Jeff Burgess landed in the computer industry in 1979. He sometimes wishes it had been 1975. Then again, maybe not.

In this episode, Jeff traces the winding, unplanned path that dropped him into a warehouse at TechAids Industries at exactly the right moment, when technology was just sexy enough to consume him, and when his obsessive desire to learn every packing list and receiving ticket could actually mean something. Two years earlier, he argues, none of it would have stuck.

From Bill Gates founding Microsoft at 19 to IBM's 55-pound portable computer, Jeff walks through what was actually happening in the industry during the years he missed, and makes a compelling case that the timing he got was the timing he needed. The pot, the failed college trimesters, the string of warehouse jobs, and his father's Sunday sermon all turned out to b ...