So what’s Bill and Dave are Dead all about anyway?

Bill and Dave are Dead is a personal memoir covering 12 years worth of electronics mayhem at one of the world’s largest technology companies. Sometimes the sheer stupidity of situations that developed from idiot coworkers’ actions and totally retarded management staff drove me to the brink of sanity. Writing about it has helped me stay out of the loonie bin. The company’s founders, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were two truly great men whom I admire. They practiced superior business ethics in everything they did and paved the way for other companies to raise their standards with regard to the treatment of their employees. They always placed their customers as the first priority instead of stock shareholders. The unfortunate business situation today is of course the exact reverse; everything is focused on the stock shareholder with all other considerations tossed out the window. Sadly, when both men passed away their positive business ethics and honest practices were quickly abandoned. Their spirit died along with them.

This ‘blog begins in December, 1991 and my goal is to bring this project up to present date and time as quickly as possible. I didn’t want to simply begin the ‘blog without some explanation about why I was writing about my employer… and I had many years of hand written journals sitting in the back of a book case collecting dust. I decided to start the ‘blog using my journals as a backbone and I chose 1991 as a lead-in point because that was a very uncertain time for me. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with myself for a career, or where I was heading in life.

My journals were and are incomplete in some areas so I’ve spent a lot of time trying to remember approximately when certain events took place and fit those stories back in where they belong. In those cases I’ve been writing daily off the cuff, entirely from memory. I always wanted to do something with my journals as far as publishing them so I’m killing two birds with one stone here- making the journals public and writing about my job. Many of my fellow coworkers both past and present have been an invaluable resource for helping me get these stories straight and they have also helped me keep everything factual with no embellishments. I owe them a great deal of thanks for their assistance.

In addition to writing stories about on the job weirdness, I have also included quite a few stories of my personal life outside of work. Those posts focus mainly on turmoil caused by my family members, individuals who can only be classified as fuckups, and a handful of particularly unstable girlfriends who have excelled at making my life unpleasant. Keeping things brutally honest and real has been a forefront objective of mine because in my opinion it makes for more interesting reading. It has also given me an opportunity to divulge publicly many of my mistakes, poor judgement, and mistreatment of others which I regret. In a way I’m trying to clean up my side of the street with a few people. Some readers may find portions of what is here to be distasteful, but I hope some will find Bill And Dave Are Dead to be humorous as well as learn something about what it’s like working in the electronics industry.

The past few years of my life have been very difficult. Writing about many of these adverse situations has helped me deal with it in a positive way. Without being able to write, I might have blown my brains out by now. That’s the simple truth.

-fp November, 2006