Thursday 10/21/2021
Hit the gym at 7:30am to do my round of the resistance machines. At 9:15 I headed out under partial clouds (it rained last night) for the East Bay, Fremont, the Shustek center. Where I spent the day cataloging. Cataloging what? Well mostly a donation that consisted of a variety of ergonomic mice. Lots of companies tried to make mice that would avoid carpal tunnel, or something. Plastic blobs shaped by holding a big lump of clay and gently squeezing it, and taking a mold from that.
For the afternoon we were joined by relatively new volunteers, a couple, Paul and Katherine. I had met them first a couple weeks ago but didn’t really inquire into their history. Today one of the museum curators stopped by to answer a question, and he an Paul started an animated conversation in which I learned that Paul was the Paul Laughton who wrote Apple DOS, the original OS for the Apple II. (No, Steve Wosniak designed the hardware. Steve Jobs managed the development and marketing.)
And that his wife Katherine worked at Atari and wrote their editor/assembler.
I felt almost as impressed and star-struck as when I talk to my CH neighbors, John and Francis, who worked on the Apollo Guidance Computer under Margaret Hamilton.
Codgerville 