About Me

An Opportunity to Strike Out On My Own

After 20 years of working in the Embedded Software arena, in every role from Software Developer and Project Manager, to Sales Support, Contractor, and even startup CTO, I’m going to try to take a break from the world of Big Business, and strike out on my own.

My company for the last 8 years, Wind River, decided they didn’t need a Sales Support guy in the Dallas area during the latest RIF, and I got my walking papers.

It was in a large part my own fault for not baby-sitting my career better. During the last year, I had been tasked with supporting a networking product we’d purchased from a company in Stockholm, the Interpeak stack. My role ended up supporting the use of the existing product on Linux machines, and on a competitor’s operating system. I spent a lot of time working at customer sites enabling the success of our competitor’s customers. I think I did a pretty good job at it - maybe too good. Sure I made some money for the company, since the customers were paying well for my time, but it wasn’t furthering the company’s products. Since I’m part of the sales force, and wasn’t adding significantly to the bottom line for the last year, and since the account managers weren’t getting much support from me, it was easy to see, in hind-sight, that I was minimizing my value to the company.  I had survived several RIFs in the past, and most of my peers thought I was pretty much untouchable when it came to layoffs, but apparently the upper management didn’t get the word, and when the Sales Support had to let go of a few people, for the first time in 8 years I didn’t have enough guys in my corner to get me through this RIF.

It was a shock, to say the least.

But it was also an opportunity.

Entrepreneur At Heart

I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart, and had a keen interest in the internet. I’ve been online since 1993, and built my first major Web Application, a Fantasy Football League site, back in 1995. I’ve had domains since then, and always have had a virtual server, and a few web-sites kicking around, mostly for fun, without the desire to make a lot of money off of them.

Around 2003 I started a Bunco website, www.BuncoRules.com , and was receiving as many at 2000 unique visits a day. In 2007 I put up some Adsense ads, and was surprised to start earning $100-$150 bucks a month, from a site that had almost zero maintenance from me. The main purpose was to share some info about the game, and to collect a survey about how people played the game. I never expected to by #1 on Google for the last 3 years for the terms Bunco and Bunko (an alternate spelling), as well as Bunco Rules.

After 30,000 survey responses, I decided to write down everything I learned in a book, which I self-published, called The Bunko Book . Sold several hundred copies, and made me a published author - woohoo.

Back in 2000, I was the CTO of a Startup, Athalon Designs, that was translating the internet into Arabic, in real-time. I worked with a great bunch of guys, funded by Abdullah Romaizan, a wealth Saudi, but when the translation team in London dropped the ball badly, on the day before we were to be fully funded, Abdullah pulled the plug, and sold off the translation software, ending that dream before it was fully started.

It wasn’t my first startup, not would it be my last. None have been hugely successful, but I’ve learned a lot each time through the gates.

Now I’d like to take all this Internet knowledge I have, and see if I can’t make a living off of it directly. The 30 Day Challenge is my first step in that direction.

Health and Fitness

I was a jock in high-school and college, but my sports activities slowly dwindled away, and when I got cancer in 1996, it seemed to vanish completely.  My cancer was caught early, and a little surgery and radiation treatment got me past the hurdle, and I’ve been clean for 12 years. But immediately afterwards I put on a good bit of weight, and I’ve battled it ever since.

Last year I spend nearly 6 months on a Fitness Boot camp, which brought back a lot of my strength, and helped me lose about 30 lbs, but since then it’s creeped back. After I lost my job, I didn’t immediately hit the gym with all my new found time, and put on even more.

I love outdoor activities, sports and bike riding, but getting heavier and heavier makes a lot of these activities more and more difficult. So, once again, I’m taking a running start at knocking off some of these pounds.

I’ll be trying a few different programs and approaches to fitness and losing weight, and will try to document the efforts in these pages.

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