Ron Altmann was raised in central Minnesota and graduated from high school in 1959. He was the fortunate recipient of a scholarship to a small engineering college whose only requirement was that he become a naval architect. He learned that the bow of a ship is the pointy end, and received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1963.For the next quarter century he worked as a research engineer in a private company, testing models and full-size ships for the U.S. Navy. Much of his work was with high speed craft such as planing boats, hydrofoils and surface effect ships. For three years he was the head of the Hydromechanics Laboratory at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.In 1988 he started his own software development company, creating games to teach phonetic reading to pre-school children. Two games were marketed for the Commodore Amiga personal computer before Commodore went out of business in the early 1990’s. He moved back to Minnesota in 1991 and began writing code for Microsoft Windows, supporting local companies with specialized spreadsheet and database applications. In 2004 he began teaching computer courses at the Minnesota School of Business. He retired from teaching in April of 2012.Over the past twenty years Ron wrote a number of essays that were collected into two books for his siblings, and more recently he began to write fiction novels based on stories found in old Norse sagas. The advent of on-demand printing has allowed him to publish these works. Now cousins, old school mates, and even complete strangers can join his brother and sister and read what he has been doing during those long Minnesota winter nights.Read more about this authorRead less about this author