You were very lucky in more ways than the one. That's a great story, though. Those kinds of memories and meaning in your work are priceless. My father was over

You were very lucky in more ways than the one. That's a great story, though. Those kinds of memories and meaning in your work are priceless. My father was overworking most of the time due to his career as a pipefitter for Imperial Oil. He spent two terms unemployed— once when we moved to our small SW Ontario town (long story why), and another during an illness that lasted about a year. Because my mother had left her career in insurance to look after us, our college savings were depleted (the last thing they touched to make payments). I don't remember the times he was unemployed very much. Much of my family was ill at the same time he was and I spent a lot of time looking after them (with my thoroughly tough mother)— otherwise he was driving an 2-3 hours round-trip to the union hall every day to try and find contract work. So I didn't see much of the guy when I was young, and when I did he was exhausted and often cranky. There were some great moments in there, and he still taught me as much as he could while I was there, but I'm just remarking on the work and unemployment and family time thing. Funnily, I got into programming because my mother had an [name I don't remember] 80286 from her work as an insurance analyst and I dug right into that machine. Then the internet finally came to town... .. Really, thanks for sharing that.