The Galveston Daily News from Galveston, Texas • Page 26

B12 SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1999 GALVESTON COUNTY, TEXAS BUSINESS Successful Americans opting out fast track By JEFF BARNARD The Associated Press BEND, Ore. The first time Collins Hemingway saw the snowcapped Three Sisters mountains, he was recently divorced and driving west with his toddler son to take a job as a copy editor at an Oregon newspaper. Afte? helping the newspaper make the jump to computerized editing, Hemingway took a leap himself, landing a job at a public relations firm to help create an image for an upstart software company called Microsoft. After 18 years in high-tech public relations and marketing seven with Microsoft, where he capped his career collaborating with Bill Gates to write "Business: The Speed of Thought" Hemingway has done what a lot of people who tapped into booming stock options have done: retired before they burned out. "I probably had better odds of being struck by h'ghtning than ending up where I am now," says Hemingway, 49, who grew up poor in Arkansas after his father ran out.

Now, he's sitting in the living room of a custom home with a sweeping view of those same Three Sisters he fell in love with driving west; The high desert of central Oregon attracts a lot of people like Hemingway. People who have worked hard in a boom economy that rewarded them with wealth. People who have decided work means more than just making money and retirement doesn't mean putting their feet up. Hemingway is looking forward to writing a novel instead of speeches for Gates, getting involved in his community instead of jetting around the world, and doing a little consulting and investing while still having time to backpack through those spectacular mountains. "All my life Fve worked hard solving problems for other people, at work other people wanted me to do," he says.

"What is going to be nice, for what I hope will be the next 20 or 30 years, is not that I will be sitting around the swimming pool drinking margaritas, but that I will be doing work I want to do." Like the '49ers rushed to California for gold, people who have already struck it rich rush to Bend to find another elusive element: joy. Between 1990 and 1997, Bend and surrounding De- Mom runs Internet site from home Collins and Wendy Hemingway play with their dogs Sept. 2 in the back yard of their home outside Bend, Ore. Collins Hemingway, 49, retired this year from Microsoft after deciding that after IS years in the high-tech business, it was time to concentrate on things he wanted to do, like try to write a novel. schutes County grew 34 percent, to just over 100,000 people three times the overall state growth rate.

As a 30-year resident, developer Bill Smith almost qualifies as a native. In the past 10 years he has seen a lot of people like Hemingway move to Bend as it morphed from a dying timber town to an L.L. Bean-lifestyle boomtown by hooking successful people who like to play in the great outdoors; There is world- class skiing, fly fishing, dozens of golf courses and wide open spaces. "It's not just affluence that causes it," Smith says. "It's a willingness of people right now to not chase monetary rewards.

"Maybe it's because job movement among companies is now accepted, firms are offering sabbaticals, those kinds of things. Now it's OK to move to Bend, and live there and get by on significantly less than you would if you applied yourself in a city like Seattle or Detroit." Lake a lot of other folks, Marc Blank and his wife, Cezanne, fell in love with Bend after skiing Mount Bachelor. They moved here before bothering to figure out how to make a living. He had graduated from MIT and medical school but gave up plans to be a doctor and moved to Los Angeles to design computer games. It didn't take long to get tired of LA.

He began in Bend by doing some freelance work and consulting before enlisting a partner from a previous company to start Eidetic, a computer game outfit still basking in the success of a million-seller, "Syphon Filter." "Everyone working for me is doing well, but everyone could do better," Blank says. "What they get is a place that is more matching to their temperaments. We tend to keep people a long time because they have made a life decision." Another Bill Smith, not re- lated to the developer, found that he was not really satisfied after working so hard for success on Wall Street, then starting a financial advisory firm with his wife in Westport, Conn. "We probably had the best of that lifestyle," Smith recalls of his life in Connecticut. "Our business was successful.

We were our own bosses. And we lived in the town we worked in. But it wasn't serene. Horns honked. People wrestled over parking spaces.

Most of our friends were commuting to New York. What they wanted most, he says, was easy access to recreational activities. "One winter we rented a ski condo in Vermont, but it took six hours to get there. It seemed that as soon as we got there we had to turn around and get home." Looking around the country, they found Colorado too boring, Florida too hot, New England too cold. Bend was just right, with no waiting list for the tennis club and lots of other people just like them.

Though they had put away enough to retire, with two growing sons and people who knew their background asking for financial advice, Smith and his wife, Linda Zimbalist, restarted their firm. But in this life, Smith wears T- shirts and sweat pants to work instead of suits. Instead of a BMW, he drives a four-wheel drive pickup. While his friends back in Connecticut are riding the train home from Wall Street, he spends summer evenings practicing Softball with a bunch of other 50-somethings. He also volunteers at a ranch for troubled boys.

"I've got, for the first time, playmates," Smith says. "We have no desire to leave and will probably stay here forever." By DAVID KOENK5 The Associated Press BEDFORD From outward appearances, there is little to distinguish Cynthia Sorrels from the other moms in her modest suburban neighborhood, little to suggest that she has helped build a popular Web site for children and parents. Sorrels works from behind a U-shaped desk in her home's crowded front room, balancing the demands of three inquisitive kids with writing and editing reviews of computer software for Kids Domain (www.kids domain.com). "I like hanging out and playing with toys and arguing with the Mds," Sorrels says with a laugh. "If a pretty cool job." Kids Domain, part of the- globe.com network, features reviews of software and gadgets, games to download from the Internet and contests where Mds can win Beanie Babies and other prizes.

"We want Mds to have fun," Sorrels said. "They have plenty of time to grow up and deal with the evils of the world." Sorrels' partner, Grace Sylvan, a stay-at-home mom in San Jose, said the site, with its downloadable puzzles, mazes and other games, serves as an antidote to the wildly popular shoot-'em-up games. "Doing mazes and puzzles involves something more than a trigger finger," Sylvan said. The beginnings of Kids Domain go back five years to Sorrels' desire for a hobby after the birth of her third child. Her husband, Craig, whose salary as a phone company data-entry technician was the family's sole support for several years, bought her a computer.

While cruising Internet news groups for parents, Sorrels came across a posting by a computer- network manager at Birmingham Financial company says its filling vital niche By JOHN CUNNIFF The Associated Press NEW YORK With company pensions, 401(k) plans, Individual Retirement Accounts, stocks and bonds, all with peculiarities, you might think middle-class Americans have enough on their plate. And they do, says entrepreneur Brian Hollander. Too much. What they lack, he says, is a coherent plan to make sense of them all to relate one to the other in pursuit of education, retirement and other life goals. Searching in the traditional markets and on the Internet, he found lots of financial planners with big ideas seeking big clients with big bucks.

But very little for the little guy. And so he started DirectAd- vice.com (www.directadvice.com), which for $75 a year seeks to provide subscribers with a total financial plan via the Internet, applying high-income concepts to the lower end of incomes. And so has come into being another product of a surge in the application of technology to remaking the marketplace, derailing old practices with innovations not possible before. Or that, at least, is inherent in Hollander's goals. The full story won't be known for a while, for new companies are loaded with risk and Hollander knows it.

But entrepreneurs with ideas can't be stopped, and Hollander feels his idea is a natural. As personal affairs become more complicated, most people need a plan, he says, but are turned off by cost, embarrassment or distrust. Some also feel that good planners don't want small accounts. Moreover, having begun assembling a financial, programming and technological team in 1995, and having commitments from financial institutions and Internet companies, Hollander feels he has a head start. Among investors are J.C.

Bradford, a Nashville broker, Incam AG of Germany and Soft- bank, a Japanese Internet investor. And Hollander expects an agreement with ETrade for the product to be on its site. But above all, Hollander says, DirectAdvice.com fills a need. People today, he says, have been presented with wonderful but complex and confusing financial products, but less often with the ability to understand "I I like hanging out and playing with toys and arguing with the kids, it's a pretty cooi job." Cynthia Sorrels mother and games reviewer for Kid Domain Web site University in England, who was looking for volunteers to review software for kids. Sorrels, 41, signed up and soon added other reviewers mostly stay-at-home moms like herself and her work anchored the review section of a site called Games Domain.

At the same time, Sylvan, 38, was building her site that started as a place for kids to download Macintosh software. A gaming company, Attitude Network, brought the ladies' operations together. Earlier this year, theglobe.com, best known for chat rooms and other "community" features, bought Attitude Network and the gaming site. Theglobe.com has increased advertising revenue and hopes to expand the site to include online sales of software and toys and to offer home pages and e-mail for children, if it can overcome privacy issues. "I think they're doing a good job.

It's nicely laid out, easy to navigate, pleasant to look at," said Barbara J. Feldman, who writes a newsletter and a syndicated newspaper column about kids'Web sites. They have things for Mds and grown-ups. Tm sure the reviews are mostly read by grown-ups." While measuring the popularity of Web sites is difficult, indications are that Rids Domain is doing well. According to Alexa, a San Francisco company that makes software for tracking traffic and popularity of Web sites, Kids Domain ranks among the top 10,000 Web sites in visits and has 27,000 links from other sites an unusually large number.

By those and other markers, Kids Domain is more popular than rivals such as Billy Bear's Playground but still far behind the leader, Yahooligans, ranked 991 among the more than 22 million content sites on the World Wide Web, according to Alexa. "Definitely people are going to the (Kids Domain) site, and our users give it four stars out of five for popularity," said Cynthia Lohr, a spokeswoman for Alexa. She added that Yahooligans got a perfect five stars. However, Kids Domain does not show up on some leading lists of the best kids' Web sites, such as Feldman's or the American Library Association's, which tilted toward educational sites, including many with ties to Public Broadcasting Service television shows. Although Sorrels' youngest children, 5 and 6, are both computer- savvy and readily identify their favorite games and links she said parents must separate their kids and the screen.

"I tell people to get their Mds away from the computer. When they grow up, they're going to remember things like this," she said, holding up her daughter's art project "not that mom figured out how to make some software program run." Nursing Home "In Home InterMED Home Care, Inc. 1(877)648-4553 Millennium Books on sale for $30.00 (tax at tbe following locations: Moore Memorial Library (Library is also selling leather bound books for $60.00) City Hall Mainland Museum Nessler Center Lowry Fitness Center Chamber of Commerce An ideal Chrismas Gift! Book Signing Party with Ron Stone at Mainland Museum October 12, 1999 7pm 9pm and handle them effectively. "Missed opportunities are bad enough," he says. "Fatal mistakes and they can easily occur are another matter altogether." And tax, beneficiary and other issues can effect vast changes in goals.

What DirectAdvice.com offers, he says, "is a credible, objective, online personal adviser that you can trust and which delivers a report equivalent to those costing $1,000." Without modern technology, he says, it would be impossible to guide clients through a questionnaire in less than an hour and then deliver a "full, objective, personalized" plan in 40 seconds. The product, already widely used, is interactive, allowing clients unlimited updates and changes in the guts and goals of their plans, and access to articles, tips, advice forums and experts. Though the plans are computer generated, Hollander maintains that "no two customers are alike." In fact, he contends that success depends on the product being "personal, comprehensive and unique." Mail orders may be sent to: Moore Memorial Public Library 1701 Texas City, TX 77590 Free shipping upon receipt of check made payable to City of Texas City.