After four years at Hunter (four years seemed to be a theme for me as you will see as we move on). I moved to a publishing company, where a former co-worker had moved to earlier. He was also thinking about starting his own business, but that will be later on here.

    On the home front, it was starting to become apparent that looks alone couldn’t maintain a relationship. My wife and I had different outlooks on life and the future. But it would take a couple more years for it to come to a head.

    In 1976, her parents decided to sell their Brownstone near Prospect Park (maybe a bad thing, because they are worth a fortune now), and move to Staten Island. At the time, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge had opened some time ago (I believe the original toll was... wait for it... 50 CENTS!) and Staten Island was growing like crazy. They wound up buying what was called a “Mother-Daughter” house, and we left Brooklyn to live on another island.

    Up to this point (and for another 11 years, actually), I had never spent much time on the “mainland” of America, but instead did a lot of “island hopping” from Brooklyn, which is on Long Island, to Manhattan Island and now from Staten Island through Brooklyn and then to Manhattan Island and back. I would either have to drive into Brooklyn, try and find a parking space and take the subway into Manhattan or drive all the way in and deal with further traffic and parking. It was a little crazy.

    Meanwhile, things were not going very smoothly in our marriage. On vacation in Bermuda, we tried to sort things out, but that didn’t go well at all. We just weren’t meant to be together. So we got a separation and I moved out of the house in 1977. Since my sister was now living in the apartment in my parent’s house, I got an apartment in Staten Island, near Wagner College.

    It was a bit of a chore living so far away from the “City,” as Manhattan was/is called. But I was making a good living, so I dealt with it for the next 2 years (soon to be another fork, but in a while…). It did make my social life a little complicated.

    I started dating again, but I met a few women who lived very far away. There was an acronym, “GU,” which stood for Geographically Undesirable. I made up for it a little bit because Staten Island was still relatively undeveloped, and I lived near a nice park with a lake. Plus, I lived up on a hill, and there was a spot right near my apartment that had an awesome view back down to the Verrazano Bridge.

    For anybody knowledgeable about the geography of New York City, think about this typical dating scenario: Working in Midtown Manhattan, meeting up with someone after work, driving through Brooklyn, over the Verrazano, to my apartment, “hanging out,” then going all the way back through Brooklyn and Manhattan again and then one more time all the way back home to Staten Island. I was putting a LOT of miles on my car. I did meet a woman around this time that, sadly, is out of touch now, but whom I cared about a lot, and we went through a lot. I wish you well, sweetheart, wherever you are.

    Professionally, working at the publishing company was pretty interesting. My title was Application Programmer/Analyst, and I guess we were the forerunners of people who are now writing “apps.” The software we developed was a little different than at Hunter, so I started to become more diverse in my computer development. It has often come up in conversations, so I have said it many times, but now I will put it down on paper (In a manner of speaking, I don’t know if this entire thing will ever go beyond digital).

    Had I stayed in Aerospace, I wouldn’t have had the different experiences I have had in Academics and Commercial/Publishing up to this date. I would eventually deal with medical applications, telecommunications, finances, etc. It has been pretty cool, actually.

    Here's another mini fork or fork within a fork. The publishing company had an office in Binghamton, in upstate New York. I had to go up there a couple of times to do some work. It was the winter of 1978 and the weather was terrible. I was riding in the passenger seat of an employee's car from the company. When she went to change lanes on a bridge over a river, she skidded and lost control. We crashed into the side of the bridge. Luckily for us, the wall stopped us, or I don't think either of us would have made it.

    We wound up in a hospital nearby. I was lucky to have only bumped my head on the dash and got a butterfly stitch on the corner of my right eye. Unfortunately, she hit her face on the steering wheel and she had a bloody nose. We were able to leave the hospital, and I came back home the following day. I learned later on that she had more severe injuries. Though I never found out the full extent of her injuries, I hope she recovered. Meanwhile, if that bridge wall hadn't held, this would never have gotten written, and I wouldn't be around today. A fairly consequential mini fork, I would think.

    While working at the publishing company, I still maintained friendships with the people I worked with at Hunter. One in particular, the “other” at the interview with Bernie, had a friend who worked for the Phone Company. They thought about developing software that could help companies deal with their telephone utilization. They were looking for someone to create the software and they wanted it to be me.

    Since we all needed to keep our “day jobs,” we worked on this at night and on weekends. As luck would have it, he and I both were living on Staten Island, so it was convenient to get together and work on it. It was going to be a sideline for a while before we could quit our jobs and devote ourselves entirely to it. This was looking to be the next real fork. I guess I had to experience a couple of “minis” again first, though.

    Meanwhile, after four years at the publishing company, another person who worked there and who I also knew from Hunter, decided to go on his own and start a consulting company. I left the job at the publishing company and, while I was still developing our telephone management software, my “day job” became doing consulting work for another Hunter friend. This is also where I met Bernie’s daughter. That makes three people from Hunter who were very influential in my life.

    As I have said before, "Bernie, thanks."

    That also makes for “Jack” (Jim in my case, obviously…) being a pretty busy boy. This particular fork we’re on right now began around 1976. I worked on the telephone software for a while. We found several computer centers where we could rent time and work on it. Over the next few years, we rented time in a place in Downtown Manhattan near the World Trade Center, a place in Midtown Manhattan on Park Avenue and one near Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building. I was all over the city. Since we both had worked at Hunter, they agreed to be our “beta,” so to speak, and we were able to test our software there and get the kinks out.

    Moving on to 1982, we have now (finally) gotten to the point where we were able to afford our own offices. I was working in the frickin’ Empire State Building. How cool is that?

    We started with a smaller office on the 84th floor. Eventually, we moved down to a larger one on the 81st and then a still larger one on the 78th. We hired some other programmers, including the brother-in-law of the person from Hunter, a friend of mine from my stickball days (more details later), some office staff, etc. We were becoming a real company! I was making a very good living, and having a pretty fun time otherwise, too. Life was pretty good.

    And then we come to a fork -