Items three and four I did at my first job (non-technical). I had been screwing around with software through my teenage years building AOL chat tools and littl

Items three and four I did at my first job (non-technical). I had been screwing around with software through my teenage years building AOL chat tools and little mods for games - I never considered it for a career. I was hired as a data entry clerk when I was 18 at a large hospital. The billing department would work in excel and print hundreds of pages a day for data entry clerks to enter into our insurance billing system. It took me about two weeks before I realized that if I could get them to bring me the spreadsheets on diskettes I could write a program to input the data into the system for me. It took me a few days to figure it out and then I completely automated my job for about six weeks. I was busted reading the Dungeon Masters guide in the middle of the day by my boss. She asked what I was doing and I explained “I am reading the dungeon Masters guide.” I explained that I had written a tool to automate my job. I had not signed a PIIA form and I wrote the software at home on my own computer. I guess the company had no legal right to take it, so she offered me $2000 and a promotion to the IT department to give the company the rights to my software. I was making $7 an hour, so I was very excited at the 2k. I took it and they fired 15 clerks :(