Lunacy in the Computer Room
In my early computer days, right out of the Air Force, I worked nights at Service Bureau Corporation, a wholly owned IBM subsidiary. We programmers had to use the mainframe IBM 704 after normal business hours, so nights in the computer room were always interesting. The face of the computer console was pointed toward Madison Avenue through a […]
Italian Adventure — Luck With the Travel Gods
Here was the plan. Fly to Italy on Tuesday. Return Friday afternoon and land at Newark Airport at 1:00 pm. Then somehow get to LaGuardia Airport in time for a 4:30 pm flight to Chicago. At my age, that might sound a little ambitious. My wife and I already had tickets to Chicago to spend […]
Trying to Outsmart the Weather
This record-setting blizzard we just had reminded me. Back in the 1950s, when I was working professionally as a meteorologist, we didn’t have computers, satellites, or any of the incredible tools that forecasters rely on today. What we had instead were surface maps, upper-air charts, a good deal of training, and experience. If I’m being […]
The Fear of AI
Back when I worked for IBM in 1959, the mainframe in use was the new IBM 704. To give you some perspective, the 704 was in a gymnasium sized store front on the corner of 59th street and Madison Avenue. The console amused passers-by in the huge picture window with its multi-colored blinking lights. In […]
Music to My Ears
This past September I thought to myself, I should be making a plan for a family get away. The last time I wrote about such a get away several Four Seasons of Great Notch residents approached me and said I was nuts. I was told “at this stage of the game, THEY should be taking […]
Family Vacations
I’m not a very wealthy woman, but my philosophy in life is “why leave it all to the kids?’ You need to enjoy now as much as you can, and you need to create as many memories as possible. So a few years after I retired, and found my bearings as far as where to […]
My Take on Greenland
I try not to exercise my political ideas in these brief articles and I have no intention of starting now. However, having spent time in Greenland in winter and summer, I might just clarify what can only be either false impressions or lack of interest. First, Greenland became important in the early days of the […]
An Accident – Whose Fault?
I offered to give a friend a ride back from the body shop. He was dropping his car off to have the annoying dents (his words) removed. On the way there, I made a left turn onto a street that had a stop sign for the oncoming vehicles. To make a short story shorter, we […]
My History with Golf
The puzzling behavior of our military in the news these days reminded me of my military service in the Air Force. My memories are not what you would imagine. In fact, the things I remember after so many years surprise me too. My commanding officer when I was stationed in the Azores was a golf […]
Website Disasters
Almost my whole business life has been as a computer techie. And one significant thing I have learned that still hasn’t been learned by website (or programs for that matter) designers. The techies that built the website should never be the ones who decide it is ready for the public to use. Never. That failure […]