I graduated from Harvey Mudd College in May of 1993, at a time when the job market was not particularly forgiving of my lack of experience. In other words, finding a job proved to be much more difficult than I thought it might have been in the years previous as I watched my upper-classmates and their offers of lofty salaries and exciting positions.

I, on the other hand, received no such offers, no such excitement. In lieu of these, I decided to stay in Southern California, where I thought perhaps the reputation of my alma mater and the fact that some part of California probably concealed my eventual career might come together. While I waited impatiently for this event, I stayed in summer housing on campus, which for that year was at Scripps College (an all-girl college across the street from Mudd) in Kimberly Dorm. I had never been there during my undergraduate career, by the way.

So there I was, paying about $50 per week to stay in my extremely spartan abode. I had secured a subsistence position in the A/V department of my school, which was run by my friend Matt Masterson. An older Scottish joke-teller and whiskey-drinker, Matt was a most kind man, and seeing my plight, handed me the rent-paying task of copying graduation video tapes for all 118 members of my class (or, their families rather) using three video decks. He paid me for the time the motors were running in them.

This, mixed in with a six-mile-round-trip walk to my favorite Thai place at the time, and various other interactions, kept me out of trouble while I eagerly searched the papers and on-campus job postings, sending out a resume or two ever couple of days.

This really sucked.

My friend Jason was staying across the hall from me, equally lucky in the ways of work. He and I were fairly desperate, and so we gave in to temptation and called up a friend of ours, David Stepp, who had gone back home to the Bay Area to work for the summer before his departure for grad school at Duke. He had mentioned before leaving after graduation that he wanted to get us up there, and that this place where he was to work was always in need of summer hires, at least, but for myself, I felt that getting a job in that way was literally giving in, and I didn't want to go that way just yet.

But such moral fortitude was emptying my pockets and destroying my pride. One completely disappointing job interview at General Instrument in San Diego convinced me that my future did not exist south of Fresno. I called David.

This part is a little fuzzy, but at some point, Jason called him as well, and since Jason was already from the Bay Area as well, he was more than willing to head up and check it out. He and his girlfriend, Meg, jumped in his car and headed north. He was interviewed for the day by a number of characters, with a break at Fresh Choice with Andrew Eisner and Bruce Berkoff. Meg waited in the car.

So Jason was hired, which seemed encouraging. It was a strange gig, only guaranteed for the summer, and not paying all that great, in a field I was not particularly interested in, but times were tough, and I was down to only a few blank video tapes. I finally hooked up with Bruce after a brief round of phone tag, and I found him to be one of the most alarming people I had ever met over the phone. In other words, I was feeling a little concerned that perhaps high moral ground was the better, if less lucrative choice in this situation.

Among my most favorite interview questions was when, since Bruce knew several of us (David, Jason, and others), he asked if I could rate my own intelligence with regard to those peers. I was thrown for a loop. How do you answer that? Who is smarter, you, or your friend? When? How? It didn't help that we had just graduated from one of the screwiest colleges I had ever heard of, making for a pretty shaky self-esteem level in the academic department. I took the fifth.

Tickets arrived via Fed Ex from Shannon Nell, who I would later learn was the key to the existence of Bruce. She set up a day of interviews and even set my itinerary so that I could see the sights and learn a bit about the area. I had to leave early in the morning, arriving Saturday. The interview was Monday.

I showed up wearing black slacks, a white shirt, herring bone jacket, and a black tie with some sort of weird pattern on it. I was staggeringly over-dressed. Bruce, who I immediately recognized as Satan coming down a double flight of stairs, greeted me kindly and immediately chided my wardrobe. And So was the beginning of my interview with SuperMac.

I met quite a few people, and this was my second interview that was not on campus, so I was sort of making things up as I went along. I was trying to follow the recipe for a good interview that I had heard about from all of those upper-classmates who apparently did theirs correctly, and in so doing I found myself telling the same stories over and over.

Warren Jew and Mike Mathog interviewed me as a pair, which was strange. Everyone was difficult to read, but they were the hardest to get a handle on, so I just tried to answer them. Warren had worked on some microcontroller stuff in college, which we had in common, but for the most part, I felt like I was just barely dodging the bullets. One of the guys who eventually started Rocket Science games interviewed me (I forget his name, but so does everyone else now), as did Loren Luke, who has all sorts of grand contacts in the entertainment industry. I think there were others.

Suddenly, it was lunch time, and I found myself walking across the parking lot to Fresh Choice with Andrew Eisner and Bruce Berkoff. It was odd, as I felt certain I had been there before, or at least heard about it. There was no girl waiting for me in any car nearby. We did have a pleasant conversation, though, even though I spilled a whole lot of crappy chicken noodle soup all over my tray and neglected to grab any napkins. Andrew had a penchant for repeating the word "whatever" and he seemed to enjoy chewing on the ear piece of his glasses. Bruce was, as near as I can describe, a Gatling Gun of conversation. I was fatigued.

While we were waiting, I was hit was the second-strangest interview question I have come across, by the same individual. As Bruce sat in a cube (a concept I was not wholly familiar with, though it was fairly close in size and clutter so that familiarity with "Dorm Room" was sufficient background) that was disorganized in layers while I waited for something, and asked me "What are you passionate about?" Not a question about my qualifications or experience related to the position, and not a question about what I planned to do in five years, and certainly not something so mundane as a question about hobbies. My answer, strangely, was "Thai Food."

As I departed, we set the start date for July 17, 1993. A Monday. I bid Bruce farewell at the door with his final assurances that the meager salary and temporary employee status would change, as would my job title and description. I had just agreed to be a Tester.