The Greatest Invention of My Lifetime, cont.

As reported in last week’s blog post, my life has been defined by a discernible lack of manual dexterity.  This shortcoming surfaced during my early education and followed me into my brief stint of public service.

During my twenties, my life goals changed and I completed a bachelor’s degree at the School of Business, San Diego State University.  Appropriately, I began the search for profitable employment.  This search began in 1981, the depth of the Carter Recession.  If you think things are dismal on the economic scene now, you should have been around then.  It took me, the holder of the most marketable degree among job seekers (of that era) ten months to find a job.

I was still relying on the trusty old Royal manual typewriter that my dad had acquired for me during my high-school days.  I had composed curriculum vitae of suitable style and purchased the services of a local office supply store to print several hundred copies, incrementally over time, to be used in my search.  Each Sunday, accompanied by my wife of the time, I would travel to my parents’ home for dinner. While the rest of the family socialized in the living room I would spend the afternoon, and sometimes late into the evening, composing individualized letters of introduction to accompany my résumé being submitted to prospective employers. Thankfully, by that time the miracle “correction tape” had been invented. While it was no indemnity against mistakes, it certainly improved the review and repair process. I cannot recollect the exact number of documents I prepared during this effort.  But I am sure I used enough watermark bond to send some logger’s children to college; probably to become a tree-hugging environmental biologist.

I eventually succeeded in securing employment with The Automobile Club of Southern California, an affiliate of AAA.  For those unfamiliar with this not-for-profit behemoth, it is a member owned motorists’ association that among other services (you’ve seen the maps, you’ve seen the tow-trucks) provides automobile insurance. I was assigned to their General Accounting Department in downtown Los Angeles.  It is a great organization.  They were a bit behind the times technologically speaking.  For the entire department, comprised of staff of perhaps thirty including managers, supervisors, clerks and professionals (that was me and my co-workers) there was one computer terminal.  It was used exclusively for information inquiries.  All data input was accomplished by submitting hand written coding sheets that were transported to the processing center in Orange County.  Two days later, the accountant responsible for creating the entries would receive the original documents and a computer printout that reported the data entered.  The accountant would then review the data for accuracy and advise the data processing staff that the effort was successful, or heaven forbid, of any errors that needed correction. It is interesting to note that the use of computerized business information technology was pioneered by the insurance industry.  We were not of pioneer stock.

This association lasted for just under two years until I could market myself for supervisory positions.  Another couple of years with a developer of computer operating systems prepared me for real management responsibility.  I landed at Brock Homes (eventually absorbed by The Ryland Group) and began to build a foundation for success.  Now with management responsibility, I found I needed to occasionally communicate in writing with persons outside of the company via that miracle of information dissemination, the letter.  Upon such occasions, I would use the typewriter provided for the accounts payable clerks use on the rare occasion they needed to issue a check between computerized check runs.  It was just sitting there most of the time.

On one occasion I was discovered by the Controller (my boss) laboring over a letter I was composing to some taxing agency.  She recommended that I hand write the letter and have one of the department secretaries produce the typed product.

“But I compose better at a keyboard than when writing long-hand.” I protested.  She determined that my preference did not outweigh the need to demonstrate proper professional decorum and thus I was banned from using the typewriter.  After all, this was the same woman, who in the presence of the entire clerical staff announced that it was not necessary for me to assist with the keying of journal entries during the crunch of month end.  It was beneath my station. I hated that woman!

After five years of indentured servitude (after all, they paid well) I recognized that I was never going to be promoted beyond my station of General Accounting Manager, when they told me I was never going to be promoted beyond General Accounting Manager.  It had something to do with Ryland being a CPA shop and I was not a CPA. I left Brock, Los Angeles and a stalled career to return to San Diego.

This occurred in 1991 in; you guessed it, the middle of the George H.W. Bush recession.  It took me about eight months to find a job.  During this time I used a Brother word processor that my Dad had acquired at some garage sale.  It looked a lot like a typewriter but had a small electronic screen at the top of the keyboard that would report the information you typed into memory.  Once entered, you could recall from memory the typed document and the machine would recreate it on paper.  This was a great step forward in the process of writing the individualized letters of transmittal that accompanied my résumés as only the address particulars had to be typed in for each.

Eventually I landed the job at Shea Homes for which I am famous. To summarize, my career there took off when I was given the opportunity to write the San Diego Division business plan for 1995. By this time, use of the desktop PC had bloomed in the business world.  One could see in real time which keystrokes were successful and which had gone awry. In addition, the era of desktop publishing had dawned allowing the ambitious author to monitor form as well as content.  Facilities for inserting photos and graphs and charts and tables were added to the suite of word processing software capabilities. It was an accountant’s dream; words and numbers!  It was one of the most challenging and rewarding assignments I ever undertook and it led to my eventual advancement into executive management. 

In the years since, tools have been added without which I would not be able to dazzle my reading audience today.  Not only have we sophists experienced the benefits of spell check, but built in artificial intelligence has given us the best of grammar, usage, diction and syntax.  Those of you who know me well will not be shocked but for those of you new to my communications, I don’t really talk this way.  I wave my hands over the magic keyboard and the jumble of thoughts is marked with red, green and blue underscoring, each offering admirable suggestions that make my prose seem elegant.

Readers, I cannot deny credit where it is due.  I offer homage to the greatest invention of my lifetime, the word processor!  Huzzah!

The Greatest Invention of My Lifetime

You have more than likely encountered a statistic which proposes that the sum of all human knowledge doubles every five years (or, insert whatever number the uninformed bloviater used while trying to astound you with his absolute command of fantastical facts).  The truth is, this oft used shock statement is an erroneous distortion of Moore’s Law which derives from an observation by Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel, that over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. It has become a standard maxim used to forecast computing business growth. It in no way attempts to quantify the future occurrence of spontaneous cranium explosions brought on by the need to assimilate ever more information about the world in which we live. Nobody really knows the rate at which human knowledge doubles because there is no way to quantify said subject. But this has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of this post.  I just like to occasionally demonstrate the great heights to which my Wikipedia information theft skill set has risen.

I was born into modest means.  My parents were somewhat typical members of what has come to be known as the Greatest Generation. Thank you Mr. Brokaw for setting a standard so high that no future generation will ever hope to surpass it! Is it any wonder that we seem, as a civilization, to have eschewed individual brilliance for common inclusion?

“Oh yes, they were the Greatest Generation…ever! No doubt; no need for us to strive for personal accomplishment.  Yes, it’s quite obvious that our best option is to huddle together in egalitarian delusion hoping, praying that our trophies and parchments that celebrate participation piled against the gate as a barrier will dissuade the barbarians from their attempts to open the portal and just go away to leave us to our conformist lives!” But I digress.

My love affair with keyboards began early.  I remember, when a small child, I was the proud owner of a toy piano.  No cheap instrument this, as it had real flats and sharps… not the painted on black stripes of inferior types.  I guess I was enthralled with the power of being able to manipulate the keys thereby producing the respondent musical tone.  From then on, whenever in the presence of piano (or organ, or any keyboard instrument) I would begin banging away.  Mind you, I had (and continue to have) absolutely no musical talent.  But I loved the tactile feel of cause and effect.  The affinity for pushing buttons in order to elicit a response has stayed with me, both literally and figuratively throughout my life. I apologize to any of you that might have been a victim of this particular proclivity.  

As part of my eighth-grade experience, I spent a small bit of time with my future high-school counselor mapping out a curriculum best suited to my talents and dreams. I believe he was happy to be meeting with the graduating class of Santa Sophia Academy as there were only forty of us compared to the public junior high across the street which seemed to be populated by uncounted thousands.  Perhaps that is why he spent our entire session with his head resting on his hand with his eyes closed; shaking it silently with every question I posed.  “Yes, Dale.  The school cafeteria will offer a fish option on Fridays. Now let’s get back to your selection of classes for ninth grade.”

In completing the pre-interview paper work I had indicated that I wished to be enrolled in the college prep curriculum and also try out for the freshman football team. This elicited yet another head shake and the revelation that I had better attend summer school. One reason was the tacit understanding the football players enroll in summer P.E. en masse to ensure proper conditioning for the upcoming season.  There were only two types of students enrolled in summer school P.E. Football players and students who had failed P.E. during the previous school year.  That in itself is an interesting story but best left for a future post. The second was a recommendation I sign up for pre-algebra as my standardized testing scores indicated a less than stellar grasp of that mysterious wisdom known as math.

Jump to the summer session between my freshman and sophomore years.  I once again enrolled in P.E., having successfully made the frosh football team and was subsequently invited to join the junior varsity the following year.  Having no academic shortcomings to repair and being too young to qualify for driver’s education, I opted, with a number of my teammates to enroll in typing as it sounded to be an easy grade and would likely not require the intellectual absorption of any new material. Picture if you will a class populated half by young female students with little chance of being accepted to college hoping to learn a marketable skill and half by oversized jocks looking for an air-conditioned refuge in which to avoid real academic exposure.

Of course the women, hoping to build that marketable skill set, and pulled by the magnetic charm of the teacher, a man with a chiseled jaw and sparkling smile, opted to occupy the seats in the front of the classroom where the electric type writers were located.  The football players, by habit, stationed themselves in the back of the room where they could make their snarky comments and apply as little effort as possible. We were assigned manual machines. Each day I would pound mercilessly on the battered Olympia, extolling the virtues of the jumping quick brown fox and deriding the lazy dog. After eight weeks of intensive practice I achieved a blistering speed of twenty-five words per minute. I was awarded a “C”.

My father, eager to assist in my academic success, plunged head-first into the effort of acquiring a machine on which I could improve my newly acquired skills.  As was his wont, he scoured the “thrifty ads” of the local newspaper: “Two lines for two weeks for two dollars!” Eventually he hunted up a used Royal manual that looked like a movie prop from His Girl Friday (Columbia Pictures, 1940, Howard Hawks directing). It must have had a twenty pound trigger pull which I am sure contributed to the chronic pain I experience in my knuckles as old age rears its head. The beast got me through high school and two rounds of college.

When I was nineteen years of age, I was hired by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department as a Sheriff’s Cadet. It was a position most closely paralleled to a paid internship in the private sector.  It involved mostly clerical responsibilities.  (For exposure to the more interesting elements of this employment, see my previous blog posts: A Rip in the Fabric of Society and Keyless Entry.)  One of the requirements for this plumb job was an achieved typing speed of twenty-five words per minute.  To my great relief, I was never subjected to a typing test during the selection process.  I am certain my skills had eroded significantly since my high-school typing class.

I recall on one occasion, when the office secretary was absent, the Poway office sergeant asked me to type a letter he had composed to certain department higher-ups. Now for you youngsters out there, this was 1974; long before personal computers, the internet and e-mail had not yet been conceived, much less invented. As this document was official in nature I took the responsibility very seriously.  I lined up the letterhead pages and carbon paper very carefully. I painstakingly corrected every error through all four copies using that newly introduced miracle of written communication, White Out.  It took me four hours to complete the single page memo. When presented to the Sergeant for his review and signature, his only comment was, “Why didn’t you use the photocopier for the CCs (Carbon Copies for you digital age youngsters), Cadet?”

Later in my short career with the Sheriff’s Department, I was assigned to the central office Communication Center.  This facility was the nerve center of patrol where calls from distressed citizens were received and Deputies in the field were dispatched to their aid by way of radio transmitter.  Typically, much of the staff was comprised of older career Deputies waiting for retirement, disciplinary transfers or the walking wounded unfit for any but the lightest duty.  The level of enthusiasm among the denizens was such that when the Sergeant had to take a nature break, the deputies would roll their eyes in the direction of the Cadet to indicate he should take over the dispatch chair.  That’s right citizens of old; there were times when the ultimate responsibility for assigning assets to meet the needs of a terrorized public was in the hands of a twenty-year-old screw up.

One of the responsibilities of the com-center was inter-departmental communication of warrant abstract information to other California law enforcement agencies. For the civilians out there; briefly this means that when cops outside of San Diego County had apprehended a suspect and found that there was an outstanding warrant for his arrest originating from us, they would request the issue of a formal warrant abstract be transmitted via the statewide arcane computer system before they would “book” the fugitive.

Now it just so happened that the county employed a rather comely young female civilian clerk during regular business hours to respond to these warrant requests.  As our shifts overlapped in the afternoon I thought it my duty to learn as much about this communication process as possible in the furtherance of my value to the taxpayers so I spent any time I could under her tutelage. That made me the afterhours expert for operation of the teletype based system.  The process was simple. When a request was received, the required information was retrieved from the records department staffed 24/7 on the mezzanine floor above.  It was delivered to me via the vacuum powered tube system that served the facility.  Once in hand, I would look up the precise addressing protocol recorded in the three-ring binder on the teletype operators’ desk. I would fire up the teletype and key in the information.  This demanded absolute precision as any error would kick back the communication as undeliverable. Due to the state of communication pipelines of the day and the limited capacity, the systems would time out after just a few minutes and close your window.  To avoid this, abstract transmissions, instead of being entered into the communication line live, were first typed onto a punch tape to be fed into a reader that entered the data much faster than one could type.  So, the operator would key the data into a coding machine resulting in a series of holes being punched into a tape that could not be read by humans.  The tape would then be fed into a reader that could enter the data into the system within the time limits allowed and voila! Or rather, I would get a kickback message advising me that my attempt was unsuccessful and I should try again.

I don’t believe I ever successfully transmitted a warrant abstract in my brief career.  But, the commitment level of the Deputies assigned to the communications center being what it was, they let me keep trying until the day I was promoted to Deputy and transferred to the jail.  Hopefully no serial killers were ever released on my watch.  The curse of keyboard technology followed my into my business career… to be continued!

 

 

 

 

Lessons Learned

In my lifetime I have been places, seen things and met people.  When, as I have, one spends time among men who have chosen a life of action, one encounters some interesting personalities.  I have known soldiers and sailors and cops and real estate sales professionals.  All have their stories.  And it’s the stories that count.  As wisdom is gained, the sage listener learns to cull the cream from the crap.  So many stories told by self-described men of the world have the ring of made-for-television movie plots. Some, if one knows what to listen for, are much repeated legends altered in detail to suit the ego of the raconteur. At age twenty, we all have a naivety for such drama.  By forty, we begin to realize that if everyone who claims to have been there had, there wouldn’t be enough stretcher bearers to carry out the dead.

Rarely, luckily, one stumbles on the real deal; the guy who was there. The guy! In my case, I had the great fortune over several years to be in audience when Armadillo was holding court in some dimly lit dive bar or presiding over a late-night meeting under the low-sodium glare of a Winchell’s parking lot.

Armadillo (pronounced Arr-maw-dee-o, except in Texas where it’s Arr-mah-dill-ah) is the moniker I assign to a great adventurer.  I’m not even sure I was ever privy to his real name.  But he held himself out as a member of the clandestine services; sometimes patriot; sometimes mercenary; sometimes entrepreneur.  He had always been in the thick of the hot spot of the day. And the stories he did tell.  Most men would blush to report such wild adventures knowing they did not display the aura that accompanies such credentials.

While Armadillo’s stories were wild and wooly, challenging the credulity of his audience, he always finished each one with a lesson learned, as if it were a homily for survival. I would never presume to relate his stories.  They belong to him.  The rest of us have not earned the right.  But I believe it to be a duty of honor to pass along the wisdom he shared.

So today, I offer you what I can remember of his lessons.  I don’t know where he is presently but I’m sure it’s somewhere the bullets are flying or the daggers are being bared. And I know he’ll survive because of the lessons learned.

·         A pistol in the waistband is worth an arsenal in the trunk.

·         Sometimes the cause of death is a failure to accurately calculate probabilities.

·         The dark side of the moon isn’t, sometimes perspective should be ignored.

·         Self-worth carries no collateral, achievement increases personal capital.

·         Practice, practice, practice.

·         A flat tire is the result of a hole and gravity working in concert, the trick is to know which can be fixed and which must be lived with.

·         The single most missed luxury commodity when abroad is American toilet paper.

·         Peanut butter is a nutritionally balanced meal.

·         The perceived interest displayed by a woman is most likely inversely related to the actual interest generated by a woman.

·         Stainless steel isn’t.

·         Thirty rolls of toilet paper, in a household of one, will last four to six months, give or take, dependent on the fiber content of the local cuisine.

·         A tattoo makes a body instantly identifiable, surviving loved ones appreciate that.

·         Practice some more.

·         Fire fighters have counter-intuitive logic; who else runs into a burning building?

·         One roll of toilet paper carried afield will last one day less than the duration of the deployment.

·         If you can see them, they’ve probably been watching you for some time.

·         Identify the most talented sniper in the theater, buy him a drink, and make him your friend.

·         The memory you carry of a woman improves over time, or worsens; honestly speaking.

·         Trade your pemmican for beef-jerky before the newbies learn what pemmican is.

·         Never plan for a cold drop in an Indian Casino! Never!

·          .45acp… because shooting twice is just silly.

·         Job one; take care of your feet.

·         Floss daily, brush often.

·         Just when a woman tells you that you’re the man she’s always been looking for is time to get lost.

·         I don’t know which is worse; a skittish helicopter pilot, or a confident one.

·         If you want a volunteer, ask a fire fighter.

·         Never put off until tomorrow what you can get someone else to do today.

Cats or Dogs?

“There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t” – Robert Benchley

“There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can count and those that can’t.” – Anon.

It has oft been said that there are two kinds of people in the world; cat people and dog people. There are some that would argue one can feel equal affection or aversion to both species of domesticated critter but they will get no consideration here.

We have all been acquainted with an eccentric aunt or crazy neighbor who has an excessive retinue of feline friends oft referred to by the owner as “family”. They are generally somewhat retiring and reclusive in their habits. In extreme cases, the cats may be dressed in theme costume and use to play out some elaborate historical pageant. Upon learning of such a relation’s demise and that we were lucky enough to fall heir to the dearly departed’s home we offer, “Eew!”

 Our lives have probably been enriched as well by the committed dog enthusiast. They are never satisfied with one or two, but must own a pack.  It is not unusual to encounter a dog lover that has a breed affinity that ups their price and lowers their likely longevity due to in-breeding. Some take the opposite extreme and companion up with a tea-cup this or that which is destined to spend its life being carried around in an oversized purse that in bygone day was referred to as a courier’s satchel. I believe these are really cat people but cannot stomach the litter box regimen. And let us not ignore the little beasties that ride in the crook of their all-to-macho owners elbow as he motors his Ford F-.250 down the avenue (off-road edition, of course).

Yes, ours is a culture that clearly defines itself by pet affiliation.  This started my wondering about other cultures and how their relationships with furry friends might render some clue as to their philosophy.

In provinces in south-eastern China some people consider cat flesh a good warming food during winter months. It is estimated that around four million cats are eaten in China every year. However, in northern China eating cat is not considered acceptable. With absolutely no data to judge the tension generated by such a cultural divide, I speculate this could be the undercurrent that forces a future civil war. Or perhaps the neighboring Mongols have trapped all of the cats for use as tent material.

Native Americans encountered by Lewis’ and Clark’s Corps of Discovery offered the explorers dog meat as a delicacy.  It is reported by Stephen Ambrose in his biography of Meriwether Lewis, Undaunted Courage (Simon & Schuster, 1996) that various tribes offered to trade for Capt. Lewis’ Newfoundland Dog, Seaman, with culinary intent. Capt. Lewis declined the offers in favor of canine affection.  There is no opinion stated that said attempts at barter had any bearing on Capt. Lewis’ eventual suicide.

While the southern Chinese enjoy cat and the western Indians (American) preferred dog, the rural Swiss are more liberal in their epicurean pursuits and delight in the consumption of both kittens and puppies. I would offer that this practice of inclusiveness demonstrates the strong commitment to neutrality that defines Switzerland’s long-held political philosophy.

So how do you see yourself? Are you a cat lover of a dog fancier?  Let us know.  And if you have a favorite recipe you would like to share, you have my e-mail!