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I worked for Howard Wolowitz
If you’ve ever watched The Big Bang Theory, you’re familiar with a character named Howard Wolowitz. You may not know that he was named after an actual person who the show’s creator knew and who I once worked for.
My first job was at a place called The Small Computer Company, best known for creating the Profile database for Radio Shack’s TRS-80. My job was to port it to different systems, first to CP/M on the Apple II with a Z-80 card, and later porting the Tandy Model 16 version to various Unix systems.
The company was founded by Bill Prady and Howard Wolowitz. Bill later left for Hollywood and created The Big Bang Theory. I ended up maintaining a lot of code that he wrote.
The real Howard is nothing like the TV character. He was an old-time mainframe programmer who always had an amusing story to tell and loved to demonstrate the software to customers. He also smoked weed constantly. Working there was always fun.
One year for his birthday they hired a stripper. She pretended to be a customer and he gave a software demo for her as she started to strip. He somehow managed to maintain his composure, which is lucky since his mother also worked there as a bookkeeper.
One morning I rode up in the elevator with the VP, who happened to be in a very bad mood. I tried to lighten the mood with a joke, which he didn’t find funny and fired me on the spot before we even reached our floor.
