Chapter 35

When Andrew got home he was tired and so decided to have a nap and felt great when he woke. As everyone else was out Andrew wrapped the gifts he had bought the family as well as Leslie and Nikki’s gifts. When he woke the following morning he could feel the previous day’s swim in his arms and legs. There was no way he was going to the Pool. So he rolled over and went back to sleep for a couple of hours. After exercising and a slower run Andrew got ready for Julian coming over. His first course textbooks had arrived in the mail on Friday. They could look through them and see what the first course was going to be like. When Julian arrived Andrew went to help him haul the two boxes of stuff up to his room. They had both often laughed and said wouldn’t it be great to have two computers so that they could have one at each house. Save all the endless taking apart and reconnecting that each had to do every two weeks. Andrew took the box from Mr. Strong thinking that he would head back to his car.

“Once you have taken that to your room, do you think I could talk to you for a few minutes?”

“Sure come in please Mr. Strong. Do you want privacy to talk? My folks are home and Julian is here, so finding that might be a bit of a challenge.”

Andrew wondered how open Mr. Strong was going to be. He guessed that Mr. Strong wouldn’t want to talk about his business in front of his parents.

“Let’s talk in your room if that is okay. Julian knows the gist of what I am going to be talking about anyway.”

Andrew dropped of the box of stuff for Julian to start getting his computer reconnected and went through to tell the folks that Mr. Strong was there.

“Mum, Mr. Strong is staying for a few minutes. He has a couple of computer questions that he wants to ask me. We will be through in my room.”

His mum did the obligatory adult small talk and got Julian senior a cup of coffee and then left them in peace. They went through to Andrew’s room. Julian looked up at them, snorted and went back to rebooting his system.

“Andrew, I need your help. My firm has spent a lot of money, I won’t say how much but you know roughly based on everything we bought, on more than 30 computers all with VisiCalc installed. I saw what you had done for Brian and it was my endorsement that in the end tipped the balance. We went ahead with the purchase. Since then it has not gone well. The firm that we bought the computers from seemed very reliable but they have been nothing but trouble. What we have is an expensive collection of computers, most of which do not work as they are supposed to and nobody is getting anything productive out of VisiCalc. How do we fix this?”

It was like Brian Campbell all over again except that it was a whole firm.

“Why are you here Mr. Strong? Surely there are firms that can help you fix this?”

“We have tried a few but they are all too busy or not interested. They will sell us more computers but they don’t seem interested in fixing someone else’s screw-ups.”

This was straightforward, or at least it appeared to be. Lots of re-installs, checking everything, distributing the templates to all the computers and a bunch of hand holding to convince them that a kid could do it.

“Do you mind going and talking to Mum for five minutes. Ask for more coffee or something. I want to talk to Julian alone for a couple of minutes.”

Mr. Strong looked like he needed a drink after that statement but dutifully headed out.

“Do you want to make some good money, gain some experience and help your dad out over the winter break?”

Julian looked startled.

“Really? Doing what.”

“What we do every week. Break the system down, reconnect it, check everything, boot it up, deal with the inevitable screw ups, fix them, install the VisiCalc templates I am going to sell him and then make sure everything is up and running. Then go onto the next computer and repeat. I will pay you £200 but we will probably work all next weekend other than Sunday afternoon. Full time 27^th through the 31^st.”

“£200, are you kidding me? Dad will never pay me that.”

“It won’t be your dad. He can’t employ his son and his son’s friend. Wouldn’t be independent, lawyers worry about stuff like that. He will have to get someone from the office to deal with us. Anyway, will you do it if I can swing the deal?”

“If you can get him to do this I will never doubt you again. Sure I am in. This I have to see.”

Andrew went and retrieved Mr. Strong who was looking at him with suspicious interest.

“Am I right is saying that this is all complicated by ethics and independence for you?”

Mr. Strong continued to stare at Andrew but nodded.

“That is why we were trying other places. I would be conflicted, in a legal sense, if we hired you.”

“I have a solution. It won’t be cheap but it will fix your problem. You need to know that Julian will be helping me do the work and that I will be paying him for it. Can you call someone today and have them meet with me on Monday? They need to be authorised to hire me if they decide to. You need to do what you have to so that they know it is your son and his friend that will be doing the work and that your firm will be paying them. Me directly and Julian indirectly.”

Mr. Strong looked like he had swallowed something that was disagreeing with hm.

“There will need to be receipts and everything Andrew. It will be completely different than what you did for Brian Campbell over the summer.”

“I know that Mr. Strong. When I talked to Brian about selling the VisiCalc templates to other people or firms he spent a long time telling me how difficult it would be. How as a minor I can’t sign anything, all those kinds of things. With a lot of help and some money to a lawyer.”

Here Andrew smiled at Mr. Strong but it went completely over his head.

“We came up with a solution. So can you arrange for a meeting with someone who will be authorised to sign off if it meets with their approval?

“Yes, I will call one of the other senior partners and he will be available for a meeting and can commit the firm. I will let him know our relationship and that you will be working with Julian.”

“Thanks Mr. Strong. I know that Julian and I can fix this for you. It will be up and running by Friday January 4^th.”

Andrew finally got him out the house. Julian laughed and said they should call his mum and make sure that his dad got home okay as he looked more than a little confused. It was true. Julian Strong senior seemed out of sorts that morning. They went back through to Andrew’s room. Rather than start looking through the new textbook Julian wanted to chat first.

“How did you do that man? You are 14 for fuck’s sake. You shouldn’t be able to talk to Dad like that.”

Julian was seriously confused.

“Brian Campbell has been a great mentor. He has spent hours with me going through this stuff. I have dinner there most weekends, and he talks with me, teaches me about business. I think he is secretly proud of the templates and he wants to see what I can do. Shit Julian, I am making this stuff up as I go along. The one thing he repeatedly emphasised to me was the whole independence thing. He told me that your old man couldn’t have anything to do with buying the templates for his firm, because he is buying them from me. But think about it. This is going to be easy money. You don’t think that we can sit and work our way through 30 or 40 computers. We do it every other weekend. Sure the first one is going to be a pain as we try and figure out what works and what doesn’t. My guess is between a lousy install and a bunch of lawyers trying to fix them that we will take everything apart, reconnect it and then see what happens when we boot up. Probably have to reinstall stuff, almost certainly VisiCalc. It is really fussy. I had to reinstall it for Mr. C. It is 12 disks. We will take a tape deck and play some music and just work our way through it. Boring days but £40/day. Nobody knows computers yet. I don’t know what this bunch of clowns did on the install but it isn’t old men in suits who can fix it. It is us and they are going to pay us to do it. Remember all that shit your Dad used to give you about why you were playing with computers?”

Andrew finished up with that question. Julian had been sitting looking thoughtful as Andrew had talked. Now, finally, he had a huge grin on his face.

“Oh man is he going to have to shut up now!”

The reality was finally settling in.

“There is still a ton we need to talk about but a couple of things. I don’t know whether they will go for it. I am going to be pushing the line here. Being greedy but not too greedy. The fact of the connection to your Dad is our biggest weapon. It is not like we are going to half ass this and fuck around. I am going to try and charge them a lot of money. At least 30 computers and 30 copies of VisiCalc. They are in for a minimum £40,000 maybe more. There must be a lot of pressure to get value. We will have them up and running by the end of the Christmas holiday. But there is a risk that they will tell me to stuff it. Not a big risk I think since it looks like we are their last resort but there is a risk. No 50 year old guy likes to get told what to do by a 14 year old. Alright, let me go and make one call and then we can see if the Open University is going to teach us anything new.”

Andrew was pumped. Pumped more than he thought he would be and probably too much. Why? Control. Time to take away some control from the adults and make them pay. He needed to calm down. He called Leslie and she came to the phone.

“Great news. Julian Strong senior was just here and they are royally screwed. Remember how your dad could get nothing to work until I helped him. Now imagine an entire firm of lawyers like your dad.”

She giggled and yawned at the same time.

“Good morning to you too Andrew. Okay that is good news. Why are you on the phone to me sounding so excited?”

“I need you to call Mhairi Connelly. I know it is the weekend but we need to meet with her on Monday morning. Hopefully she is working. I’m not joking Leslie; this firm is in trouble with their computers. They have dropped serious money and are getting no value. I am proposing to work from the 27^th right through until the 31^st fixing this. I have got Julian to work with me on it. I am thinking about charging them £1,000 to do this and install my templates on all the computers. I am going to pay Julian £200 and we need to ask Mhairi about how to do that.

“Can you ask her to meet us on Monday morning? Probably an all morning meeting. If she is free then I think she should accompany us over to Strong’s firm.”

Leslie was finally getting the magnitude of the opportunity.

“£1,000. Do you really think we can get away with charging that?”

“They have probably spent more than 40 grand on the equipment. Sure they will be pissed that they have to pay a kid another thousand to actually make it work. If they are pissed then they can go sue the firm that installed it for them the first time. There is probably a 20% chance that they will tell us to take a hike.”