My Life [5]

From contract programming to software ownership

By Jim Rix

When I began contract programming, around 1980, computer software lagged far behind computer hardware. Skilled programmers were consequently in high demand, and contract programming was quite lucrative. I contracted with companies like Advanced Micro Devices and Intel, two semiconductor manufacturers, as well as companies with federal aerospace contracts.
    One of my last contracts was back with Lockheed, where I had begun programming after teaching at Los Gatos High School. The occasion followed the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of January 28, 1986. Lockheed had won the contract to test space shuttle engines and fuel tanks (like the ones that failed and led to the Challenger disaster). I remember writing the software that moved engines and fuel tanks, under program control, through the high-energy X-ray machines that inspected these space shuttle components.

Realizing that the real money was in owning the software that I wrote, I developed in my spare time a Dental Office Practice Management System that I named “SoftRix.” It was slow going at first, but by the early 1990s it expanded to the point where I could sell the rights to market it for a healthy sum – to the company Versys Inc. – with the understanding that I maintain the software and provide customer support (for a fee from the user, of course). I went into partnership with my brother Dan; he handled customer support and I maintained the software.
    In time, Versys elected to discontinue marketing SoftRix and released the rights back to us, along with a healthy user base which we continued to support. The software had expanded to include medical practice management as well as dental practice management. At brother Dan’s suggestion (and design) and with my programming, we added Electronic Claims Submission, whereby we would transmit our customers’ medical/dental insurance claims directly to insurance companies, either electronically or via the US Postal Service (a paperless solution for our customers).
    We operated in this capacity for approximately 25 years, until 2015. Brother Dan passed in February that year, and SoftRix retired in October. I tried to sell our user base, but I could find no buyers, so I continued to support users gratis. The software was solid and needed no support. Mostly, I just advised users to find a good hardware technician.

My life had progressed through dance and playacting, marriage, parenting, teaching, programming, furniture selling, scientific programming, contract programming, and entrepreneurship, as well, of course, as writing and publishing a book on our criminal justice system, with which this account of my life more or less began four chapters ago. What of all of these things I’ve done stands out most in my mind from this vantage?
    I didn’t get into anything like that in my autobiography to Shirley Skufca, but Mo has urged me to write about it. He seems to find my life interesting, which is one of the things that makes him a friend.
    Okay, I’ll play ball. As I danced extracurricularly in high school, so I did in college, mainly to meet girls. I was paired with my future wife for dance productions because Carol Sue was the tallest female dancer, and I was the only male dancer able to lift her. So I guess I both figuratively and literally picked her up.

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While Mo & I have been attempting to pleasure you with these elaborations on the autobiography I wrote for Shirley Skufca Hickman for her new book about being a young teacher at Tulare Union High School, she finished and published her book! It was great fun reading the book and being reminded of some of the things I was doing 60 years ago, much of which I had totally forgotten and some of which I had only a vague recollection of.
    There is one event, however, that I have not forgotten in all these years, and that is helping my good friend Bill Silveira and his dad castrate pigs. Bill grew up on a farm that, as I remember, produced mostly cotton. His dad’s hobby was raising prize-winning hogs. Normally, before they are taken to market, hogs are castrated when they reach about 75 pounds. But Bill’s dad had let these pigs get to about 1 5 0  p o u n d s – too heavy for Bill to handle alone.
    So Bill commandeered my help. He would chase a pig down and grab it by a hind leg. I would rush in and grab the front legs. Together we’d roll the pig onto its back. Bill would hold the hind legs, I the front, and his Dad would move in and in less than a minute do the surgery. It was a learning experience for me. I learned then that the meat we humans eat is from castrated animals. For example, we don’t eat bull meat; we eat steer (castrated bull) meat. I learned that I didn’t want to have anything more to do with farming.
    Y o u  can read Shirley’s book too: It’s for sale on Amazon. Bill Silveira’s review of the book will appear in this spot next Wednesday (March 18).

Copyright © 2020 by Jim Rix