Photoessay #1074 - Work

My Guided Autobiography group continues to meet. For this week's meeting, we chose the topic of 'Work' Here's my entry (subject to revision) accompanied by a picture of those great DEC writers that we all thought were so great.

In Teddy news, Dennis took him to the softball games down at the Kent Service Fields. I was so surprised "I had requests for him", he grumbles. He had a great time, especially standing by the dugout. He could greet each those players as they came off the field EVERY single inning. What could be better than that? This morning I took him with me to Linda P's planning for her first solo seminar tomorrow for her product for small businesses. Check it out
I'll be the person in the back at the table with the product.

Here's the Work piece...

Work – Computers back in the day

In the 1970s, I worked at a series of jobs on the 'computer'. We felt on the edge or at the edge or modern or something. But looking back, anecdotally, it all seems pretty quaint.

For a summer job and right after I graduated in 1974, I worked as a contractor at the Department of Program Evaluation at the California Department of Education (I was promised an analyst position but that never exactly happened) for Bob P (probably in his thirties) who I adored. He set up an independent operation right there in the state building. He had a 'hookup' to the computer at Stanford University. In those days, PCs didn't exist and you couldn't use remote terminals to access the central computer, only input devices were cards, tapes, terminals in the computer room or these huge round disks (they looked like big frisbees). CRT (Cathode Ray Tubes) screens could only be used that big computer room. We used 300 baud teletype machine terminals over a phone line to remotely connect. We considered them high tech as it didn't use the rolled heat sensitive teletype paper but the continuous feed folded green and white modern 'computer paper'. The terminals operated at 300 baud (think chunk chunk, chunk). Don't know how he managed to set up that connection. But, we performed magic by running statistical analysis in that room with that frosted glass window. More than once, somebody would do something that brought the whole Stanford system down. "Don't do that!" came the message back. Bob's carefree manner often resulted in promises that he could not keep and occasionally, we would all disappear or lock the door to the room turn out the light and sit on the floor so nobody would know that we were there.

All substantive output came from the huge printers at the computer center at Stanford (about 2 1/2 hours drive from Sacramento). Sometime you came in to work and Bob would announce that somebody had to go to Stanford and pick up a printout. "No problem, you would be back by the end of the day", he would say confidently. Nobody believed him. Jockeying would ensue among the three of us about who would go. "I went last time!" "No you didn't. I did! Remember I was down there for days" "I have something to do tonight" "I didn't bring a car" etc. We were all young and had no families. You could always use the excuse "Last time, I got down there and it wasn't ready." Bob would look you straight in the eye and declare "I absolutely promise you it will be ready this time" You could hedge with "Is it ready now?" He would reply "um, almost, but it will be ready by the time you get there, I promise!. Besides you can use my car" You knew that this was optimistic Bob P hype. So, if I lost the round of excuses, I would take off in his forest green Pinto (I neglected to tell him that I didn't know how to drive a shift car). Erroneously I thought that if I had his car, he would be motivated to get me back to Sacramento.

Was it ready when I got to Palo Alto? Of course not. Did I expect it to be? He would say "Um, pretty soon, why don't you go shopping or something" One time I was there overnight maybe longer. Who remembers? But you didn't want to be the one to go to Stanford.

A year or so later, when we lived in Chico (my husband went to Chico State), I worked for another entrepreneur who contracted with that same office. Technology had advanced a bit. We also didn't have any direct computer resources, just what we could scrounge from faculty and student accounts. They had a crazy way to distribute computing resources. Somehow you have to read in your cards (I think we could use some terminals) connected somewhere in Los Angeles which would automatically generate another set of keypunched cards which some operator would pick up and feed it into another card input. Was that nuts or what?

I was in possession of a coveted daisy wheel printer (the latest!). A number of graduate students wanted to get their hands on that printer. I bargained tough. If they gave me their userid/pw to their account, I would let them use the printer. Extortion! One political science member spent the summer in Europe, somehow we wrangled his account information. Could we run a few things? Sure, no problem. He got back and wondered why he was receiving invitations to computer planning sessions. Turned out that 'he' had used the highest amount of computing resources of ANYBODY else in the California State University System. Over the summer. So he must be an expert. Yup, that was me running his account into the ground.