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Before I came to Interactive/Dataworks about 1 year ago in 1997, I was a moral mess, as you can see from this picture at the left. Notice the deep-set eyes, the vacant stare, the small brain case, the slovenly unkempt appearance, and generally disgusting and frightening visage, reflective of the obvious deep disturbances within any individual that looks like that. Who can imagine what thoughts lurk behind such a demonic grin? |
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After I had worked here for a while, things improved and my appearance today, as the picture at the right shows, reflects the inner peace and joy that association with folks like Jack inevitably brings. In his highly fanciful biography, Jack included his page from the Interactive corporate web site. That seems like a good idea to steal, but to save you the trouble of going to mine, I’ll just show you here what mine says, some of which is even true: |
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Stan Zegel
Systems Integration Analyst
Dept: Integration Services
Location: Chicago Office
Start date: February 24, 1997, Employee number: 724I counsel clients in application and use of 3rd-party software in conjunction with Infoflo. My major 1997 project is integrating 3rd-party more-sophisticated sales/use tax software.
My background includes over 30 years of systems analysis and programming, 20 involving Pick and derivative systems. I'm presently serving a 4-year sentence on the city council of my community, Winfield, IL.
I'm married to Lois Kataoka, the best wife in the world, and I have twin cats, Lionel and Ethel. I have no kids, at least none proven, but to be sure I suppose one would have to contact these ladies.
A more complete professional history includes starting a service bureau when I was paroled from the University of Iowa in 1969 with a degree as a history teacher. We provided computer services to local governments, primarily Iowa counties, and primarily voter registration services, for ten years. I was also a subdealer for the Microdata Reality systems, the first Pick computers.
I later went to work for one of our time-sharing customers, Rockwell International, instituting various Pick applications (some of which they still can’t get turned off) for 10 years after that. That was followed by some stints as DP (I know that’s old-fashioned) Director for a couple of firms, one of which was installing Escom’s MRP package. (That was an "interesting" 3 years, spent trying to make the programs function without data because the company didn’t want to bother actually putting any in, or very much of it at any rate. There were also constant modifications to make to the programs so they would function like the manual methods the company had used for decades --that Escom customer wanted state-of-the-art progress as long as they didn’t have to change anything they did.)
Escom was later acquired by Interactive. One of the Escom owners also acquired was Kurt Wold who ended up running the Integration Services group for Interactive. About a year later he called me up, told me about Jack, and convinced me to come work for him anyway.
| My hobbies are mainly reading (history). My specialties are English and Austrian history. My brush with greatness was having a private lunch with the heir to the thrones of Austria, Hungary, Bohemia and other parts of the former Holy Roman Empire, Dr. Otto von Habsburg back in 1979 when he was a candidate for a seat in the European Parliament. (He is the eldest son of the last Emperor, now the longest serving member of the European Parliament, and celebrated his 85th birthday last week.) |
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I speak German, like foreign travel, and a stamp in my passport proves I have actually been to Hell. (There aren’t as many people there as you might have thought and, frighteningly, most of them are Lutheran, as am I. The road to there isn’t paved with anything; we had to take the train. I knew we were getting close when I saw the sawmill with all the logs piled up. And it freezes over every winter, or at least the fjord beside it does. The next day we were in a another town, which had a suburb called Paradise.)
When I retire in about 10 years I plan to write a best seller (yea, right) about the year 1867. My present writing consists of compiling the full story on Jac-- er, one of my colleagues, based upon records that are available to me from various police agencies now that I am an elected official.
My athletic, sports and exercise abilities and interests revolve around the TV remote control, at which I have become very proficient, much to the annoyance of my wife.
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I enjoy classical music, and made a pilgrimage behind the Iron Curtain to visit the J.S.Bach museum and his tomb in the main church he worked in. Ended up organizing the purchase and smuggling of new divine service books to the pastor there. (Such were the commies, that in the land of Luther one of the most famous churches in the world had only a single copy of the book of the liturgy, 25 years old and literally falling apart, taped and pasted together.) My musical tastes end in 1828 with the death of Schubert a year after Beethoven’s. (Maybe it’s the historian in me that makes me prefer the music of dead, deaf Germans to live going-deaf gangster wannabes.) |
I work from home (630/510-0511) most days, not the Chicago office, on the Vertex sales tax implementation. I expect I will be doing work with CAD link in a couple of months after this Vertex project is finished.
That’s enough writing... I need to go check the thermostat on the electric heater I installed in the cats’ insulated house out in the garage. (If you ever wonder about the purpose of life, it is very simple: man is put on earth to serve cats.)
Stan the book collector
Stan the citizen.
Stan the historian.
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