1. Gordon Henry Kraft Story
I have been continuing the work of
my mother Mildred Otillie Joss Kraft
on the Kraft Family Tree. she
clearly felt a higher calling...
My results stagger ones imagination, and the forefathers
are from both sides of the equation, Religious Monk
Warriors, and are questionable. Does Ancesty.com work
right?
Regardless, my personal convictions remain, I still cry
when I see a helpless elder, or a child. I think war is
obsolete in comparison to the natural events we all share.
I believe that it is time for that 1,000+ years of Peace,
because we have tried for over 2010 years to find an
alternative...
and I believe, “People Know” People need to worry about
themselves and not so much others. We have become
overly involved in the freedom and rights (space) of others,
and this is the root of the religious conflict. Why do you
care how one prays or believes in God, if there is only one
God. There are many Prophets... and God did not tell man
to kill man, only man does that. What motivation did they
have?
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2. I only know of one Starship Earth. perhaps its time we
should go out and see whatʼs out there?
Gordon was born Dec. 21, 1943 9:55PM in the middle of
the Sagittarius-Capricorn CUSP, Good Sam Hospital, in
Sandusky Ohio, the only known city designed using the
Masonic Symbol, like Washington, D.C. and he was raised
by his Aunts, Katie and Annie Joss, much of the first years,
mom was working for the war effort, and my dad was in
WWII in the South Pacific and ended up in China.
The first stories that I seem to remember were in a
Department Store in Cleveland and climbing into the
cabinets under the clothes shelfs, and my mom freaking out
and later having to wear one of those dog leases for kids
with the leather thing around your chest, because I was
always exploring... Adventure and the wonderment of what
everything is? Has always been important to me, like
exploring by car, or better yet by boat...
I remember playing in the coal bins behind the VA Hospital
when I was a kid, and getting pretty dirty... My dad was a
Civil Engineer student from Ohio State, he was in heavy
construction and was the Project Director for building many
VA Hospitals, we lived on the VA Hospital grounds much of
my early school years in the Drs. housing. Cleveland/
Brecksville, Ohio (I was the first WWIII patient there when I
was 4 or 5). and Marion, Indiana. And he worked for GE in
Cincinnati/Lockland, Ohio.
I went to Jr High in Marion, Indiana. Dennis was born
here. We lived in the Drs. housing on the VA grounds
during my mid school years, I remember a former soldier
that used to walk around the park like hospital grounds, he
would stop and back up every once in a while and then
continue walking... it was sad. another said he was Hitler
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3. and another played the violin... but it was a peaceful place
to live, until Jeff got hit by a car and nearly killed, then we
moved into a Show Home ultra modern home, like the
modern, for 1956-59 Eichler style in California, across the
street from the Mississinewa River, where dad became the
Commodore of the Boat and Ski Club, I was in a few ski
shows, when I was in the 6th and 7th grades, even tried to
do the 6ʼ jump, good going up... then hit my head on the
steel tipped jump skis and never did that again... woke up
in the river. Then there was the time I drove a friend of my
dads boat to pull his daughter on skis, and the steering
stuck and I hit the dock at 30 mph and just before hitting I
jumped to the other side of the seat and then shut off the
throttle running still wide open while the dock was sticking
inside of the boat where I was just sitting... the girl was
fine just left go of the rope, a 60ʼ ski rope... boats in those
days used cables and pulleys... but... I did get to drive my
first outboard genuine APBA racing flat bottom when I was
in the 7th grade, it had a 35HP Merc HP Racing Outboard,
was 10ʼ long, and did about 55mph, banging up and down
with a squeeze throttle that when you flew out would stop
the motor... it worked. My dad had a 16ʼ Wolverine
lapstrake that we all refinished each year during the winter,
then he bought a 16ʼ Uniflite?, then a 17ʼ molded plywood
ultralight called a Cadillac, with two 35HP Johnson
Outboards that could pull 10 skiers from a deep water
start... I used to jump out of it while going wide open down
the river, you would hit the water like a torpedo... yep true
story.
Then we moved to Cheyenne, Wyo. to build the VA Hospital
addition and I went to High School in Cheyenne, Wyoming
were it is so cold that you canʼt make a snowball because
the snow is too dry. The folks there were wonderful, the
hospitality of living in Cheyenne was a incredible
experience.
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4. Cheyenne Frontier Days, the Grand Daddy of all
Rodeoʼs!
Frontier Days in Cheyenne was a hoot, if you lived there
and wore tennis shoes downtown you could be arrested...
I only had a couple of fights during high school, because I
was only 5ʼ6” growing too 5ʼ8”, and was like Richie
Cunningham in Happy Dayʼs, freckles and all.
I did not like to fight, but growing up in Cheyenne didnʼt
leave much chance of not getting into a fight or two...
During Frontier Days, the real cowboys from Casper and
Cody and Jackson Hole came down, and the boys from
Montana, and Colorado came up for the greatest Rodeo in
the world, the Cheyenne Frontier Days. And in 1961 they
wore their hunting knife on their belts, and were not talking
Buck Knifes... No bullshit. And these guys thought coming
to Cheyenne was like coming to the big city! No bullshit.
Coming from Indiana this was what you would call culture
shock... no bullshit.
I met this young guy one evening during Frontier Days,
being harassed by several guys, and he was acting like he
had no choice but to fight back, I recognized one of them
as the Mr. Jr. Cheyenne Body Builder from the Cheyenne
YMCA... I dead lifted 435lbs. in a weight lifting contest at
the YMCA when I was 16, and weighed 164lbs.
Mr. Jr. stood behind me in our Cheyenne High School
ROTC class, always wanting to kick my butt... Perhaps it
was because in formation in ROTC one morning Mr. Jr.
poked me in the butt with the barrel of his M1 rifle that we
drilled (marched) with, and I impulsively turned around and
placed the butt of my M1 about one inch from his face...
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5. Back to the Frontier Days, Mr. Jr. begins to tell me he is
going to kick my ass, and with a quick glance I see my new
friend hit one of the other guys really hard and that guy
went down, and it looked like my new friend, although
outnumbered, was pretty tough, then Mr. Jr. kicks me on
the side of my leg, so I say, “oh you kick like a girl” and I
kicked him back as hard as I could and then he swung at
me and I hit him in the side of the face and he quit. By this
time however my new friend was on the ground getting
beaten and I roared loudly at the top of my lungs and
charged over at them and they took off. I helped my friend
walk home, he was pretty beaten up, and I never saw him
again after that night. It was over quickly, and I only hit Mr.
Jr. one time. I was glad it was over since it scared the
crap out of me, but I was proud to help out someone who
was clearly a underdog. I always believed in “might for
right”, like in King Arthurʼs day, and the Knights of the
Round Table. Ok so this is a little bullshit...
We went to Jackson Hole and Yellowstone every summer
for vacation and even took dads boat, my dad had one of
those new four seat 1963 Police Interceptor V8
Thunderbirds and could tow his boat at 100 mph, I know his
friend had a Chrysler 300D and was in front of us towing
his boat... so the windshield blew off on the way... of
course Wyoming is a large state, with a very limited
population and the highways are empty for long distances.
I drove dadʼs T-Bird from Laramie to Cheyenne about 49
miles in about 42 minutes and that included going up
Sherman grade at over 100mph... The 1963 Thunderbird
could go about 140mph.
Yellowstone lake is so cold when the wind comes up in the
middle of summer that you cannot believe it... My brother
Jeff and I were freezing out on the lake one day, that one
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6. of Dadʼs friend sat on us to keep us warm while we
returned back to the dock. The weather changed incredibly
fast that day on Yellowstone lake and it is a very big lake
when you are in a 16ʼ boat with a 35HP Johnson outboard.
I fired off a few cherry bombs in the park in the center of
Jackson Hole one night and even tried to sneak in to buy a
beer in the Silver Dollar Bar... when I was 16. Jackson
Hole is a place I love, and Yellowstone is a place that calls
me... My dad always said if you want to talk to God he is
here. Godʼs country he called it.
Mr. Garton lived down the street from us in Cheyenne and
we got to go hunting deer on his ranch in the Iron Mountain
Range north of Laramie.
My dad started Kraft Construction company and became
the National Program Director of the National Home
Builders Association and he constructed over 200 homes
using state of the art prefab advanced construction
techniques in one summer. He had a partner and
something went wrong with the relationship, my mom said
my dad got taken advantage of by a crook... I always
wondered who and why, etc.
The Garton-Plaguer(?) Ranch raised 500 head of Black
Angus each year and was awesome. Gina was there and
she was a nice lady, and they had a real bunkhouse, and
they told me that the first steer wrestling (like in the Rodeo)
happened years ago on their ranch when a big black
cowboy jumped off his horse onto the back of a steer that
would not go where he wanted. I went there the next year
with Jim Whiting a close friend from high school to go
hunting, and Jim had a Winchester .44 hexagon barrel hugh
rifle, it fired a bullet that was much larger than my .270
Winchester deer rifle that my dad owned. We saw some
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7. deer way over a valley on the horizon of the next hills and
Jim fired off a round to drive the deer down towards us and
down to the small valley it was about a half of a mile shot,
sounded like a canon ball lobbing across the valley, and a
deer fell down! We had to go all the way over there and
drag it back. No bullshit. Whiting also had a old Buick
convertible with no top and when it filled up with snow we
used to drive around throwing snow balls out of it... And I
used to Ice Skate to High School on the city streets
because the snow and ice was packed once in a while. I
won a Treasure Hunt for $300 when I was a Senior and
bought a 51 Mercury Club Coupe with a Flat Head V8 and a
Mercomatic, a green Merc like the Fonzie had on Happy
Days. The Merc used to have a generator that made a loud
screaming noise until it warmed up, so one time I went out
on the highway and went as fast as it could and the hood
opened, no it did not come off, it just stood straight up in
front of me at 100 miles an hour... I could see under it
though and slowed down and slammed it shut, bent hinges
and all... The Merc was OK, just needed some banging
and bending and it was fine. One time in the snow and ice,
I ran up over a curb and hit a tree at about 10 miles and
hour and the old Merc just pushed the tree over a bit, and
had a small dent in the bumper, do that today and you need
a new car.
Poor Student
I was a poor student in High School and needed to take a
extra half year course with the sophomores in a Gym class,
and I barely graduated with a “D”. It has been the
motivation for me for my entire life, because school was
boring and slow unless I liked the class, like History and
Latin “Caesar's Gaelic Campaign”, etc.
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8. And I was only 17 when I started going to the University of
Wyoming and hadnʼt even gotten laid yet. I had two
roommates and we paid two old ladies $18mo. to live in
their basement that they rented out to college students, a
off campus residence at 17...
I went to Roswell for Christmas that year, and when I got
back after the Christmas vacation (I finally got laid), I got
sick and nearly died with Acute Rheumatic Fever at age 18
while attending the University of Wyoming.
My dad drove all the way up to Laramie with my brother,
and I laid on a mattress in the back of his Falcon station
wagon and we drove back to Roswell, NM. My dad was
then a Catalytic Construction Project Director on the
Boeing/Catalytic Atlas Missile sites around Roswell.
When I was well enough to go out of the house, having
been laid up for several months because of the Rheumatic
Fever and a Heart murmur (which kept me out of Vietnam),
I was invited to go out with the daughter of one of my dads
Sr. Engineers and I got to take the car.
We went to Grannyʼs DriveIn and for the first time I was out
in a Roswell evening. And within a few minutes the girl I
was with, had invited a car full of friends to join us and go
for a cruise in my dadʼs car. When we got back a Roswell
Police car came over and the policeman asked me what
was that bottle in the back seat? Of course I had not had
anything to drink and didnʼt even know there was a bottle in
the back seat so I argued with the Policeman until he asked
me to get out of the car and look in the back seat. Whoa
where did that come from? I really didnʼt know that one of
the kids had it with them. So the first night out, I am at the
Roswell Police station and they are calling everyones
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9. parents. Welcome to the friendly folks of Roswell, you all
come.
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10. Cuban Missile Crisis...
My dad told me to apply as a common laborer, since I had
worked for him during the summers of my high school years
in Cheyenne when I was 16 and 17 as a laborer in
construction. I worked as a driver and helper at a
Commercial Printer in Cheyenne during my 15th summer
I was working on the Atlas Missile sites in Roswell during
the Cuban Missile crisis “the Missiles of Oct”. It was a very
intense time since a few sites had nose cones delivered
and the Atlas fuel tanks were full, and they were locked
and loaded so to speak, my dad stayed at one site for
several days and nights during the peak.
One of these days I was at one of the sites when a convoy
drove up with a Nose Cone with little radiation stickers on
it... Airman with machine guns were running around. We
went from a normal guard gate security to a lot of Airman
with guns running around and they were serious...
Another day a Atlas was on the “up level” (ground
Level) iced over fueled with Liquid Oxygen LOX and
Hydrogen and glistening in the early morning sunrise, it
was breathtaking...
The Atlas Missile sat on a elevator 10 floors below ground
on a structure that included a Flame Bucket whose purpose
was to vent the flame and heat from the thrust of the Atlas
at takeoff and with the elevator at the top level the flame
bucket was above ground and the Atlas was on top of the
structure. The cables were about 1.5 inches thick and we
could (learned from the Iron Workers) place each foot with
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11. a boot on it between the cables and hold onto the external
cables of the set of 5 and slide down the cables and skip
using the slow elevator... gloves were recommended. I
used to slide down several floors at a time, if it were above
ground I never would have done it. Hey the Iron Workers
used to jump across open spaces, it was not for the weak
at heart to watch, of course they usually had a safety belt
attached to something, but not always... And there was
nothing to attach to when sliding down the cables. I would
never do it today.
Before this timeframe I had been promoted to Labor
Foreman of the “Tiger Team” of a small group of labors.
One of the first things I tried to do was to fire the son of the
Labor Union boss. They put him on swing shift.
One day we had to remove a 2x12 about 14 feet long from
the flame bucket below the Atlas Missile, and they had just
put the Nose Cone (NUKE) on the bird... I touched the
nose cone one time and it hummed, and then one time, a
Airman dropped a half-foot+ long tubular can that hit with a
loud heavy bang on the grating above our head, just below
the nozzles of the bottom of the Atlas Missile, while we
were standing in the flame bucket, I think it was a explosive
bolt being installed or something in the Atlas, and it took us
about 3 seconds to get that 2x12 out of the flame bucket
and up 11 floors to the ground level... which beat my
diarrhea run...
One of these sites LOX fuel tanks exploded and blew the
155 ton each 10ʼ thick blast doors hundreds of yards out
into the desert. And emptied the hole. They are all now
empty.
The sight of a Atlas Missile glistening in the sun rise will
give one goosebumps, not a good feeling, I was 18.
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12. Talking with the sense that one is invincible, like in
Congress, only works, if you donʼt see one of these, locked
and loaded, venting, ready to fire... and this is one thing
we are in total control of. The Earth, now thatʼs an entirely
different thing. God Bless us.
Walker Air Base
Walker Air Force base was a B52 SAC Air Base and a
couple of times I ended up in the NCO club drinking beers
with my friends that either were in the Air Force or were the
sons of Airman who lived on base. I remember Ray Hesslup
and John Dalton, they may have been from Warren Air
Base in Cheyenne or at the University of Wyoming but
somehow their names come to mind, and I remember one
night when some drunken Airman were yelling the South
Will Rise Again and where are you from boy! I stood up
and said, nose to nose, Wyoming! He blinked, and backed
off, and didnʼt know what to say. If I told him Ohio, I would
have gotten my butt kicked along with the guys I was with,
but I knew Wyoming would stump them... Actually it
freaked them out... I just grinned knowing they just about
had their butts kicked by a Wyoming Cowboy!
I have often stood between overwhelming force and a few
to stand down the issue. I grew up in Wyoming and New
Mexico and guys there drive clear across the state to fight
each other in the early 60ʻs based on reputation. There is
always someone tougher, or more lucky that day, so
fighting was of no interest to me, and I was small and
scarred, but fierce like the Bobcat. Ok so I am now Bull
shitting a little...
Funnels Drinking Team
I created the Roswell Funnels Drinking Team with Bob
Gilmore, and made everyone get a blue dress shirt and had
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13. them airbrushed by a car pinstripe artist in Roswell. You
know a funnel that you pour stuff into a smaller opening
like your mouth. And I did fight Bob Gilmore my best friend
twice, first time him, second time I knocked him over the
hood of Kennyʼs Corvette... and my hand swelled up like a
basket ball in size... then we went out and got drunk each
time... ah Roswell...
My dad had a Sako .222 varmint rifle and used to go out
with my mom and shoot those tiny beer cans, and he used
to say that they loved the rainbows from the beer can
exploding.
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14. Roswell Aliens
There was a cotton field behind the house we lived in
Roswell, and the area is desert and dry, not much to look
at, but the Bottomless State Park, Ruidoso, Santa Fe, and
other parts of New Mexico is breathtaking.
Once I heard some girls talking about aliens land their
space ships in the Bottomless Lakes State Park, when we
were drinking out there, it was a cool place to see, kinda
like the Yellowstone pools of blue water, and Carlsberg
Caverns is just 96 miles away or so, they said that New
Mexico is ocean bottom and has caves that connect
underground and that is how the aliens move around... But
back then, there were no Alien signs and crap like today in
Roswell. Just the New Mexico Military Institute (NMI) for
rich kids that we used to harass, then we had Walker Air
Force Base, and the Coons brothers who used to kick
everybodyʼs ass, and a few girls. Drinking beer in the park
and eating watermelon with Gilmore at 3AM that he found
at a Lonnieʼs or a “711” store...
Smokey the Bear
Driving with Gilmore to where the real Smokey the Bear
was found in a Ruidoso, New Mexico. To finding a stuffed
replica of Smokey and taking it back to Roswell to greet
the tourists as they drive by the New Mexico Military
Institute (NMI), and a Roswell Police officer slamming on
his brakes in disbelief of me and Gilmore wobbling this 200
pound plaster of paris, chicken wire, wood, concrete, and
fur, Smokey the Bear to the center divider in front of the
NMI... then running around Grannyʼs DriveIn with the
Roswell Police car lights on, sirens on, chasing me around
the parked cars in the DriveIn stalls... diving under one of
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15. the parked cars waiting for at least 22 seconds and
climbing out right in front of the Roswell Police Officer and
going to get Smokey the Bear from the center of the street
and helping the Police Officer try to put Smokey into the
trunk of the smokey... I was crying with laughter... Then
he picks up the mike and sayʼs car 54 to base returning
with suspect and bear.
Later that day when they got confirmation from the New
Mexico State Police that it was not stolen, and was
abandoned, I went home to hear my dad say “do you know
anything about those kids today with a Bear in Roswell?” It
was on the Paul Harvey Radio show as the ending story of
the day...
That wasnʼt half as funny as when I came home the day
after Thanksgiving from Artesia, New Mexico and my dad
sayʼs where have you been? In jail? That was Gilmoreʼs
fault, I did nothing wrong, I didnʼt even have anything to
drink, but he had to tell the Justice of the Peace at 1AM to
go F himself, he knew his rights. And there we were with a
Mexican that had stolen some chickens for Thanksgiving.
We were not charged for getting into a fight with some
AWOL Airman. All I did was drive Gilmoreʼs car with he
and Kenny and go to Artesia to find some women...
I drive into a A&W DriveIn, and Gilmore says stop the car,
he and Kenny get out and get into a fight, I am sitting there
for a second wondering why, and then I get out and hold
the other side doors shut of their car so they canʼt all get
out, since they had five against the three of us, and I donʼt
want them getting out, so they start the car and Kenny
throws a full beer can into the cars windshield and it cracks
the windshield... They took off, we leave town, and while
driving out of town Gilmore throws out a case of beer cans
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16. right in front of the Artesia Police car that is now following
us out of town, I am watching the Policeman swerve around
the beer cans, and he does not turn on his lights or
anything, just following, so I think they just want us to
leave town... we drive normal speed for miles and nothing
he is still following but not trying to catch up or stop us, so
I wind Gilmoreʼs new Ford Galaxy 500 up to 110mph the
motor is making that drone sound, and a few more miles,
and the Police man is still behind us but never turned on
his lights or siren and is slowing, and I think we are clear,
then I see up ahead a few miles several headlights
crossing the hi-way like maybe a roadblock, and I stop well
before the lights ahead. And the local Police man comes
up to the car laughing and askʼs us to follow him back to
Artesia, and I do, and the Police officer is laughing so hard
that he is crying... We get back to the Police station and
they ask me to sit in a room by myself, and Gilmore and
Kenny get to stay out front, I am thinking why is this
happening, why am I being separated, then I learn that I
did nothing wrong, but the Justice of the Peace is up
because this is one of the funnest stories they ever had
and wants to talk to us since we are good kids from
Roswell and they donʼt like those asshole airman coming
down to Artesia from Roswell and creating trouble... Like I
said everything was fine until Gilmore opened his drunken
mouth... but they did let us go. Kenny had to buy them a
new windshield. And the Airman were AWOL and did not
want any more trouble as it turned out, so no charges
against them either. How did this start? Gilmore said later
they gave him the finger as we were driving bye, and they
admitted it to the Police...
I purchased a new Ford Fairlane 500 with a 260 cubic inch
V8 small block, and added a larger two barrel carb when it
was a month old. We used to drag race almost every night
around Roswell. The New Mexico State Police would park
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17. and watch us. There was no traffic on the high ways
around Roswell in the evenings of 1962, and some of the
kids even had 409 Chevyʼs, the baddest of em all. There
were Ford 406ʼs which could outrun the 409ʼs at the top
end, like a race to Artesia, but the 409ʼs were King Kong in
drag racing at that time, and the kids parents would fund
the bets, sometimes the pink slip... When I finally moved
to California I put a Cobra four barrel manifold with a Holly
Four Barrel Carb using mechanical secondaries, on the
Ford 260 small block, lakes plugs (exhaust cutouts), and
turned a 14.95 ET at the Half Moon Bay drag strip, right
along with those pissed off 283 and 301 Chevyʼs, that little
Fairlane had 30,000 miles all in quarter miles on it...
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18. The Gordon Kraft - QAPlus Story
My story begins in my 7th grade, when I shot a paper clip into a
waste basket in our Music Appreciation class. Well as life works
the paper clip hit the edge of the piano and struck our music
teacher in the forehead causing an almost invisible mark on her
head. I cowered and did not tell anyone that I was the dumb
ass that did it. So the entire music class was kicked out and we
spent the rest of the year in a study hall... during one of these
days in study hall, the principle was summoned to the room and
when he saw me siting in the front row, said, Gordon! why are
you in here? You placed second highest in scientific aptitude in
the entire state of Indiana, in recent testing... Hey this was the
first time I thought wow if I am that smart why am I failing all my
classes? This quandary has followed me throughout my life...
1963 - Western Electric:
Several years later while working for Western Electric in
Burlingame, Ca. at a tender age of 19, I was asked if I would
like to go to work in the IBM 1410 Data Center as a Computer
Operator. I thought why not? I knew I was supposed to have a
scientific aptitude, so what about computers, they were new
and upcoming, and I might make a lot more money? My first
year however was sorting punched cards, and collating them for
entry into a IBM 407 Accounting machine... I hated it!
Then one day I finally was promoted into the computer room as
a swing shift computer operator hanging tapes and loading
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19. continuous form paper into the IBM 1403 Line Printer. That was
my first experience in computers. And watching the paper fly
through that printer was my first hand experience of seeing how
fast a computer could be... Soon I memorized the entire IBM
1410 rack of manuals, something that I learned would be
valuable, I could remember all of the IBM Manuals, and later
IBM S/360 and S/370! And since I knew there were many
Worldʼs Greatest Programmers at that time, no one had claimed
the title of the Worldʼs Greatest Computer Operator!
1965 - Sylvania EDL:
Finally I changed jobs and went to work at Sylvania EDL
operating a CDC 3200 and wow was it fast! The CDC and
Burroughs were much faster in compile time over a similar S/
360. I got fired for going out to a long diner one night with
everyone else there, and I always thought I was the scape
goat...
1966 - Fairchild Semiconductor:
Fairchild Semiconductor was my next job. Working as a
computer operator on the night shift running a S360/30 and
S360/50 DOS mainframe. And sometimes a IBM 1401. I
thought, this sucks! So I started going to Foothill Jr. College
and later to DeAnza since they had a new IBM S/360. With
plenty of compile time available for my DeAnza COBOL class
available on Fairchild's late night S/360. I got my first A in
school! Not so dumb after all I thought... I took advantage of
Fairchild's offer to attend several IBM School classes in SF.
And soon was promoted into the COBOL programming group at
Fairchild, thanks to Joe H. our manager. It did not take me long
to realize I just made the biggest mistake of my life. COBOL
application programming, because no one had taught me
anything about System Design... Here I had gone from the top
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20. computer operator in Fairchild to the lowest COBOL
programmer level and thought I would be fired any day now...
Then Jack Gisselli gave me the chance to become a IBM S/360
Systems Programmer! Wow, it was complicated, but I was back
in my strength arena, computer operations and the job was to
get more productivity out of the IBM S/360! I did well at this
and was one of those crapped crusaders called a Systems
Programmer. The average person did not know what that was!
And I was one of the revered important programmers, not just a
COBOL programmer of which Fairchild had many.
One day while I was walking through the main Fairchild lobby, I
saw a golden haired very well dressed guy drive up to the front
door in a red Lincoln convertible with two gorgeous baby dolls
in the car. It was Jerry Sanders the VP of Sales for Fairchild,
and as the story goes he was on his way up to see Dr. Hogan
the CEO of Fairchild, to be fired, but things went a little
differently, Sanders got a raise! might it have been the babes in
his car??? Who knows...
Carter Associates
# Gordon Kraft (mid twenties) Data Center Manager, rented
Carterʼs computer time ran the Service Bureau, IBM S/360
Systems Programmer.t and I got to drive a IBM salesmanʼs
Ferrari Lusso V12, or maybe at Caelus... anyways I memorized
all the IBM manuals and could configure IBM Mainframe
Systems from both a Hardware and Software viewpoint.
# I became active with the COMA Computer Operations
Management Association and used to go to large Data Centers
in SF as well as Stanford Data Center with Rich Montegomery a
fellow member of COMA, and Toby Mgr NASA AMES Illiac IV.
# Dr. Rupert Listner (Stanford) Sopat 1401 Higher Level
Language
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21. # Dr. Joseph Carter (Phd Math Stanford)
# Bob Stillman was his student
# Dr. Gerhard Dirks invented the Computer Memory System
and Hard Disk Drive for IBM, Dirks was in the same building in
Sunnyvale, Ca., I worked closely with Dr. Dirks who was the
most gentle soul, trying to forecast cash flow requirements for
his struggling startup. He was building a flying head per track
DRUM next door. He would bring over IBM punched cards for
my Adpac language skills... Adpac transferred Punch Cards by
using a 80 column format for coding, it was a very elegant
language for its time. You could SORT/SELECT/MATCH/
MERGE mag tapes of similar data, etc.
# Dr. Steve Case (was a brilliant man, and I think Gerhardʼs
son or at least prodigy) he used to visit me years later at
DiagSoft to talk about ideas.
# Bob Rome (Associates) BOM Bill of Materials expert. IPL
Indentured Parts List, similar to the applications at Sylvania.
Electromec
# John Dorchak managed ELectromecʼs Service Bureau,
(and I remember one of the nations, now largest Temp
Employment Agency there)
I was a moonlighting Computer Operator, the worlds Greatest
Computer Operator!
DiagSoft note:
and later, John was my interface to Intel Top... He said he
wanted Gordon Moore and I to meet, I did get to meet with Les
Vadez directly because of John (who I know reported to Andy or
Craig) to resolve my dissatisfaction with Intelʼs unprofessional
crap, I even hung up the phone on AT&T VPʼs with Intel
Management in my office Conference Call, so it got a little
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22. heated, I proved my case and Intel settled, I (Alan Pinner) did
sue Intel to accomplish the meeting.
John was a Headhunter for the very top of Silicon Valley...
friend to Gordon Moore, neat man...
I never dreamed when I started DiagSoft, that I would have
to stand my ground so strongly as with Intel. but then I
never Dreamed that Intel would invest... they made a great
decision to stabilize DiagSoft, required because of their
actions, but they did not pay attention to AT&T demands,
regardless of how loud I was about it, keep going we have you
covered... BS, then when the bill was over $1.3M I had our CPA
do an audit of the project start to finish and sent them an
invoice, that started the ball rolling...
AT&T knew how to play the OEM game much better than Intel,
who was happy as a pig in shiiii with the new Intel Division and
a major AT&T OEM deal... and my Intel interface was not
forthcoming. just change the screens, blaah.
DiagSoft created at least 8 new product trees for Gail of AT&T
(smart and very demanding) who had personnel onsite at
DiagSoft without Intel personal present... then eventually, Clift
Fahey of Intel, the picture of that handlebar mustache English
Sargent Major, overwhelmed my door. and me for the first few
days, then we were close friends. and he started trying to
FACILITATE and taught me Clear and Crisp Intel jargon... Joe
the Intel Manager of the Intel Hillsboro Platform Group scared
the crap out of me every time we met, then we were friends too,
it was a learning experience...
AT&T said the Intel OEM Agreement gave them Diagnostics to
AT&T Specs, and the Specs kept coming...
However, once I got to the higher level of Intel, all the BS
stopped instantly. It reminded me of my days at Arthur Young
and Company, and my idea of the problem with VCʼs is MBAʼs
wanting to be Partners...
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23. Avhram Miller was the VP Business Development and a great
guy to work with.
Arvind Sodhani was the Treasurer of Intel and on my DiagSoft
Board of Directors. He was awesome.
IBM was the complete opposite (at my DiagSoft OEM closing
meeting with IBM, and bringing Alan Pinner of Berliner, with me
at IBMʼs request, IBM actually asked me after we slept on the
deal overnight, if I was happy with the deal? I said, no they
were getting too much, and I doubled the price in that meeting,
and added QAPlus/PRO a new variant of FE so IBM could use
either copy Windows or a cut down version of QAPlus/FE, Alan
crapped his pants).
# IBM and DEC, prepaid me advanced royaltyʼs (recouped at
50% per period) to cover Legal costs against Intel (we were too
important to them also),
John was one of my mentors... we were close friends.
Intel was awesome to me, and I have nothing but praise for how
well Intel is managed in one of the toughest competitive trade
secrets arena...
1968 - Caelus Memories:
After a year or so in the Fairchild Systems Programming group,
René Vishney (Award Software) was leaving Fairchild and
asked me to go with him to Caelus Memories to be both the
Data Center Manager and the IBM S/360 Systems Programmer.
The company, Caelus Memories made some of the first S/360
2311 Disk Packs and later IBM 2314 and IBM 3330 Disk Packs,
and Philippe Yaccanelli was its awesome CEO. I was young
still... and Phillippe used to park his Norton motorcycle outside
his office, inside the building... He had a reputation for
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24. dropping in unannounced and taking the swing shift to pizza
and beer. He was one of my true mentors since he strongly
believed in Quality in everything he did, including advertising.
And since I was very technical I became one of the employees
that got to go to many Sales meetings. The sales men hired by
Caelus were what I grew to know as the fire alarm ringers',
these super salesmen, were more than just a little aggressive.
In fact one of them became known for setting off a fire alarm in
a Hotel lobby because he wanted another drink... :) And Yak as
he was called, was famous for having original art works
commissioned by artist's for the Caelus print ads... To this day,
he is responsible for me always trying to duplicate his sense of
doing everything with as much quality of life as possible.
Especially, the image of a company being bigger than it really
was...
Since I was a S/360 Systems Programmer, I became the IBM
DBOMP guru at Caelus, an original IBM relational DBMS “Bill of
Material Processor Database” product. Never forget “END.” or
the end of a chain of related records.
René spent most of his time these days organizing his desk...
And going to a lot of free lunches with vendors... Then one day
some guys came by selling a new rDBMS called TOTAL. I was
tempted to go to work with them, but concerned about my
ability, so I stayed with Caelus. That Christmas we were all laid
off. I was crushed, not any money for Christmas toys for my two
kids, it was one of the worst times of my life. I was in my 20 s.
1971 - Arthur Young IT Consultant:
I was out of work, and virtually fell into a great Systems
Programming job for Arthur Young and Company in SF. This
was an exciting time in my life. I made enough money to buy
our first house in Hayward, Ca. at the Hayward side of the San
Mateo Bridge. I rapidly became one of their top outside
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25. contractors, I liked most of them, but was glad that I was not an
employee of Arthur Young since all of them were Harvard MBA's
and the best way to grow was to screw over your fellow Harvard
MBA coworker... The talent was incredible, and Nick Jones was
scary smart. I had a wonderful time working for him. And we
were at Contra Costa County in our own rented offices most of
the time. I was 28 and self employed and well along in my plan
of having my own company... I made more money than most of
the Arthur Young employees, and didn't have to put up with
their BS attitudes... But it was one of the most important
learning environments of my life. I learned that they were all
tremendously bright, that made it fun, and I learned that with
the internal Arthur Young Library, they had a new copy each
month of virtually all the trade magazines, so it was easy to
become an expert in almost any industry in days or weeks.
PLUS they had their own internal Print Shop! Wow, they could
produce the most impressive reports, bound and all. After our
time with CHAS our custom version of the IBM SHAS (Shared
Hospital Accounting System) I had created a universal
translator front end to IBM S/360 DOS that allowed us to rent
time from various IBM mainframe data centers around the SF
Bay Area that converted rigid IBM JCL (Job Control Language)
to run on almost any IBM S/360 configuration. I called it my
Front-end Processor... I even had the opportunity to be
considered the first para professional for Arthur Young s SF
office, kinda like Bill Cosby's Intern joke, hey you almost a
doctor... Because without a college degree, I could never be an
employee. But I could be considered a para professional. It
made them happy, and it paid me well.
1973 - Microform Data Systems:
I started as a consultant working at Microform Data Systems as
a IBM S/360 Systems Programmer, and shortly thereafter was
hired as the Manager of Software Development. Working for
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26. Mel Brodie, Pete Hepburn, and the awesome CEO, Dean Mack.
My career was zooming, I was now managing about 50
programmers, and we developed 411 Directory Assistance
Systems. The incredible product made by Microform was its
Ultrastrip Micrographics technology. Microform had perfected
the ability to not only microfilm a document, but to place that
microfilm into a computer controller microfilm reader that they
made for it. The cool part was that the microfilm was itself
microfilmed, therefore Microform had developed the technology
to microfilm microfilm. What? Really they could take a 35mm
strip or roll of microfilm of images that were of say a 30 times
reduction in size of the original image and then microfilm that
microfilm another 10X or more, resulting in the image being
300X reduction... up to 600X, and blow back that image full
size or larger... and display the image on a computer controlled
Ultrastrip reader, a Microform reader could find and display any
page out of over 100K pages in less than two (2) seconds,
depending on how we indexed the original document or image.
Therefore we were able to microfilm the Phone Book, microfilm
the microfilm, place it into a Microform reader, and display any
page in that Phone Book in less than two (2) seconds! That is
how the Bell Operating companies did their 411 Directory
Assistance for about 10 years. Until the technology was finally
replaced with minicomputers and CRT s.
In order to extend the Microform product line for this
application, I created Advanced Mechanization, or in other
words, index a Telephone book, and paginate the information in
such a way as to reduce the number of entries per page, and
thus shorten the time the operator spent looking at the entries
on the selected page because there were far less listings per
page, just a lot more pages, but I figured out that there was a
lot of unused microfilm possible and it was very cheap to
produce, so I caused them to increase the number of pages,
and the number of entries per page was less, so the result was
a faster system. Then for the constant daily changes, we put
the addendum on a minicomputer hard disk, and displayed it on
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27. a an associated 9" CRT. It took me several weeks to prove to
Microform, that the CRT s had to be paralleled wired because
at 9600 baud the current top speed for CRT s would not work, if
the system had to send over 128 different pages of addendum
simultaneously, so with a parallel wired CRT, we could transmit
over 128 pages of different data in less than one (1) second.
The Microform 411 Directory Assistance System using a CRT
for the daily changes (addendum) was just as fast or even
faster in trials by AT&T than the up and coming Directory
Assistance Systems using minicomputers and CRT s alone.
Ralph Manefredo was in Field Service and Engineering at
Microform. Frank Berko was the VP of Sales for the Telephone
Division.
But time was against Microform, and Dean took too long to
recognize the rapidly advancing Digital Only world of mini s and
CRT s. I created a Tandem NonStop design for this, but
Microform had far too much resistance, and by the time the
project was started, I was promoted to the position of Director
of Advanced Systems. With several PHD s and MBA s working
for me. The para professional. In this position, I created several
Paperless Office Applications using Tandem NonStop minis as
the index controllers for applications like Nuclear Power Plant
Document Storage and Retrieval of 30 million pages, with any
page displayable in less than 12 seconds... I called the Tandem
based system CARMS, Computer Assisted Records
Management Systems. I was now making presentations on
Advanced Paperless Office Automation Systems. And Office of
the Future applications. Dean was replaced by Arnold
Silverman. And Arnie was eventually on the Board of Directors
of Oracle last I heard. I resigned because the new management
was reinventing the failed previous attempts of Microform and
Dean was no longer there as my mentor.
Ralph Manefredo added:
Meeting Gordon
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28. I met Gordon in December 1972 right after I started at
Microform Data Systems. At the time, he was working as a
consultant and I was new hire. Gordon and I hit it off right
away. I remember he was in the computer room testing a
database he created to be used for our directory assistance
software when I heard "you son of a bitch". It seemed the tape
with Gordon's database on it, which he spent hours creating,
was eaten by the IBM tape drive.
Now, normal procedure is to go to the system console and
issues a tape unmount command. This command causes the
front door to slide down, the tape to be rewound onto the
supply reel and the reel hub to release the tape so it can be
removed.
Well, Gordon was so pissed, he ignored normal procedures and
walked over to the tape drive, grabbed the tape drive door trim
and slammed open the door. This was done so hard, that the
door bounced a couple of times. Gordon then grabbed the tape
reel with his database and ripped it off of the tape drive hub,
without the hub release actuated. He then grabbed the tape
that was still in the tape drive and started to rip it to shreds.
That was my first experience with Gordon.
Gordon's Porsche
Another time, a bunch of us were out to lunch, Gordon and Tom
O'toole were in Gordon's new Porsche 911 and Gerry Harbick
and I were in my 1960 Corvette convertible and Gordon sped
out of the parking lot as Gerry and I were just getting into my
car. The next time I saw Gordon, was on the on-ramp from El
Camino Real onto 85, and there was Gordon and Tom standing
in the ice plant in the middle of the landscaped area between
the on-ramp and the freeway. It seem rear engine cars do not
give advance warning at over 70mph that they are about to spin
out and Gordon spun out and ended up in the median. He bent
all four aluminum wheels. So with the four bent wheels, he
drove under 15mph all the way from the ice plant off road to the
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29. local Porsche Dealer, looked like a Clown Car in a Circus, very
very funny story. Later, I asked Gordon what Tom said and he
told me after his continued questions if Tom was OK, he sat
there for about 45 seconds and all he said was "nice ride".
Then Tom went out and bought himself a new Porsche, go
figure.
Gordon and Offshore Powerboat Racing
I am responsible for Gordon's interest in offshore powerboat
racing. At the time, Gordon had a 24' Bayliner cabin cruiser,
Hagar, in a berth in Redwood City, and I suggested Gordon,
Gerry Harbick and I take his boat out to watch the offshore
powerboat races and we went. Gordon tried to anchor outside
of the Golden Gate Bridge next to the lighthouse but couldn't
find the bottom, so we drifted with awesome race boats flying
100' skips out the Golden Gate, Rocky Akoi was the winner of
that race. We had a blast, and Gordon told me years later that
my introducing him to offshore powerboat racing is why he
started Talkstory.com Offshore Powerboat Racing Team.
Gordon and SNET
Gordon and Rick Westman were in West Haven Connecticut
installing the SNET film lab system when Ron Rowe and I got a
call. It seems there was a problem with the SNET system and I
was the only one who could fix it. I needed to get out there
immediately. At the time, I was working for Ron Rowe and he
agreed to send me out that night. Well, I took a red eye to NYC
and immediately went to our offices across from Madison
Square Garden. I arrived at the office around 5:00 am, so I laid
down on the floor and slept until the office opened at 8:00 am.
Around 9:30 am, we left and drove to West Haven. As soon as I
walked in the door, Rick said we found a lobster even you can't
eat, and Gordon piped out if you can eat it, I'll pay for it. That
night, we went to dinner and they ordered my lobster. It turned
out to be a 5 lb. backed lobster stuffed with crabmeat. It took
me about two hours, but I ate it all. The look on Gordon and
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30. Rick's faces was priceless. There is more to write, and I will as
time permits. In my six years at Microform, I forged a long
lasting friendship with both Gordon and Rick that I will cherish
the rest of my life.
1980 - Artelonics:
Artel was founded by Bill Odell in Palo Alto. And eventually
renamed Artelonics to avoid a similar named company legal
action. Artelonics was funded by Shell Canada. We developed
the first Intel 8086 PC, ahead of Convergent and IBM. I
personally did the demo at one of the first COMDEX shows to a
contingent of IBMer's before they announced the IBM PC. the
Artelonics 8086 had a Pascal environment developed by Bob
Stillman of Award Software fame. The machine was aimed at
the Office Automation market. We had over 100 top engineers
including Xerox Star developers. The Artelonics had a 864x512
bit map graphics overlay on top of the Text Screen and was
huge. I was the National Sales Manager. In the short life time of
Artelonics we had tremendous support financially from Shell
Canada, and I was on the inside track so to speak with the
Shell executives. Eventually Shell decided to erase the
company, and they gave the designs to Stanford and bought
back the install base. The company never happened...
1981 - GKE Software:
Since Artelonics had built one of the first CPM86 based 8086
PC s we constantly were pursued by various Software
Developers, including Condor Computer Corp. in Ann Arbor,
Michigan. The CEO of Condor at that time approached me to
help sell their Relational Data Base, and with the knowledge
that Shell Canada planned to shut down Artelonics, I accepted
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31. the Condor offer to be a independent Sales Rep. Within the first
year, I had closed a new retail store called BusinessLand.
Working with Enzo Torresi and David Norman, I became a
consultant working for BusinessLand and selected the initial
PCs to be sold by BusinessLand, including the Xerox 820 PC
and the Condor Data Base and shortly thereafter I closed an
major distribution deal for Condor for Micro Age and Micro-D a
rapidly growing national distributor. I also do to this tremendous
success, signed a Publishing deal with Condor Computer for
the Western Half of the US.
It did not take long to dramatically increase Condor s sales,
and in fact my GKE Software, d.b.a. was selling more Condor
than Condor itself. I accepted an offer to sell GKE to Condor.
One of the business deals I created was with Skip Barkis and
the formation of Transparent Data Systems, Inc.
I had convinced Skip that the future of the PC industry would
require data integration of various software titles, and
Transparent was then added to the Condor acquisition list as a
result... Condor also in its acquisition fever bought StarSoft,
Inc. a DOS Accounting company by becoming its Angel investor
and acquired StarSoft from the US Bankruptcy Court, in what
was called a Chapter 11 Cram down. This was a method of
acquiring a company in Bankruptcy and at the same time
cramming down or removing all other shareholders and
creditors. This was complex and GKE Software had moved all
of its employees and customer base into Condor s new West
Coast HQ in Palo Alto. Very shortly after that Condor reneged
on their purchase of GKE since they already had all the
customers and employees, and found themselves in financial
trouble due to the acquisitions and failure to compete with
Ashton Tate and dBase II.
I received a telephone call from David Wertzberger, an old DEC
sales rep that I knew from Microform Data Systems days. Dave
said, You like boating right? And I said YES, and he said how
would you like to go sailing with me in Lake Tahoe? I Said sure,
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32. and then he added, How would you like to sail and live in Lake
Tahoe, I said, who do I have to kill?
I resigned as the VP of Sales for Condor Computer and moved
to Lake Tahoe.
1983 - Handle Technologies:
My new job was with Handle Technologies, the largest employer
in Tahoe City, behind the local Safeway, right on the lake. It
was awesome, they were developing a UNIX Office Automation
Suite. It turned out that Handle had R&D in Lake Tahoe, and it s
HQ in Houston, TX. With Tommy Harlan as its CEO. Handle had
a VAX 750, and many AT&T C2 and C5 Unix minis, and
Convergent, etc. We had flex hours and some of the top UNIX
developers in the world there, they could ski during the day and
work all night! What an experience. Due to my extensive
technical background, I as the VP of Product Development soon
realized that everyone was lying to Harlan (who became a good
friend to me)... The Data Base group was yet in another city
and none of the software fit together... It was a disaster. $18M
blown on software that did not have a Data Base that worked.
They quickly learned that it is not prudent to build all of their
own tools, but it was too late. Future funding dried up, I went to
Houston as a consultant and shortly thereafter the company
closed it doors. Great Programmers, led by poor management
results in failure. So I returned to consulting.
1984 - Award Software:
René Vishney called me out of the blue and asked me to join
Award Software as a independent sales rep, commission only. I
accepted.
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33. Bob Stillman from Artelonics was the co-founder of Award, and
he and René had a small ROM BIOS company. I quickly learned
what a BIOS was, why Award was a legal IBM compatible BIOS
(Stillman wrote it in C .) And all of a sudden I was going to
Canada and the Far East, mostly Taiwan. The sales plan was to
license the Award ROM BIOS in unlimited deals. It was a very
hard sale at first, because Phoenix had already closed most of
the Taiwan PC clone manufactures and virtually all of the major
USA based companies. I found that the smaller PC
manufacturers needed the Award BIOS but could not afford a
unlimited license and at the same time, René was getting
greedy... So I came up with selling the Award BIOS on a Sticker
basis. I can still hear the Chinese say here comes Mr. Kraft
time to buy more stickers! Within two years, I had sold over 5M
Award BIOS stickers. This was one of the most profitable
software companies in the world. Award gave the customer the
right to burn their own EPROMS containing the Award BIOS
code, and the evidence of sale was a holographic sticker. There
was NO COST of goods involved, less engineering costs, and I
was selling Award BIOS stickers at that time for $6-$12ea.
In fact I was doing so well selling stickers, that René and Bob
asked me to move to Taiwan. I chose Hong Kong. Within the
first 90 days in HK, I sold over $400K of stickers, but my wife
and kids hated it there... Then one early morning, Bob Stillman
called me in HK and said, I am firing René, come home now.
Here I was making over $30K a month, and the company was
booming, and René and Bob could not agree on anything. This
was a disaster. So with both of their approval, I left and started
selling my home grown QAPlus Advanced Diagnostics software
that I had written to these same PC manufacturers. Award was
a battle ground for the next several months, and I was glad to
be gone... In the end, both René and Bob lost the greatest
opportunity they ever had. Leslie Richard's from Eurosoft was
their rep in Europe...
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34. 1987 - DiagSoft:
I created my QAPlus Advanced Diagnostics in 1986 as a viable
alternative for the PC Clone industry which at the time only had
illegal copies of IBM's DOS Advanced Diagnostics to use. I
created the initial version of QAPlus by buying the Assembly
Code DIAGS source code from Delta Data (Chesapeake Data
Systems) and I wrote a Borland Turbo Pascal QAPlus shell with
Benchmarks, which I later replaced my benchmarks by the
purchase of POWERMETER Benchmarks, which was based on
my efforts and was a very similar design. I hired Gene Farnham
and a little later Alan Marconet as programmers for my Interim
Solutions, d.b.a. During the initial meeting with my SJ attorney
Art Plank, I was swayed to change the name to DiagSoft, Inc. I
owned 100% of DiagSoft.
I contracted Lynn Wubbles a San Jose CPA, to install a turnkey
accounting system, and we were off. My first customers were
Hyosung and Micronics, and it was the QAPlus version bundled
with the Micronics 386 boards that caught Intel's attention, and
I then closed an OEM agreement with Intel for their AT&T
platform deal with the Intel Group in Oregon.
Micronics later turned out to be a possible Compaq clone 386
board, this happened by Compaq using a Taiwan PC Fab... that
may have shared the Compaq 386 board design... this tactic is
how Taiwan has grown to be our primary US supplier, and was
common in those early days of Taipei, DOS, and Award
Software ... I had many friends there, and ACER was an early
Award customer and Distributor for Award in Taiwan...
Later, after difficulty with Intel not paying much attention to
their large AT&T OEM deals diagnostic requirements in which
Intel had grossly underestimating the degree of effort to simply
change QAPlus into a AT&T look and feel, and being told
bluntly, by AT&T that it expects and therefore gets!
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35. Intel placed several top execs in DiagSoft's offices in Scotts
Valley (Cliff Fahey great guy from Intel taught me to use Intel's
"clear and crisp communications"), and all of a sudden we had
more Intel and AT&T personnel than we had DiagSoft personnel
in our building. I used to joke, I think the Intel Bus just
unloaded in front of our offices... We were instructed by Intel to
continue and do whatever AT&T wanted and that Intel would
pay the development costs...
1990 - DiagSoft: - cont.
At the 1990 COMDEX show in Las Vegas, I had our engineers
install one of the first Creative Sound Blaster cards that I got
from Creatives Lim brothers in Singapore, into QAPlus and it
"Talked" using Star Trek sound bytes... And I had our engineers
add PC Anywhere for a Remote Diags capability. I also had our
engineers add "Intruder Alert code" if QAPlus was modified in
any way, which it then became a precursor of Virus Detection
and by 1990, I had the message Illegal Copy of QAPlus
displayed on the screen, and I remember the time a Asian
customer called me all freaked out, and said that my software
just told him that it was dialing the Police! Funny at the time,
since it told us that he was using a modified copy or had
removed some of our tests. And at that time, if QAPlus did not
run on your PC platform, it meant that your PC was NOT IBM
COMPATIBLE... ie. you had a BIOS incompatibility problem. or
sometimes even a real hardware design problem.
QAPlus was blamed for stopping the Intel PC production line in
Puerto Rico one time, and I had a lot of Intel VP s screaming at
me to fix the problem with QAPlus, a day later we proved that it
was a genuine Intel design problem. This happened several
times with our various OEM s over the following years. And
soon QAPlus became the defacto industry Gold Standard for
PC compatibility...
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36. In fact Don Harris a close friend and sometimes our VP of
Sales, told about 50 Tandy executives and engineers in Fort
Worth, while walking back and forth on a stage in a Tandy
meeting room, that in the olden days, the Pharoah's cubit, or
method of measurement, was the unit of measurement used to
build the pyramids in Egypt, and demonstrated that the distance
from his elbow to his finger tips was a Cubit. And that QAPlus
was the Cubit or unit of measurement for PC Quality... I
crapped myself.
During this difficult time (very demanding were the AT&T
personnel) Lynn Wubbles was instrumental in asking Intel in a
meeting to discuss a possible investment in DiagSoft, with Intel
offering $250K and Wubbles asking them to sweeten the deal a
little it became $300K, and DiagSoft received a $300K
investment from Intel for 35% of DiagSoft stock. Wow working
with Avrham Miller VP Bus. Dev. and Arvind Sodhani the Intel
Treasurer, try saying that fast... And me wondering how in the
hell I got here?
With Intel as our outside investor, and tremendous difficulty
with satisfying AT&T, DiagSoft and QAPlus evolved into a family
of Diags for the end user, the Field Service Reps version
(QAPlus/FE), and our ISO 9000 focused QAPlus FACTORY for
burn-in, DiagSoft grew to a prominent market defacto standard
for PC Diags.
During this rapid growth, I licensed QAPlus source code to
TouchStone Software and it became the basis of CHECKIT for
the retail channel. Unfortunately, TouchStone decided to
change enough of our code (actually weaker testing) and a
nicer front end, they informed me that they would no longer pay
royalties to DiagSoft. I was pissed off, but could not get Intel to
support our suing TouchStone Software for Fraud. So we
continued to evolve the QAPlus Family to include a dBase
variant Log for Multi PC unit testing which caught the eye of
several PC manufacturers desiring a ISO 9000 PC Testing
System that could log hundreds of PC test results
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37. simultaneously and DiagSoft became the company to use as
part of ISO 9000 Test, Collect, and Report PC Manufacturing.
1994 - I opened DiagSoft's Pac Rim HQ in Maui, Hawaii with
Intel's approval...
I had a letter from the Governor of Hawaii inviting me to do this
(a Hawaiian State DBET group found us at COMDEX). I went
over to the Manoa Innovation Center, which was the State of
Hawaii's Honolulu Incubator (I was very impressed with Frank
F. the man in charge there), but felt that Honolulu was kind of
like LA, lots of traffic, and I was living in Scotts Valley, Ca.
During this trip I learned that the State of Hawaii also had a
IBM SP2 Super Computer Center under construction in Maui
and another incubator facility. I went to Maui, rented a couple
of offices in the MRTC in Kihei, and DiagSoft had it s R&D in
Maui! I also founded Big Kahuna Productions a Film/Video
Production company with Richard Mann as my Producer/
Director/partner from (RMG Hollywood) LA, we also trained 5
full time animators doing 3D Studio Animation for advanced "3D
Virtual Sets" in Maui. In total we hired over 10 employees that
were living in Hawaii and it was awesome, watching their talent
grow working there in Maui, the most creative place on the
planet...
A local hawaiian told me once, hey Big Kahuna kinda like da
pope! We were always respectful, and I look forward to the
Hawaiian Nation achieving sovereignty like our Native
Americans in the states. Hawaii is a awesome and beautiful
place, and I always told people that it was like that because
God created it last, and he still it...
I spent as much time there as I could afford, while still running
DiagSoft and having to deal with sales, tremendous evolution
timeframes caused by Intel, Microsoft, etc. We released a
GOLD Master of QAPlus almost weekly!
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38. While in Maui, I created my greatest product idea yet.
"Electronic Technical Support Centers ETSC" using QAPlus with
Carbon Copy or PC Anywhere, we had the perfect solution for
the Tech Support industry to ensure that the Customer Support
Rep of a company knew exactly what was in the customer's PC
and if it was working right. A simple concept, that blew
everyone s mind that looked at it.
Given resource, I blow out COMDEX with over 5,000 attendees
to our show that I designed, the SCRIPT, the booth with Chris
King's design influence, the Moore Sailboats UltraLight
Futuristic Dual Monitor Work Station a Chris King Project, and
Skip our live NASA actor on stage all week long... this was an
awesome success for me, and I was so very proud of the Audio
System that I setup, with Carver Dolby Digital THX, and ADS
sound system, the Pioneer Surround Sound Leather Chairs, etc.
a unbelievable homerun for DiagSoft and me and the $300K I
spent to pull off for this week at COMDEX. (just think what I
could do with significant funds, I am a PROMOTER and
SHOWMAN and BUSINESSMAN I thought to myself...
In 1994, I introduced ETSC at the COMDEX show in Las Vegas
in an all out splurge for a 40 x50 booth in the Hilton Hotel. We
hired a mural artist, and we created a beautiful artistic original
work airbrushed canvas backdrop that was a 15 tall, 35 long,
raised stage with a 60" SVHS Pioneer big screen TV built in
like Star Trek, had a professional video done to play on it, and
a LIVE actor to talk to the big screen TV. We originally
designed the booth to look like the bridge of Star Trek, but after
trying to get Data from the show Star Trek to be our actor, and
not being able to afford him, I hired a Radio personality from
the Santa Cruz - Monterey Bay area to be our actor. We
changed the theme to the bridge of the USA Space Shuttle,
Star Ship DiagSoft, and got clothing from NASA, and had
custom futuristic computer workstations made by Moore
Sailboats in Santa Cruz. These workstations had TWO PC
monitors, one keyboard, built in, and we had the first ultra light
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39. (sailboat talk) futuristic Tech Support Work Stations in the
world. For seating, I purchased 12 Pioneer Surround Sound
leather chairs for $1500ea. These chairs had a 12" Sub woofer
speaker under the individuals butt. We had sound tracks from
NASA of a real space shuttle blasting off into space, with
accompanying video, and a live actor on stage to interact with
the big screen TV, just like in Star Trek. And the coolest thing
was that QAPlus was actually loaded in the real space shuttles
computers, NASA was a customer of ours...
We also added 12 movie star high chairs behind the Pioneer
Surround chairs with wireless Sony Headphones. A Carver
Surround Sound AV System, and ADS Studio Surround
Speakers in the booth... The show was so awesome that we
had a line of waiting people reaching up to 300-500 people long
from out booth all week long including the tear down time of the
COMDEX show. We were so popular that I ended up on the ABC
Business Week show from there with Bill Gates. AND collected
over 5,000 new sales prospects! Intel was there in out booth
many times during the week, because of this popularity, and
stated that little ole DiagSoft had more customer traffic than
Intel did at that show... And ETSC was launched. This
experience was the most creative opportunity I had ever
dreamed of. All I could do was grin and it took weeks for the
grin to wear off, I was so proud... DiagSoft was now believed to
be at least a $50M company by the audience. We were $7M at
this time.
And one of the funniest parts of this story is that women did not
want to leave those Pioneer Surround Chairs... :)
At this time, DiagSoft had tremendous growth and we had sold
over 20M copies of QAPlus, yes that is right over 20,000,000
copies! By Aug. 96 we had sold over 35M copies of QAPlus via
OEM bundling deals, and we had over a 85% Global market
share.
This market share was told to us by Microsoft, because they
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40. said that we were in ALL of their accounts worldwide, and they
asked us to AUDIT the Microsoft Technical Support Centers in
Redmond and give them suggestions for improvement.
Not only did we create the PC diagnostics market, and our
Intruder Alert Virus Detection was one of the first Virus
products, but we were recognized at the time as one of the
most advanced Tech Support Development Companies by
Microsoft...
The Audit of Microsoft ran into problems after we had a team of
DiagSoft personnel in Redmond for a week, Microsoft decided
that they wanted to own ALL intellectual property rights of our
study, and anything that we created in our future products, I
pulled our team out. Microsoft clearly has a long term vision of
the Microsoft world... Come on Apple!
1995 - DiagSoft: - cont.
In 1995, I purchased M.A.S.T. Maui Analysis and Synthesis
Technologies. They were a incubator company in the Maui High
Tech Park, working on a A.I. Neural Network product focused
on a prediction engine for Excel to forecast the S&P 500 index.
And associated Data Mining.
You would be amazed at the number of available skilled
programmers and computer artists working in the restaurants of
Maui...
We had another 40 x50 booth in the Las Vegas Hilton for
COMDEX, but this time we had Mel Cabang a well know
Honolulu comic live on stage doing the ETSC demo. And we
gave away 5 free trips to Hawaii. It was at this show that the
tech support company Sykes, Inc. became interested in
DiagSoft and ETSC. Over the next year I had several meetings
with John Sykes of Sykes, Inc. and finalized the acquisition of
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41. DiagSoft by Sykes in a meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
I went to High School in Cheyenne, Wyo. And Yellow Stone
Park and Jackson Hole are my most favorite places to visit.
It turned out that Sykes wanted to acquire DiagSoft and
announce it as part of their Secondary Stock Offering. I was
given the right to piggy back up to 49% of my Sykes stock
(stock swap deal). And all of a sudden it was like winning the
lottery. I had about $14M in my previous always empty pocket...
I went a little nuts.
1997 - DiagSoft: - SOLD!
1997 Retired, buy Lazzara DREAMS:
I purchased a brand new Lazzara 76 Grand Salon enclosed Sky
Lounge motor yacht for $3.5M and had a cup of coffee and
danish with John Sykes two days after commissing DREAMS do
come true. John told me a story of Ed Merrifield telling him
about how he did everything, while sitting on the boat that I
know from the books you bought him, so I do not trust Ed. Ed
was given a “empty desk” for two years and told to stay home
the third year, they would mail him his checks.
John appeared to be not happy with me and this purchase, but
hey you only get one turn in life. Then he went out and bought
a Race Horse Ranch in Ocala, Fl.
I had a $20K for 20 hours a month consulting Agreement with
Sykes after I resigned, for two years, but since they never
called me to do anything, I told them to cancel it after only a
few months. I thought they would want my input and help at
least that is what John Sykes told me... Then I find out that
John Gordon had thrown me under the bus to Sykes, etc. many
BS stories.
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42. And it appears to me in hindsight, that source code and
Intellectual Property has been used to further the entire Diags
industry since then, including where Johnsʼs buddies that he
brought into DiagSoft ended up at, and using Carl for firing Alan
Marconnet... at the time of sale of DiagSoft, my option was to
fire Ed and Jon and take the company back to Family owned
only... or take the check. and they were all enthusiastic and
strongly wanted me to sell the company. I told Scott Bendert
CFO Sykes, at Peachwoods, that I was concerned that Sykes
was unprepared to the handle the pressure of the PC industry
for DiagSoft, he laughed...
Do to the lack of a Internet Version of ETSC becoming
complete, it appears to me, that Sykes failed to fund further
development and just wanted ETSC to go away... the reduction
of a Tech Support Call was opposite of the revenue generation
principles of Sykes business.
It appears that John lost all of the major accounts...
I was retired. and I was really tired...
1998 TalkStory Offshore Racing, Inc.
I approached Dick Lazzara and asked if Lazzara Yachts would
like to sponsor a APBA Offshore race boat I planned to buy. He
said, don t ask him if I was not serious... I was, and the rest is
on my website:
www.talkstory.com
1998 APBA Offshore Racing, LLC.
I also invested and co-founded the APBA Offshore Racing, LCC
with Michael Allweise and joined the Board of Directors. I was
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43. active with the APBA Offshore Racing, LLC until we sold it in
Jan. 2003. And I ended up as the Chairman of the Board during
the final months of operation and the 2002 APBA World
Championships in Alabama.
1998 StarPower Home Entertainment, Inc.
I was approached by Nathan Morton the Chairman of StarPower
to invest. I did so and have been on the Board of Directors ever
since. StarPower is a affluent buyer Home Theater retail store
group located in Dallas.
1998 Broadband Networks, Inc. BBNC.
Plus I made a investment in BBNC, Inc. Ralph Manefredo.
1998 Moses Computer, Inc.
Investment in Moses Computer, Inc. Frank Berko.
both of these companies were founded by former Microform
employees.
1998 Don Harris & Company
Plus investment to my old friend Don Harris.
1997 Artificial, Inc.
Artificial, Inc. was my idea of the next long term market
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44. opportunity: Artificial Intelligence products, Web Sites, and
Robots.
2002 AiLibrary, Inc.
AiLIbrary, Inc. was a replacement for Artificial, Inc. after my
divorce.
2002 - current AiHome(tm).
But then I have a new product idea in the works, I call it
AiHome or an Advanced Internet Digital Library and Home
Theater.
Sykes, Inc. stock.
I did the above investments under the belief that Sykes was a
conservative company and would grow well over time, and the
fact that I had John Sykes hold 10% of my stock in escrow, for
my real retirement, Sykes stock ended up being depressed by
two things that I know about, the first being the demise of
the .COM stock market which affected Sykes more than
expected, and the second the need to restate Sykes earnings
due to doing a deal with SystemSoft, Inc. for code to use in
ETSC. Sykes and System Soft swapped about $8M in
invoices... per Ed M.
Sykes also refused to release as per the Escrow and delayed
until the stock value was down to about $2 share. and that
caused a Margin Call that collapsed the value of my remaining
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45. stock... the next day after the Margin Call, the stock
rebounded.
This combination cost me about $5M worth of escrow stock,
since I had a stock swap deal with Sykes, and had asked John
Sykes to place 10% of my shares into a escrow account for my
real retirement... To this day, Sykes stock has not really
recovered... and neither have I.
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46. Years ago, I was the Manager of Software Development at Microform Data Systems, we
created “Paperless Offices” for extremely large paper databases Like Nuclear Power
Plants, Banks, SSA, or even the Telephone Book on Microfilm. Static Storage of
Information.
INDEXED via several simple designs such as Trigrams, Tetragrams, etc.
the operator asked what city?
hits the labeled CITY KEY the MDS Reader immediately starts to move to the location
in the ultrastrip of 50 strips in the cartridge and the elevator is already moving.
the operator asks what name?
types the first character of the name and the MDS READER moves even closer to the
section or strip, and then as EACH character after up to only 4 characters, the reader is
on the right strip and the right page of 2,000 pages on the single strip of Ultrastrip at
over 300X reduction... (We could Microfilm the COM Microfilm output, the designer of
these cameras did special cameras for the U2) and with the number of listings per page
reduced she gives you the answer, the MDS READER could do this at under 2 seconds.
Usually the right page was in front of the operator before she could focus... and any
changes were on the little CRT next to her MDS READER.
The MDS 411 Directory System was called DAS/M for Microfilm.
IN order to COMPETE and not lose all of our install base to CRTʼs. We created DAS/
CM using a 9”CRT connected via Parallel cables and ran at over 1,000,000 baud... The
little CRT was used for the ADDENDUM the CHANGES until the next PRINTING of the
Telephone Book. Now Times Mirror Press did the PRINTING of many of the Telephone
Books, so losing that business was not in their interest.
But I found out that they produced Microfilm Phone Books using COM.
So, we needed to reduce the time on the page a Telephone Operator took to look down
the page and maybe page forward to find the desired listing. OR the dreaded CRT
would take away all of our install base. Disk Drives were only a max of about 10MB at
this time...
So I thought about it for a few days and came up with how much unused Microfilm
space did we have in the typical MDS Ultrastrip Reader that was connected to the
Microdata 1600 mini computer using a REDUNDANT cross switched NONSTOP
architecture, but a person had to throw the switch.
We design the Video board to use the same memory as the Microdata RAM and so the
info in a memory area would be sent to the addressed CRT at over 1,000,000 baud, it
was so fast that the little CRT actually looked like it jumped when a new page was
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47. received. These were the Changes/Adendum the page displayed on the MDS Reader,
relational.
So by reducing the number of lines per page by “repaginating the Telephone Book” and
using more Microfilm we reduced the number of HITS. The DAS/CM-AM Advanced
Mechanization was FASTER than the CRT hands down.
To the solution to complex problems is often the most simple...
I ended up as the Director of Advanced Systems for MDS and designed CARMS, and
PBOS Paperless Business Office for the Telephone Company, and was working for
Frank Berko and Dean Mack on many Sales trips, so Dean decided that I was a natural
salesman and that I only do what I want anyways, so I became the National Sales
Manager, without ever being a Salesman...
I also designed System/C MDS Tandem NonStop based next gen productline, but MDS
failed to build a PARALLEL Video Board and the performance and database work were
a failure... But I was then the Dir of Advanced Systems and they didnʼt want my help...
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49. Evolution of the Operating System (OS)
The Operating System like on your Microsoft Windows, iPhone iOS4,
and Android, evolved as UNIX derivative works. They have evolved over
several decades to be unique and distinct from their original works. The
OS is responsible for intertask communication, I/O, and multitasking to
name a few areas of the OS.
And the various OSʼs share some commonality due to the File Systems
used.
The What and Where of your information.
Microsoft Windows
Windows began as (Seattle Computing DOS, Jon Gordon) MSDOS, and
has evolved more than any of the competitors, using File Systems
compatibility. This severely limited Microsoft due to DOS backwards
compatibility. They got involved with XENIX and the Santa Cruz Operation
(SCO) and Novell. And released Windows NT, which had a UNIX Kernel
style of Multitasking, etc. but with the Novell Compatibility, etc, the product
was complex, and awkward and lacked the good UNIX stuff, so variations
were required to support so many diverse File Systems...
ALL of Windows grew out of proportion and spaghetti code maintenance
became a drawback. Too many cooks spoil the soup.
Microsoft Nokia Windows
Microsoft just got into bed with Nokia, the combination may be the solution
for Microsoft, because it gives them the Mobile Industry and Nokia a
chance, so the combo should be good for both, if they can work together...
Apple iOS
The future of iOS is going to be interesting, the world of .MAC and other
Cloud Computing, such as iWork, are Apples entry, and they are elegant
and well integrated across the Apple platforms. And iTunes and the Apple
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50. Retail Stores are blow away successes, who thought Apple would succeed
with a retail store a few years ago? How many stores do they have in
operation as Bricks and Mortar Customer Interface Retail locations across
the world? How many more? The combo of Internet and Bricks... The
number of people that go into a Apple Store is well beyond the normal
Retail Traffic and purchase patterns of the Retail Channel... one month of
four StarPower Retail Stores traffic to one hour of one day of one Apple
Retail Store is a ridiculous comparison... is there going to be a Club Apple
for Affluent Customers as a future for a StarPower and Apple type of Retail
Store? ie. no Cash Register in the store?
Android
Then again, how long did it take Google Android to be a major factor in
the world of OS? make or buy product? Lineage?
Novell the Intellectual Property House.
Novell Networks was the early multiuser database network solution
and therefore much important customer data was in it... Then I believe that
Novell became a investor to SCO... XENIX Copyright ownership has been
in the courts for years.
UNIX
AT&T Mini Computers 3B2 and 3B5, using System V UNIX, were our
customer at Handle Technology in Lake Tahoe... plus the DEC VAX 750
behind the Safeway Store in Tahoe City... and a room full of UNIX Guruʼs
there with flex hours, give them a LIft Ticket they would code for free...
The issue is: Where your information is, and can you access it.
Basic Four Accounting
The late 1970ʻs and 1980ʻs market control owned by Basic Four and its
associated Applications has evolved, and in the early days they were the
primary Data location of many of small businesses. And the information
was in a proprietary format and not easily shared with other systems like
the emerging PCDOS IBM. The Basic Four format incompatibility and the
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51. lack of comparable Applications from the early IBM days, gave them a
extended market life cycle.
The real issue is marketplace ownership of the format of information...
Today, all major tech companies are trying to own the format of the data.
Whose data?
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52. Cloud Computing and Mobile Computing convergence.
Everyone driving towards the integration of the information across
platforms, theirs...
China is making substantial Intellectual Property contributions via
Whitepapers in English...
WebOS, Chrome, Android, Safari, Windows x, OSX, iOS4, etc.
The players are now in format for the next decade...
So where is your data?
iData*, XML, SQL, etc., and how long do you need to store a copy at home
or business?
Fire File/Backup for the days the Internet is OFF?
Egypt Internet example?
Wikipedia?
User controlled data?
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53. Backup of Data.
The ability to get people to use Backup tools has not done well.
The Apple Time Machine, the Audit Tape of UNIX, is cool, but not as simple
to use as one hopes to locate and replace damaged or missing data, and
ONLY that data...
Going back in time tends to lose some important details in life as it does
with just Date/Time Based Data Recovery.
Ai would do a better job of watching over your data.
The combination of the Data Backup of the Apple Time Machine with
some Ai to keep the data in real time sync across X numbered servers is
required for trusting the Net to store important data. Appleʼs MobileMe
is becoming a Digital Library of INDEXES of your digital information files
located on your computers...
A Grid Computing and Cloud Computing goal of shared computing
resources operating in a redundant data scenario that may reduce the need
for real time backup and periodic backups of the Grandfather, Father, Son
methodology currently still in use will be the best backup you can achieve.
BIOS
eLearning Format
Phase I
encapsulate existing eLearning Works (frame)
Phase II
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54. Automate Interactive improvements and format evolution plan.
Phase III
XBOX and PlayStation immersive games that educate as the base lineage
of the game, fail, repeat, win, award.
Cloud Based Education
Begin with the problem of unemployment education.
Correlation of Data(stuff)
# GOOGLE VS BING, ETC.
Multi Vendor Platforms, mostly software.
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55. # Cloud
# # Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, WebOS
# # # HTML5, Client Server, FileFarms
# # # # PHP, JAVAscript, etc.
Versus
# Internet Work Stations
# # Windows, OSX, Android, UNIX, Unbutu, etc.
User Data Security.
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56. TerraCloud Platforms(TM).
The Bricks and Mortar of the continued need for advanced Work Stations
will exist until the Internet achieves hard disk drive data transfer speeds...
which are now SSDʼs... across space...
sell “whereʼs your data?”
Got Backup?
Got Tech Support?
Echo Data redundancy?
whatʼs the Plan?
AiLibrary
Local/Remote storage of your entire digital lifeʼs history is around 2TB of
digital stuff, according to my redundant digital content on AiLibrary DS100.
A 5TB storage device will probably be in your iPhone 2015...
This capacity will be in a iPad type device within 24 months... or
Dock/Hot Spot... or Time Machine for the Cloud...
WideBand Required!
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57. Entrepreneur Incubators
copyright gkraft Jan. 2010
Entrepreneur Incubators are needed to provide a workspace for America’s new creative
ideas.
Yes, the Incubators to date have all failed because they got funding from cities and
states, and management were not much more than Landlords...
The one thing that I learned promoting my friends and brothers to the level of President
is that most people want the job, think they can do the job, but cannot.
So, I believe that my Entrepreneur Incubator Project has to be "for Profit" with the
necessary Exec. Management, Mentors, Legal, Accounting, Marketing and Sales. And
that we use a criteria to select the most promising new product and companies of
tomorrow to embed into the Entrepreneur Incubator, with the Marketing Rights,
Intellectual Property Rights owned and controlled by the Entrepreneur Incubator with a
buy out clause for the Entrepreneur to be able to reach a certain plateau of success
before we permit them to spin off on their own. Such is the purpose of an Incubator...
These Entrepreneur Incubators need the support of the cities and state, but not the
interference and control that is typical of todays Incubators or this will also fail.
America needs new Hope, ideas that are born from necessity the mother of all
invention... America needs employment, eLearning, etc. The time is now. That is why I
sent my new Venture to you, because we need to find the Barry's, Rick's, and Craig's of
tomorrow...
The States need to do Trade Missions to Export the products that will turn around their
economy now, not tomorrow...
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58. Dec. 21, 2012
My birthday is Dec. 21, 1943 and the connection to my attention on 2012, since that is
the date that many are afraid of...
Causes me to pay attention to the continuous Earthquakes and Volcanic Activity around
the World.
If you do a Google Search for Dec. 21, 2012 you will find that there is over 26 million
hits.
If you read my BLOG, www.talkstory.com I sometimes write about 2012, not many, ALL
have me recommending that man needs to consider getting along with each other. I
always write a positive approach to the date. And if you count the number of times I
really write about 2012, it is less than 10 times. None of them predict that anything is
going to happen, they all refer to what I read on the internet, and the newspapers.
I watch the History Channel (48 pages of videos on their website), as well as the
Discovery Channel (several), as well as the National Geographic Channel, etc. they are
constantly running documentaries about 2012 and the concerns of those that made
these documentaries.
I have reached these conclusions:
Nostradomus and the Mayans had no way to forecast the exponential increase in the
intelligence of man.
Nostradomus and the Mayans only could study the stars from their vantage point on
the earth, and create Star Charts to base their predictions on. And they needed to go to
places to find different angles of View...
Volcanos are the pressure relief valves of the earth. Just like a pot roast cooking in a
pressure cooker uses a pressure relief valve today...
Geothermal Energy uses Scrubbers to clean the super heated energy output used to
run the turbines to generate energy and this process is cleaner than most other forms of
energy production, and is called a "Consistant Energy Supply". Read Wikipedia, and
other Google hits on the subject.
The forecasts of Nostradomus and the Mayans define the alignment of the Planets on
Dec. 21, 2012
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60. 2/4/10 5:54 AMSearch Results
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EDITOR'S PICKS
Armageddon
What might happen on December 21, 2012? What do the world's major
religions say about the end of the world? Is Armageddon going to
happen? Get in-sight on the history that started it all and how it will
change the future.
Nostradamus Effect
Nostradamus Effect examines these and other end-of-time predictions
from cultures across the globe, from centuries ago, and connects the dots
with current global events to separate the prophecies that appear to be
inspired visions from those that are merely crackpot conspiracy theory.
Buy Doomsday 2012 on DVD!
A surprising number of prophets – from ancient oracles to contemporary
internet–crawling software “bots” – point to December 21, 2012 as the End
of Days. Could the concentration on this date be merely coincidence, or is
there something deeper behind it?
Armageddon - History.com - 2012 And The End Of Th...
Armageddon - History.com - 2012 And The End Of The World. Armageddon Week Begins
January 3 at 8/7c Curious about 2012? What did Ancient Egyptians believe about the fate
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Cities of the Underworld hosted by Don Wildman - History.com. History Made Every Day | | |
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The End Of The World - History.com - Armageddon P...
More recently, some doomsday forecasters have focused on the year 2012. Citing the
conclusion of a lengthy cycle in the ancient Mayan calendar, certain theorists anticipate the
end of life as we know it on December 21, 2012. These theorists believe that on December
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Doomsday 2012: The End of Days DVD, Shows Nostrad...
Doomsday 2012: The End of Days DVD, Shows Nostradamus , HISTORY Shop. A
surprising number of prophets - from ancient oracles to contemporary internet-crawling
software "bots" - point to December 21, 2012 as the End of Days. DOOMSDAY 2012: THE
END . . .
Doomsday 2012: The End of Days DVD, Shows Decodin...
2012: The Sun
Video 3:13
Could violent solar activity,
predicted by some of 2012,
end life on Earth?
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2012: The Masons
Video 3:08
The Masons have been linked
to many of history's greatest
movements, but what do they
think of the 2012 debate?
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2012: The Hopi
Video 2:38
The Hopi people saw a silver
lining in the end of the world.
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2012: The End of Time?
Video 3:21
Why do some people believe
the world might end in 2012?
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