Technology Through the Years

I apologize if you have been having trouble following my directions to get to this site. I have a little trouble entering the link---and other things computer-ish.  After three times of trying to get it right I usually give up. My nephew commented on Facebook, "Just cut and paste." Yeah, like I know how to do that.  Probably if I could do anything so advanced I would be able to get the darn link right in the first place. Just sayin'

My first brush with technology was in college where I worked at a hospital telephone switchboard. This was the kind of technology like you see in old movies, where an operator, wearing a long dress and her hair in a bun, used those long cords to connect the calls, sort of like an octopus doing the hand jive. "That isn't technology," you may well say, but at one time, a couple of centuries ago, it was pretty advanced. I did finally learn how to field calls, though I didn't have to wear the bun, and if you held those cords just right you could learn a lot of other things too, about doctors, and clandestine affairs and such.  Not that I ever listened in or anything.

The next real job I had I used an adding machine for eight hours a day.  Mine had a handle on the side that you pulled down when you had all the figures in, so it may not have been too technologically advanced, but I did get to sit where I could see a computer.  It was.---and I'm not making this up, it filled up one whole side of a large room---about the size of a  Chevy Suburban and that was one of the new, cutting edge ones.

When my boss at the furniture store a few years later wanted to bring in a computer and all of us had to take a class on it, I have to admit I was a little intimidated.  My friend, Daisy, went with me to the Vo-tech and there were about thirty people in the class and every two people got to sit at a real computer, with a monitor, a keyboard and a CPU (see how I learned those terms right off?) Ours was right next to the wall.

The first thing the teacher did was give everybody a disc (back then I think they were called floppies) and told us to insert it in the computer, so I did.  Only he didn't say exactly where and after I put it in a slot I looked around and everyone else's screen---sorry, monitor---had stuff on it and ours was blank. Apparently there was a special place where you put it in the CPU thing-y and I had put it between the CPU and the wall.  And it was stuck.  Daisy had a nail file so we worked and worked to get it out from between the wall and the CPU but it took almost the whole rest of the hour so I think we missed a good bit of what the teacher was saying.  Not to speak of it being a little embarrassing, what with everyone else getting to use mice and all, and we apparently weren't ready for one yet so they didn't give us one.  I didn't really like the thought of touching a mouse anyway.  And then the class was over.

So that is one reason I'm kind of technically-challenged.  I didn't get off to a very good start and am still running to catch up. At my age, running is a challenge in itself.