An aging community we are

[John Esak]

[...]


Okay, let me see... 

<reminiscing mode on>
<run-on-sentence option engaged>


It was in 1979 that I was hired by a gent from ABC News who had just taken
over the management of Enterprise Radio, an offshoot of ESPN which had just
been sold by Scott Rasmussin and his dad (who started ESPN in their living
room and had recently sold it for big $$$... The very same Scott Rasmussin
who I see daily on all the networks running his most excellent political
polling apparatus)... Hired that is to get ER on the air a 24 hour sports
radio network... A thing never heard of before... 24 hour anything... By
midnight January 1, 1980.  It was the most hectic 9 months of my life and
somehow, some way we actually got the whole NOC, satellite uplink system and
several dozen downlinks around the country finished on time.  I was working
24 hours a day and no kidding.   During that time, I hired a guy who used to
work with me at Sigma Sound Studios in NYC. His name  was Doug Grinsberg.
Both he and I were introduced to Profile by a kid named.... Oh my God, I've
nearly forgotten his name!  Dana Hones... Anyway, he was and still hopefully
is one of the greatest guys... :-)  He had Profile on a Model II, and with
Scripsit, they sucked me up in a huge way. Left ER in the spring of 1980 and
moved to Washington, DC., where I worked as a programmer for a couple
different companies... Then joined RS as a CSR in their M Street store as
Bill noted. 

(Previous to all this, in the early/mid 70's I worked with Unix from
AT&T/Bell Labs as it was distributed to the colleges and Universities.  I
was a nerd at the University Of South Florida getting my Master's degree,
where we had a PDP 1170 all to ourselves in the music synthesis studio....
Boy, they were great times. I played in the studio by day and rock & roll
bands by night. One of my bands toured around a bit in Florida with the
likes of The Allman Brothers and others.  There were even a couple times
when I opened the show for Jay Giles and Styx as a soloist! I could actually
play a piano then. :-) and had a Fender Rhodes all hyped up with phase
shifters and every other kind of do-dad available at the time. ... Before
*that*... It was the 60's and I was in the charter class of an experimental
college in Sarasota called New College.  Yes, the sixties were good to me,
so I won't recall (at this time) too much about those days... :-)  I do,
however, specifically remember the day our Nat Sci department got one of the
first LED calculators ever made... It had four functions. Yes, +, -, *, /
and I'm dead serious.  Square root didn't come out until a little later...
Sometime when CB radios joined in the fray I think. :-)  Now too be honest,
CB was out a decade earlier than this, but it didn't catch on until the
70's.  Okay, I've got to stop this, or we'll never get to the filePro stuff.
:-) )

One of the real "achievements" of my lifetime was at the M-Street store
circa 1982, building a Profile/BASIC based system for a guy who worked for
Oliver T. Carr (sp?) a huge developer/financier in DC. At the top of the OTC
building on K street I think... I put in a Model II running "terminal"... It
was controlled by this guy's home system (another Model II) when he dialed
in on 300 baud modem and controlled (with some nifty special RS-232
switches) the air-conditioning and heating system of this enormous (like 15
stories) building.  I am absolutely certain this is one of the very first
implementations of personal computers for this purpose ever.  If this didn't
presage the future-world-view and *current* ubiquity of our Max Headroom
society, I don't know what would.  Now, everything is controlled remotely to
varying degrees of complexity over "the net" as we all know... And without
doubt the Max Headroom series was not just 20 minutes into the future but 20
years ahead of *its* time.... And my little program for OTC way back then
was 25 years ahead of its time.  (And this was before Profile even had
"lookup" and Math 64!

I wouldn't be surprised if I hadn't hit on Bill Campbell for ideas on that
little program. He was one of the most technically savvy guys around at the
time. No wonder his store did amazing business. 

Shortly after that 1982 time frame I joined Small Computer... Maybe 1984,
and ran the Washington, DC office, which grew at one point to a staff of
17people!  Here is where I met up and partnered with Ken White, hired Doug
Grinbergs back again, and Steve Hood among many other RS people.... All
because they knew filePro...  Well, I remember teaching Ken filePro. It took
a few days... I hired him because he was smart, not because he knew the
program. :-)  (I'm sure he still hates me for ripping him away from his
electronics design aspirations.)

So, let's see again... Does all that roughly add up to me being 60 and
giving exactly half of my waking life to the writing of filePro code??? Um,
yes. :-)  Now, some may have put a :-( after that statement, but I don't
think I would have changed any part of this for the world.  All of us who
*hit* the birth of the personal computer  industry at its outset are among
the luckiest folks in history. None of us here will have our names carved
into the cornerstones of buildings like some we know... But we were right
there with the movers and shakers for all of it as it was happening. Nope,
wouldn't change anything, except... I would have written a foolproof
licensing scheme into filePro when it was first released from Radio Shack's
grip.  I believe it would have become a smash success story of the age like
Lotus 123.  But for that miss-step, filePro had it all and would have
garnered the R&D $$ to keep it on the forefront forever..  Still, the
majority of us made good livings on what it *did* become and still will *be*
in the future.  Most of the programs I've written are self-pruning,
self-configurable and fully operable "as is" for the next couple decades
should the hardware be available to keep them going. I hear very little from
a whole host of companies that still use my stuff... And all of it was
written in filePro of various vintages.  Good job, Ken, Ron, et al... (By
the way, who is this Al guy anyway? He seems to be everywhere.)

</reminiscing mode/>
</roso/>

As fun and happy as my life has been, I hate doing this.  I much prefer
looking forward than backward.  And right now, I have a few hours of
late-night programming in filePro to look forward to. Honest, and I still
enjoy it!

John Esak