Me at 35

My layoff from Volt Energy Systems when the Portland office was closed down left me unemployed in an economy that was floundering. I tried my hand at consulting, but I’m just not good at marketing. If I wanted to be a salesman, I would have been a salesman. I’m much happier being a nerd.I was even worse at being a bill collector. I had a couple of contracts working from home and delivering the product. My main client was my old employer, who still was doing maintenance from the parent company for the remaining contracts. It was a real challenge for me dealing with constantly having to try to get them to pay my invoices. Sure, they said, “net 30 days,” but they really meant, “whenever we get around to it.”

After that dried up, I signed up with a man I met at church who was doing some marketing for a consulting company. It was a good match. He actually seemed to like marketing and collections, bless him.

Steve Willoughby, vice-terror of Sunday School class, surpassed only by main terror, Jay Fritzler

I got a contract with the State of Oregon in Salem building a modem interface between IBM PC’s and AS/400 midi computers. What was great was that I got to use C++. I had learned C back at Volt Energy Systems, not because we were really using it much, but because my friend and former Sunday School student, Steve Willoughby, had a crush on it. It was a nice language, a new paradigm for my brain to manage, but I wasn’t nearly as in love with it as Steve.

During my down time between jobs, I had done a tutorial for C++ and was instantly smitten. Object-Oriented Programming! Learning how to program in C++ was, for me, like reading a novel by Alexandre Dumas. I bought a compiler for my Windows PC and wrote and wrote and wrote applications for my own use.

So, it is true that I was in love with C++ and Postscript simultaneously. Not to worry. Barbara is still #1!

One of those applications was to create a pedigree chart from a GEDCOM file. I had also just learned and fallen in love with Postscript, a language for doing some awesome stuff on an HP Laserjet printer. This application would read the GEDCOM file and then write it out to the printer in Postscript.

When I actually got paid to do a job in C++, I was in hog heaven.

It was all too brief, and I still to this day can’t seem to get a contract writing in it.

After the contract at the State of Oregon, I entered a brief slump before nearly killing my career altogether.

To be continued… OOP’s! Did I Do That?!

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