Stepping into the 21st century with my new computer
“Mother, it’s time for you to join the 21st century.” This is what my
son has been saying for twelve or thirteen years. He said it again a day
or two ago. I’ve heard him every time. Gee whizzly—I know it’s a new century.
Didn’t I work on a Y2K project?
The Y2K project happened when I was still doing temp work in 1998-99.
Sixteen temps were hired by a large company (I think it made auto parts)
to make email and phone queries to suppliers around the world: were the
suppliers’ computers going to crash or explode when the clock ticked into
2000? (Just so you know: the new century/millennium actually began in 2001.
The 2000 is the 10 in the sequence of 1-10. The new sequence starts with
11, or 2001. Got that?) The large company liked me because the last time
I took a typing test I scored 65 words per minute (one of the other temps
typed about 15 wpm) and I knew how to say please and thank you during the
phone calls. As we temps worked through the long list of suppliers, some
temps were let go. At the end of the Y2K project only a computer geek named
Andy and I remained. Andy was really smart. He knew so much about computers,
we teasingly asked if he was a silicon-based being in disguise as a humble
computer tech. It was while I was working on the Y2K project that I started
writing Finding New Goddesses. Which explains why my Found Computer Goddesses
are so old-fashioned. I need to Find goddesses for cellphones and tablets
and all these other new thingies that kids learn about when they’re two
years old. (Or do they start younger?) I’m wondering if a Found Goddess
of Social Media might be Viralicious. No, now I’m thinking Virabella.
The Y2K project had computer adventures that I still remember. Like when
one of the temps downloaded an .exe file and sixteen computers promptly
crashed. Or when the official tech guy switched servers without testing
the new one first or telling us. Sixteen computers crashed again. Or when
one guy was fired because he was watching “foot porn” (I’m trying to imagine
what that is) instead of researching suppliers in South Korea and China.
No computer crash, but a lot of joking.
The first computer I ever saw was in 1967 at Southeast Missouri
State University, where I had just begun the coursework for my M.A. and
was supporting myself as a secretary to five educational psychologists
(two of whom are my friends to this day). No, I didn’t type on a computer.
I sat at an IBM Selectric. And took shorthand. The old-fashioned way, in
a steno notebook. The computer was a mainframe that filled an entire room
with an elevated floor and special air conditioning. I don’t know what
the university used the computer for because during enrollment, we still
stood in long lines with papers in our hands. I also remember seeing other
secretaries doing mysterious things with punched Hollerith cards. They
also painted them red and green and stapled them together to make Christmas
wreaths.
I also remember seeing the word processors (the talented women,
not the software) using ice picks to sort Hollerith cards and poking tape
cassettes into the computers sitting beside their workstations at some
of the office jobs I had during the 80s and 90s. Also during the 80s I
got a job at a minicomputer manufacturer. “It’s better than daytime TV,”
the tech pubs manager told me during our interview. (You may be asking
why I was doing work like this after earning a Ph.D. in English. The answer
is that there were no jobs of newly-hatched Ph.D.’s in 1976. The English
department that graduated me had one opening. And 1,200 applications to
fill it. There were only a dozen openings for medievalists in the whole
country. So I did a bunch of interviews, didn’t land in a university, and
moved to California to live with a friend whose two sons were about the
same age as my son. Then I got my first job as a technical writer.)
Does anybody remember what a minicomputer was? In my memory, it
was about the size of my new Asus computer and looked somewhat like a really
big typewriter. We tech writers didn’t get to use any kind of computer.
We had old typewriters or wrote by hand on legal pads. Our work went to
the word processors, who typed it up. While I was at that company, they
bought an NBI word processing system. It was vaguely like a very early
version of WordPerfect. I learned to use it, and when the head word processor
quit, I got to be head of the word processing group—two women nearing retirement
age and one over-eager girl who flirted with the department chair. As you
probably know, demand for minicomputers went nowhere. We had almost no
work to do, so I started doing my own writing at work. I was fired for
stealing the company’s electrons (!) by a manager who was younger than
I was, held only an M.S., and who probably weighed less than I did. About
two years later, I heard that the two remaining tech writers had been laid
off, two more word processors had quit, and the whole tech pubs department
consisted of one word processor. Then the company’s board fired the company’s
founder (whose main occupation seemed to be getting his secretaries pregnant)
and moved the company to Texas, where it soon faded into oblivion.
Sometime later I was hired by a tiny company (a highly technical
man and his wife, a retired ballerina) to run their office. Their computer’s
name was Aurora, and Aurora greeted you with music when you turned her—it
on. That job didn’t last very long.
I used Word XP for fifteen-plus years after WordPerfect more or
less went away. I wrote my first book on a portable typewriter and wrote
my second and third books using WordPerfect 5.0 and 5.1 on a computer a
friend gave me when her company upgraded. I bought new computers in 2002
and 2008 but stuck with Word XP after Microsoft stopped supporting it.
My new computer came equipped with Word and Excel 2013 (I think). Back
in the 90s, I was really good with Excel because every time I was sent
to a new temp assignment I went to the temp agency’s office and practiced
Excel and PowerPoint. And almost never got to use them. So now I’m having
to relearn a bit of Excel to keep track of my spending and earning.
My computer started seriously crashing while I was editing on December
14. Panic! I was able to recover my work. Then, on December 15, it crashed
ten times before lunch. Now I was in a total panic, but my regular, long-time
tech was on vacation, so I sent emails (using my iPad) to friends and begging
for referrals. Kathryn, president of the Long Beach branch of the California
Writers Club (I’m the secretary), sent the first of four or five replies
and recommended Joey. He and I had a couple long phone conversations and
exchanged some emails, after which he did some research on what might be
best for me. We met at the local Best Buy on December 18, I bought the
computer, and he installed it for me. Then I bought the software I’m using
now. Joey has given me a lot of help, like walking me though three new
email programs, and explaining a lot of Mysterious Stuff. My friend Eileen,
also a writer, has also given me lots of tips and good advice. Is the newer
version of Word better? Some of it is, but some so-called features are
of no use to me. Is it easier to use? Maybe. A few features are very handy.
So, yes, my son, I am tiptoeing into the 21st century. With a little help
from my friends.
