“Vintage Monk”

Emma’s comment yesterday about liking the leaner, meaner version of me reminded me that I had been promising Nerdy and Alex proof that I, like David Haselhoff, am huge in Germany.

Ok, well I’m not huge but from the photo my hair sure was.

This was me, circa 1999 at the height of the dot com boom. A German tech magazine came to Microsoft and spent the day with several of us. For whatever reason, they really liked me and kept snapping photos of me in my office. By office I mean a server room that housed the largest data repository of declassified KGB satellite imagery outside of Moscow. Back in those days I was the brier rabbit. Toss me into a room full of hardware and terabytes of data and ask me to make it all play nice together and I was in my element.

I was also 265 pounds and had the beginnings of a pretty healthy drug and alcohol problem. It would be another year before they diagnosed me with skyrocketing blood pressure and I would require medical treatment for stress.

It would be another 2 years before I left it all behind and took up the rope business.

Life is a funny thing some days, no? I think I’m probably under more stress now that I have ever been. The constant production push, the commitments made to my employees, that constant personal drive to be more than just some guy who sells rope… to be someone who made a difference.

Yet I'm healthier and happier than I have ever been.

OK, enough navel glazing for one day. I got rope to make and a date tonight!