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After reviewing years of digital data, I've highlighted work from the 1990s, back to the 1970s.
A number of years were dedicated to working for Imperial Oil. Better known as Esso, or Exxon. While I was entrenched in the mainframe computer world, personal computing advanced at a rapid pace. Remember the day the Macintosh came out? I do.The week after it happened, I saw my first Mac. Then, with a group of sixty others we made a bulk purchase. My first "real" computer! What could you do with it? Art? In fact, not much! Tools were expensive. However, history was in the making. My life was about to undergo some radical changes, and these happened to coincide with a radical change in the world's usage of microcomputers.
In 1985 I was elected president of the Calgary Apple Corps, an Apple User group. Here is some of my art work that was printed in our club's newsletter, 'The Wrapple": Jun 1985, Sept 1985, and Oct 1985. This club grew from a few dozen people to over 500 members during my time on the executive.
In the latter part of the1980's I was busy learning languages like forth, modula 2, various macintosh technologies, and mainframe technologies. I was co-chair for the mainframe support venue during the Calgary 1988 Winter Olympics and also got involved in presenting the macintosh as an alternative to the PC at ESSO. Hard work and my ability to solve various technical issues, such as building a generic platform that could be cloned in a few minutes for new machines paid off, as ESSO embarked on purchasing a few thousand machines. Why Macintosh? I think Wallter S. Mossberg's September 30th 1999 column in the Wall Street Journal 'I'm Tired of the Way Windows Freezes!' sums up the problems with the 'winning' technology. Don't misunderstand me . I'm able to work with other technologies, and I've installed a number of NT servers to my personal satisfaction and standards.
Just in case you ask, yes I do know assembler (three or four variations).
In addition to all the above, I completed a Dale Carnegie course, spent a few months in Barranquilla Columbia, South America, with Exxon Coal and Minerals, and formed a new microcomputer based business (since that business no longer exists I afraid the URL link has dissappeared) with two collegues from Esso, and built some fonts.
If you review my material from the 1990s you'll see how far I've progressed in style and technical abilities from the 80s. Remember high density disks, or when postscript was new? What about those mighty mainframes?
Enough said. Let's explore the 1990s, before you visit the 1970s.