James Anderson:
CLASS OF 1969
Chatsworth High SchoolClass of 1969
Chatsworth, CA
James's Story
I had to transfer form San Fernando High, reluctantly, because my family moved. I loved SFH. There were 3500 students in a campus built for 5,000 so there were always small class sizes. My sister and I were among the 135 white students and we had 3498 best friends. Chatsworth was a big let down. There were two black sisters there so the school was bragging about being fully integrated(?). As a result I mostly kept to myself, made very few friends and only remember Kathy Hurley, class of '69 (Friend) and Kathy Guertzen, class of 70 (Girlfriend). I signed up with classmates.com on the hope I might remember a few more,. but alas, it did not prove to be. Why do I stay around? Why not?
A couple of years after graduation I enlisted in the Navy. Two years after being stationed at NAS Adak Alaska, NAS Moffett Field, California,, From MCAS Iwakuni, Japan I went to photography school at NAS Pensacola where after graduating I received extra training in color science. I was then stationed at the 7th Fleet HQ, Yokusuka, Japan for the last two years of my service.
After receiving an Honorable Discharge I returned to work at the department store I worked at before enlisting. I had been working in the camera department. When I got back the camera department had been reduced to selling film in the sporting goods department, so I worked sporting goods. While working there I taught myself electronics. Radio Shack parts, my coffee table and a vacuum tube oscilloscope was all I needed, Oh, the library was free and provided all the textbooks I needed. I did take a coup[e of advanced electronics courses at Pierce College later..
I broke my wrist helping out a friend and had to have a fiberglass cast applied. I told the store I would be wearing the cast for six weeks. They did not want customers to see a man in a cast and they thought the cast might cause some damage. I thanked them for having me back and quit. As I was leaving the store a nice young lady named Janis asked me out on a date. Of course I said yes and we continued dating for for the next 46 years. She moved in with me after a year after I got the job at the fastener company..
I moved on to a better paying, full time job as the inside sales manager at a specialty fastener company. I learned a lot about selling to major corporations, airlines, the military and any number of government entities. My favorite order was one for the Clinch River Fast Breeder Reactor. Six bolts, six nuts and twelve washers. Why a favorite? Each bolt was 12 inches in diameter and eight feet long and weighed just a little over a ton each. The nuts and washers were of the same scale as was the wrench we had custom fabricated, These were used to bolt the reactor to the floor..
While there we went from inventory on 3x5 cards to having a brand new Wang mini-computer with 12 inch floppy drives. Installed was a beta version of the owner's son's new software company's Manufacturing Management System. Being a beta, the software had numerous bugs. After getting all departments depending on the computer, it crashed a lot. We called and begged for help but since we paid nothing and they were busy supporting paying customers. The computer language was Basic so I got some books and taught myself computer programming. The machine shop opened at 3am to let the crew avoid rush hours so I took advantage of that to use the company's computer to learn Basic.. At 8am I went back to working as the inside sales manager.. Eventually I started working to debug the MMS system. After I got it running reliably I started adding refinements. The first thing I did was give all departments the option to seeing reports on a screen rather than always printing them out on really noisy printers. WE finally received a 5 megabyte, 18 inch hard drive and I managed to migrate code and data off floppies and onto the hard drive,.
When the SoftPac team showed up to install the commercial version of the MMS package I chased them away. This was our software now. The boss agreed but asked me to let them see what I had done to the software. They were impressed. They even went so far as to add a bunch of these enhancement to their MMS package. About six months later the boss and I a fight about military pricing. I lost. He handed me a check for my pay plus two weeks and showed me the door.
Janis and I left town for a fishing trip with friends and when we returned home I got messages from many people that SoftPac wanted to talk to me. I called and Steve, the owner, asked me where I had been and that my desk was all set up and waiting for me.. Hey, I got a job without looking! At SoftPac I started by installing the system at customer sites and training the operators. At the office I started making suggestions on how to streamline code customization and better debugging an better customer support. Steve decided the software department needed a dedicated manager and so he named me! I managed to streamlining debugging by generating logs of the fixes that were done so others could consult them I set up service contract system so we make money on customer support. When we went nationwide I set up a backstop service contract where vendors would pay us a percentage of their service contracts so we would support the vendors. Very soon we started to make more money on service contracts than MMS sales!
That's how I got my start in the new computer industry. I bought an Apple II and wrote games and applications. I worked with Burbank Studios to develop computer graphics on a small scale. I wrote a scripting language I called Screen Star that allowed full control of the text features Apple had, much like HTML is today. I worked as the service manager at the computer store that sold my software while Janis worked the warehouse and ran the mail order business. I then worked for a company doing graphics and programming color graphic terminals among other tasks. Diablo showed up with new fangled ink jet printer and I taught them how to print full color photos and images on it. Because of my graphics background I got a job at a laser printer company. Also was supporting a point of sale system I wrote and was selling worldwide by a sales company I licensed it to. I also worked with a cash drawer company to make boards that interfaced computers to their cash drawers. I also wrote the drivers, installation and set up software. For that cash drawer company I wrote a catalog package that showed all the products the sold with descriptions and just for fun I added games and useful apps to show off my software prowess to future customers. So there we were working full time jobs during the week and manufacturing interface boards on weekends.
The laser printer company eventually promoted me to junior executive. I hated it. I'm a engineer I want wanted hiring, firing and writing reviews. One day the laser department manager a...Expand for more
nnounced he was leaving and hinted I was next in line for the job. So, I quit.
After several small programming adventures that former boss called me, informed me he had started up a new company, and would I go to work for him as a programmer. I started the next day! two of the other programmers were from the laser printer company and I happily went from boss to colleague. Turns out the little company was developing the first hand held digital camera, I settled in to writing the Windows program that download the images, displayed thumbnails, allowed editing the images as well as printing and saving images to disk. later on, when we developed a color camera I figured out how put up full color thumbnails.
After that an engineer I had laid off because of budgets and with whom I had been riding big motorcycles and who helped me build my first Harley hardtail chopper from a huge pile of parts. He had gotten a job at Hewlett-Packard in Boise, Idaho in their laser printer division. He called and told me about an opening in his department. At the time I was sporting a long pony tail because I had been avoiding haircuts for 20+ years and I asked if I needed to cut it of for the interview. When he told me he still had his I relaxed.
HP flew me up for what turned out to be my first interview and like a nerd I showed up in slacks, shirt, tie and sports coat. I noticed no one else was dressed like me. The interview did not go well and I was not offered the job. two month later Mike told me of another opening. I applied, flew back to Boise and presented myself for a second go round but dressed in blue jeans, sneakers, t-shirt and blue jean jacket. Because I knew what to expect the second interview went smoothly and the offered me the job.
Let me give a little background. My father was from Kellogg, Idaho and one sister, and his mother lived in Boise. so most family vacation either went through, or meant a stay in Boise. I fell in love with the place. When working at HP meant living Boise I was overjoyed! My boss was mad because I quit him a second time, They offer to match HP's salary, but the couldn't match the medical and pension benefits and the chance to escape California.
I put my house in Simi up for sale, HP paid for the packers and movers and I packed Janis, three cats, my one motorcycle and a bunch of stuff the movers would not touch and headed north. I was driving my Mustang towing the trailer and Janis was in her Z28 Camaro with the cats. We bunked at Mike's, I went to work and Janis went house hunting. We decided to rent at first and take our time buying the right house, which took a year,
The classifieds in the HP newsletter had a listing for a house for sale by owner and I went to look. The house was huge! 4500 square feet and a three car garage. It was on a cul-de-sac, was on the edge of a 65 foot cliff. and nearest house behind it was a mile away behind pastures, corn and wheat fields. The price was way below market because after he bought it for his family his wife finally quit her job in California and flew up. She took one look at the house, took the kids and moved back to California and filed for divorce. See, this house is all stone, brick and wood and she was a chrome and glass person. I agreed to buy and we worked together to handle it without a real estate agent.
I first worked at HP for eight years as their printer languages expert. One of the guys and I never did get along. Our latest team leader thought of him as her golden boy and I had to go. I went. Spent a year on unemployment looking for a job. Janis had gotten a good job at Idaho's Department of Health and Welfare in the accounting department. She added me to her medical insurance and kept us afloat for a couple of years. I got picked up my a consulting firm and spent time working at many programming jobs around town. That lasted another four years. HP's desktop laser department was awash in firmware defects so they hunted me down and brought me back aboard as an agency contractor. I found out later that lady that shoved me out the door six years before recommend me for the job because of my skill at debugging everything. I got into analyzing the system and hunting down bugs, fixing them as I went along. When I ran out my team leader offered my services to other teams and I fixed their bugs too. In between I added new features, wrote two manuals, one for the testers on how exactly the printer worked one one on how I went about debugging software. That contract lasted two years and it was the best two years of my career. I was challenged every day and never went home with a fix undone.
Afterwards I got a few minor consulting jobs and decided to retire at 62. At 63 I enrolled in the University of Phoenix's computer engineering classes. I took my time, a break, and will graduate with a BS/IT in March 2022. Why bother you may ask? When I retired I confessed to my friends that had BS, MS and PhD diplomas that all I had was a high school diploma. Even Janis has a BA. I decided to go for a BS for my own satisfaction.
That's it. Same house since 1996, same girlfriend since 1975. No mortgage (more later) and I'm driving a 200 MPH Cadillac luxury super car and a 1997 Mustang GT convertible. No debts except that stupid student loan, no credit cards and no worries.
Since the market value of the house is a little more than 4x what I paid for it and having added Janis as co-owner because she made house payments when I couldn't, we decided to apply for a reverse mortgage. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth we got approved and are in the final throes of closing. When that happens we are financially set for life.
Between my Social Security Checks (I cashed in my pension in while I was unemployed) and Janis' SS checks and two pensions and the increased cost of living here we decided to take advantage of the investment we made in this house.
Now to the bragging. This house has four bedrooms, four bathrooms a fully finished daylight basement with one bedroom, two offices, a wine cellar, a home theatre and a second family room with a fireplace. We have a library, both a formal dining room and a breakfast room. A living room with floor to ceiling windows (we use it as a greenhouse). The family room also has floor to ceiling windows and the master bedroom has a picture window so we can see that wonderful view. The master has an master bath, two sinks, and a dressing room where the closets are. The garage has three doors and yet the cars are parked in the driveway. Why? Because the garage is a fully equipped woodshop.
I'm 70 years old and in my senior(?) year at the University of Phoenix going for a BS/IT. Why now? Because I never went to college and wanted to find out what it is like.
I could go on but there are only 7100 characters left and I'm sure the reader is tired and bored by now. so I will sign off.
Register for Free to view all details!
Yearbooks
Reunions
Register for Free to view all events!
Photos
