User:Marshall H. Pinnix

We regret to inform you that Marshall H. Pinnix, Sr. passed away following brain surgery on December 8, 2007 with his family (from both coasts) with him. He was one month shy of turning 81, married to the love of his life for 50 years and was active right until the end. He lived a good life.he also had great kids and in- laws and four grandcildren- chad, melissa, Zach, And Olivia.He was a wonderful Granddad and father and husband!

I am a native of North Carolina, but left the state after graduation from the University of North Carolina in 1949, never to return to live.

I lived in New York City; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Dakar, Senegal, West Africa (when Senegal was a French colony) when I worked for the international oil company Texaco. I moved to Baltimore County, Maryland in 1955, where I have lived since. I work as a volunteer at the Helping Up Mission in Baltimore, where I tutor men who are recovering from alcohol and drug addiction in the 3R's.

I have been married to one wife for fifty years. We have one daughter and son-in-law, one son and daughter-in-law, five grandchildren, and four cats.

I worked for seven different companies during my career in the fields of accounting, financial analysis, security analysis (of stocks and bonds), and solvency assessment of insurance companies. I retired from full-time work in 1992, but continued the consulting work I had begun previously.

In 1985 I did two consulting jobs for the World Bank, one of which took me to Papua New Guinea for a few weeks. In 1992 I did a consulting job for a U.S. client which took me to Mexico City to assess the Mexican insurance market, which involved interviewing the head of the Mexican government's insurance regulatory agency and executive officers of several insurance companies there. From 1998 through 2003 I was a financial consultant to the Excess Line Association of New York (ELANY), a quasi-state government agency which regulates certain types of insurance operations in the state; my work there consisted of financial analysis of individual U.S. and non-U.S. property-casualty insurance companies regulated by ELANY and writing reports on these analyses to ELANY.

Following retirement from full-time work, in addition to my consulting work noted above, I continued to write articles for a publisher of insurance industry newsletters in London. My book Insurance in the United States: A Handbook for Professionals was published by a small London publisher in 1993, which was acquired by Lloyd's of London Press in 1995, at which time Lloyd's took over the book's publication and promotion. I was also co-author with the late Jim Bannister of the book Practical Security Analysis (having to do with solvency assessment of insurance companies), which was published in 1989 by the London-based publisher Insurance and Reinsurance Research Group, Ltd. During the period 1988-1995 I made trips to London to make presentations at insurance industry seminars held by these publishers.

I have been a Sherlock Holmes devotee since age 13 and a member of the Six Napoleons of Baltimore, a scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars. I am also among the coterie of those who like the Philo Vance stories, as campy as they are (many critics consider them with disdain). Among my other interests are investing, foreign travel, opera, history, economics, football (Go! Carolina Tar Heels. Go! Baltimore Ravens. Go! Towson University Tigers. Go! Columbia University Lions), crime fiction, and languages. I am fluent in Spanish and French.

I am a blogger (see below) and have recently begun writing book reviews for two different websites.

I just began editing Wikipedia in April 2007, and am still learning the ropes. To date I have done postings having to do with preferred stocks, the American Civil War, the American Mexican War, the 1840 American presidential election of William Henry Harrison, A Catalogue of Crime, a work of non-fiction about a murder in my hometown, the Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, the fictional amateur detective Philo Vance, and the 19th Century Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke.

I have several other Wikipedia projects in mind. In fact, frequently when I read or think about some subject, I see a Wikipedia possibility.

My Blog
"Rambling Musings of Mycroft Watson" http://www.mycroftwatson.blogspot.com Its heading says: Mycroft Watson is the nom de plume of a man who has seen many winters. He is moderate to an extreme. When he comes to a fork in the road, he always takes it. His favorite philosopher is Yogi Berra.

Places I Have Visited
In addition to living in Puerto Rico and Senegal, I have visited the following places, several a number of times.

Portugal, Gambia, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Scotland, England, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Italy, Iceland, Trinidad & Tobago, French Guiana (FrDOM), Martinique (FrDOM), St. Pierre & Miquelon (FrTOM), Guadeloupe (FrDOM), Dominica, Grenada, Venezuela, Curacao, U.S Virgin Islands, France, Andorra, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Switzerland, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Papua New Guinea, Haiti, Vatican, Singapore, Philippines, Jamaica, Guinea Bissau, Cayman Islands, Mauritania, Israel, Egypt, Monaco, Barbados, Isle of Guernsey, Bermuda And california!

FrDOM = French Département d'outre mer (Overseas department)

FrTOM = French Territoire d'outre mer (Overseas territory)

My e-mail address is marshpinnix@comcast.net.