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Showing posts from July, 2021

Pete and The “Old Man”

Pet e and The “Old Man” Pete - Kathy - me - Ready for our Hat Party K athy and I were living in Sunnyvale and working in Silicon Valley. We had been married for less than half a year. We had recently returned from our trip to Eugene, a trip that changed our relationship. After that trip I felt Kathy didn't really know me and didn't approve of that side of me. We were already at a crossroads. How did this happen? It was all so sudden. We had just taken those vows promising to stay together till the end of time. How did I get here? I felt stuck. Was this it? I didn't want to quit but I began to feel myself wanting to pull back from the relationship. I was living a lie. I didn't think I had any right to end the relationship but the truth was that while I didn't physically leave the marriage pursuing a legal separation or a divorce I did start mentally leaving the marriage. K athy and I still did most things together. We got along fine and had ver

Will the Real Dave Backus Please Stand-Up

Will the Real Dave Backus Please Stand-Up Me and Kathy (Nyshia on my right) I n May of 1981 Kathy and I packed up all our stuff and moved from the Rosemont (Sacramento) duplex we were living in to a house in Sunnyvale. I started my new job at Siegel Software and Kathy started her new job with another marketing firm. S iegel was a very small consulting firm with a total of 6 people counting the owner. There was a receptionist/admin/secretary person, Jon, the owner, and four programmers. The programmers consisted of me, two programmers who had been with Jon for a long while and then Jim who'd been there for maybe a year. They were all programming in the COBOL language which I had no actual work experience with. I had taken one class in college on it and COBOL is not a difficult language to learn. The deal I had with Jon was he'd give me COBOL experience and having me on his staff gave him an experienced “Micro” computer programmer. His current clients were all in the