Chapter 1

Paul Cullen was a self-employed programmer and computer consultant. He lived in a small two bedroom apartment in a fifty year-old garden apartment complex in northern New Jersey. The neighbors, mostly young adults, single or recently married and just starting out their lives, kept to themselves. The complex had been built adjacent to the state highway which served as a major access route to New York City. Every morning the bus stop at the corner was packed with commuters waiting for the next bus into the City and their places of employment.

That was how Paul had started his career; working for a large consulting firm in the City. Soon the daily grind, the late hours, the never-ending traffic and delays began to take their toll. As the firm had grown, management had started to ignore some of its smaller, not-as-profitable clients. When two of his clients complained to Paul about the poor service, he saw his opportunity to escape. He told them that if they would be patient with him, and if they sent the company a formal notification ending their contracts, he could serve their needs at night and on the weekends.

Six months later, after working the equivalent of two full time jobs, he submitted his resignation and set up his own consulting business. Careful not to run afoul of the non-compete clause he had signed when he first started, he built his business slowly, advertising in trade magazines, attending trade shows and encouraging word-of-mouth advertising by his clients. It took several more years of hard work, long hours, and frugal living, but he finally had a successful business and a comfortable, if not extravagant, life style.

One of his major customers was a company whose business was electrical parts distribution. They were a small player in an industry that was dominated by two or three extremely large and highly successful corporations. The company concentrated on the nuts and bolts of the industry, small parts with low markups; they were content in filling that niche. The two owners of the business knew that they would never be rich, but were satisfied making a decent living for themselves and a providing employment for about thirty hard-working employees. The writing was on the wall; within ten years, maybe sooner, they would be forced to sell the company because each year their client base, primarily small manufacturers, were moving overseas. Paul was well aware of this fact.

They also had a more pressing problem. Their systems and their hardware were old and outdated. It was 1995 and Y2K was looming over the horizon. The owners had given him the task of maintaining their existing systems and hardware instead of planning for an anticipated switchover to a Windows-based platform. Much of his efforts for the company were spent on finding used replacement equipment and program patches. He was spending more and more time there, after hours, just maintaining their systems.

The company was located in a large industrial park, near the New York/New Jersey state line, in a small run down warehouse. The offices were clean and neat, and every square foot was utilized for sales and sales support. The servers were located in a small area carved out of the warehouse; that's where his workstation was located. It was cold in the winter, and because of the large window air conditioner, noisy in the summer. It was usually nine or ten o'clock in the evening, sometimes later, when he would be finished for the evening. On the way home, he would stop at his favorite place for a late night dinner, Angel Heaven, a strip club located just outside of the complex. The place was relatively small with a three-sided bar, each side lined with fifteen stools. The beer taps were located at the corners and a narrow aisle for the bartenders separated the bar from the raised stage located in the center. The perimeter of the room was lined with small bar-height tables and chairs. The capacity of the room was about one hundred and twenty.