[Magdalen] Interesting Times

[M J _Mike_ Logsdon]

>>>Unfortunately, the techies are driving, and all they see are shiny new
toys to be mastered.<<<

I feel, to a WAY lesser degree, your pain.  Though the concept is completely within my grasp.

I am a Bureaucrat by default, but thankfully Monterey County has its own IT Dept that keeps all the changes relatively appear not so rapid, and as smooth as possible.  (A few weeks ago I forgot that by a date slightly before the time I'm recounting I was supposed to set a new password using a new protocol.  The person at the main IT service desk actually stayed on the phone with me while I did the switch.  And I of course then wrote it on a sticky and stuck it into the micro-Bible I have stowed away in my cubby.)

I muse every now and then about how the newbies around my place have no idea how it used to work.  For one thing, when I started 25 years ago only a select few had computers, so there was still actually a "clerical pool" (of which I was a member).  And when I got a computer it was an IBM 286 with 1 mg of RAM.  Occasionally I had to use a cohort's computer to open certain files, because hers had 2 mg of RAM.

And I imagine I'm not the only one in this list who remembers carbon paper.  Man! but back then could I type!  The last test I took with County Personnel prior to my being hired at the Agency in 1993 was 80 words / minute with no errors.  Grant you, it was on an IBM Selectric II, but even when still on manual I wasn't all that shabby.

As the male voice on my late-50s Smith-Corona Touch Typing Course records says at the end of a line of keystrokes he's dictating, "Return!"

[PS:  My computer doesn't like "Monterey".  But the red squiggly line underneath completely disappears when I add an extra south of the border "r"!]

M J (Mike) Logsdon.

"Aaugh[.]" -- Charles Brown.
"Avoid dull needles and use a soft cloth." -- E Kovacs.
"...[My mouth is a] shithole..." -- 45th US President.