I haven’t mentioned yet what I do for a living. I’m a Solutions Developer. This is a 21st century way of saying that I am a programmer (which is how we said it back in the ’80’s). My first exposure to a programming a real computer (as opposed to a programmable calculator) was in 1980 when my father purchased a Radio Shack TRS-80 with 4 KB of RAM. (He would later upgrade that to 16 KB.) While some berate the TRS-80, primarily because it wasn’t an Apple, I found it to be a very good introduction to the basics of programming using the BASIC language. It was better than some programming classes that I took later in which we had to rely on a college timeshare system and a teletype machine.
My father subscribed to BYTE magazine and I would peruse through the issues and try to pick up on the latest trends and buzzwords. Things like “Xerox PARC” that was experimenting with “Graphical User Interfaces”. Or languages like “SmallTalk” which used a paradigm called “object oriented programming”. I was over my head at the time, but I enjoyed seeing the pictures of the machines and what they were graphically capable of performing.
My father sold his TRS-80 (sad day) but later purchased another computer called the Commodore VIC-20. Unlike the TRS-80 which required that a monitor had to be purchased, the VIC-20 could be attached to a standard television. It also had color capabilities like the Apple and the IBM. I actually preferred the TRS-80 but I played around with it for a while because it was what we had. Eventually my father upgraded to a Commodore 64, which was not a bad machine. Like the VIC-20 it could be hooked up directly to a television. But unlike the VIC-20 which only had 4 KB of RAM, the Commadore 64 had 64 KB of RAM (hence the name Commodore 64). While there were some fun times had on each of these machines I got bored with character based computing in 1985 and pretty much gave no attention to anything that happened in the computer world from that point until 1991.
There is one exception to that last statement. The Macintosh! What an awesome machine! The earlier BYTE articles on Graphical User Interfaces were actually becoming a reality. This was the future of computing. If I could ever affort to buy one of these then I could do something! But sadly I did not make much money and was lucky enough to be able to afford my apartment lease.
Things changed a bit for me in 1991. Due to changes at the radio station where I worked I was being reintroduced to computers again. This time to IBM compatibles, namely the Dell. But what got me hooked was not the computer itself, which was character based running MS-DOS, but rather a new shell that worked ‘on top’ of MS-DOS called Windows. It was graphical computing!! It was at this time that I once again began to work with computers. Eventually I learned how to use spreadsheet programs, word processing programs, and in 1996 saw what all the fuss was about over this ‘internet’ phenomenon.
The timing of this was perfect. In 1997 I found a new job with a major telecommunications company (which shall remain anonymous) as a customer service representative. The funny thing about it was I really didn’t do much customer service. I spent most of my time creating solutions and reports for my bosses and co-workers…Solution Development. Through the help of another like-minded associate I began learning Visual Basic for Applications and Microsoft Access database development. Eventually one of the other organizations took me in to create billing engines customized for special clients held by the company. From there I built analysis engines, one in particular enabled the company to bill a large client an additional half million dollars a year for our services.
I went from desktop programming to web programming using Active Server Pages to create solutions for customer care such as a customizable quality review system, a system to monitor jeopardies for orders and billing, and probably my greatest work…a customizable system used to track customer (or other types of) requests.
Unfortunately the current economic crisis is affecting everybody, including the company (which again shall remain anonymous) for which I worked. (Yes that is a past tense verb.) The job at which I had worked for almost twelve years was being sent oversees to India. I hold no grudge against those who are now doing my work. (I’ve met them and they are nice guys.) I’m not really that angry with the company either. It is the age we live in where computer technology makes hiring workers in countries with a low cost of living less expensive than domestic associates. The problem is that while this may be “just business” to companies, another rip is torn into the fabric of the American economy. But companies are in a panic at this time and what looks like a short term savings cost may become a long term nightmare (as many companies who outsourced oversees early on are finding out).
So…I am a programmer. I develop solutions…great solutions for problems businesses face everyday. I enable employers to keep low headcounts by automating processes. And I am currently available.
