Computer Careers

 
My career in management had been very fulfilling but it was history now. The career advice I was getting from my friends, most of them successful real estate sales people, was not working for me.

I really liked programming the JCPenney computer and was actually quite good at coming up with ideas for what computers could do but when it came to seeking a career in programming I was not capable. I was self-taught in one language and programming jobs were all about languages like Cobol, Fortran, C++ and RPG. I had no knowledge of those languages and literally knew nothing about computer "storage" and "memory."

what did appeal to me, however, were the new PCs, Personal Computers, that were becoming popular. I missed programming so I bought a Commodore 64 computer, a hard drive and a dot matrix printer and hooked the computer up to a small TV. It was simple to get to the "root" directory where executable files (.exe) or programs could be writen and stored and I began programming in DOS which I found to be similar to the language I used on the Motorola mainframe. I had never let JCPenney know that I had all of the league's records on their computer and used it to process the weekly score sheets. The league secretary and I entered the data every Wednesday night after darts, printed the result sheets and mailed them the same night. Losing the computer meant the league could no longer get the Wednesday night results the next day but I managed to program my Comodore to process and print the league results.

PCs were becoming known for their "graphics" and to get some experience in graphics I wrote a DOS program that animated The Night Before Christmas. Even though I was not a very good artist, my porgram had Santa fly across the sky at the end of the story. Graphics was tedious work because every "pixel" of every image had to be programmed. It was more work than fun.

As some of my neighbors and friends began buying PCs, I helped them learn how to use them. In 1988 a colleague in the Real Estate business asked if I could write a "motel program" that would assign rooms to guests. He had several relatives who all owned motels along the New Jersey shore. His father spent a lot of time jockeying room reservations and was able to keep his motel 70% full. His relatives, however, could only achieve about 60% full. I studied the business and created a program that could actually achieve a 90% fill rate. The computer remembered every room assignment and would automatically assign preceding and succeeding days to keep as many rooms continually occupied as possible. I completed this 9990-line program 11/22/88 but his relatives didn't buy it. As soon as they realized they had to buy a computer to run the program, they were no longer interested.

However, I had spent months writing that program so I began going door-to-door to hotels and motels from Atlanric City to Cape May trying to sell it. Since many businesses did not own computers at that time, I often dragging my Commodore along to demonstrate the program. For those businesses that didn't have a computer I tried the sales pitch "It'll pay for itself within months" and for those businesses that had a computer, I created a demo program that could be used for 30 days before it expired. But I had no success until I approached the Hampton Inn®. They loved the program but insisted they must have kitchen and restaurant capabilities included. It would have taken me months to learn the food service business and add it to my program. I didn't feel I could complete that request in a reasonable time and my motel/hotel program went nowhere.

For whatever reason I decided to write a "payroll" program. It maintained employee records, had editable tax files and printed paychecks with a detailed check stub. The biggest challenge here was to teach the computer to covert a number into words for the check/ For example $262.83 had to print as Pay: ************ TWO HUNDRED SIXTY TWO and 83/100. It took me two months to write the program so it was completed in August 1989. But it was another program I couldn't sell. Next came a program for a law firm where my girlfriend worked. The firm had just gotten "PC computers" but had no practical use for them. I designed and wrote a DOS program for them that managed their case load, venues and tracked communications. They especially liked the feature that let them print out a detailed list of all the cases pending in a specific venue. If they had a trip to New York, for example, they could take a list of their New York cases making that business trip more productive. They didn't actually pay me for the program but treated my girl riend and I to dinner at a fancy restaurant. It would be 1995 before I would write a progam that actually sold.

After JCPenney, I began selling Real Estate and later sold home mortgages. Since I knew a lot about the needs of Real Estate and mortgage sales persons, I decided to write a PC program that would compare the PITI and Settlement Costs of three different mortgages, such as Fixed Rate, Adjustable and Balloon. My Real Estate friends were all very interested in this cool program and I managed, with their help, to sell it to Fox & Lazo Mortgage. Crestmont Federal, however, the mortgage company I had worked for, was not interested. But I finally had ONE sale!

By the time businesses began buying computers, DOS was no longer popular. A new version called "Visual Basic" was being used and it would take forever to convert my DOS programs into VB. In addition, Microsoft® was publishing new software on a weekly basis and it took me weeks or months to write a program. If I was going to make money as a programmer, I would have to find a job. The thought of working for someone was difficult after being the boss for over fifteen years, but I had to try.

 
One day in 1988 there was a Help Wanted ad for a PICK® Programmer. They offered two weeks training on the language and said it was similar to DOS. I slightly exaggerated my PC work and made my JCPenney mainframe experience sound more like it had been my job than a sideline. I submitted the resume and I got the job. It was an "entry level" position so my pay was at the bottom of the scale but I was finally doing something I loved and it was a steady income.

The company, Business Operating Systems and Software, had proprietary software in payroll, payables, receivables and general ledger. BOSS was located in Blackwood, NJ and had two programmers. When they hired me, they also hired Sandy, a single Mom who had graduated Cum Laude in Computer Science.

For the first month or so, Sandy and I worked together on a new PICK installation for a company that manufactured dental tools. It was located in Northeast Philadelphia so we had a daily, one-hour commute each way. Working together for months, Sandy and I became very close friends.

My first client at BOSS was in the commercial landscape business and needed a special inventory program. He bought grass-seed by the pound but his workers used it by the "scoop full." He bought concentrated fertilizer and weed killer by the barrel and diluted them for use on lawns. I gave him an inventory system that converted scoops to pounds and dilute to concentrate so he could control his inventory on those items. It was very successful and BOSS added Inventory to their proprietary software.

With an inventory program now among its proprietary products BOSS was able to attract my next client. He had a similar but more complicated inventory problem. As a retailer for General Cable, he bought cable in 1,000-foot reels and sold it by the foot. He had to track reels of many different types of cable and know how much was left on each reel so he wouldn't cut a new reel if there was enough left on one that had already been cut.

IBM had worked on this inventory for over a year and still couldn't deliver. I gave him an inventory program that tracked every reel within his inventory of cable types. The program told him which reel he should cut when an order came in and, eventually, which reels he could consider as scrap.

Meanwhile, Sandy left BOSS and moved on to programming in COBOL for Cigna® Insurance. Another programmer also left the company and I took over his client, who manufactured eyeglasses. BOSS was now down to two programmers; myself and the boss' son.

My new client, the eyeglass manufacturer, had just bought out another eyeglass manufacturer and inherited their franchise businesses. With franchises, they needed a General Ledger within a General Ledger. Luckily, I had created a DOS program that was a GL within a GL for a friend who worked for a nonprofit, the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill, PA. Having learned about this form of bookkeeping helped me to create a new General Ledger program for my new client whose headquarters were in Dallas, TX. This new general ledger program turned out to be another great addition to BOSS's proprietary software.

However, after four years with BOSS, my salary and benefits were not matching my ability and my contributions to the company. I was earning less than half his son's salary but I had more clients than he had and I was the only one developing new software. When BOSS wouldn't increase my salary but hired a new employee to take over some of my accounts, I decided it was time for me to move on.

I took a job with Larmon Photo in Abington Township, PA. Their computer was running Pick® but it also ran Prime® for the Abington Township Police Department. Pick and Prime were very similar.



My new job was with Larmon Photo in Abington, PA. The President of Larmon Photo saw a need for a computer system for the photo industry and developed Computyme Photoware. It provided inventory control, receivables, payroll, point-of-sale, and more to the photo industry. That system is PHOTOWARE®, the first computer system designed FOR the photo retailer, BY a photo retailer! In 1976, David Harrar, President of Larmon Photo, saw the need for a complete computer solution for his growing business and developed the PHOTOWARE® system. It has been over twenty-five years in the making, and in that time PHOTOWARE® has earned a fine reputation in the industry, as well as a world-wide network of users representing hundreds of camera stores like yours.

My biggest project with Larmon Photo was creating a payroll program that could handle the withholding taxes for the Washington, DC area where many employees worked in one state and lived in another.

However, the photo industry was changing and Larmon was closing stores. Larmon had three programmers and I was the low man on the totem pole. My boss suggested I might want to start searching for another job. My opportunity came with Lightship Corporation, a company that purchased past due receivables at pennies-on-the-dollar and then collected those debts dollar-for-dollar.

At Lightship I had a bright office on the 16th floor of an office building on Chestnut Street in downtown Philadelphia and this time I was actually programming in Prime, not Pick. But guess what? Sandy was working at Cigna's Liberty Place location at 16th and Chestnut in downtown Philadelphia. Sandy and I continued working in Philadelphia for the next 15 years. We had lunch together almost every day and especially enjoyed summertime lunches together in Rittenhouse Park.

One of my biggest projects for Lightship was a mainframe program that I can only compare to today's Email. My program let inter-office memos and correspondence be typed, shared and tracked. They could be searched by content, who sent it, who received it and even who replied to it. The old mainframe computers kept text on one long line so getting the text to "wrap" was one of my biggest challenges. The text remained left-justified with no hyphenations.

But small companies were not steady employment. After a year or two Lightship was also going out of business and I was searching the "help wanted" ads again for a job. As true luck would have it, the Philadelphia Housing Authority was looking for a Pick Programmer. By now I knew my worth and my skills as a programmer and since the job for the city would require me to live in the city I expected, and got, a very worthwhile salary.

 
When the PHA finally accepted and implemented what I had learned about HUD reporting, they passed a HUD evaluation for the very first time. When the guy who loaded the printer with paper and distributed the printouts of the reports that I had designed was awarded Employee of The Year, I didn't understand. What I was told was that I should have pretended to design a useless program instead of being honest that it wouldn't work. That's the politics of my eleven-year employment at the Philadelphia Housing Authority.

PHA is the nation's fourth largest housing authority. It houses nearly 80,000 people, roughly 24% (1 out of 4) of the total number of households in Philadelphia. It employs 1,400 people and has a budget that totals approximately $400 million.

I started work at the Philadelphia Housing Authority on September 17, 1993. Yes, my 53th birthday. My position was Programmer Analyst in the Information Systems Management Department. ISM was a small department with 3 programmers, 3 printing department workers, the Director and his secretary. It was located on the 3rd floor at 2012 Chestnut Street in downtown Philadelphia. Payroll was on the 4th floor of the building and the Accounting and Admissions Departments were next door in a building adjacent to our parking lot.

Working for the City required me to live in the city. I moved from a very lovely setting at Jericho Manor in Abington Township to Chestnut Hill Village in Chestnut Hill. Chestnut Hill was a proud and somewhat wealthy area neighboring the suburb of Abington but it was within the Philadelphia city limits. Both areas were far north of the city. In Abington I had a 10-minute drive to the train station before my 50-minute train ride into the city but Chestnut Hill Village was a short walk to the SEPTA train station.

Essentially ISM was responsible for designing software that created faster and better ways for employees of all the departments of PHA to do their jobs. More importantly it provided support for residents to access and receive services. And finally, ISM was responsible for all of the reports to HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Over the years I worked for PHA, I modified and/or redesigned payroll, general ledger and work order software. Every year the W2 and 1099 forms changed requiring new software to print the right data in the right boxes on the forms. Once I was assigned to design software that would combine the Housing Authority's police reports with the Philadelphia Police Department's reports. The Housing Authority has its own Police Department with armed police officers but when the city added housing authority crimes to their own crimes, the city's crime report became embarrassing. That software was never installed so, as far as I know, any crime that is committed in the city's 65 public housing sites NEVER appears in Philadelphia’s crime reports.

Imagine if that's true in Chicago, a city with the nation's highest crime rate. I was once assigned to work at the Chicago Housing Authority to improve and enhance their workorder system. I was astounded at the number of work orders to "fix bullet holes."

That work order system was probably my most impressive work at PHA. When I started work for PHA, it was under the direct control of HUD because it had never passed an annual HUD evaluation. One year during an evaluation I was appointed liaison between PHA and HUD. What I learned, and quickly realized, was that our work order reporting was incorrect. We were cheating ourselves. HUD required counting the days it took to abate a work order and we were reporting the number of days it took to complete a work order.

Often repairs for our tenants were abated before they could be considered complete. A broken window, for example, could be fixed to prevent rain or cold from entering (abated) before the new glass was installed (completed). However, I couldn't convince the PHA administrators or the ISM Director of this HUD policy.

When no one believed the work order reports had been wrong for many years I worked from home developing a program consistent with HUD requirements. I worked at night for many months. Then, even after demonstrating how the abated reports improved our HUD standing, only one Site Manager, among PHA's 64 public housing sites, was convinced. He and I collaborated and I arranged for his Site to use the new workorder software.

It took one year but that manager had the proof that I was right about our HUD reports. With his help, PHA finally acknowledged and implemented my new work order program. The year my program was installed on the computer, PHA passed the HUD evaluation for the very first time. The newspaper reported that the success was accomplished by the "Housing Authority Director and his staff!" No, it was me. Just me!

My workorder system worked so well I was sent to install it at the floundering Chicago Housing Authority. And, after all of that, when it came time for the "employee of the year award," the award went to the guy in the ISM Department who loaded the printer with paper and distributed the printouts. Not to me. Not to the guy who single handedly designed and installed the programs that saved the Authority from HUD.

The way it was explained to me, the administration had asked both of us employees to do a job, within our job description, that they knew was impossible. They never said what Paul had been asked to do but they claimed he said "I'll try." On the other hand, I had said the job was "impossible." They told me I should have said "I'll TRY!"

In 2003 PHA began phasing out their mainframe computer and replacing the programs with the Internet and PeopleSoft software. PeopleSoft set up 15 workstations in a conference room for its programmers to convert our Pick software into PeopleSoft. The programmer in our department who had the most seniority became involved with the PeopleSoft developers. Another programmer became an internet handler and I remained the only programmer to continue work with the mainframe.

Payroll and General Ledger were the first programs to be converted into the new PeopleSoft software. Instead of me becoming a valuable asset in development, though, I spent a year creating reports to compare PeopleSoft results to our mainframe results. It was a tedious, unrewarding job that was taking a year to accomplish and there was no new development considered for Resident Services and Work Orders that remained on the mainframe.

The programs that I often worked late to develop and the job I couldn't wait to start each day, had become a boring, unpleasant task and my first order of business each day was reading "Emails!" ISM moved to the first-floor on Chestnut Street and now employed 6 programmers, each in their own "cubical." I remained the only Pick programmer and was still responsible for Resident Services and Workorders on the mainframe.

In 2004 I had planned a September Mediterranean Cruise. When it came time for my vacation, PHA refused to allow it, even though the cruise and airfare were paid for and not refundable. I was making a very handsome salary but not enough to throw away an expensive vacation. When they threatened to "fire me" if I took my vacation, I simply "retired."

 
It all began in the late 90's with an Internet subscription to AOL. AOL was an early pioneer of the Internet. It provided dial-up service for e-mail and became well known with it's popular expression "You've Got Mail" AOL later provided instant messaging and a web browser after it purchased Netscape.

I was fascinated by the websites I found on the Internet and soon learned about Hyper-Text Markup Language. HTML is the standard language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. I wanted to design a website so I began teaching myself HTML code. In 2000 I bought a book HTML For The World Wide Web by Elizabeth Castro and created a website hoping I could make a little extra money on the side by programming in Pick™ software. I never got any business from that website but I still use that book today as a handy reference.

HTML is usually assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript. I've learned to use both and can actually write code faster than most people can create a website from a template provided by an HTML Builder. I can create any design anyone might want without depending on a template. I created my first website in 2000 and in 2001 I had an idea of writing my autobiography and making the website look and read like a newspaper. Each "article" was part of my life! Since then, I've published 18 websites. Some sold. Some did not. And others I gave away to friends and family.

This autobiography was first published on January 17, 2003. It was designed to look and read like a newpaper. I called my newspaper "The Good Times". The news articles in The Good Times were different events from my life and my "newspaper" even included an "Editorial" page and "Classified Ads." The "ads" were, for example, Autos I owned instead of Autos for sale. Over the years my autobiography evolved and expanded from 8 to 14 pages. In April 2018 I published a new version Vol 6 of The Good Times. With the advent of mobile devices my "newspaper" appeared in miniture on those devices. This version is mobile friendly but to acheive that it has lost most of its "newspaper" appearance.

One website I was very proud of is my Golf Course website. I designed this website in 2003 and was so sure there would be a market for it that I made a coloful trifold brochure that I mailed to dozens of golf courses and resorts. I distributed it to local courses going door to door. It was a very unique website. By selecting Course Tour from the home page menu, an interactive map of the course appeared allowing the visitor to take a hole-by-hole tour of the course. Just point to a hole number on the map and a photo of the hole appeared with a description of the hole. You could even display the scorecard along side of the map. One version of the website included views of the hole from the T-box and the green. But apparently the brochure didn't work. No one asked for a demonstration and I never sold it to any course.

All the websites listed under "External Links" in the Index are my code and you can visit those websites on a computer or a mobile device. However, the links above and in the Classified section under Web Designs are working models of only the first page. In those models the external links have been disabled. These old programs will simply appear as a miniature version of the desktop website on mobile devices. The The Iuen Family History and my Blog were designed using an HTML Builder so they could be edited without using HTML code.