Chapter 13

Shannon went into Labor at 4:30am and I had a beautiful daughter at 5:01am both were doing fine, I wandered around the hospital talking to my parents and Shannon's parents as well as all the people that dropped by the flowers while we were in the hospital. Two days later I took my family home and we showed Michele her room Shannon and I had set up for the baby, I had to explain to our daughter Michele why the room was wallpapered with hockey wall paper and all the toys were sports related, I can't believe Shannon would do this to me, she was supposed to be a boy.

I was the proudest parent you could possibly imagine I stayed home most of the time after the baby was born doing anything I could in order to help Shannon out with the care of my little angel, Shannon got me to run errands to the office at least 3 times a week, she seemed to be on the phone or on her laptop quite a bit keeping up with what her group was doing, I tried to convince her that she was on maternity leave and shouldn't have to do this kind of stuff, I think if it wasn't for the fact she was breast feeding she would have been in the office everyday working.

I played around on her laptop a little and was able to log into the company server but I found it to be really slow, even the laptop started up slow. I called James and told him about Shannon's laptop being slow and the slow connection, I asked him what I could do about it, he told me that he could get a dedicated connection to our house but as for the laptop there was nothing he could do short of building a new one with chipsets that had not been truly developed yet. I told him to get on the dedicated connection and to start working out how to get the development of new chipsets on track.

The next day James called and asked me to come down to the office and see him about the new laptop, I told him I would be right down. When I got there James started laying out the problems he had come across getting the chipset development on track, there was a Canadian company in Edmonton that was leading the research on advanced chipsets but the were in financial difficulty and would probably drop out of the race soon and maybe close up shop as they did not have the space in there present location to do the work nor did they have the capital to keep the research going.

I asked him how much he thought they would need and he told me that the owners were about to just close up shop. I asked him to phone them and get a tour of the premises as well as a meeting set up for about six of us. He got on the phone and set something up for us that afternoon, I called Shannon's group and asked them to have someone at the meeting then I called Julie and asked her to send someone as well, I told James that he could take two people with him to the meeting.

When I arrived at the meeting all of our people were there, I was pleased to see them there early, the owners took us on a tour and explained what they were working on, I asked them how they felt about the progress being made, they explained that they had put everything they had into this and felt they would not have enough to see it through at this point. I asked if they were looking for investors or if they just wanted out, they said it had grown to more than they could handle and they felt it would be best to just sell and move on. I asked how much and wrote them a check right there, I told James and his people to talk to the developers and find out what they would need to continue their research and start manufacturing laptops out of the product.

Once James and his people were out doing there thing I asked the Realty girl if there were any good locations for an electronics manufacturing plant, she told me there was a property that already had a building on it that would probably work well, I told her to acquire it and make sure that there was plenty of room for expansion, I talked to the personnel guy and told him to talk to all the people there and get them on our payroll as soon as possible. We were now in the computer industry.

Two days later I got the call I expected from James, he asked just what I had in mind with the factory and what types of laptops would we be producing. I told him to consider that the only customer for the laptops would be our company, if there were extra then we may offer them to the public but they would not be run of the mill laptops these would be of the best quality and capable of handling all the demands of our company. He told me that was a tall order and would take some time, I told him to take his time and make sure they would stand up to the rigors of industrial life.

Shannon would try and force me to go into the office at least three times a week for a full day, so I got into the habit of going into the office on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Then for the rest of the week I would generally just laze around and try to help out as much as Shannon would allow, Michele was the type of baby that slept through the night as soon as we brought her home, she would wake up with a big smile on her face and act like you were the most important person in the world.

Every Morning I would go in and check on Michele, she would wake up fairly soon after I went into the room, then I would change her and take her to Shannon for her first feeding of the morning, I would watch as she eagerly sucked on Shannon's nipples trying to get as much as she could. After she had her breakfast I would make breakfast for Shannon and myself. Then we would bathe Michele and try to play with her as much as possible, I would then go and check my email with Michele and Shannon would have a shower, after her shower we would switch places and I would have a shower.

Shannon and I made a habit of going for a walk down to the neighborhood coffee shop every lunch time for a snack and so Michele would get some fresh air. After lunch we would walk back home and Shannon would feed Michele for her afternoon feeding.