This is how you toast misfortune - My Brilliant Second Career - Salon.com: My dad was a heating guy. As a kid, I’d help him out with his side jobs on Saturdays and Sundays. The profession was just second nature to me after school. I took a job at a place that put heating systems into new houses. But when the economy went bad, there was no new construction. When the layoff came, in 2008, my boss was straightforward about it. John’s a really good guy. I understood it was what he had to do.
A few months later, I was home one night watching the Home Shopping Network. It was one of those late nights when I was trying to figure out how I was going to get the mortgage paid. At that point, I was doing pretty much anything for work. Driving a dump truck. Fixing furnaces. I would tell my wife and my daughters, “It’s OK, everything’s going to be all right,” but I was worried. Anyway, the Home Shopping Channel was selling a laptop on a flex-pay plan. I thought to myself, “I’m going to buy this computer — and I’m going to get a patent on my invention.”