After about two weeks of being away from the silliness that was Apple Computer (did I say "was?"), I began searching for a job again. That was an experience. I did the whole online thing and sent out at least one resume per day, with grand hopes of getting a call from someone. Anyone. The bank account was not exactly well-stocked (I hadn't really planned to quit Apple so soon) and eating was turning out to be a pretty good, but costly activity.

Bruce Berkoff referred me to a contract agency in San Francisco that had a position in Santa Clara doing some digital video QA stuff on Macintosh computers. That agency did not have much experience in Silicon Valley proper, so they were sort of new to the contract game. They told me which company was interested in hiring the position, and arranged an interview.

Ironically, a woman that I had worked with at Apple for a short while, Terry Berry, was working in the QA group at that very same company. So I gave her a call at the now-defunct RasterOps to see what was what. She said she had seen the resume from the agency, but it lacked (as usual) my personal contact information, so she didn't know where to reach me. She put in a good word for me with management, and the interview went, um, well.

The end of the interview was where things got a little tricky. It seems that the agency was definitely hip to the gouging game, and after the manager at RasterOps (Dan Ho) and I discussed the discrepancy in rates, it became clear that dealing through this particular agency would not be good for either party. Since I had never signed anything, and since RasterOps did not want to spend the agency-inflated rate for me (not in the budget), we decided together to bypass the agency. [Now, I don't recommend this, since it is pretty uncool and can shorten your contracting viability in the close-knit Silly Valley, but this was just too much silliness for me]

I began working there, and eventually I proved my abilities to the Acting-Director of Engineering, Marshall Johnson, and he told me he intended to hire me into the engineering group once the project I was working on shipped. It did, and he moved me into engineering immediately. While I was checking out the source base for the project, he informed met hat I would be going to Japan for a week to meet with a large company there about an OEM project that I would be working on. This, I thought, marked a definite improvement in my career direction.

I went to Japan with Ron Wood, the VP of Asia-Pacific Sales. By this time, the RasterOps/Truevision merger was complete, so I went under the Truevision, Inc. flag. Everything went well, and the code that I had been working on for three weeks before the trip worked well enough to instill some confidence in the Japanese business men with whom we were dealing.

About two weeks after my return, I was made an offer for employment with Truevision. There was no change between the annual salary and my consultant rate, which I later learned was sort of bad for me. But at the time, I wanted rather desperately to put some roots down somewhere. I took the position on June 5, 1995.

After a pleasant time working with the small-but-smart engineering team in Santa Clara, I eventually found out that the VP of engineering had initially doubted that I would come away from Japan with any success! Upon learning this, I confronted him, and he admitted to doubting me. I told him, to his face, to never doubt me again (in essentially those words), which I believe marked a definite downward turn in our relationship.

Besides the fact that that VP was a prick, Truevision itself was not in good health at all. I took it upon myself to have a chat with the President of the company, and he told me he wanted to give Truevision and him a month to start some changing before I made any decisions about leaving, and I agreed to that.

Six weeks or so later, I saw the writing on the wall and began interviewing with some direct references. One position was with Power Computing to be a QA person, one was with Netcom to be a field IS-type person, and one was with Apple's Personal Information Appliance group (also known as Newton).