Monster House Presents. Hey there, Monster Talkers. It's been a rough week here at Monster Talk

Manor. In 2020, like many of you, I had my life turned upside down by the pandemic and the economic

hit of that disaster. And for the second time in my career, I had to life turned upside down by the pandemic and the economic hit of that disaster.

And for the second time in my career, I had to burn down through my life savings to survive.

But thanks to a listener to this very show, I got introduced to a manager at Stanford University

and just in the nick of time landed the most amazing job that I never even dreamed of doing.

I was a robotic process automation specialist for Stanford University, and the past five years have been incredible.

My fascination with innovation, especially in the computing space,

had put Stanford in an elevated place in my heart,

because along with MIT, it's one of those key birthplaces of

much of the tech that makes this modern world work. I was working remotely, but several times I got

to go visit campus. And my first visit, I stayed on campus at the hotel next to the Stanford

linear accelerator or slack, and I made a pilgrimage to so many Silicon Valley sites.

And when I went to go get coffee and Pullia Hall, it was next to Vince Serf's old office

where he helped create TCPIP. And when I visited my clients in Pine Hall, it's where

Cisco Systems was born. And my first unit experience had been on Sun, named for Stanford University

Networks.

This was a dream job, and for the first time of my life, I thought I had found a place where I could actually work until I retired.

Well, I don't like to talk about politics, but this current administration is run by very wealthy people, and a couple of them, and I'm looking at you, Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen, really hate Stanford and universities in general. The administration is attacking

many universities, and they're cutting federal funding for science research, and they're

attacking the universities themselves with punitive tax hikes. It's almost like this administration

doesn't want people to have higher education at all,

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