About Me Part 3

It's been an interesting week... ending with watching "A Beautiful Mind" starring Russell Crowe... I'm tempted to just comment on that movie, and John Nash, but I decided to finish this, because I said I would, and then I'll get to that.

When I left Borland, it was primarily because the company had been torn apart, not so much internally, but by people who were intent on destroying it by any means because Borland was a true force in the software industry, with some very bright people creating some excellent software. There were people on staff being paid by other companies to spy on the development of the software, and were giving away company secrets.

I was flabbergasted myself when someone from another company that was a major software developer in the Silicon Valley that called me on my phone at work one day, and asked me if I would supply them with a beta copy of the original release of Paradox for Windows, so that their company could steal the ideas and beat them to market.

I was initially simply insulted by it. I thought these people knew me.  They offered me $500, more if I wanted it.  First, I was shocked they would call me at work for this in the first place, putting my job in jeopardy for their own gain. Second, that they would ask me to betray the company I worked for, let alone violate the confidentiality agreements I signed, just like I signed at the companies when I worked with them.

So, I got off the phone, spoke to my boss, and that night, when they called me at home, I agreed to give them the software.  The next day, I delivered it to them. And I was very upset, because they just should have known better.  They should have known me better. Nonetheless, I delivered it to them.  And I asked them, "So, if I give this to you, would you consider me trustworthy to hire me at your company".  They said, of course.  So I asked them to set up the interview.   I never got a call from them on that subject from either of them people at their respective companies. And they won't return my phone calls even today.

Maybe it's because they figured out that what I gave them didn't stand a chance to work.  And I didn't take their money.

So, I went to Atlanta.  There was a small start-up company there that had some great ideas.  And I knew I could help them. They had spent thousands of hours gathering information on every commercial building in Atlanta.  The point was to offer an online service to allow businesses seeking office space to be able to locate office space, and compare pricing of the space.

This was in 1993.

So, I got in my car, which had an engine nearly burned out, and brakes that barely worked, and headed across country.  I was pulling so much weight with it, that I literally could not get the thing to move in first gear (it's a stick shift) an an uphill.  Imagine driving through San Francisco, and all the hills there, in such a way that I never had to stop.  But I did it.  And I got there safely, in good time.

When I want through the desert, I remember there was an extremely bad thunder storm sort of paralleling the road.  You could see people in the cars hitting the gas more and more as we went along because it was apparent that at some point, the storm would cross the road, and it was obvious we were on a collision course with it. So, as I went along singing to Linda Ronstadt's song "well, I've  been to Tucson and Tukamkeri ("), Tehachapee to San Anton..." I came around the corner and there it was, the storm.  All 6 drivers of the cars surrounding me hit the gas even more.   And suddenly, BOOM.. lightening struck within 100 feet of the road... you could feel the heat, and the hair on my arms stood out.  I'd never experienced anything like it.  And everybody hit the gas some more.

The Grand Canyon, by the way, was incredible.  I only had 2 hours to tour it, because I was making arrangements for the purchase and delivery of some computer network equipment needed when I got to Atlanta, and there were some unexpected problems.  I took over 70 pictures... but mostly, I had seen the movie "Grand Canyon" with Kevin Klein and Steve Martin and Danny Glover... and I remembered Danny Glover say something like "When you're standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, you realize just how insignificant you really are in the grand scheme of things".   And that was so true.  It was awesome.

Of course, at about 4 in the afternoon one day, I stopped in Muskogee, checked into a motel, called a friend in California, and at approximately 4:20 in the afternoon, we smoked a joint together via long distance.  I'd wanted to do that ever since I heard the song Okie From Muskogee.  (The lyric... we don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee)  The significance of the time is a joke amongst marijuana smokers, because there are approximately 420 active "chemicals" in marijuana, and so it's called 4:20 burn-time.

I remember when I got to Mobile Alabama.  I was a little afraid.   The only thing I knew about the south was the history of race riots and the Ku Klux Klan, and since I purposely had left my hair long and was wearing a tie-dye t-shirt, it concerned me. But, I needed gas, and apprehensively pulled into a station with a level lot. And much to my surprise and delight, everyone was extremely nice.

And finally, I pulled into South Atlanta, at a little restaurant, and decided to eat while the people I needed to meet came to guide me to their house. This one was a shocker.

It reminded me of years before.  I had tried to join the NAACP when I was 10 or 11.  I tried to join the National Organization of Women when I was 14.  Both groups just told me to go home and talk to my parents. :}  The hardest part of that, though, was the stereotypes and opinions we all have of each other, and how we act on them as if they were true.  I still remember to this day how I held a door open for a woman once, and got chewed out on the spot for being a chauvinist.  I would have held that door open for anyone.

But, at this restaurant, it was strange for me.  There I was, sitting at a counter, waiting for the food I had ordered. And I waited, and waited and waited.  I asked the waiter a couple of times if I could get my food.  All I got were indignant responses like "Sure". Finally, they just brought me the bill.   So, I asked for my food, and they said, "You're not going to make any trouble, are you?" I looked around, and noticed I was the only white person in the restaurant, and everyone was looking at me.

I said I'd be glad to pay for it, but I'd like to eat.  So, I watched the waiter go back into the kitchen, throw some food on a plate (not what I ordered), then he spit on it in front of me and placed it on the table. And everybody watched to see what I would do. Okay.

I just looked around and put my money on the table, and waited for the business people to  show up out in the parking lot.

The business people showed up, shook my hand, and then proceeded to chew me out for taking so long. I thought going cross country in 5 days was pretty good time.

A lot more happened, but, a few days later, I was in a house in Doraville.  I'd start my day by watching a movie, and then I'd get on the computer and programmed until I was ready to drop. I did that for about 3 months.  To help them out, the deal was I'd work for $1500 a month (just enough to get by), and, they were really nice about telling me they'd pay all the utilities, my cable, water, etc My job was to create 1 program and set up the network, as well as the dial up services.

About half way through the project, I got word that my 20th High School re-union was coming up in September.  I would have been the person coming from the longest distance.

Anyway, in 3 months, I actually started the first program, wrote 5 more for other companies to use, and was just about to finish the first one, when things got a little weird.

First, I went to a dinner meeting one night, they decided I could use a break, and these people were talking to another company with a similar business... that was going to merge with ours because our software and service was so superior.    The various counties we contacted in order to get commercial property listings from didn't have it computerized, and actually wanted to contract us to do it for them.  TRW found out about our software, and inquired about us doing the same thing for their commercial listings world-wide.

So there we are at this dinner meeting, with people who were eager to work with us... but about the last 40% of the meeting was my partners threatening these people that if they didn't go along, they would be destroyed one way or another, whatever it took.  It was like having someone begging to pay 3 times the price on a beat up lawnmower, and threatening them if they didn't buy it. At the end of the dinner, I slipped a note to the other people saying that if I ever found out my partners were planning to do something wrong, that I would warn them.

By the way, when I say partners, I say that figuratively. I didn't actually own any part of their business.  My partners, though, had mentioned that, on the same weekend of my reunion, that they might want to display the software at a convention.  I said that if they did that, I would skip the reunion.

So, about 2 weeks before the reunion, I called them up to see what their plans were. The response was something like "How the hell can you justify taking the time off when you haven't even finished the software yet?"  Remember, I had already done much more than I had agreed to do, and didn't get a penny more for it.

I tried in that call to have it come to a reasonable conclusion.   It was so weird, I finally just hung up.  I got called every name in the book, and was repeatedly threatened.

The next morning, I was sitting there wondering what to do. The phone rang a couple of times, but I didn't answer.  There was a knock on my door, and I didn't answer.  About a half hour later, the police arrived.

Now, when I had first gotten to Atlanta, these people had rented an office so that when I got there, it would be ready to use.  But, they weren't going to be there, and I wasn't going to sit in an uncomfortable office alone for 18 hours a day and work by myself... without the ability to make food, coffee, play music or anything else.  So, instead, I worked at home.  When all of the equipment came in, we had it delivered to my house so I could configure it and get it ready so that when we did open the office, everything would be ready.  Not a single box had been opened yet.

To tie one more thing in, I didn't know how long I'd be staying in Atlanta, so their friend, their banker, set up a bank account for me so I wouldn't have to get a driver's license in Georgia, and deal with all of that.

So, I got on my phone and called this attorney I had been instructing, and made the policeman wait while I talked to the attorney. The policeman was going to arrest me.  They told him I had stolen all this equipment.

I talked to the officer once I got off the phone, and he clearly understood I was being given a raw deal.  So, they just had me carry all of these boxes and put them in her car.  The, the officer tried to mediate the situation.   He asked me if I'd still be willing to work with these people.  I told him sure, for about $200 per hour.  He just couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to work with people like this.

So, I spent the day wondering what I would do next. I had just gotten my $1500 check from these people, and had deposited it in the bank, and it hadn't cleared yet. So, I decided the best thing to do was wait a few days to make sure it had cleared before trying to get any money.

The next day after that, I got a call from a very nice officer with the Georgia Bureau of Investigations. He was calling because these people hadn't paid for any of this equipment.  The sales rep at the distributorship was a former CIA agent.   Apparently, these people had called him and threatened his life if he wouldn't take the equipment back.  So, he called the GBI.

Meanwhile, I had been the guru of the Atlanta Paradox for Windows User's Group, which was sponsored by a software education firm in Atlanta.  These people said, no problem, we'll set up a class, and you can teach it, and you'll get paid by the student.  Supposedly, I would have earned a few thousand dollars.

The next day, though, my utilities started getting shut off.   The bills hadn't been paid, as I had been told they would be.  And I had no money.

The next day, I went to the User's Group meeting.  Outside the building was a teller machine.  I got out some money.  I checked the balance.   The check had cleared.  As it should have, because the check was drawn on the same bank as the one where my account was... where their friend was the bank president.

The following day, just to be sure, I called the bank to make sure the check had cleared.  They said it had. So I wrote some checks for the bills.   But, apparently they had recognized me, and, when I went to get another $40 out of the bank, it said I was overdrawn. They had transferred the money back out of my account, and faked a "stop-payment" on the check after the fact.  I even went to the bank and got a printout, and it showed the activity plain as day.  So I called the main office of the bank, and they refused to discuss it.

So, I mentioned it to the same guy at computer distributorship.   The next day, I got a call from the Secret Service. Seems they wanted to ask me a few questions, because they had gotten a report about me committing bank fraud.  And, by now, all the checks were bouncing.  I told them what had really happened, and they just laughed at me about it.  They said they couldn't help me, that their investigations were only on behalf of the bank.

I won't tell you the rest of that story, because you wouldn't believe it anyway.

So, the next day, I called the officer at the GOBI.  He said he couldn't help me.  But that the regular police department would. I went to the police department the next day, waited in line for four hours, and they listened to my story, and said they couldn't help me.  Even though I had records from the bank regarding it.

At one point, I had asked this company to receive a wire transfer from a friend in Santa Cruz for $800, so I could pay the rent and utilities. I guess they didn't understand what a wire transfer was.  I tried to explain it to them, and all they said was "We're not a loan company". They didn't want to hear that all I was asking them to do was receive the money so it wouldn't go through my own bank account.

And, I finally convinced Wachovia Bank to receive the money for me.

But, I realized at that point I was on my own. And I  couldn't get another bank account because of the bounced checks.  To make it worse, I found out that my old bank in California had not cancelled my bank account there, even though I had appropriately taken steps to do so, and so they have it on record that I owe them for unpaid bank fees.

I hustled very hard, and within 4 days, had $3,000 in retainers for a couple of projects.  And I thought I would be making about 5k on the Paradox for Windows class.

Then, I started getting harassed by the business partners because they couldn't get the software to work.  And they wanted their money back.  This went on for a few weeks.

I showed up to teach the software class, and their were only 5 people there.  To top it off, 3 of them had never seen Paradox before. 2 were placed in the class for free.  These people had told me there would be a minimum of 20 people.   But, I taught the class.

Meanwhile, money kept disappearing from the bank account all the time.  Checks would bounce, and then the money would suddenly reappear.

This education company set me up with a simple contract for a national exterminating company.  There were 2 key deadlines.  As luck would have it, they were both the day after I had gone through having a gun pointed at my head while people ransacked my house.  My experience with the police told me the only thing they would do was take a report and express their hopes that not too many things had been broken.  That's how I lost the "T" section of my album collection.  I had lots of rare records then. So, I'd call and give them some feeble excuse as to why I wouldn't be there to deliver the software on time.  I didn't think they'd believe me if I told them the real reason.  No one else did.  That ended up blowing that contract.

So, then I ended up working for a big 10 accounting firm, to rescue them from a project they had done nothing on for over 6 months.  I worked day and night, and then had to go to North Carolina to show them the progress, and to teach 24 people who had never operated computers before how to run Paradox for Windows.  So, by day, I taught the class, and then worked all night continuing to program to deal with their desired modifications.

Upon returning to Atlanta, and expecting to get paid, I was told that the Account Manager for the project and I had been fired because not enough progress had been made on the project in 7 months (even though I'd only been on it for 1) and that the people in North Carolina were offended because I smoke.

To top it off, they decided they were going to pay me $20 less per hour than agreed to.  I might add, the manager of that office was fired 2 days later for embezzlement.

Meanwhile, the account manager supposedly talked them into having us complete the project. So, I worked on it another 3 weeks, then called the accounting firm to find out when I could pick up my next check... and they were surprised, because they supposedly didn't know anything about it.  The account manager had lied to me.   Why, I don't know.

So, given that I was continuing to give technical support on Paradox for Windows via Compuserve, it was pretty easy for me to pick up a contract. That went pretty well. 

Until I decided to take a weekend off to volunteer as the solo cameraman for a 2-day, 14 hour per day diversity conference in North Carolina.

The guy didn't want me to go.  As if it was his choice.

So, when I got back, I talked to him on Monday morning (we talked everyday, and I delivered the latest daily results to him via modem), and he told me they weren't going to pay me any more money until the project was completed, some estimated 6 weeks later.

At that point, all I wanted to do was get out of Atlanta.  I completed the project, and then they decided they weren't going to pay me for another 3 weeks.  So, as the electricity and phones and all were turned off  (I didn't want to make any more work commitments that would cause me to stay there) I just waited for this check to arrive.

I have to say, my landlord was very nice about it all.  He was aware of what I had gone through.  And I still owe him money.  About once a year I call him to make sure he's still there.  Because I have every intention of repaying him with interest. He's one of the few people I've ever met in my life who has acted like someone who understands the golden rule, let alone a Christian. For the record, he's an African American. And he owed me nothing.

And there's a lot more to this story. It just isn't worth telling.

Finally, I was able to get the money, rent a truck, and move back to California.

Back in California, I had it set up to live with someone who I thought was one of my 2 best friends in the world.  He told me he was difficult to live with, but that if I could put up with that, I was welcome.  Since I had a great deal of experience at living with difficult people, I didn't think it would be a problem.   And I'd done him so many favors, I figured he could put up with me for a while.

I cooked for him, cleaned his house daily, took care of his dogs... everything a good maid or slave could possibly do. All the while, I was trying to find a job, and couldn't get and interview because I didn't have a degree.

Anyway, he called up my other supposed best friend... and conned him into the idea that my "rehab" should be a community affair, and that he should do his part.  After all, this other friend had lived in my house for over a year rent-free so he could afford to attend UCSC and get his degree.

So, I actually didn't have a problem with going to live at his house, other than feeling humiliated once again.

So, I moved in, and the next Sunday, I wake up at 8 in the morning to the sound of pounding hammers and construction equipment.  It seems that the guy who lived in the house next door was a contractor who'd bought the house to remodel and sell. That part was okay.

But my roommate said this had been a real problem for quite some time.  And he wanted me to help him do something about it.  To fight it.  I just shook my head and said "The best thing you could do is move.  But if you really want to fight it, what's going to happen is that eventually you'll get evicted, and ultimately have to go to court to vindicate yourself... and me".  He insisted he wanted to fight it.

I wasn't in much of a position to argue.  After all, I was otherwise homeless.

Because I couldn't get a job, I became a master at yard sales.   I could look at people getting out of there cars and tell what they'd be interested in and how much they'd be willing to spend.  When that wasn't enough, I started selling things at the flea market.  That include a couple hundred albums from my collection, a Gibson hollow-body electric that I loved, 2 keyboard, 2 reel-to-reel broadcast quality Otaris, a 4-track Teac cassette, my car stereo, my fish tanks, a couch, an antique table hand carved from teak wood from Lebanon, computer parts... whatever I had, it was for sale, except for my Ovation Balladeer and the rest of my albums.  And my then 15 year old dog and cat... who were very cool animals. 

So, finally, I ran out of things to sell, and decided to lie on my resume so I could get an interview for a decent job.  Mind you, it takes about 10 pages to fit my resume, without lying about any of the work I've done.

I got a contract at a major national bank in the San Francisco financial district. It should have been a slam-dunk.  But not for Chuck.  The first day I say in the chair next to the desk of my supervisor, she looked at me, and said "You know, this is going to be interesting.  I have  a real problem dealing with men."  I just thought "Oh, no".  I looked on her desk, and saw a picture of a guy who had the same general looks as I do. But, I let go of that part.   I can usually get people to relax and feel good being around me, so I didn't worry about it too much.  And the truth is, we did alright... mostly...

I'll mention that I'd already made plans to take a vacation to Crescent City about 6 weeks into that contract, and they agreed to allow it.

The problem was they had existing software they wanted to modify.   Had I known that software, I would have advised them to start from scratch.  I ended up modifying it so much that I actually did completely re-write it.

The problem was, I kept asking... what reports do you want?   What information needs to be recorded?  Normal, simple questions.  About 3 weeks into the project, she finally admitted she didn't know what the end result was because her boss didn't like her, and wouldn't tell her anything because "you'll just have to figure it out".

Did I mention that all this time, I was getting my Camaro completely rebuilt mechanically?  Spent nearly $10,000 doing it, a good investment I thought, because it gave me the opportunity to work and go where I wanted.  A new car would have been much more expensive, and I wouldn't have been able to get financing at that point anyway. And that didn't include the $700 per month I was paying for a rental car for 4 months while the Camaro was getting rebuilt.

So, back to the contract.  The whole thing should have only taken about 2 weeks. I work very fast and hard, then take time off between contracts to play.  At the 6 week mark, I reminded them of my plans, and they became furious with me for considering going, even though there were no deadlines to deal with.  The last day I was there, I was leaving straight from there to go to Crescent City, but I had one other appointment to go to on my way out of town.  And that was to meet a guy at Sybex who wanted me to write a book on Paradox for Windows. A friend of mine who wrote a similar book has financed his whole life off his book. But, because of getting chewed out, I was late, and frankly, just didn't have any more energy to overcome one more solitary thing.

I was pretty bitter about what had happened in Atlanta.  I felt pretty beaten up, and all I wanted, like I kept telling people, was to have a normal life for a change.  I guarantee you, I had forgotten about the deal with God at that point.   I was just trying to survive, and trying very hard not to let my anger spill over into anything else.

So, I left for Crescent City, and had a very good time.  Bob even let me pull a few shifts at his radio station.  Whenever I need to deal with "adversity", I go back to broadcasting.  It's something I love to do. Anyway...

I got back to Santa Cruz a week later... and not only was I fighting a contractor next door, but it turns out things like the washer wasn't working, the roof leaked, the heater barely worked... and when my friend mentioned it to the landlord, she'd say things like "well, I can't afford to fix the washer, so you'll just have to do without it"... which, by the way, is not legal in California. S, I had my friend write her a letter.  No response.  Another letter.  No response.

The next thing I know, my friend gets a call from her, saying I must be an awful person, because he would never say something like "I would appreciate a response to this letter, as well as having these problems resolved".  Frankly, given the amount of time he had been dealing with the problems, I thought it was pretty reasonable phrasing.

And then, there was this contractor next door.  I talked to the police about it, found out he was breaking the law, found out he was violent toward inspectors on job sites... generally had a reputation in town as a jerk... to be charitable.  The other truth is, I simply didn't have any more patience left.   This one very nice police officer tried to mediate, but the contractor lied so much and said so many false things about me, that I couldn't contain myself.

In addition, he checked the records, and found out that our landlord had turned the house into 2 units illegally, and bullied her into getting a restraining order against me. Even though I had done nothing violent, and didn't even know her. He must have told her some real whoppers.  I had never even talked to her.

Meanwhile, I had gotten another contract, which I'll go into a little more later.  To do that contract, I sat at my computer 12-16 hours a day, at a window, that was parallel to the house the contractor was working on.  And it's not like I had a lot of choices about where I could set up to work. This is still in the period where my car was being worked on.

Now, the noise wasn't the real issue.  The problem was that we had a very small yard, with a small fence between the properties.  This is where my friend and I let our dogs into for dog business.  The front yard wasn't fenced.   There were nails in the ground... new ones all the time... when they did the roofing, they did it in such a way that materials kept hitting the window that I was sitting in front of while working... understand, I had what I had left of my possessions stacked into a 10x12 room, and there wasn't much room.  My albums require a 6 foot long by 4 feet high space just for storage.

There were many occasions over a period of weeks where I literally dropped to the floor, thinking boards and nails and things were going to fly through the window.  He told everyone in the neighborhood that I was a violent crack head. Not true. It was incredible. He told my landlord that I didn't have a job (I suppose because I worked at home) even though I was making good money, trying to get things caught up.

Finally, the eviction notice came.  We went to an attorney, and they just acted like my friend and  I must be criminals for not paying our rent... which is what they claimed... although the truth was, they refused to accept our rent payments.  Ultimately, supposedly, the landlord agreed to drop the eviction in   exchange for the rent.  But, of course, they forgot to withdraw the eviction.   And then wouldn't. And we only did the settlement because my friend decided he didn't want to fight it.

Within a week of us moving out, he started getting phone calls from the neighbors. Seems this contractor and his friends were terrorizing most of the people in the immediate perimeter of his house.  They killed a dog in the house behind them.   The people occupying the apartment made from the house we were in kept catching people looking in the bathroom window when they were showering... the list went on and on... finally, the same police officer got so tired of all the calls about them, he told everyone still there how to do one of those suits where they evict a landowner for being a bad neighbor.

At that point, I made arrangements 6 weeks in advance to move into a house in Yosemite.  When I got there, they said they had rented it to someone else, and that they didn't have anything else. And it would take 3 weeks to get my money back.

So, I moved my stuff in with my brother until I could find another place.  All this time, I was working on this other contract.  I thought it was perfect. It appeared to be a long-term project, not great, but decent money, and certainly would have put me in the upper class of the Yosemite set.

But this contract started out weird, and ended weird. I got the referral from a friend of a friend who used to work at Borland.  I had to drive for nearly 4 hours to go to his house to pick up the materials and get an intro to what was going on.  When I got to his house, his wife, who did not (supposedly) speak English in person (she did fine over the phone) handed me the stuff, and didn't even let me in the door.  I just thought, no biggie, it's my contract now anyway.

Even the initial interview with the agency involved was strange. Even though I had said I wasn't willing to work in an office long before agreeing to it, they insisted on it when I first met them.  I didn't understand it. Then, at least.   So I just played a couple salesman tricks on them to force them to allow it.   Like taking off my watch in the middle of it and projecting that I didn't have time for such nonsense. A tough trick, but all I wanted was to get back into the mountains and give myself some time to let the anger and frustration go.  And the work they needed was really pretty simple.

The truth is, had I started the software from scratch, it would have taken less than 4 months. And that includes the time it would have taken to learn OS/2 and 2 new server operating systems. When I started the project, I was living next door to the contractor.  1-1/2 months into it, I moved to Yosemite.  And I didn't even have to show a resume to get this job.. another thing I thought was odd.

When I got the software, I wrote some other software to analyze the code that was already written, and I was shocked.  There was approximately 1.8 million lines of code.  And basically, what I had discovered was that the previous guy just copied the same routines, over and over again, instead of creating the code so it could be used over and over... something you might call sub-routines with variables, instead of the same code adapted for each specific instance or occurrence in the software.   You'd have to know software to understand this.  Other than that, he had written excellent code.  Excellent.  It didn't make sense.

I wrote some other software to convert it, and it came to less than 100,000 lines of code to do even more than it could do before.  It just didn't make sense.

Even before I moved to Yosemite, I had gotten a call from the guy who hired me to do the job.  He was upset because I was getting the job done too quickly.   I was putting in a lot of hours, as I always do... the quicker I got done, the sooner I was able to do other things I liked... that was my way of creating freedom... And I wrote bug-free code... and billing 60-80 hours per week.

On this one call, he proceeded to tell me that the goal was to stretch it out for as long as possible. To force them to give us a new contract, so it could be extended an additional 6 months. It didn't make sense.  A project like that has a finite life in the first place.  Surely, it had to be complete at some point.

He proceeded to tell me that the way the contract was written, he could have sold the client a roll of toilet paper, and no one could do anything about it.   I reminded him that I was recording the call, because this was the first time I had ever talked to him, and I wanted to make sure that I would remember any special instructions.  I told him I was recording the call in the first place.  I know the rules.

He just kept talking. I tried to let him know without being rude that I didn't find it amusing.  I told him that, as a taxpayer, I didn't like paying taxes so people like him could get rich. He started talking about Solomon Rushdie's book, and how he couldn't believe there could be people who were "true believers" who were willing to give their lives for their cause (even though our armed forces do exactly the same thing).  This, by the way, was in 1996 or 7.   I have my notes, but not here.  I always wanted them in a safe place just in case.

During this same  period, I began being harassed again by the people in Atlanta/Chicago.  A guy I found out was extremely "connected".   I don't know how he found me.  The phone wasn't even in my name, or in the   name of someone with the last name.  The only thing I could figure is that it was from my employment records.

I just got off the phone and shook my head.  All I knew is that I was going to give my money's worth toward the project, and deliver it the best way I knew how.  I'd always worked on the principle that if you do a good job, what I call work myself into obsolescence, that those clients appreciated my work, and always found more for me to do.

So, I proceeded.  And I got a few more calls like that from him.

Meanwhile... I kept prodding the staff at the client's office to tell me what was going on because it just didn't make sense.  I have to believe that they wondered too, since I was getting the job done pretty quickly, in a way that allowed them to define their own reports, add more fields, all the things that a programmer would do to empower their customers to do as much as they could themselves.

Finally, a fellow geek took me out to lunch and told me the whole story, all the way down to the contract number and terms and the story behind how it all got started, a sweetheart deal.  Ya just never know what those geeks are going to do :}

Meanwhile, I had a conversation with an old mentor who I thought was safe to deal with. He convinced me to go into business with him, developing internet web sites.  He would do the sales, I would do the development, a pretty simple deal.   So, I spent a little over $3,000 to get the equipment to be able to do the whole job from a development point of view.  Computers, scanners, modems, digital camera. I thought this would be the next "career".  He was also a field rep for the Republican Party.

So... back to the contract... I started asking other staff members about things, and no one was willing to discuss it. There I was, stuck in the middle of fraud.  I called senators, reps, even my old mentor who just told me "that's just the way things are done".  I was stressed out already.  The last thing I wanted was to have someone try to arrest me for this, just like in Atlanta.  All I was trying to do was make a living.  I wasn't asking for anything else.

I called the Democratic National Committee, the Republican National Committee.  I talked to a guy 3 times, and delivered a report to an FBI Agent in San Francisco who said he was actually on the terrorism task force... it was right after the bombing in Oklahoma City... The only response it got was to have a representative call the client to find out if they needed help in getting rid of me.  After a while, I was pretty angry, and on bad days, I'd call whoever was the most senior person in the office that day and give them a pretty tough 3rd degree about it, and demand that they take action.  Of course, nobody would, and the person who told me was formally disciplined for saying anything.

I will neither apologize for my behavior or state that it wasn't appropriate.  My attitude was how dare they involve me in a crime like that.   Because all they were really doing was making the program look bigger to make it seem they were making progress. And collecting a large amount of money they didn't earn.

That cost me around $700 in legal fees just so I would know where I stood in the matter.  And it wasn't good.  Because now, I was a knowing accomplice.

At about this point, the guy in Connecticut started harassing me.   They didn't even know at that time that I had finished the project, and the final version was already sitting in their offices on their computer system.  Throughout the time I worked on it, no one would ever take the time to even look at it, except maybe once a month so they could approve my time sheet.

The tactic they used on me was to withhold my pay until I signed a confidentiality agreement.  Even then, I wanted to find a legal way out, without being an accomplice.  So I went on the internet to the Cornell Law Library, and found a Supreme Court ruling on a case less than 2 months old, Microsoft vs Qualcom, where it was ruled that you can't impose a confidentiality agreement after the fact unless you specified, to the detail, what you wanted to keep confidential.  That meant the only way they could enforce the agreement was to admit to the crime.

So, after weeks went by, I signed the agreement, and, after another trip to the attorney, forced them to pay me.  Meanwhile, I literally nearly starved to death. That's no exaggeration at all.  What I could count on was 2-3 meals a week at my brother's house.  I couldn't pay my rent or utilities.  And our dear welfare system had nothing to offer a guy like me who had been working hard, paying taxes and asking for nothing in return for many many years.  Because I wasn't a minority or a mother with young children.  Couldn't even get food stamps because I had this money coming. I lived on eggs and grape juice for nearly 2 months. And I had no assistance at all in getting the medicine I needed for my condition.  That was about $50 a month back then.

Why didn't I just go get a job? Because in Yosemite, there were few jobs. And it was winter.  The closest town was Sonora, and I couldn't even pay my gas to get to work on the jobs that were available.

Finally, I got the money.  It should have bought me 4-6 months of rest, which is all I wanted.

Meanwhile, the internet business.. at some point, the partner just stopped communicating with me. I never  have received the courtesy of an apology or explanation. And I wrote him a pretty nasty letter, lied to him about a bunch of things because I was so angry with him... I'm sure it was political, because as a Republican field rep, I was likely not a good person to be associated with.

The fun part was, I was getting pretty good at the guitar and singing again.  Almost professional. And it started to  get around that I had an open door policy.  So I had tourists stopping by on the weekends... I'd do 3-5 sets a day on Saturdays and Sundays... and it was just fun to sing and play and hang out with people.   And this included some of my favorite people up there, a couple of police officers who I hit it off with.

I took a contract in Sacramento with a nationally known lending institution... I didn't even know that my friend was the boss... under normal circumstances I could have helped him out.  But the company's employment policies were so bad that everybody was depressed, and I just didn't have that kind of energy to give.

So, then I got a job in Walnut Creek, and I lied on my resume to get the interview.  But I never had the chance to tell them I lied... at least at that point... what I was hit with was the Robert Half states that 95% of all people lie on their resumes... all kinds of demeaning things about people and how bad they were.   Of course, what they didn't tell me was that they stayed drunk most the time, yelled at all of their employees constantly, and humiliated people left and right.

The medical insurance they offered wouldn't cover me because I lived too far away. I understood, and made a comment about not wanting to trust the doctors in Sonora anyway.

They supposedly checked up on me with a guy at Borland who was only there for a few months of the time I was there, and who supposedly said I didn't do half the stuff I claimed... which wasn't true... I never lied about my skills... it was truly a demeaning workplace.  And I just wasn't in the mood.  And alot of really weird things went on there.  But, they liked my work alot.

I was supposed to fill out a formal application... I'm sure it was there way to tell the truth about a degree.. and whatever else they believed.  This was one of the guys who called me a genius.

I ended up filing a claim against them for forcing me to work in a   hostile environment.  And I didn't do it for me.  I did it to put a mark on their record for all the other people so that if they filed a claim, there would be a precedent.  I kept waiting for the judge to send me a ruling so I could file an appeal in court, because I knew I had a valid complaint.  But the judge exercised his prerogative to withhold the judgement for 6 months, thus basically forcing me to drop it.   But I had a case.  In that hearing, they used the insurance thing to say that I became furious over it... which was a lie... they tried to make it out like I didn't get along with other employees, which wasn't true... they pulled a fast one by asking if I thought I was a genius...  I shook my head, and finally said, people like you have described me that way, all I know is that I'm intelligent, that I might consider myself a creative genius, but I wasn't very street-smart.  And then they asked about my degree. And of course, it all became about that, even though it wasn't the issue.   But, the employer is protected by the law, not the employee.

As if all that wasn't enough... let's go back to 1983 for a moment.   In my consulting business in the Seattle area... what I'll say is that I grew up dirt poor,and earned everything I've ever owned.  I made and $80,000 computer sale one day, with a $50,000 custom software and support contract.  For me, that was allot.   I needed a car, and I didn't have a guitar, and I was low on time, so I went out one day and bought my Ovation Balladeer and beautiful red camera... t-tops, a bra, ma wheels, louvered back window, a 305 engine with 4 on the floor.  I had wanted a Camera for years.  I certainly had never had a car that nice before.  Did I mention it was bright red? And it wasn't about speed... it was the precision of the machine.  Except for the front suspension, it was the same as a Corvette.  And it was the last year of the old body style. I was proud to have worked to finally get what I really wanted.

I had a great driving record.  I supported all Police charities.   I truly respected the police. Until I bought that car.  First, my insurance company cancelled my policy.  Then, no one else would insure me, because my insurance company had canceled me.

I was so used to driving junkers, and I was so naive about what would happen by driving such a car, that on the way home from the dealer, everywhere I went, people kept staring at the car.  In my world, that meant the muffler was dragging or something.  I kept pulling over and inspecting the car to see what everyone was staring at.  It took me about 2 weeks to figure out that people thought it was as pretty as I did. And it is a pretty car.  Even today, it's all original paint.   My neighbors used to say I was going to rub the paint off because I waxed it so much.  But I earned that puppy... and I only bought it to impress me.

The first day after buying it, I was coming home from a client's office, and a police officer pulled me over.  He told me he'd been watching me drag up and down the street for the last 3 weeks, and he was informing me that it had to stop.   I just played passive.  But I certainly couldn't respect the lie.

I finally started counting how many times I got pulled over.  In Washington State, I got pulled over more than 19 times, and never got a ticket... because I wasn't breaking the law.  That's called profiling.  Finally, my attorney told me that when they pulled me over without cause, to ask them for their name and badge number.  When they asked why, I was to tell them so that when I filed the harassment suit, I'd know the officers to name in it.  I only had to do that once, and I never got pulled over in the State of Washington again.

My respect for the police began to wane.

When I moved to Yosemite, in a very bad state of mind and full of anger, I didn't want to get known as  a hothead in a Camaro, so I asked my brother what he thought I should do. He was a volunteer for the local Sheriff's Assistance group.   He said I should volunteer, and then people would get to know me.  Then he proceeded to tell me about this Highway Patrolman who was really bored patrolling the hills, so his plan was to harass the locals enough that people would complain, and then he could get transferred somewhere else more interesting.  I didn't volunteer.

This cop harassed me every way he could think of.  He would pull in front of me on two lane roads and then spray gravel into the front of my car... he'd follow me through the locked security gates where I lived and then sit outside my house and watch me... I couldn't go anywhere when he was on duty without him on my tail.   And I wasn't breaking the law.

One day on my way to Sacramento to work, a 4 hour drive each way, this one cop pulled me over and gave me a ticket for 71mph in a 50mph zone.  I was over doing 35-40, as I had just come through a hair-pinned turn on an old country road.   He was coming from the other direction.  He came up behind me. I decided I would comply with any orders he gave me, but until he did, I was going to have it out with him verbally.  I put my hands on the steering wheel, and we had a shouting match.

Finally, he said, license & registration.  I shut up, and began to reach for my wallet, and he began to pull his gun...Had it out of his holster. I understand on a certain level.  But I didn't break the law.  He did. Profiling.

At that point, with what I've told you, if you threaten my life, it just makes me mad.  I made my peace with God about death when I was a kid.   Death doesn't scare me.

So I said to this cop, "Put that God Damn gun down.  Do you threaten your wife with your gun when you argue with her, too?"  He put it away and acted embarrassed.  I have a pretty powerful voice, and I know how to use it.   I told he that if he wanted to ask for my license, then he'd better be prepared to allow me to retrieve it.

Remember, I was not in the mental state to deal with this kind of harassment,

I ended up calling his Sergeant in Stockton and I must have yelled at him for a good hour. I told him that my attorney told me that if a police officer pulls a gun on me, that I have a right to defend myself.. and it was one hell of a commentary to have to consider having to defend myself against the police... and of course I reminded him that I didn't have a gun and didn't need to.  I informed him that when I was a kid in the wilderness, I always had a pistol on me.  But I had no need of a gun where I lived.  Of course, that whole conversation turned into a conversation about me owning a gun.  I even understand that.  But, I'm just not a violent person.   I do have a temper when provoked.  Seriously provoked. I paid the ticket because I didn't think I could contain my anger in court.. and having a red sports car I would have lost no matter what anyway. That's profiling for ya.

In follow up calls, I can honestly say that he and I could have been good friends.  We even had  a couple dates to have dinner after work, but his duties got in the way.  And I quit going to Sacramento.

The last ticket I got occurred on my way to Walnut Creek, to work... and I was coming around a corner after being at a full stop, behind a car making a left turn across the highway.  My favorite cop came around the corner, within 3 feet of the back bumper of the car he was following/harassing, and he saw me and did a fish tail to come after me.  I have a policy with cops like that.  It's called, take the foot off the gas, and just pull over.  When he "radared me" I was in first gear, and couldn't have been going more than 35 in a 55 zone.

He came to my window, and said I was doing 85.  I said a few things about how he'd been harassing me, and how it must make him feel powerful to abuse his authority. He told me to shut up and wrote the ticket.

I sent a letter in response to it.  I did not send money. I told them any time they wanted to pick me up, they knew where I was.  But they could throw me in jail for 10 years, but I would never pay a dime for that ticket. And I won't.   I have a copy of that letter. And my brother refused to say a word about his attitude problem.  I didn't break the law. He did.

The first ticket I ever got, the officer pulled me over and I led him to the McDonald's at the end of the off ramp, and after he gave me the ticket, I offered and bought him breakfast.  He didn't break the law, I did.  But I've gotten tickets, pulled out of a line of rush hour cars doing 20mph by a cop who had a sports car pulled over at the same place at the same time every morning for weeks. Profiling.

All totaled, the number of times I've kept count, I've been pulled over more than 40 times, got 12  tickets, and, in the Camaro, I deserved 2 of them.   Do I ever speed? Of course, don't you? But I didn't deserve those tickets.  I don't have a whole lot of respect for the police anymore.  And they've never really helped me when I needed it.  They did that, not me.

I'll have a couple more stories like that later.

As if all that wasn't enough.. I had been in Yosemite for about a year... that's about how long it takes to work into a niche in a small community like that.  I had a part time job at the local radio station, and I was trying to get back in shape so I could take up a previous officer from a program director named Richard Sands in San Francisco.

I spent days and hours processing myself... trying to acknowledge where I made mistakes, acknowledging my anger and the behaviors it caused... and then choosing how I actually wanted to be as a person again.  After a couple of months, I began to feel much better, I started playing music again, and I wanted to be around people again.  It was a pretty good time.

But... my mother was staying at a place where I can only describe it as elder abuse.  My mother and I were very close, which is amazing because at one point, I refused to talk to her for 10 years. But we had an incredible relationship. The problem was, according to her care  providers, that she was using 10 rolls of toilet paper a week, and they were angry about the expense. I knew something was wrong.

I tried to talk to her about it, and all she kept doing was trying to give me her belongings.  I refused them unless she felt that she was dying, and she wouldn't own up to it.  Our deal for our relationship was that she would never lie to me again.

She wouldn't come to live at my house... she knew I stayed up all hours of the night and slept during the morning hours, and she always gave me a lot of space.  At that point, I had just negotiated a deal with a local isp to take over as their Tech Support Manager.  But another person offered me an opportunity to go to Brooklyn, and she convinced me that she knew the people to get me booked into clubs in Greenwich Village.   This was a business relationship only. So the deal was that I would stay in her extra bedroom, and she would take a cut of my club money, as well as help manage my other finances for a fee. I don't really care about money, and I figured anyone could manage it better than me.

So I used that opportunity to take my mom to Maryland to live with my sister, and to see some grand kids she had never met before.  That meant alot to her.   And we discussed what would happen if she had medical problems along the way.   The doctors said she shouldn't fly.  We had an incredible time seeing the United States together.  And it made our relationship even stronger.

Meanwhile, I took a challenge from the woman in Brooklyn... she said noone would hire me for a job if I wasn't in New York already.  I told her I could get a job in 24 hours.  Actually, I had 2 offers in 4 hours.... by phone and fax. And I didn't lie.

We had to wait 2 days to leave Yosemite because the forest fires were so bad, the roads were closed.

I dropped my mom off in Maryland, and headed to Brooklyn. This woman who was to be my manager would get calls from these people who wanted to hire me, and she would tell them I  was so busy, that if they wanted to talk to me, they'd have to pay $50.  And they all said yes, and put it on a credit card.  Amazing.

One day, she said I was supposed to go somewhere and give a seminar about the internet.  So I put on my pinstripes, and packed up my computer, and away we went.  What I didn't know is that she was a psychic for the Psychic Friends Network.  What an interesting group of friends she had. And she had decided, without conversation, that I was sort of psychic, and led me to a patio table outside a restaurant, and placed two people before me,and said, these people would like you to do a reading.

So, I asked for a glass of water.  And proceeded to do the best I could. And I nailed it.  The guy was about to go to jail for the second time for aggravated assault. I told him all the people in his life who could help him financially to fight the charges... just nailed it.  I was shocked.  And it was pretty weird telling someone they were going to jail.  I hadn't played ESP games for years.

So she put another person.. her best customer, in front of me.   Nailed it.  Then there was a line of people at this restaurant who wanted me to do their readings.  What a bizarre day. I told her not to do that to me again.}

I knew I was taking a chance moving to Brooklyn like that. And it didn't work out, but I figured it was worth a shot. And I called the potential employers and made sure they got their money back.  I don't have any regrets about it.  It was kind of fun.  And I really liked the New Yorkers I had met. A lot.

My favorite was this guy who saw me driving around with my over-sized Springer Spaniel named Barney.  I heard a man yell "Hey put the belt on him".  I turned, and was a little concerned, and I heard him yell "Hey, put the seat belt on the dog, it'll make him happy".  So I did. 

I was sitting on a bench one day, and a park worker walked up to me and sat down, and we must have talked for an hour.  I asked him if he would get in trouble for sitting down with me. He said "Nah, I'm the supervisor.  See those guys, they're working. I'm doing my job." 

I had some fun talks with lots of people.  I like direct people who know it's just about communication.  You know where you stand. And unlike a lot of places, they didn't mind I was from California.  They were as curious about me as I was about them.  And I wasn't afraid of New York anymore.

Then, I went down to Maryland, and hung out with my family, who I hadn't seen for years either.

The first job I got was the one Supervising the first Teamster's Election supervised by the Dept of Justice. That was very interesting.  The people I met were great.

Then, given my background, the first thing I did was apply for a job at this huge international online company in Reston, Va. :}  People said you couldn't even get an interview there for 6 months.  I just wrote them a letter with my 10 page resume, said I understood what a world class organization was about, that I didn't know what they really did, but I bet they could find  a way to put me to use.  3 days later, I got a call.

I set the appointment. I was excited.

Meanwhile, someone asked me to a Halloween party, and asked me to bring my guitar. So I did.  Many people played their instruments and sang.  I played backup for people. And then when they were done and I was sure I wouldn't suppress anyone, I played about a dozen tunes.  I was shocked at the response.  A bunch of people asked me to play at their parties.

I was feeling pretty good.  But when I got home, no one was there.  My mother had been taken to the hospital. The next morning, I was told she had terminal cancer, and only had about 10 days to live. That was the day I was supposed to go to the interview.  But my mom needed 24 hour care.  So, I had to cancel.   The night she died, I had been with her for 18 hours, and she came to once and said "Help me", and then went unconscious for the last time.  It tore me up pretty bad. And, in my family, I was more or less the leader, so they took their frustrations out on me.  It took me about a week just to go outside. They never told me what they did with her remains, and I wasn't invited to inherit anything.  I don't have much to do with them anymore.

And the online company wouldn't call me back, no matter how many times I called.  But I understood.  I just wished they had asked why.

Yep, I got around.

But, I got another contract through an HR agency.  And it was a good one, working for a federal agency. They liked me there allot.  And I helped them allot. They brought me in to do a cost accounting system.  But I ended up doing a number of things for them that the rest of their staff didn't know how to do.

About 6 months into the job, my dog died.  That may not seem like much.  But Barney was a special dog.  He was so smart, that I used to use him on my radio programs.  I could teach him new tricks in seconds. I would do public appearances, and if I didn't bring him with me, people were disappointed  Everybody loved that dog.  You just couldn't help it.

He died at the age of 19 years, in my lap, in the same room where my mother died.  I just grieved for losing him, and it dredged up everything about my mother's death.  I took a week off.

My first day back to work, I came to get in the building, and just happened to get the one woman who challenged me and every other "short-timer" to do something she'd considered stupid so she could hassle us.  I hate to put it in this context, but she and all the other security guards were African American. I didn't have any trouble with anyone but her.  But, with what was on my mind, I was exasperated.  My mistake was  that I didn't sign in on the top line of the register. And she proceeded to chew me out, and tell me I had to go downstairs and call my supervisor or I would have to leave the building.

I told her "Look, this is not a big deal, I signed on the second line.  Why are you doing this?"  She said "If you can't follow procedure, you don't belong here".  I said "It's not my job to know the requirements of your job." The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by 6 security guards.  And I have to tell you, there was no big argument.  And the other security guards had the look of astonishment on their faces.  They knew me as the guy who came out on breaks and asked them if they wanted anything, told them jokes.. I actually felt sorry for them, having to sit there all day and be bored.  Just then, a supervisor from the department came into the hallway.  I was just getting through saying "Look, I didn't do anything, treatment like this makes me hate coming here".  This wasn't the first time, and  I had already requested a pass before that to avoid this person.

The supervisor ordered me out of the building.  My boss called, and wanted to know when I was coming back to work.  He hadn't been told anything.   I told him what happened, he said he was aware of the problem, I told him I needed a pass, or I wasn't coming back.  I never went back. It was a clear case of reverse discrimination all because of 1 person's intolerance to another.  Had I been the type, I would have sued.  But I'm not the type.  If they had reviewed the security tape, they would have known I didn't do anything.  Oh, well. The company supplying the services had even asked me if I wanted them to get me a classified clearance. I told them no, but they viewed me as a good employee.

So then I got a job at a well known think tank type company.. and I lied on my application about the degree. And, the way things went, I was interviewed rather hurriedly, so I didn't get a chance to say much.  When I reported to work they were all on vacation.  So, all I had to do was read the executive summaries they had been submitting over the previous two years.  The only thing different on the summaries was the date.  But they billed the Federal Government every time.

Of course, the only thing that would ever be important is that I lied, not that they lied.  Not that they spent taxpayer money for nothing.

They had also given me an application for a security clearance, which I didn't want. Frankly, I did a pretty good job of avoiding that and employers who did drug testing, because I respected their rules, and I  wasn't willing to follow them.   As far as I am concerned, so long as I don't use marijuana on company time and it doesn't effect my job, I don't think it's any of their business.  But I respect the rule, because a lot of people do abuse it.  So, like with a number of alternative choices I've made, I took responsibility for my own choices, and I just avoided those companies.

I'm sure they think I was too embarrassed about the degree thing.   I wasn't.  I knew it would affect the security clearance. But, they wanted to then pay me $36,000 a year... and I wasn't willing to work for that little doing a project the magnitude they wanted done.  And they still wanted me to do it.  It was the knowledge that they were cheating on a government contract, and I wasn't about to get caught in that situation again.  I just won't do it.  And I was frustrated, because I knew I could do a great job.  I had allot of experience in the very system they needed.  And it was a worthy project of my time.

So, I went to work for a company specializing in Human Potential Development.  I lasted the average 6 mos. That was normal, though, because a big part of that job was about being "in training"... really working through incompletions... such as anger and frustration, and turning it into something useful.   And I took the department I ran from an effectiveness rating of about 50% to over 90%.  But, the 13 hour days 6 days a week can get to you.  I'm glad I did it, and I wouldn't again.  It was intense, low pay, but very rewarding.  And I left on good terms... which is not usually the case for people when they get to the point they don't want to do it anymore.  Most people there just don't come to work anymore. }

It was there that I met a very cool woman, from Olympia.   Interestingly enough, we traveled in the same circles in the Seattle area, but didn't know each other, and we were both married at the time (to other people).  We also moved to the DC area within a few days of each other.

She had been a school teacher, as well as the development director for a pretty well know and respected ngo in DC that worked on hunger and poverty issues... she had alot OT do with the passage of the WIC program.  And, and Welfare Reform Act of 1996. And a whole lot more.  People estimate she's positively affected the lives of 20 million people world wide.

She was also a leader of courses on what's called Self Expression and Leadership Program.  The people she trained include the individual who created the "Walk A Mile Program" and many others that are common names in America.

At that point, I began to work at a medium sized business in Rockville.  This place had its problems, like any business, but it was a great place to work. The truth is, there was really only one person there who was a true detriment to the company, and she was the Director of New Product Development.  Someone who was in charge of software design, who had never written a line of code.  She got the job when the company was more of a garage business.  When it looked like her inability to get job done... and it really was at the pint where her errors were going to bankrupt the company... I called corporate headquarters, and explained the situation

A couple days later, because of what was going on, it really negatively impacted my job.  I thought I'd get out of the way and move on.  So, I talked to my boss, and told him I'd probably only be there another month. The systems I had been working on were stable, so I just wanted to give them enough time to be able to replace me.  I really liked that company.

I had no sooner told him that, when I was paged into the manager's office.  At which time I was offered the job that she and the lead programmer on this other project had just quit.  My only wish is that it had happened 6 months before, because I guarantee that the problems were easy to resolve, if you really understood databases.

A it turned out, the following day, the main guy from corporate came in and told us all that we were being merged and dissolved into another company.  I agreed with them about what they were doing, and their business strategy.  What I didn't agree with is the methods used to persuade people to continue working until they were through with them.  And it was very much like that.  Their strategy was simply to not tell anybody anything.  Morale got so low that we started locking up equipment at night, not so much to keep it from being stolen, but to keep people out of trouble.  People do funny things when they're upset like that.

In my case, they told me the deal to make with the programming staff to keep them there for an additional 6 months.   The problem was, they lied to me, which made a liar out of me to the staff.  I was both upset by the tactic, by their unwillingness to address the complaints caused by their rescinding of the deal, and they totally undermined my credibility with the staff. I had pushed the staff very hard to accept the terms.  Something I wouldn't normally do.

Then, one day, they decided, I guess, that they didn't need me (which I told them the first day they got there), and did what they did with most people they were through with. Write them a letter saying their work is disappointing.  As with me, I saw that, shook my head, cleared out my office and left.  The bottom line: they had offered us $5,000 each to stay until the company completely folded.  This was their way of saving another $5,000. That's all there was to it.

I know 3 people who were helping them with the transfer of the business who, 6 years later, still haven't gotten other work because they were so disillusioned.  The new managers used force on a staff that was used to being managed like a family business.  And these people would have done whatever they were asked, if treated with respect.  It was a good group of people. And it had its share of well seasoned computer professionals, too.

As for me, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. And I wasn't too worried about it. I had some money that I could draw upon.   And, by then my relationship with, we'll call her Mary in this context, had advanced to us living together.

One day she told me her 5 year plan for ending world poverty.   She asked me what I thought.  Numerous times. Finally I told her she had a good plan for passing small pieces of legislation,  but it would never end poverty and hunger.  I then proceeded to lay out  a bigger vision for her, which ultimately resulted in www.hungersummit.org a few years later when we moved to Olympia.

Anyway... a few months went by, and I ended up sort of being dragged into her business.  I'll add that this is the first time in my life I decided to follow someone else's leadership. Not like I undermined leaders before.  In this case, my sole purpose was to empower her in something I wasn't an expert in, but had numerous skills to offer.

My first job was to help straighten out the accounting office, whose practices were, at least, bordering on criminality.  The person in charge of it knew I was well versed in Quickbooks... suddenly, checks that had been missing for months were being covered by cash deposits.  Someone else brought me an article from the Washington Post about the 10 signs of employee embezzlement. This person, a high level manager, in order to protect themselves, basically convinced the rest of the staff that I shouldn't work there because we were in a relationship.  I understood the sentiment, but I wasn't there to assert authority.  Everything, except teaching writing skills and focused communications, was background kind of work.  The other truth was, he wanted her job.  The problem was, I knew all the games he was playing, and coached her how to deal with it.  He knew that was because of me,because she had never stood up for herself before with him.

So, the first day I walked in the door, everyone was already in this mode of refusing to work with me on the basis that we were in a relationship.   Despite that, I drove the acquisition of software through a Gates Foundation Grant, I used my Christmas time to install 25 new computers to replace the junk they were using, put in a new server using NT4 (their old Novell Server was so virus ridden that you could even add a new user to the system... the administrative tools had gotten infected and erased, and it was bootlegged, so there was no way to legally restore it.

I was also instrumental in creating the themes for their most successful media campaigns in 5 years, as well as writing a great deal of copy.   Their old media director is now the publicist I have in Washington DC, and most of you, especially at CNN, know her well. One day, she may actually be given work to do :}  

What I ended up doing is not working at all when they were being fussy, to let things calm down. It cost me tens of thousands of dollars, but I was more interested in ending hunger and poverty.  After all, I had almost starved.  It's not a pleasant feeling to be that hungry as well as know that nobody is willing to help you.  It's incredibly dehumanizing, to say the least.

That's how I ended up being an adult webmaster for a short time.   One day, I got an email saying that someone had purchased a subscription for me to the largest adult website on the internet. I was pretty surprised that someone would think that I would want to have that subscription, as well as the person who gave it to me.

Nonetheless, yes, I looked at some pictures.  But when I   said  I did it for the technology, I actually meant it.  I figured that any industry dominating 60% of the internet traffic had something  to teach me. So, one day, I went to the site and hit the webmaster button.

When I wasn't trying to end poverty, I was playing with these websites.  And I was horrible at it. I just couldn't do what was required to see alot of people on "click thrus" to the real commercial sites.  But I did learn to use search engines, and got 3 worked up to about 75,000 hits per day.  And they teach their webmasters how to do that.  It's more organized and streamlined than the Republican party.  And like I've said before, the people I came in contact with was a group that was made up of people who were very honorable, committed to not cheating, committed to exposing child porn. And they mostly had children themselves.  It was a constant discussion on the message boards... how to keep your kinds from being exposed to it.

And I won't try to tell you that all of the adult webmaster groups are like that.  They're not.  But most are.

And then one morning, I woke up and said, you know, that technically makes me a pornographer, and so I stopped.  And not because I was doing anything illegal or that I think adults should not have the right to view porn... that just wasn't why I was doing it.  And, I knew that, even though I had no intention of doing anything to cause me public attention, I knew it could be a problem.  I think of it in terms of whether or not what I do is an accurate expression of who I say I am as a person.  Like, as a role model. So, that's my embarrassment.

So, what I did was point the traffic to the web site to end hunger. But that wasn't the reason these people didn't accept me.  Because I did that long after I began working with them.  What did happen though is that a certain control freak used it to extort me, and I acquiesced to it because I didn't want to compromise Mary.  Unfortunately, this guy's goal was to unseat her after all, and threatened to use it against her to get her removed. 

They went through mediations for months to resolve their differences (personally, I would have had a restraining order slapped on him, or reported him to the police).  That was before we knew he had that "ace" up his sleeve.   For the supposed good of the organization, Mary quit.  That organization is now nearly bankrupt.  Mary was the heart and soul of the organization.  And she gets embarrassed allot easier than I do. And this guy is now harassing the current executive director as well. He goes around the US telling people he's saving the world, using the excellent reputation of this organization like a calling card, but he and one other guy are slowly but surely killing it.  It's an authority figure problem.   They'd find a way to do this sort of thing to anyone in a leadership position. Frankly, I think they're both mentally unbalanced.

One of the things these guys did, because we wouldn't create   the web site the way they demanded, was to go out and buy the domain name (which I knew was available from a broker, we just were in no hurry) for the organization, and then, one day through one of their fits, and started directing members to the organization to their site instead.  They claimed that the organizations' materials were not "properly" copyrighted, and downloaded it from the official site, and put it on their own.  These are the types who'll do anything to get their own way.  I could go on and on.  I knew I could write one letter and take over the domain, since the broker told me he'd help, and they represented themselves as authorized agents f the organization, which wasn't at all true.

Bottom line, for me though, was, I worked with an organization for nearly five years who were very hostile toward me for invalid reasons.. long before the adult website thing... and not a single one of them had the courage to confront me or ask any questions.  I am very proud of the work I did there, despite the fact that my treatment was pretty damaging to me. But. Mary insisted that I work there, everytime I told her it would be better for me to not do it.  And easier for her.

There's a person working with me in this organization who claims to other people, and to  my face when I've tried to resolve things between us,   that we are friends, but she won't talk to me or respond to any emails... she does send me articles to post. Whatever works. :}

By the way, that situation came to an end about 6 months after we moved to Olympia.  I'm glad, frankly. Mary is much too good to have to deal with that sort of behavior.

But what also was a huge ordeal to me was election 2000.  I've been nearly obsessed with revealing at least to myself, what happened, and now that I know, I'm taking it to the streets.  I'll just never forget how I kept telling people don't worry, the Supreme court is incredibly fair.  They'll do the right thing.   Only they didn't and they should be impeached, if not arrested. Or both.

The plan was for me to come out here and just rest and relax a while... I had given Mary all my money to pay bills, though that didn't happen... :} Believe it or not, I had decided that when I was ready, I would go back to being a disk jockey, and look for a job as a news writer, if not an editorial columnist... and look what I'm doing :} After all, it doesn't look like we have an administration with a desire to end poverty.  Even though the plan we would have implemented would have done it in as frugal and efficient way as possible, and the plan was to have been presented to the public next march.  We had a 10 year plan.  And it would have included research and guidance form orgs like Aspen, Harvard, Tufts... and many, many others with fine reputations and credentials.

There are always a number of other things that factor into this story, but would just be redundant.

But there are a couple issues I want to say something about.

First, I've made many remarks about smoking marijuana.  I want it to be clear that I'm not really an advocate... the only person I've ever actually recommended it to is my mother, and the only reason she didn't is because, appropriately so, is she was concerned about mixing it with her other medications.  I do believe, though, it would have been medically beneficial to her.  She told me once that she had always been concerned about me using it, but after being around me more at home while I was using it, she didn't worry about it anymore.

In addition, I had ulcers in my teens, and my mid 20's.  All the medicine they gave me to keep me from, excuse me for being graphic... from vomiting all the time came nowhere near to the effectiveness of a little bit of marijuana.  I can't smell things, and we think that has something to do with why I don't eat as much as I should... couple that with a slight mal-absorption problem I have due to a birth defect, and it explains why I'm normally "under weight".  I'm 6-3 and the most I've ever weighed is 150.  And yeah, I've worked out on weights and all that.    And the medication I take is technically a class 3 steroid, like some athletes take. Marijuana definitely increases my appetite.  Do I smoke it alot?   I treat it the same as responsible alcohol use.

Why is that important to me?  Because, as I mentioned, I grew up in a violent alcoholic environment that was very detrimental to the whole of my family, let alone my next older sister an d me.  I have never met anyone who became violent due to marijuana.  People get violent from alcohol all the time.  When marijuana smokers smoke too much, they smile, eat chocolate, say 70's words like cool and right on, and mostly believe in world peace.  I can live with that. :}

Now, I've also said things about what is the gateway from marijuana to harder drugs.  It's not marijuana. Most marijuana smokers I know don't really want anything else. They do it, however, when it's there.  I had two occasions in my life, before I was 25, where someone dropped by with cocaine.  And the similarities of the cases are kind of strange.

The first time, it was just a friend who dropped by... someone I basically trust... and said, try this.  And, given what cocaine's effects are, I liked it.  So then I said, how can I get a little of that?  He arranged it for me.  What I didn't know was that this guy was a major importer of cocaine to California.  The good and bad news is he liked me, so when I bought $25 worth, a very small amount, he was giving me 10 times more than I thought I was buying. I only did that a couple of times.

The second time, I was hanging out every Sunday with a bunch of guys who watched the Seahawks games every Sunday. 

One day, and this was right after I got divorced, I ended up staying at this guy's house on Saturday Night, and stayed over to watch football the next day.   We stayed up playing computer football most of the night, and he kept whipping this stuff out like candy.  I finally told him I didn't want anymore, and he certainly didn't have to feel like he needed to give it to me, because it was so expensive.  He said, don't worry about it, then went into his closet where there was a large safe, and inside the safe were 2 machine guns and alot of cocaine.  Alot.  He gave me a packet.  We watched football the next day, but I never went back.

I took the packet he gave me, and a couple of days later I got tempted, and proceeded to do what I thought was a very small amount. Cocaine and crack are very bad drugs.  They trick you into thinking it feels good, when it really doesn't.   I took that packet and used so much that I ended up crawling outside and laying under a cold water faucet because I thought it was going to kill me.

After I felt better, I went back into my house, and sat there for awhile, and proceeded to begin to do some more.  I thought "wait a minute, this is nuts" and flushed it down the toilet. End of that story.

I've never done acid, I did mushrooms once in my 20's, I did ecstasy once years ago... again, by associating with people selling marijuana.  Don't get me wrong, not all people who sell marijuana sell other drugs... but like any business, everyone's out to increase sales.  And that's where the gateway is.

If it was legalized and controlled in 1 oz sizes or less, the gateway would be removed, and it would be easier to control access to it by children.

I've mentioned before stuff about owing taxes.  Right now the government says I owe around $17,000. The heck of it is, when I'm working at a decent job, that's not much money to me.  I just haven't seemed to have much luck at finding decent work that really uses the skills I have to offer. Nonetheless, I have no objections to paying taxes.  I wasn't even going to contest the interest because I thought it was a fair trade to pay them for taking so long to pay them  And I don't try to shave my taxation either.  Because I work as a contractor so much, I always add a small percentage on to the total taxable income just to make up for those little checks you get here and there that don't show up in the 1099's.   I know that probably seems weird, but I do.

Frankly, after dealing so much with failures of this government, and failures of this society that have taken a huge toll on my life, I'm not against paying them... but I have a bit of  a lackadaisical attitude to making the payment of them a priority, since my government and the services I receive in exchange don't seem to represent that I'm a priority on their list.

When I got back to California from Atlanta,  all I wanted to do was have a normal life.  And I couldn't even do that.  And a member of my government is partially to blame for my situation.  He broke the law, and I paid, as we all do when our leaders give away our money to people who have not earned it. 

And, at this point, with all the weirdness I've experienced, knowing full well that I didn't cause at least 90% of it... I only have 2 choices: give up or do something about it.  I know I made a deal with God, but I don't know how much more I'm willing to learn. :}

I watched A Beautiful Mind last night, and I guess most people think it's a great story, with a happy ending.  What I see is a guy who lived a tormented life. A guy who was ridiculed, who people wouldn't take the time to get to know and appreciate his value... when you tell people they're crazy all the time... when you tell them they're different... it makes them have to be different because nobody wants to be different, they just want to be who they are.  They want to know somebody cares and understands them.  When they don't get that feeling, they withdraw. They become eccentric as a means to cause people to either like them because it's fun, or to give people access to them by giving them a facade people can relate to.

Part of what goes on for me is that people have mostly liked me.   I've actually always been a pretty social person.  And I'm known to be an eccentric, because people don't easily latch on to what I'm talking about when I start talking concept and theory, let alone when I start talking about personal philosophy and the principles I live my life by.  They're not typical.  And I won't cause benefit to myself at the expense of other people.

Right now, I'm in a situation where Mary won't watch the news, and she won't read the website because she gets depressed when she thinks about what's going on in the world.  And when I tell her that this happens or that happens, she tells me I'm crazy.

And yet, I sit here and watch it occurring before my eyes, on tv.   And no matter what I say, she thinks I'm making it up.  She thinks it's all a coincidence.

But that's just kind of how the world is, isn't it?  We all walk around having expectations of other people, and then get frustrated at other people, and then do what the other people do because, after all, if they're going to do it, why shouldn't you?  Or, we refuse to acknowledge the truth and then condemn those who do because it it's easier than having to admit things we don't want to face about ourselves, and the world we create every time we turn our heads and ignore what's right in front of our eyes.

I've done a lot of good in the world. I make alot of fun of myself, and I enjoy life when I'm not being obstructed by corruption.  I know what I'm capable of, by my acts alone are not what defines me.  It's the reasons I act.

These days, I see myself more as a cheerleader more than anything,   And I go around telling people God Bless You and God Bless America... we're a nation that shows disdain at the idea of making a constitutionally correct decision to remove under God from the pledge of allegiance, and then it's odd to walk around saying God Bless You.  Do we as a nation, as individuals, believe in God or not? More importantly, do we live what we say we believe in?   It's like I said about my "deal with God".  I can understand why people would think that's unusual.  I didn't tell you about it to impress you or anything other than to declare my faith in God.

And if you look at my life... and I've had more bad times, and I've also had lots of wonderful times.  But if this history isn't some indicator that God has been teaching me what I need to know about the human condition so that I could be a leader of some sort who understands what people go through.. it sort of takes Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain" to the nth degree.. then I can't imagine any other explanation.

It would be incorrect to say that I feel sorry for myself.  What I do feel is that many other people have it much worse than I ever experienced. I have plenty of those stories too. I'm glad I didn't have to feel that much pain.  But I know that what I've experienced, whether I accomplish my personal dreams or not, makes me a better person.

Now you might same I'm a loser, unlucky, however you want to put it.   For example, I could have gone to college. Lots of people go to college and don't learn a thing.  That's not really the issue. 

You might think I have rigid standards, things of that nature. It's true, but only for myself.  For other people, they have to make up their own minds.

What the issue is for me is how we, as people, overlook the potential of the world because of our constant need to classify everything to provide a simpler way to understand.things we can't possibly understand without taking at least a little time to inform ourselves. To listen.  To read. To understand.  To be the people under God that we say we are.

So, be a leader.  Take it on.  Be a NEW PATRIOT.  Do it for America. Do it for yourself.

Be a NEW PATRIOT.   Do it for America.  Do it for yourself.  Click here for more!

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