Charles Samuel Pointer III, Charlie Three to his friends, Chuck to his doting dad, was going to get a job.

His father would be impressed. Even though Charlie Three didn't need the work he was setting up for the Christmas vacation, he knew full well that his dad, Charles Samuel Pointer II, admired initiative and determination above all other qualities. Ever since the pioneering days back at the start of the twentieth century, the Pointers had been demonstrating their initiative and determination.

Charlie's great-great-great-grandfather had shown the initiative to emigrate with his wife and two children from Eastern Europe to the United States of America. And like thousands of other immigrants, Josef Podowski arrived at Ellis Island, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, with nothing more than the clothes he stood up in and the determination to succeed in his new life.

And he did. He was a grafter and he was clever. Even way back then, Josef saw that the future was in communications, and so he made it his business to get in there, starting at the bottom and working his way up.

A couple of generations on, with a lot of hard work, plenty of that famous initiative and determination, and a change of name from Podowski to Pointer, and the family fortune was well on the way to being made.

Charlie Three's grandfather, the great Charles Samuel Pointer I, chose the new family name. He reckoned it sounded substantial and solid, pioneering yet well established and, most importantly, American.

The business continued to thrive and grow, and on the morning that Charlie Three left for his job interview, it was established as one of the nation's top computer and Internet research and development organizations, firmly placed at the cutting edge of the industry.

Some day Charlie Three was going to take over that business. But there was a Pointer tradition: no one got an easy ride; everyone had to get out there and show what they were made of by demonstrating that famous initiative and determination.