Donald Lloyd Rice has always lived life on his own terms and transitioning from this earth was no different as all his friends and family can attest to!
Born on November 22, 1939, first name Donald was soon dropped and he went by Lloyd. He was raised on the family farm north of Blue Mound, Illinois under the parental guidance of Wayne Curtis Rice and Lois Ada Zimmerman Rice. Lloyd attended local schools followed by two years at Millikin University in Decatur.
He then moved to Pasadena, California Cal Tech campus to begin a life enriched with academic learning, foreign languages and the life long skills used for computer programming. During this time, with two friends he traveled to Europe to practice Spanish, German and Swedish as they worked odd jobs from country to country. In 1964, while in Sweden, his family contacted him of the arrival of a draft notice requiring him to return and enlist in the U.S. Army. He was stationed at Fort Hood in Texas and assigned the duty of driving Patton M60 Tanks.
In 1966 he was honorably discharged and returned to University but now at UCLA, Los Angeles, where he focused on Linguistic Articulation and Computer Programming. One project he was particularly proud of was his software contribution used on the Mariner 67 Mission to Venus while he was working in conjunction with the Jet Propulsion Lab.
Later, while working at UCLA’s Phonetics Lab, a Hollywood Production Company approached the department and asked for an expert to analyze the ”authentic” recorded sounds of a Big Foot creature in the wild captured by some local hunters. Lloyd was chosen as the person to go on camera and use the department’s highly technical equipment to verify possible authenticity of physical sounds coming from such a creature. The DVD documentary was called ‘Mysterious Monsters’ and was hosted by Peter Graves. Lloyd’s on-screen character was given the title and name: Dr. Robert Sheldon and of course the ‘expert analysis’ was filled with technical jargon with no scientific substance but it satisfied and supported the theory of existence of ‘this’ Big Foot!
Lloyd graduated with a B.A. Degree in Linguistics in 1969 and shortly after became an active member of the Acoustical Society of America. With a school friend, he started a small company called Computalker Consultants which manufactured a speech synthesizer board for the personal computer market. The personal computer changed drastically during these days and outpaced Computalker’s board so the company dissolved.
In 1988, Lloyd then started writing signal processing software for a speech recognizing system designed by Speech Systems Inc.. The company had its name changed to Syvox and was purchased by a consortium located in Boulder, Co and Lloyd was given the opportunity to move with the company and work for several years until he retired in 1999.
This was a good time for Lloyd to become more involved with the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) where he reviewed patents each month and wrote reviews for the Journal of Acoustical Society of America. With his advanced skills in computer programming, Lloyd developed a major software package using neural network skills that enabled his computer to search for U.S. Patents and process the reviews more efficiently and faster. He later served as co-editor, then editor of the Journal of Acoustical Society for many years.
Lloyd’s passion for computers and time spent on them filled his days. When not working long hours for ASA monthly reviews, he would use his ingrained traditional programming skills to make spreadsheets and logistic tables for everything that could be charted including all household systems, personal data and his many topics of interest. He would then convert all these files to PostScript using command line prompts to talk to his office-sized Toshiba Printer. The now paper files were meticulously arranged into manila folders and placed in well-organized tall metal file cabinet drawers.
He mastered and wrote code in all the major languages put favored PERL and refused to upgrade off of Windows 7. He owned and used only traditional computers with towers, monitors and keyboards and would never even think about bringing a laptop contraption into his home.
One of his many computers was dedicated to monitor his whole house generator, as he never wanted a power outage to deny him access to his computers and he kept copious notes on the generator’s weekly Sunday morning automatic testing time. When analyzing the data, Lloyd identified a drifting geometric curve showing a slow-down of 20 seconds which both delighted and baffled him!
See more at: https://www.thenaturalfuneral.com/donald-lloyd-rice/
