Chapter 33

Mandy called my phone the next day and apologized for not answering. We chatted for about 45 minutes, and she told me she was probably moving in two months. Seems she and her boyfriend were more serious, and he had gotten a promotion and was going to the San Francisco store. And her promotion and transfer were expected soon also. I congratulated her and said I would miss her.

I also said I had a new adventure if she could illustrate it, and she said to send her a tape. “It’s really hard for me to do much else anymore Pete, but I will see if I can fit it in.” I sighed and said I would do that. We gave kisses over the phone as we hung up, and I wondered if I had done something wrong.

Well, the contracts from Pavel, Rocco, and the car lot were all signed so I had Blake get to work on the systems as Abe and I made plans to go to San Francisco the next week. The scanners for Pavel’s office and the two for me finally arrived, and we loaded up the truck with quite a few things and took them to the new shop. Abe and Blake helped me unload as Sue looked around the office. They all liked the setup, and I had us all sit on the floor in the office I was going to use and told them my plans.

“Sue, you are moving here with me when I open this up for business. Abe, you are going to take over Sue’s position there, mostly running the techs. Blake, you are taking over the in-house stuff. Repairs, upgrades, getting systems ready. I want the 405 as the dividing line for the shops, we handle stuff to the west out of here, the old shop handles all things east of the 405. But it’s not a competition, feel free to call if you need help, or have techs doing nothing. This is more administrative than anything else.”

They all said that sounded like a good idea. Sue asked me what she would be doing with the rest of her time, as that was not enough to keep her busy all day. “You my dear are going to work with me and become a master at setting up and running a BBS. This is starting to become a full-time thing for me, which means I will need somebody to run things if I take some time off. Abe, Blake, you both are going to learn this also though. I have a feeling that soon this is going to be a big business.”

“Is that why every computer you sell has a modem in it, Pete?”

“No Blake, honestly that started because early on I had a lot of old modems. I figured it was a good way to get rid of them and show why my computers were such a good deal. Now, it’s just a matter of routine, to be honest. But I bet that has helped me grow my BBS, as every computer we sell already has a modem and the BBS programmed into it.” My phone rang, and it was Julie. It seems the guy from the TRW swap meet had called and said he had more of the RADAR desks. “Jackpot!” I called out and told her to call him back, find out how many he had, and how soon we could get them. I explained to the rest what the call was, and said it was perfect timing as one of the things I needed was more desks.

We were walking around and I was explaining how I wanted everything set up when Julie called back, he had eight of them, and we could get them at any time. I whooped and sent Sue back to the shop. “Guys, looks like we are going to Santa Monica. Let’s go get the truck.”

Well, it was a pain but we got all of them in a single load, and for a bit more I grabbed a dozen rolling stools he had, along with two more lab benches and a rack that was only four feet tall. The truck was stuffed, but they helped me get them all unloaded, and the loading dock made things a lot easier. I put Blake in charge of stripping out all of the old RADAR stuff, and told him to box it all up as I might have a use for it. I called Dee and asked her to have dad call me that night when he got home from work.

We left one desk in the truck and soon had it unloaded at the shop. Blake went to the one still in the back closet and started taking measurements of the shelf my dad had added, and I told him to paint it black when he was finished. He nodded and said he would probably have them done by the end of the week, he wanted to get the painting and cleaning done first. I spent the rest of the day getting the computer and scanner for Rocco up and running and had it in the back of my truck.

On Saturday I drove to Rocco’s place, and once I got the BBS installed he went to his office and called it, and it worked perfectly. I showed both him and a girl named Sherry who was slender and very pretty how to use the scanner. They both scanned in about ten large printings that seemed to be promos for their movies, both front and back. I even saw that Sherry was more than just office staff when I looked at one of them. The page sized promo flier showed her taking a huge black guy fucking her doggy style on the beach, and on the back a petite Asian girl eating her out on a bathroom sink.

Well, if nothing else Rocco seemed efficient. Hiring his working girls to work in the office also probably helped keep them loyal. I then showed them how to put the photos into the system, and how to make menu items, and how to add photos into the file areas for download. Then we went over how to administer the system, add new users, block users, delete or ban users, and how the message forum worked.

Rocco really liked that, and told Sherry which ones he wanted, including one called “Talk to the Stars”. “I want you, and any others that want to use this to talk to your fans. Can this do private messages?”

I showed him that feature, as well as the program I had added for live chat between users. “Now this is only one line now, so it is somebody here with another calling in. But if you add more lines, you can have many people talking at once. But this is already set up to run many lines at once at this time. If you are ready to expand, let me know and I will provide as many nodes as you need, it will take me about a week to get them set up. But you can call my BBS, I run the same chat software there, even though the BBS program is different. I have ten lines, so myself and ten others could all chat at the same time.”

I saw Rocco’s eyes shine at that and started asking me how that would work. I explained how to set up the rollover lines with the phone company, then how to setup a forwarding number. “Now this is local to this area and the San Fernando Valley. I already reach Santa Clarita and Hollywood, by getting a phone number that connects to those areas and having them forward calls. It’s local, but you do pay for the line. You can do this by knowing the area codes, and hop all over the LA area. In short, you have a number in the East Valley that is local to Hollywood. Then you set up a line there, which is local to downtown LA. It then forwards the call to a number in Hollywood, and it forwards the call to here. And you just repeat it as far as you want to go. I know of one in San Pedro that is local to Lancaster using this trick.”

Rocco liked that a lot and said he would be calling me soon to expand this if it takes off. When Sherry asked me how to promote it I smiled. “Simple, either add a slip of paper into the tapes with this service, or just put something about it on the box itself. Maybe even promote it before the movie itself plays, like those phone numbers some pay you to promote. Something like ‘We now have a service to let you know about new movies coming soon.’ Pictures, talk to the cast, whatever you want to add with the phone number. Even put an ad in something like the LA Xpress, get a magazine to do an article on it.”

Rocco smiled and said he would do that. He and I went into his office as Sherry was scanning in photos, and he gave me a soda and we sat at his desk. “Pete, I can understand why you do not want to do much because of Linda. But I have a partner that wants something similar. She never worked for him, so there is no worry that you would ever have contact with her or photos of her. Can you do this for him, and run it also?”

I said I could do that, and told him to tell the guy how much it could cost for me to host it. “And ask him how many lines. I am moving to a new location, and can now add pretty much as many lines as I need.” I wrote down how much each line would cost per month. “I will fax you a full price sheet, but I would suggest starting with no more than 5 lines, then add more as needed.”

When I got home there was a message from Norm. He said everything was ready. I called him back, and he said that Monday would work for him, and I gave him the address of the new facility. The next morning I got up early and loaded everything in the house that was not needed at that time for the BBS and loaded it into my truck. I then went to the shop, moved everything to the back of the truck, and grabbed anything else that I wanted at the new location. Including all but one of the rackmount cases, and everything else I had ordered for the BBS or new shop. I also threw in the large folding table we sometimes used.

I was finishing unloading when I got a call from Becky. I told her where I was. She said it was her day off so I invited her over if she wanted to join me. I was loading all of the RADAR parts into the back of the truck when Becky got there, and I said we had some time so I drove over to see Josh. He greeted me warmly, and said that while he had some items I might want, he did not have a load ready for me yet. I smiled and introduced him to Becky, and said I had something he might want as well. Dad had told me that Josh was who I would want to see, so I took him to the back of the truck.

When I showed him the boxes, he grinned. “OK, I know exactly what these are, old Litton displays. How many of them do you have this time?” I told him eight, and then asked him if I could look around as he had his guys unload them. I pointed things out to Becky that they had, and said it was basically the used sales part of my dad’s old company. I did see half a pallet of the Alps wide carriage printers, and a case of modems, I put tape on those, and we kept looking. Then a pallet of monitors, and it took me a few minutes to realize these were all rack mount. I pulled one out, it was a VGA display, and had a date code of 1988. I counted 25 of them on the pallet, so added a sticker to that also. Then on a pallet, was a pallet jack. Josh was coming over, and I asked him what the deal was with that. “Oh, the pull handle to release the pressure does not work, Pumping the handle raises it just fine, but you gotta use the toe lever up there to lower something. I tried to send it to get fixed, but they told me to just get rid of it and sent me a new one.”

I shook my head and had him remove the straps and tested it. Sure enough, it worked just fine. You just had to use your foot on the back of the forks themselves to lower a load. I pointed to the case, two pallets, and the jack and said how much for all of them. “Well, you got $1,600 coming to you for those RADAR parts. Let’s just call it even, give me a second to do the paperwork.”

I used my new pallet jack to move everything to the loading dock, and soon the papers were all signed and I had everything loaded. “They were happy when your dad came up with those units, but I have a feeling now it was really you. Can you get any more?” I told Josh I had no idea, but I would let him know as soon as I did. We were driving back when Becky asked how much the desks had cost. “$100 each, I sold the guts for $200 each. That means I got all of that stuff in the back for $800. The printers and modems alone are worth more than that, the pallet jack and monitors are just a bonus.”

We got them all unloaded, and I was testing the forth good monitor on the table when Jack showed up. It only took him about 15 minutes to change over the power, and I asked him if he could run another phone trunk. He grinned, and said not a problem. And out of the 25 monitors, only three seemed to not work. I tagged those and set them aside, then called the shop. I told Julie to get Blake on the phone, and told him to not do any conversions on the desks, to just clean and paint them. “Good timing, I was making the first measurements to start cutting. What’s up Pete?” I told him about the rack mount monitors I had just bought. “I put my keys on my desk, when you got nothing going on, come on over with my truck, and I will have you take the shop truck back. You can grab one of the monitors and put it into the server desk. Get some rack mounts for those we already cut them off of, and we will just bolt those inside. Get enough so we can do all the desks we had already done. That will free up more monitors for the shop to use.”

Becky helped me move a desk into each office, and soon the monitors were all mounted, along with a rack mount computer. And we then repeated it for the one in the back. We were just finishing when Norm showed up.

We were unloading things from his van when Blake arrived, so he helped out, then handed me my keys and I gave him the ones for the truck. Norm was mounting the new server into the desk, and Blake said that looked a lot better with the rack mount display. I told him to call in a crew for Friday, I was going to shut down my BBS and move everything over on that day. He said he would do that, and he took off. Sue had arrived at some time during this, so I put her to work networking all the computers, and said to put the switch into the short rack I had gotten earlier near the phone connection.

Norm was all done, and then was showing me how the new OS worked. And sure enough, it was kind of a cross between DOS and UNIX. But it was also multi-tasking so I could flip between many open programs with ease. He then showed me the program he had made, which allowed me to easily bring up remote terminals running on the network. “Man, like I’ll come back next week and we can do the rest. So this is where you gonna be now? No more garage and house?”

“Nope, I have outgrown that actually. I already had ten nodes myself, and I have commitments now to run at least three more for other businesses. Within a few months, I think I am gonna outgrow what I could do there, and I already have Jack installing another 24 lines so I can quickly run 48 total.”

We chatted a bit more, and when I asked him how much I owed him, he just waved his hand. “Man, talk to me when we are all done, I ain’t done yet. I saw those monitors you got tagged. Like, they all broke man?” I said none of them would power up, but I had yet to check them out.

“Man, might just be a fuse, might be more. You already paid me for the software I had to buy, how about you just give me those, and we call it even?” I told him he was welcome to them, and he grinned and started to load them into his van as Jack finished the new phone lines. He then added another patch panel and moved all of the network lines into it, and then into the passive hub I had brought over.

“Dude, when you do a network, you do it right. I’m already passing out some of your cards now, Pete. Hopefully, I can get you some business like you have gotten for me. So you are bringing the rest over on Friday?”

I told him I was, and he pulled out some paper and started making notes. “OK, is that when you want the lines swapped? If you want I can call up Pac-Bell now and get the transfer order put in. You want them all moved here?”

“Yes, all but the original two home lines. And I need, hmm, call it five more lines here. Put them all on that new panel you installed, the last two for the business. Then the other three at the top of that panel. I’m thinking for at least now, I use the first panel for the BBS, the second one from the end as business lines, then from the top as nodes for other businesses. Might make it easier to keep them all straight.” He said that was a good idea, and he made the call. He handed me the phone, and I not only authorized the change and the new lines, I had them add Jack as my representative for any other such jobs in the future. He looked at me and I smiled. I then handed the phone back, and when he was done I asked him how much. Becky already had the checkbook out, and I signed the check and handed it to him.

He asked me what time I was going to do the move, and I said I hoped to have the guys at my house by 8, and the new rack here by 9:30. “OK, I will be here at 10. I’ll help you get everything put in, and make sure the lines all come up without an issue.”

He was soon off, and I asked Becky what she was doing for the rest of the day and tomorrow. And when she said nothing, I had her follow me to my house. Once there we had a late lunch of the pot roast I had started the night before and asked her if she wanted to go to San Francisco with me that night. She smiled and said she would love to, and after eating we threw an overnight bag into the back of my truck. We then went to her house where she did the same. Once at the shop she was talking with Julie and Eve as I went and updated the guys on what was going to happen on Friday. They said they would have the truck and crew at my house at 8.

“Oh, and I think I’m gonna keep the ambulance at the new location. We are gonna move all the big and bulky stuff there, give you guys here more room to move around in. Blake, you are going to be moving between the two a lot, especially when we get more pallets. We will do all the prep work there, and just run systems over here as needed. Maybe keep ten on-hand here, with fifteen monitors and five printers. Keep the rest there, that will empty a lot of the backroom I bet.”

“Yeah, good deal. I will have them load up all the excess on Friday, and the desk.” I told him that was fine, and we all had a quick meeting in the front.

“OK, I will be moving the ambulance to the new site in a few days, but it will still be available as needed. Next Monday, we start the official swap of all West Valley operations to the Warehouse. I have a feeling I am going to be busy there, as I have a lot of BBS systems to configure, and then run for several companies.”

“Oh, I got the call from Lovely Angels, that company that Rocco sent the estimate to.”

“Oh really? What did they say Julie.”

“The contracts are already sent, they will send them back to us tomorrow, signed with a check. They want five lines and will forward a bunch of images for us to scan and put into it. With weekly updates after that.” I laughed, and we all gave a cheer.

“Well, porn is not where I wanted to make a mark, but you take what you can get. Order me four more 486 systems, I’m gonna go ahead and populate the new racks I’m getting tomorrow. That way if we get a new contract we just configure the data and away we go.”

“So that’s why you are going to San Francisco?” Abe asked.

“That, and of course anything else that catches my eye. But yes, I figure we will get a bunch of racks, and anything else. Go ahead and write down in the next 20 minutes anything you might want, Becky and I will look while we are up there.”

They started doing that as I went over a few more things with Julie. “Oh, and Julie, you just got another raise. You are now the general manager of this location, and give yourself another title if you want. I have a feeling this new location is going to be taking up most of my time.”

“Thanks, Pete, I appreciate it. At least you are a good boss, as you throw me more money as well as more work.” We all laughed, and Becky and I headed to get some fish & chips for dinner, then to check out the pawnshop. We saw nothing of interest, so we headed back to the shop. I collected some lists, and we threw the bags into the truck and headed on north.

She asked me again about money, and I assured her I was fine. “Dee moved some funds around, it’s all paperwork really. But we now have some one to three year notes backing up the land bills that will be due until 1993, that gives me more money on the ready access side. And trust me, this five line contract is a big deal. We are talking about $1,000 a month good deal, plus the $2,500 to get it up and running.”

She whistled and said that was damned good. “Especially since most of that is profit. My costs are a fraction of that, most of that is really labor. Of course, Sue will probably soon be tired of scanning in the Lovely Angel images, but it’s a great project.”

We got into San Jose at around 11, and got a hotel for the night. We were both worn out, so just kissed and cuddled up to sleep. The next morning she was looking through the phone book and had a bunch of addresses written down. We hit a gas station and got a map of the area, and she started locating addresses as we drove to Weird Stuff.

Six racks and five rack mount cases went into the back, as well as two cases of modems, another case of Novell 286 at $3,000, and about fifty boxes of DOS, and a case of AdLib cards. Becky found a manual called a “Technicians Reference” that she grabbed five copies of, then once it was all loaded we hit the next place. There the only thing of interest that I grabbed was a case of forty Northgate keyboards. At $20 each, this was a steal. The next we added in a dozen rack mount cases, a dozen rack mount keyboards, another case of modems, and a case of random blank rack mount faceplates.

The last one was mostly Apple stuff. But in the back, Becky found some MIDI equipment she grabbed for herself, and I grabbed twenty Apple II systems. We had a decent haul at that point, and we decided to take the 101 home. We stopped at Solvang, and after dinner at Anderson’s we checked into the hotel. We made love for about an hour, then holding each other tight we drifted off to sleep.

We were at the new shop at noon and soon had everything unloaded. I told Sue to put the new boxes together, each with four modems in it. I then pointed to the case of modems I had got. Becky was sitting in my lap in my office and we were saying goodbye when Sue called for me to come to the back. She handed me the card she had pulled out of the box, and said she had no idea what it was. It was a standard computer card, but not like any modem I had ever seen. In fact, I counted 16 UART chips on it. I scratched my head, and read “Digi 16” on it. We moved the box to the table, and soon had 24 of those set on it. Along with 24 long metal boxes, all with a cable on one end, and what appeared to be 16 serial ports on the box itself. And there was a bunch of other stuff, and of course the manual was at the bottom.

I read through it, and my eyes opened up. “Holy crap, these are DigiBoards!”

Becky gave me a look, and Sue of course asked what that was. “Well, in short, these will let me hook up to 16 modems onto a single computer! OK, change of plans! Max out the RAM in these systems, if need be I will order new motherboards with maximum RAM as the main consideration. Holy hell, with one of these boxes I can run up to 16 lines from a single computer. Becky, can you give them a call, please? See if they have any more of these!” She kissed me and headed off as I got on the phone and called Norm.

Thankfully, Norm was familiar with the product, and explained to me he had installed a SHIVA server earlier in the year. I had no idea what that was, but I told him I had just acquired several of them. And I only had a slight idea of how we could use them.

“Man, that’s even better! OK, don’t do internal modems anymore, you gotta go with externals now man. Which ones do you have?” I told him I had the 16 port model, and he said that was great. “OK, now you are gonna need a lot of RAM, man. A lot of RAM, and the fastest computer you can for those. On Friday I can show you how to do that, it’s not hard but they are tricky, oh so tricky.”

I then called my supplier. And after some consultation, he was overnighting me fifteen 486 boards, each with 32 MB of RAM. Along with fifty external modems. Becky saw the price as I wrote it out, and she gasped. And as soon as I hung up, she asked me if I was fucking crazy.

“Nope, but consider this. One computer with this much RAM and that board will replace four of the older computers. One computer doing the work of four! I can rip out all of those old ones I was planning on using, and sell those. The profit will pay for this stuff as it is. For the porn company, I was going to have to use two computers, now I do it with one, and I can add another eleven lines for just the cost of modems and phone lines. And if Norm can find an easy way to do it I can even have one box run up to 16 BBS systems. I may have actually overbought racks I am thinking now. I can literally run all the systems I have now in a single rack.”

“OK, I guess that makes sense. Oh, they have three more cases like that. They are going to hold them for 48 hours.” I called Sue in and asked her what tech might be willing to make a run to San Francisco and back for $200. “Somebody with a van or truck with a shell would be best,” I added. She quickly got on the phone, and I had Becky write out the address and directions to the store. I handed him the check and the directions, and he said he was heading off now. I handed him another $50, saying that should cover food, gas, and a motel for the night.

On Friday the move went as expected. I had been running for the last week the warning the board was going down today, but should be back up in the evening. We quickly got everything stripped out and loaded up, and by 10 it was in the new store. I thanked everybody and gave them $100 each, and Abe and Blake headed back to the store. Sue was busy in the office scanning in over 100 covers and promo material from the porn company. And Jack arrived and asked me if that was where I wanted the racks to be.

Once I confirmed they were how I wanted them, he pulled out a drill and some hardware, and mounted them all into the floor. He drilled in the concrete, pounded in some bolts about a half inch thick into the concrete floor, then with some large bolts we had four of them bolted securely into the floor. “There, now they will not move in an earthquake.”

We moved the other three racks to the side, and when Norm arrived he looked through the boards. “Wow man, yea. Digi 16 boards. These are killer man, killer!” I asked him if I could run different BBS systems from a single computer, and he said no problem. “Just like, assign them when you set them up to the COM number, and away you go man. You can run sixteen one line boards, or one sixteen line board from one computer with these. Or any combination.”

The new BBS servers were already mounted, so in about four hours Norm and I got them all loaded, configured, and were testing them as Jack and Becky set up the modems. The kid came back and dropped off three cases, and I opened them all and looked. Yep, each one had another 24 sets. I now had 96 in total.

I asked Norm how much these things cost, and he was looking at me with his eyes bulging out. “Dude, those are like $5,000 each. Where you get so many, you rob the factory?” Even I felt a little light headed and breathless when he told me that.

I laughed and shook my head. “Naw, but I often get lucky when I hit some surplus places I know in the Bay area. They will throw out things for sale sometimes without really checking them well, and I just get lucky. As you can see, the box says they are internal modems. Here.” I then handed him a set, and he actually hugged me. At least he had taken a bath sometime in the last week. He told me that two of the three monitors only needed fuses, he was still playing with the third one. At that time I was smiling as I saw one line after another of the BBS going active.

Soon, all ten lines were hot, and I was seeing people disconnected as they were not paying members. But I shook my head, and asked Jack to call and have the next six BBS lines activated, to use the same roll-over pattern. He nodded and made the call as Norm installed the next six modems. I was quickly cloning the nodes and configuring them as Sue watched closely, and Jack said they would be up within an hour.

I was showing her how to cycle between multiple nodes easily, and we saw the eleventh, then the twelfth node go live. We hugged each other, and I saw Norm looking at the 20 inch monitor I had stuck in the corner. He asked if we could put that to use, and soon it was on top of the desk. I shut down the terminal station and added another video card, and soon it was up and running with only a few changes to the hardware settings. Norm then sat down and started writing a program, as I gave Jack another check and he headed on home. Becky gave me a hug and kiss, and said she had to get back to work. “But Pete, this has been an amazing week. Now I am glad we are seeing each other again, or I would never have seen this.” We kissed again and I walked her to her car.

Back inside Norm was testing his program, then doing some changes, then testing again. Finally, an hour later I grinned. On the 20 inch display was a breakdown of 50 nodes, ten boxes on the screen showing five lines on each. And each one gave a status report, saying if it was active, in use, and what the program was doing. Not bad, not bad at all! He even told me that if there was a problem the box for that line would turn red.

I asked him how much I owed him, and he said “Nothing man, nothing. Pete, you are an alright dude, honestly. You give me things just to give them to me, and that kind of karma pays back man. It pays back. I can’t take money from you man, but I know you will not like it if I refuse. So this is the deal, if we do more, you pay for the hardware, the time is mine to do with what I want. And I want to see where this all goes, this is like nothing I have ever done before.”