CA Part 2 Return to the San Francisco Bay Area.
If you are trying to follow this life saga, you will know that I stayed and worked in the Washington, DC area for about six years before returning to the Bay area. This time I thought for good. When I moved to Sunnyvale, I bought a mobile home close to Lockheed Missiles and Space (LMSC) where I got my next job, still in my new field of computer programming.
And I stayed in that mobile home through a series of job hops all within the Sunnyvale area. I was happy there, gainfully employed, and close to family. But time marches on. My last job in Sunnyvale was with a company called Data Design Associates. After some years with that company, the owner went through some dramatic marital situations. He divorced his wife, who got 50{0cdeda01f3f3bfc56e7a77b9bf298b3f7d32c3660f53c61fbe1a94dd1c6575f6} of the company ownership.
Maybe not quite 50{0cdeda01f3f3bfc56e7a77b9bf298b3f7d32c3660f53c61fbe1a94dd1c6575f6} because each employee at that time had some equity in the company and there were over 100 of us. In any case, she had enough equity to sell her part to a competitive company called Integral Systems. The original owner bailed and Integral decided to close the Sunnyvale office and merge everything into their Walnut Creek facility. I suddenly was facing a two hour a day commute on the freeway or a move to the northern part of the East Bay. Housing prices in the Walnut Creek area were out of my reach. Decision time.
Leaving the San Francisco Bay Area Again
On a whim the previous summer, when accompanying my niece when she and her husband moved to Arizona, I bought a little retirement house on a golf course in Chandler, Arizona. I bought it as an investment at a great price with the plans to rent the house seasonally until I was ready to maybe retire in it. Faced with the job and housing dilemma in California, on a whim, I asked my acting boss if I could work remotely from Arizona.
People from DDA had been leaving after the merger with Integral and they were needing technical people to stay. I thought it was worth a try. They wouldn’t let me work from home in Sunnyvale, it was within commuting distance, but maybe Arizona. My boss came back with a “Yes, but I had to do it within the next week”. The date when the office in Sunnyvale was to be closed.
Somehow, I did it. Got everything packed from both my office and my mobile home, got a mover AND additionally bought a larger house in the golf resort in Arizona. Actually, I think it may have spanned a couple of weeks before I was moved in and settled down to work in Arizona.
It was 1992 and my Granddaughter was born back in California a week after I made the move. I was sad to miss that special event, but s*** happens as they say.
But Before the Ink Dried
Then, as they say, before the ink was dry on everything, there was another movement of the DDA portion of Integral. Integral sold the DDA products to IVIS, a group in North Carolina. It was two guys who had once worked at DDA and knew the products and had been doing custom installations and modifications as consultants. I was offered a job to go with the purchase BUT I would have to move to North Carolina. That was totally out of the question for me, so I was suddenly unemployed with two houses in Arizona.
The job market for computer people in Arizona was nearly non-existent. So, I went down and filed for my first unemployment payment. Because I had just moved to Arizona, that was a bit iffy. I started interviewing for jobs, but nothing was clicking. Then one day, I got a call from IVIS in North Carolina. They asked if I still wanted to work for them from Arizona. You Bet!! And that’s what I did until 2001, when IVIS ran into financial problems and I was laid off. I was 66 that time and decided it was time to retire.
Retirement
I sold the house on the golf course, bought 2-1/2 acres in the Queen Creek foothills of the San Tan Mountains and I’ve been here ever since. Not completely retired the whole time, but this is my final hometown.
When we moved out here to Queen Creek, it was very much a small ranch town. There were no grocery stores, only a couple of churches, a couple of schools, and very quiet country living. Since that time, the area has boomed. Continued as Arizona.