Charlotte County Florida Weekly

First Loves

Business leaders reveal their complicated affairs with their first computers



 

 

DAN CREIGHTON REMEMBERS TWO COMputer geniuses standing over him as they provided step-by-step instructions for using the new-fangled machine on his desk. Unfortunately, they weren’t around the next day when a lengthy letter he was about to finish typing disappeared with a push of a button. The screen went blank and Mr. Creighton’s document was never seen again, sucked into the technology black hole birthed by the inception of the personal computer in the 1980s.

“Even though I had that computer, I kept going back to the typewriter,” admits Mr. Creighton, then working as a money manager in California. “I was more comfortable with it.”

Ah, the early days of computing — before clouds, recovery programs and save buttons ensured a version of a document was stored somewhere. Local business owners remember those neophyte days of technology gone amok, of lost or misplaced files, user and ID10T errors, and those darn bomb messages that sent many early Mac users into panic mode. One could only reboot and hope most of the document had magically survived.

 

 

Michael Wynn, president of Sunshine Ace Hardware, is still haunted by an upgrade gone awry five years ago. “I mistakenly listened to the software developer who said it would take just four to six hours for the conversion. It took 18 hours and there was nothing we could do except watch the screen kick through its progressive percentage of completion. It was one of the few times a technology problem was visible to our customers.”

Wynn’s six-store franchise now has multiple back-ups in place, including those old manual credit card swipes.

Markham Norton Mosteller Wright & Co., a CPA firm with offices in Naples and Fort Myers, has always invested in state-of-the-are equipment, says partner Gail Markham.

“We made the big technology leap 20 years ago when our first IBMs were huge with very little capacity, not to mention very expensive,” she says, adding those early machines didn’t always live up to their hype. “I still remember the prom- ises made and not delivered by the IBM and Lanier sales reps: that the systems were integrated and would ‘talk to each other.’”

Sometimes being the first to test drive cutting-edge technology can backfire. Karen Mosteller, Ms. Markham’s partner, remembers jumping at the chance to convert to the new Citrix system “before the software companies had worked out all the kinks. We experienced a lot of instability until the software caught up to the technology,” she says. “At that point we were ‘bleeding edge.’”

Even IT experts have their duh moments. Michael Tarabokija, the tech whiz at the CPA firm, has become so attached to his smartphone, “I swam with it once in my swimming shorts.”

Eventually, most have came to love computers and technology. Now an integral part of the modern office and business, computers weren’t always the savvy, almost intuitive machines they are today. They were slow, cumbersome and less than engaging with nothing but a DOS prompt. Some required multiple program diskettes and a kid-glove treatment, or a little manipulating, as was the case of Naples Airport Authority’s executive director Ted Soliday who back in the 1980s finagled his Apple2E to run an IBM spell check program.

“The IBM program had more applications and was quicker and better than AppleWorks,” he recalls. “All it took was a touch of silver solder to get the Apple to accept the IBM programs.

When the computer crashed, as all eventually do, even the Apple dealer was stunned by the transformation. “He asked, ‘How did you do that?’” says Mr. Soliday.

Despite the problems — or maybe because of them — many of us remember our first computer as we do our first love.

Tom Uhler, a principal of Uhler and Vertick Financial Planners, says he’s revealing his age when he points to the Apple2+ as his first computer. “It had no hard drive, just an external floppy drive. I had to load the program off of the floppy, then take out the accounting program and put in a data disk. I eventually sprung for a second floppy drive. All it had was a DOS prompt. There was no graphical user interface.”

Floppy drives were the bane of Mr. Soliday’s earliest experiences with a computer, an Apple2E that had two external hard drives. The top drive was dedicated to the main program; the bottom for a spreadsheet or whatever project he was working on. “If you wanted to do spell check, you had to take out the main program and keep the lower disk in,” he recalls. “You were changing floppy drives all the time, but it was better than a typewriter.”

Networking those individual desk computers was the looming mainframe, a computer so large it often required its own air-conditioned room.

“No one was allowed within 10 feet of the mainframe room,” says Mr. Creighton.

Some veteran users got a jumpstart into the computer realm, introduced during childhood or school years. Others were already working real jobs in the real world when these desktop devices suddenly invaded their worlds.

Robert Fay, vice president of Seminole Gulf Railway, was a mere babe of 3 or 4 when he decided to play with a stack of program cards his father, a transportation consultant, was converting to reelto reel.

“I got it good,” he remembers. “In spite of my age I had to sort them back to the proper order”

The family’s first home computer was an Apple clone, a Franklin. During high school Mr. Fay used an IBM PC, and as a college junior a Mac. “It wasn’t a singlebox Mac. This one behaved more like an IBM PC. It had a monitor separate from the computer.”

Mr. Wynn’s first computer was an Apple2E he begged his parents for in the early ’80s. “It had a five-and-a-quarter floppy drive and a monochromatic screen. I used it for homework, reports and, at that point, a lot of games. It was a great machine, but it was slow. You had to load everything into the memory.”

Mr. Soliday was introduced to computers aboard the aircraft he flew while serving as a Marine pilot in Vietnam. After a medical discharge, he returned to college and enrolled in computer classes. “I could program four or five different languages on the big old IBM mainframe,” he says. “That was back when you had to punch a punch card. I had 2,000 cards for one program, and I hated having to find the stupid card that had an error if I made an error. But I really got into computers.”

Collier County Tax Collector Larry Ray was also introduced to computers in the military and took graduate classes in programming during college in the 1970s. “We used an IBM mainframe and you had to get your results from the guys in the computer room.”

Navigating the early days of the computer world also meant learning the lingo — hardware, software, diskettes — and frequent calls to the predecessor of the “IT guy.”

“During my training, I’m thinking, ‘What are you talking about?’” recalls Mr. Creighton, president of the eponymous Cape Coral-based commercial development and construction firm. “We had a software guy and a hardware guy and none of us knew what software or hardware was.”

Today, computers and technology are a necessity in the business environment.

“There aren’t too many things we do that don’t involve a computer one way or another,” says Mr. Wynn. “We have a separate data server that collects a mirror image of point of sales and inventory. We use the data to learn more about merchandising assortment changes and can even measure the speed of checkout.”

“I learned to love the organization and accountability of a computer,” says Mr. Creighton. “The applications today are pretty amazing. I can track everything.”

Even old letters. “Now, I can pull up a letter or correspondence sent to me six months ago,” he says.

Mr. Uhler jokes that he’s a whiz on Excel. “I get teased because I know every Excel shortcut,” he says. “I’m not the first to adapt to things but once I do I really embrace them.”

“We have instant access to research, whether it be for tax, litigation, consulting or continuing education,” says Ms. Markham. “We also have 24/7 access to each other, our clients, our friends, families and our networks.”

Today, smartphones and iPads are the two technological tools these business people say they can’t live without.

“I’m in love with my iPad. I love getting instant information no matter where I am,” says Mr. Creighton. “I have a BlackBerry and I’m about to switch to an iPhone to coordinate it with my iPad.”

The connectivity and instant communication — what businesspeople love most about technology — is also what they dislike. Sometimes it’s just hard to unplug, says Mr. Soliday.

“Computers today are half of my day,” he says. “I can’t get past e-mail. I carry a BlackBerry. It’s always there and hard to get away from.”

Mr. Uhler has an iPhone and is eyeing an iPad — a move he hopes will reduce the physical clutter of file folders and loose-leaf notebooks. He’s also looking to the ‘cloud,’ hoping to one day access all of those former paper files from either device.

“It’s funny because there’s almost a pecking order to computers and technology,” he says. “The older guys I’ve worked with thought I was a genius because I could help with minor computer problems. I think my partner’s a genius because he can help me, and he thinks his younger brother is a genius because he is a genius. I’ve learned there’s always someone who knows less than you and always someone who knows more.

“And if you need something explained, find a 14-year-old.” ¦


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