Marc Perkel - Resume

Moving to San Francisco - Looking for Opportunity

I'm moving to the Bay Area and looking for opportunity, not a job. I have been self employed most of my life and I like working for myself. I'm used to being the boss. However, I do need to eat, and eat well, and I have a lot of skills. And I don't know where I want to work or what I want to do. So I am posting this document on my web site about me, what my talents are, and hoping that there is someone out there who can appreciate someone like me and can use my talents in productive ways. I'm looking for projects to get involved in as an independent consultant or perhaps a partner. I have a LOT of unique talents and I want to be part of the cutting edge thinking that helps move the world into the future. That's why I'm relocating to the Bay Area. I want to be where it's all happening and work with the most talented people on the planet.

To that end I will now try to give you an overview of who I am, what I've accomplished, what my talents are, and some examples of what I hope to do and the kind of projects I'm looking for. I see myself as a major player and I think big. I'm want to hook up with people who also think big. Keep that in mind while reading my resume.

Who the Hell is Marc Perkel?

Marc Perkel is a multi-talented individual with a background in computer programming, writing, electronics, politics, law, and business. I have an extensive web site with about 50,000 pages online which cover almost everything there is to know about me. You can read an overview on my Marc Perkel page. And you can access all the details at my main index on perkel.com web site.

My main feature is that i am very smart and I think "outside the box". I am someone who has new, innovative, and interesting ideas and can bring these ideas into the real world and make them work. I am a self taught and self motivated individual who is not afraid to get involved in projects of any size or scale. I'm an ideas person. I'm a "big picture" thinker. I'm someone who can see the "forest through the trees". I'm a visionary, or I have "the vision thing" as some people call it. I'm someone who can evaluate a situation and provide direction and a sense of reality. In fact, I founded the "Church of Reality" which is based on seeing the real world the way it really is. And example of my kind of innovative thinking.

My history of innovative thinking goes back to childhood. I was the "boy wonder" type kid excelling in Mathematics and Electronics. After learning some calculus at the age of 13, I designed and built my first computer out of pinball machine relays. This was my self education in electronics. During high school I worked at nights and on weekends doing consumer electronic repair, TV, stereos, CB Radios, then working up to medical equipment and marine electronics. At the age of 17 I got my First Class FCC license with Radar Endorsement.

In 1979 I built my first "real computer" an Imsai kit and programmed it from the front panel switches in binary. This was my education in computer programming, design, and repair. I wrote my own operating system and eventually wrote my own Forth compiler for it. I also started repairing computer systems and arcade game machines as I was developing my software skills.

In 1984 I opened up a computer retail store, Computer Tyme, and started marketing computers. Computer Tyme grew to two stores in 1986 and had 12 employees at it's peak. During this time I was developing my software and in 1989 came out with the DOS Toolbox and MarxMenu, a dos menu system. These two programs took off fast and started doing very well.

In 1990 I decided that computers were becoming an appliance and I didn't want to be an appliance dealer, so I sold my retail stores and moved into being a software company. Computer Tyme software did well for several years until my divorce in 1994. Which is when I started developing my legal skills.

After getting a judgement for more than 100% of everything I own, while being represented by lawyers, I took over my own legal representation and learned the law on my own. I picked up some books and started doing research on the Internet and quickly became quite good at it.

When you take a computer programmer and make him become a lawyer you create a very dangerous individual who is capable of using logic and making legal arguments that are far beyond the capabilities of the average attorney. Some of my legal work is considered to be state of the art and my strategies and innovative and unique. I have experience in ever level of Missouri state court up through the Missouri Supreme Court and every level of the Federal court system including the United States Supreme Court. Besides my own cases, I helped ghost write some of the arguments used on President Clinton's impeachment defense in early 1999. I have two more cases that are heading to the United States Supreme Court early next year.

I am also a political activist. I ran for the United States House of Representatives in 1998 as a Democrat, and the United States Senate in 2000 as a Republican. My politics center around what is the best for the people, not what party one belongs to. I communicate with members of Congress in both parties by e-mail and attending political events. I lobby Congress to do the right thing and fight over who gets the credit rather than doing the wrong thing and fight over who gets the blame.

I also write letters to the editor and e-mail them to my list of hundreds of newspapers. I am a very good writer and I may be the nations most published letter to the editor writer. I am published regularly in many large newspapers including USA Today, New York Times, Washington Times (even the moonies like me), San Francisco Chronicle, and the Chicago Tribune.

As a visionary, I feel I have a public duty to help keep the world on course, that I have the ability to accurately determine a correct course of action. By getting published in the media and by interacting with members of Congress and the President's staff, I can bring my vision into reality and perform a civic service in making the country and the world a better place to live in. I mention this here as an example of the scale and the scope of the kind of thinking I do and how I have the confidence to act on a large scale. I am looking for opportunities to do more of this sort of thing.

My Current Projects

Currently I'm working on expanding my web site, writing more useful information that the world can enjoy. I'm working to get Al Gore elected President of the United States so that the leader of the free world isn't a drunken frat boy. I'm also studying the Federalist Papers and I'm going to write a detailed series of web pages dealing with Constitutional issues as viewed from a 21st century perspective. I'm going to do volunteer work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and make these briefs available to them as foundation arguments in protecting our online rights and privacy. I am currently learning Linux and trying to get my programming skills up to date, which is an endless task.

What I'd Like to do

I don't really know all the things I'd like to do. I hope to have opportunities I never dreamed of. But I do have some things in mind that I'd like to get involved with as interim projects.

• Software Quality Consultant - There are many big software companies in the Bay Area with awesome software packages. But most of these packages could be a lot better than they are, and often with minor feature additions, minor bug fixes, cosmetic fixes, and improved documentation. Many packages could be 100% better with 5% more effort.

  Often a company loses touch with what the customer really wants. Sometimes tech support isn't communicating with the programmers. Sometimes the programmers are the ones who wrote the documentation and forgot to tell the user critical steps that the programmer just knows and forgets that the user doesn't know. Perhaps there is another use for your product and with a few modifications, you could be selling to a new market. Maybe it's helpful just to have an outside perspective.

  I am someone who can come in and learn your software products and give you feedback on how it can be improved. As a programmer, I have a perspective on how hard specific improvements are to implement. Many changes are very simple and involve adding easy options to a software package or just better help screens. Often simple things can be added to eliminate customer confusion and thus increase sales and reduce support costs. These simple changes can add millions of dollars to your bottom line profits at a very affordable cost. If I get excited about your product, I might even work for stock options and join your team. I'm somewhat of a perfectionist and may be the kind of nit picker you need.

  So what makes me such a good software quality consultant? I'm glad you asked that question. I started my own software company in 1989 selling menu systems and other utilities to large companies running mostly Novell Netware. Many of my customers had tens of thousands of computers installed and needed my utilities to manage them. My software was the front end menu and my utilities did software distribution, job control, and file modifications across the network. With millions of users installed, my software quality was so good that I could run my company, do software development, and do the tech support myself with only one other part time employee helping with tech support. The way I managed to do this was that I kept me documentation good, my software bug free, and when there was a bug I fixed it the same day. If I can support a million users with one employee, I can probably inprove your product to cut your support expenses.

• Network Consultant - I'm looking to do some apprentice work with a team of independent cunsultants as an extra hand putting networks together or working with an ISP to improve services for customers. I'm skilled in Netware, NT, and Linux, but I need to get sharper and would like to be a sidekick and learn from someone who's really sharp. I'm very good at troubleshooting and figuring out innovative ways to "make it work".

• Photographer - I'm a fairly good photographer and enjoy capturing people on my digital camera. Why do boring unnatural posed shots when you can put life in your pictures. You can view my Picture Collection and see my work. I'm very good at photographing women and babies. I'm also good at taking pictures for online personal ads for those looking for someone special on the net. You can read my web pages in Digital Photography to learm more about what I do.

• Political Consultant - Looking to win an election but need someone to help you focus your message, and make sure you have the right message? Perhaps I can help. I'm someone who things things through and can participate in mock debates, public policy strategy, advertizing, and just helping you figure out what really is the right thing to do in a world of complex issues. I'm a "big picture" guy who also can be very inventive about how to get a point across. When faced with two bad choices, often I can come up with a third solution that works, If you need outside perspective and a smart guy on your team, I may be just who you're looking for. I only work for the "good guys" and you have to be willing to be on the right side of the issues.

• Legal Strategy - Now that I have significant legal skills, I'd like to get involved in litigation strategy to do the research and craft the winning arguments to win cases. I'm someone who thinks "outside the box" and am very innovative and able to craft ideas that have never been tried before. I have to believe in the cause though and looking for cases that excite me and advance the rights of people. I don't work on evil causes, but will often work for free, if necessary on causes I believe in.

Skills Summary

Here's a short list of my skills. If you see anything you like, email me.