I got to thinking about what people liked, what was popular these days, what was politically correct. I Decided upon dolphins. Naturally, Dolphins.com was taken. I tried DolphinLand, World, Island, Key... "Congratulations - That domain is available," the message on the screen read.

DolphinKey.com - Was it a good name? Who knew, but I rather liked it. So, after saying it over and over in my mind, out loud, writing it down a few times, playing with logos and the likes, I bought it.

DolphinKey.com was born. But what about a website?

My first idea was to take it rather literally: Somewhere in the tropics, beachfront property with a scattering of thatch-roofed shops offering a variety of goods. Did I have a variety of goods to offer? No. The website languished...

Sometime later I was hanging out at the local marina--naturally not actually out in my boat--when I noticed there was no longer a Tides Tables display on the counter. I was told the provider had split town. Left the country. Blown the clambake. I got to thinking...I was a programmer, after all. Sorta...

I found a source of tides data, parsed it, began writing my own tide table generator, the format based loosely on the tide table mine would be replacing. Naturally, I made certain changes, added this, left out that, and voila! I had become the Tide Table provider for that marina.

But the graphics were weak, "connect-the-dots looking," and the data were limited to our marina. So, I went onto the web, spent a few minutes in the search engines, and finally found N.O.A.A.!!

I called N.O.A.A. on the phone and spoke with one of their programmers, who told me, and I nearly quote, "From the sound of what you are writing, you might as well just get the data off of our website." I quickly threw together a Java program, then another, then another... Before too long, I had a collection of routines capable of web-walking and data-parsing, which created flat files on my disk. A few changes to the existing Tide Table image generator to handle this new deluge of data...

Suddenly I had a program capable of producing Tide Tables for over THREE THOUSAND (3000) locations along the U.S. coasts and around some of its partners.

In the mean time, with the Tide Table looking quite good--if I do say so myself--I figured, it was time to make DK real. SO, I got an occupational license, tax id, et cetera, and was in business as a Desktop Publisher.

Soon I had ads in my Tide Table Brochure, which I named "High Tides & Good Times."

Requests followed for smaller versions from those who were aware of another Tide Table company in the local area. I had never heard of this other company, nor had I seen their version of a tide table. When I was shown an example, I was shocked. It was just a card with columns of times and tides levels, tough to read, without curves to show tides directions and speeds. I figured the card size was ok--I made mine slightly smaller for production reasons. I wrote some more Java code, and voila (again). I had a new product to offer: Tide Table Cards.

The rest of the story is future history, yet to be written...

-Chris