Maria Langer is legendary for the 85 books she’s written about computers from 1991 to 2012. That was merely the middle part of her career. Maria started her career with a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Hofstra University. After a few stints as a financial analyst and auditor, she decided to dump the 9-to-5 grind and delved into writing computer books. Basically, if you wanted to learn anything about computers in those days, you read her stuff. Around 2011, that came to an end, and so, inspired by a childhood ride, she started helicopter pilot lessons. Today, she owns her own helicopter and tour business, working out of both Arizona and Washington. Maria and I are both aviation enthusiasts, geeked out about aircraft in our chat, and Maria tells some interesting stories about flying choppers.

Joe Moreno is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a former U.S. Marine officer, a former Apple software engineer for nine years, and is now the Chief Technical Officer of ItsBorrowed.com. In high school, influenced by his father, Joe decided to join the Marines. He was also very much into computers and became a Marine programmer, working on production systems. Later, after the academy, he became a supply & logistics officer, and his skills caught the attention of Apple in 1998. He was virtually hired on the spot at a career fair for military officers. We spent some time chatting about Apple’s recent history and his work with databases, WebObjects, Unix and Apple’s online store. Listen in to hear us chat about iPhone ordering tricks from the Apple store during the annual September chaos.

Dr. John Gustafson is a professor of computer science, now at The National University of Singapore. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied mathematics from Iowa State University and also specializes in high performance (supercomputer) computing. (HPC). He’s worked at Sun Labs, Clearspeed Technology, Massively Parallel Technology, Intel, and AMD. At an early age, he was fascinated by chemistry and also had a good sized electronics lab in his basement (thanks to indulgent parents). But by the time he started his undergraduate degree at Cal Tech, he’d settled on applied mathematics with physics as a second major. It was at Cal Tech where he met and was influenced by the Nobel Prize winning physicist, Dr. Richard Feynman. John, describes his career arc, and at the end has some great advice for young scientists just getting started.