In the mid 80’s, my best friend and I somehow found ourselves in possession of a Timex Sinclair 1000 computer. This thing connected to a black and white television and used a cassette tape player to store the data and programs. We had the 16K RAM pack. All of the programs were input manually in spaghetti code.
To be honest, my friend Rod took a much greater interest in this device than I did. He was the one who input 90% of the programs that we had. At that time, he was well ahead of me in the world of computing. He spent whole days just typing on this little machine.
After the Timex, it was several years before I got another computer. I picked up an Intel 8088 based computer from a coworker in 1994. It was still very command based but it did have a menu interface program. I played with it a little and learned some programming in BASIC, but it was still just a toy to me.
In 1996, I was working at Pronto Print. The owner of that company, Jim Sage, gave all of his employees a computer literacy test. I scored lower than anyone in the company. That was my wakeup call. I knew that if we were being tested for computer literacy, I would need to know at least a little bit about them for the future.
At the time, my mother was already very interested in computing and she helped me to find and purchase an AST Adventure. It had a an Intel Pentium running at 166mhz, with 16MB of memory. Windows 95 was the operating system.
This time, when I started setting up the computer, the obsession took hold. Maybe it was the GUI interface. Maybe it was because I thought my job depended on it. Whatever it was, I was hooked. The first hardware update I ever completed was to install a 200mhz Cyrix processor in this computer.
Jim Sage recognized my interest and a talent that I didn’t know I had. He nurtured that talent. He allowed me to tinker with the computers at Pronto Print and paid for me to take some college courses in Computer Science. I was eventually the in-house computer tech. Sometimes I even filled in on some graphic design work.
After a few years when I needed an upgrade, I decided to build my own machine. I purchased all of the parts from Tiger Direct. It had an Intel Pentium III 500Mhz and an ATI Rage Fury graphics card.
It was around this time that I met my friend Denver Dorman. Denver runs a successful consulting company in Bend OR. In spite of the fact that he is several years younger than I am, he as been a very generous mentor for a long time. People were starting to ask me to help with their computers and I decided that I could get paid for my labor. With Denver’s help and support, I launched “Keith’s PC Service”.
Keith’s PC service was loosely modeled on Denver’s own “Innertech Systems”. I started out providing tutoring to senior citizens around Bend OR. I leveraged my reputation in the printing trade to start computer consulting with nearly every printshop in town. I developed my first niche as a tech who could get PC’s and Macs to cooperate. That’s much easier to do now than it was at the turn of the century. I also started doing websites and graphic design.
The Great Recession of 2008 brought my printing career to an abrupt end. I took a big risk and a big pay cut to switch careers and found my first full time job as a computer technician at Support.com. At first, it was entry level virus cleanup and operating system repair and maintenance. Although it was low pay, Support.com had a good training model and effective methods for addressing computer problems. I moved up quickly to the Technical Lead team, doing advanced repair and analysis. The biggest advantage to the environment at Support.com was the very large talent pool. I got to work with hundreds of very knowledgeable people and learned from all of them.
When I was ready for a new challenge, I found work at Healthnotes doing technical support for their Aisle7 products. Healthnotes was a true family environment. Everyone there was supportive and helpful. My direct supervisor was Bill Hays. He was a great mentor and friend. Healthnotes gave me opportunities to grow and learn that I am forever grateful for.
In addition to customer technical support, I was given the chance to learn software QA testing and eventually IT. They trusted me enough to train me on server administration, Active Directory and other IT skills too numerous to list. Everything that I learned there prepared me for success at my next job.
Healthnotes was acquired by TraceGains in 2018. I was promoted to Desktop Support Analyst at TraceGains. I am currently the entire IT department. I purchase all computer related hardware. I manage Azure Active Directory, Office 365, SharePoint and OneDrive. I manage our endpoint antivirus and firewalls, including the VPN.