I can tell you for a fact that I wasn't awake as my body and mind entered the last year of my fourth decade of life. That unstoppable force called "time," which pushes us all ever onward, shoved me right along... Right into my 40th birthday. Damn!
The good news, I'm told, is that 40 is the new 30... Yes? Strange, feels nothing like 30 to me.
For one thing, when I turned 30, I was still struggling to figure out what my career path should be. That was 1995, of course, and I was just about to take a job with a young but promising company called Clark Internet Services, Inc., in Columbia, MD. I still remember my first interview with the owner and the Sales Manager for the company.
We met at the Pizza Hut in Columbia, where the owner/President, Jamie Clark, bought pizza for us and chatted casually with me via his Sales Manager who translated Jamie's Sign Language into speech for me, and vice versa. Jamie was a nice, highly intelligent, man who was immensely dedicated to the dream that, one day, this obscure service called "the Internet" would change the world and help level the playing field for members of his community.
After dinner, we drove just a few miles down the road into Clarksville, MD -- yes, named after Jamie's family, whose history stretches back to the nether reaches of Maryland history -- to a 300 acre stretch of farmland. We turned onto a bumpy dirt road that wound itself through about a half mile of corn fields to an old barn. And there we parked.
We had arrived at the hub of ClarkNet's operations... A converted dairy barn nestled amongst the corn fields, cow and sheep pastures, and several wooded acres.
It was dark when we arrived and there was noone at the "office." Jamie unlocked the door, which was newer than the building, walked in, and turned on the lights.
I walked in and looked around. Yup, a barn. It smelled like a barn, looked like a barn, etc. On the right was another door which led to the room which housed ClarkNet's servers as well as an impressive (for that day) bank of modems. I honestly can't remember for sure, but I think they were all 14.4K modems at the time, which was, of course, the best dial-up standard of that day. On the left was a round room that had been completed coated with tiles... The milking room.
Article comments
1 - SFC SKI
I'll say one thing, at 40, I don't feel I have to explain or justify any damn thing I say or do, I am a curmudgeon in training.
2 - gonzo marx
thanx for the good Read, David...
43 and doing ok with it, thank you ever so much....
and Ski...your natvie Talent fuels the true Skill in your training.....
{8^P~~~~~~~
>bows, hand over fist<
Excelsior!
3 - swingingpuss
David, you seem to have laid a solid foundation in your thirties and are now reaping the benefits in your forties both in your professional and personal life:)
Many salutations and compliments.
4 - Shark
And if you're really lucky -- in your fifties -- you'll realize you wasted most of your life chasing money, prestige, resources that you never dreamed of, a company which treats you well, compensates you well, offers you challenging work, opportunities for advancement, etc. -- that eventully drops you like a hot potatoe for economic reasons -- and you'll dedicate the rest of your life to having fun, finding True Meaning, contributing to your community...
and then you'll become a liberal.
Or you could continue at this pace, have an epiphany, and pull a Hunter S. Thompson.
Ya never know.
5 - Shark
*spelling error = obscure Dan Quayle reference
6 - David Flanagan
Shark,
What are you talking about? Hunter S. Thompson was a liberal. He also did a boatload of drugs, which, as you might know, tends have a causal linkage to suicide.
My favorite drugs are caffeine and whatever that chemical is that you get from eating chocolate. Not something I'm likely to blow my head off over.
David