[Magdalen] Interesting Times

[Scott Knitter]

I'm one of the venerable proposal managers who remember marking up proposal
sections on paper with a red pen, attempting to "make it bleed" with
revisions. The markup would be placed back in its manila folder, with
appropriate annotations made on the folder cover sheet, and walked back to
Word Processing, where typists would make the changes on a Wang system that
used eight-inch floppy disks. Upon return, we had to do true proofreading
(making sure the live copy = the dead copy + the red revisions). Graphics
were done on pasteup boards using wax or canned adhesive and then
photocopied into the final document. Our graphic artist cynically called
herself "the slide girl" because she spent most of her time designing
slides and having them produced by a vendor using glass mounts.

The IBM PC was my entry into the corporate work world, as I started out
processing orders for these for our rapidly growing workforce at EDS in
Warren, Mich. Then I got hired into a proposal group, and here I am.

On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 12:42 PM, M J _Mike_ Logsdon <mjl at ix.netcom.com>
wrote:

> >>>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.
>



-- 
Scott R. Knitter
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA