Update News for June 2026

Here is a quick run-down on what you will find in this bulletin:

• Transitions
• A Little Compulife History
• Transition in the 90’s
  Term4Sale was the Second Name We Chose
• Another Transition
  The Passing of Richard (Dick) Gilbert
• Transitions in the Compulife Team
• Transitions in CQS.EXE Development
• Internet Server Transitions
• Our Revised Programming Plans

These topics will be dealt with in more detail throughout this bulletin.

Transitions

As announced in last month’s bulletin, this will be the last regularly scheduled monthly “Update News” bulletin. From this point forward, we are going to rely on our “Blog” to communicate changes to our software program. You will find the blog located here:

The blog is the place where each month’s bulletin has been published for several years, and where all the previous bulletins and this final monthly bulletin are found.

Starting in July (next month), when you install the monthly update, you will automatically find the program connecting to the blog. The newest stories, which will be dated as they happen, will appear there. This will be a lot like the midmonth update news where stories will be published chronologically (newest to oldest). Instead of talking about changes to rate data and products, or brief discussions of a fix or change to the software, the blog will focus on more detailed discussion about our programs and services as changes are made. This is going to be very important once we roll out the new CQS.EXE (more about that further down).

A Little Compulife History

Originally, the monthly bulletin was NOT intended to be a regular thing. In the beginning, when we packaged our subscribers’ disks for the month (yes, we used to ship 5 1/4″ and then 3 1/2″ diskettes on a monthly basis; pre-internet), we would often slip in a paper bulletin to talk about changes/improvement in the software that we were sending that month. There was a month, perhaps a year from when we first began shipping software (at the end of 1982), when there were no changes to report. We decided there was no need for a bulletin as nothing in the program had changed.

That made the phone ring. “Where is my bulletin?” We discovered people thought it was a regular part of the monthly update and so I endeavored from that point forward to make certain that we didn’t miss putting in a paper bulletin with each shipment of our disks.

Once we transitioned to internet shipments of software, the day of disks and paper bulletins was replaced by internet updates and bulletins on the web. Each month’s software update knew what the next bulletin would be called, and so the program would automatically pop up the bulletin for that month/year on startup after processing the monthly update. The nice part of the internet bulletin was not only could you get the current month’s bulletin, you could access the library of old bulletins.

Starting in July, and from that point forward, the program will simply pop up the blog and take you to last posting (by date) on the blog (most recent story at the top). That is how we keep the current library of past bulletins and how we report changes in the midmonth bulletin.

By the way, you can see all the transitions to our website by visiting a third party website that I use quite a bit, called www.archive.org. At that site you can see a history of our past websites (and many others) over many years (decades for older sites like ours). Here’s our main website in the past:

The first archived record of our website was the January 17, 1998.

Transition in the 90’s
Term4Sale was the Second Name We Chose

If you visit that January 17, 1998 copy of our compulife.com website, you will see a link on the homepage to what eventually became www.term4sale.com. The original name we had planned for the site was termshopper.com but we had to shift gears on that during the registered trademark process, which we initiated VERY quickly upon determining that we would be offering FREE quotes on the web.

The domain name termshopper.com was later changed to www.term4sale.com when we discovered that another party had been using “termshopper” but had failed to register it as a trademark.

During the initial trademark search we had discovered a different individual in Wyoming had begun a trademark process for “termshopper” but he had not completed the registration. I reached out to him to see if we could purchase that use of the mark and we struck a deal. Having made that purchase, we continued with the trademark registration process.

Later in the process I became aware of another previous use of “TermShopper” by a company called “SeeTerm” which had been a competitor of Compulife in the early days. We had always known the product as SeeTerm and up to that point had never seen their use of “TermShopper”.

I had met the folks from SeeTerm before, at trade shows, and so I reached out to the principal to see if a deal could be struck. He did not wish to relinquish his rights to it. At that point I explained that his failure to begin a trademark registration was a problem in that I had spent money beginning it, and that I had spent money acquiring the Wyoming mark. I agreed to sell him our registration of it, providing that he paid all our legal costs to complete the process which was nearly finished. He agreed as his only alternative would have been to commence a legal process to challenge the registration. That would have been expensive for both of us as he did NOT previously take any steps to register it in the first place. Further, the Wyoming mark (which we now owned) preceded his use and the registration process already commenced. He said he would pay the costs but asked if we could complete the process and then transfer ownership to him once he completed payment. I agreed and we looked for a new domain name and came up with term4sale.

Ironically, we still own the registration for TermShopper because SeeTerm made a couple of installment payments on it, then went silent never to be heard from again. To keep that mark alive, we have over the years maintained a page for that domain name. You can see the website here:

As I say, we own that trademark and maintain the page as evidence of continued use. That way, when it is time to renew the trademark registration, we can demonstrate to the trademark authorities that we have not let it go unused. We don’t know at this time what we are going to do with it, as it could still belong to the folks at SeeTerm, should they ever show up with the balance of their payment (plus interest). As this is now over 30 years ago, I suspect that they no longer exist. The principle of SeeTerm was quite a bit older than me.

NOTE:   If you check archive.org, the first archived record of the termshopper.com site is December 2, 1998.

Following our switch to www.term4sale.com, we set the quoting site up there, and you can see the archive of that site here:

The first archived record of the term4sale.com website was January 25, 1999, and it does NOT look that much different from the page we still maintain at www.termshopper.com.

Another Transition
The Passing of Richard (Dick) Gilbert

I am dedicating this last of the monthly bulletins to the man who would have been the first to receive a bulletin, Richard (Dick) Gilbert.

Dick was the VERY first subscriber to Compulife and continued to maintain his subscription to Compulife through his most recent business in Canada called Megacorp. Megacorp has existed for many years.

In the days when I first met Dick his agency was located in Mississauga, Ontario and was called Gilbert, Spencer and Associates. Mr. Spencer, who was a senior, brought Dick in to transition out of his business. At the time Dick would have been in his late 30’s (I was 28). Mr. Spencer had retired by then and was gone by the time I met Dick.

The last email I received from Dick was April 10, 2026. Dick did a routine email blast every Friday which contained humor that he had gathered during the week. He then sent out that humor to all his agent affiliates and business associates (I was one of them) each Friday. Some of those emails were just great. I did receive another email on April 17th, which I understand he had been working on, but by that time he had gone to the hospital with heart issues. His assistant sent out the April 17th email. While in hospital Dick suffered a stroke. I am told he passed away the week following. I did not learn about any of this until May.

Dick and I spoke once a year or once every couple of years. If he had a question about something U.S., I got a call. If I had a question about what was going on in Canada, he was one of my go-to people. Dick was VERY keen and involved in the Canadian life and Critical Illness insurance markets and seemed to always be on top of the latest information. And Dick ALWAYS had a strong and reasoned opinion on those matters, which he was happy to share.

I would provide more information about him but unfortunately there has been no obituary and there was no funeral. That seems to be a growing trend today, and in particular, it is a very growing trend in Canada.

Further, with the adoption of MAID (Medical Assisted in Dying) Canada is turning the end of life for many into an assembly line process. Our relatives in Canada have advised that there is one funeral home in a city near them, which has a room in it which the “patient” can go (alive), be put to death with a drug cocktail, and then moved into the rest of the funeral home for cremation or preparation for burial.

Dick would have been happy for me to pop the MAID segue in here because we often discussed Canadian politics. He was a conservative as I am, so I know he would appreciate that little side trip in this memorial of him.

I still have Dick’s April 10th humor email. If ANY of you would like a copy of it just email us at:

I think Dick’s method of regular communication with his agents and business affiliates was BRILLIANT. Once he primed the pump and got it going, the recipients became his source of humor, sending along what they thought should be added to his weekly publication.

Readers Digest (now you know how really old I am) used to have their bits of humor in their monthly publication, just like the newspapers used to carry the Sunday comics. It was a smart idea, and Dick Gilbert was a smart and enterprising man. His purchase of Compulife as our first subscriber underlined that he could see an idea that would become obvious to everyone, but not so obvious right at the beginning.

Transitions in the Compulife Team

2026 is also a transition year for Compulife, particularly in Canada. Our two (and only) Canadian employees have decided to retire. Chris, our senior programmer has been with us for 34 years. He had been talking about retirement for a couple of years, but at the end of 2025 Chris made it clear he was very serious about wanting to wrap it up.

We began a search process for a new programmer with an emphasis on finding a Kentuckian (where we are based here in the U.S.) who was determined to continue living in the area. Fortunately we found a young man (at least young to me) who had recently moved back to Kentucky from the northeast. He wanted to be closer to his and his wife’s family who live here. His resume looked great, and after an examination by Chris, and a lunch interview with Jeremiah and I, we offered him the job which he accepted. He has been working with us now since the beginning of January.

Chris is so impressed with our new programmer that he has negotiated with us the balance of the year to be a holiday until the end of 2026. He reminded me there were a lot of years when he didn’t take the holidays he should have, and after 34 years I wasn’t about to argue with him. Chris will continue to be available for consultations should we need him, and he will remain available part time after 2026 should we need anything. We are going to try to bother him as little as possible.

The retirement of Chris is challenging in that he was a capable guy who always got there for us in the end. When programming software there are many different ways to get something done, but Chris was always a guy who could get it figured out and make it work. My objective in delivering software to our subscribers is dependability and performance (speed) from the program. The user interface, the screens and layouts that you see, were largely what I wanted, but what happened internally in the program is the job of the programmer and that has been Chris for decades. As the insurance expert in the operation, I need certain things done a certain way, in order to be able to enter and store products and rates and have them quote and display correctly, but how that was achieved internally within the software was Chris’ job and he did it very, very well. I believe that Chris and I were a good team and Chris will be missed by me particularly. Our hope is that our new programmer will find that Compulife is a good company to work for so that he can now be a long-term part of the new team (keep reading).

The other Canadian employee who is retiring is Donna. Donna came to work for our company not long after Chris did. Donna has been the office manager for our Canadian company. She was the person subscribers went to for all things administrative, paying invoices, signing up for new subscriptions, etc. Essentially she did in Canada what Jeremiah (my son-in-law) and Pat (my wife) do here in the U.S. Donna had threatened to retire once before but I managed to talk her out of it. At that time we made her job part time which she could do while on a road trip. However, once Chris decided he was wrapping it up Donna said she was doing the same. I made no effort to talk her out of it the second time.

After Donna mentioned retiring the first time, I began thinking about a new person to replace her. My wife’s niece Stacey (married to my wife’s sister’s son) came to mind. We reached out to her to see if she would be interested in a regular part time job that she could do from her home on the farm (the same farm her mother-in-law and my wife grew up on as kids). After investigating the job, and working with Donna for several months, Stacey has agreed to take over. Stacey has been job shadowing Donna since last year and has successfully taken over when Donna and her husband were off for international vacations.

One of the things Canadian subscribers will see is a change in our Canadian Head Office address (Head Office is Canadian lingo for Home Office). It will be moving to a rural route number in New Hamburg, Ontario which is just a few minutes west of Kitchener. Kitchener is where the Canadian operation began life in 1982.

The farm where Stacey and her husband now live was originally owned by my wife’s father and mother. It’s ironic that the property where I first started dating my wife is now where the Canadian company will be operating from. I think the job is a good fit for Stacey and should be a solid long-term solution for her and the company for years to come (God willing and the creek don’t rise; that’s KY lingo).

I want to say THANK you to both Chris and Donna for their many years of hard work and faithful service. We wish for them a long and happy retirement with good health. Hopefully the memories of their contributions to Compulife’s success give them satisfaction that they did a good job that benefited many people over the years (our subscribers and their insurance customers). Finally, we hope Chris and Donna know just how much they will be missed.

Transitions in CQS.EXE Development

Our new programmer brings with him a new set of skills and experience and has introduced us to some new possibilities for the direction to take our software from this point forward. He has a lot of experience with newer programming tools and techniques, and so for the past couple of months he has been working to help us determine whether any of this is applicable to what we are doing.

One of the changes we are definitely making is that he wants to build the new CQS.EXE with a completely different platform for the user interface. What Chris and I had been working on, will not be what we are going to be releasing.

Given that we will be moving to a completely new interface, I have determined that it will be Jeremiah together with our new programmer who will take that project in hand, and will be in charge of developing it. This will be my way of transitioning that part of my work to Jeremiah. Of course CQS.EXE must have all the same functions and features of what is currently in GOWIN.EXE (my project with Chris) but the reorganization of the menu options (a needed change) will be up to them. I’m staying out of that.

They are pursuing a user interface development tool that will give Compulife access to many more platform options in the future. For example, it is possible that we could have a version for Mac computers. it is possible we could have a program version that runs on the web without a much different interface. NONE of that is a promise of any kind, but it will NOT be built with our current tools which are not the newest tools available. Anyway, that project will be for Jeremiah and our new programmer to determine.

Where I will continue to be involved is in the maintenance of our data and new product entry. I am the one determining what the new data structure will be, and I am moving that up as the number one priority before the release of a new CQS.EXE. That means that GOWIN.EXE, which you currently use, will be updated to use the new data structure and will, in the beginning, be able to use old or new data depending on what is available to the software. That part of our new development will be based upon what I want and need to make my data entry work easier, and to overcome limitations that I have worked around for many years. Those limitations are going to be removed. Eventually, once I am forced to do so, I prefer to hand over the data maintenance system to Jeremiah AFTER I get the new data structure implemented. That new data structure will give us a much simpler and more powerful data entry system than we currently have, not that what we have isn’t already great stuff. But we can and we will make it better.

Internet Server Transitions

Compulife maintains our internet updating and web quoting services on multiple servers provided by multiple IPs (internet providers). This gives us redundancy in the event of problems or service issues from the third party IP providers that we work with. Some of the servers that we have been using are OLD and have not been updated with the latest versions of operating systems and languages available for internet development. We have been putting off updating them (if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it). But one of our providers has pushed us to move to new servers and so Jeremiah and our new programmer have been working on that.

Part of that is because some of the changes to internet languages (such as PHP) render existing code unsupported and so to move to the new server you must, at the same time, re-write software to make it compatible. As the owner of a software company, that is frustrating. You have to continually invest more time and money just to keep the same old service you have been offering functional.

Incidentally, that’s the reason why we charge a subscription fee for our software. To give you a program and information that stays current, it constantly requires changes to both the programs and data.

During April and May Jeremiah and our new programmer have been working to replace two of our oldest servers. One of those servers was where we were running the Canadian version of Term4Sale, and the other was the server on which we were running the Canadian version of our webquote options. We decided that it was important to do it for the Canadian versions of our products first, and then to take the changes to the U.S. versions of those services. There were a LOT of changes required, and our new programmer together with Jeremiah was able to get a lot of those changes successfully made.

Canadian subscribers should notice a definite speed up in web quotes. They are much snappier, newer computers are faster. Canadian subscribers using the postal code analyzer will find those lookups much quicker now. The process of looking up and displaying results from our database of agents was heavily changed.

Work and upgrades to our servers will continue until all our servers have the latest operating system and software upgrades.

Once that is completed, we will return to work on the data overhaul.

Our Revised Programming Plans

The following is the current order for new work that we will be doing moving forward:

• • Overhaul Of Current Product Data Files.

• • Introduction of New PC Version: CQS.EXE

•          Introduction of Compulife Mobile Plus (with Pick 12).

Anyone with questions about any of these upcoming projects can call Bob Barney to discuss:

Please don’t email me essay questions; just call. If I’m not in, email me at:

Just give me your name and your phone number, and a short message, and I’ll call you.

These planned objectives will easily consume our programming time during the balance of 2026. The good news is that once the product data files have been converted, and we have introduced the new CQS.EXE and upgraded our internet engine to use the new data files, Compulife will be turning its full attention to our web-based, Compulife Mobile software. The long-term goal is to have a web-based product that does everything our PC-based software does.