You're correct; I went back and fixed it. It did come out in 1989
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All Things Geek
- Thread starter Coss
- Start date
I loved Lotus and began with the DOS command lines and used them well into the windows version. But I went to a company who used Excel and had to start over. I've never gotten as comfortable with Excel even though I've now used it far longer that I did Lotus. Of course I had transitioned from Dataease before that, so change itself wasn't new.
WilliamH
Elio Addict
This was moved from the thread Interior Dash at the request of our moderator.
The major problem with Centrex was that someone in your HR department got to pick the options.
As we all know HR people have no idea what we do or what we need to get the job done.
As a result, they ask for what they think is needed even though they have never done the job.
I remember I requested someone with advanced shell and AWK skills.
They told me I was looking for a UNIX sys adm.
No! I was looking for someone who could manage an integrated environment that required seven NCR 3700 computers running 4 unique Oracle databases setup to act has a locally housed distributed system and one full backup system with two remote mini test versions that could run multiple instances of the full system. And among other things, we had to run nationwide NPA splits every two or three months.
When I explained what we needed they insisted that I needed a C programmer despite the fact that I told them we had made a decision to use shell and AWK for technical reasons.
To err is human, to totally screw things up requires a computer, to really make a mess requires an HR department.
<Thank you William>
The major problem with Centrex was that someone in your HR department got to pick the options.
As we all know HR people have no idea what we do or what we need to get the job done.
As a result, they ask for what they think is needed even though they have never done the job.
I remember I requested someone with advanced shell and AWK skills.
They told me I was looking for a UNIX sys adm.
No! I was looking for someone who could manage an integrated environment that required seven NCR 3700 computers running 4 unique Oracle databases setup to act has a locally housed distributed system and one full backup system with two remote mini test versions that could run multiple instances of the full system. And among other things, we had to run nationwide NPA splits every two or three months.
When I explained what we needed they insisted that I needed a C programmer despite the fact that I told them we had made a decision to use shell and AWK for technical reasons.
To err is human, to totally screw things up requires a computer, to really make a mess requires an HR department.
"New" technology isn't necessarily good. I recall when the telephone company (remember them?) introduced Centrex, an arcane business telephone system that put a WORLD of functions at your fingertips from an ordinary 10-button phone on your desk. Well, that was the story, anyway. I worked for a large publishing company, printing among the magazines and periodicals, most of the phone books for the central states. So we were "honored" with one of the first Centrex systems in the country about 1976 - that came with a pair of legs sticking out from under the double-rack that sat in the reception area . . . it had it's own dedicated Bell tech who practically lived under it.
From your phone you could dial "9" to get an outside line, "8" an intercom line (prior to dialing the number). You could dial "80" for "page all", or a series of "8_" numbers to page certain departments or warehouses. You could forward calls, redial, message, ringback, and do all kinds of techie stuff, but just making an ordinary phone call outside the building was a serious problem. Occasionally Centrex would just hang up on everyone - for no apparent reason. I always had to warn my customers that this might happen during our call (it was common to happen 3-4 times a day) . . . and this didn't help us look professional AT ALL. We wasted more time looking up how to put a call on "Hold" than we would simply calling the number back. When you had a second line break in, more often than not, switching to the other call would cause you to hang up on both. Although we had this advanced technology throughout the offices we still needed two full-time "operators" to shepard the calls.
I owned an early "digital" watch that could perform dozens of functions including time, day, date, stopwatch (3 modes), alarm, countdown timer, and a couple of other functions I never could figure out (the instructions were in a weird early Chinglish that was indecipherable). The trick to this watch was that it had only three buttons (plus one that turned a light on and off so I could read the LCD screen in the dark), meaning that all normal operations required a dance on the three remaining buttons to select and operate the various functions. After six months when the "gold-tone" began to rub off, I ditched it . . . going back to an analog watch that told me the time and date without having to push a long sequence of buttons to get to the prime reason I wear a watch in the first place.
After a few assorted calculators and PDA's came and went I found that there is a mindset somewhere, primarily in the Far East, that buttons are bad. This forces you through a series of sub-menus and long-short-long-long button pushes to reach the desired function, and any mistake cannot be backed out, but requires starting over. Yes, I even had a Casio day-planner that was a nightmare to program with all your phone contacts and calendar. Of course when the batteries died you had to replace them - requiring you re-enter ALL of the data because the device had no storage.
Today I carry a Windows phone. It does everything well and links to my desktop, cloud accounts, and e-mail accounts quickly and easily. Not great, but it's certainly on par with Android and Apple phones that I've owned. If you're a Windows user, it's all pretty intuitive and the platform works well because it seldom outsmarts me.
<Thank you William>
About a decade ago I started working for an educational services firm that handles testing for all sorts of colleges, universities, and corporations. When I came in our salespeople were still using transparencies to do sales presentations. The president of the company was an old-school school teacher, who grew up with the rule that if it still works don't replace it.
All of these transparencies were printed out using our sole laser color printer, an HP Color Laserjet 4 that was so old I can't even find it on the retired products page on the HP website. It took 2 minutes to print out a single transparency. I think two things finally changed his mind to let us get new equipment: the company that did our support couldn't support it anymore, so we HAD to buy a new color printer, and someone finally convinced him that we were losing sales because we were using such outmoded technology as transparencies. So they bought the salespeople new laptops and each sales office got an LCD projector so the salespeople could run their demos right off the laptops. No more transparencies.
What year was that? Had to be within the last 10 years.
The prices on color lasers came down so far; the new printers are cheaper than some of the cartridges for a HP4 color.
Yes, I have worked on those <shudder> I had to replace the fuser; do you know what you have to do to get to it? You can see it, but you have to disassemble 70% of the printer to get it out.
I was even lucky enough to get to work on Mannis Mann Tally line pin printers. These things are 6' wide, and are on a stand that put them 4'to the top of the printer from the floor. The print head has it's own cooling fan! When they print on those huge sheets of green & white computer paper they rock back and forth. They was what they used at Levitz Furniture for inventory. What a nightmare.
That was circa 2004. We also got a bunch of HP LJ8100 printers, so each dept. had a printer instead of an entire floor sharing one. The admin. assistants loved the features on the new printers, especially the ones where they could send it to print, but it wouldn't print until they entered their code. I loved that feature too, until I saw the 60 Minutes program on how the hard disks these printers used weren't getting wiped when the companies traded up.
Wasn't that an eye opener? (I saw it too)
I was doing a contract job at a law firm (Big one) and everything you did, required you to enter a code, copiers, printers, fax machines, I was beginning to wonder why they didn't do it on the coffee machines. The reason for the code there was because everything they did that was billable was counted and charged against a client account. If it was internal, that too was charged to the "Client Area" <each floor, every few cubicles and offices, were considered a "Client" and this is how they did their yearly/quarterly budgets> Even things like staples, Kleenex, paperclips, everything had to go with a code.
They had a separate department that did nothing but keep track of every single item. So when you see these monster bills by lawyers, you now know part of the reason why.
Their IT department was comparable to government grade; I was only allowed to see part of it (like whatever I could see when they opened and closed the door). To get any further I would have had to go through a strict background check.
bowers baldwin
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Are you sure it wasn't one of these beasts? a color 5M, (the only HP printer I ever failed the test on) GOD they were awful, and if you couldn't resolve the issue, taking back to the shop was a pain, it weighed like 90 LBS...
Rob Croson
Elio Addict
Those 8100's (and the 8150 that replaced it) were great printers. The energizer bunnies of printers, they just kept on going. We put millions of copies on ours, with nothing more than toner replacements and the routine maintenance kit every 350k copies.
YES! That was the beast! Top of the line when it came out; outmoded just 3 years later.