Chapter 7

I was sitting at the breakfast table watching Shannon tease me as she did every morning by wearing very little then making sure one nipple or the other would make an appearance. I was lost in thought thinking back over the last year since Shannon and I had been an item. Shannon broke my line of thought with.

"What do you know about computers?"

"Not much. I know they are supposed to make things easier but I find I can write faster then I can type so I don't use the one in my office at all," I replied

Shannon told me that the Realty business uses them a lot and Jim had told her that all the accounting was done on them, She said that Jim wanted to talk to me about getting all of our offices hooked up together so that we could keep track of jobs better as everything was faxing now and with as many fax machines as we had half the time the faxes were being sent to the wrong dept.

I looked at her thoughtfully and said, "what is everyone else doing?"

"Just about everyone had computers now but only a few had them hooked up together, a couple of the computers in the downtown office were hooked together but that was about it, most of our computers don't even have email," she said.

"Do you think computers are going to take over all businesses like they say?" I asked.

"Yes, they are teaching computers in school now and I would think everyone will have one at home in a few years," she told me.

"Well what do you propose we do?" I wondered.

"I think we should start a new division for computers and networking, they could learn by doing our network then they could start contracting out and doing networks for other Companies as we go."

"Just what we need another division I can't keep up with what we have now," I sarcastically said.

"John, you know as well as I do that you have tried to diversify this business right from the start, right know you have the Construction, Electrical, Realty, Welding, Machining, Housing, and Millwrighting Divisions and they are just the ones that bring in money you have Accounting, Personnel and Payroll divisions that don't bring in any outside money at all." Shannon stated, "what is one or two more going to hurt? It's not like you can't afford it and you don't need to keep track of everything that is going on, that is why you hired all the rest of us."

"OK, how do we do this?" I asked.

"I think what you do is go over to N.A.I.T (Northern Alberta Institute of Technology) and see if they have a networking course yet, if they do hire the top students, 10 should do it. If they don't, make them start one, you have a lot of pull there. Every apprentice you have went there for training and in some of the classes the only students were your employees," Shannon suggested.

"Right, well, lets talk to Rick, and Jim and maybe we will have the Dean come and see us this afternoon. Who should look after this division, do we have anyone that knows anything about computers now?"

"It should be Jim at first I think; he knows a little about computers but he is the one that will have to test it and make sure no one can break into the accounting computers," She suggested.

"What do you mean break in? Now you are scaring me," I said.

Shannon just smiled, stood up took the plates over to the sink and playfully turned just the right way so I had a full view of her right breast right down to the pointy nipple. I knew this conversation was now over and we were going to have to make this a quickie if we wanted to get to work on time. We had been late a lot over the past year since Shannon moved into my house.

That reminds me, she never did ask about moving in. She just did it really gradually then once she had everything moved in she mentioned that a couple of the realty group's girls were wanting a house and maybe she should just give them hers. "After all," she said, "they were cute and I wouldn't mind too much if you glanced at them every now and then, as long as you didn't neglect me." I think she liked to watch as well because every now and then I would see she had the telescope pointed towards one of the houses that the wife sun bathed in the nude. I would have to ask her about that some day; she was always pointing out cute girls to me. Maybe a cute butt here or a nice set of tits there.

Anyway suffice it to say, Shannon had all the right people convinced this was a good idea and even let the Dean from N.A.I.T. know what she was looking to have taught in their next round of classes. He asked, "why should they change the curriculum for us? Shannon just replied, "we would be hiring all the students that graduated from this course over the next couple of years and we wanted them at least partially trained when they came to work for us."

When the Dean left the meeting he told us, "the instructors would be in touch to make sure the new curriculum would be suitable for our purposes." We now had a new division, Networking. Iit didn't sound all that great so we would have to work on the name before we started to market this new technology.

A month later they were in my office ripping apart walls to put in the wiring required in order to get this networking thing up and running. Yeah this is something people will pay for I thought, lets just go out and rip everyone's office buildings apart. Man, I was pissed. I decided right then and there we had made a mistake and I was going to stop this and I mean now!

Shannon saw me stomping to the elevator and jumped on with me. By the time we got to the new Networking floor 23 she had me calmed down enough to at least listen to what they had to say about this.

James, the new Manager for the networking group, nervously explained that most new buildings had wiring that could be used to do this already installed. In fact we had wiring in place that could have done this as well but they decided if they were going to do this they wanted to do it right. That would involve adding something called Cat 5 wiring to all the offices as well as adding extra ports so that furniture could be moved around in the future. The reason my office looked like shit was there was only 1 inside wall and it wasn't even close to my desk. SThat meant that they had to rip apart the outside walls which of course were mostly windows so they had to do some fancy things with the window sills.

James was a true geek. He really believed in what he was doing and his explanation pacified me for the moment but I was still not really happy about everything they were doing. I asked him how long they would be working on the floors in our building and he told me that it would be at least a week, maybe more because of all the people trying to do their work at the same time. I told Shannon to call everyone in the office to the gym (it was the only place big enough to hold all of us) right away because I wanted to have a meeting.

As soon as it seemed everyone was in the gym I started.

"OK people, this is what I know, the network guys are working here and they need to rip everything apart in order to finish what they started so what we are going to do is vacate the office building while they work. You all have 2 hrs to get a hold of whom ever you need to in order to be away from here for a week, I want you to supply to anyone in the realty group the amount of dependants you have that will need to travel with us to our temporary location, I won't tell you where it is but I will tell you it isn't in this city and we will be flying there first thing in the morning. I will let you know where we are going as soon as it is arranged, Right now I can tell you that I guarantee there will be beaches and it will be hot. Any questions"

I looked around the room and all I saw were looks of bewilderment. I turned and went to the elevator Shannon, Rick, and Jim got on with me.

"OK people you convinced me to do this networking thing and I can't do any work the way things are so it will be up to you to find us a Hotel we can rent in some tropical area, Hawaii would be nice but it can be anywhere. Just remember, I promised all of these people a nice vacation so you guys find it. Shannon, you find us a plane or two if needed to take us all there and it has to leave in the morning," I stated