When the personal computer started to take hold of the government and business desktops, and the Field Engineers at Harris started scattering to other jobs, I found an interesting position with a company called ViaTech Systems in Falls Church, Virginia. My jack-of-all-trades background was put to the test on a contract with the IRS to supply specialized assistive devices for their employees with disabilities. I did a bit of everything - evaluation of needs, vendor research, writing purchase orders, installing and integrating the equipment, maintenance, record keeping and correspondence.

Three years later both the contract and I moved to another small company, Conwal Incorporated, down the street. With the IRS doing more and more of the disability management on their own, I found other ways to make myself valuable to my employer. I took over support for their internal network of mostly Macintosh computers, and helped out where I could, working on proposals and other internal functions.

The President of Conwal is one of the most interesting men I've had the pleasure to know. Everett Alvarez was the first American aviator shot down over Vietnam, and was held for more than eight years as a prisoner of war. He wrote two books about his experiences, and is one of the most decorated and honored veterans of the war in Vietnam.

I spent five years with Conwal.

I started at Unisys in October of 1996, working on-site at the US Coast Guard Telecommunications and Information System Command, TISCOM, in Alexandria, VA. I have to tell you that I learned more on the job in the first six months there than I'd learned in the previous ten years.

It was during my four years there that I became a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. In order to earn the Systems Engineer certification you go through a battery of exams given at Microsoft authorized learning centers. I can truly say, without risk of contradiction, that passing all the exams is quite an achievement for anybody, so I'm duly proud of the title. At this writing, I'm one test away from a major update in my certification, which should hold me till they retire the present operating system for a new one. (About two weeks time, it seems.)

The Coast Guard contract, unfortunately, ended in 2000, so I'm now working in several other capacities at the Unisys office in Reston. Big things happening these days - I hope I can keep up.

Okay, so Microsoft is a megalomaniac evil entity. We all know it. If they had their way there would only be one brand of software to fulfill all your needs. Their software is, however, what I make my living working on. The whole world relies very much on Microsoft products, and even if it was split into a hundred little companies they'd still all be run the same way and producing the same products. Get used to it - you don't have a choice.

The truth is that all their major competitors are trying to do the same thing, and every one of them would be very happy to take over the world, too. They all try to find ways to destroy each other. Just look at Larry Ellison at Oracle, an even weirder player than Bill Gates, and almost as rich.

In some ways it's probably a good thing that there's a fairly universal standard. Okay, so Microsoft products may not do some things as well as other brands, and reliability and security have always taken a back seat to monopolizing the industry, but look at all the good they've done for office productivity. They've created a huge market for people who wouldn't be needed at all without Microsoft products.

Hmmn. Maybe that isn't quite the way to phrase a desperate compliment....