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edenfalling1. If you worked as a secretary at "the local grain company" in Kansas in the late 1980s, would your company be likely to have a computer? If so, what kind and what would its capabilities be? If not, what office technology would you have instead?
I ask because I was only about six or seven year old at the time in question (and also, I grew up about 25 miles from Manhattan), and I am therefore very, very unclear on the intermediate steps in office technology between, say, typewriter-with-carbon-paper and PC-hooked-to-internet. Internal networks like I think IBM used to do are a complete mystery to me, and I don't know if a modestly sized grain company would either have been interested in or been able to afford such a system anyway.
(This is in reference to the Mysterious Skin fic I am trying to write for Femgenficathon. The character in question is Avalyn Friesen, and the setting is the rural vicinity of Hutchinson, which is about 40 miles northwest of Wichita.)
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2. I have been thinking, once again, that I really should go back to college (by which I mean, take one or two online courses a semester for several years) and finish a degree in something, if only so that I have my trained monkey certification and can thus get a foot in the door at better jobs should I feel inclined to look for a new position. The thing is, I associate college with the worst years of my life -- the years in which my depression and all my related maladaptive thought patterns jumped out and beat me up repeatedly, once I was away from my accustomed support networks -- and I have a reflexive mental/emotional flinch reaction whenever the idea of returning to that comes up. Also, I hate, hate, hate the reminder of how many courses I screwed up or just failed utterly because I was unable to attend classes or complete the assigned work.
It would, I think, be less distressing if the inability had been because the classes were hard. No. This was because I was unable to do much of anything for several weeks every month or three, and then did not have the tools to climb out of the resulting hole, nor even the tools to convince myself that I was worthy of so much as attempting to climb out of the hole. And that is not a state of mind I want to touch with a ten foot pole... but I kind of have to at least brush against it in passing, if I want to get copies of my transcripts and talk to admissions people about how many courses I need to do to get a degree and swear to them that no really, I'm better now, I promise.
(...Okay, organic chemistry genuinely was hard -- I just cannot visualize complicated stereoisomers to save my life, and now you know why I decided to major in German literature instead of chemistry -- but everything else was easy. Which was quite possibly part of the problem. Easy things don't feel meaningful.)
Anyway, I talked about this with Vicky when I saw her in August, and she helped me write up a list that breaks down "go back to college" into a bunch of small, manageable steps. I need to print that out and pin it to the wall behind my computer to prod myself into taking action.
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3. Gacked from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
annearchy: The first five people to comment on this post get to request that I write a drabble/ficlet of any pairing/character of their choosing. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their own writing ability level. (Slight variation: you must specifically ask for a ficlet in your comment or I will assume you don't want one and will move on to the next person. Also, what the heck, I will write ten of these -- five for LJ comments and five for DW comments, assuming anyone is interested at all.)
I make no promises whatsoever as to length -- you may get a single sentence if that's all I can think of -- but I do tend to run long...
I ask because I was only about six or seven year old at the time in question (and also, I grew up about 25 miles from Manhattan), and I am therefore very, very unclear on the intermediate steps in office technology between, say, typewriter-with-carbon-paper and PC-hooked-to-internet. Internal networks like I think IBM used to do are a complete mystery to me, and I don't know if a modestly sized grain company would either have been interested in or been able to afford such a system anyway.
(This is in reference to the Mysterious Skin fic I am trying to write for Femgenficathon. The character in question is Avalyn Friesen, and the setting is the rural vicinity of Hutchinson, which is about 40 miles northwest of Wichita.)
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2. I have been thinking, once again, that I really should go back to college (by which I mean, take one or two online courses a semester for several years) and finish a degree in something, if only so that I have my trained monkey certification and can thus get a foot in the door at better jobs should I feel inclined to look for a new position. The thing is, I associate college with the worst years of my life -- the years in which my depression and all my related maladaptive thought patterns jumped out and beat me up repeatedly, once I was away from my accustomed support networks -- and I have a reflexive mental/emotional flinch reaction whenever the idea of returning to that comes up. Also, I hate, hate, hate the reminder of how many courses I screwed up or just failed utterly because I was unable to attend classes or complete the assigned work.
It would, I think, be less distressing if the inability had been because the classes were hard. No. This was because I was unable to do much of anything for several weeks every month or three, and then did not have the tools to climb out of the resulting hole, nor even the tools to convince myself that I was worthy of so much as attempting to climb out of the hole. And that is not a state of mind I want to touch with a ten foot pole... but I kind of have to at least brush against it in passing, if I want to get copies of my transcripts and talk to admissions people about how many courses I need to do to get a degree and swear to them that no really, I'm better now, I promise.
(...Okay, organic chemistry genuinely was hard -- I just cannot visualize complicated stereoisomers to save my life, and now you know why I decided to major in German literature instead of chemistry -- but everything else was easy. Which was quite possibly part of the problem. Easy things don't feel meaningful.)
Anyway, I talked about this with Vicky when I saw her in August, and she helped me write up a list that breaks down "go back to college" into a bunch of small, manageable steps. I need to print that out and pin it to the wall behind my computer to prod myself into taking action.
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3. Gacked from
annearchy: The first five people to comment on this post get to request that I write a drabble/ficlet of any pairing/character of their choosing. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their own writing ability level. (Slight variation: you must specifically ask for a ficlet in your comment or I will assume you don't want one and will move on to the next person. Also, what the heck, I will write ten of these -- five for LJ comments and five for DW comments, assuming anyone is interested at all.)I make no promises whatsoever as to length -- you may get a single sentence if that's all I can think of -- but I do tend to run long...
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 10:42 am (UTC)I would say that for your purpose, your secretary probably did have a computer, an 8086, 8088, or 80286-based IBM XT (or clone like Compaq, Tandy, NEC, AT&T, or DTK), running PC-DOS (IBM only) or MS-DOS (clone). He or she would have used Lotus 1-2-3 for spreadsheets, WordPerfect for letters and internal memos/notes/correspondence/outlines, and a Clipper or dBase-based database to maintain the inventory and customer lists. One "killer feature" of the day was mail merge: putting a bunch of pre-cut sticky labels in the dot-matrix printer and matching up destination labels with "Dear Mr. so-and-so" letters. (If the story goes into the early 90's, the next "killer feature" was the ability to send faxes directly from the computer to a fax machine.)
The hardware would cost about $2000, the software another $1000-2000.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-22 12:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-23 02:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-23 04:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-23 11:49 am (UTC)[Fic] "For All the Works and Days of Hands" -- Naruto
Date: 2011-09-24 06:44 am (UTC)---------------
It says something unflattering about her, Yukiko thinks, that she could forget Yuichiro and Mei's second anniversary. She stares down at the pointed note from Uncle Yutaro, reminding her that this is not an optional attendance event, and wonders when she and Yuichiro drifted apart.
When she was growing up, Yukiko spent pretty much every weekend with her cousins -- in the yard of her mother's apartment building, in the back room of Uncle Yutaro's grocery store, out in the streets, in one or another of the parks that dotted Konoha, wherever. She and Yuichiro were the oldest, born within a month of each other, so they tended to get saddled with looking after the babies. Neither of them really liked that idea -- Yuichiro was too afraid something would go horribly wrong and he'd take the blame, and Yukiko was much more interested in playing ninja vs. samurai.
When she learned how to do genjutsu, Yuichiro had the brilliant idea that she could put his little sisters to sleep so they'd be safe and out of the way. Yukiko practiced until she had the technique down cold, and the next time she and Yuichiro were assigned as babysitters, she got Yura and Yume to sit on the floor and listen to Yuichiro tell a really boring story about a fish made of stars that tried to eat the moon. Eventually they were distracted enough that the genjutsu caught and tightened, and they curled up to sleep all at once. She jumped up and down, and Yuichiro clapped his hands, but they just made funny high-pitched snores; they were safe until she did the release. She and Yuichiro grinned at each other until their cheeks hurt.
That fell apart the minute Aunt Hanako came in to put Yusuke down for a nap and make sure Yume and Yura hadn't up and died while she was upstairs drinking sake with Yukiko's parents. She was not amused to find her daughters lying curled up on the cold concrete floor of the stock room, while Yukiko and Yusuke climbed the shelves and threw wadded up cardboard missiles at each other.
After that, Yukiko and Yuichiro had to figure out games to distract a pair of bratty little girls who were five and seven years younger. They never did get very good at that, but luckily Yura liked playing house, and once she was six or seven, they could leave her to watch Yume and Yusuke and make their own escape.
Yuichiro was her best friend as far back as she could remember. So when did that change?
Not when she graduated the academy. Ame and Kasumi didn't replace him -- they just slipped in alongside him, so she had three best friends instead of one. Not when her parents died. Yuichiro was the one who came over to visit each week, bullied her into doing laundry and buying groceries and generally keeping up the facade of a functional life. Kasumi and Ame would have, but they were busy on missions and just weren't around as often as Yuichiro could be. And he kept that up after the Kyuubi, until Yukiko pulled herself together to stand on her feet.
So when did they drift apart? Because they have. Yukiko hasn't seen her cousin in months, not since... well, since he and Mei bought their store and had the grand opening last spring. That's over half a year.
The obvious thing would be to blame Mei, but Yukiko's not stupid. Mei's a sweetheart and she just Yuichiro to be happy. She would never pry him apart from his family. (Well, maybe from Uncle Yutaro, but that's just good sense. Everyone thinks he keeps too tight a grip on the clan.) And she doesn't remember Yuichiro telling her all about Mei as he fell in love, which he should have done. He told her all about his crushes when they were younger, after all.
Sometime in those gray, choking months after she lost her team, she must have said or done something to push her cousin away. Yuichiro being Yuichiro, he assumed it was his own fault, taken the blame, and decided not to burden her with his presence anymore. That's just the kind of stupid he is. And it's just the kind of stupid Yukiko is that she got wrapped up in her day-to-day routine and never noticed her best friend wasn't around to shake her into life. Not until the kid showed up to do the job for him.
Naruto and Yuichiro. That's a funny juxtaposition, Yukiko thinks with a private smile. One does nothing but worry and the other doesn't seem to know the meaning of the word. They might like each other anyway... but she doesn't think it's a good idea to introduce them. Not yet, maybe not ever. After all, there's the minor issue of the Kyuubi killing Aunt Hanako to work through.
Still. Thanks to the kid, Yukiko's remembered what she's been missing these past few years. And now that she knows, she can start to make things right.
"Hey, Naruto," she says, without bothering to turn. "Let's go out for ramen tonight, just because."
The kid stops halfway through his attempted ambush and cheers.
Re: [Fic] "For All the Works and Days of Hands" -- Naruto
Date: 2011-09-24 05:52 pm (UTC)Re: [Fic] "For All the Works and Days of Hands" -- Naruto
Date: 2011-09-24 06:17 pm (UTC)Re: [Fic] "For All the Works and Days of Hands" -- Naruto
Date: 2011-09-24 07:18 pm (UTC)It keeps surprising me how much livelier Yukiko was as a kid than she is as a young adult. She's a brat with her cousins, she talks back to her mom, she conspires with her teammates against her jounin-sensei... I wonder if she subconsciously sees a bit of herself in Naruto sometimes.
Re: [Fic] "For All the Works and Days of Hands" -- Naruto
Date: 2011-09-24 07:22 pm (UTC)(I suspect our older cousins would have done the same to us in turn. *grin*)
Re: [Fic] "For All the Works and Days of Hands" -- Naruto
Date: 2011-09-25 02:55 am (UTC)Re: [Fic] "For All the Works and Days of Hands" -- Naruto
Date: 2011-09-25 04:48 am (UTC)I am amused that putting Yura and Yume to sleep was Yuichiro's idea, not Yukiko's -- but he had the best motives, really; he just wanted them to stay safely out of harm's way. *angelic innocence* I am much less surprised that Yukiko thought it was the best idea ever.
Naruto makes every story better. True Fact. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 11:46 am (UTC)It was just a horrible downward spiral I couldn't seem to get out of, and it was so hard for me to make friends to get that new support system. Ugh, horrible time. I dropped out and that was for the best, because I quit wasting my money, but now that I'm stable and have a decent paying job, I really want to go back, maybe do one or two classes a quarter at the local college. The only problem is every time I go to fill out an application, all that panic and stress just seems to come back and I decide I'll do it "later". I've been saying that for about the last two years now...
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 12:49 pm (UTC)1) I started my career at a very large Midwestern law firm in 1988. The secretaries had fancy IBM typewriters that were quite revolutionary because you could backspace over a line and correct text without using white-out. My law school had large tandy or Compaq computers in a pool that ran WordPerfect and WordStar on a DOS platform. I moved to another, more sophisticated place in 1990 and they were only just starting to give secretaries computers. I would not assume that a grain elevator in the 80s would have anything but an IBM selectric or Smith-Corona. This was before Fed Ex too and fax machines were only just starting to be used.
2) College. Do you feel like you are in a better place mentally? It certainly seems so over the distance of the Internets where I really don't know you at all. Why plunge in though? Maybe start with a class at the community college? Get back into the discipline of it and see if you like it and if it agrees with your head. And, you know, when you describe that hole you were in where you could not even imagine getting out, that is such a classical depressive episode and don't you feel you are better able to see that and deal with that now?
3) As for drabble, oh gosh, do I have to post over in mine? I'm BORING and don't really have anything to say. BUT BUT Shezan and Ilgamuth or Cor and Aravis. Oh please.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 02:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 02:41 pm (UTC)The NBI system stayed in place at least through 1989, but over those 2-3 years all the engineers got personal computers, and the Macintosh became more popular. By 1989, I was working as a newsletter editor in the publications department and I had a Mac on my desk. I can't remember exactly when the secretaries switched from NBI terminals to their own personal computers, but I know they kept their Selectrics around for a long time, because it was too hard to address an envelope in a computer printer.
Networking: Our NBI terminals had internal e-mail, but hardly anyone used it. In 1986-1987, file exchange between computer systems was a huge issue; there were companies that sold gigantic, multi-thousand dollar machines that would convert files from one computer system to another (I remember because I researched them). People were beginning to have computers in their homes and using text-based networks such as Genie and CompuServe. We got LAN-based company e-mail around 1989, but it was still difficult if not impossible to e-mail outside the company.
People started talking about the Internet in the late '80s/early '90s, but it was still all dial-up and mostly text-based. UseNet and Fetch were popular. I signed up with America Online around 1991 or 1992 and used their forums extensively. I remember 1993-1994 as the year all hell broke loose on the Internet, because America Online finally started allowing cross-communication between .aol email addresses and other email addresses. I first saw a demo of the graphics-based World Wide Web running on a very slow beta version of Mosaic in 1993, and, in one of the defining moments of my life, said, "This is cute, but useless. It'll never catch on."
So, that's a long answer to a short question. Bottom line: You'd be safe making your fictional company computer-free. Alternatively, your secretary might be typing away on an IBM Selectric while her boss was swearing at his PC. E-mail would probably not be in heavy use. The PC would be used mostly for spreadsheets and (secretly) computer games.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 03:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 07:03 pm (UTC)[Fic] "Do not stand at my grave and weep" -- Chronicles of Narnia
Date: 2011-09-21 11:20 pm (UTC)"How so?" Shezan asked, slipping her newly ragged volume of Hilad's poems of grief under a sheaf of papers on her desk. She pushed herself to focus, to think outward instead of in. "You said yourself that things in Narnia went promisingly. The queen challenged Rabadash to prove himself, she accepted the necklace he offered, she followed him to Tashbaan -- done, and done, and done. And she does not strike me as one to court war over a broken dance."
Ilgamuth glanced along the hallway behind him and closed the door to Shezan's rooms. "That would be true if she were a daughter of Calormen. But she is a barbarian, and the more I speak to her retinue, the more I suspect she opened the dance unaware." He sank onto the sofa and gestured as if opening a book and preparing to share the knowledge it contained. "Consider that Narnia lay prisoned in sorcerous winter for a century, and that the tetrarchs, to all reports, come from a land beyond the edge of the world -- as our ancestors did, nigh a thousand years ago. The queen had no reason to know our customs. Even the humans among her counselors might have remained purposefully ignorant, out of ancient spite and resentment."
"You believe that she thinks she is still in the space before the first step?" Shezan said slowly. "Still considering whether to stake a claim?"
Ilgamuth nodded. "It would make sense of her behavior of late. In Narnia, she was warm to counter the land's chill -- even in spring, the nights are cold and frost is far from unknown on the fields. Here in Tashbaan, she grows cold to counter the heat of summer and Rabadash's growing passion. But she speaks gently and smiles when he declaims his love, rather than sliding her words around to reparations. That is the way of a woman weighing her choices and choosing to withdraw, not one who has already chosen and is having second thoughts."
If Queen Susan of Narnia thought she was unattached while Rabadash and all the court considered her halfway to marriage...
"This is not going to end well," Shezan said, echoing Ilgamuth's opening. "Can you spare this night? I have no faith in our ability to hold the Narnians, not when the gods have so clearly taken an interest in Rabadash's fate and shown a willingness to use even demons in their plans. He will be beyond fury if the queen plays him for a fool, and those of us with cooler heads must be prepared for the aftermath."
If only her grandfather had not died the day Rabadash sailed for the north... but there was no use wishing for time to unspin from its skein. Azaroth had called him home and he was with the gods, advising the armies of heaven as he had advised the Tisroc on earth. His smile, his rapier mind, his sure and gentle hands -- they belonged to the other world now.
Still. If only.
Ilgamuth leaned down to kiss her forehead, having walked over without her notice. He wrapped his left arm around her shoulders and touched the half-hidden book of poetry with his right hand. "You do your grandfather honor," he murmured. "Come. Sit with me, and I will quote Hilad's poems of love that outlasts death. Then we will save our prince from his folly and our country from humiliation."
"So may it be," Shezan agreed. Circling her hand around his wrist, she let her lover raise her to her feet.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 11:28 pm (UTC)Depression sucks. :-(
I have been meaning to go back and finish college for, god, about four years now, but I flinch away every time. I am hoping that having the process broken down into a series of tiny steps will make it feel more manageable and less overwhelmingly terrifying. *cautiously optimistic*
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 11:34 pm (UTC)Yes, I am in a MUCH better place mentally. I was out of college on a psychiatric medical leave from 2002-2003, after which I tried to go back in 2003-2004 and discovered that while I was on anti-depressants, I had not untangled all the related behavior patterns, dropped out again, and entered the work force. By mid-2006, I had found my way out of most of my mental boxes. I just remain very wary of college, because in my experience full-time school exacerbates all my negative tendencies whereas full-time work mitigates them. So my tentitive plan is to take one or two online courses a semester, maybe supplemented with a couple in-person courses from the local community college if I can wrangle a plan to get the credits transfered to the place I hope to enroll in. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 11:39 pm (UTC)This is why I want to take classes part-time instead of full-time. Work keeps me emotionally grounded in a way that school never has.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 11:55 pm (UTC)So I can safely ignore the internet, even if there are a few computers around somewhere in the office? Cool. That makes things simpler.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-21 11:59 pm (UTC)I taught myself to touch type on that machine, when I couldn't keep up with my imagination by writing longhand. *indulges in fond memories*
Selectrics sound like they were nearly ubiquitous. And hey, are you interested in a ficlet? I can totally write H/Hr if you'd like. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-09-22 12:48 am (UTC)