The Decorated Apparel Expo is a trade show for screen printers, embroiderers, Direct-to-garment printers and other apparel decorating professionals.

SMR Software evolved from the proprietary business management software I had written to run Northwind's day-to-day operations and a 1989 article for Stitches Magazine I was writing on embroidery pricing. When a primitive spreadsheet proved unable to handle the math operations of pricing multi-head embroidery for the article, I decided it was time to offer my programming expertise to the industry. Starting as a small DOS utility program to easily price screen printing and embroidery that could take into account each shop's situation and profit goal, the first version of 'Pricelist'​ was released to the industry in 1990. The product was originally sold by 'Scott M Ritter Software,'​ as a division of Northwind, but SMR Software quickly grew to need it's own resources and eventually eclipsed Northwind's profits while demanding more of my time than I could split between two companies.

Northwind - and it's original retail store: 'The Shirt Affair'​ was a chain of screen printing and embroidery shops in Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Shirt Affair boasted the first computerized embroidery machine in Northern Minnesota in 1985 and by the Mid-1990's the Northwind factory ran multiple manual and automatic presses and multiple multi-head embroidery machines. Northwind was recognized numerous times with industry awards and was among the earliest adopters of computerized art, sublimation printing (we had our own offset presses to produce Sublimation transfers in the pre-computer age) discharge and four-color process printing. Most pictures of new technologies used in articles I wrote for Screen Play, The Press, Printwear and Stitches Magazines were taken on the Northwind factory floor.

Assistant engineering position combined with on-air personality work. Gave me extra income working my way through school and the status of carrying the first cell phone anybody in the college had ever seen when I was on-call :) Was frequently farmed out to perform remote record hops and rented out as both engineer and disc-jockey to many of the local 'discos' that were so popular in Superior, WI at the time.

First job at the age of 15 - I answered an ad in the local paper looking for 'young, enthusiastic, go-getters.'​ Sounded like I was signing on to the 'Mod Squad,'​ ended up learning vacuum cleaner repair and sales skills. If you've ever heard about all the stunts, drills and outrageous meetings that Kirby salespeople endure, don't believe it. What you heard was mild compared to the reality.

Ever watch WKRP in Cincinnati? That's tame compared to what happens when the greatest talents in Twin Cities radio come together at a station that changed it's format in the middle of a broadcast day, live at the Minnesota State Fair, and had no misconceptions that it might one day need to renew it's broadcast license. I could fill multiple books with just the crazed shenanigans I witnessed working here. 'Grabs Me' T-shirts, green bikini contests, imaginary concerts with 40 of the top bands of the era, and snowball fights in a 50,000 watt transmitter bay to name a few. This period definitely skewed my impression of what an average work day should look like.