The latest… 10/11/95
Ok folks... I've finally had a chance to sit down and type something about what's been going on. Good thing too... a lot has happened since April 13th! That's the last record I have of sending something to you all with news about the ever exciting adventures I face. Some of you I've seen since then, others I haven't... all of you just deal with what you already know and read on... 'cause you might learn something you don't!
Well... it just so happened that 8 days after I mailed the last update, the company I was working for (CyberBridge) blew sky high. The situation was, as I said, a tremendous amount of money was being wasted on people who weren't necessary, $3,000 office chairs that weren't necessary, (you get the picture). It finally came to the attention of the powers that were, that they were running out of capital and were going to have to break down and let some people go. So they call the office of our main capital investor (Denbridge) and say, "Well, we need to lay a bunch of people off, but we need $70K for severance, vacation pay, and all that." The money was not immediately approved and we didn't hear from them for about a week. Then, Friday April 21st, out of the blue in walks a Denbridge representative saying something to the effect that they were doing a hostile takeover, we were all fired, and not to expect any money. So the fun begins... Denbridge owes us (the employees) money... quite a bit, in fact. So one of the sales force (Tim Templeton, who was also owed quite a bit of money) proceeds to take out a lien against all the company's assets to assure that he gets paid. What worked out was that he spun off a new company with us as the crew, we kept our hardware/software, we got the contracts we were working on, and in exchange we wrote off what they owed us. This was going to be great... finally a company where we (the crew) were going to have more say in what goes on, etc. So the first thing we do is go to lunch to brainstorm up a name. Turns out, Tim T. had plans of his own and never intended for us to 'get involved'. He walked in one day and announced that our name was going to be "Providence Studios". He was starting some 'sister company' (Providence Video) that was going to do video seminars teaching other businesses how to effectively manage their businesses in a Christian fashion... what a joke. He was some how able to raise half a million in capital for the video company (so I heard) and was only going to use the contract money (being delivered in milestone payments) to fund Providence Studios... well, things didn't work out. We (the crew) went with out pay from April 10 - May 30... ouch. After then the checks were a little more regular, which we were happy to see. Then in July, payday (the 26th) came and went and there was no explanation for, and no mention of our missing paychecks. This was in the middle of the CCT season and I had work to do on Mt. Helix, so I decided that I wasn't going to go to work, but instead would work on Helix the next day. So... I'm up there working and I get a page from them asking me a few technical questions and whether or not I would be in. I was going home to shower and said I would come by after that, which I did. They then proceeded to schedule me for hours, but I informed them that I was not going to continue working 'for free'. Our supervisor and I had had one private meeting in this May - July period and I outlined for him what I saw were definite problems in the management of Providence and what I wanted to see changed. None of these things happened, of course, and it all just came to a crux that fateful July 27th.
So I went on for the rest of August just handling Jesus Christ Superstar (which was almost a full time job toward the beginning) and sometimes going on job interviews with the rest of the crew. Then at the beginning of September I get a call from Rob (Evans, guitar player of the Cloud Merchants, my former band, and fellow digital artist) asking me if I'd be willing to be flown up to Milpitas, CA (SF bay area), have all my accomodations/food paid for and finish the last contract in 2 weeks time for Time Warner Interactive. So... I flew up on the 8th of September and that's just what we did. It was a great experience and we made some good friends there at TWI, not to mention getting a great letter of recommendation from the senior producer we worked for.
On the day I was leaving for Milpitas, I got a call from John Couch (the gentleman who is basically responsible for my being into computers at all) just saying hi basically and telling me about a company in San Jose that needed someone with my talents. I told him I was just going to happen to be in the area for the coming two weeks, so we arranged a meeting up there. Anyway... I ended up interviewing for this System Administrator position at this company, Info.NET Technology Corp. and got it. So after we finished out job at TWI, I went back to SD for one week, got all my stuff together and headed out for San Jose... where I now live.
Info.NET is a pretty cool place. It's actually a software development company that's doing work on 'Internet Tools'. I've got to be careful what I say about it so I won't go into much more detail. I'm in charge of the computers and our network basically: 6 Sun Sparcstations (SunOS 4.1.3), 1 Pentium Server (Linux 1.2.11), 1 Dual-Pentium Server (Windows NT Server), A few Windoze boxes, My Windows NT Workstation, and, of course, a PowerMac 8100/100. We're tied with our Cisco router to a T-1 from MCI, and from there into 'the net'. The objective (at least what I've been told) is to build something that would be attractive to the likes of a Netscape or Adobe or Microsoft or something, sell to them and become filthy rich. The projected date is sometime in May, so we'll see how it goes....
When I first got here, I stayed with an old friend of mom's in the lovely town of Gilroy, otherwise known as 'The Garlic Capital of the World'. That was nice... kinda like living on a farm. It's about 30 miles South and East of downtown, so there was a drive, but it was tolerable. Before I came up I had talked with a friend of a friend of my dad's who had a room she was thinking about renting so I came to see it after my first day of work. I spent Sunday (the day before) looking at other places that were for rent and this place was definitely the best. There was already a bed and a computer table... nice not to have to bring all that stuff from SD. So I'm getting pretty well settled... I'm about 10 minutes south of downtown. I hate not knowing my way around... it's kinda fun though, 'cause when you least expect it you run across someplace like Apple or Silicon Graphics. That's the best part of being up here... I'm about 15 minutes just south and east of Stanford, so I'll probably be hangin' with Jason (Kent) on weekend or whenever his schedule allows.
For those who are interested, my next scheduled appearance in SD will be the weekend of the 28th.
I hope you all are doing well, I'd love to hear from you to know what's going on in your lives!
So, yes, I'm now an inhabitant of the thriving metropolis of San Jose, California.... Here's all the new pertinent info (please forward it to whoever might want it):
Home --------------------------
James Wigdahl
(Come on... you really think I'd leave something like this here?)
Work --------------------------
James Wigdahl
c/o Info.NET Technology Corporation
40 South Market Street, Suite 200
San Jose, CA 95113
(408)271-0330
(Ahhh, what the heck... you can get this right from InterNIC anyway...)
Internet ----------------------
jwigdahl@ifnt.com
http://www.ifnt.com/jwigdahl