We design, develop and debug low level software, mostly on Windows desktop systems. We've also written for desktop Linux; Windows Mobile; Symbian; VxWorks on SPARC; Palm OS; and CSR BlueCore. We debug software written by others, including complex interactions with the OS and third party products.

Mass market software containing our modest contributions includes Zone Alarm; Apple's first Windows version of the QuickTime Player; and the long-forgotten Connectix product, RAM Doubler for Windows.

In the Stone Age we developed various data communications applications on VTAM, Tandem and Stratus, and chased problems in VTAM, NCP and IMS DC. Is anyone here old enough to remember the VTAM 1980 New Year's Day problem?

After two years, three of the five founders of Freyberg Technologies had left. One of them was Freyberg, who wanted his name back. The survivors, Ong and Rothstein, cast about for a new name. Rothstein suggested Morganfield Systems, after bluesman Muddy Waters, born McKinley Morganfield. Ong massaged this into Morgan Laboratories. Four years later, Rothstein (that's us) left to start a consulting business. Muddy Waters again provided the name.

Choosing a domain name was tougher. The logical choice, mckinley.com, was already held by The McKinley Group of nearby Sausalito. They were bought by Excite in 1996, and kept the domain name for several years afterwards. We were asleep at the wheel when they finally relinquished the domain, and it was scooped up by a real estate firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We settled on mojo-working.com, taken from the name of one of Muddy Waters' better-known songs, Got My Mojo Working. Public Relations firm Mojo Working International of London, England, holds domain name mojoworking.com.

In mid-1978, Bank of America occupied its new data processing center, near the intersection of Market and Van Ness in San Francisco. Lights and air in this energy-efficient building were controlled by software, with manual overrides applied as necessary from a man in a glass booth on the tenth floor.

The fourteenth floor was programmed to shut its air vents at 6 p.m., and turn off the lights at 7, when some of us were just getting warmed up. Restoring the air was easy. We called the man in the glass booth and he entered the necessary commands at his console. Lights were harder. Same man, same glass booth, no dice. He could only accept requests from a guard in the downstairs lobby. So every evening we phoned the guard, who filled out a form that included our name, floor, and department number.

The lobby guards, all very personable, had varying levels of English language skills. Most found the name Rothstein way too difficult. One colleague took great delight in watching us struggle to spell our name slowly, day after day. He often needled us for our misfortune of having such a complicated name, when so many of our colleagues had it easy: Mike Chan, Steve Rowe, Bob Good, Herb Chang. From necessity came invention. Arthur Rothstein became Art Wong.

The name was popular, soon adorning our cubicle's nameplate, our business cards, the Bank's corporate directory, and the local phone directory. We still get calls from Chinese telemarketers, and from bill collectors trying every Wong in San Francisco hoping to find a deadbeat with the first name of Joseph. And, as befits the Internet Age, we have domain artwong.com.

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With Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter

Human interest mixed with shameless self-promotion Pretzels (1955) | Bar Mitzvah (1966) | Ninth grade (1967) | Mutt and Jeff (1967) Math team (1970) | Putnam exam (1972) | Thesis (1979) | April in Paris (1997) Gail Collins Crossword (2012) | Technophilia Crossword (2013)

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