About Dave
About Dave's:
Dave was born in Redwood City, California, and spent though his mid-grammar-school years mostly in the bay area. When Dave's dad decided to retrain from an EE to a PhD (i/c designer to shrink), the family moved to Southern California.
Here Dave discovered games and then computers then girls, well that special girl anyway, his wife Linda who he married at 19. She is still the force behind Dave, as well as the Kids and Grand kids.
Dave's computer experience goes back to Junior High School. He started with programming the Oak Crest Middle School Math Departments computer.
About the same time he was working on his computing merit badge in Boy scouts, working with CPM computers. One of the scouts dads also had a bring home computer from Scripts Medical, running NUTRAN (a variation of FORTRAN) Dave got to work with this computer too.
When Dave moved on to High School he joined the computer club and was working with Apple II computers. He programmed and repaired these computers for the School Library. He also wrote a program to calculate genetic models for the biology department.
Having a good high school education under his belt and facing years of review in college Dave was disillusioned so he took some time off and went to Hawaii for awhile to live on the Beach. This got old when winter started.
So after 6 weeks he returned to Southern California and retrained as an "automated process control maintenance technician." This got him working for a company called "Microworks" where as a bench technician / engineering assistant, he tested, repaired and assisted with the design and programming of video digitizers.
Dave had to move on though, he moved to Santa Cruz and started working at Affordable Computers, located at 740 Front street in Santa Cruz. He retrained as a repair technician. Classes at Apple Inc. on computers and printers. Followed by many years of book, internet, and self study to round out his knowledge with Windows, and Linux.
Also, it was about then Dave's son, Dan, was born. You might have seen him working on repairs now and then in the shop or in the field for a few years.
Dave's daughters were born a little later, Emily in Zayante and Sarah in our "new" house in Lompico. Emily and Sarah have also worked for Dave from time to time.
So as it went, Affordable Computer became Computer Center of Santa Cruz. We had an earthquake, and Dave lost his house in Lompico to it. Then Computer Center of Santa Cruz became ComputerWare, and by then Dave was making good money. Under the ComputerWare management Dave could no longer earn what he was used to so he left and opened Dave's Computer Service in 1990, at 765 Cedar St. in Santa Cruz.
This brings us to the History of Dave's Computer. Founded in 1990 by Dave and his friend Phil, we did mostly Mac Plus power supply and software repairs. As we were still working with the county on permits for the rebuilding our house, Dave used his SBA Earthquake loan to get the business going. A few years later Dave sold the earthquake damaged house, payed back the SBA and moved to a early 1900's house in Santa Cruz.
After a couple of years Dave added Epson warranty repair. Epson still made PC computers in these days. Dave has also done extensive training with Epson on printers, scanners and pro-graphics printers.
Apple though still had tough requirements for an independent service center so it was not until 2000 they loosened up so that Dave's also started doing Apple Authorized Service. Since my move to Humboldt I had to drop the AASP, but my training and parts inventory has remained current.
Dave hired an Apple authorized technician and expanded quite a lot at this time, so we started planning our move to a larger space at 181 Walnut Avenue where we continued expanding and doing more onsite, printer, and warranty repair; our team grew from 2 in 1990 to 10 by 2002.
With the recession in 2009 Dave began the downsizing of the business. He had too let employees go and looked for a smaller location. This progressed and just when the economy began to improve, I had an opportunity to move to some beautiful acreage in Humboldt county.
So the downsizing continued with a move to 150 Felker St. and a gradual complete scale down and finally letting the rest of the employees go. Loose ends kept Dave in Santa Cruz running the business himself for another 9 months. With no employees and flexible work hours Dave was enjoying doing repair work again for the first time in years.
Dave has completed his move now to Humboldt county and is providing service here. He already has satisfied customers.
Some employees over the years have been:
Dave (Manager, Tech, well Dave) 1990 - current
Phil (The Bum) 1990 only
Lonna (The Office Goddess) 1991 - 2008
John (counter) 1992 - 1999
Marcus (Mac tech) 1992 - 1994
Brian (Mac tech, and also half the Twisted Pair) 1994 - 1996
Emily (front counter, middle daughter) 1992, 2002 - 2009
Sara (front counter, accounting, youngest daughter)
Apple Authorized Guy 2000 only
Dan (PC and printer tech, eldest son)
Bruce (counter) 2001 - 2002
Jeremy (PC tech) 2001 - 2004
Roger R(orders, intricate tech) 2001 - 2002
Roger K(onsite PC tech and printers) 2001 - 2015
Jeff (onsite Mac tech) 2002 - 2015
Rob (onsite Mac and photo printer guy) 2004-2006
Mike (PC tech, best hire) 2004 - 2007
Anna (front counter, PC tech) 2005 - 2006
Calin (Mac and printer tech) 2005 -2006; 2008-2009
Loren (Mac tech, also best hire) 2005 - 2015
Gary (Mac tech) 2006 - 2008
Robert (PC tech) 2007 - 2011
Nick (PC tech) 2007 - 2009
Jasmine (front counter) 2007 only
Mason (counter, web design) 2007 - 2009
Daniel (PC Tech) 2011-2013, 2013-2014 onsite tech
Aaron (front Counter, linux tech) 2012 - 2015