DIARY 13758
12/29/78
TALK TO ROLF ABOUT COMPUTER ECONOMICS
He's been nudging me to give him a "cost per line" for his computer computations, and I can't figure why he wants it---it's obvious to me that it's going to be profitable even if I ALONE work on it. But he keeps on asking, talking about "mom-and-pop" operations that just slide along this side of bankruptcy, and I get frustrated and ask him to tell me how much the computer will cost: $15,000. Then 3 months of computing effort on his part will cost about $5,000, and after lots of haggling he decides that for maintenance a figure of $2000 is fair, making a total outlay for the outright purchase of $22,000. After more haggling, talking about interest rates for borrowed money, repayments of loans, he decides that it must have at least a 20%-a-year profit. So I leap at the figure of 2 years and say that that's $11,000 a year for the cost of the computer and for the needed profit, $4,000 a year, which means the machine has to earn at least $15,000 a year. I take a stab at 3 people (me and him and Dennis, at least), and say that 3 people who WOULD have made $10,000 a year will NOW make $20,000 each a year, or $60,000, so that after taking off the $15,000 a year for the computer, that leaves $45,000 to be divided among the three formerly $10,000 people, bringing them up to $15,000 a year, a 50% increase. A $60,000 income at 30 cents a line is 180,000 lines, or a COMPUTER charge of 9 cents a line. I say that charging by the LINE makes it WORSE for me and BETTER for people at the bottom, while charging by the COMPUTER HOUR makes it BETTER for me and WORSE for those at the bottom, and since we're going to have to rely on QUANTITY, we should EITHER charge by the LINE, or take HALF the line cost and HALF the hour cost and COMBINE them for a MIDDLE ground for both charges. 180,000 lines is 60,000 lines per person, or at 1500 lines per index, 40 indexes per year---whoops, which suddenly seems like a LOT!! I ALSO make a list of index-instruction expansions: 1) expanded mechanics of all phases; 2) how to use codes; 3) how to edit best; 4) use of paper clips in final edit; 5) use of over/under card in typing; 6) bills and cover letters and memos on errors; 7) rules on marking; estimating lines, ranges; 8) rules on editing: cheating on sub-subs with page # same, expanding entries, continued entries; and 9) rules on typing: contd., 3-letter codes, keeping line counts and times by "1/4 deck" increments.
DIARY 13767
12/30/78
TALK WITH ROLF ABOUT HARDWARE FOR INDEXING
He says he's talked to Data General about their new hardware, and it looks like we'd be better off getting a main storage of 128,000 bytes that would be able to hold a whole index of 1800-2000 lines, which would make the initial programming much less expensive, though it would cost $11,600 as compared with the $5,800 of a 32K main storage, though he said he'd have to go with a 64K at least, anyway, and that there was an extra I/O device needed for addressing if the storage went above 64K, since there'd be an extra byte necessary for addressing. But he said we could then use a floppy disk, which is only $3,900, as opposed to a hard disk at $10,400, since all that would have to be on the floppy disk is the systems programming. And we'd have to buy a cabinet to put it in, though he said he'd like to do without it. Then he started insisting on a printer with keyboard input to act as an alternate input in case the terminal went down, so that we could finish, and he said that that would cost about $3,000 NEW, with the fineness of print of a typewriter, since he didn't want to go to a dot-matrix printer, since he said that lowercase on dot matrix had difficulties with lowercase letters. So the total package would come to about $18,865, which with the 35% discount would amount to $12,262, and would have the confidence of being mostly Data General so that if something went wrong, we could ask for maintenance for the whole system, rather than having to detach all the peripherals and then not be able to PROVE anything was wrong in the Data General equipment. Then he gave me his hours on the Surgery of Gallbladder 300 pages 1375 lines: 92 hours for $550, which comes out a tiny bit less than $6/hour, of which 45 was for reading/marking/typing, which he didn't further break down, 27 hours for editing, just over 50 LINES per hour, which is REALLY sad, and 12 hours for typing and 4.5 hours for proofing, and then on Friday get a call from Jenet that some of the lines might have to be taken out. So he's just not doing very well, though he's agreed that the displays would be simpler since he'll agree with my assumption that the line is OK unless we SPECIFY, maybe 1/10 the time, that we want to see the context into which the line is being put. He's coming around to the idea of "as automatic as possible" which is the way I get MY speed from the system.
DIARY 13775
1/1/79
TALK WITH ROLF ABOUT DATA GENERAL EQUIPMENT
First the bad news: the discount is only 10-12%: 35% discount is for 40-50 units for a major developer, so that after a year during which you don't order the other 39-49 computers, they BILL you that 23-25% AT 12% interest, since you only ordered one. And here AGAIN he appears to be introducing a "money sink" that doesn't really seem REQUIRED, just boosting outlay needed. Then he said they said we were on the right track getting larger memory and doing indexes IN memory, but OS with floppy disk doesn't support THAT main memory, and EITHER write a memory-mapping device or get a HARD disk. Even WITH a hard disk, you NEED a floppy disk for program maintenance and modifications---and he admitted that only Digital Equipment Corp, DEC, is MORE expensive (20-30% more)---the IBM of minis---than Data General, which seems to have ways of FORCING you to buy things you might not really want. We would then need a BUDDY who would GIVE us the floppy disk information when he'd transferred it to his hard disk, since it's easier to slip a floppy disk into an envelope rather than a $50 hard disk, for maintenance purposes. Lastly, the NEW model 4C (C=Compact) is not deliverable for 270 days! Then the GOOD NEWS: Cathode ray terminal is supported at either 9600 baud, which is 1000 characters per second, or at 19,000 baud, which is 2000/sec, which would FILL the screen in one second, AND it would take 4 terminals. Letters come out 1 letter per millisecond, so one "Entry" would be expanded in 1/10 of a second, which is good. We talked from 10:05-10:30, and I took notes and felt that we'd gone from something sensible to something more expensive without quite seeing what the difference was, and WHY not go for a floppy disk ONLY, forget about the hard disk, keep it in storage, and then get into greater, more flexible considerations when the application proves itself, and, more importantly, the companies begin to have it PROVEN that we can generate good indexes on time, so that they'll be willing to give us the quantity we'd need to support a number of terminals and about a dozen indexers, so that the profits would support anything I wanted to do, probably without having to do indexes again, and it's all something to work with.
DIARY 13784
1/1/79
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PAUL AND RAY
Paul is 40 and Ray 35, though Paul thought he was in his 20's when they first met in "The Strap" but Ray is VERY Christ-oriented, saying that life is FOR getting enlightened, and we talk about Actualism for a LONG time and he tells about this seeress who'd told him he'd move when he did, sell his antiques when he did, and get a car the very next day, which he did, for the price range stated. But he wants Paul to be faithful, and I say that I'm pleased to see Dennis get the KICK of a new person and then RETURN to me, proving that I can, after 3.5 years, outlast the KICK of a new person, and he just keeps saying that he's CHOSEN not to do it. Paul says he might try it, but is very fond of Ray, and Ray's sort of using it as a bludgeon and is VERY supercilious toward Paul at times. Ray talks of his 11-year relationship with Robert, and "various lovelettes," his belief in the Brotherhood of Christ but NOT the equality of those brothers, not the equation that if CHRIST is also GOD, the BROTHERS are also GOD, though he's intrigued by Actualism. Then he starts talking about suicide, having looked at it, and Paul gets activated, and I observe that Ray is just LOOKING at it, it's not the BLACKMAIL that the others used, and Paul said that was a GREAT way of looking at it, and I gave a few other suggestions that they said were something that they'd have to think about. Ray lives in a studio in London Terrace, across from the one-bedroom apartment of Robert and Greg, his new lover, who join us at Paul's later, after having gotten the address as 493 3rd, rather than 49 3rd and walked a lot, and Robert's rather dour, so I can see how someone would want to steer clear of him. Paul and Ray are nicely openly affectionate, and they can spread the affection around to me, and there's perhaps the underlying fantasy that we FOUR could go to bed, since Paul and I have been bed partners for so long, and there's lots of mutual admiration being exchanged, he likes my apartment, I like Paul's tree, I read Ray's card to Paul even before PAUL gets "the time" to go through it, and Paul's put off by his sentimentality and god-using, while Ray doesn't like Paul's constant "God-Damn's," and I say they're just WORDS, but that their RELATIONSHIP goes far beyond the words and can really overlook them. Doctor Zolnerzak to the relationship-cementing again, and it's fun to WATCH.
DIARY 13785
1/1/79
NEW YEARS EVE AT PAUL B.'S
His 11-foot tree with a white star on top and loads of lovely gold and green balls and festoons of gold and silver tinsel with tiny white lights is really quite pretty, and he brings out the sliced-lunchmeat and chicken and ham and swiss and makes a nice sandwich with mustard, and then white wine and sherry to drink, and the cats are running around and nibbling, but I'm not as allergic to them this time. We watch Frosch and Eagling and Park on the tiny TV set from "Die Fledermaus," talk about vacation to various places, the delights of living in New York, the problems of indexing, and Ray wants to be added to my list of indexers, impressed by the $22/hour rate. He turns on the TV station to Times Square, where people are rocking back and forth, and we watch the countdown on the set and at midnight toast in champagne and everyone except Robert gets up to kiss everyone else, and it's pleasant enough. Look out at the subways streaming across in the back, with the tin roofs out the window looking like snowy roofs, and we talk of the difficulties of heating houses, paying bills (which Ray doesn't do in London Terrace, which is convenient, though he pays $350 for his studio), and other sundry items. I mention my upcoming trip to the Caribbean but no one bites to ask about it, lots of talk about "Agnes, he" gets quite surrealistic, and the Heath bar reminds me to tell them about the Ruins, and we chat of baths, sexlessness outside of NYC, his tenure-trauma when he had to defend his teaching job, his reduction from 225 to 113 pounds, his mania for keeping slender despite baggy clothes on his wide hips, and Paul is going to lose his job when "Ain't Misbehavin'" moves to the Plymouth so they don't have to fill up the $12 seats in the second balcony at the Longacre, so I probably won't get to see it on his comps at ANY time. Talk of movies and TV series and cable TV and prices and cruising and lovers and religion, and then the two get up to leave and I decide to leave too, after laughing together at the pot-lid clapping, fireworks, shouting, whistling, and running around with sparklers that the people on the street do at midnight, eager to show they're alive in a new year and hoping for the best.
DIARY 13797
1/3/79
BILL H. CALLS FOR AN HOUR!
I think it's Dennis but it's Bill, from Maine, not "calling for anything in particular, just to say hello." I told him about training indexers, about Dennis just getting back from San Diego, about catching up on diary pages, and still involved in Actualism. "What actual change has it made in your life?" he asks. "I feel that I'm much more open to differences of opinion, much more likely to listen to someone I don't agree with, and more open to emotions and feeling from the body." I told him about the bodywork, about the circumstances of seeing the color around Amy's arms, about the meetings and people in the group. Mentioned that at ONE time I wanted to be in contact with more "strange" people, and Actualism has certainly done that for me. Mentioned that Andre and I might be going back to the Caribbean, that Dennis has moved into the building, and that my life was pleasant in general. He said that he had no tenants, refusing those who came to him from past references; had the temperature up to about 80E inside since it was unseasonably warm outside at about 45E, though it was due to go down to 15E or so during the night, and he wished it'd hurry and get there. His discomfort and swelling from the hernia was now completely gone, so he was planning to go down to the farm in Virginia in September: "Otherwise, why am I here, living on earth?" He said that people might think he was serving the community by teaching 4 nights a week from 8-10 at Ricker (which kept many friends away, since he didn't make much time for socializing, except for one guy who'd drop around 7-8 times before finding him, and he enjoyed his company), and then taking other nightshifts at the Halfway House, where he still worked in greater amicability "bumping hips and bumping shoulders and joking with the guys in a friendly way," but he wanted something more, and he thought it would be still Gurdjieff. Todd's father was now interested in chess, as was Todd, now 15, cute in an average way, but his repressed mother told him not to mess around with Bill, so he was now only interested in stamps as an investment, not "as I am, as pretty objects." He would be voted the oddest man in Houlton, he laughed, and looked forward to getting away in September, but greatly enjoyed our talk, and I hope he realized it was an HOUR!
DIARY 13927
1/12/79
TALK WITH DENNIS ABOUT INVITATIONS AND SERVICES
I tell him that Don wants to help him with buying his emu, at least to see if it's WORTH it, not so much as for the size of the discount, and that Art was unhappy that he didn't call about his friend in La Jolla. "What should I say," he nattered, "I don't have a car, but can you come see me?" and I rephrased it, "Art Ostrin, a good friend of mine, talked a lot about you, he's doing fine, told me to call you; I won't be able to come see you, but I wanted to say hello from him, any messages for me to give him, great talking to you." He didn't say anything, only that he was harried and didn't have the time. "You say I should be tolerant of the person smoking in front of me, but you don't seem to be very tolerant of the way I am." "I can't think of a way to explain it that makes me know you see what my POINT is," and I make the mistake of calling him immature and he explodes, then says he doesn't want to talk about it, then bitterly snaps back when he talks at all. Then he uses the word service, and I say THAT, at last, gives me the handle I want: He asked Don for dinner and Don said he was busy---to DON, who doesn't like to cook, dinner is a SERVICE: he was INVITED for a SERVICE and said no. But ART and DON, through me, invited Dennis to accept a service, and he didn't even TELEPHONE them. How would HE like it if I extended a dinner invitation to Don and Art for HIM, and they DIDN'T EVEN BOTHER to call him to say that he DIDN'T want the service? He didn't say anything. He said he was depressed, that I'd wrecked his whole day. I said I felt pretty good because I'd managed to make my point clear to him: all he had to do was think about it, either call them or not, but call or not UNDERSTANDING why they were so concerned about his NOT calling. "Ernie thinks of me as someone he calls and chats with, but I don't get the idea that YOU consider Don or Art someone you want to call and chat with, though maybe you just don't like them that much." He said he did, that he was just different, and I said that I had to put in one last thing: I didn't understand his being TOTALLY helpless with a corkscrew or a can opener, but TOTALLY independent when it came to visiting San Diego without references or buying emus. "It might be a cassowary," he grumbled, almost refusing to be placated, and though he felt BETTER, he didn't feel good about me even by the following evening, suggesting we might do better to spend some time alone, HE now saying that HE had lots to do.
DIARY 14021
1/28/79
ROLF ON TERMINALS AND INDEXES
He's calculated that at 1,000,000 lines per year, or 1000 indexes of 1000 lines each, it will take about 8 people doing an average of 125, or one every three days, and they'll be getting paid about $20,000 and contributing to a salary for the two of us of about $35,000 each, not counting what we do in indexing ourselves. His COMTEN stock went from 7/8 to 52, which he's pleased about, and Asbestos has gone up to 3, and he's getting stocks from people who "smell them when they fall out of bed and no one will touch them but I see something good in them." He figures a terminal good for only about 2000 hours use a year (40-hour week for 50 weeks) before we think of getting a second, and I figure if it's up to 3000 hours, THEN we get another one and each uses 1500 hours, easy. He cautions me I wouldn't want to live with the terminal and people coming in and out; I say that he'd better figure that I can only train 1-2 people every two months who'll stay in it, since nothing but money's going to keep them here. He figures going up in price, but not to $30,000, and says that money's always easy to come by. He's got an offer of halftime work at Alexander's on a Data General machine so that he can find out about the machine coding necessary to work with the terminal display. He says it would be transferable by about 3 men, that rent would only cost about $3000 a year, that we'd need an assistant for $12,000 a year, about $3000 for FICA, for insurance, and then I call him about Shaughan Lavine, Bruce's friend, who calls about 5 pm. He says the indexing would take $10,000-$15,000, that the first is quick and dirty and the second, now, would probably have to go to re-entrant coding for 2-4 terminals, since 4-5 terminals would be necessary to make the 1,000,000 lines per year, and I say we won't have to worry about customers, though he suggests companies won't be pleased to give ALL their indexing to one company, and twinkles when he talks of the "blue-paper company" and the "pink-paper company" that competes against itself and has different type fonts for confusing competition. I agree we can do indexes from out of town, and he starts talking about the ENJOYMENT of making $35,000 and doing only what we like to do and putting aside $20,000/year for improvements and other programs, and he thinks it can be finished and in operation THIS YEAR!!
DIARY 14026
1/30/79
ROLF TALKS ABOUT THE COMPUTERIZED BREAKEVEN POINT
He's come up with an amusing way of keeping people on after the indexing training: starting them out as APPRENTICE INDEXERS at 50% of the computing revenue for those who need constant supervision and checking both in indexing and on the machine. Then they graduate to JOURNEYMAN INDEXERS at 60%, and they need only scattered supervision and control, but still can't quite be trusted to do everything themselves. Then they graduate to MASTER INDEXER, who can be responsible for training new apprentices, get 70% of the revenue, can do selling, can do any kind of indexing (he says it's like me), and can be trusted alone with the machine, knowing enough about it to perform minor maintenance and major customer contact. Then he proposes a spectacular MASTER OF ALL MASTERS who, for a short time, gets a terminal in his apartment, contracts for loads of work, goes up to 80% of the revenue, and "can walk away with $5-6000 at the end of a month." I think it's all just fine! THEN he asks me how many indexes we can start with: he said 0 first month (assuming there'll be things going wrong and minor equipment failures and misconceptions and misdirections), 5 second, 6 third, to 12 in 9th, 14 in 10th, 16 in 11th, 18 in 12th, assuming my rate of training of one new one per month will be augmented by OLD ones doing MORE than their one per month, and that makes 116 per year. I say Raven could be 40, ACC 10, Springer 10, miscellaneous 20, and the rest gotten easily. He talks of endless lunches at Lutece meeting 4 new publishers a month and winning one, and I go through my contacts list and come up with at LEAST 20 companies, and I ask Susan today and SHE said she'd have entrée to 10 companies at least, and he says that 7 is the breakeven point when I suggest we could start by doing about 8 per month, and I say it depends on when we start, and he seems to be talking about starting before the end of the year, constantly assuring me that the initial MONEY isn't any problem at all. I'm reluctant at first, then warm to it, and he talks about scheduling problems and having newer indexers train the newest indexers, and we'll be making money just by keeping the business going, and I'm forced to start thinking of myself in a NEW way, and he's encouraging and supporting and willing to milk me dry.
DIARY 14051
2/6/79
JACK SEELYE, JOE SCHACK, ROLF AND ME ON INDEXING
Jack mentioned Joe Schack and his wife, Ann, "not that they were doing indexing, but he worked for UNIVAC, then to IBM, tried freelance programming and consulting (friends of Barry Gordon), they have a minicomputer in their home, IBM 2741's in home, they developed a software indexing format for TEXT for hospitals, for doctors to store documents, but it flopped, maybe they want to sell their machines, and we set up for lunch since they live on W. 12th, though she's back to work. They may need money: their son's going to college, and Joe's up on the Nova. Our first hour's talk is on the 9 floating apartments in Jack's coop, all with 3 baths and $600 maintenance, still full of rent-controlled widows, and then I push talk to computers, he asks about indexing, then HE says he has 2 NOVA 800's in his apartment, some of them not quite working, or working "tenuously," a 2741 terminal, and Psychtronic cassettes, no drums or disks. He talks about computer-compositing tapes, saying that Monotype tape is 36 channels, teletype tape is 7-channel paper tape, and some compositors may have the TAPES of the books that WE get! He wanted to index their anatomical pathology records; doctors typed in their own documents that they wanted to retrieve, but they tied it to the hospital's being run by the city, the unions came in, so they were locked out after 8 months. "We might have sued them, but we didn't know enough." Rolf said he seemed like an intelligent innocent "but there are HUNDREDS of naïve people who think that software is FREE, not thinking about updating, maintenance, and they position themselves where they can't make MONEY." He says he might be able to do 50% of the debugging on THEIR machines, if they'd let them, will be seeing them Wednesday 10 am, which I'll miss, says he's intelligent but knows nothing about economics, lacks drive and interest in business, and then HERE I say I DON'T want to have to give a code for every subentry, describe how a four-level index may have to be FORCED to three in ways a machine couldn't predict, want to start on flowchart but don't have the time, agree that programming should be as simple as possible, and that we might have to rethink WHAT it is we want on screens, but WILL want to see at least THREE segments if we're looking at CELL pathology, TISSUE pathology, and PATHOLOGY in trying to figure out how best to edit---how about SELECTIVE printouts instantly??
DIARY 14061
2/14/79
TALK TO ROLF ABOUT HIS DAY AT JOE SCHACK'S
Talk from 10:02-10:53 because I'm VERY busy with the index, but Rolf obviously wants to talk, concerned about his reaction to Joe. He says that the system looks VERY good (though I question just how long it WAS in operation and how many more bugs it might have in it STILL), though he had to bit-juggle and stand the machine on its head before it could perform the most BASIC functions, and I ask him if it wasn't embarrassing, and he says with some dismay "He couldn't even SEE how bad it would look to someone; he couldn't even SEE." He talks plaintively about giving him the job of programming to do, and I say that even if he SAID he'd do it simply and follow our requirements, he'd be months late, saying, "But I'm giving you a much better system that will do things MUCH more generally." I mentioned before that he'd be like an albatross around our necks, and he brought up the term more than once. Then he suggested we give him a piece of the profits for him to do the programming, and I get a HORRIBLE sinking feeling, but I just let him talk on about the IDEA of it, not committing himself or me to it just yet, hoping that HE will see the error in it. He sees the system that Joe has as being capable of helping with debugging though it doesn't have the same kind of interfaces our system would have, and I ask him if the timing might not be all wrong and he agrees that it could be. Finally I ask "Do you see YOURSELF in his position in a couple of years?" and he says he DOES, with some pain, fear this might be he, and he doesn't like the idea of it at ALL. He doesn't know what he DOES all day besides live in the hope of selling the system. "He doesn't even LIVE very well: the apartment is small and dark and cluttered, he doesn't seem to do very much except think about his system," and I even got the idea he might not even dress or eat very well. He said he's got to think about it some more, and I say I'll be busy through Monday, and he says he probably wouldn't be ready to talk about it much before then, anyway, but says that United Asbestos has gone up to 3, which is pretty good, and that he's going to look at some more ideas for the system that seem to be increasing the price even more. I figure I MIGHT be forced to look at some flowcharts of my OWN at some time, SOON!
DIARY 14073
2/18/79
ROLF AND I TALK ABOUT SMALLER SYSTEM
He says C. is coming into town tomorrow for a week of skiing, he's an anesthesiologist and an MD, but doesn't know English very well since he'd been saying he'd ARRIVE on the 28th but he's LEAVING on the 28th, arriving tomorrow. I tell him about Port City Press and he says he'll call them, and AGAIN seems to want to work with Joe Schack. I say it's not GOOD, that he's burnt out, and Rolf compliments me for getting OUT of the field, since he thinks that the obsessive-compulsives who go into the business let their MIND take over the operation of their lives and become DRIED OUT emotionless beings waiting for someone else to drop in and take over, which he finds very frightening. I'm flattered at his compliment. Then I start beating him down: HAVE been thinking the system would be different if I designed it now, that we wouldn't rely NEARLY so much on the display since we don't rely on it NOW (though THROUGHOUT this discussing I FORGET that he wants to get the system IN PART for his OWN option-watching system!!, which I don't mention and HE doesn't mention!), and I say "We've been talking about it for two months now" and he interjects "At LEAST that," and I shoot back "If the system had been $1500 instead of $15,000, we'd probably be USING it now, rather than still thinking about it," and he again mentions his penchant for looking at every conceivable possible angle for a large investment, and I say why doesn't he look AGAIN at a microcomputer system with lots of core, most rudimentary printer, and have this as our FIRST system, and if we can keep ONE busy, maybe by the time we'll keep 4 busy we'll be ready to trade the whole thing in for a LARGER system that'll be our 1,000,000 line/ year system---that our POSITIONING is good because even though we're starting SMALL, we're still thinking about getting LARGE---and it might be MUCH easier to write 3 systems for 3 sizes of indexes than writing a GENERALIZED system that would have MUCH more risk of having undebugged pathways, causing future troubles, whereas a quick-and-dirty method would be STRAIGHTFORWARD enough to be foolproof: if not, just take it back and exchange it like a record player! He seems to agree, says he'll look at it, and obviously has too much going on to make a logical decision, but he keeps saying how WISE I am and how CLEARLY I see the situation. Maybe, still, I WILL be doing it myself!
DIARY 14136
3/2/79
TALK WITH ROLF ABOUT MICROCOMPUTERS
He only talks from 2:40 to 3:15, but he said he went to Radio Shack to find a VERY reliable set of equipment, but all the stock is the LOW end of the microprocessors, which are oriented toward BASIC, have TV-type monitor, a regular Sony audio cassette for storage that costs about $100, the TV about $200, the microprocessor chip so much, a small disc that hold 80,000 characters is $500, and he can't find the price in his mass of stuff but it's about $1500. Then he went to the Computer Store, which is more like the TOP of the line, and he found their catalog interesting, though they have no prices in it because they change so frequently which would mean they'd have to reprint them all the time. He looked at the Alpha microcomputer, which company he'd heard about before, but they'd only been around a few years so there was no way of predicting them to stay around or fold fast. He said it was exasperating to study such a fast-changing market: this time ONE might be the best buy, but next time something that did TWICE as much might come out at HALF the price, and, he said the Alpha did everything the Data General equipment did and MORE, which sounded good to me since Data General was MINI and Alpha was MICRO, therefore cheaper. He said they used the standard S100 bus, which was usually 8-bit, but they doubled it somehow and got 16 bits out of it, which meant that we could plug ALMOST ANYTHING into it and it would work. Building on it could eventually get it to a TIME-sharing system with HARD disks, which sounded just like what we wanted. He said the processors came in BASIC, LISP, PASCAL, and FORTRAN, which was about everything, and there was even a prepackaged data management system and many other applications. The Computer Store services the equipment, having lots of spare parts and even replaceable units so that if something went BAD, they could replace it with a new item while repairing the old. He said they also had a large computer there on which they did demos, which I should go with him to see sometime to see what it does and how much it costs, and he said he'd continue to study the field, for the fourth time now, and hope he could find something that we'd be willing to work with for the FIRST version of the system.
DIARY 14147
3/7/79
ROLF AND I ABOUT MICROCOMPUTERS
He brings over a few magazines which are nothing but page after page of ads for minis and micros, catalogs which don't have prices because they say they change so quickly, and lots of cheap pieces which he's read about enough to know that they don't have the connections necessary to make them part of a SYSTEM. For the little HE has to do with getting business and handling the logistics and relations of indexing, he seems to want me to do MORE about the programming and system, since he wants me to check demonstrations of computers with him, go through his calculations of pricings, saying that it'll take about 7 months to pay off a $6000-$7000 system, as he figures this will be, and at the end I say "OK, how reasonable is it to select the computer in March, program it in April and May, and then have June-December, 7 months, to pay it off THIS YEAR?" He says OK without too much conviction, and I keep trying to think of ways of having him do MORE, FASTER, and get something that will WORK. We talk about getting some kind of machine to power my Selectric as printer, but it'll cost $600 about, my maintenance contract probably wouldn't cover any damage done to my machine, and he doesn't want to go halves in a NEW machine for me if mine breaks. We look at Radio Shack's $1000 special, which wouldn't have enough power to do much of anything, and I say it's too bad we can't find something reasonable for about $3500, halfway between, but he insists that a printer will cost $1200, a disk the same, and a CPU only about $400-$800, and a video for $200 and some other things, and suddenly it's up at $6000 again, without planning for maintenance or anything. But I keep insisting that I just want something that I can WORK with, that we've been talking about it for MONTHS now (the magic figure of 7 months if we say we started talking about it in October; and I check and we ACTUALLY started talking the MIDDLE OF SEPTEMBER, so it HAS been 7 months IN WHICH WE HAVE TALKED ABOUT IT!), and we should get ON with it. FORGOT that I said "I would do the program if no one else would" and maybe he's waiting for THAT! But I've NOW made it clear to him that it WOULD be him doing the programming, and maybe I can bully him into it NOW.
DIARY 14163
3/9/79
ROLF ON CORPORATE CASH FLOW AND INDEBTEDNESS
In re Asbestos: He cautions me that the earnings for the quarter ending December will come out quite low, not because the mine didn't produce, but that the earnings were very HIGH, and to ensure continued SLOW earnings increases companies tend to "cook" their profits, hiding them when they're "too high" by doing, among other things, the two things that United Asbestos did: they funded their pension fund---companies should have a lump sum representing the number of hours worked by present employees that furnishes their retirement benefits, yet they can't afford them in the beginning, so they stretch payments to the fund out over 20 or so years, and United Asbestos just put in 1.9 million in a lump to take care of a lot of that now; and they bought an insurance company. When I said it sounded that BOTH would go under if something happened, he said that many insurance companies wouldn't TAKE asbestos liability now because there are lots of lawsuits going around against asbestos (which may make prices stay low?), so the common practice for large companies is to buy up an insurance company with lots of other business, to stretch the risks, so that the company itself wouldn't be liable to these large suits, and the insurance company would have other accounts over which to spread THEIR liability. He said he wasn't sure what that did for indebtedness, but he knew what it did to cash flow: cut down on it, though he didn't think the stock would be affected any more than marginally. A consultant-friend of his he talked to in Montreal has just finished a study of the asbestos business that he'll be sending a copy of to Rolf in a few weeks, but he said there were lots of bankers around, that the company has been having lots of fights, they've sued Esarco again, and maybe they're trying through bankers to refinance OR to set up a merger with Esarco itself, both of which he seemed to think would be good for the company. He talked with some other people who said the actual mine looked better and better, that earnings would continue to rise, that the stocks should just be held on to so that they'll appreciate in the future. Nothing like having a personal friend as a stock market consultant: just hope he HOLDS TRUE.
DIARY 14171
3/16/79
DINNER AT DENNIS'S FOR SIX
Dennis opens the wine and lets it sit, so I get out the glasses and pour the first glasses, and we're all saying we're hungry so we sit for the cranberry soup, which is a triumph of taste and texture and color, and he's very pleased. Then the chicken stuffed with nuts is good except that I have to remove all the black threads that kept the pieces together, and then there isn't quite enough good buttery gravy for me, but he gets a good piece and everyone seemed to like it, and the banana-cream cheese-cinnamon dessert was another hit. White wine ran out rather fast, and with George's saying that white wine tends to make people have worse hangovers, I tend to go to red for half the evening, but the retsina-taste leads me back to white when they open the bottle George brought. Andre passes around a few joints, and we're standing in the kitchen when Peter (?) seems to be leaning backward in the pass-through to look up at the living room ceiling, but then he sinks to his knees as we stare at him silently: I think he's playing some sort of joke from the bemused look on his face, but Andre goes over and he blinks and sort of wonders what's happened to him, and Andre concludes that he was very stoned. George said that had never happened before. George and I talked for a long time about indexes and indexing and he said that his department just wasn't able to handle all of them that came to him, and I said I'd be taking over whatever he sent me, and he said he'd keep me in mind. John was VERY amusing, talking about our trip through Nepal and India, talking about the pipe-smoking for a quick rush in Kathmandu, and he seemed to enjoy the people and the attention and Dennis had lots of fun all the while, smiling and laughing and talking and smoking and drinking, and no one seemed to make any great note of my not smoking, and then Andre said that he was very tired and laid on the bed until everyone left, and then he slept on the sofa. It seemed to be a triumph, though his table was a bit BIG for 6 people with the leaf out, and it'll be better next time kept closed. His bread was delicious, his service skimpy as he relied on others to serve wine, but his food was delicious and his work incomparable and everyone LOVED the pyramid-music, so it WAS a good thing that Arnie didn't take it when he left this afternoon.
DIARY 14184
3/19/79
DENNIS DRINKS TOO MUCH AND HAS DESPERATE SEX
He seems to have drunk 3-4 tumblers of orange juice with possibly a double-shot of rum in each one, so he's really swinging rather high as he tears his clothes off and concentrates on his penis. When he reaches for the popper he fumbles around before he takes hold of it, and twice he drops it off the edge of the shelf before he dizzily retrieves it. I fear each time he opens the bottle of amyl, fearing he'll spill the whole thing into the bedding and mattress. Then he bumps his head resoundingly against the wall when he leans forward to look at his cock, presses it painfully to my forehead when we're both looking, and in embracing me frantically he SCRATCHES my back so hard that it's rubbed raw, and it's scabbed over still on the following Monday. I wince as he holds me, and then try to bring him off so he can get to sleep and he starts his odd doglike panting, catching in the throat with a wheeze so that he's going "Uh, uh, uh" as well as breathing, and further constricting his throat he comes out with an "Oooohhhh" that he might WANT to indicate the height of feeling, but to me it's just a way of INDICATING that he's enjoying himself when he's really NOT. I can't think of any way to bring it up to him then, nor can I now, since he keeps insisting that he loves so much to masturbate, yet he's not hard; he says he loves to look at his cock while holding my eyes to his in a commanding stare, almost to prolong the tease of WANTING to look at his cock and NOT, but somehow wanting to avoid the fact that he's not excited as he SAYS he is or would WISH to be. He keeps sucking on the popper and I keep thinking of what Arnie said about his report from an expert that the effect will last only a SHORT time and then actually cause the cock to go DOWN, and I try to think of some way to tell Dennis this, but I'm sure he'd put it into the same framework as giving up grass and cutting down on booze: I'm not willing to have any fun anymore. So he sways around the bed, groaning in agony-ecstasy, growing softer and softer so that he has to slap it around before it responds at all, and though it's juicing copiously, he seems a lot farther from orgasm at the end of 45 minutes than he did right at the start.