RE: old school

[John Hedtke <john -at- hedtke -dot- com>]

"Oh, look, it's a record of the Beatles!"  "Yeah, I've heard of 
them!"  --actual conversation between two 12-yo girls some years ago.

I share most of the experiences on Al's list.  My ex and I bought an 
honest-to-goodness IBM-brand PC with the 4.77MHz chip and all, though 
we had a 10MB drive slapped into it as people would in them days 
rather than paying for an XT.  To Al's list, I would add working at 
Microsoft before it went public when it was just a software company 
that looked like it was doing well, documenting CP/M, MP/M, and 
Northstar systems (and other things that ran the S-100 bus), 8" 
diskettes, programming HP3000 Series III computers, and punching my 
programs on cards using IBM 024/026 keypunches to feed to the IBM 
1130 and IBM 1401.  And before that, learning to program old IBM data 
record machines with the plugboards and wires (which was actually a 
lot of fun in its own way) and reading stack dumps for IBM 360 
assembler code.  Oh, and going to Reed College with Steve Jobs 
(although I never really knew him there).

Yours truly,

John Hedtke
Author/Consultant/Contract Writer
www.hedtke.com <-- website
Region 7 Director, STC
541-685-5000 (office landline)
541-554-2189 (cell)
john -at- hedtke -dot- com (primary email)
johnhedtke -at- aol -dot- com (secondary email)

/

At 08:27 AM 5/20/2008, Tammy Van Boening wrote:
>So, I have been lurking on this thread cracking up at the memories it
>brings back and I just had to chime in about an "old school" experience
>that my husband and I had last summer. We were on vacation in Vermont,
>and decided to visit Fort Ticonderoga as we are both huge history buffs
>and the restoration of the fort is phenomenal. Anyway, we were one of
>several mid-40s+ couples visiting the fort that day along with several
>late elementary /middle school summer camp tours. One of the floors in
>the museum is dedicated to the decommissioned USS Fort Ticonderoga and
>it has rows and rows of the artifacts and memorabilia from the ship.
>While we were perusing the mementos, we heard one of the young boys in
>one of the summer camp tour groups squeal quite excitedly at the top of
>his lungs "Hey, cool, look it's a record!!! Do you think is still
>plays?" Sigh . . .You can only imagine the looks that were exchanged
>among the (ahem) "older" couples that were touring the fort!  And one
>wonders why I feel so old at times!
>
>TVB
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From:
>techwr-l-bounces+tammy -dot- vanboening=healthlanguage -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>[<mailto:techwr-l-bounces+tammy -dot- vanboening=healthlanguage -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techw>mailto:techwr-l-bounces+tammy -dot- vanboening=healthlanguage -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techw
>r-l.com] On Behalf Of AL Geist
>Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 8:57 AM
>To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>Subject: RE: old school
>
>DBaseII, Aldus Pagemaker, Wordstar, Mulitmate, Visicalc, Apple I,
>PDP1134, PDP1170, Octal tape readers, tube radios, the first chips (AND
>and OR gates, Flip-Flops, and Inverters were all that was available in
>the beginning-late 1960s), MS-DOS2.11, 4.77 MHz XTs before hard
>drives....and the list goes one. It has been a wonderful and exciting
>ride being part of an industry that moved from vacuum tubes and paper
>tapes to SOCs and terabyte hard-drives.
>
>I moved from engineering to technical writing back when the IBM Composer
>was the output tool and layout was on blue-lined card stock. I still
>have my Xacto knife and a there's a portable waxer and a few sheets of
>rubylith in a box somewhere.
>
>
>Al Geist
>Technical Writing, Help, Web Design, Award Winning Videos
>Office/Msg: 802-872-9190
>Cell: 802-578-3964
>E-mail: al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com
>Website: www.geistassociates.com
>See also:
>Fine Art Photographer and Note Cards for Special Occasions
>Website: www.geistimages.com
>" ... I walked to work, quit my job, and kept walking. Better to be a
>pilgrim without a destination, I figured, than to cross the wrong
>threshold every day." (Anon)
>
>
>
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