![[an old ex-rider]](WU121223.jpg)
Golly! Who'd'a thunk it? Me! Working as an employee of an insurance company! Yet there I was! And in some ways, I thrived! Despite usually being at odds with my boss, who was the Vice President for Technology. Gracious!
I met my best friend ever there. I actually mentored her! She had joined us as a fluke. She was working at some clerical job that she was wasted in. She heard the company needed a programmer and asked for the job. In any other corporation, she'd've probably been laughed out the door. She had no training, no experience, didn't even know what a computer was or how it worked. But my boss briefly had a sub-boss then, and the sub-boss recognized that she was bright as well as beautiful, and was sure she would learn quickly and well.
Man! There's a bet not many would have taken!
Did it pan out? Holy jumping cicadas it did! Within a year she was programming quite competently, and soon after that, she was suggesting capabilities that could be added to the computer programs we provided for the clerical workers in the company. She was a helluvan asset! And damned good looking too.
We're still good friends. In some ways, she takes care of me as if we're related. I'm very very lucky to have her in my life.
But back to programming for an insurance company while at odds with my boss. Well, I survived.
I had to learn furiously to understand what my boss wanted. I had no training in business, he had no training in physics or engineering. We had a communication problem
But I solved the problems I had been hired to solve. I maintained the old, old programs the company was still using written in computer languages none of the youngsters around me knew.
Oops! Then the company decided to splurge and *buy* - oh my goodness! - new programs that needed no programming.
Double good fortune! They needed new programs to fill in some of the capabilities the store-bought programs didn't have. My friend could provide those. She stayed on. And the man who had been the company's DBA (Data Base Administrator) quit and went to work for a company that actually paid for his expertise and skill. Quick as a wink, I volunteered to do that work. Caught in the lurch, my boss accepted and I became the company's temporary DBA.
Whew! I was still employed!
And some time later, our poor old computers that should have been replaced years before began to get rickety, and I learned I had the knack of keeping them running, sometimes even keeping them running efficiently. Damn, it was tough solving those problems! But I got me some book larnin' and became the company's de facto system administrator. I kept those suckers working til the company merged with two other companies to become a real corportion. They bought some new, powerful computers.
Oh well. It was past time for me to retire anyway.