Life's circumstances and the decisions demanded by them got me into this. My main love was weapon design, but it was rarified air back in 1979 and nobody would listen to some punk kid who wanted to build the next generation of military assault weapons out of Dupont Zytel reinforced with mineral and glass fillers. I had a bullpup design that put significantly more non-metal material into the weapon than the Steyr AUG (the exotic-looking rifle the guy tried to kill Bruce Willis with in the final scene of Die Hard), floated if dropped in water, could be cleaned using waste water, was usable from inside a vehicle, was switchable from right-side to left-side ejection, etc. So we looked into financing and building our own factory.
Then David was on his way, and I had a family to consider, which meant as little risk as possible. So my mother and I started a word processing service bureau instead, and it took off. Soon after I got divorced and won full custody of David. When David was four I had a disagreement with my mother over the business, and I was out. I had fifty bucks and David, and nothing else. One of my word processing clients was a person from the company that did all the ad work for Domino's Pizza. She had lots of contacts within Coca-Cola, and I landed a job there through a temp agency. I went right to work analyzing and solving problems, using what I had learned about programming FORTRAN at Georgia Tech and fighting CPM and DOS in the word processing service bureau. After a year or so I hung out my shingle, took David in one hand and an almost empty checkbook in the other, and paddled like crazy for the next twenty years. Those of you who weren't there back in the day won't fully understand what it took to just make computer-related things reliably work in a production environment, but the knowledge gained in doing that earned me experience I couldn't have learned anywhere else. Soon I was like "Bring it on, bitch!" to every technical challenge, every computer language. Teaching myself (training back then was an expensive joke) gave me an edge in training others how to do the same, and how to setup systems that replicated expert knowledge. So while my friends were building lots of simpler systems that did basic utilitarian tasks, I started building a small number of really complex systems that integrated all those business tasks into a single system. That's where I gained a love and respect for process. Then came the web, and the HTTP protocol, and my world was dumped right on its ear. I went from sophisticated design environments (for the day) like PowerBuilder and VB4 to Notepad and then HomeSite with this new language called ColdFusion. So I took my experience with database design and tuning to ColdFusion, and started busting out of its tiny envelope of what it could and couldn't do. I joined a CFUG and started lecturing on advanced topics, turned that into advanced ColdFusion training, and only worked on the more complicated business systems offered to us. David had been programming since he was 8, and did his first professional paying work at 10, and by the time he was 15 he was spending his spare time in the business, plying his talents. On his 16th birthday he quit school and joined the business full time, and that gave us the ability to be a real company and not a "Me, Inc." Lisa joined two years ago to ply her MBA, and now we have the entire range of operational services under one roof, from giving a business the ability to more efficiently produce dollars to accounting for them. We've been really pushing the envelope for the past few years, and we can do some amazing things these days. I'm in the process of packaging all our testing and analysis services into a single comprehensive package, and it's the most exciting thing I've ever done. We're also gearing up to hire some top talent soon. I have a fresh reason to be excited about this business after 22 years. Respectfully, Adam Phillip Churvis President Productivity Enhancement ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;192386516;25150098;k Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:259507 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
