I hate to sound like a geezer, but hey, you kids just have no idea. Years ago, in the mist of the primeval past before computers were standard office equipment, I worked for a Fortune 500 company where "office automation" consisted of two IBM Selectric typewriters with 7,500-character memories. We had acquired these devices so we could avoid retyping boilerplate, but their limited memories rendered them useless I hate to sound like a geezer, but hey, you kids just have no idea.Years ago, in the mist of the primeval past before computers were standard office equipment, I worked for a Fortune 500 company where “office automation” consisted of two IBM Selectric typewriters with 7,500-character memories. We had acquired these devices so we could avoid retyping boilerplate, but their limited memories rendered them useless for any real work. This was just about the time the first Apple IIs came on the market, with word-processing and spreadsheet capabilities, not to mention floppy disks that could save countless (well, at least dozens of) documents. I was fascinated by the cute little computers, and bought one to fool around with at home. I also asked my boss if we could buy one for the office. You already know the answer; those computers were not sold by IBM — and that magic three-letter word was the last word in most business conversations. Not long afterward, I acquired an Osborne computer which came bundled with WordStar (an early word processor), a SuperCalc spreadsheet, and Personal Pearl, a crude database manager. As an experiment, I put the department’s budget into SuperCalc, and when revisions arrived on my desk, I went home and cranked them into the spreadsheet. When I returned the revised budget to the office within two hours (it usually took all day), I was expecting a pat on the back for my timely innovation. Instead, Charlie, my boss, shot me a glance of withering disapproval, and scolded me for not having given the numbers sufficient care. I explained to him how a spreadsheet worked. To my amazement, he caved. Sort of. Charlie agreed to let me use my computer at home to update the budget, just as long as I checked the spreadsheet calculations manually. Sheesh. Nonetheless, this turned out to be the tip of the camel’s nose poking into our office tent. Soon middle managers had brand new IBM PCs on their desks and were taking typing (I mean “keyboarding”) classes — held behind closed doors so nobody would spy them learning a secretarial skill. And when someone’s printer quit working, or he couldn’t figure out how to format a page, guess who he called to help? Me. Even so, it took months before some of the managers gave up scribbling document edits on pages their secretaries printed out for them. In a way, I can’t blame those managers for avoiding word processing. Our first PCs were cursed with IBM’s DisplayWrite, a clunky word processor which had been selected by my boss “Charlie” (newly appointed “automation manager”) because a) it sported the three magic letters, and b) an IBM rep had lied and assured him it could produce two-column text, which we needed. We ended up using DisplayWrite to print single columns, then cutting and pasting them two to a page and running the mock-ups through a copy machine — until I brought in my personal copy of WordPerfect, which could generate two-column text easily. Two weeks later, after I helped staffers learn how the program worked, everyone in the office was using it, despite Charlie’s complaints. And somehow I became the go-to computer guy. Eventually, Charlie was promoted sideways, and they changed my job description to something with IT in the title. Now, did I tell you about slogging three miles to school through waist-high snowdrifts? And that was during summer session. Data Management