Personal Computer

I glibly mentioned that I had bought my first personal computer, or as we called them back in the day, an IBM clone or a PC. However, I did not say why this sudden diversion away from the Commodore 64 or Amiga was warranted.

Stan Solomon, my accountant, had educated me in 1990 about the power of deferring a portion of taxation to the following year, and, assuming that all circumstances stayed the same, the devious plan would have worked out quite well. The unfortunate aspect of the game of numbers, now that I was not under contract anywhere, was that in 1991 the deferred part would have to be efficiently disposed of so that I would not be hammered for taxes.

It was decided that a major legitimate expense would be a personal computer and a printer. I remember welcoming this suggestion and did some research and then promptly bought one at the Toronto Computer Fest.

The company was called "First Choice Computers" and the machine was a 386 with 2mb of RAM (which I increased to 4mb at the cost of $190) and a 100mb hard drive (which I increased to a 200mb unit at the cost of $200) - the grand total was somewhere in the region of $4000

It was a lot of money for sure but solved an uncomfortable tax situation, plus there was another life changing benefit.

I could play Doom!

The secondary thing that Stan Solomon instructed me to do was to maximise my RRSP contribution, something that made less sense to me than throwing money at a computer, however, I reluctantly agreed and in 1991, prior to the deadline, we both put our first RRSP contributions away.

I did not realise at the time, but that advice was one of the key ingredients in changing our financial habits and oddly enough, that home PC, as it evolved, became an invaluable tool that over the years solved every financial situation we faced.

Crime and punishment

At the time there were numerous frustrations that started to eat away at me and start me on the path towards leaving once again.

There were a large group of design contractors employed at Dowty and it seemed that because I was spending some time in the CAD room after hours, I was involved in a lot of the banter between them and was learning a lot (again) of what I was missing in the wallet department.

In addition, to help in some of the scheduling of projects in the stress office, the Chief had advised us "senior" stress guys to utilize the jobshoppers more, something that was easier said than done and it became a daily frustration, and counter productive, to have someone else do the work. This may have been their plan, adopt a clueless approach to analysis and have the mini-bosses downgrade the task set.

The third irritant, and this felt more like an ongoing punishment for my past behaviour, was that the Chief appeared (to me) to be actively blocking my happiness, and he was doing this in a very subtle way. I was not being sent out to meetings at other companies, no field trips, no courses and certainly no jollies. If there was a junket to be enjoyed, for the first year or so, you could bet that I was not involved.

And that, more than anything, pissed me right off.

That was perhaps the intention, but the real effect of it all once again started a bit of a deep resentment inside me, first that the contractors were happily enjoying a lot more money, second that they were not taking much responsibility for delegated tasks and thirdly, here I was, worrying about getting reports done in time but it appeared that no one on the corporate ladder appreciated me.

Sob.

I don't know if at the time, throwing a few breadcrumbs my way in the form of a two day course, or a trip up to Montreal to Canadair for a business meeting, would have made anything better. I do know that by about the halfway mark of my tenure I was becoming rather bitter and twisted once again.

So once again, I started to plan my escape.