Working in the charitable sector, as is often the case, my job has several roles. Primarily I am in IT though; I work for Asperger East Anglia in Beccles having been diagnosed with a high-functioning autism spectrum condition in my mid 40s (56 now). About 70% of the job is refurbishing or repairing charitable donations, mostly computers but sometimes light domestic goods, which are then sold on eBay or sometimes in our high-street charity shops; we've two as we're not a big national organisation - the clue's in the name

Most of the rest is the same, but with the addition of mentoring young adults with autism how to cope with the social skills and/or expectations to do with the workplace, much of it a case of how not to be me when I was younger

My background is IT, computer systems and microelectronics, with microprocessor architecture being my special interest. I worked for a direct mail company after leaving university doing IT support and programming mail jobs, about half for junk mail and half bank, insurance company documents, we even did a bit of government work. I've used VAX/VMS, SunOS, DOS, Windows, UNIX at work and more at home, including Linux for day to day use; I've also made a few contributions to ZDoom and was an early member in 1999 of the DOSDoom team (the port that eventually became EDGE before Coraline took it over as 3DGE).
Of course when I bought my first PC in 1995, it was to run DOOM - told the sales guy at PC world: 'If it doesn't run Doom, it's dead on arrival'


So what are the rest of our backgrounds?
A typical day for Martin Howe

