I was one of the "early birds" in computing. In 1957 I was working at the Census Bureau and I got to take an on-the-job course in Programming - to program the new Univac 5. Anyway, we programmed in Assembler Language, but there was not yet an assembler for that machine, so we had to translate the code into octal, get it punched on tab cards, and feed it into the computer. My sort program failed, and I got a machine dump printed out, but never got a chance to re-try. (only one member of the class had a successful program, a little lady whose regular job was filing clerk).

That was the last programming I did at the Census Bureau. However, later when I was doing my graduate work in Sociology at Columbia and was a research assistant at the Bureau of Applied Social Research, the university acquired a big computer -- IBM 7090. Few sociologists knew any programming, so my Census Bureau course - failed sort program and all - made me an instant "guru." I learned Fortran from a manual and became the BASR Programmer and Computing Consultant. My professional career was tied to computing (particularly statistical program applications) from then on.

I was computer savvy - programming, managing, teaching, and consulting - for many years. Then in the 1990's I began to fall behind. The changes came faster than I could keep up with them. I stayed on top of the statistical packages and applications, but became obsolete in programming and in systems. At this point I cannot even install the operating system on my microcomputer. What I don'k know far, far exceeds whatever I ever knew (most of which is totally useless in today's computing world anyway.)

Nevertheless, it has been great fun learning and using the newer computer applications. Here are some of the things I do on the computer these days:

• E-mail communications
• Financial Management (bank account records, tax records, etc.)
• Managing my photo collection and creating "albums"
• Writing reports of my climbing and other trips
• Recording my dreams (when opportunity permits)
• Assembling a family history
• Shopping
• Selling books on Ebay HalfDotCom
• Looking up information
• Solving Puzzles and Playing Games

• Developing this personal website

• Building The Website: Creating the markup language code for the pages
• Graphics Tools: Preparing the Graphics for display on the pages
• Web Hosting: Finding a Web Host on which to store and display the pages

At some later time I may post details on some of my other computing activities.

Meanwhile, I would love to receive your comments, and suggestions and something about your own experiences in these areas.

You can contact me at: sidel.climbing@verizon.net

--- Phil Sidel