Originally from Sylmar (Los Angeles), California
I Graduated from Sylmar High School at age 15. I attended
West Valley Occupational Center in Woodland Hills, CA with emphasis on Electronics
Technician training.
In 1979 I moved to San Francisco, CA and became a sound
technician with Bruce Trondson "TrondSound", the #2 sound company in the bay area at the time. I moved
back to So. Cal in 1982, where I became a legal secretary for a Beverly Hills law firm, which gave me
lots of word-processing experience with which to gain temp employment just about
anywhere (for a steady paycheck).
In 1984, DOS 2 was the operating system; Undelete
didn't come along until DOS 3! Mice were making their debut, and lightning-fast
12-MHz 286 processors were all the rage, along with 20 MB hard disk
drives that could hold all the software you could ever want. Floppy drives
really were floppy. 1,200 BPS modems were flying off the shelf for
a mere $300, allowing people to send text in real-time, only
5-10 data errors per page! On-line meant CompuServe (text only)
with per-minute charging. Nifty games like Trivia, Cross-Country Truck Driver,
and Oregon Trail. Graphics consisted of Xs, Os and line-and-box drawing
characters. HP had the market on laser-jet printers; fixed-spaced Courier font
came standard. Proportional-spaced fonts came from a cartridge.
This is what I learned when they gave me an IBM PC-AT (12
MHz processor) at my desk at The Irvine Company Security Department (1984),
complete with manuals for DOS, MultiMate Word Processor, Lotus 123 Spreadsheet
and R:Base Database. They took away my IBM Selectric II, so I taught myself all
four programs and produced my daily Security reports on the first day. I even
printed them out on the new HP Laserjet printer (with proportional spaced font
cartridge).