My first computer and homebrew peripherals
KIM-1 (6502 8-bit CPU) circa 1977
The Navajo say that nothing lasts forever except Mother Earth and Father Sky. A lot of things don't last nearly that long. Take my last job, for instance. (Hey, it ain't mine to give anymore!) I was really looking forward to getting my 5 year CV pin at the end of next February. <heavy sigh!>
I was out sick on Thursday and Friday of last week, the days after the opening of Spike Lee's film of the Autobiography of Malcolm X. I had (still have, 'cause it ain't dead yet) a wicked upper respiratory infection and was coughing nonstop. I finally got to see a doctor on Friday morning who put me on antibiotics and a codeine cough suppressant. That afternoon I tried to dial into work, and for the second time in 24 hours, the modem on PANDORA just didn't answer. I called in to find out why, and was told that all external system access was denied through the weekend because of the layoffs.
I tried to call my boss (Bill Upham), but the secretary said he was in a meeting. I asked her about the layoffs, and she told me that Ilya Yanovsky had been let go. That's when I knew that my name was probably also on the list. I ended up calling Bill at home for confirmation. "I don't want to do this over the phone", he said. I told him that I needed to know if I should bring boxes on Monday. He said, "Bring boxes".
So I sat back and thought. I thought for a long time. Then I thought that the codeine in the cough syrup must have been contributing to my sense of blunted affect. That led me to the conclusion that the reason didn't matter so long as I didn't panic. So I got out my cassette tapes of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that book with the words "Don't Panic!" in large, friendly letters on the cover, and listened to them while I spent the next 6 hours combining my graphics and astronomy software toolkit libraries so that my planetarium simulator can calculate the positions of planets and display them against the star field. (Hey, it was the weekend!)
In the end, I decided that I didn't feel any different because of what had happened, so why should I act any different? By then I was well enough into the weekend, and well enough over my cold, that I started to think about what I should do about being laid off. This was somewhat complicated by the facts that (a) I had not been officially notified yet, and (b) I did not know what kind of severance package I would get.
O.K. Assume the worst; vacate office by close of business the day I come back, the paycheck I just got is the last one I'm gonna git. First stop is the bank... leave enough to cover the outstanding checks, plus $100 for cushion. Direct deposit will be stopped eventually, and from here on it's strictly cash; credit cards no longer exist. The price of gold is at a ten year low and dropping... nothing I can do about that now. I have several one-ounce gold coins that I can probably trade for rent for a few months.
The next stop is the gas station... We will not let the tank get below half empty. Gas, then food. I can fast; the car can't. Make car payment before rent payment; I bought a car that I can sleep in with reasonable comfort.
One evening last week, between fits of coughing and sleeping, I caught a piece of one of the TV law drama/soaps, probably "L.A. Law". A woman whose son was convicted of selling narcotics had come to see the public defender because the state had confiscated her home as part of the bust. She was ranting about how she'd worked for years to pay off the mortgage after her husband left, just so she could have something for herself and her kids. "Now all I've got is a 1982 Escort with a bad muffler and a leaking oil pan, and I've been living in it with my youngest child ever since you people took my house away!" Heavy duty deja vu! I mean, I'm thinking to myself, "Yeah, just like in Grapes of Wrath. There, but for the Grace of Allah, go I. Well, that's why I bought a van, so that I'd have someplace dry to sleep if I should every find myself homeless."
Having dealt with the essentials (friends will always feed me and let me use their shower), I decided that I could (a) do nothing and plunge into a deep depression, or (b) impact my options, as the beltway bandits would express it. O.K. I've got an international reputation in a field of which practically no one has heard. Half of my time/expense is related to national and international standards activities regarding the exchange of digital product data. My area of specialty is interoperability. (Can you say that, boys & amp amp girls?) That's worth $54,000 to some companies at some times. It's no longer the case for Computervision.
I figure I'm a luxury item in the best of times, a nonessential extravagance in the worst of times. When I was IGES Project Manager for Version 5.0 and had my name (and Computervision's) on the cover of a 600 page American National Standard, then I earned my salary just from the sales that were clinched by being able to say that I was on their payroll. After 4 years, they decided that my $15,000 a year travel budget, and my not being in the office for 25% of my time, was more than they could afford for what they were getting from me the other 75% of the time. Frankly, the feeling was mutual.
I mean, I've tried for nearly five years to get the company to dedicate the resources to getting its seven different products to be able to exchange data using IGES. Just last month, I had a meeting with my counterpart from the Medusa side of the shop over in England. We were working on CADDS/MEDUSA interoperability in order to migrate customers in the German market (Mercedes, Audi, BMW, etc.). We were beginning to make some progress... he was laid off, too. I got e-mail from him to that effect when I finally got into the office and scanned my backlog of messages.
So, if they won't follow the suggestions I give them, even though everyone agrees that there is a Real Need to implement them, then what was I being paid for? Anyway, based on the other individuals who were RIF'd in this round, I'd say that the layoffs were not about performance, they were about salaries. Between the company paid benefits, my travel budget, and my salary, CV saved $90,000 dollars a year by releasing me. You can buy a couple of fresh out of college new-hires or that much, with theoretically twice as much productivity.
Now I'm not saying that I'm just a one-trick pony, but there aren't that many times that I'm called upon to do one of my Water Tricks. (You know, walking on it, parting it, changing it into fermented grape juice.) I'm a rainmaker. I'm a hot-shot maverick who'd rather design interfaces than implement them. I'm insubordinate, disrespectful, and arrogant, but I'm not stupid. I'm right more often than I'm wrong, and some people don't like being "shown up" by somebody like me. (A forty year old hippie, a prima donna in denim and jogging shoes. Who may have to live out of his van.) There's a lot that could profit from my talents, but few that can afford me.
Well, it's Picture Time. This entry represents the closure of another cycle. Here is a photograph of my first computer, taken with a Kodak instant camera. I had the picture digitized, and here it is, 15 years later, being displayed using technology that was not available when it was taken. This was State of the Art in the days when Woz and Jobs put theirs in a box and called it the Apple II.
A few years before this picture was taken, I had just worked on a project at Xerox where they were simulating the effects of a proposed color copier using computer scanned images. This introduction to digital image processing is what led me to computer graphics and CAD/CAM. So, 17 years later, I'm able to do at home what took hundreds of man-hours and literally millions of dollars of hardware resources. (O.K., so they were shared resources.) Well, this rendering is in monochrome (a TIFF file), but I plan to buy a color scanner, after I buy a higher resolution monitor and graphics card, that is. (Like, maybe after I find another job?)
And now, back to our narrative, already in progress.
As to my future, I have decided to expand my WIZ WORX operation to include accepting contracts for custom IGES translators, while at the same time actively soliciting offers of permanent employment. By expanding WIZ WORX, I create a bargaining chip. "Love me, love my tax shelter" now becomes, "You want me to give up a $15,000 a year business for what kind of salary?" At the very least, I can say, "O.K., no more contracting while I'm on your payroll, but the shareware business stays the same as with my last two jobs, or I walk."
I've decided to start work on two original MICROSOFT WINDOWS(tm) applications; an engineering drawing IGES viewer, and a 3D surface/solid IGES viewer with dynamic shading and rotation. The second is rather ambitious, and I must admit, is the carrot. "We'll pay you to develop it for us, but on our time, and we'll own it." Like I always said, the secret is to find something that you would do as a hobby and get someone else to pay you to do it.
The severance package turned out to be that I get paid until the first of January. My official termination date is 07-Dec-92; everybody being laid off this round gets the same date. I can continue my medical and dental for 18 months at $200 a month. Since my athsma prescriptions would cost $90 a month without, it looks even cheaper. So, keep up the medical. (But how to prioritize it in relation to rent? Ah, that varies with time and circumstance. Cross that bridge when you come to it.)
So, I'm unemployed, but not homeless. I may drop one of my two phone lines, but I'd keep the one with the 800 service. It's Monday night, Thanksgiving is Thursday. I don't have to go to the unemployment line until after New Years Day. I've got about 5 weeks of freedom. I'm going to send 125 copies of a press release that announces I'm accepting contracts ("Have PC, Will Travel") and that there are new products afoot. It's a good window of opportunity, and this is the best I can see to make of it. I'll immerse myself in the mode/view/draw rendering of IGES files and make IGESDRAW a full Class II display tool. I think that I can complete that by Xmas. I can get a good start this Thanksgiving weekend.
I talked to a company called Aries in Lowell today. They just lost their IGES guru a few months ago, so they asked for a resume. If this were not a 3 day work week, I could probably have 2 interviews arranged by Friday, and at least one for the following week. So, how do I feel right now? I'm not worried. This won't last forever.
-=DAH=- 23-Nov-92
After making this entry, I started working on a rap to help deal with my frustration and anger. (You've probably already read it, but reciprocal URLs never hurt.)
Last update: 19-Oct-95 by dennette@wiz-worx.com <Who is this Dennette person?>