I'd trace my awareness of the Trump family, mostly in hindsight, through the Mayor Koch chapter in New York City. Donald was making it happen, whereas I was the penniless speculator in Jersey City, just outside of Manhattan, hoping I could do something with the Stanley Theater, 2nd largest of its kind after Radio City Music Hall they told me.
And that wasn't the full extent of my urban dreamscape. A single ticket, no off and on (no transfer needed) train line: EWR to/from JFK. That'd be so great. Plus that Dymaxion billboard, just outside my front door (the Loew's blank wall was so inviting).
That movie The Apprentice, that I take as historical fiction, is set in around that same time. I could sense at the time that my acting as a booster for Jersey City, like some self-bootstrapping speculator, was somewhat redundant with what else was going on at the time.
I got tracked into other lines of work: protecting the right to vote in DC; upholding academic standards in NYC. I was very much the east coaster back then, having acclimated through Princeton, post Philippines. I wouldn't resume my west coast lifestyle, interrupted in the mid 1960s, until around 1985, upon arriving in Portland from Bangladesh, where mom & dad had pulled up stakes (Bhutan still ahead).
On the right to vote front, I learned that many don't believe their ballots stay secret and they fear retribution from the powers that be if they go against the local rulers, whomever these may be, most likely the party in power, but possibly a company, gang or family network, whatever astroturf. That's only the beginning of the intimidation gauntlet. Making you believe that they'll know is more effective than knowing, and way more efficient. Heightening paranoia levels is a tool in every bully's tool chest.
On the academic standards front, I was learning about the economics of serving every public school child with the requisite hard copy textbooks, and milk (food logistics was not my focus back then, although the connection between nutrition and work-study productivity I'd clearly made).
The observation I'll make now in that connection is voluntarily fasting in a condition of mindfulness, as many religions recommend, is different from feeling deprived in a Dickensian condition of servitude. A true fast begins with the promise of a feast on the other end, if that's what's wanted. This is why you'll get your rich and famous touting a lean and mean yoga that works for them: they have a choice in the matter.
Exactly what that school textbook market looks likes today I couldn't say as I'm no longer closely following that literature, except when it comes to Silicon Forest stuff. The electronification of learning resources was just starting back then, and they set me up as a new kind of gatekeeper. Nowadays I'm on the other side of things, feeding the local schools with what big publishing keeps unavailable.
Some of the stuff I'd review for McGraw-Hill was too good to become standard and would be a threat. The wholly local, community sourced curriculum, faculty generated, would spell the end of big publishing, so our business model was to take a pass, but best of luck.
I remember how years later, Microsoft would swallow FoxPro, which competed internally with the Visual Basic (VB) line of products, Microsoft Access in particular. From my point of view as an outsider, the freelance developer, MSFT seemed involved in something of a DIY exorcism after that, trying to extricate the better, but alien project, from it's VB beating core. Like a science fiction movie.
I'm sketching where my headspace went, aftering thinking for-credit viewing for college audiences would be a thing. It would be, but they don't need to all go to the same theater on a scary train. VHS would be sufficient, or community television. My vision was too Disney in the sense that I was treating The Stanley as a theme park pavilion. All before JCNJ would star as Gotham in the Joker movies (along with Newark).
Did I watch The Apprentice (the TV show, not the movie)? I barely watched any game shows back then. I got into networking downtown (in Manhattan), by taking up duties voluntarily. I had my choice of cults, one could say, in a city of that size.
I forget the exact set of stepping stones that took me from the Bonnie and Ray (and Julie) Simon chapter (friends and neighbors) to the Americans for Civic Participation chapter (Reagan-vs-Mondale) and thence onward to the 28th floor of that Rockefeller Center building, now back in Ray's orbit, but based in Brooklyn (and maybe Queens?).
Anyway, I couldn't have watched The Apprentice back then as it was still years into the future. I'd be back in Portland, Oregon by the time it aired, and again I had little time for game show TV, let alone wrestling shows. If I was staring at a screen at it, I was likely eyeballing Visual Foxpro, or VFP as we called it, through version 9.
By 2015, the exorcism was finally complete: Microsoft was no longer supporting its super popular FoxPro line. Which doesn't mean FoxPro went away. That was one of the issues: FoxPro was subject to rampant piracy, and open sourcing it was never an option, or maybe it was. I'd still get a last chance to dabble in it, in connection with long haul truck scheduling and routing. I was back in apprentice mode myself in that case, working with a skilled transportation engineer and another independent application developer, a lot like me.
