Drew W. Saunders

Education:

Stanford University

BA, 1989, Human Biology

BA, 1989, Self-designed major: "Life, the Universe, and Everything"

BS, 1989, Electrical Engineering

MA, 1989, Modern Thought and Literature

MS, 1990, Biophysics

PhD, 1991, A special doctoratedegree based on "He just knows darn near everything" with a PhD minor in "All the other stuff we didn't know could be known."

Experience:

1982

Apple Computer: Summer Intern. Told them that "Those folks at Xerox PARC have a great idea for a human-computer interface." Mentioned something about "Maybe you should be sure to license it nice and leagally, just in case it is popular," but fears they didn't hear that part.

1983

3COM Systems: Summer Intern. Accidentally wrote one too many zero's when describing 10BaseT networking. Was terminated for incompetence and told "100M bits/second! Why that's faster than T3, who could possibly want that kind of speed?"

1984

Apple Computer: Filing clerk. Suggested "This Macintosh is a great idea, but it needs something more, something added, something that would be a real 'plus,' like a whole megabyte of RAM." Was told that RAM was too expensive and that such a machine would never out-sell the Apple II.

1985

Microsoft: Part-time Application Engineer. Wandered into a meeting, said "You people can't get anything right until version 3, and it'll be something like 1995 before you even get near what Apple is doing today!" Believe members of the "Windows" and "Word for Macintosh" teams were present. Was immediately terminated.

1986

Adobe Systems: Temporary Business Analyst. Came up with an idea that "Perhaps the world needs some form of standardized printing software" added as a post script to a memo on ear wax I had prepared for a lowly clerk. Memo unfortunately made its way to top management and I was terminated for spending too much time studying ear wax.

1987

Saved the world from Lex Luthor and his evil minions. He had planned to cause oil leaks in the Alaskan shipping lanes. I had told him that double-hulled tankers were promised by the oil companies working in Alaska.

IBM Corporation: Part-time Network Analyst. Thought that the days of the mainframe were limited, and that something where people, or "Clients," would connect their powerful desktop computers to data warehousing mini-computers and workstations acting as "Servers." Was laughed out of the job.

1988

CERN, Switzerland: Summer job as Systems Analyst for particle acceleration. Thought it would be nice to share this information. Mentioned that they have a lot of spiders around, and that the place was full of webs. Was told "Your head is full of cobwebs" and that "Who would want an easy way to string data together in a 'web' of information when we have good, reliable, text- and menu- based systems." Was let go before the end of the summer.

Remainder of summer was spend writing a screenplay for Winston Groom's Forrest Gump, unfortunately lost this on the train and still have no idea what came of it.

1989

Literary Analyst, Knopf Press, New York. Decided that "Dinosaurs re-created from DNA might be plausible, and that they should get that Andromeda Strain author to write it up." Marketing felt that it was too technically challenging for most readers, and that dinosaurs were "Not marketable, and no movie rights could ever be procurred for such a book." Management decided to let me go, feeling that nobody in Marketing could ever be wrong.

Intel Corporation: Microprocessor Design. Pushed hard for the departure from CISC technology and implementation of RISC for the home computer microprocessor market. Was terminated, and told that "Only those fools at Motorola would do such a thing, and you'd see Apple and IBM cooperate long before that could happen."

1990

Security Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency. Thought next conflict zone would be Yugoslavia over ethnic differences. Terminated, and told that Yugoslavia is a stable country and that I should pay more attention to the Soviet threat.

1991

Special Assistant, office of Govenor Pete Wilson. Suggested that base closures were a high probability, and that planning for economic conversian was immediately needed. Was terminated by re-election committe head and told "California will never lose its bases, we'd have two women senators before that could happen, maybe even that Boxer and Feinstein terrible two-some. What do you think we should do with our bases, make a State University or something?"

1992

Reflecting on a life of failure, joined a monastery and was enthralled by the sound of Gregorian Chant. Left the monastery and tried to sell the idea of Gregorian Chant as popular music. Never got very far in the music world, returned to monastery.

1993

20th Century Fox Corporation: Computer Services. Suggested that Quentin Tarantino might be a good director, and that John Travolta was due for another come-back. Marketing felt that "Computer Specialists are not in touch with the public. Tarantino's single directorial work was not indicitave of potential future talent, and Mr. Travolta's career could only be helped by the story line of one of those trashy pulp fiction magazines." Marketing being always correct, I was terminated.

1994

Microsoft Corporation: Consumer Services. Pushed hard for the inclusion of internet access into Microsoft Network. Was told "The Internet is only for UNIX-geeks, people want their own commercial access providers, and Microsoft will easily push the Internet out of existence." Shortly thereafter, position was re-engineered out of existence.

1995

Self Employed, selling ice cream to the Native Alaskan populations and fresh rainwater to Brazilians.