Not long after starting my Apple consulting business, I got a call from a part time bookkeeper who worked with one of my clients. It turned out that she had a client of her own who was frustrated with his PC and had just purchased a Mac.

“I’ve seen you work with Martin,” she said,” and you definitely know your stuff. And frankly, there aren’t very many people who know Mac. So I was wondering if you would be willing to help this client of mine out.”

Seeing as that I was still just getting started with my business, I said yes to everyone. I got the address and an appointment was made.

Now at the time, I had only been married for about eleven months, and I had been a father for six. Go ahead, do the math. I don’t mind. The point here is that as a family we were struggling financially. The dot com bust had happened, jobs were scarce, and I had taken it upon myself to do consulting as a stop gap measure until people started hiring for real jobs again.

The funny thing was, I was actually doing pretty well with the consulting work. It’s just that I was the only income provider for the family while my wife was home with our son. And as many readers here know, money may come in, but it goes out just as fast. We were always counting our nickels at the end of the month.

This call came in during a particularly tight moment in our cash flow. When you are self employed as a sole proprietor, cash flow is king, and I clearly hadn’t learned that lesson yet. And so, as I mentioned before, I said yes to a new client, hoping I could bring in a little cash before my next scheduled retainer check from one of my larger clients.

I drove up the winding forested hillside roads of Mill Valley, and parked the car on a narrow outcropping of road at the edge of a cliff. I stepped down some slippery stone steps to a terraced deck that surrounded an enormous home overlooking the valley.

I rang the bell and was greeted by an overweight man in his late fifties. He had about nine hairs slicked over his balding head, wore a light blue bathrobe that was far too short, a gold medallion necklace shown out if his exposed hairy chest, and he was shouting angrily into is cordless phone. He opened the door widely so I could come in. He then rudely ended his phone call, and motioned me to follow him.

As we walked through the enormous house, I saw that it was something of a time capsule. The interior decorating was frozen in 1977. Chrome railings on the staircase led me past wall sized mirrors, High end molded plastic chairs and recliners sat in wall to wall brown shag carpeting. It was as if the entire home was furnished from the discarded sets of Logan's Run. And more, the household sound system was blaring the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever at full volume.

"Let me start by saying that I hate computer consultants!" He yelled, continuing the argumentative tone of his phone call. "You're all a bunch of rip-off artists! I had three other consultants try to help me with my problems and none of them were able to help. They still charged me a fortune!"

I stood poker faced listening to him. He continued, "So anyway, I decided that my computer was a piece of shit and I bought this Mac because a friend of mine said they were easy to use. I want you to transfer all of my data and settings from this PC over to my new Mac."

Now in 2002, this was no small task. There were none of the automated tools to do this that there are now. It was going to be a tedious job with no short cuts. And worst of all, his desk was located in his bedroom, a room that might have been pretty large but it was filled with an enormous circular bed and giant projector television screen. A small desk holding a brand new iMac sat cramped against one wall. I got to work.

While I worked, the guy got back on his phone, continued his argument where he left off and walked outside to his deck. The deck surrounded the house so he walked in circles as he shouted. I might have been able to hear him go all the way around, but his conversation got drowned out by the falsetto chorusses of the brothers Gibb.

I finished several hours later, having done everything he had asked for. "How much?" he asked pulling the phone from his ear. "$300.00" I said.

His face reddened. "Three hundred? Three hundred? Goddam! Three hundred? Is that right? Goddam! Goddam! For three hundred dollars I could get two hookers and a gram of coke in here!"

I really did not want to picture that while I sat four inches from this guy's bed. He hung up from his phone call and then stormed over into an adjoining chamber that led to the master bathroom. He opened a drawer and pulled out a roll of cash that was about as thick as my upper arm. He walked back to me, pulled three one hundred dollar bills off of it from under a single thin rubber band.

Suddenly his phone rang again and in an instant he was back into his argument. He was so angry with whomever was on the other end that he set the roll of cash down without thought and walked back out to the deck so he could raise his voice to full volume. In a minute he was back to doing laps around his house.

I sat there.

I looked down at the roll of one hundred dollar bills on the desk. And if, as it appeared, there was nothing but hundreds in it, then there must have been over twenty thousand dollars total.

I sat frozen with a moral dilemma. Clearly here was a man whom I could easily call the dregs of humanity. He was rude, obnoxious, selfish, angry and just plain gross. I was a newly married guy who honestly didn't know if I was going to be able to afford both food and diapers that week. And just look at that money! There was so much money there that there would be no way of knowing if a few bills had suddenly disappeared off of it.

I listened to him make his ten minute circuit around the house. There was plenty of time to do anything I decided to do. And I honestly contemplated a crime on a scale that I had never contemplated before.

So what did I do? What happened next?

I'll tell you all tomorrow.