Gerry Dupreys Home Page

This document is wildly out of date. There are some moderatly minor attempts to update it near the end. My apologies

I'm a partner in Micro Sage Software, a software house specializing in administrative software for public school districts. Our charter is to produce the best software for running a public school district and back that up with the best support for our clients. Based on our customers responses, we are succeeding.

I started Micro Sage over 11 years ago (officially, we got our start on June 1, 1987) with my business partner and friend Rick Havourd.

In response to the mail I've received from people who don't like my page (those damn PETA people, mostly), this is not a 100% factual account of my life (perhaps 80% fact, 20% mental lint and post consumer waste)

Whats your story?

I'm from a family of three children, a mother and father, a number of cats and some very short-lived hamsters. Born in 1965 in the Pioneer Valley area of Massachusettts (Chicopee to be precise), I longed to visit Dollywood, years before it was trendy (or constructed). I usually spent my summers growing potatoes in shoe boxes and wiring discarded range tops to black & white television sets.

In 1981, just beating out the law and an angry Dairy Queen franchiser, the family packed up the RoadMaster (or maybe VW bus, it's a bit fuzzy now), crossed the state line and settled in lush, affluent and Unionville-a-phobic Farmington Connecticut. I got a job as a greatly underappreciated bagboy at the local grocery store but quickly dumped that for a low paying job as an A/V specialist and counterboy at the Univerisity of Connecticut Health Center. I worked in BMC (supposedly 'Biomedical Communications') for about a year (if you don't count my frequent and suspiciously regular 'missed-the-bus' days off). My best memories involve slipping dirty limericks into batches of presentation slides and using the hospital pneumatic tube system to send anonymous and quite ghastly medical photos to unsuspecting clerks.

Upon (barely) graduating from Farmington High in 1983, I started working for Systems 11 in Middlebury Connecticut. The job basically involved fooling around with thumbtacks, finding new ways of humiliating people, megabytes of infantile email (back before infantile was popular) and occasionaly writting some programs. This was a period of long daily commutes and little money (my occasional forays into my friends and families sofas yielded more than I netted). Shortly thereafter, I moved to Waterbury Connecticut (judged one of the 10 worst cities in the USA by Money magazine). There I was introduced to true city living, the concept of always locking ones car up and the joys of betting on the frequent neighborhood street fights. Cleaning up the change that fell out of the combatants pockets provided for a little extra that I liked to call 'food'.

In June of 1987, looking to get a new appreciation for 'poverty line', I started the business with Rick and learned to love pasta. With our first check, I bought a Charms blow-pop and a PDP-11/73 we affectionatly named BabyM (still alive & kicking today).

By June of 1989, after a night of world-class drinking, we decided to move the business to Michigan on a bet (actually, it was on a U-Haul). We relocated to Grand Blanc, Michigan, a suburb of Flint (fabled in the wonderfully depressing movie, Roger and Me and also judged one of the 10 worst cities). I bought a house, mowed some lawn and decided home ownership is vastly overrated.

By 1991, we had pretty much seen as much of Flint as we could, so we relocated to Ann Arbor Michigan. Ann Arbor is dominated by the University of Michigan (UofM runs the puppet city govenrment) and is actually a very nice place to live and work. I've been living at the same place/address for over three years (a personal best) and then just last week, the bastards raised my rent. I've always wanted to try living in a cardboard box....

Once again in response to my critics (and a social workers concerned phone calls), I really don't live all that badly anymore. The place I'm in is a really nice apartment and I've just decided that, nice as it is, I could afford two new cars and a mortgage for what they want per month.

What do you do now?

Currently, Micro Sage eats up most of my time, but I do have other interests. I like going to movies, lots of reading (sf mostly), keeping myself fit (weights and some aerobic work 5-6 times a week), raquettball when I can find someone interested, water skiing and tormenting my two cats, Tiffany and Theresa with an electric cattle prod I got for christmas last year (thanks mom!). Things that use house current or explode (or both) seem to have a particular fascination for me.

But have you ever done anything interesting?

In the past, I've been a sunday school teacher (now a reformed atheist), played both trumpet, bass trumpet and Mirophone in the Royal Columbians Drum Corps (recently shutdown - 2001) for 10 years, been best man at my mother and brothers weddings (no, not at the same time), worked for the most evil, amoral human being who's ever skulked the earth and wrecked a few cars.

Do you have any hobbies?

What little spare time I have is usually involved with fiddling around with old medical equipment or playing with blue LEDs (I've finally got a true full-spectrum RGB led - I've yet to do anything neat with it though). I don't watch too much TV (how trendy!), but always make sure I catch Babylon 5 every Tuesday nights. Sometimes I go water skiing when Rick has his infrequent 'friends from work' gatherings.

What are your goals?

Lately, I've taken to trying to stay up late to see if a commercial for a thing called a 'Potty Light' is real or just some weird dream I had on the couch one night. Watch this spot for more infomation...

July, 1995
I must conclude that the 'Potty Light' was simply the product of an undercooked pizza. I have not ever spotted it again.

I've also just hit 30 and in a short fit of depression, briefly considered buying a burial plot. Getting over that (they are way too expensive), I've decided it's time to get serious about trying to meet someone, finding a house/home, inventorying my psyche (and seeing how much of it is full depreciated now) and do some laundry. I'm fearing the laundry the most....

July, 1996
Seems I've made good on almost everything I set out in last years little update. I've just bought a house (I close on July 31) right in Ann Arbor, I've done some fair amount of introspection (turns out my psyche isn't all that depreciated after all (though there has been a mechanics lien filed against it since 1974)) and I've met someone special who has brightened my whole life. Yikes - I'm almost happy!

Lets see if we can make this work again. By next year, I want to be worth 14 Billion, have my own low-earth orbital platform, have told the pope a knock-knock joke and genetically engineered a new grapefruit that tastes like a bannana but looks like a blue potato. Cross your fingers and bolt your doors!

July, 1997
Well, this year wasn't as good in completion of my resolutions as last year. While my personal worth has increased a bit (I cleaned out the couch), but not anywhere near 14 billion. Low earth oribital platforms are still hideously expensive, so I don't have one of those (see earlier point about money), the pope has refused all my calls (okay, I suppose I would have had to had made some to have a chance, but, well, I was busy..) and the limited genetic engineering I've tried has resulted in a few extra doorknobs in the house and a stridently feminist fruit fly named "kushbalibalibali". Oh well.

In other fronts, I'm still living in my house (with three cats, the aforementioned extra door knobs and a gaggle of overly industrious carpenter ants), I've learned to like lawn work again and I've taken up running.

I'm also trying to teach my house to take care of itself. This is probably one of my more hopeless endeavours, but it keeps me pleasantly cross with something nearly every day (from stupid construction tricks of the previous home owners to tetchy hardware and a distinct lack of electrical conduits).

Micro Sage has grown considerably and we are now knocking on 10% of the Michigan market. That'll make us one of the largest providers in the state. We've also started on a cross-platform Java version of our product.

Finally, that someone special in my life last year is still around and making it all worth living. Mark is probably the most understanding, level headed and handsome guy I know and yet somehow has managed to tolerate me for over a year. As long as I keep drugging his coffee, I don't think he'll ever come to his senses. Lucky me!!

With this next year, I'd be happy to acheive a bit more inner peace, teach the cats to stop barfing (sorry, but there is just no good way to put that) and get working on the house renovations I've been nattering on about for the last year.

August, 2002
Okay, this hasn't been kept up to date a lot lately. To bring you up to date on the last five years, here's a quick rundown:

April 2005
Another very infrequent update

June 2007
Yet Another very infrequent update

Here is a photo gallery of people and things I like (or got to stand still long enough to photograph...). If you aren't interested in me or things about me, you are really going to waste your time if you go in here.

I've recentlty begone working with Stained Glass. Here are a few of my projects.

We've also started renovating the house. A summary of the project and progress is available here.

Last updated (barely) June 2007
Please send mail if you have comments or suggestions.