My Start on the Computer in 1998

Carolyn’s Online Magazine

MY INITIATION TO THE COMPUTER IN 1998

In transferring material from one filing cabinet to another I found the following e-mail in which I related my experience in starting out on the computer. It was sent to a member of the then-existing photography group in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, on February 6, 1998.

Subject: 2/6/98 R Moon

Date Fri 06 Feb 1998  19:25:07 -0800

From Carolyn Holland carmonh

Organization Wesley UMC

To Jordan

CC lenswork

Holland to Richard Moon—I hear you’re being introduced to e-mail by tjordan.

I may be the newest (in the photography club) to have the technology up and working, and I find it frustrating. You get thrown out there with no instruction book, and if you make an error you can get knocked down, zoom!

Were we still using these disks in 1998?

First, your equipment has to be in good shape. We started with a dead mouse, a keyboard that gave new meaning to typing double letters, an arid printer—and a husband (Monte) who comes from the farm mentality that if it works ever so slightly, don’t replace it!

We also started with only 8 memory.

We finally replaced our old decrepit, alzheimic, arthritic mouse (we all have to be sent out to pasture eventually) with a lively, attentive, alert younger model.

Monte also added ink to the thirsty printer, so we are printing black and white copies of the photos. He tried a printing one in color one, which turned out neat. However, it printed in monochrome green. That is the next printer problem to be solved.

After we resolved the mouse, memory, and printer problems someone came and made an adjustment on our keyboard. It cut the double-lettering down significantly, but it still happens, though it’s no longer intimidating—it’s manageable. I suppose this piece of equipment will have to be replaced soon.

Had we replaced the 5.25 floppies with these disks in 1998?

So now we are up and running. It took from Januaary 15 until last week, but finding stuff on the Internet and communicating via e-mail is interesting.

E-mail leaves something to be desired. It lacks the personalness of the phone call or the letter. But it is much easier, increasing incidences of communication, and you don’t have to locate and deal with stationary, stamps, and writing.

We are currently receiving photos from family members in Okinawa. It’s neat. They take pictures and we can receive them in 5 minutes if the computer field isn’t too crowded. Monte decided to upgrade our memory from 8 to 32.

Some messages are still better written off-computer. I wrote my goodbye message…and waited for the tide to come in and erase it.

Once you are up and going you will hear from Kern more often.

It was nice hearing my photo came in second at the last club meeting, when I decided to cut out to go to a tap dance show instead of attending the meeting. At least I wasn’t sharing my current bug with you camera club members.

Toodleloo. Camfancarolyncholland