time to grow the =F= up sigh
1992 - Boeing layoffs
Tons of friends got kicked out. I survived fine.
It didn't seem right to hire and fire like that.
Boeing also got boooring. Stuck on mainframe while Unix was taking over.
Gramma always told me I should play piano. I'd play single finger melodies I'd hear on McDonalds commercials. But never get both hands working at the same time. Had quit my one stab at lessons cuz my teacher was a jerk. (Might have been me.)
Something new for my Amiga!
Using MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), PCs could =talk= to SYNTHESIZERS!
Hook cables between em and BAM!
A computer program could play the synth!
Bought Bars&Pipes Professional - a midi sequencer
This program could record/save/play/show songs on your Amiga and synth! HAD to try to build a similar program. It's called PianoCheetah now. Used to call it MidiPlay.
Got Kawaii Spectra KC10
My first keyboard. Nice sounds. Quality organ style keyboard. Went searching for a synth that had better sounds.
Got Yamaha TG-33 sound module
Connected it via MIDI to my keyboard and Amiga. Nicer sounds. Couldn't add =new= sounds like I could with my Amiga's 8 bit samples. Was a costly mistake, but I was making $19,200 a year - pfff who cares.
Got Peavey DPM V3 sound module
It could do "sample dump standard" to load in new samples! But 16 bit mono samples go slow thru midi cables at 31K baud. But I loved that sound module.
Got Peavey SX sampler
A 16 bit 24/48 KHz sampler ...that I never used.
Amiga was an octopus in my living room...
monitor, keyboard, mouse, hard drive, floppy drive, printer modem (2400 baud!) midi interface sound sampler (24KHz 8 bit) picture digitizer hooked to video camera audio out to my stereo
Took up an entire 6 foot long table
Not including my stereo and Spectra keyboard...
These sprawled across the living room of my lonely apartment.
MidiPlay and MidiComp.
these were my new laser focus in coding.
Hooked to my new fully weighted 76 key Ensoniq KS-32
Good piano sounds on it (the rest sucked.)
But it was a good solid keyboard. My Peavey V3 made the sounds.
Met a girl, with a girl (almost a year old) and a boyfriend. She hated the boyfriend, moved in with me, and WHAM! No room for my Amiga!
Quite a bit happens when a woman and a little girl enter your life. Especially at the same time !
Tearing myself away from Carissa was the hardest thing I've ever ever done as Kathy gave her old boyfriend another shot about 6 months in. ...But I knew Kathy's sister
Realized I had to say goodbye to my Amiga. Not just due to girls. Commodore had gone out of business. No more upgrades meant the OS was truly and utterly DEAD.
Dark Ages of my programming past began... Bright ages of my life, though.
bought Mac Classic. A fresh OS to play with.
Couldn't find source code for doing midi on AOL. (internet was young) I finally came across some but then...
1995 - ClairCom
Boeing's low pay finally got me lookin elsewhere.
My DBA called me up from a place called Claircom, about to be bought by AT&T.
Started working downtown in the Gateway Tower => Key Tower.
Now I was a contractor. I converted to employee a couple years in.
Later, I'd be one again for a looong time.
Had a PC at my new job with 2 =gigs= of disk !! AND a Sun Unix box ON my desk !! Unix and Win95 hit me like a ton of bricks and I was in love. My poor mac died of neglect. As it should have. Still have it's bag for storing cables.
While my home computer had died, my life was taking off again. Two new work OSs and a job billing for telephones on an airplane network.
My work was no longer boring ass. What's a CDR ?? What's RF, a switch, T1, who are these marketting crazies ??
Life blows up
Closed on a 2 bedroom house. Got back together with Kathy & Carissa.
Connor happened.
Got married.
So a 4 yr old and baby in a 2 bedroom... Plus brand new crazy job.
1995. A very big year for us. I was an us now.
1996 - Claircom became "AT&T Wireless' Aviation Communication Division"
Windows NT ! Oracle 7 and 8 !
Forms and Reports and PowerBuilder (that I tried to stay AWAY from). Informix. Nothin compared to Oracle, but I learned it. Remedy... Bleh. But you gotta learn some boring stuff to get paid.
Figured out a little more about business...
Sure, yeah, networks, OSs, Databases, Applications. But there's also this stuff called Billing, Inventory, Marketing, Accounting, Human Resources, ...
When a company is sized at about 200 people, you can see these pieces play out.
Call Detail Records and Switches hooking to cellsites that control an RF connection to an airplane phones network.
I was on the billing system.
Solaris and Oracle and Pro*C and Forms and such. About 5 other folks working on it with me. Contractors built it. We maintained it. We picked it all up when the contractors up'd their rates...
Unfortunately, this airplane phone stuff was doomed.
In 1995 when they installed the American Airlines MD-80 fleet, we saw our usage/revenue skyrocket.
Thing is, it didn't keep going up and
our expenses always kept us from profit: revenue share with the airlines was 33% of our take! paying to keep up long distance connections from 150 cellsites scattered across the US to our central switch in Texas umm, very very costly...
We never EVER made a profit in ANY quarter...
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