BTW, a friend of mine bought an 8080 in the day. Olivetti. Didn't get a 286 due to the rumour of a 386. Put that off. And the next thing. The olivetti packed it in and he found an Olivetti typewriter/wordprocessor. Ran that for 10 years. Ribbons or something became hard to find. Then he reverted to an IBM selectric he got a garage sale. Another 10 years go buy and finally Dad let me take him and get a computer.

The next 6 months I played support hotline.

Phone: "The needle dooey isn't showing up."

Me: "what?"

Dad: "The thing where you push on the other thing with that thing thing."

Me: "OH, you mean...???"

I'm sure you get this.

I found out it was my youngest brother, who had a free computer in his office at the school board was getting info from the IT department. When I asked my brother what computer he had at home he said..."why buy a computer when you get one for free at work?" Hard to argue that. Now he's 55 and he and his wife both pull down top buck as senior teachers, and they just moved 'home' to live with his wife's mother because 200k is not enough to afford those vacations. Geez. And to think I quit teaching to bird dog forest fires.

John Conley
Musica est vita