Prologue - That's the Way It Is

For thirty years, Walter Cronkite closed the CBS Evening News with five words: "that's the way it is." No spin. No bullshit. Just the truth, delivered straight. When Cronkite said it, America believed it.

That's how I'm ending my story too—with the unvarnished truth of an amazing, brutal, beautiful life. All the struggles, sweat, tears, marriage failures, bankruptcies, lawsuits, FBI agents serving federal warrants at my door—and I'm still here. Still standing. Still swinging.

I remember reading Earl Nightingale's "The Strangest Secret" back in the early '70s, right after I came home from Vietnam. I was working as a TV repair tech, living paycheck to paycheck, wondering if this was all there was. Nightingale talked about diamonds in your own backyard—the idea that opportunity is right where you're standing if you'd just open your eyes and see it.

That message hit me like a rifle shot. I was looking for some big break, some lucky moment, when everything I needed was already in front of me. But here's what Nightingale didn't say, or maybe what I had to learn the hard way:

"Get your ass off the sofa and go dig them up."

Reading about opportunity doesn't mean shit. You have to move. You have to build. You have to get your hands dirty.

This is my life story. I retired at 76 years old, and every word of what follows is true to the best of my knowledge.

August 20, 1969 - I was drafted into the Army. Not asked. Drafted. Eight weeks at Fort Knox for Basic, nine weeks at Fort Polk for Infantry training, then shipped to Vinh Long, Vietnam. I served with the 7/1 Air Cavalry as a door gunner in a Huey helicopter. The rotor wash would whip hot jungle air and spent brass casings into your face while you scanned the tree line, finger on the trigger, knowing that green hell below could light up any second. You learn real fast what matters when you're hanging out the side of a chopper with rounds coming up at you.

October 22, 1970 - Honorable Discharge. I came home with an Army Commendation Medal with Oakleaf Cluster and an Air Medal for 167 hours under fire. Those medals sit in a drawer somewhere, but what I brought back was something else—the knowledge that if I could survive that, I could survive anything.

And I needed that knowledge.

1970-1971, I worked as a television repair technician. By 1971, I went self-employed. In 1974, I built my own two-story home with my own hands—every stud, every nail, every wire. The TV Clinic opened in 1975. Added a video store in 1979. By 1987, I'd evolved into Micro Systems International, and in 1994, I founded Endless Visions Inc., developing software and working with hundreds of corporations worldwide on their security issues.

I almost quit once. During the second bankruptcy, sitting in my truck outside the courthouse with the FBI breathing down my neck over some bullshit federal warrant, I had the engine running and nowhere to go. For about ten minutes, I seriously considered just driving until I ran out of gas and starting over as someone else. But then I remembered hanging out of that Huey, and I thought: I didn't survive that shit to let some suits in ties finish me off.

I didn't quit that day. But that didn't mean the fight was over.

The next two decades were a gauntlet of survival. Two divorces stripped me down financially, three bankruptcies nearly broke my spirit, and three federal lawsuits kept me dancing with legal sharks while federal marshals showed up at my doorstep with FBI warrants that would've crushed a lesser man. What kept me standing wasn't some magical resilience—it was pure, unadulterated stubbornness. I'd learned in Vietnam that quitting wasn't an option, and I'd be damned if I was going to start now. Every setback was just another chance to prove I was tougher than whatever was trying to take me down.

RawCopy, FatTracks, WebCount - those weren't just copyrights, they were my middle fingers to every system that tried to break me. Each one represented months of grinding, sleepless nights, and pure determination, proof that I could build something lasting even when the world was trying to tear me down.

Keep building, keep moving, dig up those diamonds even when the ground is hard.

So here I am at 76. Retired. Still breathing. Still thinking. Still here.

I survived the jungle when the jungle wanted me dead. Survived the federal government when they came knocking three times with warrants. Survived businesses that collapsed, marriages that ended, bankruptcies that should've buried me. Survived every goddamn thing this messy, brutal, beautiful life threw at me.

Walter Cronkite closed every broadcast the same way for thirty years, and now I understand why. Because at the end of the day, after all the chaos and the fighting and the rebuilding, there's only one thing that matters: you're still here to tell it.

That's the way it is—not the way it should've been, not the way I planned it, but the way it actually went down. Messy. Brutal. Beautiful. Mine.

I'm still standing. That's not hope. That's not luck.

That's proof.