Dear Readers:

Acceeding to your Editor's request that I contribute a column monthly (accompanied by sufficient grovelling, promises of undying gratitude, and pledges of vast stipends to be paid "later, when we sell the rights for the movie"), I had this month's column fairly well sorted out when two items of note intervened to prompt radical last-minute revisions:

1. My computer locked up, sending several hours's work into Never-NeverLand (another as-yet unproven case of industrial sabotage by Microsoft), and 2. I received a delightful response to last month's column from one of our own, which is reprinted herewith, and with her permission.

I know you will appreciate Patty's sharing of her experience as much as I have, and I hope sincerely that others will also be willing to share in future columns. Identity of guest contributors will, of course, be protected unless permission to reveal the author's identity is received prior to publishing.

Thanks for a grin and a chuckle. Enjoyed your article. My first intro into computers was in the 60's when I wanted to advance from my lowly clerk's position to secretary. I asked our office's self taught computer programer how to learn to key punch. Instead he brought me three TutorTexts and introduced me to the binary system. Needless to say, I was cringing in my high heels. After all, I've since become an art teacher because math was never my strong point. Consequently, I did learn to key punch down there in that dungeon where he tended this electrical demon which swallowed the cards I punched and made big spools of tape spin with little blinking red and green lights. At least the a/c was lovely down there during Houston's more oppressively hot, muggy days.

Almost two decades later I was hired to do data entry for a company over a modem to their main office. I was petrified! What if I pushed the wrong button and my whole day's work was lost. I learned not to panic and managed not to blow up the company--my other fear. Not totally without reason, after all I was working for a uranium mining company.

Another decade passes and I decide I want to become a school teacher, teaching art. Well, the powers that be stipulate that all Texas teachers be computer literate. So I took a crash course in computers and that's about what I did. I went on to use Word Perfect to type my term papers, but was still not comfortable with these fancy typewriters.

Finally, I bought my own first computer and it was an IBM clone with no hard drive, but it did have a cute drawing and painting program. Then I finally got smart in my old age and 4 years ago bought a Mac and I've become something of a techie myself. I joined our Mac group about 6 months after I bought it and St. Mugs has made me welcome and enlightened me about all of the wonderful things computers can do.

To testify to my love for this machine, in March of this year, I persuaded my 78 year old mother and 80 year old father to buy their own Mac. I set it up for them complete with a color printer, Zip drive, scanner and installed all of the necessary software for them to go online as well as use their computer as a speaker phone so Mom can call right from her computer desk. Mom sends me email several times a week and Dad checks on his stocks daily. They have surfed the web and contacted distant cousins.

So, from computer idiot to computer whiz(?) I have to thank Apple and St. Mug for helping me make the transition.

 

Patty Barnes

AWESOME!

Thanks, Patty. See you all next month for Chapter 3!

Your fellow traveler,

buckebohlz