A MICROSOFT ROUND TRIP
BALOON RIDE
Right now
you’re reading a story that I’ve written, but actually I wrote this story as it
was told to me by a woman by the name of Dona (Cookie) Miller, a pleasant lady,
in her own words near as I can remember.
“When
I finished my finals in Computer Science at Weber State, Microsoft hired me
aboard. The date was June 3, 1993. I was in an excited state of mind, and
within a few days of being hired, I jumped out of bed before the crack of dawn.
I drove my car hastily to the Weber State football field located in the
foothills of Ogden, Utah. I unloaded my car in preparation for my balloon trip
to Seattle. I then drove back to my apartment, and parked my car in the back yard.
I woke up my teenage son, Raskel, called a taxi and driven back to the Weber
State football field. The sun was peeking over Mount Ogden.
We placed our
belongings in the gondola and climbed aboard. A quick blast of propane (100 million
British Thermal Units), and the balloon launched upward. ‘Midnight Blue’ extended herself eight stories
top to bottom, and began silently moving west North West toward our
destination, Micro-Soft Seattle. As ground grew farther, away two excited
individuals were having their first time long trip balloon experience. After
many difficult wind changes and a problem with a fan prop blade in Boise, we
arrived two weeks later in Seattle. We landed on Microsoft Corp. entrance lawn.
For
all intents and purposes, I was in the wonderful world of the famous alpha geek
Entrepreneur, Bill Gates. After two weeks of indoctrination, I was given a job
description of Chief Executive Facilitator and Public Relations Director. My
office was a few doors down from Bill’s. At the time Microsoft had a serious
problem with the United States Justice Department. This was before Microsoft
spent tons of money lobbying; that came later, 900 million in 1996.
The so called
Justice Department claimed Microsoft had a monopoly, better known by the Geek
Squad, as a beta-mixer. You see, on the worldwide internet millions of people
paid $19.99 a month to use the Microsoft windows operating system.
And so, in the
year of 1992, to no one’s surprise Bill was subpoenaed to a Justice Department
hearing. The Justice Department’s lawyers, mainly the chief Prosecutor Bob
Sharp, was the same guy that lied and produced false evidence at President
Clinton’s impeachment Monica Lewinski sex scandal hearings. He was later
discredited by Clinton and Gates. No one has heard from since. President
Clinton said, “He’s the only person I ever disliked.”
Back to my story: There were others in
Congress who raked Bill over the coals. You had to see it to believe it. The
questions were asked one after another, after another. The hot air blowing
around that hearing room was worse than a Texas tornado. The tech revolution of
that era definitely had its share of mud-slinging. Bob Sharp had made up his mind prior to the
hearing to break up M.S. split it down the middle into two companies. The
Justice Department had split up AT&T, and Standard Oil, but AT&T and
Standard Oil was not Bill Gates.
Was there much sympathy for Microsoft? The
answer is not much. Most politicians, lawyers, and competitors considered Bill
and his windows operating system (DOS) a bad thing. They thought of Bill as
another Rockefeller or worse. Some were even heard to say, Bill had outright
stolen Windows, when he slipped out the back door at IBM, his former employer.
It was
winners take all. Bill made no plans for recapulation, it was red alert, full
reconnaissance, take no prisoners. On Bill’s behalf, I told the media and
anyone else who would listen, the sound, unabridged situation the Justice’s
thing is totally unfair-burro racism, a simple case of political extortion. The
blankityblank J.D. isn’t just, that is for certain as night follows day.
In the
while, my life was a bed of roses. Yours would be too. Hundreds of us were
suddenly multimillionaires. Profits were doubling each year, money no object,
wages, commissions, stock options, golden parachutes, bonuses, up, everything going
up. Long gone were my Ogden days of drinking beer, begging for food stamps and
welfare handouts, oppressive duns, nor hiding behind knocks on my door. Real
money was coming in. The boom times were rolling, $100s, $1,000s, not the $20s
that spew out of ATMS into the hands of the rank and file, real money, good
whiskey; no more working under the table at the “Co-co-mo.” Bar on Two Bit
Street.
I was posing
as a “Tree War Writer” A tree war writer writes dancing baloney and useless
Animations that are used simply to impress clients. Tree war writers live in a
rarefied organizational layer. They are high above the regular employees. For
example, I did dancing baloney for Lucent’s Tech Division in the advertising
manuals department, located on the Eastern Rim headquartered in Peking.
Yes sir, I
had left Ogden and my 404 (mouse brain) boyfriend, Mortimer Bolivar, left him
behind for good the minute I left Utah.
Mortimer is a long haul truck driver, who works for “Neil Trucking,” headquartered
in North Salt Lake City, transporters of cars, trucks and wrecks. Mortimer is
short and has a talkative personality. He holds himself very stiff, straight,
and upright as short people usually do. He is careless with his paychecks. The
whole time of our relationship, he was skating on thin ice. He showed no
interest in my son Raskel. When he would come to my apartment, it was on the
spur of the moment, and only for a day or two at the most. He usually came for
salsa chips, popcorn, beer, TV sports, and anything else he could get. What kind of a boy fiend is that? Sometimes,
to top it off, the son of a gun, would park his rig in the back alley and not
come in at all, instead preferring to go drinking with his loser friends. If
you add in his whiney conversation there is decidedly more bad than good.
Were there any other changes in my life, like
say, social? Sure, a hundred and eighty
degree about face. I met a rich lawyer after starting my job, a barrister by
the name of Mark Anthony IV. He would give Raskel five silver uncirculated
dollars whenever he came to call. We ate at fancy restaurants, hotels and other
places. Mark was tall, stood straight as an arrow, handsome, and held a job
paying a shade over 2k a year. He had gray matter between his ears. Life was
heavenly.
Back to the Justice
Department which put an INJUCTION ON ms
Suddenly in need of respectability, to try and win public
and political support to Gates views, I would compromise with people. I would
present the positive aspect, which was the convergence of a worldwide internet
that would interface with any and all hardware for a minimal price. Bill’s
vision was to give free e-mail, and movies or music for a small server fee.
Computers for all the people on and off the planet using one common system
without curbs or government intervention. Software competition was often bought up, or sent on a ‘Salmon Run’ upstream to die out in the end.
Microsoft
would continue to dominate if the politicians and lawyers would go where I
won’t say. Bill put me in
charge of propitiating these elements. I enjoyed my job and the competition. My
apartment was open for entertainment. I was friends with respectable executives
like the CEO of Net Speak for instance, a fierce competitor. Whereas Bill
fulminated, I would present reasonable arguments for the Microsoft cause. I was
making ten thousand clams a week and giving twenty plus speeches a month. My
shrewdness was the talk of the town, I heard say. I might sit at the dinner
table next to an ego surfing phobic from a cube farm or maybe a chainsaw
consultant brought in to reduce the employee headcount or someone bat MO
billing emotional shields or surrounded by circles of the old nobility, who had
been diminished, or killed by the fall of Apple. They were all there at one
time or another. Each filled a niche in the prairie dog era called ass kissing.
They all came and went as most of them lost market share to Microsoft.
But then my
balloon started leaking, slowly at first. Gates and his wife, Melinda, left to
be philanthropic (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) and with them went 30
billion MSFT stock. The foundation became the world’s largest private
philanthropy. Steve Ballinger took over as CEO all by himself. And worse yet he
inherited Bills 12,000 legal men. As any sane person knows, anything bad will
happen with just one lawyer, let alone 12,000.
The housing
bubble of ‘07 came second. The lenders foreclosed on my condo. I lost my 500K
down payment. Next, the stock market went south. I lost my leveraged stock
holdings first; big holdings like LU
fiber optics at $80 a share, was taken off the stock exchange, as it nose-dived
into 4 cents a share, then penny stock, then to the junk bond market. All my Microsoft stock at $140 a share took a
dive to $20 in a short time, and as I couldn’t cover my margin and it went by
the wayside.
The Federal
Reserve was plastering the streets with trillions of dollars of useless paper
dollars which cut the value of a dollar down the middle.
You can guess
the natural result. I was broke. Hopelessly, I climbed aboard ‘Midnight’ with
little more than my innocent son Raskel. The Japanese tail wind pushed the balloon
SSE, bobbing us along the skyline past strip malls, into Oregon, Idaho, over
the City of Rocks, across the Great Salt Lake, into Ogden, above Mortimer’s
Semi-Truck in the alley.
I was
back to square one, generic America. I turned the propane off, ‘Midnight’
landed on the 50 yard line, her last descent, worn out and useless. I wonder if
the Co-co-mo. could use a bar maid?
DR. KARL WALLACE D.D.S.
To read more Karl Wallace stories go to:
karlwallaceblog.blogspot.com
