Grady, you are definitely going through tough times. It's amazing that you can stay upbeat. Are you not still doing some consulting, or is that not a possibllity? Do you have a Paypal account? If you do, let me know.


I got conscripted into working for a local pawnshop recently, and it reminded me of the blessings I've got. I have supported a FPD application for a pawnshop for several years, and the owner told one of his fellow pawn shop owners about me, after the other guys computer crashed. It seems his "guy" died a few months ago, and he had been maintaining their system with a home grown Alpha4 program running in Windows '98. I was brought in to see what could be done. I found out very quickly that Alpha4 will run in Vista, but only in a small box. That wasn't acceptible, so I wound up building them a windows 98 computer and putting their old stuff on the new,old(windows 98) machine. While working to get them back online, I had the opportunity of seeing the folks who are coming in trying to get 30 bucks, 50 bucks, or whatever. Now, from their appearance, many appeared to be looking for that next bump. I just keep telling myself that if I had taken a few left turns, that could easily be me. Even so, I believe we are all the authors of our own destruction, and those left turns they took are what got them where they are today. Then, this past weekend, I was at the local hospital, emergency room with my son, who had sliced his foot on some broken glass, and I saw a lot more people who have ruined their health. I think Memphis must be the epicenter of the morbidly obese universe.

Oh well, bottom line for me is, be thankful for my blessings, and avoid left turns at all cost!

Let me know if I can help, at least a little.