A Brief History of Dines
(c) Dr. James J. Dines, esquire - January, 2025
I was born into a highly dysfunctional family when I was very young (credit to Groucho Marx.) It might be said that I never had a prayer. My sister said it once. My father was an extremely smart man who wielded great power and influence while he was alive. He left his mark on the world to be sure. He had a polarizing personality and was famous in the community in which I grew up. It seems that everyone but me loved him or hated him. I both loved and hated him throughout much of my life; the classic love/hate relationship. I would come to realize that I was, and would always be, his little boy. His last words to me were "be a good boy", and my last words to him were "how about if I be a good man instead?
I wrote and delivered my father's eulogy to a crowd that would attend what was hailed as the largest funeral celebration in the history of Gardner, MA. There was a parade with hundreds of uniformed police officers and firefighters, as well as a long procession of towing & recovery, and construction equipment, all owned by successful businessman from within the state, as well as from neighboring ones. A large part of this can be explained by the fact that my grandfather was a full time firefighter and my father was a volunteer one who built Roger Dines & Son Construction from the ground up and turned it into a business that would sell for 5 million dollars after his death. He married a woman who eventually rose through the ranks of the Gardner Police department to be Deputy Chief of Police there before transitioning to the Chief of Police in the nearby town of Athol, MA. This meteoric rise was due in large part to his influence.
My father was also the Vice President of the Massachusetts Statewide Towing Association, which explains why the parade included the towing equipment. The Towing and Recovery endeavor started as a side hustle when State Troopers used to chide him, asking when he was going to get some real recovery equipment. They would call him when a tractor trailer or other heavy equipment went off the side of route 2, which passes through Gardner Massachusetts, where he started his business and where I was born, during snowstorms. He would respond with his men and construction equipment to right the heavy equipment and return them to the highway. In response to this chiding he took out a half million dollar loan, purchased and refurbished an entire fleet of heavy towing equipment (and a standard wrecker and a ramp truck), and just a few years later was considered a legend in the industry. That was his idea of a side hustle. To employ a touch of understatement, I lived in his shadow under a lot of pressure throughout my entire youth.
When I was four years old my mother, who was a widow trying to raise two traumatized daughters alone when she met my father, sat me down and gave me "the talk." I remember it rather vividly. She told me that I was smarter than the other kids; that I have a special gift and that I owe it to the world to use it. Again, no pressure or anything. The thing is she wasn't wrong except for her timing. It's not the kind of thing you tell a four year old child. Clearly she didn't know that though, and I know she was just doing her best to handle a situation for which no woman could possibly be prepared. Still, getting this perspective thrust upon me so early on did not serve me well. As you might imagine, the behaviors I exhibited subsequently didn't exactly endear me to the other children.
I have been victimized on myriad occasions. The first time I can recall I was 5 years old. I developed PTSD at the same age, but not from that. I wouldn't figure out that I had PTSD until my mid thirties. Nobody knew I had it before then, least of all me. I was bullied throughout my childhood and youth. I was a victim of gang violence in my twenties, and again almost 20 years later. Worse yet, I have been a victim of myself far too many times. Make no mistake about it though. I have been victimized, but that doesn't mean I play the victim; not anymore, and not for a long time. I am a musician. I am a drummer. I am a guitarist. I am a lyricist and poet. I have a wide array of interest, in fact, that goes on too long to itemize here.
I began smoking Marijuana when I was 6 years old. I used to ride my motorcycle with an older friend who always kept a lid of pot under his seat. The motorcycle was a gift from my father, who rode himself, but seldom had time to do so with me. You might think I had everything any child could ever want, but the truth is that the thing any young boy wants more than anything is to be loved by his father, and have his father show that love by investing his time being with his son. I don't blame him for not showing up at my Birthday parties or on Christmas, because he honestly believed that his priority was to work on building an empire for me to inherit. Before I turned 17 I told him that he could keep his business. I had discovered computers and I knew that I wanted to go a different way, and nobody who knows me would ever argue against the idea that I certainly did that.
People have called me lots of things throughout the course of my life. Nevermind though; I don't. I practice the four agreements spelled out and elaborated upon in full in the book "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz:
* Be impeccable with your word
* Don't take anything personally
* Don't make assumptions
* Always do your best
On a professional level I leveraged hard lessons learned from my successful entrepreneur and philanthropist father, who was the sort of man who taught swimming by first holding ones head underwater, figuratively speaking. By the age of five I was an excellent swimmer, literally; they used to call me "little Mark Spitz". As an autodidact I taught myself how to write software and design computers in high school. I went on to single-handedly create one of the first computer systems capable of having its firmware updated over a serial connection the way that cellphone operating systems are today. I did this by leveraging an opportunity which presented itself by being the right person, with the right background, at the right place and at the right time, when FLASH memory was only available as engineering samples from Intel prior to its release to the market. Not long after that I celebrated my 25th birthday.
I am now a high technology guru with 35+ Years Experience in High Technology including Software Engineering, Hardware Design and Troubleshooting, and Embedded Systems Development. My experience has garnered expertise using and administrating Operating Systems including Windows, OS X, Linux, DEC VAX/VMS, et. Al., as well as Network Administration, Security (incl. 'Cybersecurity'), and Technical Writing. I created this website by choosing the cloud platform, OS, and tools then employing an AWS Lightsail Virtual Machine running the CentOS Linux distribution, configured with a LAMP stack and my chosen Content Management System, Joomla. Then I tweaked things a bit, and went forward creating and adding content, including what you are reading now. I needed a powerful project management tool as well as a way to keep my works under revision control so I added the Redmine project management tool and git SCM package to my web server.
High Tech was my primary source of enjoyment and income for decades. These days writing serves that purpose and I have relegated technology to the background. In a certain way it is my side hustle.
What follows is a summary of skills I regularly employ:
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Experience working well with teams, colleagues, and independently
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Solid communication skills both written and orally
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Ability to understand and convey complex ideas, processes, and policies
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Strong commitment to quality, with emphasis on accuracy
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A preference for establishing strong interdependent win-win relationships
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Understanding the importance of following a process and process improvement
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Ability to leverage extensive high tech skills in most high tech domains
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Able to think “inside, and outside, the box”; offering a unique perspective (i.e. there is no box)
I am an older, wiser man now with a colorful past, beautiful in its complexity, who might be accused of tilting at windmills from time to time. I have watched as time passed, but I have never let it pass me by. I understand the importance of doing what you love, and letting the rest follow. I don't do what I do for money, power or fame. I do it for the love of the endeavor.
Pursuant to my teleological alignment I am finally at a point where I understand "the talk" my mother gave me. I haven't had an imaginary friend since Henrietta Pussycat, so I don't think I'm God's gift to the world or anything like that. Indeed, I like to joke sometimes that my magnanimity is exceeded only by my humility. Still I am ready to use the gifts with which I was born, the knowledge and wisdom I have acquired over the course of my lifetime, and whatever other resources I can muster to try to make the world a better place.
No man can change the world, for better or worse, alone. It is my hope that I can inspire as many people as possible to collaborate with me in my efforts, and I invite the reader to join me in this endeavor. You can start now, right here, today. Just follow the other links on this website to get started.