In 1974 I moved to Lewisburg, PA (Dave Marra's home town) to attend Bucknell University.

While attending Bucknell, I took two required computer courses with Bucknell's (very large) IBM mainframe: BASIC and FORTRAN. I remember carrying around a stack of punch cards, wondering (I didn't "get it") why I had to play around with this large machine which had no apparent usefulness to me or the world.

In 1978, upon graduation I moved to the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC where I worked for eight years for the Consumer Congress of the Commonwealth of Virginia (CCCV) - a statewide citizens group representing the interests of Virginia's consumers of Virginia Utility companies. Our primary focus was trying to keep electric rates affordable for residential customers. As Executive Director of CCCV I lived in Northern Virginia but made frequent trips to Richmond to testify at utility rate hearings and coordinate the efforts of our lobbyists in the Virginia General Assembly.

In 1984, I participated in Apple's first "Test Drive a Macintosh" promotion and brought home an original Macintosh from Hess's Department Store for a week. What a blast - MacPaint was my favorite. But I couldn't really afford to keep it and so after a week I packed it up and returned it to Hess's.

In 1986, homesick for Pennsylvania after living in Virginia for eight years and ambitious to make a better living, I moved to Philadelphia and enrolled in Drexel's MBA program.

In 1986 all Drexel Undergrads were required to purchase a Macintosh. Being a grad student I was not required to purchase a Mac, but I took the opportunity to purchase the just released Mac Plus at a special Education bundle price of $1299 including MacWrite 1, MacPaint 1, FileMaker 1, MS Excel 1, and Hypercard. Retail price for the Mac Plus at the time was $1999, without the software. I found this deal too good to pass up and purchased my first Mac. I remember that day vividly (9/17/86) - the third happiest day of my life after my wedding day (8/30/1992) and the day my daughter was born (12/8/96). (No, really!)

While at Drexel, I spent more time playing with my new Mac than on homework, and when I graduated with an MBA, rather than entering the job market, I became a Macintosh Consultant, trading as Macintosh Accounting Solutions.

I rented an apartment from Alan Klein, a large property manager in University City, who managed over 1000 apartment units. I drew a to-scale (1"= 1') floor plan of my one bedroom apartment with MacDraw so that I could experiment with various furniture arrangements. (I also made to-scale drawings of my furniture so that I could drag it into different positions and see how the arrangement worked.) When I showed a printout of my drawing to Alan Klein, he hired me to draw floor plans of all of his different apartment floor plans and a consulting career was born. I later went on to automate his accounting system using a Mac II and employed MS Excel to help him manage his three vast investment portfolios. I built an automated accounting system with Excel version 2.2 including menus, scripts, dialog boxes and lots of formulas.

I went on to help other small businesses set up in-house automated accounting systems with very early versions of MYOB, Excel, and later Multi Ledger. I also did general Macintosh consulting including sourcing, setting up networks, troubleshooting, training, and so forth and in 1999 changed my business name to MacTweak as tweaking was the essence of what I enjoyed doing for Mac users.

In 1997 I joined the Apple Solution Experts, which has since become the Apple Consultants Network. When Apple introduced certification (Apple Certified Technical Coordinator) in 2001, I became certified one week after the exams became available. I'm proud to be one of the very first ACTC certified members of the ACN in the United States.

I feel fortunate that I have found a way to make a living doing something I love, and so I never have to "work." When I think of what is most important in my life, I think of my family, and I take pride in being a dedicated father to my six-year-old daughter Madison. She knows how much I love Macintosh computers and often asks me what I like more: computers or [fill in the blank with whatever I am enjoying at the moment: skiing, chocolate ice cream, or her.]

In the few rare moments I am not in front of one of my computers or convincing a Wintel user to switch to Mac, I enjoy skiing, mountain biking, camping, family activities, fishing, and gardening.

— Randy Philips