It’s hard to believe that the last QHJ came out last May. What have I been doing? Well, let me tell you. Since May I have had a number of life changes that have kept me busy.
The first is a change in jobs. I decided to leave the Air Force and seek employment else where. I spent a number of months looking through technical career newspapers and various technical job related web pages, looking for job openings. I found the San Jose Mercury News Talent Center to be about the best place to look, esp. for the SF Bay Area.
Related to the first change, was leaving my job. I had to finish a few tasks and then document my job so I could pass it along to someone else. Documenting what you know is not as easy as it sounds. I also had to spend some time out-processing from the service. It takes paperwork to get in the service, and it takes even more to get out.
The final and biggest change was moving from Dayton, OH, back to the SF Bay Area. Getting the house ready for moving and getting it ready to sell took a while. I had to do some painting, replace a few doors (one cracked and one warped), patch some mortar on the brick outside of the house, and a few other household chores.
This all left very little time for hobbies. About the only time I used the QL was writing cover letters and printing Resumes. And since the move my access to the Net, esp. USENET has been limited.
I am waiting for my house to sell in Ohio, so I moved into an apartment. This meant that I had to put a number of household goods in storage. The movers did not do a good job of putting the right stuff in the right boxes so I could get what I needed off the moving van and put the stuff I did not need in storage. This meant that my QL is with me, but the disk drives, power supply, mouse, and modem cable are in storage. I’ve had to borrow disk drives, a PC power supply, and a QL power supply to get the QL up and running. I still have to make a modem cable. I’m using my Z88 for my telecomm. needs, and it’s tough finding an Internet Service Provider that supports 8 lines of display (real tough). Once I get a modem cable built I should be able to read comp.sys.sinclair.
Speaking of the Z88, most of this issue has been written on the Z88 while riding BART (the local commuter rail system) to work. I have about a 50 minute BART ride, so I have lots of time to put to good use.
And also speaking of work, I am now working for a company in Berkeley called Project Technology. They were founded by Sally Schelor and Steve Melor, creators of the SM Object Oriented Analysis Method. My job is to maintain the Sun Unix boxes and the PC’s.
While I’ve been busy doing non-QHJ things, I noticed that no one sent me e-mail asking where the next QHJ issue was. I’m not too sure if this is a good sign or not. Granted it was nice not to be bugged, but then I have to wonder if the QHJ was missed.
One thing you will notice with this issue is the number of articles with no code. I have not had the time to sit and code at the QL, so I’ve written some articles and covered what code was necessary with pseudo-code.
Well, that’s about enough for me. Oh, since I have just moved, please note the new snail mail address, but don’t write it down in ink. I hope to buy a house sometime around the March or April ’97 timeframe. Here now the newsletter.