Chapter 22: Business Deals

July 30, 1986, Chicago, Illinois

"What did I miss?" I asked, sitting down next to Penny.

She leaned close, "Screwing me! For the last year!"

"You know I only have eyes for you, Penny!" I teased.

"It's not your eyes I want!" she giggled. "But seriously, nothing major happened. The only out-of-the-ordinary thing is that Julia is going to talk to a work-study student this morning."

"Good. Where are we with the medical software?"

She handed me a stack of papers.

"Bug reports from Zeke, Mario, and Dave. Take your pick!"

"Well, shit," I sighed.

"Nah, some of them are actually change requests, not actual bugs. We'll finish before I have to go back to school for sure."

"Are these in any order?"

"The ones on top are the worst bugs or most important changes. Dave indicated on each one the effort he thought we'd need to complete them."

I nodded and simply took the top bug report and started reading. It was a field validation problem when entering blood pressure readings. You could enter negative numbers. I sighed. I hadn't even thought about that. I'd simply checked for numeric input. Dave's note asked for additional validation code that turned the fields red if they were outside the normal ranges. He also had a note to check the pulse, respiration, weight, and height fields as well.

Penny smirked, "I left that one for you, genius!"

"You know, if you didn't work for me..."

"What?" she giggled.

"Never mind! Is this how it's going to be?"

"Absolutely!" she said mirthfully as her fingers danced over her own keyboard.

I turned to my keyboard and brought up the code that I needed to work on. I felt Penny adjust her legs so that our knees just barely touched. She didn't do it all the time, but often enough to make the point that she wanted to be very close to me, even if we couldn't make love.

Around 10:30am Julia came into the attic room. She asked me to come talk to her, so we went down to what was now my private study. She'd walked over to the University of Chicago first thing that morning to meet with Doctor Dalton and a potential work-study student.

"Tell me why the work-study student doesn't have a job lined up?" I requested.

"He did. The company backed out because they lost a large contract with the city and are laying off a bunch of people. Doctor Dalton has been scrambling to try to find him something. It's been tough because it's almost August and the job needs to start when school does in a couple of weeks."

"We can't let the pressure influence our decision. What was he going to do at this other company?"

"COBOL on an IBM System/34."

"Ugh. No thanks! I purposefully didn't take the COBOL class at IIT. In fact, none of us did except Cindi."

"It's a core class at the University of Chicago. Anyway, he's just finished his Sophomore year, but he's a year older than most Sophomores because of work-study."

"What did he do during his other work-study semesters?"

"For his most recent one, he was a computer operator for an insurance company — you know, just like the guys at IIT who loaded card decks, mounted tapes, and ran the printers, that kind of thing. The one before that was programming in RPG II."

"You aren't filling me with confidence here," I said. "He's an IBM mainframe guy through and through. That's pretty much the opposite of what we're focused on. Are you recommending that we hire this guy?"

"Doctor Dalton was politely pushing pretty hard," Julia said. "He's clearly in a bind, because the kid needs the work-study money and the other arrangement fell through."

"I'm sure he was putting on the pressure. And yes, he's a Board member, but what do YOU think. Forget what HE thinks."

"His skill set doesn't really match what we need," she said.

"That's pretty damning to the idea of hiring him, don't you think?"

"I do."

"Then tell Doctor Dalton 'no'. His student doesn't fit what we need, and at this point, we don't have the luxury of training someone from the ground up. Did the guy have a PC at home growing up?"

"I don't think so, no," she said.

"Then forget it. I'm exercising my veto. If you need to blame me, go ahead. I'll talk to Doctor Dalton. One thing I'm sure of is that with everything you said, my dad, Beth, and Joyce will back our decision. If Doctor Dalton makes an issue of it, then perhaps he's not the best choice for a Board member."

Julia sighed, "The sooner I can get away from dealing with the Board members on a regular basis, the better!"

"Well, Elyse graduates in ten months, which will help some. Unfortunately, my sister has five more years before she'll finish her MBA. And we really can't afford to hire someone to take on those tasks before Elyse joins us."

"Oh, I know," Julia sighed. "I'm really happy when I'm doing the project planning, design, and pre-sales support. That's fun and I'm good at it. This high-level corporate bullshit is, well, bullshit!"

I chuckled, "And now you understand exactly why I structured the company the way I did and the role I fill!"

"Yes, I understand that you're an asshole and decided to stick me with all the stuff you don't like to do!" she said with a laugh.

"Scott always told me to find people who were better at stuff than I was and hire them. You're better at it than I am. But I see that you're developing my attitude towards it!"

"I sure am, and it took less than a year. Well, I can handle it until next Summer when Elyse joins us full time."

"Good. As for the staffing, we probably can't do work-study because it's so late in the year, but we could do an internship. I wonder if Tasha Zhukov might be interested."

"Your friend Andrei's little sister?"

"Yes. She has a PC at home and I've been tutoring/mentoring her the same as I did Penny, though not to the same extent."

Julia smirked, "I should hope not!"

"Get your mind out of the gutter!" I chuckled. "You know what I meant! Natalya comes by a couple of times a week so we can work on her school assignments. She's pretty good. Mind if I call her?"

"Will she be able to give us enough hours?"

"At this point, anything will help," I said. "Penny's going to work on Saturdays the same as she did last school year, and I can put in the extra hours, especially with Jess being here for the next two months. Cindi's pretty confident in her sales projections for the medical office software, and if I apply what Beth and I learned back in High School from the veterinary software, I think she's probably right. Honestly, if we close half the deals in the pipeline, we can hire a full-time programmer and keep Natalya on as an intern. Assuming that she's interested, and that you and Dave agree."

"Give her a call," Julia said.

"I will. If it works out, we can probably talk to Doctor Bauer about an internship like Dave and I did at Nuvatec. Fortunately, Tasha will graduate before Penny would be eligible to earn college credit for working here."

Julia laughed, "By then, Penny won't need college!"

"Please don't ever say that to her. I agree with you, but I want her to get her degree. It's important for her to get it. If something happened to NIKA, I'd hate for her to be left in the lurch."

"You don't think she could find a job without one?"

"I'm sure that she could, but why not have every possible advantage?"

Julia went back to her desk, and I made two phone calls. The first one was to order the computer that I'd promised to order for Lyudmila. She'd left the address of her dorm with Elyse, who'd given it to me the night before. With that accomplished, I called the Zhukovs' house to talk to Natalya.

"Hi, Tasha, it's Steve Adams," I said when she came to the phone.

"Steve? What's up? School doesn't start for a couple of weeks."

"I know, but I wondered if you might be interested in working for NIKA part-time during the school year?"

"What?! Really?!" she exclaimed excitedly.

"Yes, really. We need someone part-time who can help with programming. What does your class schedule look like?"

"I'm a morning person, so I'm done by 2:00pm on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I have morning classes on Tuesday and Thursday. I guess I could work about fifteen hours a week, unless I could work Saturday, too."

"Penny will be working Saturdays, so that would be OK. I'm worried about you having enough time to do your homework."

"I do quite a bit of it at your house, anyway. If you're cool with me staying in the evenings, I can just balance work and homework. Plus, I have Sunday afternoons after church. Speaking of which, Father Basil said you should call him to have lunch sometime."

"I'll do that," I said. "Why don't you come by the house tomorrow and talk with Julia. Anytime should be fine; she'll be in all day."

"I'll come in the morning! See you then!" she gushed.

"Thanks, Tasha, see you tomorrow."

I went upstairs to let Julia know that Natalya was coming to see her in the morning and that she'd probably be able to give us around twenty hours a week, but we'd need to make sure that she had sufficient time to get her homework done and kept her grades up. Julia said that she'd go talk to Elyse and get everything set up so that Natalya could start as soon as possible, and have time to get acclimated before Penny disappeared during the week due to school.

August 1, 1986, Chicago, Illinois

"Welcome aboard!" I said to Natalya Zhukov as she came into the attic office.

"Penny, Charlie, I'm sure that you remember Tasha Zhukov. Zeke, this is Natalya Zhukov; she goes by Tasha."

Everyone said hello and as Penny and I had agreed, she took Tasha over to Tom's old workstation and started showing her our software and explaining how we operated.

"You trust Penny a lot," Dave said.

"After nearly three years, is that really a surprise? And Tasha is going to more or less take some of Penny's workload. I assume Julia talked to you about hiring a full-time programmer."

"She did. We put together a job description and we'll be ready to go once Cindi and Mario close a few more deals and we receive Board approval. That stack of bug reports includes a bunch from the doctors' offices in Wheaton and Lisle. They really love the software, so once we have no more major bugs, we can start selling."

"Well, let's get the business development meeting out of the way and we can get back to it. We'll lose Penny for most of today because she's showing Tasha the ropes, but Penny said she'd work tomorrow to make up for it. Other than karate, I'll work tomorrow, too. Kara and Jess already planned to spend the day together."

Dave, Julia, Cindi, and I went down to my study, where Elyse and Stephanie were waiting with tea for everyone.

"The big news is that Mario has a line on two law firms — one each in San Diego and San Francisco — that are interested. They were referrals from Ford, Jackson, and Finch. And they're about the same size."

"Damn!" I said. "California is looking up!"

"So is Cincinnati," Cindi said. "Your friend Ben van Hoek has been talking us up, and I have four inquiries from Cincinnati. And the best part is they called us!"

"I went through the remaining major bugs," Dave said. "I think we're safe to start pushing the medical software starting on Monday. I'm heading out to the two beta sites this afternoon to install the latest updates."

"When will it be ready to ship?" Cindi asked.

"By the end of the month," Dave said. "Let's just say Tuesday, September 2nd; the 1st is Labor Day. That gives us enough time for Jorge and Zeke to finish the documentation, and close about 80% of the open bug reports and change requests. That includes all the critical, major, and medium bugs, and all the major enhancements. That should be sufficient."

"We'll ship with known bugs?" Elyse asked.

"We'll always ship with bugs," Julia said. "There is no such thing as bug-free software. It's a matter of what the problem is. If we wait until it's perfect, we'll never release because that's not possible. The minor and trivial bugs are things like columns on a report not lining up perfectly, or a screen that's not formatted properly. They don't affect operation."

"OK," Elyse replied. "You guys know this stuff better than I do, but if I released financial reports off by even a penny, I'd be in serious trouble if I knew beforehand it was off."

"Yeah, but accounting is an exact science," Cindi said. "Programming is more like witchcraft! Or some zombie thing. You've seen Steve when he's in his zone!"

Everyone laughed.

"Seriously," I said. "Julia is right. We'll never fix the last bug. So if we fix everything that prevents proper operation, we're ready to ship. It can't be any other way if we're going to stay in business."

"Do you realize how crazy that sounds?" Elyse protested. "You can only stay in business by selling a defective product?"

"It may sound crazy, but that's the software business. Scott beat into our heads about testing and quality assurance. But even with the serious effort we put into it, we'll never find all the bugs. And we do promise to fix them when they're reported. The key is making sure we don't ship with any of those critical or major bugs. And guess what? Eventually we will. That's something else Scott pointed out — no matter how much we test, no matter how much effort we put into it, we'll always miss something. Think of it this way. When Ford sells you a car, they give you a warranty. Why?"

"In case something goes wrong."

"Yes. And then what?"

"They fix it," she said with a smile.

"There you go. It's not a perfect analogy, but I think it makes the point. And, after a certain point, the warranty expires and you have to pay for repairs. And you also have to pay upkeep the entire time you own the car. They don't give you new tires or oil changes for free."

"No, they don't. I need to talk to someone at UofC. Nothing in any of my business classes has even touched on selling computer software."

"That's no surprise, really," I said. "We're sort of in a new world here. The market for computers used to be big companies and governments. Now it's pretty much everyone on the planet with a bit of disposable income. This is all new to everyone. Heck, until IBM changed their policy in 1969, they pretty much controlled everything from top-to-bottom in the industry."

"Big Brother, what if we put out the list of known bugs when we deliver the software? That would cut down on calls and people would know that we knew about them."

"That's an interesting idea," I said. "Dave, what do you think?"

"I like it," he said. "It's being honest with our customers. I wonder if there are any legal implications if we do that."

"I'll talk to Jamie," Julia said. "But I like the idea as well. Cindi, do you have anything else?"

"Just the pipeline report for the week. The number of unsolicited inquiries is increasing, which means word of mouth is working pretty well. At some point, we should think about taking out an ad in some legal journals."

"That sounds like a good idea," Julia said. "Figure out what it might cost and what happens if we generate a ton of inquiries. Anything else?"

Nobody had anything else, so we all went back to work.

At lunchtime, I walked to Alderman Bloom's office, and we went for our usual sandwich. He informed me of some office space that was available that he thought might interest us. A local union had built a large hall and was looking to lease part of it and would offer us a very good rate in exchange for setting up and maintaining their computer systems. I let him know that we were certainly interested, and he said that he'd have the union local president call me. When we finished lunch, we shook hands, and I started to leave.

"I do have a favor to ask," he said.

"Sure," I said.

"I have a niece who needs a job. She can type and do clerical work, so she'd make a good secretary or receptionist. I'd appreciate it if you could hire her."

I had expected a request of that nature from the start, and if my interactions with Don Joseph had taught me anything, friendships and favors were keys to success. Having an Alderman owe me a favor could come in very handy at some point.