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I am a retired USMC Gunnery Sergeant. I served exactly 20 years 0 months and 0 days. No kidding. You should have seen the look on the S1 clerk's face when he figured that one out. I joined the Marine Corps in March of 1977 and went to boot camp at Parris Island the following July. I spent three and one half years at Marine Corps Air Station Santa Ana. I worked at Headquarters and Maintenance Squadron 16, Ground Support Division. My first job was a refrigeration mechanic (MOS 6078). After four years I decided to get out of the Marine Corps and move to Cape Cod Massachusetts with my wife Lisa and our 6 month old daughter Melissa (Missy). Lisa was from the Cape and we both love being near the ocean. We were married on Christmas Eve in 1978. Missy was born February 9, 1981. Life outside the Corps was a bit rough. I went through several jobs and learned quite a bit more about myself. Especially that I was ill equipped for the civilian rat race. Never the less, I worked hard at every job I had. I wound up unemployed for about three months and things just started to unravel. After a little over two years of job hopping and inconsistent pay, I decided to see if I could go back in the Marine Corps. I was fortunate enough to be accepted back. I kept my rank (Corporal) and all my time in grade. Lisa was reluctant about my decision but knew in her heart that this was the right thing for us. On September 1, 1983 I reenlisted and went right back to Marine Corps Air Station, Santa Ana. This time I was given the MOS of Ground Support Equipment Electrician (6077). It took a while to get back into the swing of things. The hardest part was returning to a situation where I now worked for Marines that had worked for me. I adjusted rather quickly. I learned to be grateful I retained my rank and time in grade. When things settled down I starting taking college classes at night. We moved to MCAS Cherry Point in the summer of 1986. I was a Sergeant. Melissa was five and had a two year old brother named Derrick. I bought my first computer from Radio Shack, a Tandy 1000 SX. I continued taking night courses which included Introduction to Computers and BASIC Computer Programming. A friend of mine, Sgt David Shaver, showed my a magazine article on "how to quickly pay off debts". He knew I had a computer and asked me to help him. I used a spreadsheet program to calculate how to pay off all twenty-one of his debts based on the ideas presented in the magazine. It took over 5 hours to manually figure this out. I remember thinking this was a good idea but not worth the time. I spent the next three months designing a computer program that would duplicate the results obtained with the manual spreadsheet method. The program was crude but it worked. At this point it didn't have a name I just referred to it as the "Payoff" program. This is what became "ZilchWorks - Debt Reduction Software". I continued with evening college taking more computer programming classes. My interest in computer programming lead to a lateral move. In 1989 I switched into the Data Processing field. I moved to Marine Corps Logistics Base, Albany Georgia as a COBOL Programmer (4063). I decided to create a more sophisticated version of that old "Payoff" program. My hope was I could sell it to people who needed help getting out of debt. I spent an entire years worth of evenings and weekends creating the first retail version. In December of 1991, I began marketing my software known as "Zilch" through various shareware vendors. Other prominent shareware authors that I got to know (actually, I picked their brains) told me not to expect any results for six months to a year. Imagine my surprise when two months later I received my first order from Gifford Wherry of Kennewick, WA. I haven't looked back since. The rest of my Marine Corps career was as follows:
Now you know the whole story about how ZilchWorks came to be. Semper Fi! |
