Preparation

119

I think I was in bed sleeping late when it happened. After two years of sticking to a daily routine as part of attending College, once it was done I had naturally delved into the pleasure of sleeping late during my otherwise unstructured days. The phone rang, and I had learned from past experience not to answer the moment I awoke but to first shake myself and make sure my voice was clear before I responded by the next or subsequent ring. It was a representative of Rocky Mountain Telecom and they were wondering if I'd be available and interested in a job interview. I WAS.

Date and time set, I was given the instructions of what to do when I arrived at the complex and then the call was done. But I was just beginning to debate what I should wear for the appointment. Given my years of experience not getting jobs through job interviews my mind went to the only time it had worked. In all of my previous occasions, I had dutifully 'dressed-up' for the interviews in shirt and tie, but had found over those same years that doing so only made me look out of place and suspicious, as well as leaving me feeling like a cross-dresser while I engaged in the job interview itself. The one time I had successfully gotten a job from an interview was for a supermarket where I was so uninterested in having a job there, I arrived for the interview in my jeans and tee. Given that I badly wanted a job at Rocky Mountain Telecom, I decided to go with what worked in the past and not with conventional wisdom.

Spending some time in front of the mirror as I picked out which color of my cut-off sleeved sweat shirts I should pick, I settled on the medium blue one but realized I didn't know what to do with my hands. As I had been using a canvas backpack to carry my college books in school, it occurred to me to add that to my ensemble and pop some unnecessary items into it just to give it a little weight and make it look natural. My long hair I would again have in a tail at the nape of my neck and all & all I was going to show up at the job interview looking as if I was doing so between college classes. I thought that would work, even though I had been done with College for a few months by this time.

Remembering that the closest bus stop to RMT had been over a mile away, rather than make that walk and also be at the mercy of late buses and mechanical breakdowns, I told Daina of the news and asked if I could borrow her car. She was thrilled, but immediately panicked when I told her of what I was going to wear for the interview; she felt I should of course be wearing a suit & tie, otherwise in her eyes I'd be throwing this job opportunity away. I assured her I knew what I was doing and she agreed to let me borrow her car for the day.

Dropping her off at the school for her work day, I then got to spend a few antsy hours at my apartment killing time until I was to hop in the car and drive to the RMT complex. As I turned onto the final road to get me there, the road ended at the complex itself and when I pulled closer I discovered that, in the two years since I had last been there, they had finished building four more wings to the complex and were in the processes of laying the foundation for the final wing. I tried not to stare at the behemoth the complex had become and concentrated on pulling around the parking lot and arriving at the 'visitor' parking slots. Parked, I took my last chance to steel my nerves, then got out of the car and walked across the round-about and into the new lobby entrance. Unlike the original entrance of the building which was somewhat cramped, they had made this new entrance large and over spacious with windows all around. I walked to the security desk and signed my name at the visitor log and told them who I was supposed to see. One guard called him on the phone while another gave me my temporary badge.

After a few minutes 'Rich Jones' came down the long flight of steps beyond the security desk and ushered me in. When he saw me a smile spread across his face, I believed from noticing I wasn't dressed like the rest of the interviewees he must have been going through during the day. He then lead me up the first flight of stairs, technically it would have qualified as two flights given the number of steps, and then we were in the cavernous 'spline' area that joined the original IBM building to the right with the many new wings attached to it on the left. In this long walking area was a giant conference room before the two entrances to the new cafeteria on either side of it. Then there was the second flight of stairs, again qualifying as two separate flights in length. We were now to the rear lobby of the building and its associated security desk whereupon there were the doors to one of the old IBM building wings and the multiple, three floored entrance for two of the new wings and the one yet to be completed. We went up a third flight of stairs, though this time not giant sized, and we had reached Rich's floor. If not for my regained health I never would have been able to have made it up all of these stairs in one go without a rest and I wondered if Rich, himself, was using this journey to assess my physical well being if he should hire me.

We entered upon a floor of hundreds of office cubicles and thankfully his was just a row or two in. Being a manager, his cubicle was half again larger than the typical space and he had me settle down as he poked his head over the edge divider and asked an underling in the next cubicle to join us. Along the grand walk Rich had engaged me in a little chit-chat about if I had ever been to the complex before, and the fact that, given the way I was dressed, I had clearly just come from College. To avoid stammering I kept my answers brief so I didn't have to reveal my stutter to him until this interview was about to commence. Fortunately, the long walk through the immense space to this point had so engulfed my mind, I didn't stutter much at all during the interview.

I then discovered this was a job interview for an IBM mainframe based job. Given my over a decade of experience with personal computers and some minicomputers, I didn't have a clue about mainframes. Still, I had taken some mainframe related computer language courses in College so when it came to the technical portion of the interview I thought I'd do fine... Only to discover with my wrong answers that the COBOL programming language had undergone a major revision since I had learned it ten years earlier. Admitting that I had no mainframe experience nor had stayed afresh of programming language changes, Rich asked me what experience I did have? I then noted my time working with the X400 messaging group two years earlier using Digital VAX machines and the 'C' programming language. He asked me the most elementary question about the 'C' program language: ''If you don't define the return value of a function what type of return value do you get?''

I didn't need to ponder this long and answered, ''An Integer.'' He seemed happy with that answer and the interview was soon over and it was left to the underling to escort me all the flights of stairs back to the front entrance of the building. Along the way was when I had the chance to ask him when the COBOL language had changed and shared a little more chit-chat about the job needs they had and how I lacked experience in them. Turning in my temporary badge and signing-out, I left the building feeling like I had blown the interview and decided that I should brush up on the programming languages I had learned in the nineteen eighties to discover how many of them had since changed. Picking up Daina at her job, we went out to eat and I told her how it had gone. She consoled me that I was sure to get another job interview sometime soon.

The following week, I was puttering around my apartment when the phone rang. It was Rich from RMT and he asked for someone whose name I didn't know. I was about to tell him he had the wrong number but, having recognized his voice, I told him who I was instead. After a moment's confusion, he explained that he had been distracted when dialing the number and lost track of who he was calling. But since he had me on the phone, he told me that I had a job and asked if I could start by the end of October. I agreed, and that was that.

I would start out at Rocky Mountain Telecom at twice the annual income I had ever made in my life, about the same level my father had reached after decades of managing the the ski area. In another eight years I'd be making two and a half times that and worked my way up from an entry level position to Senior Software Engineer at times in charge of some of the most critical systems the company had.

Apparently, while I had been barred from the higher tier educational path in High School and all of my friends who had entered it to one day become 'Engineers' only to wash out by College, it was I who reached that professional marker. Go figure.

And with this 'dream job' I knew I would live a long and happy life!^*

Yeah, right.

(^* It's a whole other book...)

Seeing The Destination

117

And with the end of May Nineteen Ninety-Four came the end of my last full semester of College. Having a chat with the receptionist student of half American and half German background, she told me that it had been a very close decision when tallying the grades but she had just narrowly beat me to become our Campus's Valedictorian. As the role conferred the responsibility of giving the speech at the graduation ceremony, I was glad I had just missed the bar as I didn't want to attend the event anyhow. I had actually received a better honor already by the time I graduated. The College had offered an Academic Excellence Award the previous year and I had won it giving me some additional scholarship money. With the end of College came the end of my Social Security PASS Plan and I would once again be back to my normal monthly income. Now with the most recent turn of the year cost of living adjustment, I would have just over one hundred dollars of spare money each month. I remembered how I had started at my first apartment having just under fifty dollars per month five years earlier.

There was still one more College class for me to take. It was a job hunt preparation class of only a couple sessions offered at the end of each semester for graduating students. As the Spring version conflicted with a core class I needed for my degree, my chance to take it had been bumped to the end of the summer semester. Still I wasn't going to wait for it before updating my resume and mailing it out. Actually, as I had gained such a diversity of skills over the years, I created three 'targeted' resumes, each with a subset of my skills intended for different types of computer jobs. One variation listed all of my Desktop Publishing skills, one for my Personal Computer maintenance and configuration skills, and finally the Computer Programming variation listing all of my completed projects, languages, and development platform experience. But this last one gave me pause. As I had roughly fourteen years of software development under my belt, but listed my degree as being received this year, I wondered if this resume would be seen as 'too good to be true'. As I had already had years of people disregarding my computer skills as they couldn't believe that I could truly have them I decided to play it safe and take out my most impressive projects, just keeping to a handful that would show breadth of skill without too much depth of experience. Technically, everything still in that resume was true, it just left out quite a bit.

With these resumes completed, I began mailing them to various businesses I thought might be interested and have openings, especially Rocky Mountain Telecom. That was still the place I wanted to work at and given my past letter of recommendation and the names of a few managers there, I felt I'd be a shoo-in now that I had my degree 'in hand'.

One wrinkle, I didn't have my degree in hand yet. As I hadn't taken that final course, they hadn't printed it up for the end of the spring semester. I'd have to wait until after the end of the summer semester before they'd issue the 'sheep skin' document to me. I didn't think it would be an issue.

Our local office of Colorado Vocational Rehabilitation was thrilled with my completion of college and let the University of Colorado job hunting team know so they could now bring forth jobs requiring a degree in order to apply. As a twist, they had found a job for me that didn't need the degree. Their helper I most often worked with had a perfect job for me: His wife was part of a start-up business that would be producing a new medical device. The Federal Drug Administration approval of their device would come down 'any day now' and they'd be making money hand over fist. As they wanted to get ready for that, they had rented office space and wanted to hire me to setup and maintain all of their data processing systems and office computers. I was taken to the empty office space they were going to move into and met his wife and all seemed fine, but it just wasn't that Rocky Mountain Telecom type job I had my eye on. Further, there were often reports in the news of how the F.D.A. routinely dragged their feet on approving anything and I felt like this new business was counting their one chicken before it had hatched. I explained this to the job hunting associate as my reasons why I wouldn't take the job, noting too that Social Security only had a limited transition period when taking a job and I didn't want to lose it on a business that might be defunct in under a year if the F.D.A. approval didn't come as hoped for.

To put it mildly, he was outraged I was turning down this job opportunity. He had been working on my behalf for the past two years to find me a job and here I was, with the first solid job opening he had found for me, nix that, a job specifically designed by him through his wife's position at the start-up to use my talents, and I was turning it down so I could wait around for a ''Pie in the sky'' corporate job that I would most likely never get. Not only was he outraged but he was dropping me as a client. My VocRehab counselor, Greg, was shaken by this as well but at the same time he understood my position and decided he wouldn't let this fall out result in VocRehab dropping me, too. Still, he warned me that I really couldn't pick and chose a prospective job, I needed to be thankful for what I could get going forward.

Two months later, Daina and I drove past the set of offices the start-up company had been settling into only to now see the offices were once again vacant and for lease. Either the F.D.A. approval had failed to come through like I suspected and the company had already folded, or they had hit it big and decided to immediately move to a more prestigious office park elsewhere in town. As I never heard the name of the company again, I suspect it was the former that happened and I had made the right decision.

In the meantime, since my resume was already sent in to various companies around town, all I needed to do was sit at my apartment and wait to hear back from one or more of them with job offers. The months came, and the months went, without a call.

When August came and I took the preparing to job hunt class, sure enough, there was nothing in the class that I didn't already know...

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College Classes

112

Past the turn of the year into Nineteen Ninety-Three, I didn't want to make the same mistake I had seven years earlier when I was pursuing my computer degree. Back then, as I was focused on getting the Bachelors level degree, I didn't worry about taking the Associates degree. As fate would have it, I couldn't complete the full Bachelors due to my growing health issues at the time and I ended up with no degree at all after three part-time years of College. Had I planned ahead, I could have chosen the classes needed to complete the Associate level degree, first, then continue onto the full degree. But I hadn't and thus I had nothing. So with my return to College after a five year health related break, the moment I had those few classes needed to finish the Associates, I filed for the degree and kept it for safe keeping, just in case something unexpected came up and I once again couldn't complete the Bachelors.

At first nervous returning to College after my lost years, I soon liked the variety of activity and topics it gave my starved mind. But to my surprise, after finding I was at the coding expert level in the eyes of Rocky Mountain Telecom, it was the handful of remaining computer courses I was bored with. In the past I could have bucked-up and tried to test-out of them, but I was so apathetic with the courses, rather than put in the effort to bring myself up to speed on the topics in order to test-out, I felt it would be easier to sit in the class room and work on other class material while 'absorbing' the nuances of the subject matter being discussed 'in the air' around me. This might have worked with the computer teacher I had quickly impressed the year before, but with this year there was a new instructor for my last two computer courses, and his only impression of me was my not paying attention to him in the classroom as he taught. Still, I got my projects done on time and without error, as well as getting all of the test answers right, so he didn't have a way to vent his displeasure other than glare at me. Then he assigned a project where he found his opportunity.

The coding project was to simulate the lottery number drawing. This was a program I had mastered for my Junior year of High School and needed to simply transfer it to the chosen computer language. I did and I was done in an hour at home. For the class he spent a full week working with them to figure out the logic. He hadn't figured it out himself ahead of time. So he came up with having them write a program to pick six random numbers, but then realized they could get a duplicate number or two as a result. So he had them place all the possible numbers into memory slots, then picked the numbers out of the slots, but how would they detect if a number had already been picked? He had them fill each picked slot with a invalid number after the original number had been chosen, thus if a random number was repeated, it would see the invalid value and not print it. The problem was this would then only result in five or four numbers being produced by the program instead of the six required. So he then had them create a second variable to count how many valid numbers they had gotten and not let the program finish until six had been printed. Next, as the real world lottery balls would tumble about in the cage between each one that was chosen, he wanted the students to randomly pick two slots a random number of times and swap the numbers in them. But he felt they should check for invalid number slots and skip those, yet still complete the same number of valid slot switches. They were trying to debug the logic on this twist when the time frame ran out for the project.

All of the students who followed his lead during the course of the two weeks received an 'A' for their program, even though it still didn't run. My program which fulfilled his requirements and ran flawlessly each time, he gave a 'B' noting that I had 'poor logic'. Whatever, I only had one more computer class with him and I spent a large chunk of that one staring out the window and watching the summer foliage as it grew during the semester. This time I made sure that not only were all of my tests and projects complete and error free, but if he led the students into a rabbit hole figuring out logic, I made sure my code followed that convoluted logic and then took the final steps needed to make it work, even though it ended up tied like a pretzel while doing it. He had to give me top marks for that last semester with him and I could tell he resented it.

But my other classes still captured my attention and one of them was 'Comparative Religions'. I enjoyed this class as it gave me a chance to become familiar with many different faiths without having to become an acolyte to do so. As Daina herself was interested in all of the world's faiths, she had a selection of books in her personal library I could draw upon as additional resources when working on the projects and other class work. For the Final, we were to give a presentation selecting a topic and then using it to compare two or more religions we had discussed during the semester. Now being familiar with the content of Daina's books, I decided to be daring when choosing my topic. You see, Daina's books didn't only just have the information, but often featured full color reproductions of classical paintings displaying aspects of those religions...

We had two days to give our presentations before the class and I chose the second day simply to reduce the number of hours I'd miss if I got kicked from the classroom for my topic. When my turn came, I brought with me a pile of Daina's books with various page markers in place. I then compared five different religions and their beliefs about sexual activity in the afterlife, showing various pictures from the books as I went along. The teacher placed her knuckles to her mouth to stifle her laughter as I did this. And I assured that the students had a good view of the various pictures, some depicting couples & threesomes, others including full orgies, though nothing too explicit. I ended with the Christian depictions of sex in Heaven, which pretty much was a good handshake, if that. The teacher loved my ballsiness and gave me top marks for the presentation and for the class.

I could tell I had won her respect and made sure to take more classes with her for my last year.

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Being Handy

111

As I couldn't afford to buy Daina things to show her my appreciation for the support she had been giving me over the past few years, I offered to apply my skills. She decided to get her first PC computer and I helped her shop around until we found the best pre-made fit for her needs and cost level. Getting it to her home, I put the components together on a small desk she had in her guest room and booted-up the computer and spent a little time reviewing its bios settings and pre-installed software. I then pared it down to what she needed and then gave her a copy of my original check book program, since expense tracking was one of the things she wanted to use it for, as well as preparing her quarterly student reports.

I guided her as she used the word processing software for the first time to prepare her next set of reports. When it came time to print them up she had a ratty photo copy of a poor photo copy of a school letter head page. Seeing this, I went home and created a new school letter head form for her with a group of mountains in the background using my desktop publishing skills. For her next set of student reports, the new letter head sheets made them stand out and look more professional.

As she would have handyman tasks at her condo from time to time, I would help when I could, such as installing a ceiling fan for her after she had seen the two I put into my own apartment. As I worked on it, I entertained her with my ability to mimic various music artists I liked and sang various songs in their voices. She enjoyed it and was impressed by my ability to change the sound of my voice, even for singing. Given her positive feedback, I took up the habit of occasionally leaving hoax messages on her answering machine to see if I could fool her with a new voice or accent I'd worked out.

She asked if I could make her an exercise step for her routine at home and, as I hadn't a clue what an exercise step was, she explained to me that it had to be steady as she would be constantly stepping up and down it. I realized it was more of a little platform than a stair type of step or foot stool and she paid for some scrap particle board at the local hardware store and I measured and cut it into three pieces by hand, two thin strips I crossed & mounted corner to corner on the underside of the square main piece. It was the height Daina wanted and very stable. She was very appreciative and the next time I was at her condo, I noticed that she had a collection of spices and jars of base ingredients inconveniently stuffed into a cabinet where she would have to pull most, if not everything, out to find what she was looking for each time. I saw she had an empty patch of wall at the end of her kitchen and offered to custom craft a 'spice rack' for her. She was willing to see what I could craft up but wasn't sure she would use it if she didn't like the look. More as a box of shelves, I measured the various sizes of her items to place on it and decided to make it tapered so the large jars would fit on the deep bottom shelf and the rest would become less deep until the final shelf would hold the smallest spice bottles. As with the step, I hand cut pine boards and then assembled them, this time with wooden dowels rather than screws so there wouldn't be any unsightly screw heads. Showing it to her and how I could secure it to her kitchen wall with the mounting brackets hidden from view, she agreed and it was soon in place with the jars and spices stacked in their new home and Daina had a new portion of a cabinet cleared out and available for other uses.

With her enthusiasm for these two projects, I looked around her kitchen to see if there was anything else I could do for her. She only had a limited amount of counter space and a large portion of it was taken up by her microwave oven. I noted an odd part of her kitchen where there was a row of high cabinets that spanned over her refrigerator, across a bare portion of wall until they spanned over the open area sink dividing her kitchen from the rest of the living space. I said I could build a suspended shelf that would fit under the bare wall portion of that cabinet span next to the refrigerator and she could place her microwave into it, clearing counter space. For Daina this was one project too far and she declined. Assuming she feared it would be made out of particle board or the such, I assured her I could get quality wood and custom stain it to match the cabinets so once installed it would look like a natural part of them. But the answer was ''No.''

Still, she had a birthday coming up and I did have a few pennies saved away. Assuming her refusal of the project was based on her not having confidence in my ability, I decided to go ahead and create the microwave shelf at my apartment, trim it, and stain it. It would be suspended by two side pieces that would slide up between small mounting gaps between two of the high cabinets with bolts crossing between the cabinet insides for support. On the nights I was over to her place for television shows or playing card or board games, she would often use the restroom before she'd drive me home for the night. I took this moment of time to pull out the tape measure in my pocket and plot the area where the shelf would be placed, and later bring stain sample slips to match against the existing cabinets to insure my work would match. As I'd hear her hand grasping the bathroom door knob, I'd quickly stuff these back into my pants pockets and act as if I had just been standing there doing nothing while she was busy.

When she would come over to my place, I would furtively scoot the pieces of wood and trim from my living room into my bedroom and pull the door to, so she wouldn't see the work in progress and misjudge the half completed shelf. And then it was done and I asked to borrow Daina's car on her birthday when she was working as I needed 'to run an errand'. In reality I placed the completed parts of the microwave shelf into the back seat of her car and brought them to her condo as, since her house key was on the car key ring, I was able to bring in the pieces and compression fit them into place. Not yet mounted with the securing bolts I wouldn't trust it to hold the actual weight of the microwave, but I wanted to let Daina see the finished product and approve the final step of drilling the holes for the bolts. If for any reason before that step she still didn't want the microwave shelf, I could simply pull it out of it's place hanging under the cabinets and take it home, leaving no trace it had temporarily hung there. After I picked Daina up at work, we first went to her place so she could change before we went out to eat for the evening and I settled on her living area couch and waited for her to notice the shelf. After changing her clothes, she briefly puttered in the kitchen for a bit and then was ready to leave.

She saw my big smile and asked if there was a makeup blemish or something on her face. In reality it was the fact that the microwave shelf had blended in so well with the existing cabinetry that she hadn't noticed it when she went in. But instead of telling her this, I lead her back into the kitchen while she looked at me and I asked her if she noticed anything different. At first she thought with me, but then I clarified 'the kitchen'. She glanced around and then suddenly gave a yelp. She briefly covered her mouth from the involuntary sound and then as she realized what it was she said, ''I told you not to.''

Before any anger could develop, I went up to the suspended 'U' shaped shelf assembly and pulled it out of its place between the cabinets to once again reveal that nothing permanent had been done, yet, and she could still have that space in her kitchen just as it had been. But now she could see it as it would look if permanently mounted and I slipped it back into place. She eyed it for a while and said she'd think about it during dinner. When we got back she had me take it out again, and then put it back in place. She said she wanted to see the microwave oven in it before she would make her final decision, but without the supporting bolts, I instead offered to hold the shelving in place as she slid the microwave into the space herself and stand back for another look. She was warming up to the idea but still wasn't convinced and so I noted that the supporting bolt heads would be hidden in the cabinets and so what I could do was mount it for a week or two and if she still didn't like it, I could remove it and the only thing left over would be some holes in between the interior sides of the cabinets that I could cover over with some faux wood grain patches.

Mustering up her courage, she agreed to let me drill the holes and physically mount the shelf in place. Then I slipped the microwave in and plugged it into the spare outlet behind the refrigerator. She tried the microwave to make sure it worked and noted it was easier to program, now, with the display closer to eye level. But she still wasn't sold on it...

The following week she felt the need to tell me, after days of having more free counter space, and a spare outlet with the microwave being out of the way, she had fallen in love with the shelf...! Hearing that, I was thrilled. When her friends and coworkers visited in the subsequent weeks and months she would point it out to them and eagerly compliment me and they in turn would appreciate it and she would come back to my apartment to share this news with me.

A year later she was still tickled with it and while it had been a gift for her birthday, a single day of a year, it had given her happiness for many more days than just that.

And reflecting on it as I type this, that success and her appreciation of it has tickled me more than most any other project I've ever done these decades since.

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Over Achieving

107

Focusing on College in July of Nineteen Ninety-Two, I was quickly the apple of the computer instructor's eye and I wowed and amazed him with my understanding of logical routines and computer obscurities. Going through the text book we came across the statistic that a company could only expect to complete ten lines of debugged code per day, per person, for any project. I felt that number was low, but the instructor pointed out it included systems analysis & designing, documentation writing, and testing time, not just the time it took to write the code. I still felt that was a little low and so the teacher decided to challenge me. Our first project was to write a stock tracking program, where the user would manually input various stock codes and daily numbers and the program would provide various averages which the user could use to decide if it was a good time to buy or sell. These were the minimum needs but we'd get brownie points if it exceeded those needs. Given the complexity of the task, he broke the class into two groups who would each work on the project separately... And then there was me: I'd be working alone. We had two weeks for the project and he wished us luck and offered to be available to provide any help required.

The following week I came in with the printed documentation I had finished for the program. I handed it to him along with a disk. He asked what the disk was for and I said, somewhat confused by his question as I thought it would be obvious, that it was the program. I also gave him my time sheet noting how many hours I had been working on it and when during the past week. I noted that I had averaged thirty lines of debugged code... an hour. He couldn't believe it and did the math himself assuming I had never slept, visited with friends, or eaten since he had assigned the task. Even with all of that factored in, he figured I had produced around three hundred lines of code per day. He made sure I remained as a group of one for all future coding projects during the class so I wouldn't just quickly put out the code and leave any team mates in the dust without them having a chance to code themselves. I thought that made sense.

Toward the end of the Summer semester came a surprise call from VocRehab. They had worked out a one month trial job for me at RMT. I would work at the complex on tasks they needed, but given the red tape of them being a national corporation, rather than my working there and being paid by them, and then them asking for reimbursement on my initial pay, VocRehab was going to pay me directly for the first month I worked there. I would be like a free 'independent contractor' for the company as they got to review my skills and decide if they wanted to hire me. I readily accepted the offer and my counselor noted that I'd need to get myself some formal clothing for my time working there. That threw me for a loop as I had none, but told him it wouldn't be a problem.

I asked Daina if she could loan me the money to buy a work wardrobe and I'd pay her back once I got my VocRehab check. Enthusiastically, she agreed and we were soon off to thrift shops in search of what I could find. Ultimately we got me about five short sleeved button up shirts. Given how light the material was, I would need to go back to the ACE bandage binding technique and even wear an additional white tee shirt under the work shirt to better disguise the presence of the ACE bandage, itself. Then we picked out a bunch of neck ties that would go along with the shirts and Daina, thankfully, knew how to tie them and showed me. Once again for ventilation, I hoped the short sleeved shirts wouldn't look out of place as I'd start the job at the tail end of August. While I still had trepidations about my ability to get a job at a corporation as I'd known in the past they would often require passing a physical as an employment requirement, I pushed that fear aside for now.

My work uniform set, I next had to deal with school.

I could take my Finals the week before the end of the semester and be done with my classes a week early so they wouldn't interfere with the start of my new job. But I would have to switch to night classes for the Fall semester to ensure there wouldn't be a conflict for the last two weeks of my one month trial job. Further, one of my degree requirements was to perform a 'work study' job. This would normally take place once I was reaching the end of my college time and just before I would get my degree. But as the opportunity was too good to pass up, I asked the administration if I could count my month at RMT as my work study requirement. Not only could I, but normally the best their students could hope for was a job copying diskettes as their work study so the College was thrilled that one of their students was going to be doing their time at RMT! Checking with the VocRehab counselor, he saw no conflict with it, either.

The next problem was my lack of a car. It turned out the local buses only ran during the daytime hours and the closest bus stop to the RMT complex was still a mile away. While taking the bus to RMT would be very problematic given the long walk to & from the bus stop while wearing my minimum layers of clothing, once night school started I'd definitely need a ride to & from College at a minimum. Daina offered to let me use her car, effectively I would keep her car overnight and then pick her up in the morning and take her to work, then drive to my RMT job. As the end of the school day came, she would work late on paperwork until I was done for the work day and then pick her up at the school. We'd have dinner someplace and then she'd drop me off at College allowing her to keep the car for any evening errands and then pick me up after classes. I'd drive back to her place and drop her off and I'd go home for homework and bed. While this plan worked on paper and we didn't have to worry about it during the first two weeks as I didn't have classes... Once the plan was in full swing Daina quickly chaffed at the sudden increase in gas costs and having to spend ten hour days in her classroom. She insisted and I agreed that once RMT hired me after the trial month, I was to promptly buy my own car.

I was heady with the thought that I would soon be able to buy myself my own car once again and no longer have to depend on free local bus passes from Vocational Rehabilitation.

When I arrived at RMT for my first week, I met the senior manager who had come up with the plan and was then introduced to the manager of the X400 messaging group who I'd be working for. He in turn introduced me to the 'team lead' who would be in charge of me and in return that team member took me to my empty cubical. It would take the next two days just to get the cubical set up and I used the time in between to tour the building alone with my little badge to defend me and spend some time under the skylight lit library area of the complex paging through the Digital Vax manuals; the machines I was told I was going to be working with once I had a computer terminal.

On the third day I was ready for my first assignment, the team lead looked through the 'needed code changes list' and assigned me to change a single line of an existing program. That took me a couple of hours, mainly just familiarizing myself with the system of getting the source code from the coding library and then compiling and testing my change before turning it in well before lunch time. I was ready for my next assignment. He had thought it would have at least taken me the whole day and asked that I come back to him after lunch for my next assignment.

While I didn't have cash to afford lunch, I did pocket a few dollars from my tiny savings to pay for my daily soda at their cafeteria, it was a gorgeous two story open area made of concrete which had an ambiance between a cave and a cathedral. I'd take a seat in a far corner and spend my time slowly sipping the soda and watch as the employees would trickle in for the lunch hour and socialize. Some would eat & run while others suddenly realized the clock after over an hour of socializing and rush to finish eating before parting from friends and returning to work.

When I returned to the team lead, he simply handed me the rest of the 'to do list' hoping that would keep me busy for the rest of my time. When I turned in all the completed work to him at the end of the week, he pointed out he meant 'for the rest of my time during the trial month', not for the week as I had assumed. He didn't know what else to assign to me and I had three weeks left to fill. He said he'd find something for me by the next week and I could leave early for the weekend. As Daina had needed the car for work during that day, I walked to that nearest local bus stop a mile away. Once I was there, I was soaked through with sweat and was glad I wasn't having to make this walk twice each day.

The following week I came in and the team lead had decided to stump me. They had always wanted an X400 message dump utility for debugging purposes but never had the time to create one. Thus my job would be to create that utility from scratch. He wished me luck and told me where to find documentation on the X400 message interchange file format.

The X400 messaging format was how companies exchanged eMails with each other over the developing internet. While internal messaging formats were often just text files, the X400 message format had to take in all considerations as to what sort of message might be passed through the internet. Not just text, but voice, telex, faxes, etc. As a result, the file format for a message was complex, if not convoluted, and the freakiest thing I had ever seen. Not only was the message dump utility going to have to be complex as well, it would also have to serve as my learning tool to come to grips with the file format itself. On the second day I asked if I could have sample X400 messages to use for testing. They got that data to me by the end of the day. By the third day I realized I wanted more time to work on this each day, but as I was tied to borrowing Daina's car and keeping to her schedule, I couldn't return during the evenings to keep working with the sample data. I asked if they had an option where I could dial in from home? They did and since I already knew Jeff had a spare Digital terminal I could borrow for a few weeks, I was soon spending my hours at home working on the same code I was working on during the day. Knowing by my third week I'd have to accommodate college classes into my schedule, I made a weekend long effort to finish the utility.

I returned Tuesday morning, after Labor day weekend, and asked the team lead if he'd like to review the output of my utility. He assumed I meant review the proposed output of the utility and said I could bring a copy to his desk, instead I arrived with the program on a disk. It took him a moment to understand it was a working program I wanted to show him and then he gave it a try. He was impressed that it was already a working program, but felt the output was too technical in nature: 'Priority = Normal, From = Bob'. He felt it wasn't readable enough. The output had to be readable, but when I asked him what that would be, he didn't know. I'd have to just work it out for myself and then he'd let me know if it was good or not. Returning to my cubicle I easily foresaw days of frustration coming up with a new output format for him to nix and my returning back to the drawing board to try again.... and again.... and again.

Instead I got the idea of attaching my FlexBase code library to it. A system I had developed in the early eighties to serve as a universal online site code base, it worked on the concept of 'you draw-up the format you want an online page to display and it would determine all of the logical needs to fill it in' for each unique user. In this case I married in the form based logic and allowed the X400 message dump routines to fill the variables with the message values. This took me almost three whole days to complete and test and then another hour making the first form template for the output. I took this new, 'more readable' output to the team lead. While he thought it was better, he still had some changes he wanted to it. I left and went to my terminal, tweaked the form template and reprinted the message data and was back at his cube within ten minutes with the updated print up and a huge smile on my face. He assumed I had made this 'example page' by hand and gave some more recommendations to tweak it. I didn't let on and returned to my cube, tweaked the form, reprinted and was back at his cube. He liked that one and asked how long it would take for me to incorporate these changes into the program. I told him I already had and this was the actual output.

I treasured that look on his face. Jaw agape, eyes wide, reading his mind that if he hadn't already seen the speed of my work the previous two weeks he wouldn't have believed it. But even knowing that it was still hard for him to accept and he asked me how I could have changed the output of the program so quickly. I told him of my FlexBase code library and showed him the template form it used and he tweaked it himself and reran the program to see the updated, instant results. In High School my coding skills had been admired, but as I was a 'big fish in a small pond' I really couldn't gauge if I was truly that good, or simply the best looking dog given what little competition I had. I knew my time at RMT would be my first true chance to find how good my skills really were, and it didn't disappoint!

The team lead asked for my source code and told me I could leave early for the weekend. The following Monday he came to my cubical with a huge smile on his face. He pointed out that he had a Masters Degree in software development, that looking at my code Friday afternoon he had become so impressed by it that he spent the rest of the weekend going through it for fun. He admired the logical structuring of my code and my use of tables to drive the code flow, not to mention the output coding which allowed the easy to modify template. He thought this was some of the best code he had seen in his life, and he was highly recommending me to be hired as an employee by the company. He gave me a copy of his letter of recommendation and his manager was reviewing it as we spoke.

For the rest of the week, more and more high level employees and managers paraded into my cubicle to see me run the code, promptly update the form with their suggestions as they watched and reran the program affirming their requested output changes. By the middle of the week they wanted to offer me a job...! There was just one little question: ''What degree do you have?''

I noted that I was self taught and didn't have a degree, as such, but was currently in night College to complete my Associates Degree by the turn of the year as I continued on to a Bachelors of Science. There seemed to be some turmoil with this answer and then they asked me when I thought I'd have that Bachelors in hand? In another year and a half, or so.

No job for me.

The head of the company on the other side of the nation had recently dictated that he wanted to have 'the smartest work force of any telecommunications firm' and by 'smartest' that meant everyone had to at least have a Bachelors Degree to get hired. As I didn't have that degree in hand, it didn't matter what level I performed at, they simply couldn't hire me.

So I got my work study completion form filled out by the manager as well as a glowing review written for the Vocation Rehabilitation people to have. Then I was back home at the end of the four week period with nothing but college studies to again fill my time.

I felt like I was the most highly praised applicant they wouldn't hire!

(at least I no longer had to worry about passing a physical examination to work there.)

The Brass Ring

105

After losing a year in the hands of my first vocational rehabilitation counselor, I was very impressed with my new counselor, 'Greg'. Using his partnership with the University Of Colorado group, they had scheduled an appointment for me and a few other clients to be presented at 'Rocky Mountain Telecom'. RMT was one of the big winners with the break up of the national Bell Telephone company. They went from being a small regional telecommunications carrier to a full-on national long distance competitor. With their explosive growth they had recently taken over an abandoned IBM complex and not only made it their own, but were actively expanding it to house many more employees. Of the computer related jobs in Colorado, I saw this as the Brass Ring of success. If I got a job there, it would surely put the across the hayfield grocery store owner's wife's curse to rest: That I would end up as nothing more than a hot dog vendor.

The meeting set, we were to arrive at the VocRehab building a half hour before hand to be confirmed as being present and then taken to the facility in a van. Oddly enough I had been to the complex a year before as one of my old writers' group cohorts had landed the job of managing the building drawings as part of the takeover by RMT; he had given me and Jeff a tour of the then empty complex explaining the changes that were going to be made and the estimated number of people who would eventually work here. Pulling up in the van I could now see the front parking lot full of cars and the previously empty foyer now tight with security desks and electronic gates. We signed-in and then waited for our host to come and greet us and lead us to the conference room where we would meet with a selection of managers. To my surprise, the room wasn't more than a few hundred feet from the foyer and we were sat as a line behind a row of tables with the various RMT managers and lead employees scattered at the individual tables before us.

With no formal choreography to the proceeding, the University Of Colorado adviser introduced the representative of Vocation Rehabilitation who gave a quick speech of 'helping to find jobs for capable, if physically challenged, people and thus bringing success to us both'. Then he decided to have us introduce ourselves, briefly describing our physical challenges, and note our job goals and relevant experience. When it came to me, it turned out I didn't have to describe my physical challenges all that much as my stuttering was on full display. Normally in unusual circumstances I forget to stutter but perhaps sitting at a table rather than standing at a podium made me too comfortable and therefore the back of my mind was in full control of my attempts to talk. Still, I eventually got out my safety line, ''I'm sorry, I stutter occasionally,'' with a sheepish face and then talked briefly of my intestinal problems and of having recently recovered and looking for a computer programming job with near a decade of experience under my belt. I neglected to note that most of that experience had been unpaid volunteer work.

Once the rest of us had given their introduction we were asked a few questions... very few questions, and then the meeting was formally over and we could mill about with the employees in the room. Very few had questions for me, I hoped it was more a case of they were put off by my stuttering rather than concluding I wouldn't be a capable addition 'to the team'. Finally, on the way out of the conference room, one of the lead employees pulled me aside in the hallway and told me of her battle with Multiple Sclerosis and how supportive the company had been for her and it would make a great place for me to work at as well. Acknowledging this I got around to the question of if she had any jobs that might be a good fit for me. It turned out she had no role in the hiring process and had just attended the meeting based on her identifying with the topic given her own health issues. She was actually interested in talking to me more but they were loading the van and I was the last one to be rounded up. In retrospect I should have asked if I could stay and have her give me a tour of the building and, possibly, bump into coworkers who were involved in hiring. I could have taken the bus home on my own once done. But I didn't think of that idea and just did what I was told and returned to the van.

On the drive back, the University representative and VocRehab counselor thought it went well and expected callbacks for many, if not all of us, for job interviews...

As the subsequent weeks went by, no calls came.

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The Morning After

103

I arrived at the mobile home before nine the next morning to find that my sister and her daughter were already gone. Checking on my mother, she thought they had gone at least an hour earlier and she had been alone since. But she pointed out that she had called my not as older brother and he would be getting emergency leave from the Air Force and flying out to take care of her. When I asked her when he'd be arriving, she said he hadn't figured out the arrangements yet, but when he did he'd be here to take care of her. In the meantime I told her that I'd be moving back in temporarily and would be bringing my computer here to keep me busy as well as some books. Was there anything she needed in the meantime? More water and the bed pan.

During my drive home the previous night I had stopped at the grocery store to find some bending straws to make it easier for her to drink water so that request was quickly addressed, as for the bed pan we finally guessed that the best technique was for her to roll to her side and then I place the pan where her seat would be once she rolled back. It took two tries to get this right and then she'd need time alone to do her business. I took this as my first chance to go back to my apartment and get a car load of my stuff for the stay. The new 'speed bumps' in the mobile home park quickly became the bane of my existence as I had to very carefully roll up one side of them and then gently back down the other side with my impact sensitive computer in back. Even without the computer, these lengths of asphalt curbing were so steep that they could only be taken at less than one mile an hour to reduce the abrupt, unforgiving jump they caused in the car. It was time to empty the bed pan and my mother rolled to her side again and I had to quickly intervene to stop the bed pan from rolling onto its side as well and spilling its contents. I then emptied it into the toilet and thought to take it to the kitchen sink where I could use the sprayer to rinse it out. Returning to my mother I asked her what else I could get for her. She said she would be fine for now.

Realizing I'd have to be spending the nights using her water bed so I'd be within ear shot of her, I stripped its sheets and blankets and put them in the washer next to the bedrooms. As the machine ran, mother called me back into the bedroom where she then cried about what had happened to her. My mother cursed my sister for not having a bathroom night light so she could see what room it was in the dark. She had gone passed it, assuming it was another bedroom door and then realized she had gone too far when she found the steps, instead, and fell down them. Our mother had apparently been at the foot of the stairs for a long while calling for my sister before she finally woke up and came to see what the problem was. She hadn't wanted to take her to the hospital fearing my mother's out of state insurance wouldn't cover it and she'd be stuck with the bill, but she finally relented after a period of mother's begging. The emergency room doctor told mother she had a broken pelvis and was to be kept in bed for the next few weeks until she healed up enough for a follow-up with a specialist. I tried to imagine a broken pelvis and all I could guess was a plate split in half with the two halves waving like wings whenever my mother moved. I couldn't imagine how she had been released from the hospital and neither could she.

The good news was, in her eyes, that my not as older brother would be taking leave from the Air Force and coming out to take care of her until she was all better and I wouldn't have to be there for more than a night or two. I thanked her for letting me know, especially as I would be returning to College in a week and wouldn't be able to help her full-time by that point. After a few more days of my mother assuring me my not as older brother would soon be arriving to take care of her, she finally concluded, ''I guess he can't get away, just now.'' Not having witnessed any of the phone calls she told me she had made to him, I didn't know how much contact she actually had with him about her condition, or what he truly told her. Years later when I'd talked to him about the time, he said he had never told her he would be coming out to help her so he didn't know why she had been telling me that. To my mind, though, my not as older brother had always been deemed 'the best child of us all' in her eyes and she was likely just expressing her preference as to which one she wanted to take care of her by imagining he was swooping out to save her.

My mother wasn't sure what she could eat and eventually decided on canned Spaghetti O's as a food she could easily just swallow without chewing. At first I tried to feed her with a spoon, but she decided it was better if I propped up her head with multiple pillows allowing her to drink it down from the edge of the bowl until she was done, then I would remove all but one pillow so she could return to lying flat. And so the days went for the first week, her diet of canned Spaghetti O's being supplemented with occasional glasses of juice between the routine glasses of water. She just lay in the darkness and I guess she let the time drift by her as the days wound on. I would sit at the computer on the dining room table and surf online or sometimes watch television with the sound very low waiting for the next time she'd call me for food, liquid, or for help with the bed pan. While she had been on vacation during the holiday weekend this had happened, it soon dawned on us that I needed to call the hospital kitchen where she worked and inform them of her injury and that she would have to be out indefinitely on medical leave until she was well enough to return.

To break the monotony, Daina would sometimes sneak over for the evening and we'd quietly watch television together as I waited for the next time I was called to mother's bedside. One time Daina needed to use the restroom but, as it was next to mother's bedroom, she decided to wait until our current show was over and then go home so as not to disturb her. At the next commercial break I went and got myself a glass of ice tea and then sucked some into my mouth and gently spewed it through my pursed lips back into the glass making a peeing sound. Daina lightly punched me in the leg in response. I'm so evil.

Toward the end of the week, I called a social services group who specialized in helping older people with mobility issues and asked what services they offered. I told them of the condition my mother was in and that I'd be returning to College with the following week, asking if they had someone who could check on her during those times. I also asked what other help they could provide and requested overall advice as the only guidance I had about the whole thing was what my sister had told me. They said they would check into it and call me back. I gave them the mobile home phone number and, after not hearing back for a while, I walked to the post box to get the daily mail. When I returned mother was angry at me as they had called back and she had answered the phone. ''I don't need any help from strangers!'' she yelled at me and I told her that the help request was in part for me. It turned out I didn't need any help either to her mind and so I concluded that when I returned to College the following week that it meant she would be able to take care of herself.

In reality though I continued to live with her for the next two weeks and still took care of her except for the six hours from the late morning to the late afternoon when I took my classes.

By the third week she was well enough to get up and painfully hobble on her own. I moved my stuff back to my apartment and no longer spent the nights there. When I took her to her first specialist appointment, she found out that her pelvis hadn't been broken all the way through, just fractured. That was why staying still had been allowing it to heal over time without any intervening surgery or devices needed to stabilize it. Until the end of June I continued to check on her and be with her a few hours in the morning before College and a few hours after College to make sure she was doing as best as she could. By the end of July, she was well enough to return to light duty at her job, thus I was out of a car and back to taking the bus for my needs so I just ended up calling her once a day for the rest of the month to check on her and insure she was doing all right. By August she and I were back to our lives as if nothing had happened, having little contact once again.

But something had happened.

One day, she asked for me to come over and see her for 'something important' that evening. Rather than take the multiple hour ride on the bus, I asked Daina if I could borrow her car when she was done with work and she agreed. I drove over to my mother's mobile home and rang the door bell I had installed for her a decade earlier and she opened the door and was glad I had come. She had recently figured something out and it had been a profound insight for her and she wanted to share it with me. We sat down at the antique dining room table and mother looked to me. ''I just wanted to tell you that, when you came I couldn't understand why God would want me to have another child under those circumstances. When I didn't have a miscarriage and the doctors even revived you when you had been born dead, I couldn't imagine why God wanted you here so badly. But now I know.'' She reached out her hand and placed it on the back of my hand already resting on the table, ''God sent you to me so you would be here for the time I broke my pelvis.''

I could tell by the gentle and warm look in her eyes that this was important for her, but for me all it confirmed was she hadn't wanted or valued my life until this Summer.

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