David,
Appreciate your insightful article.  Would you be interested in posting a photo of the 15 circle diagram your friend gave you?  When you say it is near the birth certificates of your children, that says "this is important."  Learning from those who have preceded is a treasure.  By the way, I began my "computing" days as a 10 or 11 year old on a Commodore 64, typing in code from RUN magazine.  Still remember my first PC-compatible computer that my dad bought me, and how weird technology is that it cost as much as it did - 40MB HDD and all - and yet how much I learned.
Thanks for the wisdom and history of this post!
John from the US