Janice wrote:
Abe was absolutely passionate about e-mail possibilities for connecting colleagues, because he knew what significant work was being done and the power of connection.
I remember Abe well and enjoyed working with him as a co-conspirator on the early listservs. Here's another anecdote. Soon after I arrived in Houston in 1982 I bought an original Compaq luggable computer - the first "IBM-compatible" computer, weighed in at 35 lbs. It cost over $2000. I bought it with an American Express card I rarely used but had as an emergency backup for international travel. Now what to do to pay for it? I saw a help wanted advertisement posted by an oil trader who wanted consulting on dbase III and lotus 123. I wrote him a letter saying "there is a right and a wrong way to use Lotus 123 and Dbase III together, and I know the difference!". He hired me for $35 an hour (a fortune in 1982), and computer was paid for in no time. That was my one and only consulting job, my acceptance rate in getting consulting jobs is 100% :-) The consulting money did not go through the order/ica books. I never would have gotten priorship permission to do it. But nobody tried to stop me either. I put the computer in the ICA office, and it was very popular with my order colleagues, floppy disks and all. (Later I added a 10mb hard drive I bought for $900.) I worked off hours for 6 months or so with the oil trader, acting as his computer tutor. I wrote a dbase III program that let him keep track of buying and selling oil all over the world. Little did he know I was teaching him things I had in most cases learned just a few days before using McDonnell Douglas's one (!) PC in my NASA job! That's where I learned how to use Lotus 123 and Dbase III! I guess I was more in tune with freedom than obedience. I'm calmer now with a more Buddhist transcendent consciousness, but I'm still in touch with my freedom! Tim