A Crummy Commercial

I heard the news that Stewart Cheifet has died: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/01/stewart-cheifet-pbs-host-who-chronicled-the-pc-revolution-dies-at-87/ https://obits.goldsteinsfuneral.com/stewart-cheifet I used to watch the Computer Chronicles a lot.  It was a good show but the thing I really remember was the Cheifet "cutoff" - when he was done interviewing a person he would just walk away at the end, no closing words, just an abrupt transition :) My last job was at a company called Powercore in Manteno IL.  It was a Windows "shop" but they were expanding into Mac software at the time - later the whole Mac team (3 people) quit at the same time.  The main product at Powercore was called Network Scheduler (see the video below for details).  This was before the internet had really arrived.  Powercore had a dialup BBS to deliver software updates.  If an important customer was having trouble getting into the BBS one of the guys would go in and just hangup ...

Mentioned a work related story about Summertime in the blog yesterday.     This one ?:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onTWpZalc7c No, no, not Summerland (although that's a wonderful composition and rendition), I want SUMMERTIME ! How about this ?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK_z73tVbgU NO, That's Summertime, Summertime https://www.youtube.com/shorts/BE55yOQ_2to Yeah, that's the one ! The way Dizzy is looking at Ella is amazing - a decisive moment kind of like the pictures Cartier-Bresson or Gary Winogrand took - this picture was by William Gottlieb  https://www.newsweek.com/30-stunning-photos-golden-age-jazz-1582109 I *think* it was the first holiday season I worked at GTE (1977).  I went to the lunchroom as usual but in addition to the usual fare we were all treated to a mini-concert.  GTE in Northlake IL had clubs, all kinds of them - even photography and ham radio as I recall.  But they also had a music club of some kind because...

I used to live/work in Northlake IL.  Recently I took a "drive" around Northlake using Google.  It's been over 30 years since I've physically been in Northlake so allow me a little curiosity :)  As far as I know the town was named Northlake because two main arterial roads, Lake Street and North Avenue cross at the western boundary of Cook County / Northlake - in other words a very practical place not fancy.  Suburb names in Chicagoland could be weird though, there is one called Oakbrook which had a big mall / shopping center, and then next to it is Oakbrook Terrace, maybe not quite as upscale but again, practical :) I actually had been looking for a building to the east on North Avenue that had an old Zenith plant: next suburb east of Northlake is Melrose Park, IL They made picture tubes there but of course picture tubes and Zenith have not prospered over the last 30 years.  One of the engineers at GTE used to work at this Zenith Rauland plant.  He said the...

I used to live/work in Illinois.   At first I cashed my paycheck at what is called a currency exchange, yikes ! (they charged quite a fee).  In the late 1970s/early 1980s banking was weird in Illinois.  No branch banking, so you either had to go down into the city to a big bank or use a local bank.  I first opened an account with the Northlake Bank.  It was OK but they paid below market rates on savings and as far as I could tell their big claim to fame was that they were once held up by a gang using automatic weapons.  Next I moved to a bank in the next burb, Franklin Park.  I ditched them after one of their bankers told me that they couldn't explain their interest payment to me (which seemed low).  Then I opened an account with First Federal Savings which wasn't a bank, it was a savings and loan.  They were OK, had branches all over Chicagoland - I stayed with them ever since - they were eventually acquired by Citibank.  I also ha...

 I used to work at a place called Automatic Electric in Northlake, Illinois.  It was a good place to work, I didn't really realize how good at the time.  It was a generous place, not just in the sense of money but generous of spirit.  For example, one of my co-workers didn't have his degree (which is a whole topic for discussion, technical folks without a degree).  So he went to school at the company's expense, but he didn't study engineering, he studied music.   And his boss and the company knew that.  The company made the world a better place by allowing people to further their education / dreams.   But the operations moved out and the building I used to work in was sold in the 20th century.  One of the parts where I worked (in the front, we moved around a lot within the building) was torn down.  Here is how Bing shows it now in 2022 from above: Bing aerial view of Automatic Electric turned so that the front of the building (east) is D...