exponentially with learning, because mine was certainly weak which made the learning of something so new very difficult. A ten-foot pile of books, and a few years later, I was ready for my new career. I was fortunate to be accepted at the first job I applied for as a programmer. Fortunately, the type of programming that I was involved in, although it required a great deal of programming knowledge,   ( mostly at the assembly code level )   it didn't require much of what would be considered by many as "higher math", so I was able to do my job, and do it well.

Recently, reflecting on where I've been in my life and the grandkids just beginning their time in school, I decided to "learn more math". I began less than a year ago with the usual pile of books and the infamous ti89 calculator. I have been quite pleased with my progress. Of course that progress has once again involved studies early in the morning, late at night, and of course during my lunch hour at my job, but the rewards of learning always make it feel worthwhile.

A few months ago I discovered Maple. Since I began using Maple, the learning has become easier, which of course translates into being able to learn more, more quickly. I feel so fortunate to have such a learning tool, and am thankful to have had the opportunity to have interracted with some of the wonderful people that make up the team at Maplesoft.

As a way of becoming part of the community here, I recently uploaded an application to the application center. A very simple application demonstrating some very basic use of the Maple components to create numeric color codes used within HTML. Well, needless to say, in my excitement of it being my first contribution, it had quite a few errors. Even though the person who processes the applications was kind enough to correct one of the spelling errors for me, there were still more errors that I discovered soon after the application was uploaded. Being my first application I wanted it to be more presentable, so I've corrected the rest of the errors that were evident to me, and    ( not having the ability to easily correct my errors within the application center here )    have made it available at a little place I have on the web. For anyone who is interested in seeing what someone with minimal experience with Maple can do in a very short while, I've made both the HTML and worksheet available. Below are the links   ( you may need to click the  read more  link first )   that you can click on, or copy and paste into your browser to either view the worksheet as HTML, or download an archive containing the Maple worksheet.

   HTML:           http://2timv.com/math/maple/colorForHTML_ul.html
   Worksheet: http://2timv.com/math/maple/colorForHTML_ul.zip

In closing, I would like to say that if you're young and have the use of Maple, consider yourself very fortunate. If you're older, and like myself are working to further your education - if not only for yourself but to be an inspiration to your children or even grandchildren - get Maple!