I didn't always see the world as a software engineer. Initially, I had every intention of carrying out my childhood dream of being an electrical engineer and designing and building micro computer hardware. I did engage in a couple year-long stints as a failure analysis engineer for Apple when they started rolling out the first Macintosh and for Wyse Computers when they introduced micros to their successful line of "dumb" terminals. And I did a three year stint heading up final production/QA/field support for the top U.S. robotic stage lighting company, Morpheus Lights, Inc. Those were crazy times in Silicon Valley in the 80's. But it wouldn't be long before I set aside my BSEE (electrical engineering pursuits) and began to trade in those wire wrap prototypes for the instant gratification of building software. When I entered college, hardware dictated the future of computer technology. But very quickly, when Apple and Microsoft began to develop graphical user interfaces, software called all the shots. And I became more and more intrigued. I studied PASCAL, COBOL, C, and BASIC in my spare time. My software friends told me to study C the closest, as it was the future. They were right. But it was a long and winding road getting there. And here's how it all happened:
In 1984, My first PC was a Timex Sinclair 1000 which was basically a big calculator with a membrane QWERTY keyboard and an interface to store data using a cassette recorder and another interface to connect to an NTSC monitor. I found the device at the San Jose Flea Market at Capitol Drive-In where I scored much of my computer hardware. Every weekend "dumpster-divers" would bring whatever they retrieved from any of the hundreds of computer makers in the area to the swap meet to sell. It was a computer geek's dream come true. Computers were so expensive at that time, this was the only way most micro enthusiasts could get their hands on cutting-edge hardware. The stuff was cheap but the catch (and all the fun) was making it work. The Sinclair had a built in BASIC compiler and so you could write BASIC programs, store them on cassette (like the ones you used to listen to music on), and then retrieve and run them. Soon the Sinclair became quite boring and so I upgraded to an Apple ][ plus I bought used from a friend and then "maxed it out" with parts from the swap meet. The Apple was a color computer and with the right add-on cards, you could get 80 column support, hard drive support, Floppy drive (5 1/4") support, and a plethora of 3rd-party hardware. I had a color Roland NTSC monitor and dual floppies which I modified to use both sides of the floppies and installed a write-protect override switch so I could overwrite protected disks. I eventually added a 300 baud MODEM and traded an industrial HP printer I scored at the flea market for a HDD host adapter at the Computer Surplus Store (CSS) behind the old Wonder Bread factory off First Street in downtown San Jose. I still recall the smell of fresh-baked bread drifting through the warehouse while combing through computer parts in the early morning. So now, with the host adapter, I added the classic Seagate ST-125 20MB (full-height, 5 1/4) hard drive to my Apple. This was the best it got for a micro back then. I was one of the first online banking customers with Bank of America. But just when I thought I had it all, I realized that IBM had a more serious PC which ran a more serious disk operating system (MS-DOS). So I took my beloved Miyata Frog R/C car to the Computer Surplus Store and traded it for an IBM clone which was made by a company called Victor in Scott's Valley. It was a brand new factory defect in the box with 256K or RAM, hard drive, and floppy. I took a gamble, took it home and did a visual inspection and discovered the Intel 8088 processor was plugged in the socket with the two end pins hanging over the side. I corrected the problem and it fired right up. I've been a Microsoft devotee ever since. Needless to say, when I told my friends down at CSS what I found, they took down every single Victor and had them gone through to see if more units could be fixed so easily. Not a chance.
In my spare time, I used my connections from the swap meet to land a gig doing component-level repairs of mother boards and other parts made by Wyse which were sold for the gold and aluminum content, by the pound, to the highest bidder. The parts were to be scrapped. But I knew a guy who purchased the pallets and he knew he could make more money by fixing and selling parts and systems than by melting them down. Since I had previously worked at Wyse on the Failure Analysis Team, I knew what the common issues were and I even had sets of schematics for all of the micro computer PCBs. I made $60 a board for motherboards, $40 per power supply, and $20 per 3 1/2" floppy drive for fixing them. Or I could take one for one. meaning that for every 2 I fixed, I keep one. I would repair up to 20 or 30 pieces a day on a good day. I kept some and got paid for some. The stuff I kept, i sold at the swap meet and then took some of the money I made from those sales and "re-invested" in other gear I found at the meet. My garage was lined with tech benches on both sides. I had oscilloscopes, meters, custom made test beds and soldering stations. It was a full production repair facility with rolling carts loaded with "junk" which, when working, were worth up wards to hundreds of dollars a piece. Although Wyse eventually started destroying the bad product before auctioning it, it was good while it lasted. After this gig was over, I would take one more job as an employee for another tech company before I opted to work for myself indefinitely. Hardware got cheaper and therefore it was no longer cost-effective to repair computer components. You now replaced them. So I adapted and opened up a computer repair and laser printer cartridge recharging service under the fictitious name, CompuSolve.
CompuSolve did okay. It was more of a business 101 than a success story. I ended up with three major customers: Avantec, a defense company, several Self Storage centers, and General Electric Corporate. My contract with these companies was to provide recharged laser printer cartridges and deliver and install them as needed. But once in the offices, people would come to me with all their computer problems and I would take care of them and send an invoice for all my time. I could literally walk into any three of these businesses without being called and find work, do it, and leave. Not a bad gig. I serviced Apples, IBMs, Wangs, did networking, system configurations, and sold a lot of recharged laser printer cartridges. But the problem was that I only had these three big customers. And after doing this for about two years or so, the economy tanked and two of the three companies informed me they were downsizing and were going to be handling their computer issues in-house. The one company remaining, Self Storage, was not big enough to sustain me. The time I should have been spending drumming up more clients and then hiring other techs to service them, I spent doing all the busy work I could handle myself without a worry in the world. Lesson #1: Never base the future of your business on 2 or 3 Goliaths unless your dad is the CEO of one, your uncle the Chairman of the other and... you get the idea.
So here I am, it's 1992 and California is in a recession. On every major road people are selling their second and third cars. Houses for sale everywhere. One day Lockheed is laying off 15,000 people, the next day FMC is laying 5,000 people, the next day someone else is laying off thousands more. So now, after 80% of my business just left, I either have to market my business or find a job. Either choice was ridiculous in these times. So what to do? After some deep soul-searching and a swift kick in the ass, I decided to go and live in Hawaii with my old school buddy who moved there 3 years prior, and teach SCUBA! I'll do this until the California economy recovers, I thought. At this time, I was an assistant PADI SCUBA instructor and Dive Master. On the weekends I took students on check-out dives at Monastery Beach and Lover's Cove in Monterey. I was a SCUBA nut. So I figured I'd take my other passion and live on it for awhile. I never would have imagined I'd end up staying in Hawaii for nine years.
The pay rate for SCUBA instructors in Hawaii was deplorable. It turns out every SCUBA diver on the planet also dreamed of teaching SCUBA in Hawaii. This drove the demand for the job high and the pay low. Meanwhile, I am meeting people in Hawaii and discovering everyone needs help with computers.
[MORE ON BUILDING UP-N-RUNNING HERE]
[PC CURRENTS HERE]
In 1995, soon after the Internet opened up for public use, I wrote the first shrink-wrapped e-commerce solution.
[MORE ON ECWARE HERE]