A decent of example of my late 80's Battle station
No one cared about the family computer in our house in the late 80's. We had a dumpy
Tandy 1000 Color computer that was bought second hand refurbished from a Radio Shack. The first year they had it, they may have put some tax info on it, ran a few schedule programs, and never turned it on again. I had played a few games on it copied from a friend, and asked for it to be moved to my room. I eventually added an
Apple IIe to the mix, bought from the school when they were upgrading. I did not have anything fancy, but it was mine, unlimited access to two different PC systems.
Kids have no fear of destroying what their parents buy them
I did what any kid would do, I took them apart, traded or "Borrowed" parts from other computers, attempted to connect with other computers, and generally just tinker around with them. I understood and knew how to navigate DOS, do some simple basic programming, and generally just had a really good launch point which would help me for the future. Back then, if you could enter a few DOS commands or copy a disk, your parents thought you were some kind of genius. Not only that, but your teachers did too. I remember handing in my mediocre and lackluster research paper in 5th grade that I had typed and printed on my Apple IIe and got a good grade on it because the teacher was so impressed with it being typed on on a computer. I was lucky enough to have parents that liked that I was so in to it, so when I asked for a game here and there or some blank disks, they just bought them for me.
A typical 80's computer lab
I was fortunate enough to be in a school that was a huge technology hub, even for such a small town, and we had a full computer lab with all the newest computers. It was called "One Computer Per Student" program, and literally every class had multiple Apple computers you could use during your free time, or to type something up, and no one ever looked over your shoulder unless you were playing a game when you were not allowed. For a small fee of $5 per quarter, you could have afterschool access to this computer lab, provided you take a series of PC literacy tests to verify you could be left alone with half a million dollars of computer equipment. I met some people, we started a little club, and even if you didn't own your own computer, that was fine, there was plenty in the lab.
Scary programs with their scary numbers and clicking
Things quickly changed for me, I moved, and no longer had access to a PC outside of school. Macintoshes were the new things, and I signed up for any afterschool program I could to be around them and learn and play the newest games. In one of these afterschool sessions, a teacher asked me if I could help her with a program that wouldn't open, and also needed some help with a Lotus 123 spreadsheet they used for grading that was giving her errors. I quickly figured it out, fixed the issue and moved on. This was to be the theme for pretty much the rest of my life.
A computer genius at work. Typing and stuff. Look at him go!
It was not uncommon for me to be in a work/school environment where I was around people older than me, and there was a 99% they did not understand computers or care at all how to use them. Mention an email and their eyes would roll back in their head. Have to plug anything more advanced than a VCR.. even a phone line, and people would ask you for help. If literally anything happened to their computer, they would completely shut down and have a paid expert come to the school or work to figure it out. Monitor came unplugged? Better call someone you know and not touch it just in case. Need an upgrade? People were absolutely terrified to take the case of their computer to even have a look. I quickly realized that I could always be counted on and be the hero of these situations, and often times I used it to my advantage.
The first big job. Look how angry this man is at technology. I love it.
One of my first real jobs after college was making a website for a medium sized liquor store business with multiple locations and a warehouse with an attached Co/Op. Someone told them they needed one, and by word of mouth, my name came up. I had made several basic HTML sites for people and their businesses back then, it was easy to do and took no time at all. People didn't want much.. just contact info and a few pages explaining a product or whatever. I charged a flat rate of $500 and $50 per week to maintain it after I turned it over to them and set it up on their own webhosting platform. Something was different this time however: The owners themselves whose website I was making they would never see, because they did not own a computer. I take that back, they had a 286 downstairs with an inch of dust on it that they used to print tags from about once a month on thermal rolls that was never turned off for ten or more years. I would make the website, print out screen shots of what it looked like, and bring it back to them. Behold:
Yes this is really the website.
This was the landing page for the site. I incorporated the logo and page to animated, which back then was ahead of it's time. I used a standard GIF maker on my
Powermac 6100, and Adobe Photoshop 3.0. They loved it. I brought in a primitive laptop I borrowed from a friend to show them in real time you could click it, and I even scanned in their newspaper ad. They wanted it more basic, more white, and I changed it a few times so it is what you see now and above. This convinced them to get a PC, and to look in to doing some upgrades to their systems around the office. For the last 20 years, they had been doing their books on paper, their inventory and orders, sales, and yes, even register cost and price changes. I don't even know how they knew how much money they were making, but they had the biggest and cleanest stores in town, and no one seemed to care. The only complaint they had was that the registers would process credit cards at a snails pace, sometimes taking up to a minute or more. I was hired on the spot to diagnose some emergency issues, and start the process. They offered me a good wage, and a spot as assistant manager at one of their stores when I was finished.
God help me this brings back memories.
The picture above is literally the registers we used at the stores. I looked under the register, and they were hooked up to a
2400 baud modem. I had a budget, went to the store and bought 56k external modems for $25 each at Best Buy, plugged them in, and tried a credit card. As fast as it could dial, the transaction was approved, and in one day I improved the efficiency of the entire system but multiple magnitudes. These stores were BUSY. I mean three registers going all day, 14 hours a day. 30-40k sales on a bad day. Instead of over a minute per credit card transaction, it took less than 10 seconds. Overnight, the lines diminished and customers were happier, and a strange side effect of that was an overnight increase in overall sales. One store only needed two registers open, so that saved on payroll. I tackled inventory next, buying a cheap online inventory scan-in and scan-out solution from a local supported vendor. The existing registers could be hooked up to this system, but the scanners had to be switched out. The scanners at the registers in question were
single line scanners, with a trigger. They were clumsy and slow, and the barcode had to be facing a certain way, and the single line had to hit both sides. I bought the new scanners and attached the new system, and just turned it on.
This horrible thing. You know what you did.
Again there was a singularity of progression that was noticed almost instantly. The clerks at the register no longer had to turn and spin the products and bottles a certain way, which increased speed and sales. The inventory computer could change costs and prices on the fly with a simple update, could be sent out to the stores via aforementioned 56k modem. No more manually entering in sales for hours after closing time once a week. Tags could be printed and sent to the stores when needed the same day. I could pull inventory reports on the last days sales at any time, instead of waiting for the paperwork with the X-Tape to verify how much money we made. It was accurate and clean. I knew exactly what to order based on Auto-replenishment and inventory depletions on a simple report. The owners did not know what the hell was going on, all they knew was.. they liked it. I was given my own store and free reign to go the warehouse and other locations to make sure things were working, and worked for this company for almost 10 years as a store manager and in charge of all their technology.
Wrap it up
At the end of the day, just basic knowledge of computers and how they work has made me a lot of money, and made look good wherever I go. It's diminishing; I'm the old guy now that has people perceive as a scary amount of PC and software knowledge for someone my age. Still an advantage when dealing with CEOS and such, and I can always make a mean spreadsheet to help people understand data.
