My Dot.Com story begins in 1994…
In 1994 I started work at Intelligent Electronics (I.E.) here in Denver; 3rd shift assembly on the IBM EduQuest line.
Turnover at I.E. was pretty heavy at that time, and after about two weeks I was moved to QA for my EduQuest line, and about a month later I was managing that line…
During my 90-day review it was discovered that I had a lot of experience with networks and network operating systems such as Novell – and there was a new opening in the I.T. department for a Novell guy. So they asked if I was interested – and the next week I was the second in command of the network for the Denver operations.
By 1997 I had been running the network at Intelligent Electronics in Denver for several years. In the time I’d also written a few bits of software for the company such as “IntelliTrack” – a warehouse management suite – and several data interchange applications to allow internal systems to communicate with external vendor’s systems.
I’d also developed the image-based network load system I.E. used on the assembly lines, which in my reviews was mentioned to be one of the biggest advances for the company in the last few years – and I got a pretty nice bonus for it.
Things were going great until early 1997, when we (the employees) suddenly discovered that Ingram Micro was buying I.E, and everyone got two weeks notice… And while my job was secure, Ingram Micro wanted me to move to Memphis.
I had been through Memphis a few times and decided that was a bad idea – so I turned in my notice and started looking for a new job.
On my last day at I.E., my boss met me at my car and handed me four trays of 512K Pentium Pro CPUs, stating “The C-level is all getting a huge payday out of this – you deserve something too…” And with that he shook my hand and walked away.
512K cache Pentium Pro CPUs at this time were selling for about a thousand dollars a piece, so my boss had just handed me about $16,000 in CPUs.
A friend of mine in Maryland (RSO) mentioned his company in D.C., Amerind, was looking for a network guy, and that he’d put me up for a week at his place to do interviews. So I flew out to Maryland in May for a week and did a bunch of interviewing.
Things looked good and I got a lot of bites in D.C., so I made RSO a deal – I’d give him $12,000 towards a 40 acre farm he was looking at in central Virginia if I could take over the bedroom on the far end of the house.
I flew back to Denver and started selling everything that I couldn’t ship to Maryland – this included my 1974 Porsche 914 and my 1967 VW Beetle. And three weeks later I arrived back at BWI to start over…
Here’s the writeup of 1997 to 2000, covering the rise and fall of me during the Dot.Com…
Ultimately I survived the Dot.Com. I made a lot of really cool stuff, and made a half dozen people quite wealthy – but I actually lost everything, twice, and essentially had to start over at the end of 2000.
Still, I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. The six years between 1994 and 2000 were incredible.
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