Hi Pete,
I've spent time in most of those places... 5 to 10 in a little island community near San Francisco, but got out early for good behavior.
What years were you in Santa Monica?
Pete
I used to live in Scotts Valley and in Santa Cruz in 86 and 87 when I was a contractor with Borland helping Bob Zale to Fix Turbo basic and stayed in Santa Monica (more precisely close to Venice) in 88 - 89 when I used to write papers as a tech survey for the french versions of PC Magazine and PC Week.
So, I used to write some good stuffs for Spencer Kat (LoL).
That's when early in 88 I started my first US Cie. International Software Solutions Inc. witch produced Turbo Text, Turbo DB (Dbase II, III, III+ and later IV compatible), Turbo Desk (a better TSR clone of Sidekick) and many other specific products dedicated to the french market such as OrdiFacture (an invoice system with stock management) and StarBone (a highly specialized medical tool for sports physicians and trauma specialists).
Most of these products but our TSRs were written in compiled BASIC (plus some assembly for speed in critical points such as windowing on DOS) using indifferently QB 4,5, Turbo Basic and later PDS 7.
Latter on, my entire development team moved to ANSI C when we switched from DOS to OS/2 and Windows. this is when we created, long time before any other, the first graphical and cross platform remote control utility called R.S.M. (Remote Services Management) with host (client) for DOS, OS/2 and Windows and guest (manager) for OS/2 and Windows, a product that we sold worldwide to over 120 millions copies including several OEM releases with big guys such as Compuware, and even a bundle with OS/2 Warp IV under the name SOS/2.
As a matter of fact, ISS Inc. was acting almost like a book publisher, with a very small internal team (3 peoples at the beginning and up to 50 at the end when we had subsidiaries in France, Germany, England and South Africa prior we sold in 97 the complete group to Peregine Systems Inc.) and external authors paid with royalties on the net sales of their product as I learned to do from my old friend Philippe Kahn.
Cheers.
Fifi