meme: 5 early jobs

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks to goss, here’s a meme

Introduce yourself with some jobs you have done apart from what you do now

I retired from paid employment in 1990, and since then I’ve been a disability rights advocate, helped herd SF con cats, and typed & read many many things on the internet.

Before that, I was…

1. Photocopy clerk & summer gofer at ETS which runs high stakes educational testing like GREs, TOEFL, and SATs
2. Data tape librarian, keypunching the journeys of 9-inch tape reels between their storage cabinets and the tape drives where student loan data was read and written
3. Ten-speed bike assembler and mechanic
4. Civil engineering drafter who insisted that fire stations needed both men’s and women’s bathrooms
5. Phototypesetter, stat camera operator, pasteup artist, and staff designer

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

Love seeing #2, big mood of an era

Yes indeed!

[jesse_the_k]

I managed to touch many edges of the computing juggernaut:

• Offline interaction with a PDP-11 via paper tape
• Keypunching the data tapes
• Publishing a newsletter on 5-1/4" Apple floppy disks
• Asynchronous communication through emails and BBSs
• all the way up to the glories of Dreamwidth!

What was your first computing experience?

Re: Yes indeed!

[yourlibrarian]

Oh much later, it was data entry for an insurance company which had a disastrous rollout of its "customized" new system. Not long after I started doing data entry for a real estate firm which wanted to automate its mailing list.

[sonia]

You have done a lot of cool and important things, before and after retirement! Yay for that fire station advocacy.

Thanks!

[jesse_the_k]

It was surprising how hard the civil engineers resisted. But it was 1978, and I was the first "back shop" woman they hired.

When I arrived at my interview, the manager did a double-take: I think he was expecting a male Jesse.

...a little research reveals that the fire department shows 30 people on staff, at least six of whom look like women to me.

[lunabee34]

That is an incredibly varied career. Very cool.

Thanks!

[jesse_the_k]

Varied and also a tad restless -- while maintaining an interest in languages and codes, I switched industries every five years until I had to retire on disability.

[em_h]

Hey, fellow former phototypesetter!

Waves back emphatically!

[jesse_the_k]

Fascinated by calligraphy and Letraset when I was in middle school. In my 20s, taught myself Compugraphic IV and then Editwriter 7500.

You?

Re: Waves back emphatically!

[em_h]

Watched hot lead typesetting as a child (my father was a writer and connected to small publishers), taught myself Compugraphic IV when I was working at a student newspaper because doing my own typesetting was the only way to get anything done efficiently. Ended up moving from being an arts reporter to managing the typesetting room. Never did use EditWriter 7500, I went from the Compugraphic IV to an early generation of computer typesetting and layout at a different indie paper.

Years later I happened to walk by the student newspaper office when they were discarding the old Compugraphics, and I was sorely tempted to take one home. I weirdly loved those machines.

Re: Waves back emphatically!

[jesse_the_k]

How cool to see hot lead in your youth!

doing my own typesetting was the only way to get anything done efficiently.

That's the hard-mode version of "don't learn how to type or they'll make you a secretary."

There was something charming about the Comp IV—I think it encouraged mindful action, since one had to make all choices one line at a time. I can't remember if one could scroll back in that line, or only backspace? I was particularly proud of being able to typeset 4-up business cards in one go, only adding the cut lines later in pasteup.

The printshop owner didn't want to shell out for "extra" 8" floppy disks on the EditWriter, so we had just two of them. That was terrifying when I typeset a mail-order catalog and didn't want to have to rekey those highly-fragrant hand-written pages.

If you care to wander down memory lane, may I recommend a very Web 1.0 site, Prepressure.com.