Loren Petrich's Computer-Center Page

Computers are one of my favorite subjects. I have been working with them ever since the early 1980's, and I got my start on Big Iron: IBM System-370-series mainframes running VM/CMS and Digital VAXes running VMS and UNIX. I'd connect to them by logging on at a terminal which was often very distant from the computer itself. However, as the years went by, I switched to Apple Macintoshes for much of what I do, though I had continued to do much of the heavy number-crunching of my line of work on Sun workstations and servers, all running UNIX. I occasionally use some PeeCees, as I like to call them, but only at work for stuff that runs only on them. And when I do work on one of them, I often prefer DOS to Windoze, as I like to call it. I have plenty of programming experience, and much of my career is built on doing programming.

I am old enough to remember a time when it was IBM that was the big villain of computing, anonymous, corporate, you name it. Apple's (in)famous "1984" commecial (available online at various places) was widely viewed as an attack on that Immense Blue Monolith. However, in recent years, a different villain has taken its place, Microsoft, aggressive, crooked, thieving, you name it. One difference is that that company has a personality attached to it -- its founder and head, Bill Gates (an interesting change from IBM's image of anonymous suitdom). And the villain of that "1984" commercial looks suspiciously like him. Though M$, as I sometimes like to call that company, has been rather shamelessly imitative, there are some things that it has yet to imitate. For more on a rather interesting perspective on this company, check out my page on JoanieDearest, the nickname I have invented for a certain Joan L. Brewer Grove.

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