It is later in life, I am about forty-three or forty-four years old and I am at the home my friend, and then employer, Steve Frazier. Steve has the guitar. Steve can actually play a guitar and make nice-sounding music on it. He has owned several nice guitars, including some expensive acousticals.

Steve #1- Steve Justice

But that is not the story. Rather it starts in the summer of 1981, with my introduction to microcomputers by a different friend and teacher named Steve Justice. Steve Justice worked for the Bonneville Power Administration. He was an electrical engineer who worked as a Fortran programmer. He wrote databse and SCADA aquisition software for BPA computer systems. He is to this day, an exceptionally nice person. He is a Christian and actively lives his faith serving other people. I met him when Carol and I started attending the church he attended.

One day, he invited me to come out to his place of work and see the Bonneville computer system. It was more than I can describe and at that time it was way more than I could begin to understand. This was in 1981. A short time later, Steve Justice, not Frazier, purchased a brand-new, double floppy drive, 48k TRS-80 Model III computer. For those who do not remember, personal computers were very expensive in the 1980's. Steve's TRS-80 was in the $2500.00 to $3000.00 range with the two floppy disk drives and the 48k of RAM.

Steve Justice invited me to his house to see his new computer and we played the two-person castle adventure game on it. I was hooked. It was all I could talk about or think about for the next several months. I started reading computer magazines and dreaming of owning one.

Later, in the spring of 1982, Steve encouraged me to enroll in a computer BASIC language course he was teaching at the local college. At first I dragged my tail on the idea, but eventually he won me over and I signed up. Ouch! It was hard. My brain was stretched and ached. I wrote all kinds of code and most of it didn't work. It took hours to troubleshoot the problems. But when the smoke all cleared, I received a hard-earned "A" for a grade. Steve talked me into taking the Advanced BASIC class the next quarter.

The Advanced BASIC was held during the day when I had to work. Steve said for me to pay the money and then come over to his house and use his TRS-80 Model III. It was a good idea with one problem, the class problems were written for APPLE II computers and AppleSoft BASIC. Everything was different when it came to file and print I/O operations.

"No problem," said Steve, "just do them in both versions of BASIC, Apple and TRS-80 BASIC (written by Microsoft)."

That is what I did. With his help when I got stuck, I did the exercises in Microsoft TRS-80 BASIC and in Applesoft BASIC. Again I passed, with an "A" grade. I worked extra hard to get it. I couldn't let down my friend who believed in me.

Now I really wanted to own my own microcomputer. The problem was that I didn't have the money to purchase one. Months passed before I was able get a 16k, non-extended BASIC Radio Shack Color Computer. I would loved to have had a Model III, but they were in the financial stratosphere. The Color Computer was $300.00 and the monitor was $ 100.00. Our family had to stretch and strain to pay off the Color Computer.

But I was smitten. Over the next three years, the COCO got an extended BASIC language chip, a memory upgrade, a floppy disk drive system, a modem, a printer and eventually I was set. I spent all my free moments reading about, working on, fixing and operating personal computers. I wanted to be a computer guy.

Steve #2 - Steve Frazier

Eventually desire led to a career change away from the automotive parts business and I went to work for Steve Frazier, a real-life, self-taught computer guy who started a computer store, The Computer Place, in Moses Lake in 1989. Through the help of another computer friend, Jim Barber, whom I have yet to write about, I was able to get started teaching MS-DOS Classes at The Computer Place in 1991. That is when I became aquainted with Steve and Teri. Eventually, Steve offered me a job working for The Computer Place and I came to work for him on April 1st, 1994.

Prior to that time, I worked for Steve Justice, Steve #1, at Bonneville Power, as a contracted programmer's helper. It is funny how these Steves have been so influential in my life. One of them, Steve Justice, Steve #1, got me interested and started in computers, and even provided a job for me after I left the auto industry. The other Steve, Steve Frazier, Steve #2, hired me and trained me to sell and fix personal computers and eventually sold me his computer store.

My relationship with Steve Frazier has truly proven to be life-changing. It's the way he is. He can be tough and pragmatic when necessary, but he has great compassion and humanity. He is very business saavy and is truthfully, one of the best practical computer technicians I have ever seen in my life. Over and over again, I have seen him come up with solutions to computer and networking problems that stumped other people with fancier credentials than he possesses. He is a great teacher.

He re-molded my thinking process and taught me how to think for myself. He gave me great encouragement. He invested thousands of hours in helping me and has been there through some very difficult spots in life. He is the dear friend who once offered to put all of his financial resources and his financial future on the line to try to help me when he didn't have to do it. You do not get many friends of his quality in life.

Who Might Be Steve #3