What's a Popkin?

Well, the question really is "Who is Laird Popkin?" Good question.

In the summer of 1988 I met Laird Popkin when he was working at The Bit Bucket in West Newton. The Bit Bucket was this cool store with cool people and with cool stuff in the windows, like Amiga computers showing ray traced animations with shiny chrome balls and also a PDP-8. Try to find one of those on ebay!

Now, Laird was this nice fellow a couple of years older than me. He gave me my first ever demonstration of Windows 2.1. He showed me how an Atari ST could run Mac software if you ripped the contents of a Mac ROM. He introduced me to bulletin boards and FidoNet, and emoticons! He even invited me to his place in Sudbury (or was it in Weston?) where he shared a house with a bunch of other techies and their Apple II's and a Jaguar motoring enthusiast. He loaned me his copy of The Eudamonic Pie, which is this fascinating book about how some west coast nerds invented a computer in a shoe for beating roulette. Eat your heart out Maxwell Smart! I still have the book. Sorry Laird.

Laird and I had lunch a few times and struck up some great conversations. We talked about computers, science, consciousness and God.

Wherever you are Laird, thank you!

A Fortunate Series of Events

In the spring of 1986 I discovered something that would change the direction of my life completely. I had been reading the Bible a lot in my teen years, but I didn't have a church community that fit what I understood from my studies until I found the Boston Church of Christ.

Late that year I decided to move in with some other young fellows from the church in Newton, but in order to do this I needed to find more regular paying work. I continued to work with Mr. Alessi but I began to look for a job. For some reason in the cold early spring of 1987 I worked for a few weeks at McDonalds and then suddenly I found an ad in the local paper. I remember the ad was titled "Programmer Trainee".

I went in for an interview. The company was called Circuitboard Fabrication Company, or C.F.C. It was hidden neatly in a neighborhood right next to a grade school in Newtonville. The president of C.F.C. was Bob Spain. He explained that this was a job programming CNC drilling and routing machines which are used to cut circuitboards out of fiberglass sheets. I told him that I was interested in developing computer programs and he responded that I may have an opportunity to do some of that at C.F.C. Small business owners like Bob Spain and Patrick Alessi are so openminded. :-) He offered me $5.50 an hour, and I accepted the job.

I began my new job taking the bus from Needham center to Newtonville because my car had broken down. Then after a few weeks I moved in with the guys from church. I only took with me what would fit in one carload. My new home just happened to be walking distance from C.F.C. It was very easy for me to see the hand of God in this arrangement.

I was surprised to learn soon after starting my new job that Mr. Alessi had used C.F.C.'s services to produce the circuitboards I had been assembling for two years. I had notice the marking CFC-1 on the boards and now I understood what it meant.