LDSW #21 - How I Got My First Computer
In the early 1980s while I was working as a secretary at Clark College, I had a sick day off work when I sprained an ankle, so I spent the whole day reading a book I had recently purchased on doing family history by computer.
I had drawers full of family group sheets, pedigree charts and hand written notes hastily scribbled on various sizes and colors of notebook paper. The collection, all too often, spilled out on the floor every time I tried to access a particular item. I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could organize these things so I could access them quickly? Then I read the book. It had long been a goal of mine to do a thorough preliminary survey to determine which of my ancestors still needed their temple work done. Computer genealogy seemed to be the answer I needed.
I was also spurred on by a passage in the Doctrine and Covenants Section 128:24 which was imbedded deep in my mind, “Let us, therefore, as a church and a people, and as Latter-day Saints, offer unto he Lord an offering in righeousness; and let us present in His holy temple, when it is finished, a book containing the records of our dead which shall be worthy of all acceptation.” How was this even possible?
A few of my prayers had been answered from time to time, so I began praying for how I could purchase a computer. It didn’t seem possible at the time. All our regular income was dedicated to other obligations. Desktop computers in the homes were just becoming a reality, and costs were somewhere around $2,000, which was too much for our budget. Then came the miracle.
We had invested in a limited partnership, which owned and operated apartments and condominiums, several years earlier. So far we had seen very little return on our investment. But this year the company sent us a dividend of $900 dollars. It came at the same time as a local retail store was offering new, affordable home computers with 64k memory for only $800. We jumped into the car and headed for the store. I got there in time to buy one of the computers. Within a few days, a man my husband worked with, mentioned that he had one of the rachet type printers he wanted to sell so he could upgrade to a newer model, and he was asking just $100 for his old printer. We bought it!
I was then able to purchase a copy of Personal Ancestral File (PAF) software from our church bookstore, and began entering family names into my own database. It had been only a few weeks since I had read that book. I was convinced that the Lord does hear and answer our prayers! [And we never got another large dividend from that investment!]
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Saturday, April 6, 2013
On Being a Perfectionist
In one of my recent blogs I wrote about things I started doing but didn’t take them to the next level and went on to try another craft or hobby. Now, I’ve been thinking about some things I do that are done well.
I can make real fir Christmas wreaths and boughs like a professional. I can knit baby caps on a rake loom, and I’ve even sold a few. I can write a book about my husband’s white-water rafting experiences. I have a full notebook containing articles I’ve published. I can play the piano well enough to accompany congregational singing. I could even hold my own in a Jeopardy quiz on music and musicians. At 50 years of age, I earned an Associate Degree in Arts and Sciences from a community college. My emphasis was on Technical Writing and computer applications. I can layout and print out newsletters. I can make up lesson plans, and teach how to do genealogy, and how to write your personal history.
When I was 18 years old, and recently graduated from high school, I was hired as a clerk-typist for a custom house brokerage. I worked for a boss who demanded perfection. Though it was after World War II, it was sort of “known” about the office that he and his wife were Jewish and had escaped from Nazi Germany, which had something to do with their not having any family. He was a proud Prussian and used to demanding what he wanted. There were some nights, after dinner, when I helped my mom by wiping dishes, that I would complain to her about how mean Mr. Adolph Carr was.
I became able to meet his demands. We had a complicated 4-digit file numbering system. Over time I had the important account numbers memorized and could put my hand on a file as soon as he called for it–usually during a phone call. It was in the days when we made Consumption Entries on purple ditto masters that could not be erased. The masters were run through a cylinder with an alcoholic solution to print out copies. If I had a strikeover it would eternally embarrass me. When I had “down” time at work, Mr Carr would hand me a big book full of addresses for freight forwarders. I think he must have known every freight forwarder in West Germany. It was my job to type up business solicitation letters to each of them. The letters had to be perfect–no erasures or “white-out” or correction tape marks added. One particularly slow day, I didn’t have any other work to do but the solicitation letters. That day I typed 40 letters and envelopes–my best record.
Mr. Carr also dictated letters which I wrote down in shorthand. One day I missed a spelling error. He held the letter up in the air, and in a booming voice called out, “What is this? I can’t read it. Is it in Spanish or something? All eyes from the office staff were on me as I hurried back to his desk to see what he was so excited about, and with a red face, assured him I would retype the letter.
I remained at this office for two years, until I got married and moved to California. What did I learn from all that harassment? I learned basic double-entry bookkeeping from Mr. Carr. I learned to look words up in a dictionary, and became a good speller. When computers came along I could type over 100 words per minute. When my husband and I are in strange cities I am able to memorize street names, routes and directions quickly. I have ways to remember people’s names.
I still use my shorthand skills when I go to meetings and classes. I became more organized and efficient as I went on to learn more computer applications. There’s one more thing I can do to perfection. I can type professional resume’s without a blemish. As a writer using a word processor, I will reprint a page, several times if necessary, to correct even one tiny mistake. Now I am a perfectionist too! As I think back about Mr. Carr, I’m grateful that he pushed me to do my best. And my mind echoes back, “whatever’s worth doing, is worth doing well!”
I can make real fir Christmas wreaths and boughs like a professional. I can knit baby caps on a rake loom, and I’ve even sold a few. I can write a book about my husband’s white-water rafting experiences. I have a full notebook containing articles I’ve published. I can play the piano well enough to accompany congregational singing. I could even hold my own in a Jeopardy quiz on music and musicians. At 50 years of age, I earned an Associate Degree in Arts and Sciences from a community college. My emphasis was on Technical Writing and computer applications. I can layout and print out newsletters. I can make up lesson plans, and teach how to do genealogy, and how to write your personal history.
When I was 18 years old, and recently graduated from high school, I was hired as a clerk-typist for a custom house brokerage. I worked for a boss who demanded perfection. Though it was after World War II, it was sort of “known” about the office that he and his wife were Jewish and had escaped from Nazi Germany, which had something to do with their not having any family. He was a proud Prussian and used to demanding what he wanted. There were some nights, after dinner, when I helped my mom by wiping dishes, that I would complain to her about how mean Mr. Adolph Carr was.
I became able to meet his demands. We had a complicated 4-digit file numbering system. Over time I had the important account numbers memorized and could put my hand on a file as soon as he called for it–usually during a phone call. It was in the days when we made Consumption Entries on purple ditto masters that could not be erased. The masters were run through a cylinder with an alcoholic solution to print out copies. If I had a strikeover it would eternally embarrass me. When I had “down” time at work, Mr Carr would hand me a big book full of addresses for freight forwarders. I think he must have known every freight forwarder in West Germany. It was my job to type up business solicitation letters to each of them. The letters had to be perfect–no erasures or “white-out” or correction tape marks added. One particularly slow day, I didn’t have any other work to do but the solicitation letters. That day I typed 40 letters and envelopes–my best record.
Mr. Carr also dictated letters which I wrote down in shorthand. One day I missed a spelling error. He held the letter up in the air, and in a booming voice called out, “What is this? I can’t read it. Is it in Spanish or something? All eyes from the office staff were on me as I hurried back to his desk to see what he was so excited about, and with a red face, assured him I would retype the letter.
I remained at this office for two years, until I got married and moved to California. What did I learn from all that harassment? I learned basic double-entry bookkeeping from Mr. Carr. I learned to look words up in a dictionary, and became a good speller. When computers came along I could type over 100 words per minute. When my husband and I are in strange cities I am able to memorize street names, routes and directions quickly. I have ways to remember people’s names.
I still use my shorthand skills when I go to meetings and classes. I became more organized and efficient as I went on to learn more computer applications. There’s one more thing I can do to perfection. I can type professional resume’s without a blemish. As a writer using a word processor, I will reprint a page, several times if necessary, to correct even one tiny mistake. Now I am a perfectionist too! As I think back about Mr. Carr, I’m grateful that he pushed me to do my best. And my mind echoes back, “whatever’s worth doing, is worth doing well!”
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Memorizing Preserves the Past
Memorizing Preserves the Past
The power of recalling memorized materials has awed me. I didn’t set out to memorize many things but those I did commit to memory are not only still with me, they are teaching lessons I didn’t get the first time around.
Take the Gettysburg Address, written by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, for instance. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Nelson, divided this famous speech into four parts. I got the first section to memorize: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation can long endure...” Then the person reading part two took over, followed by persons three and four. At the very end we chorused together, “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” What a great message to give a rising generation surrounded by doubts and fears about the future!
I was a little girl with a big book of Nursery Rhymes. I could recite the verses before I could actually read them. This prompted me to ask, “Why couldn’t Humpty Dumpty be put back together again?” And “Why would anyone put four and twenty blackbirds in a pie? In my book they were all chirping their heads off while singing.”
My dad decided I should memorize the multiplication tables. Every time we went somewhere in the car, he would fire off a set. “What is seven times six?” I was expected to fire right back with “forty-two.” I can still answer the questions quickly. After I perfected the times table he started drilling me on the names of the forty-eight states and their capitols. “The capitol of Michigan is Lansing.”
In church every Sunday we said little verses called Sacrament gems. Six of those verses are now words to a Sacramental hymn we sing. “In memory of the broken flesh, we take the broken bread. And witness with the cup afresh, our faith in Christ, our Head.”
I learned the thirteen Articles of Faith by memory, when my Sunday School teacher, Mrs. June Skyles, offered a prize to the first person who memorized all thirteen. Guess who won? I was given a sweet picture of a cottage surrounded by flowers, to hang on my bedroom wall. Maybe that’s why I love flowers so much. Maybe that’s why I can still do a pretty good job of reciting them today!
Other things I was around a lot just sort of seeped into me. Our newspaper had a little quote by Voltaire, “Though I disagree with what you say, I’ll defend to the death, your right to say it.” That was noble. Now its important.
Then there was a radio station that started out the morning news with, Salutation to the Dawn. That poem was in a book my husband and I were reading a few days ago. He had learned the same verse and we both recited it together. “Look to this day for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence–the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision. Look well, therefore to this day.”
Another radio program that I listened to on Sunday nights right after Mystery Theater, and just before I turned off the radio, stayed in my memory. Lying there in the dark, I still recall the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace, where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sorrow, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I shall not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Another character building poem I recall was written by one of my favorite authors, Edgar A. Guest, called Myself. “I have to live with myself and so, I want to be fit for myself to know....” This is one of the truths I have lived by.
At a recent stake conference in Peoria, Arizona, a visiting authority, Gregory Switzer, taught the audience a quick way to learn the Ten Commandments. (See Deut 5:6-21) The first four deal with God. (1) No other Gods, (2) No idols, (3) Don’t take My name in vain, (4) Keep the Sabbath Day holy. The fifth (5) commandment says to honor our parents. The last five deal with others. (6) Don’t murder, (7) Don’t commit adultery, (8) Don’t Steal, (9) Don’t Lie, (10) Don’t Covet. Since we can’t display these signs in public anymore we were told to “Teach them to your children.” He also said to use our walls and refrigerator doors to teach children. I used to display the framed testimony of Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon near my front door from D&C 76:22 “This, last of all is the testimony which we give of him. That he lives!...” I think this left an impression on my children though nobody mentions it.
By recalling things I have memorized, and “how useful they’ve been in my life, I firmly believe you can’t start too soon. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 Babies can be taught with music.
Memory is the book that can't be burned, or confiscated, or hid in a virtual cloud, no matter how many ways they try to destroy it. And even those with memory loss retain long-term memory longer than other things they may forget.
The power of recalling memorized materials has awed me. I didn’t set out to memorize many things but those I did commit to memory are not only still with me, they are teaching lessons I didn’t get the first time around.
Take the Gettysburg Address, written by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863, for instance. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Nelson, divided this famous speech into four parts. I got the first section to memorize: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation can long endure...” Then the person reading part two took over, followed by persons three and four. At the very end we chorused together, “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain–that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” What a great message to give a rising generation surrounded by doubts and fears about the future!
I was a little girl with a big book of Nursery Rhymes. I could recite the verses before I could actually read them. This prompted me to ask, “Why couldn’t Humpty Dumpty be put back together again?” And “Why would anyone put four and twenty blackbirds in a pie? In my book they were all chirping their heads off while singing.”
My dad decided I should memorize the multiplication tables. Every time we went somewhere in the car, he would fire off a set. “What is seven times six?” I was expected to fire right back with “forty-two.” I can still answer the questions quickly. After I perfected the times table he started drilling me on the names of the forty-eight states and their capitols. “The capitol of Michigan is Lansing.”
In church every Sunday we said little verses called Sacrament gems. Six of those verses are now words to a Sacramental hymn we sing. “In memory of the broken flesh, we take the broken bread. And witness with the cup afresh, our faith in Christ, our Head.”
I learned the thirteen Articles of Faith by memory, when my Sunday School teacher, Mrs. June Skyles, offered a prize to the first person who memorized all thirteen. Guess who won? I was given a sweet picture of a cottage surrounded by flowers, to hang on my bedroom wall. Maybe that’s why I love flowers so much. Maybe that’s why I can still do a pretty good job of reciting them today!
Other things I was around a lot just sort of seeped into me. Our newspaper had a little quote by Voltaire, “Though I disagree with what you say, I’ll defend to the death, your right to say it.” That was noble. Now its important.
Then there was a radio station that started out the morning news with, Salutation to the Dawn. That poem was in a book my husband and I were reading a few days ago. He had learned the same verse and we both recited it together. “Look to this day for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence–the bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow is only a vision. Look well, therefore to this day.”
Another radio program that I listened to on Sunday nights right after Mystery Theater, and just before I turned off the radio, stayed in my memory. Lying there in the dark, I still recall the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace, where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sorrow, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I shall not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Another character building poem I recall was written by one of my favorite authors, Edgar A. Guest, called Myself. “I have to live with myself and so, I want to be fit for myself to know....” This is one of the truths I have lived by.
At a recent stake conference in Peoria, Arizona, a visiting authority, Gregory Switzer, taught the audience a quick way to learn the Ten Commandments. (See Deut 5:6-21) The first four deal with God. (1) No other Gods, (2) No idols, (3) Don’t take My name in vain, (4) Keep the Sabbath Day holy. The fifth (5) commandment says to honor our parents. The last five deal with others. (6) Don’t murder, (7) Don’t commit adultery, (8) Don’t Steal, (9) Don’t Lie, (10) Don’t Covet. Since we can’t display these signs in public anymore we were told to “Teach them to your children.” He also said to use our walls and refrigerator doors to teach children. I used to display the framed testimony of Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon near my front door from D&C 76:22 “This, last of all is the testimony which we give of him. That he lives!...” I think this left an impression on my children though nobody mentions it.
By recalling things I have memorized, and “how useful they’ve been in my life, I firmly believe you can’t start too soon. “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 Babies can be taught with music.
Memory is the book that can't be burned, or confiscated, or hid in a virtual cloud, no matter how many ways they try to destroy it. And even those with memory loss retain long-term memory longer than other things they may forget.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
A Well-Intentioned Hobbiest
Once upon a time I decided to learn how to upholster a chair. A woman showed me how to strip it to the frame, put back the padding, stretch the fabric to fit tightly in the right places, tuck, tack and make a cushion with cording around the edges. Just when it was starting to look good, and I was proud to say I did it all alone [with Madeline’s supervision of course.] I stopped reupholstering chairs. I never upholstered another chair. Why?
I had done it and wanted to try something else.
I wanted to learn photography, so I took a class, and learned how to develop my own photos, and I bought my own darkroom supplies, from enlarger to trays to solutions, to glossy paper. I did print some photos and even matted some, but you know what? I found it was an expensive hobby, so I sold the supplies.
That was okay, I had done it and wanted to try something else.
So, I decided to do cross-stitch pictures. I made a wall hanging with a baby’s name and a rattle, and blocks, a heart border and his address so he won’t forget where he used to live. Then I made a house with balloons and grandchildren’s names on them. I did a couple of temple pictures for wedding gifts, made myself a design by looking out my back window at a house across the field, (Though it somehow lost its second story when I ran out of room on the fabric.) And then I got neuropathy in my hands and had to quit that activity.
Besides, I had done it and wanted to try something else.
I bought fabric in beautiful colors of purple, lavender, aqua and teal. I was going to embroider butterflies on twelve quilt blocks and make a quilt for a grand daughter’s wedding present. The quilt squares were cut out but the quilt didn’t come together. I didn’t even embroider one butterfly. She got married without a wedding quilt.
I had started it, and decided I didn’t have enough skill. I gave the fabrics to charity and wanted to try something else.
So I invented a project. I took a set of outdoorsey rubber stamps and blew each stamped image larger in my copier. There was a log cabin, and a couple of moose, (or is that meese?) and fir trees and a lazy old hound dog to lie by the front doorstep. I scanned the design and printed each element onto heat-transfer paper. Then I got some tan cotton fabric and ironed on the picture elements with lettering saying “Cabin, sweet cabin.” I couldn’t top that.
I had done it and wanted to try something else.
This time I decided to take upholstery samples about 11" x14" to see what I could do to recycle the samples. I designed a group of wall hangings for a nursery or daycare center. Using various trimmings I already had, I made a scene with fish swimming in an aquarium, a wooly sheep on a plaid background, A big frog about to snap up a dragonfly with his long tongue while a little frog watched the technique; cars, trucks and things that go, and one panel with alphabet letters. But I thought they were kind of stupid looking. I gave them away.
Besides, I had done it and wanted to try something else.
So I took another class–this one on making greeting cards with rubber stamps and other special effects. The class was fun. I began buying stamp pads and a heat embosser, and metal punches, and I got a really good deal on a set of plastic drawers to keep things in. I was going to make my Christmas cards that year. But I didn’t have time, so I bought some cards. That was okay too, except the birthdays came along faster than I could remember to make those cards too! I still might make some gift cards ahead of time.
But, I had done it and wanted to try something else.
Sometimes I mastered a skill. Sometimes I recognized I didn’t have a skill. I always wanted to jump in with both feet, and have the top kind of equipment to do the job. Sometimes my plans were changed by circumstances. I get good ideas and don’t always follow through. Last year I wanted to recognize, collect and sell jewelry over the internet. I’ve purchased all kinds of jewelry to sell, some pretty good stuff. And I have a set of tools, and I’ve noticed how other people display items at their garage sales. I’ve even learned how to sell items on the Internet. So, what’s holding me up now?
I hope I don’t find something else to try before I make this one successful!
Dedicated to all of you who have drawers full of barely used craft paints, yarns, embroidery floss, fabrics or card stock and colored pens. Can someone out there teach me how to use a Crikut machine?
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Three Books Worth Reading
Three Books That Will Inspire You and make you think about your life
The Timekeeper by Mitch Albom
We only have a small amount of time to live our lives. An ancient old man, a teen age girl with an identity crisis and a businessman with a fatal disease all play out the scenarios of their lives, which at a future time intersect with one another. The history of the world is their stage. The reader is compelled to think about what time he/she has and what they value most.
The Last Lecture by Randy Pauch
A professor diagnosed with leukemia, discusses addages he learned in life from parents, teachers and others, and how he came to value love of family, take chances, step out of his “box” to enjoy life and help his students define who they want to become.
Thank You Power by Deborah Norville
Some people advise keeping a gratitude journal. Some sing, “Count Your Many Blessings.” But gratitude is much more than that. It can affect your outlook on life, help you resist illness, get a job, and make many friends. You might even become rich! Even adversity can be turned into a positive experience. Thinking about others instead of yourself can bring blessings too. You might even learn to be truly happy.
I don’t have publishers names for these books because I have already given my copies to others, but all three are listed at discount prices on www.amazon.com And most likely, you can find them at your public library.
The Timekeeper by Mitch Albom
We only have a small amount of time to live our lives. An ancient old man, a teen age girl with an identity crisis and a businessman with a fatal disease all play out the scenarios of their lives, which at a future time intersect with one another. The history of the world is their stage. The reader is compelled to think about what time he/she has and what they value most.
The Last Lecture by Randy Pauch
A professor diagnosed with leukemia, discusses addages he learned in life from parents, teachers and others, and how he came to value love of family, take chances, step out of his “box” to enjoy life and help his students define who they want to become.
Thank You Power by Deborah Norville
Some people advise keeping a gratitude journal. Some sing, “Count Your Many Blessings.” But gratitude is much more than that. It can affect your outlook on life, help you resist illness, get a job, and make many friends. You might even become rich! Even adversity can be turned into a positive experience. Thinking about others instead of yourself can bring blessings too. You might even learn to be truly happy.
I don’t have publishers names for these books because I have already given my copies to others, but all three are listed at discount prices on www.amazon.com And most likely, you can find them at your public library.
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