Has It Been That Long?

I reconnected with a a long-ago friend from when I worked at IBM as a co-op many years ago.  We did some catching up asking the, "so what are you doing now?" type questions.  We reminisced about our days at the development lab and some of the memories we had.  Then, I asked him how his two boys were doing.

His sons are thirty-one and twenty-nine now.  He gave me an update on them and I thought, "hold on, they were just kids when I knew him back then."  At that point I did some year math.  It's been twenty-five years since those days at the software development lab.  I felt old.

Maybe not old so much as aged.  I still feel in many ways like the co-op who came in and helped the team doing something called, "object-oriented programming".  I made a lot of diskette copies (3.5") and I installed OS/2 on I don't know how many machines.  If it was mundane and an actual employee didn't want to do it, they had one of the co-op do it.

And we didn't mind.  We were having fun as college students working in the real world, making an hourly wage that is still well over today's minimum wage.  We were also given email addresses, which in 1990, most people didn't have.

And we sent instant messages.  No one had heard of an instant message back then, but the VMS mainframe we used for internal mail had something called "tell".  If you knew the person's ID that you wanted to message, you could type, "TELL DELMONTE.J MEET FOR LUNCH IN THE CAFETERIA AT NOON?"   That little message would pop up at the bottom of their terminal screen and they could respond back just as easily.  It was high-tech, even if it was on a terminal green screen.

That was also when I found out how much of a time suck instant messaging could be.  You start a conversation about the funny thing your office mate is doing at her desk and the next thing you know, twenty minutes has gone by.

I was a lowly co-op back then, but I remember those days fondly.  All the IBM-ers were friendly and I felt like a real member of the team.  Four years later when I left (after being hired out of college to work with the same group), was a sad day.

The Big Boy Update:  He loves his teacher.  He got in the car after school and announced this to daddy.  Then, his sister said she loved Kica too.  Kica is so nice, I'm not surprised they feel that way.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  The potty squat.  Today my daughter needed to go to the potty and had waited almost too long to make it.  As she was climbing up on the big potty she couldn't hold it any longer and just started to go.  She was only half-way on, feet and hands on the seat of the toilet in a position I can only describe as, "bug like".  She made it though, so I'm not complaining.

Fitness Update:  That tennis elbow, or whatever it is I have going on, became worse after a lot of pullups last Friday so Don had me do a legs-only workout today.  My legs are tired.  I hope my arm feels better tomorrow because my legs may revolt if this keeps up.