Marmot Graphics:
For several years in the 1990s, Susan and I had a graphic design and web design business we called Marmot Graphics (the Marmot in question being a nickname for Susan, who was born on Groundhog Day, etc.) - and it was a reasonably profitable side business. It paid for our various computer upgrades over the years, and our clients got quality stuff for reasonable prices.
The business really got off the ground after Susan and I were furloughed during the US Federal Government shutdown in late 1995. The U.S. EPA’s managers strongly suggested we Find Other Employment, and freely handed out written permission to moonlight (which you had to have) from the Regional Administrator. We hooked up with Adam D’Auria, a techie friend of ours who had a good computer consulting business in the Chicago area, and he threw some of his customers at us for web work.
The end of the business bascially came to to three things - the crash of the dot-com boom, our customers getting a desire for more website than their budgets could afford, and adopting Meredith. The first two closed down the old business, and the last choked off our time for getting in new business. We basically let the little business we had die out, and turned our attention to raising The Kid.
Below is a copy of my old business card from the company. (The marmotgraphics.com website is all that remains of the business - as soon as I can integrate the last of my stuff from there into memnison.com, I’m closing it down and ‘ending the era’, so to speak.) The various contact information on it is wildly out of date, except for the phone number.
