The Things You Find

An interview with me from March 1993:

RIDING OUT THE STORM
John Koziol, president of Nexgen Computer Corporation, a computer programming group, sent his family away while he rode out Hurricane Andrew in his home in Cutler Ridge, Florida. He expected some winds and possible flooding from a storm surge. "I was 10 feet above sea level, and I have a two-story house," he says. "My logic was that my equipment was on the first floor, and I couldn't possibly waterproof things. I thought if I stayed, I could react as things developed. Boy, was I wrong."
Koziol got stranded upstairs, isolated from the equipment he had stayed to protect, when the hurricane whipped into his neighborhood. It came on so suddenly and so fiercely that the doors blew off their hinges and knocked him down twice. He survived by using a mattress to create a cave in a closet. Only afterward did he notice that the sheetrock on his bedroom walls had disintegrated into powder.
Koziol and three employees had worked from his and his father's homes before Hurricane Andrew. "We knew our bases of operation were gone [his father's house was also destroyed] and weren't going to be livable ever, or for quite some time. We had a little bit of cash saved up, so we decided either we had to fold the company or take our reserves and take our chances," says Koziol.
He moved the company into an office building. "The way we were set up, with the home offices and everything distributed, worked to our advantage," says Koziol. "We were probably back on our feet much, much faster than anyone else in that area--in less than a month. And our revenues and staff more than doubled within three months. I preferred the home office, but I knew that we would eventually evolve out of it. The hurricane jump-started that evolution."

FoxBase?

Does anyone know of a running FoxBase application these days? I know there was one running a few years ago using FoxBase/UNIX but haven't heard anything more.

The Death of ActiveDocument in VFP

The short version: We turned it off.

As I recall we were alerted to a security issue with ActiveDocument early on in the testing for VFP8 that couldn't be easily resolved. So development stubbed it out (meaning it did nothing) and we waited for the complaints.

None ever came.

Great technology

The Darwin Award Poems

Poems as odes to the Darwin Awards.... some are based on real, some could be.

Hey, look, my old pistol I'd lost three years back
(Crime was up when I got it, I feared an attack)
It looks pretty dirty - does it still work?
To set safety off requires a hard jerk.
Surely it's unloaded, as near as I figure;
so lemme look down the barrel and jiggle the trigger.

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My engine sounds funny when the car's put in gear
When in Park or Neutral, there's nothing to hear.
C'mon Tommy, old buddy, let's see what's the deal -
you rev the engine; I'll check under the wheel.
OK, pal, see, this car's really cursed.
Try goosing the engine, then put it in first.

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Sailing! Sailing!
Meandering through the sky!
Bought myself some weather balloons,
ya know I gotta try!

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Updated: I guess there are more in me....

I know the wings will hold me, they're made of balsa wood.
My arms are strong, my aim is high - I've always known I could
The cliff is high and wind is strong and they say I can't fly.
I launch and hear close snapping sounds - uh oh, I'm gonna die.

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Stole some jet packs from my air force base, they make the planes go fast.
I've been working on my Mustang I, you know they're build to last.
I weld these JATOs to the frame to make a mark that way
I'll set the record for Mustang speed on this very day
I light the flame, the car leaps forward; the controls are rather stiff
Aw shit the car has left the ground, aw shit here comes a cliff.

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