Federation Commander

Funny story:

I went to my sister's house in Tulsa for New Years and, of course, brought my copy of SFB along, in addition to some minis and SSDs I had photocopied. I get a game going with my grand-niece and nephews, and their dad, who lives in Amarillo Texas, comes to see what I'm teaching his kids. I mention it's a starship combat game, then I ask him if he knows anyone on the list of credits.

Lo and behold, he went to high school with Steve Cole! He said Steve was in his DOS computer programming class . . . and that he was a big nerd. Then he said he thought it was cool how he knew someone who has developed such a successful game system.

Funny thing is, he knows no-one else from the list, just Steve. Talk about six degrees of separation . . .

If it's the same Steve Cole, it's even funnier, considering what a Mac (classic) loyalist SVC is now.

IIRC, there were two Steve Cole's in Amarillo at one time.

The death of the "other" Steve Cole seemed to cause more than a bit of consternation for our beloved SVC.

Interesting. My nephew may be too young to have been in high school with our Steve, now that I think about it; did the other Steve die of old age or something else?

There's a third Steve Cole, I believe he lives in NC --
Most of my gaming group knows him, never met him myself --

There are actually a couple of hundred Steve Cole's in the US. At one time, there were four in Amarillo, but two moved away and the other one died.

Stephen Ray Cole was the one who died. He was nearly the same age as myself (within a few months). He was a building contractor and gun nut, and I was an engineer and gun nut, so we got each other's phone calls and mail (a lot). He weighed a lot less than me and died of a heart attack; my heart arteries are as clear as a newborn baby. Go figure.

I took fortran computer programming in high school. I don't think I ever took a DOS class. I was in High School from 1966-1969.

Ah, probably the wrong Steve Cole, then. My nephew's in his thirties, which would put him in high school around mid-eighties or so.

But at least he knew the name.