2006 March: Sue and Mike Spend a Week in San Diego

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Mike

Animals and more opera. Continue reading →

In the summer of 2023 I spent more than a day gathering information from every source that I could think of to try to determine exactly when Sue and I took the trip to San Diego. At first I thought that it was in 2002; I even wrote about one thousand words based on that assumption. I later found evidence that made me place it as late as 2009. As I was in the process of rewriting this to reflect the new date I came upon a set of Word documents labeled SD01 through SD07. They contained the notes that I had taken while on the trip, and they were dated. So, I can say with no fear of contradiction that the trip began on Thursday, March 23, 2006 and ended on Wednesday, March 29.

The notes were evidently intended to be expanded into a readable write-up of the trip and then, along with a sampling of photos, posted on Wavada.org along with my other travel journals. Evidently I must have gotten either busy or lazy; the readable journal never was written, and nothing was ever posted.

The good part is that the notes were a lot better than the septuagenarian memories that I would have needed to tap. Unfortunately, the photos have been lost. If I had integrated them into a journal, I would still have the best of them.

On the same day that I found the notes I rummaged through the bottom shelf on the bookcase in my office and found a paper bag with the imprint of the San Diego Opera on it. Inside was a receipt for the opera tickets, the program for the performance that we saw, and many other items from other places that Sue and I had visited. I would have preferred to find my photos, but this find greatly increased my enthusiasm for working on this entry.

Preparation: In March of 2006 we had two cats, the youngster Giacomo (introduced here), and my best buddy Woodrow (introduced here). The notes stated that Woodrow “purred in my ear”, which is how he often told me that it was time to get out of bed. We planned on leaving the cats alone in the house for a week, but we were not worried about them. Woodrow was well past his prime, but he was very self-reliant and quite tough. Besides, if things got bad, they could go outside through the cat door and make mischief. Sue’s father-in-law Chick Comparetto¹ promised to look in on them to make sure that they had food and water. Woodrow was not afraid of strangers (or anything else). He would certainly greet Chick at the door and ask to be petted. Giacomo in those days was quite shy. Chick probably would never lay eyes on him.

I had a Frommer’s guidebook for San Diego that I purchased in 2000 for the business trip that I took with Denise Bessette in 2000 (recounted here). I did not use it much then, but I must have researched it much more thoroughly in 2006.

We planned to meet up with Marva Whitehead, whom we had met on our first trip to Italy in 2003 (documented here), for dinner on Monday. To pay for the trip we were using my frequent-flyer miles on Delta, my Hilton Honors points for the hotel stay, and my frequent-parker points at Executive Valet Parking for a spot near the airport. It was actually a pretty economical trip.

Would you expect Charlotte to be on the left on a trip from BDL to ATL?

The notes said that we brought Sue’s backpack/suitcase purchased for the 2003 trip to Italy, the duffel that IBM had given me in 2000 and the cats had baptized shortly thereafter, a suitcase held together with duct tape, and another backpack that contained my computer. Sue also probably brought an assortment of bags to use as carry-ons. I brought my camera (a small Cascio point-and-shoot digital) with some ability to zoom. Sue may have brought her camera, too.

Sue had arranged for John Bolling, a former IBM employee with whom she had worked in (or maybe even before) the early days of TSI, to meet us at the airport in Atlanta during our layover there. Our plane to San Diego did not leave until 6:18PM.

Denny’s closed for good in 2022 after 45 years.

Thursday March 23: Our first stop was at Chick’s house. Sue gave him the spare key to the house. We then ate brunch at the Denny’s on Elm St. at a little after 10AM. For some reason we made two trips to the bank (or maybe one each to two different banks). Sue sent an email to Marva just before we left.

We drove in my Saturn to Executive. The guy in front of me in the line there asked the clerk about the company’s points system. He had paid only $4 per night by using prepaid coupons. It was nice for once to be the one who was going on vacation. Usually I was the stressed-out guy on a business trip, and everyone else was giddy about their upcoming vacation. It was an even better feeling this time because I had amassed enough points to pay for the car’s entire stay.

Our itinerary called for us to leave Bradley at 1:55 p.m. and to change planes in Atlanta. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. For once there was no problem getting through security. Because of problems in Atlanta we did not actually leave until 2:41. Sue made short work of an ice cream cone while we were waiting.

The flight from Bradley to Atlanta was completely filled. Sue volunteered to take the middle seat, but she was quite uncomfortable. She learned that the guy next to her was going to Costa Rica to photograph wildlife. I had made this trip so many times that it was like riding a bus for me.

Somehow John Bolling found us in the gigantic Atlanta airport. He had a job there working for AirTran Airways². He told us that he did not like his assignment at all. He had reportedly lost twenty-five pounds in five weeks.

I bought and consumed a gyro and some curly fries while we were waiting for our plane to depart. It did not do so until 7:15.

The plane to San Diego was also very full. No meal was served on the flight, but we did get drinks and a package of snacks. I selected trail mix, Later the flight attendants brought some Gouda cheese spread, and crackers plus some kind of buttery shortbread stick. One passenger was a guy from Italy. I was impressed that the stewardess was able to converse with him in Italian.

Sue watched a movie on the little screen on the back of the seat in front of her, “The Family Stone,” with Sarah Jessica Parker, Diane Keaton, and Dermot Mulroney. I was in the middle seat. I undoubtedly brought something to read, study, or play with, but the notes did not mention anything. The guy next to me brought absolutely nothing with him for diversion, and he did not avail himself of anything offered by the airline. He just sat there.

Nothing held together with duct tape appeared on the carousel.

Although we gained three hours during the flight, it was still 9:30 by the time that the plane’s wheels touched the ground. When we arrived at the baggage claim area, I was amazed that our luggage was not there. This NEVER happened to me on business trips, and on this occasion both of our flights departed late. It was hard to imagine how Delta had screwed this up.

Sue was upset about it. It did not bother me a great deal. In the worst-case scenario we might need to wear the same clothes for a day or two. Only one person in San Diego knew us in San Diego, and we were not scheduled to see her for a few days.

We told the people at baggage claim that we were staying at the Hampton Inn in Kearney Mesa. They said that they would deliver the bags to us there.

We walked to the Avis counter and picked up our rental. Our vehicle was a blue Chevy HHR that, according to a form that I found in the bag, had been inspected by someone named Otis. I had seen one or two of these cars before, but they were still an oddity if March of 2006. I was not impressed. It had no pickup at all.

We found our way to the Hampton Inn in Kearny Mesa. By then it was nearly 11:00, which was 2AM Enfield time. I had never had a bad experience checking in at a Hampton Inn. This clerk was unenthusiastic, but he seemed competent. We told him that Delta would be delivering our luggage, or at least we hoped so.

We quickly went to sleep, but for once we hoped to be disturbed during the night.

Friday March 24: The bags were delivered at 1AM. They appeared to be in no worse shape than when we had checked them.

All Hampton Inns provided a free breakfast buffet. Sue likes to go to restaurants for breakfast, but the selection at this hotel was pretty good. This was a good deal for people who can tolerate plastic silverware and are not picky about how their eggs are cooked. I had scrambled eggs and biscuits, fruit, and cereal. The setting was very elegant by Hampton Inn standards.

Our plan for the day was to visit the San Diego Zoo’s Wild Animal Park³. The name was slightly misleading. Although the park was affiliated with the zoo, it was located in the San Pasqual Valley east of Escondido. It was thirty miles north of the zoo.

We had a very beautiful day for our visit—74 degrees and sunny. We drive north through a naval air base and then east through the back country. We drove by an ostrich farm, which was a first for me, and a few places where visitors were allowed to pick their own oranges.

The park was huge. It covered 1,700 acres! The animals at the park were not, for the most part, kept in cages. Rather they were kept in groups in areas that resembled each one’s natural setting. The easiest way to see a lot of animals fairly quickly was to take the monorail⁴, a two-car open-air train that made a clockwise circuit around the entire park.

The park was not too crowded. We picked up a map of the park and a list of the shows and their times. We also picked up pamphlets that described two sections of the park, Heart of Africa and Condor Ridge. The former contained the vegetarian animals that resided on the savannas. The latter contained animals from North America.

There were a few empty seats on the monorail. We took Frommer’s advice and sat on the right. The trip lasted a little less than an hour. Each train had a guide who explained over the intercom what area of the park we were passing and what animals were visible. In a few cases she needed to direct our attention where some of them were hiding.

The train ride was great fun. We saw three separate types of rhinos. At one point the guide told us about some kind of Japanese animal that was in a culvert directly beneath the train. We passed through lots of different terrains. We even saw mountain goats and bighorn sheep in the Condor Ridge section, a bonobo playing with a basketball, and a giraffe doing the splits in the Heart of Africa.

We could see a balloon ride that we did not take. There were also trucks that you could ride in. Their main purpose was to feed the animals, but visitors could pay to tag along.

My most distinctly remembered experience occurred near the end of the monorail ride. The guide told us to be very quiet as we were approaching a new exhibit. She warned us not to make noise, because it might disturb one of the park’s newest resident, a bobcat. We need not have worried; I doubt that any noise we made would have disturbed a loader manufactured by the Bobcat company.

After the monorail ride ended we stopped for some food. We purchased an apple, banana, muffin, a bag of $4 potato chips and a $4 glass of Diet Coke. I also got a refill for only $1. In 2006 these prices were outrageous.

I think that we walked up to Condor Ridge, which is in the northeast corner of the park. My notes say that we saw a bald eagle, some prairie dogs, and a porcupine.

Somewhere in the park we saw all of the following. I probably took photos of all of them.

Gorillas being fed some oranges.
A hummingbird and a bustard.
A sleeping warthog.
A meerkat colony. One was on guard; the rest were underground.
A bird show. I wrote: “Pete and girls. Forgot about the parrot act.”
An elephant show with two performing pachyderms, Mary and Cookie. The trainer’s name was Brittany.
“Poop from egret.”

I loved the Wild Animal Park even more than I had loved the San Diego Zoo six years earlier.

We ate supper.at the Pampas Bar and Grill⁵ in SanDiegoVille. Our waiter was named Pedro. I ordered a ribeye and mashed potatoes. Sue had a strip steak with sauce and rice. The vegetables were understandably meager. Argentinians are notoriously carnivorous. A guy played the guitar and a harp while we were dining.

The vacation was off to a great start.

Saturday March 25: The plan was to spend the entire day in San Diego. The weather cooperated. It was around 70 all day long, and it was sunny.

We ate breakfast in the hotel again. I had sausage and scrambled eggs, with biscuits, fruit, and cereal. The baseball team from Westmont College in San Diego was in the dining room at the same time as we were. Their uniforms had maroon trim. They reminded me of UMass’s colors. I had stayed at many Hampton Inns. I had never seen a breakfast area so crowded. Sue and I had to eat at little table.

The next line of my notes says: “Convoy St. Target: _______. Big dip to get in. Drove past Home Depot Expo Center.” I am not sure what to make of this. There is a Target in Kearney Mesa, but in 2023 it is on Othello St. There is a Home Depot Design Center in San Diego, but it is not near the hotel or Target.

Balboa Park was our first touristy destination of the day. The park’s website calls it, “San Diego’s ever-changing, always amazing, 1,200-acre back yard.” I distinctly remember having trouble finding a parking space along the side of the road. Several women were reserving spaces for their husbands. When I finally found one I had difficulty maneuvering the HHR into it. It was quite a bit larger than my Saturn, and the visibility was not as good.

The main thoroughfare, which is reserved for pedestrians, in Balboa Park is El Prado. The notes describe it as “very nice”, and the photos that I found on the Internet certainly confirmed that. On both sides of it were museums, hotels, restaurants, and other elegant places.

The notes state:

Railroad museum. Wooden trestle bridge. Imperial valley. Junkyard dog. Barrel falling off of truck. Pushing truck uphill.

I assume that the first two words referred to the Model Railroad Museum that was located in the basement of the Casa de Balboa building on El Prado. Although a flyer from the museum was in the Sand Diego Opera bag, I don’t remember anything about it.

Sue had her own N scale model train layout that she constructed on the ping pong table in our basement in Enfield. Someone bought a Lionel train set for me when I was very young. My dad and Joey Kuchel set it up in the basement when my family lived in Kansas City, KS.

Evidently we saw all of the following somewhere in Balboa Park: “Palm reader, bicycle taxi, guitar and flute.” None of these references rings a bell. I distinctly remember not getting my palm read in San Diego or anywhere else.

I did not find a flyer from the Natural History Museum, but we must have gone there. We saw a movie about Baja California and a skeleton of an allosaur.

I reported “lots of interactive stuff for the kids.” Don’t ask me what “Dave in white coat in bathroom” referred to.

I have no notes about the tram that went around the park. It was free, and I found a flyer for it, so there is a good chance that we rode on it for a while.

Try to imagine the Moreton Bay Fig Tree with seventeen less years of growth. That is what we saw.

Our next stop was at Sunset Cliffs Natural Park. I probably had some very striking memories of this stunning location, but all that I wrote was, “Sucking face. Woman with cigarette”.

I found handwritten directions to Old Venice Restaurant on the back of an advertising piece from Avis that was in the bag. We ate a pizza and a very good salad for supper there. The pizza had prosciutto, chicken and basil. The notes stated that the restaurant was near Shelter Island, which is really a long peninsula.

I remarked in the notes that the people in the restaurant were too good-looking. We ate our supper on a wobbly table outside. Darren was the waiter’s name. I didn’t record the amount, but I am pretty sure that I left a tip.

When we left the restaurant I noticed a small ding on the passenger side of the HHR. Dings on rental cars can be costly. I had to hope that Otis had made a note of it when he inspected the vehicle or that whoever inspected it when we turned it in was equally negligent.

I forgot to bring the good map that I had ripped out of Frommer’s in 2000. I found myself on Rosecrans road and couldn’t figure out how to get on the freeway. I also ran a red light. The notes did not state whether the malfeasance was accidental or deliberate.

Another great day!

Sunday March 26: The plan was to drive to La Jolla, Coronado Island, and Old Town in San Diego. I wonder how much I used the Frommer’s book to select the itineraries. My choices do not closely agree with “Frommer’s favorite San Diego experiences.”

Sue might disagree, but I found the weather to be less than perfect. Clouds kept the temperature in the sixties all day. That’s light-jacket weather for me.

We had the usual breakfast at the Hampton—eggs and biscuits, fruit, and cereal. They also generally provided at least two kinds of juices and plenty of coffee.

We stopped at Target again. This time we picked up some two-liter bottles of Diet Cokes and some snacks. These items were much cheaper at chain stores than at locations attractive to tourists.

La Jolla was less than ten miles to the west of our hotel. I anticipated that we might have difficulty finding a place to park, but I was wrong.

Sue and I walked down to the beach We saw the aggregation of seals that Denise and I had enjoyed so much in 2000, but the only thing that I wrote about the experience was that the rest rooms were “crummy”. My dim recollection is that it was breezy at the cove.

We walked into town and strolled around for a bit. It seems incredible, but I reported that we could not find the Best Western in which Denise and I stayed. I did take note (and probably photos) of two dachshunds.

We did not take the 26-minute route from La Jolla to Coronado Island that is shown in the map at the left.

We were in no hurry, and so we drove through San Diego down to Chula Vista and then over to Imperial Beach at the south end of San Diego Bay. from there we took the “Silver Strand” up to Coronado.

The notes indicated “6$ at beach”. Maybe that was what I paid for parking. All beaches in California have always been open to the public.

I remember that there were protestors at the incredibly elegant Del Coronado Hotel, but I do not recall what the issue was. We had lunch al fresco. It consisted of leftover pizza from Old Vienna and food that we had purloined from breakfast at the Hampton Inn.

We walked up to the legendary hotel and even went inside. I could not believe how many bellboys they had. I kept waiting for one of them to shout, “Call for Philip Morris.”

Afterwards we stopped at a place called Moo Time Creamery for some ice cream. For some reason we ordered three types of ice cream. The notes stated that Sue really liked the double chocolate and the pear sorbet. I preferred the stracciatella.

Moo Time had a statue of Elvis and another one of a cow. I found a photo on the Internet.

I am surprised that I even tasted the ice cream. It has never been my favorite food, and, if the temperature was only in the sixties, I was probably shivering while I ate it.

From Coronado we drove to Seaport Village, which was on the eastern side of the bay, so that Sue could do some shopping in what its website calls “14 acres of fine waterfront dining, entertainment and world-class shopping in the heart of beautiful San Diego”.

I had difficulty finding a place to park. I must have let Sue off and parked in a lot rather than on the street. The notes said, “Hard to park. Meet at four. Brought Sue the ticket.” I interpret this to mean that I was given a ticket so that the HHR could exit from the lot, that I brought the ticket to Sue, that I planned to mess around somewhere while she shopped, and that we would meet up somewhere at 4PM.

The rest of my notes about Seaport Village were difficult to decipher: “Smoking outside of jewelry store. Arabs. Cat.illacs.” I was evidently impressed by the number of boats in the nearby marina. I also saw quite a few sailboats in the harbor. In 2023 I have no memories of this place, but Sue’s only clear memory of the entire trip was that she bought her favorite earrings there.

From Seaport Village we probably took I-5, which in Southern California is called “The 5”, north to the Old Town section. Old Town is a State Historic Park. The website describes it this way:

Five original adobe buildings are part of the historic park, which include museums, unique retail shops, and several restaurants. The Historic Plaza remains a special place for gatherings and historic activities. Visitors can also experience a working blacksmith shop, enjoy music, see or touch the park’s burros, and engage in activities that represent early San Diego.

I reportedly was very lucky with the parking. The word “Closing” is mentioned in the notes. Perhaps the “unique retail shops” had closed for the day.

We toured the area for a while and then decided to eat supper at Café de Reyes. We ate outside. The weather was perfect for Sue, and I got to sit by the heater. Our waiter was named Daniel, and the busboy was Jorge. The clientele seemed to be equally divided between Mexican-Americans and gringos. There were free tables when we arrived, but it got pretty crowded after we sat down.

For an appetizer we ordered quesos fundidos, which was a plate of goat’s cheese and sausage. The notes indicated that I had “combination #1 and a very large margarita.” The combinations are no longer numbered on the restaurant’s online menu, and so I cannot say what it contained, but I did call the supper “very nice”.

The notes also specified a “lady making tortillas with scrunched-up shoulders.” It didn’t specify whether she worked for the restaurant or not. I assume that, despite the word order, the shoulders belonged to the lady, not the tortillas.

When we returned to the hotel we were both dead tired. Sue contacted Marva by phone or email. We saw commercials on television for Congress to replace Duke Cunningham, who had resigned in 2005 for taking bribes from military contractors.⁷

We also learned that although the UConn men lost, the women won.

Monday March 27: This was the zoo day. For photos of animals (including the pandas) from the trip in 2000 look here. The weather was beautiful until about 1:30PM. It became chilly after that.

My breakfast at the Hampton was sausages with cold hard biscuits supplemented by fruit and cereal. The notes indicated that I took photos of the grounds around the Hampton. You will need to imagine the basketball goal and what the “Shriner stuff” might have been.

The zoo was located in Balboa Park. By this time I was familiar enough with the area that the drive there was a stress-free experience. We arrived at about 10:00. I parked the HHR near the sidewalk between aisle 4 and 5. From there it was an easy walk to the entrance. We did not need to stand in line because we already had tickets.

We made a beeline for the panda exhibit. There was no line at all. We got to see the six-year old that had been a baby for my first visit as well as the parents.

We then took the moving sidewalk up to the polar bear exhibit. Only one of them was out, but he put on a show for us. I remember that half of the exhibit was water, and you could easily see the bears when they went for a swim.

We got a bird’s-eye view of the park from the Skyfari ride. It had been included in the price of the combo (Zoo plus Wild Animal Park) tickets that we had bought. Denise and I did not do this. My recollection is that she was not good with heights.

When we were back on terra firma we walked down to visit the tortoises. One of them appeared to be horny. After that Sue went into the lizard and reptile mesa; I think that I stayed and took more photos of the amorous tortoises. We both then spent a little time in the reptile house.

We then went to see the orangutans in their new home. The notes indicated that I took good pictures of the baby. It was painful to write the last sentence. I have got to find those photos.

We ate lunch in the Treehouse Cafe, which was definitely aptly named. The photo at the right provided a good indication as to how hilly the zoo was. I ate a chicken Caesar salad with some chips and coke. Sue had clam chowder in a bread bowl and chocolate layer cake.

While we were eating the temperature dropped like a rock. The notes do not indicate whether I brought a jacket, but I probably did.

The gorilla enclosure allowed us to be within just a few feet of the mighty apes. The notes indicated that I was very impressed with the size of the silver-back’s thighs.

We next saw the hippo, but I was unable to snap any good pictures. The water was too dirty.

The flamingos did what flamingos do.

I think that the “express bus” that we took was similar to this one. The park now has a Kangaroo Bus that is a double-decker.

We then took the zoo’s express bus from stop 3 to stop 4 so that we could see the giraffes and the other hoofed animals. One of the giraffes was only two days old, but it was already pretty steady on its feet.

Sue was disappointed that we never saw any meerkats. We viewed their exhibit from three separate vantage point, but they all stayed in their burrow. It was a good thing that we had seen the sentinel at the Wild Animal Park. If not, she might have insisted on extending our stay in San Diego until she saw one.

We reportedly saw all of the following:

A horny wallaby.
Bactrian camels.
Some very active koalas.
Both Asian and African elephants drinking from a fountain.
Llamas.
Pigs.
Capybaras
At least one tapir..
A peacock that had flown up on a roof.
Quite a lot of topiary.

We enjoyed supper with Marva at the Imperial Mandarin Chinese restaurant. I had wonton soup and spareribs. Sue also had wonton soup and moo shu pork, which was apparently a specialty of the Imperial Mandarin.

One of the rear doors on Marva’s car did not work. After noting this fact I included the phrase “Simply Marvalous”.

We drove to the Black Angus steakhouse for drinks. The bartender’s name was Ryan. I had Scotch on the rocks. The notes stated that someone had a lemon-drop martini. I have a hard time believing that it was Sue. She usually ordered a Scotch if I did.

It is telling that the notes included absolutely no mention of the conversations. Either I was not paying attention, or I figured that I would remember it without prompting.

I must have had only one Scotch. I managed to pilot the HHR back to the Hampton without any difficulty.

Tuesday March 28: The original plan was to go to Sea World. However, it rained lightly all night long. By morning it looked pretty good, but the forecast was for rain all day, or at least all afternoon. We therefore decided to skip Sea World. The new plan was to make return trips to Balboa Park and Old Town.

For breakfast we ate egg pizzas (that’s what the notes said), fruit, and cereal.

This time we had no problem parking in Balboa Park. We saw busloads of kids and also witnessed a group of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans in blue warm-up suits.

I do not know what to make of the phrase “Bridge over Park Rd.” There is a famous bridge in Balboa Park, and there is a Park Blvd., but the one does not go over the other.

We saw a cactus garden and a rose garden. I also noted a pair of sneakers in a tree.

The people in the park that day were interesting. I saw a guy with a flag, and I overheard another guy who said, “I should have shot him again. I should have shot him four times.”

We visited the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center, and I picked up a daily schedule there and a flyer for an IMAX film about Greece. There was quite a bit of interactive stuff for kids in the area of the museum called Kid City. A few of the devices appeared to be broken. We watched a presentation on television entitled “Origins in Space”. It was about NASA and particularly the Hubble Space Telescope.

I don’t know why the word “Einstein” was included in the notes.

Sue and I enjoyed a cappuccino at Galileo’s Café inside the center and then watched an IMAX movie called “Greece: Secrets of the Past”. In the theater there you lean back and watch the film on a dome. I don’t think that this was a particularly useful way to learn about Greece’s past.

The statue of El Cid did not look much like Charlton Heston.

We saw a Venus flytrap, among many other species, in the Botanical Museum.

We walked past the Mingei International Museum, which promoted folk art and crafts from around the globe. We did not go inside.

We drove to Old Town again for a late lunch. We had tacos and a burrito at the Alamo Mexican Cafe. It got quite chilly. Sue wrote postcards, and I mailed them. The notes stated, “Alamo closed up.” I interpret this to mean that the patio area was closed because of the weather.

On our way to the car we found a store that was offering 50-65% off the regular price. The notes did not say what they were selling or whether we went in.

We drove back to the Hampton and took a nap so that Sue could stay awake during the opera, and I could prevent cartoon characters from appearing in the last act, as they had during the performance that Denise and I attended.

This time the San Diego Opera was presenting on a performance of Carmen by Georges Bizet. Both Sue and I had seen traditional productions of this opera several times. I owned a CD of the opera that used Bizet’s original version that included dialogue, not recitative. Every performance that I had seen had used recitative, which, in my opinion blunted the impact of Carmen’s personality.

We also had season tickets for the Hartford Stage Company when Mark Lamos, the director, was the artistic director. Both of us were quite sure that his Carmen would not be a traditional one, and we were right. The program for the opera contains 56 pages, but there is not a word about the production. The setting had been moved from Spain to an unnamed Latin American country and from the late nineteenth century to the thirties or forties. This really did not impact the arc of the story line much. Of course, gypsies were rare in Latin America, but it was not that hard to suspend disbelief. The famous Anvil Chorus did not seem anachronistic in this environment.

All performances of Carmen were sold out, but the two seats next to me were empty and at least one woman seated near us left after the first act.

I don’t remember whether I enjoyed the performance or not. The only detail that I remember was that one guy in the audience wore shorts. If it had been the dialogue version I feel certain that I would have mentioned it. The review in my notes was terse: “Liked Micaela. Good chorus. Great acoustics.”

It took a very long time to maneuver the HHR out of the parking garage. That’s often part of the price one pays for attending one of the ABC operas.

Back at the Hampton we enjoyed a late supper of leftovers consisting of moo shu pork and combination #1.

Wednesday March 29: When I traveled to the West Coast on business, I always returned on an overnight (“red-eye”) flight. The times of our return flights were not specified in the notes, but we obviously spent most of the day getting from San Diego to Enfield.

I woke up with quite a bit of energy and decided to go for a run. After a few minutes it started to sprinkle, and I returned to the hotel.

Since getting food is always somewhat dicey on airplanes and in airports we decided to treat ourselves to a full breakfast at the Spice House Café.⁹ It was less than a mile from the hotel. We had veggie frittatas and “gyros meat”, which I presume was lamb The portions were enormous. The very nice waitress, whose name I did not record, kept the coffee flowing. It rained quite hard during breakfast, but then it cleared up.

We returned to our room at the Hampton Inn, packed our things into the HHR, and checked out. Sue, needless to say, brought leftovers.

I stopped for gas at an Arco station. The pump wouldn’t accept my ATM card¹⁰ for some reason. I went to a nearby Chevron station that accepted the card. We then drove to the airport and returned the HHR to Avis. Either they did not notice the ding, or they didn’t care.

The notes said, “Raining in Salt Lake City.” So, we evidently changed planes there. I had been in that airport at least once before, but it is the only place in Utah that I have visited. The other states that I have missed (as of 2023) are Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, and Alaska.

We ate leftovers from breakfast on the flight from Salt Lake City to Bradley. There was plenty of time for Sue to watch a movie. She did not ordinarily like science fiction, but maybe “Aeon Flux” with Charlize Theron was the only thing that was available. I worked on sorting and editing my photos, the B4 deck¹¹, the notes, and playing bridge on Bridge Baron.¹²

Both our bodies and our luggage arrived at Bradley International intact. It was probably pretty late; we lost three hours in the air. I called Executive Valet, and they sent their bus to bring us to their lot.

As always, my Saturn¹³ was running and parked near the door of the office. It was a little disconcerting that the “Service engine soon” light was on.

No trip was over until we verified that the cats were OK. As the Saturn entered the driveway we saw a grey tiger-striped cat in the yard. This was not a good sign; he was not one of ours. Woodrow, as expected, greeted us as soon as we went through the door. He showed me that there was no cat food left in the gravity dispenser. I poured some into the metal plate that the cats ate from.

Giacomo made an appearance the next morning. The entertaining and exciting trip to San Diego was officially completed.

1. Sue was married (but estranged) when I met her in 1972. Her father-in-law, Chick Comparetto, lived in Enfield about a mile from our house. He looked after our cats on most of our big trips. His obituary can be found here.

2. At the height of its popularity AirTran operated 700 flights per day, many of them passing through Atlanta. It was acquired in 2011 by Southwest Airlines.

3. The park was renamed San Diego Zoo Safari Park in 2010.

4. In 2010 the monorail was replaced by a set of wheeled vehicles with similar capacity.

5. The restaurant closed in 2019 after twenty years in business.

6. Give the kid a break. His parents could not find the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

7. Are you surprised to learn that he was pardoned in the waning moments of the Trump administration?

8. You do not need to go to San Diego to be entertained by the zoo’s polar bears. You can watch them on polar-cam.

9. The Spice House Café closed its doors for good in December of 2018. It had been in business for twenty-six years.

10. Perhaps the most puzzling thing in all of the notes is the fact that I used an ATM card to buy gas rather than a credit card. By that time I paid for everything with credit cards in order to amass points. I had separate American Express Cards for Hilton and Delta. I had used them to earn enough points to cover most of the costs of this trip.

11. I can’t be certain, but this probably refers to a deck of flash cards that I created for quizzing myself on Italian vocabulary. The English words were sorted alphabetically, one card per word; the Italian word or words were on the back. The B meant that deck contained English words that started with the letter B. They were sorted alphabetically. The 4 meant that this was the fourth deck. There were at least ten thousand cards in total. I went through the entire set of decks more than ten times.

12. Bridge Baron was a terrific software product that facilitated the learning of bridge, both play and conventions. I had Bridge Baron15 on my laptop. The last version of the software that could be installed on your computer and run without the Internet was Bridge Baron29. In 2023 the app Bridge Baron Gold is still for sale.

13. The Saturn lasted until the end of the year. I traded it in for a beautiful sapphire-blue 2007 Honda Accord coupe.

1999-2000 TSI: Finding the Best Person

Posted on February 24, 2022 by Mike

Our attempt to hire René Conrad. Continue reading →

In the second half of 1999. after my sister Jamie Lisella had left TSI (explained here), the situation at the company was simultaneously the most exciting and the most perilous of its entire experience. On the one hand, business was very good; our services were much in demand, and the relationship problems of the previous few years were pretty much behind us. We had a good staff that could produce great code on a reasonable schedule. We also had plans to move into a new office in East Windsor that we were designing to fit our needs (described here).

However, the company did face some serious issues.

TSI had no marketing director, and we had done no marketing of any note for at least a year.
TSI no longer had an administrative assistant. I had take over these tasks, and I had better things to do.
The size of the potential market for new sales of our primary product, AdDept, an administrative system for retailers, was dwindling, mostly do to mergers and consolidations in the retail industry. Another factor was the fact that AdDept was already installed in a large number of locations.
The computer that we knew best, the AS/400, had limitations that made it difficult to sell to companies that were not familiar with it. Specifically, the screens and output were not considered “modern”.
The Internet posed a serious challenge. At the end of the century every business could see aspects of the opportunities that it offered, but few could see a clear pathway to using it profitably.

My partner, Denise Bessette, and I discussed these issues fairly often. We knew that we were understaffed in critical areas. Although a good case could be made for getting a new marketing director forthwith, the previous marketing person, Doug Pease, had left the company a few years earlier because I asked him to stop selling new AdDept systems for the simple reason that our existing clients were so demanding that we were struggling to keep up with their requests for new programming. It seemed to me that we should address our other problems before we hired someone to generate more sales.

I was aware that René Conrad was frustrated with her position as planning manager at Kaufmann’s in Pittsburgh (introduced here). I had great respect for René and her work. In the wake of Jamie’s departure I discussed with Denise the possibility of asking René to work for TSI. Denise was receptive to the idea, but there certainly were a lot of detail that needed to be put in order.

After talking with René over the phone a few times in August of 1999 I sent the following letter to her:

I have been thinking a lot about this. I also met with Denise. As usual, she had some good ideas. It seems to me that there are three things we need to address: 1) a job description that we all can live with; 2) a solution to the relocation problem; 3) a suitable compensation scheme. You may have other issues, too. If you do, I would greatly appreciate it if you would tell me as soon as possible.
1) Job description
You asked me if this was Doug’s job. The answer is no. We hired Doug to sell AdDept systems. We hoped he would be able to do other things, but the only other one that he was accomplished at was setting up time and action plans and agendas. In the last five years we have taken an immature product with a small client base and made it into a comprehensive administrative system used by a large portion of the most powerful and successful retailers in America. What we really need now is someone with insider knowledge to help us shape our company for the next 10-15 years. This is the primary role we would like you to pay. We realize full well that this is much less structured than what you are used to. We hope you would look forward to the challenge and can adjust to this type of environment. The second most important objective would be to relieve some time pressure from Denise and me. I hope that you would be able to relieve me of some of the training time either by eliminating the need for it by improving our documentation or by taking some of the trips yourself. The other side of the coin is that neither Denise nor I can afford to take on new unbillable responsibilities. The case in point is supervision of the administrative assistant. Jamie did this work for such a long time that she required very little oversight. I don’t see how we could afford to hire you if you did not supervise this person. I don’t see how this job can be performed from anywhere except our office, certainly for the next few months. You will have an awful lot to learn about how our company works. You know all about Kaufmann’s and a little about the other May divisions, but we have 17 other clients. We work very closely together at TSI. I don’t see how this could be done by phone. We also do not have the infrastructure for remote use of our system. We have a dial-up connection through the network, but it uses phone lines.¹ We would spend a fortune on long distance if someone had to dial in to our system, and, of course, that is the only way to dial in to our customers. Setting up an internet connection is expensive, and we would probably have to hire someone to do it. It also drags security issues in as well.
2) Relocation
I don’t exactly know how to sell you on Connecticut. Our new office promises to be very nice. You will have the biggest office with three windows. We will make sure that you have whatever you need to be productive. I have made a commitment to everyone to make the work environment so nice that people will love to come to work.
As I said, we have no death marches.
I think you will like working with our staff. If there was any negative feeling in our office, it left with Jamie. We are in the process of hiring an administrative assistant.² If you don’t like the person we hire, you can get someone else.
The area is pretty nice. The weather is certainly no worse than Pittsburgh’s.
We are two hours from Boston, which is full of activity. We are only three hours from New York by train. Vermont is only 1.5 hours. The long island shore is an hour or so.
You will have to make new friends. That is never easy.
We would REALLY like you to come see what we have to offer. Denise is eager to show you Northampton, MA (about 20 minutes north), where she went to school.
3) Compensation
I am pretty confident that the compensation issue can be worked out without much difficulty. I told you about how much Doug had been making. I neglected to tell you that 2/3 of that was in commissions. I think that we need to revamp the compensation scheme somewhat. Doug concentrated on new AdDept sales. It took him a few years, but eventually his efforts outstripped our ability to support the new customers. I get the distinct impression that you aren’t interested in that kind of job. We want to sell AdDept systems, but we think we need to develop other sources of income as well.
We propose that you receive 35% of the profit on hardware sales; 10% of the revenue on AdDept sales (assuming I take all the sales trips by myself); 20% of AdDept module (e.g., CAPS interface) sales; and 50% of “project management” income. The last would be defined as any trips (at $900 a day) that you get customers to agree to let you take. If you can persuade them to pay you without taking a trip, all the better.
You will be part of the process of developing new products or services. We will negotiate with you what percentage you get.
The starting base salary would be $50,000. e will agree to pay you an additional $2,000 per month as salary in lieu of commissions for the first twelve months. If your commissions were $500, $4,000, $800, and $3,000 in the first four months, you would be paid $2,000, $2,500, $1,500, and $2,300.
We have done no marketing in more than two years. Nevertheless, in the next year I think that one AdDept sale is almost certain (Carson’s)³ and one is likely (Dick’s)⁴. It is possible that Dick’s will happen very soon, in which case I will have to pay Jamie commissions. There are two almost certain hardware sales (Carson’s and a box for Saks Inc.). At least three or four customers could definitely use faster boxes, and the new 170’s are very attractive.
Adapting to life in a small company will not be easy for you. On the other hand, I think that the profiles of TSI and René Conrad mesh well. We are stable, free of debt, and full of kindred spirits. We need a smart, aggressive, well-connected person. You’re it.
Have you seen the W.C. Fields movie, “The Bank Dick”⁵? Fields’ character Edgar Soucè (accent grave on the last syllable) has a prospective son-in-law named Og Oggleby who works in a bank. Fields is trying to talk him into embezzling money to invest in shares of stock in The Beefsteak Mine. The pitch is “You’ve got to take a chance when you’re young.” Soucè explains, “My uncle Huffnagle, a balloon ascentionist, took a chance. While he was aloft in his balloon one day, he espied a haystack 2,000 feet below him He took a chance. He jumped out of the balloon and aimed his flight at the haystack.”
“Gosh,” says Og. “Did he survive?”“Uh, no,” says Soucè. “But that’s the point. If he’d been a younger man, he might have. You’ve got to take a chance when you’re young.”

We contacted René, and arranged for her to fly to Connecticut and spend some time talking with us in our new office. We bought a round-trip plane ticket for her and arranged for her to stay at the nearby hotel, which was, I think, a Best Western at the time.

I picked up René at Bradley on, I think, a Saturday morning in December 1999 or January 2000. Denise drove in from her house in Stafford. We tried to explain that the situation at TSI was very positive, but we wanted to hire someone who could help us face the issues of the twentieth century. René’s biggest concerns were the fact that she was used to fixed goals and rewards for meeting them and whether her presence would be required in Connecticut. Unbeknownst to me she had strong ties to Pittsburgh and was not impressed by the social scene in the Hartford-Springfield area.

A few days before Denise and I left for our trip to PartnerWorld in San Diego I received a letter from René in which she declined our offer. It was disappointing but not surprising. When we got back from San Diego, I wrote up my thoughts for Denise’s consideration and then on February 7 I set this letter to René:

Denise and I were disappointed but not very surprised to receive your letter. I think that the three of us would have had an enjoyable and successful time working together, but there is more to life than work. At least, I think I read that somewhere.
We both gave careful consideration as to whether the job could be performed remotely. We also examined whether there was a feasible arrangement that involved two weeks here and two weeks there. The thing is that we want someone we can work closely with, and we just don’t see how that would be practical without the person being in the office. Denise and I often have impromptu conferences, and I think that the close sharing of ideas has helped the company immensely. Our primary objective is to find someone with slightly different experiences and a somewhat different outlook to join in the process.
We are still convinced that you would have been the best person for the job, but we accept that we now have to look elsewhere. We both look forward to working with you.

We did not get to work with her for long. In 2002 the May Company moved the administration of the Kaufmann’s stores to the headquarters of the Filene’s division. René began working with a local non-profit theatrical organization, about as different from TSI as imaginable.

TSI did not get to add Dick’s, which is also in Pittsburgh, to its client list until 2004. On a training trip I met up with René. She showed me where she worked, and we had supper together.

What if?: It is difficult to say how different things would have been if we had hired her. In the short term there might have been very positive results. I wrote on February 17, “It occurred to me in a fit of melancholy at 5 PM on Friday that René Conrad could probably have forestalled the Cato fiasco. She could also probably have taken the Meier & Frank trips, or at least one of them.”

On the other hand, she could not have helped us much with the May Co. It is almost impossible to imagine getting much more work from them. Perhaps she could have penetrated the barriers that Macy’s set up, and we could have continued our relationship with them after the grand consolidation. Even if she did, how would it have helped us.

I don’t think that she could have helped much with A^xN. Denise came up with a great solution to the problem of marketing it to newspapers. I cannot imagine what René she could have figured out a way to use the connections we established between advertisers and newspapers for some other purpose that was valuable to one or the other.

While working on this project I contacted René through LinkedIn. Her page is here.

1. In 2023 it is strange to read about concern about telephone charges. At the time we used MCI for long distance. Every month our bill was in the thousands..A few years later our network and Internet connections made it feasible for employees to sign on to our AS/400 from home through a local carrier. In fact, one of our programmers, Michael Davis (introduced here), did this from Pittsburgh after changing from local employee to remote contractor. Denise worked from her home on Cape Cod during the last year of so of TSI’s existence.

2. The administrative assistant whom I hired was Nadine Holmes (Introduced here).

3. I can hardly believe that I was ever “almost certain” that TSI we would get Carson’s (introduced here as P.A.Bergner). Steve VeZain must have told me or Doug something that I later repressed.

4. The Dick’s Sporting Goods installation has been described here.

5. I planned to insert a link to this routine, which I consider the best comedy sketch ever, on the Internet, but I could not find it posted anywhere.

2000 January TSI: Mike and Denise at PartnerWorld in San Diego

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Mike

Fun and frustration. Continue reading →

In the late nineties Denise and I had decided that we needed to investigate ways for TSI (or at least the two of us) to develop a new product or service and to modernize, if possible, our work on the AS/400. In late 1999 we learned about PartnerWorld, a convention for IBM’s business partners that was scheduled to be held in San Diego in late January of 2000. We decided to attend. Our objectives were two-fold: 1) to hear about IBM’s approach to the Internet; and 2) to meet other vendors with whom we might team up. I also bought two tickets for the San Diego Opera’s performance of Verdi’s Il Trovatore on Tuesday, January 25. We decided to spend the last day at the zoo.

This must be in SD. Everyone in New England wears a coat in January.

On Sunday, January 23, Denise’s husband Ray drove her to Bradley International. I met them there and took a photo or two. Since we gained three hours en route we probably landed in San Diego in the afternoon. The airport was surprisingly close to Seaworld, Coronado Island, and downtown. I was accustomed to fairly long drives from airports to downtown locations. We boarded our rental car at Avis. The weather was fantastic throughout our stay.

I had booked rooms for us at the Best Western Inn by the sea in La Jolla, which was about a twenty-minute drive from the airport and the conference center. This was an excellent choice. It was a nice hotel that was reasonably priced and within walking distance of La Jolla cove. I seem to remember that Denise and I walked down to the beach as soon as we had gotten settled. There we saw both a beautiful stretch of sand and a large group of seals or maybe sea lions. Both species liked to hang around in the vicinity.

I found no notes about this trip. I found about ten photos that I took with disposable cameras. I must have had two and switched halfway through the trip; there are two different sizes of photos.

I bought a copy of Frommer’s guide to San Diego. I know that I used it to find the hotel because there was a business card marking the page for it. It said the prices were “moderate”, and they included a continental breakfast and free parking. A map was evidently torn out of the back of the book.

The business card was from Yvonne Carl, whose job was “Customer Advocate” at The 400 Group in Dedham, MA. By the time that I wrote this entry in 2023 I had no recollection of her or the group. When I tried its website, I was treated to a large and graphic ad for a combination flashlight and male sex toy.

The conference: On Monday we drove to the gigantic conference center and parked in the basement. When we registered we each received a faux leather black duffel bag, some printed materials, and an orange PartnerWorld tee shirt. Mine, for some reason had “Morpher” on the back. Denise’s had something equally meaningless.

The first event was the “kickoff” in a very large auditorium. I don’t know how many people were there, but the total attendance at the conference was about 4,000. Lou Gerstner, IBM’s celebrated Chairman, did not attend, but he sent a video. His message was that IBM was now all about e-business, by which he seemed to mean using the Internet directly or indirectly for commerce. IBM wanted everyone to use its servers and, more importantly, services. Another big emphasis was on the object-oriented programming called Java¹ and JavaBeans², both of which were developed by Sun Microsystems and licensed to everyone at no charge.

I remember two speakers. A lady who was in charge of marketing claimed that IBM “owned” the term e-business³. This was in reference to an advertising campaign that had associated IBM with the term. The other was Sam Palmisano, the number two guy at IBM, who must have thought that he was addressing the IBM sales force. He was very upset at EMC and Sun Microsystems, who were evidently using former IBM employees—of whom there were a large number—to undercut IBM on some accounts. He used the phrase “kick butts”, which seemed totally out of place for a gathering of people who had worked with IBM for years.

Denise and I usually split up to attend other presentations. In the only one that I remember a panelist said that in hiring you should always get the best person available. This was undoubtedly good advice, but I had learned that it was also crucial to find a way to keep them no matter what happened to your business.

We also visited some exhibits that were sponsored by third parties. At the time we were on the lookout for ways to provide a GUI⁴ front end for AdDept that we could implement without a great deal of work. We did not find anything of interest.

One of our major objectives was to make contact with people from other companies with which we could partner for mutual benefit. We were disappointed in this endeavor. IBM was not interested in helping its partners find partners. It wanted its partners to tell their customers to buy IBM computers and services.

Entertainment: I think that the comedian Sinbad performed on Monday evening. Denise and I attended. He began by telling the audience that he was a Mac guy. At the time Apple was not yet a major player in either servers or the Internet. Its computers were good for designers, but most people in business had little use for them. I was not very impressed with the rest of Sinbad’s routine either. I don’t think that he understood the nature of the audience.

On Tuesday evening we went to the San Diego Opera to see Il Trovatore. I remember being disappointed that the members of the orchestra did not take time to throw a baseball around during the overture. I also remember being very tired. In the last act I had to fight off drowsiness, and I was unable to prevent various Warner Bros. characters such as Sylvester and Bugs Bunny from appearing on the stage.

I remember that Denise and I were very impressed with the soprano who sang Leonora⁵. She rightly judged the arias to be beautiful. I also was surprised. I had listened to the opera several times and had never before been so impressed with these pieces.

On Wednesday Denise and I attended a party in the conference center. The music was supplied by what was left of the Beach Boys. Mike Love and Bruce Johnston were definitely there. Brian Wilson and Al Jardine were not. The other members of the band on the stage were much younger than Love and Johnston, who were both pushing sixty.

You won’t find any pictures of Mike Love without a hat. Bruce Johnston is on the left

There was nowhere to sit. Perhaps they expected people to dance, but this was a group of uber-geeks, predominantly male. Many may not have even heard of the Beach Boys. A few people may have danced, but I never would unless I had at least ten beers. I was at least nine short of that mark.

Two old guys singing about hot rods and surfing seemed weird in the twenty-first century. None of the magic of the performance that I witnessed at the concert at U-M (described here) remained.

Private experiences: I remember having two suppers with Denise. We went to a Mexican restaurant in Old Town one evening. I am pretty sure that we also went to a Chinese restaurant in La Jolla. I don’t remember where we ate lunches or breakfasts. Denise probably skipped some of these meals. When we ate together we almost exclusively discussed what we could do to enhance the business.

I don’t see any ear flaps. They must be seals.

We also spent some time walking up and down the beach and viewing the seals from a safe distance. The entire experience was at once exhilarating and disappointing. We were already starting to focus on using the Internet for insertion orders. We both had moderate confidence that we could make it work, and we were excited about the challenge. It was disheartening that we found nothing of value with regard to modernizing AS/400 applications.

The zoo: We spent the entire last day at the famous San Diego Zoo. We saw a very large number of animals, but the foliage used to establish the settings for the animals and the ambience of the zoo was nearly as stimulating.

I took dozens of photos with disposable cameras. This type of camera was totally inappropriate for a visit to the zoo. It had no ability to zoom or adjust the focus. They were not stored digitally. I had to take photos of the photos with my digital camera. That process lost some of the resolution. However, fuzzy memories are better than none.

I think that these photos are from our second visit to the panda exhibit. There are two photos from the first visit, too, but the panda is almost completely hidden by shrubbery.

The only fairly distinct memories that I have of the experience involved the panda exhibit. We began our visit there, and on that occasion we stood in line for a long time. When we finally got to the viewing area, the panda was very visible. We came back in the afternoon and got a better look.

We went to at least two shows. One of them involved birds that flew around but always returned to the trainer on command. The other featured a couple of big cats.

Here is a selection of the other photos in no particular order.

Two grouses. The dark one is facing left. The light one below it is facing right.

I don’t remember the trip back to Connecticut.

Epilogue: The result of TSI’s search for an Internet product was A^xN. The story of that project begins here. In the spring of 2006 Sue Comparetto and I returned to San Diego for a short vacation. That trip is described here.

1. I had read ten books on Java, and I did all of the exercises in each. I could do what they asked, but I could see no way to do most of what I wanted to do. On the AS/400 (and presumably on other machines as well) a Java Virtual Machine needed to be installed and configured. IBM put all of this stuff under the rubric of Websphere. The implementation on the AS/400 had horrendous performance compared to programs in the native environment.

2. JavaBeans are classes that encapsulate one or more objects into one standardized object (the bean). This standardization allows the beans to be handled in a more generic fashion, allowing easier reuse of code.

3. I liked to tell our clients that TSI was working on an Internet-based system for convents and monasteries. We planned to call it “Monk E-Business”.

4. GUI stands for “graphical user interface”, which means using screens that take advantage of all of the properties of personal computers. AdDept’s screens were still text-based, which made them less attractive but not necessarily less functional for the tasks that they performed. GUI front ends took advantage of the mouse and displayed information using colors, images, and such things as check boxes, radio buttons, text boxes, and pull-down windows.

5. We were right to be impressed. I discovered twenty-three and a half years after the fact that Leonora was played by Sondra Radvanovsky. At the time she was an up-and-coming star. Within a decade so she was an international diva recognized both for her singing and her acting ability. She gave several legendary performances at the Metropolitan Opera.

1999 TSI: Mike Gets Certified

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Mike

The AS/400 hardware, the OS/400 operating system, and the and DB2 database were introduced in 1988. The AdDept system that TSI developed for the administration of the advertising departments of large retailers was one of the very first systems developed on and for the AS/400. At the time TSI was an IBM Business Partner for its GrandAd system on the System/36. Earlier TSI had been one of the first software companies to be recognized as an IBM Business Partner for the Datamaster.

Prior to the late nineties the only requirement for a company to become a Business Partner was to have some successful accounts that were using its software or services. At times it was a huge advantage to be an IBM Business Partner. At other times IBM employees treated the partners as competition.

At some point the concept of Value-Added Retailer (VAR) was introduced. VARs were at first allowed to order and sell systems for which their software or services had qualified as adding value to the sale of IBM equipment. Too many bad sales by VARs prompted IBM to take away the ability to take orders from smaller companies such as TSI. Instead they were assigned to a “Super-VAR” who vetted and placed the orders for them. In 1999 TSI was assigned to a company called BPS, which shortly thereafter renamed itself Savoir.

The next, but by no means last, set of restrictions imposed by IBM was to require any company involved in sales of IBM equipment to have at least one employee who had passed proficiency tests for the the equipment. At the outset there were two levels with separate tests, one for sales personnel and one for technical.

My partner Denise Bessette and I judged at the time that it was critical to the future marketing of AdDept and any other future product that we continue to participate in IBM’s partnership program. I knew more about the hardware offerings than she did, and so I was chosen to study up and take the technical test. It made little sense for a different person to study for the sales one, which was reportedly much easier.

I think that I must have taken the exams in the first half of 1999 or late 1998. I have a lot of notes from the second half of 1999, and there is no mention of them.

IBM still publishes Redbooks. I think that WAS was in version 1 in 1999.

IBM published study guides for both exams. One or two Redbooks may have also been on the syllabus. I remember that there was a considerable amount of technical material about several things with which I was not at all familiar. One was the cabling required to connect two AS/400s. The other was setting up partitions on a single AS/400 so that each partition had a separate file system. It was more complicated than it sounds because each device needed to be defined in each partition that used it. I remember practically nothing about either of these topics, but we did encounter partitioning at Dick’s Sporting Goods (introduced here).

I spent as much time as I could bear going over the course material. Hardware and operating systems have never really been my thing. It took a lot of discipline to force myself to understand the details of things that we would never use.

The day arrived on which I was scheduled to take the tests. I drove to an office in Farmington that specialized in administering exams for corporations. I had already consumed one 20-ounce bottle of Diet Coke before I arrived, and I brought another with me.

I gave my registration document to the receptionist. She asked me which test I wanted to take first. I selected the sales test. I seem to recall that each test lasted for about ninety minutes. All questions were multiple choice. I was required to enter my answers on a PC.

The sales test was not too difficult; I reported back to the receptionist ten or fifteen minutes before the deadline. She told me that I had passed.

I told her that I wanted to take a break before taking the technical test. I went to the men’s room and sat in the lobby. I drank my second Diet and tried to clear my mind. Then I took the second test.

It was much more difficult than the first. A few questions were beyond my ken. I skipped them. I read all of the others carefully and only answered after I was fairly certain. I used up nearly all of the allotted time. I was pretty relieved when the receptionist assured me that I had passed both tests.

So, I was certified by IBM as knowledgeable about both the sales and technical aspects of the AS/400. If I ever had physical certificates, I certainly have not seen them for a decade. TSI’s Sales Manager Doug Pease told me that his contact at Savoir had told him that almost nobody ever passed the technical exam on the first try.

I am not sure how much good my success did us. I am not sure that TSI sold any new hardware at all in the rest of the time that we were in business. We might have ordered an upgrade or two through our Super-Var.

On the other hand, we did get to go to the PartnerWorld convention in San Diego. That adventure has been described here.

1984-2014 TSI: Denise Bessette

Posted on May 29, 2021 by Mike

Programmer becomes partner. Continue reading →

TSI’s first, last, and best programmer was Denise Bessette. The beginnings of her career at TSI are documented here. At some point in the second half of the eighties she decided to finish her undergraduate degree in economics and mathematics at Smith College in Northampton, MA, and then get a masters degree in econ at Trinity College in Hartford. She lived in Stafford, which is forty-two miles from Smith and thirty-two miles from Trinity. She commuted to both schools. During this lengthy period Denise continued to work part-time at TSI. She also raised her son Chris. Frankly, I don’t know how she did it. She never seemed burnt out or exhausted.

After she graduated she returned to work full time. At that time I named her vice-president of application development. I also arranged that Denise could share a portion of Sue’s office. At the time I did not think that there was much more that I could do. The layout of our office in Enfield (described here) provided for only two offices. Sue had the corner office. The other one was used by our salesmen. I worked in the computer room.

This arrangement seemed to work fairly well for a while. In 1994, because of TSI’s “second crisis” (described here), Denise was able to establish herself in that office. A few years later Denise decided that she needed to try to work at a company in which she had more control over her situation. This prompted TSI’s “third crisis”, which is described here.

After that situation was very pleasantly resolved, Denise and I worked productively as partners until the company was dissolved in 2014. She was in charge of getting the programming and support done and hiring the technical staff. She also continued to handle the payroll. The administrative and sales people reported to me. I continued to do the sales calls, demos, installations, and training. I also spent countless hours researching alternative approaches to our way of doing business.

After TSI moved its office to East Windsor and installed a network with a connections to the Internet, Denise handled all phases of it and worked with our clients to establish and maintain access to their computer systems. I was more than happy to let her deal with those issues.

She also managed the people who cleaned the office and a few other similar functions.

Memories: Denise caught on to my style of programming faster than any other coder that we hired. I was somewhat upset when she went part-time to be able to finish college. The silver lining was that it was unlikely that she would quit before she got her degree, or as it turned out, degrees.

In the eighties Denise sometimes brought her son Christopher into the office. She stashed him in the supply closet. No, she did not shut the door. He seemed to be content with whatever she gave him to play with there.

I remember that on one occasion Denise invited Sue and me to supper at the house in Stafford where she lived with her husband Ray for supper. It was a very nice house with a deck. The heating was provided by one or two stoves that burned wood chips. I had never seen such a thing.

That was the only time that we visited them. If you are wondering whether we reciprocated the invitation, the answer is no. I am not sure why, but we almost never invited anyone over to any of our residences in Connecticut. We probably were still living in Rockville.

I played golf with Ray and his dad a few times. They liked to play at Grassmere, a short public course in Enfield with only nine holes. I seem to remember that one hole had a huge tree right in front of the green. If you did not hit your drive far enough, your only shot to the green was to try to hit a wedge or nine-iron over the tree.

When we hired Denise she was a smoker. In the late eighties she quit cold turkey at about the same time that Sue, Patti Corcoran, and my dad also quit. I don’t remember her getting irritable or fat during the drying out period.

On one occasion her kitchen sink got backed up because Denise poured instant mashed potatoes down it. I bought her a box of instant mashed potatoes as a memento. Later I kicked a dent in one of our cabinets when I got upset at a client. She bought me an inflatable Fred Flintstone to punch when I got angry. It is still in the basement in 2023, but I haven’t tried to inflate it in a few decades.

Denise knew that I read quite a bit. She was taken aback when I casually remarked that I did not enjoy reading female authors, especially ones in the science fiction or fantasy genres.¹ On her recommendations I read several Anne Tyler books. They were all fairly good, but I had to admit that Breathing Lessons was close to a masterpiece.

I was always envious of Denise’s cars—a sporty Mazda when she started working for us and a string of BMW’s thereafter. When in 2007 I bought my sapphire blue Honda Accord coupe, she said, “That sure doesn’t look like my grandmother’s Honda!”

She was almost never ill in the thirty years that I worked with her. Then again, neither was I. I remember that she got an infection from inner-tubing on the Farmington River on one of TSI’s summer outings. We never tried that again.

Denise and I enjoyed a very productive trip together when we attended the IBM PartnerWorld convention in San Diego in 2000. The details are described here.

Denise drank mostly tea and Diet Coke in cans.² She ordinarily just dipped the teabags in the hot water once or twice. I’ve never seen such a weak beverage. Her favorite was Earl Grey. I purloined for her envelopes of tea from the hotels at which I stayed. She seldom took a lunch break; she just grazed on what she brought with her.

At some point in the nineties Sue Comparetto, Denise, and I attended a performance of Carmen at the Bushnell Theater in Hartford. We all enjoyed the opera well enough, but I was disappointed that, as usual, Sue was late and so we missed the talk that was presented before the show.

Several years later Denise and I spent an hour or two at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford. She wanted to show me some impressionist paintings. They did nothing for me. I am a Philistine when it comes to art.

Denise was afraid of escalators. She avoided them if possible. If not, she was very tentative. She did not like the moving sidewalks at airports, either.

When Christopher was in high school Denise told me that his best friend was a girl in his class. She alleged that they were just friends. Although this sounded preposterous to me, I kept my mouth shut.

I remember when Christopher graduated from high school and was in the process of selecting a college. Denise wanted him to go to a good school in New England. He wanted to go to Penn State. I advised her to tell him that he would have a better chance with the girls at a local school. At PSU half of the male students were linebackers on the football team. I doubt that she took my sagacious advice. He became a Nittany Lion.

She especially did not like it when Christopher joined a fraternity in State College, but he somehow survived the experience, and Denise is now a grandma.

Their cottage was much smaller and a few blocks from the Sound.

Denise loved bodies of water—oceans, lakes, ponds, rivers, anything. She was always happier when she was close enough to experience a body of water through any sense. For years she and her husband Ray had a cottage in Old Saybrook near the Long Island Sound. Several times they took vacations in Aruba.

In 2013 Denise and Ray sold both their house in Stafford and the cottage and moved to Cape Cod. I saw her only a few times in the last year that we worked together and never since.

Business Relationship: For the most part Denise and I had a very productive relationship. Largely it was a case of staying out of each other’s way and (after I made her a partner in 1997) coming together in November and December to evaluate progress and distribute bonuses.

A blog entry about the agendas for the periodic meetings that the two of us enjoyed from 2001 through 2006 has been posted here.

Denise provided some needed organization and discipline to TSI’s approach to programming. My “cowboy coder” philosophy dictated that when I was at a client’s site, and someone complained about a problem, I would immediately investigate it. I often was able to fix it on the spot within a few minutes. This often made me a hero at the client’s office, but a pain back at TSI. It was not easy to isolate all of the things that I had changed, bring them back to the office in an orderly manner, and integrate them into the master copy of the system without disrupting processes used by other clients. Keep in mind that I installed thirty-six AdDept systems, and they were all running the same code.

I eventually had to refrain from addressing any problems at a client’s site. I documented them but did not change the code. … All right, I’ll fess up. Sometimes I could not keep myself from making changes that I was 100 percent certain would not interfere with what was being done at the office. Denise was not a bit happy when I did this. Perhaps we were fortunate that eventually our clients lost the willingness to pay for me to travel to visit them.

The only other point of contention between Denise and me involved research. Both of us knew that the platform on which we had built AdDept–BASIC programs on the AS/400–was considered obsolete by many people in the world of data processing. In most cases these people had veto power over a purchase of our system. It was generally a waste of time to try to persuade them that their evaluation was erroneous. They were hired as experts. We were just potential vendors.

Denise and I agreed that the ideal solution would be to move the whole system to the Internet to avoid the standards that were being established by IT departments. This approach is now called Cloud Computing. However, we were never satisfied that we could do it without man-years of work and considerable expense.

If there was no pathway to the cloud-based approach, the issue was whether the problem was BASIC or the AS/400. I thought that we should investigate the programming languages that coders were using on platforms outside of IBM. At that time the most popular languages were C and C++. C was somewhat similar in structure to BASIC. C++ was its object-oriented version. I spent some time researching the IBM version of C and concluded that a transition to C was possible but unquestionably difficult.

For reasons that I never understood Denise was quite upset at me for spending any time investigating this possibility. I had absolutely no intention of asking her to convert the programs. I was just trying to see whether it was a possibility.

The other side of this coin was Denise’s advocacy of converting all of our BASIC programs to a version of RPG, a language that was popular on the AS/400 but nowhere else, dubbed ILE.³ I never understood the reason for this, but it kept the programmers busy after the requests for programming began to dry up. So, for the most part I kept my opinions to myself.

After Denise moved to the Cape she only came into the office a few times a month. She was in rather constant communication by telephone with Jason Dean, who, at that point, was our only programmer. I liked it a lot better when Denise was in the office all of the time, but my philosophy had always been to take advantage of whatever time she could give me.

1. I need to explain this. I have no doubt that women can write as well as men by virtually any measure. In 2023 (as this is being written) they definitely dominate the publishing industry. However, I contend that women have a basic fantasy about being rescued, and men have one about being heroic. I contend that this is not cultural but innate. Nature, not nurture.

I find that reading about the latter fantasies more interesting than the former. Is that a crime? I have never like a science fiction or fantasy book by a female author. Several times I got suspicious in the middle of one in which the author used initials or a pseudonym and looked up the author used initials or a pseudonym. After looking the author up and discovering the secret I stopped reading. Before you ask, I have never read a single word of the Harry Potter books.

2. I always thought that cola from plastic bottles tasted a little better. For some reason the two liter bottles are always cheaper and usually on sale somewhere. I like both Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke equally. I always have bought whichever one was cheaper. After the business closed I switched to the caffeine-free versions.

3A 220-page document from IBM that aims to show why ILE is a superior approach can be viewed here.

Wavablog

Memoirs, bridge, popes, travel, and other stuff

Tag Archives: San Diego CA

2006 March: Sue and Mike Spend a Week in San Diego

1999-2000 TSI: Finding the Best Person

2000 January TSI: Mike and Denise at PartnerWorld in San Diego

1999 TSI: Mike Gets Certified

1984-2014 TSI: Denise Bessette