Company Profile

Watkins and Associates was founded, and is owned by Stephen H. Watkins, Sr. Stephen's first programming experience came in 1973, studying Fortran programming at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 1976 he renewed his interest in programming while at the University of Minnesota, learning Basic programming in class, then taking it up as a hobby.

In 1983, while working for the Department of the Treasury, Stephen was asked to write a program to allow IRS Revenue Officers to compute penalty and interest, while they were out in the field, using hand-held, programmable calculators. The completion of this assignment led to three years of intense interest and study in the area of software programming, design and development, and eventually to his learning Assembly-language programming.

In 1985 Stephen began developing software for the Atari computing platform. By 1988 he had founded Watkins and Associates, whose two biggest (aka 'successful') products were the "First Class BBS", a bulletin board system and the "Disk Worm", a program used by software authors to protect software from piracy when it was distributed to beta testers.

In 1989 we moved into the IBM world and began developing DOS-based software utilities and xBase compliant database models for small-to-medium sized businesses in the Portland, Oregon area. During this time Watkins and Associates also released the popular "Pop-N-Print", a Terminate And Stay Ready (TSR) program. This program enabled IBM users to send printer control codes directly to their HP LaserJet II printers from within almost any DOS based program. Due to the success of this release, there were eventually versions released for various Epson, Toshiba and Brother printer models.

In 1992, Stephen became convinced that the Windows® environment was going to be the prevalent desktop environment of the future. He slowly began to transition Watkins and Associates into the world of Windows® software development, releasing "PaperMan", the wallPAPER MANager. This utility, which facilitated setting and changing the user's Windows® desktop wallpaper, was initially short lived due to a name conflict with another, entirely-different-but-older program. After some retreading, Paperman was later re-released as GUIPaper (freeware).

In 1994 Stephen successfully completed the testing and certification process to become a
Microsoft Certified Professional, a certification that he still maintains.

During a ten-year period with the Department of Energy, Stephen served first as LAN Administrator and Chief of the Energy Resources PC support desk, then later as the Lead of Application Development for the Financial Services Branch. During his tenure with the Government, Stephen designed or assisted in the development of a number of data-driven applications including an address book popup, a memory resident printer manager to quick-set the LaserJet and Epson printers in use at that time, and a numner of Lotus 1-2-3 (then Excel) analytical spreadsheets for the finance division.

After the DOE Stephen spent two years at the Virginia Power Company managing a small programming crew developing financial modeling applications and financial options calculation tools for the day-trading desk. Those tools are still used by major utilities in the US power industry.

For the next ten years, Stephen continued to maintain and manage the business, adding both web hosting and small-business support clients.

in 2016 Stephen took a hiatus from the business when he spent a seven-year stint as the Information Technology manager for Clackamas Fire District #1. While there he managed the support staff, maintained the public and internal web sites and assisted his staff with client issues and computer support. During this time, he still maintained the web presences of his existing clientele as well as providing support to his portfolio of non-profit business clients.

After leaving CFD#1 in 2023 Stephen again pursued Watkins and Associates full time specializing in design services, client support and network consulting.