Joseph Huerena:  

Life How to start... After dropping out of CU, I went to work with the phone company, first in Denver, then in Tucson, Phoenix, Seattle and then Littleton. I left Ma Bell as a Design Engineer in 1996 and accepted a 50% pay raise to go to Silicon Valley to become a Customer Services Engineer for Octel, the voice mail company. I left the next year (1997) because the cost of living was 2-3 times that of Colorado at the time (they are very similar now). I accepted a contracting job in Texas (no state taxes) for the same pay in California. I worked for MCI and GTE. One and one-half years later (1998) after my contract expired, I went to work for McLeodUSA in Iowa as a Network Engineer III. It was for less pay, but I accepted that job until I could get back on with US West. I knew that I could retire with US West, take my lump sum buyout and leave with benefits. I went to work for US West in 1999 as a Tactical Planner, prepared to put in 5 years so I could vest my time and retire. Qwest decided to buy US West, so they vested all former employees immediately in January of 2000, so I put in my paperwork to retire in April - serving over 20 years with US West and never working for Qwest. I went to work as a contractor for Telcordia Technologies in New Jersey. Telcordia establishes the computer applications, software, methods, standards and procedures for all the phone companies. I worked on a database called TIRKS for almost four and one-half years until August of 2004, when I was laid off. My family and I moved to San Antonio, Texas to reduce our cost of living about three-fold. It is with all the moves over the years that I started dabblin...Expand for more