(a dream come true: an inset picture of me stipled in the style of the Wall Street Journal. I wish I’d kept a hi-res version)

The Beginning: August 1988

In August, Sam Whitmore, the editor of PC Week calls and asks me to join the newspaper as a senior technical analyst, and offers me a $10,000 raise, from $50,000 to $60,000. I jump at the chance and start in September.

Mike Azzarra has offered me a job at a CMP startup of his, Unix Today. He never forgives me for a) not taking his offer and b) not calling to tell him about Sam’s offer.

If I had known then what I know now, I would have taken Mike’s offer, but who knew?

I got three trips to the Boston headquarters of PC Week during my 14 months on the payroll there.

The End: December 1989

Just before Thanksgiving is the Comdex computer trade show in Las Vegas each year. PC Week and the other Ziff-Davis publications take over the Alexis Park Hotel, as they do every year.

Jennifer DeJong, my supervisor, and I, play hooky from the news meeting one day, and are busted by Sam Whitmore. She and I work up my budget for 1990.

Unbeknownst to us, the publisher has been fired and the new publisher is slashing the budgets for the new year. At PC Week, this means five layoffs.

In California, Juli Cortino and Jim Miles call me the moment I return from Comdex. “We think we’re all being laid off Friday,” they tell me. “Can’t be,” I say with confidence, “I’ve been invited to that meeting, and we know they’re not laying me off.” They had just raised my salary to $75,000.

Late Thursday night, a tearful Jennifer calls me from Logan Airport in Boston. Just before she got on the plane in Las Vegas, Sam told her he was flying to California to fire Juli, Jim… and me. I spent Thursday night cleaning out all the ZD hardware and software in my home office.

I drove to the office in Foster City with a big box under my arm. Sam calls us all in together and lays us off as a group. He says we are on the payroll until Dec. 31, but are not expected to do any work. Separately, he tells me that I will get six weeks severance despite only having been there 14 months.

He apologizes for messing up my career at CMP. I briefly consider pissing on his shoes, but decide against it, partly because Juli is there and partly because it would be tacky and gross. And partly because you never know who you are going to be working with when the wheel rolls around again.

I call InformationWEEK and beg the new managing editor (former office boy Jerry Colonna) for my old job back. He gives it to me. Upon my return, the owner and co-cofounder of the parent company, Gerry Leeds restores my seniority, saying “I just consider it a sabbatical — paid for by Ziff.