INTRODUCING... me.

[Don Quixote]

Top of the afternoon to y'all. I figured since I've been here since 2014 I should probably make my introduction. 59 years old, I retired in 2011. I owned an internet security firm called Integrity Online Security LLC. I had 6 employees and we tested companies to see if they were vulnerable to hackers. After 11 years, I doubt I could hack my way out of a wet paper bag.

 

My Dad and I built my first plastic car when I was around 5. Around 7 or 8 I built the visible V8. I've probably built many more than 500 models in my day. That blurry bike is all I have left. I love to cook, so after I retired I went to Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Institute of Paris. In Sacramento California. LOL, it's an international school but it sounds impressive. I mean I don't like to cook enough to learn a 2nd language.

 

Born and raised In Grand Haven Michigan, I was within a few minutes of Lake Michigan. Grand Haven is a tourist area with a LOT of boats. When I was in the 7th grade or so I started reading the Horatio Hornblower series. Add a decade and my older brother was an officer in the Coast Guard stationed in Odgensburg New York. Just across from Canada. Oh, hey. There's a river there name the Oswegatchie River. I like to say oswegachie in trouble. Anyway It's a 12 hour drive across Canada to get there but on one of my visits I took the long way around so I could see the Niagara.

 

Just before I went to school I went to the local hobby store looking for the next and difficult model. They had this really cool wooden ship called the Constitution. WOW! Looked in the box and thought... THAT'S got to be hard. It was on sale for $399 so I snagged it and took it with me to Sacramento for school. I live in Oakdale Ca. So I rented an apartment in Sac. Plenty of time to work on the ship, right? Every evening. School was 14 months and it took me another year or so to finish the beast. I had no knowledge of MSW, much less planking or serving or anything else so you know what the planking looked like:) A little wood filler and some paint she looked pretty good. I tied all the rigging instead of using the blocks... From a distance (and if you didn't know what it was supposed to look like) it looked pretty good. About the last month or so of the build I discovered MSW and the build logs. Heck yeah! I'm gonna build a great ship this time! So I bought the Niagara. Did an okay job on the planking and deck, did a good job on the buildings... Then I got to the rigging. I bought a serving machine from Domanoff's Workshop and went at it. Somewhere here in cyberspace is an unfinished log of her. Pretty much ruined the rigging and gave up.

 

Took a few years off and restored a 69 GTO. Sold it and I just got the Pride of Baltimore since it looked like the rigging didn't look too tough. Then I got the box and looked inside... Started seriously researching what kind of ships I should be starting with. I mean dag nab it, I'm gonna lick this hobby. If for no other reason than I probably have a couple thousand in tools! I bought the Model Shipways Lowell Grand Banks Dory Model Wooden Model Ship Kit 1:24 Scale. I also bought the skill 2 and 3 in the series.

 

Here's where I sound dizzy (er) While I wait for the Dory I'm starting on the Pride of Baltimore. I know I can do a good job of bearding and the bulkheads...etc. By the time I get those done the Dory should be here and I can learn a better job on planking. By the time I'm done with the 3rd in the series I'm confident I can do the Baltimore.

 

What else... My Mother was, shall we say a piece of work, I ran away from home in the 10th grade, got into drugs, got my GED while I was in jail... Did 9 months and got 3 years of probation. Met a woman 5 years my senior with 2 boys, she was on welfare and I gave up the hard drugs but still smoked the weed. Being bored I decided to get a job. Did the temp to hire program and they sent me to a 3M fabricator where one needed to know their fractions. Well, my Dad and I did a lot of "Side jobs" for his co-workers and when I went to work at that fabricator they paid the dues and hired me because I can do fractions in my head and convert them to decimal. I'm sure everyone here can do that, but they were really impressed. They found I am pretty creative and they had a program where, if you shaved 10% off of the time it took to run a job, you would get a 2% bonus. I wound up being what they called a floater. When someone was absent I was sent to run their machine. I always shaved at least 10% off the time and made a decent living. Got married, got the family off of welfare and grew up a bit.

 

Then I went looking for something more challenging than plastic models. This is somewhere around 1986 or so. Discovered computers and fell in love. Turns out I was pretty good, too. Anyone remember the Bulletin Boards? A private citizen set up a computer dedicated to the public so they could dial up with a modem (Pretty much a fax) and do... email. Download games and programs for free. I was a member of the Association of Shareware Professionals. We were pretty smart we thought. The user would log into the Bulletin Board Service, read and reply to email and once a day the system would bundle up new messages, archive them and send them to a host in the local area code. We all gave him a few bucks each month and he would bundle up every BBS's mail and send them to someone that was outside of the local exchange. He used the money we gave him to pay for the long distance bill and in turn passed some of the cash onto that person. We could get a reply to a message from across the world in 24 hours!  Now it takes what, 1 second?

 

So you know I got into that! Users would have problems with their computer, or want to upgrade it and they'd ask me to do it. Started getting a bit of a reputation. Started making money. Then this darn Internet came along and ruined the BBS world. By then it's around 1992 or so and a store opened called Computer City. Sold computers, software and had an "Upgrade" counter. Want a CD added? Need a repair? I went in and asked the manager of that department if he could make 2 cd players work in one PC. This was before plug and play so you had to know a bit about computers. He said it was impossible so I located the general manager and asked him to follow me back to the upgrade department where I again asked the manager there if he could do it. He rolled his eye and said in a rather condescending way that he already answered that. I asked the GM if I could have his job if I could do it. I got his job.

 

A year or so later a man comes in scared because his server wouldn't boot up and asked if I could help. All his important business files were on there. I never saw a server, but I figured it's all pretty intuitive to me so I said sure. Fire it up and it gave an error saying "Bad or missing command interpreter". I've seen that before and about 1 minute later he left a happy man and the store made 25$.  Couple days later a man comes in and says the feller with the server mentioned me. This man invites me to lunch to discuss an opportunity. He was a head hunter for a place called Aerotek. A consulting firm. They sent me to Herman Miller, the 2nd largest office furniture mfg in the world. We were upgrading some 2500 PC's from Windows 3.1 to Win 95 and replacing the old PC's. We'd got to a users desk, boot from a floppy drive and the system would pull the operating system and software from the network. Took a few hours during which time I read a lot of books. Decided that was ridiculous, and did some research and found something called imaging. You make an image of a system that's already setup onto a hard drive. Go to a new PC and install the drive and it took about 15 minutes to lay the image onto the PC's hard drive. What they planned on taking 18 months took 6 months.

 

A man that quit Herman Miller to take a job at another company invited me to an interview. I got the job on one condition. I had to pass a urine test. I told him to give me a couple weeks to think about it and of course I never smoke the crap again. They sent me to school and I got my certification as a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. 5 grueling tests. In 1999 I got a divorce. In 2001 I met the love of my life and married her. She was a flight nurse. An RN that rode in the back of a helicopter and saved lives. The company offered to move her to California and give her a fat raise to manage a new base in upper Ca. A city called Weed, where everyone graduated from Weed high. In the mountains about 30 miles south of Oregon. We got there and we decided not to buy a house because we didn't think the base was viable. It lasted a year and during that time I got a job in Medford Oregon as a senior engineer. They had offices all over the world. When the base shut down my wife's company offered to move her again so she could manage their most profitable base in the Country in Sonora Ca. They spent most of their time in Yosemite National Park. (She now has a desk job)

 

We moved to Oakdale, Ca. where we've lived ever since. Before I left Medford I tendered my resignation and described my accomplishments. I stayed in Weed for another 2 months wile my wife worked here so I could finish a few projects. At the 11th hour, the owner asked if I could do my job from home. I'm thinking, have a job or look for one. So I kept my job until I opened my own firm.

 

Now let me backtrack a bit. Just as the Internet was getting its footing and killing the BBS's I discovered Linux. Windows is an operating system. Apple Mac is an operating system. Linux is too and it's free. It's not for the faint of heart so I loved it. Still do. So I setup my first Linux box and installed an instant messenger app. Actually, one did not "Install" an app on Linux at that time. Someone else wrote the program but you had to compile it. Like someone writing code for an app, but it had to be put together to run. Compiled it and fired it up and it asked me for my username and password. I entered it and my hard drive light started flickering and the app didn't work. Tried to close the app but it wouldn't even do that. So I shut the machine down and fired it back up. But it said "Bad or missing command interpreter". ??? Turns out someone formatted my drive from remote. Blew me away! Fell in love with hacking. Learned it. Quit the Medford gig and started my own firm.

 

MAN I hate typing!

Edited February 2, 2022 by Clueless

[mtaylor]

Better to introduce yourself late than never.  A belated "Welcome to MSW".

[ccoyle]

Great story! I'm a California native, so I enjoyed all of the geographical references. I grew up in Humboldt County and lived in Mariposa for 12 years before I moved to South Carolina -- I tell folks around here that I'm from "the other California." I also tell them that they have "cute little mountains" here. 😄

[Dave_E]

1500 posts… I’m sure there are many here who know you. Welcome! 😀

[mtaylor]

2 hours ago, ccoyle said:

 I also tell them that they have "cute little mountains" here. 😄

I'll have to remember that if I ever get back to see the Smokies again.

[Don Quixote]

15 hours ago, Dave_E said:

1500 posts… I’m sure there are many here who know you. Welcome! 😀

I want to get that half hull, but I already spent almost $700 on tools and models since Christmas:(

[Don Quixote]

Mtaylor

 

I tried to subscribe at the link you provide, http://trafalgar.tv                    But nothing happens when I click subscribe. The screen refreshes and adds the "captha".

[mtaylor]

49 minutes ago, Clueless said:

Mtaylor

 

I tried to subscribe at the link you provide, http://trafalgar.tv                    But nothing happens when I click subscribe. The screen refreshes and adds the "captha".

Do the captcha and see if that works.   I subscribed some time ago and it worked then.  Not sure why it wouldn't work now.

[Don Quixote]

27 minutes ago, mtaylor said:

Do the captcha and see if that works.   I subscribed some time ago and it worked then.  Not sure why it wouldn't work now.

I emailed him. The captcha is broke. He'll work on it tomorrow.

[Don Quixote]

22 hours ago, Clueless said:

I emailed him. The captcha is broke. He'll work on it tomorrow.

I didn't see that the site was trying to open another page. Pop-up. It worked.