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Dear Habs,

Thank you for the observation.

If you don't mind me bending your ear for a few moments -- with everybody else listening in -- I'll share a few pearls with you, and they are pearls only because they were expensive lessons to learn.

A very kindly man once took me under his arm when I was at a real low point in my life and offered me a job and a place to stay. I took him up on it. The job was to be his grounds-keeper and the place to stay was his house while he was on vacation in Florida for two weeks. I'd come into town nearly a drifter; unemployed and impoverished.

He was no ordinary fellow, at 83 years old he was still in the prime of his life. He had 1,400 people working for him in 3 very profitable businesses. The bank hadn't given him a loan once so he turned around and bought the bank. We used to go around the lake by the town in his boat while he surveyed his properties for irregularities.

All I had going for me was a harsh upbringing by a Norwegian Step-Dad who had taught me nearly everything about fixing anything -- from electronics to woodworking to cars. Fred, the kindly man, simply expected me to fix whatever he found wrong with his place and it was an ideal association.

After a time Fred hired me in his ship yard and I moved to an apartment, but it was always kept secret at work that I had an 'in' with the owner: every Sunday I spent all day boating with him and conversing about all the things on his mind.

All good things must pass, and I went away to college (BYU) still flush with so much that he had explained to me. Education, experience, ingenuity, and years of trying to make worthwhile software followed, but Fred was constantly my hero. He passed away at 93, deprived of his freedom, in the grip of Alzheimers. I could converse with him in my mind, until one day it seemed he was called into a higher heaven, but that is my own take on metaphysical things.

He had said to me, "Don't worry about it. I didn't have any money, really, until I turned 50." and that was to me a prophesy of sorts. He engendered such loyalty among his workers, the hundreds of them, that even though the union recruiters stood outside the shipyard gates passing out fliers and brochures, the employees would take none of them.

When life passes you a lemon, make lemonaid. There is no hardship which can not become a benefit over time. There is never a reason to lose hope and neither is there any circumstance from which you can not be brought down. I could go on but it would only be saying over and over that the human spirit can be kept above this material world.

The new company is great. Sure they have problems, but for starters they have already generated more business for us in a month than we had for the whole year prior. We are working like lead dogs in the Iditarod race. Now we get on with our lives, and I enjoy having people around the world depending on software that keeps their factories running.

Lunch today was a hamburger in the mountains beside a fast running stream, under some big old pine trees. I had to walk a road not yet open to traffic for the snow on it. plus, shrimp salad, made from big shrimp, and an apple. Swing music from the BBC Big Bands Orchestra was playing in the car on the way, and I would like to think of good software sounding like that if only it could be put to music.