okay um do you own a PC by the way i'm guessing you probably do
i don't have one in my home here my um parents have one and they live just about three miles away so we use that one and my in-laws also have one and they're almost as close they're in Richardson
oh i see
right uh-huh uh-huh and what kinds of things do you use it for when when you use when you go to their houses houses to uh use them
um usually
uh word processing something um
such as
oh forms for things uh also i have a nine year old that i've been home schooling for the last three years
yeah
oh
and we got uh the one that my parents have is an Apple II E and i have a sister-in-law who
uh-huh
is who works in the Fort Worth school district and so she got me copies of uh several of the Apple programs
um-hum
great yeah
for school programs and so we use those and there's some whenever we go over and visit grandma the kids love to play the computer game so
oh sure
that's part of it um my husband has used the one at his folks house for
mostly business things uh his resume uh his uh
yeah
letter he's been applying for jobs and things so that type of thing uh forms for his photography business and that kind of thing
uh-huh
um-hum
yeah well i tell you once you get used to having them you you get spoiled really quickly um
yeah i'm uh my father
had a software company and they have a bunch of computers leftover from that and we're hoping that they can put together something for us here that we can have the word processing here
huh
uh-huh
yeah
but um they're kind of old older so i'm not sure that we'll be able to do get too many other programs for it
right
yeah yeah um i know i'm a a writer by profession and uh when when i was first here in in Dallas or in Plano
um and was finally able to this is oh been like fourteen years ago we moved here and i was finally able to afford a new typewriter and i got an IBM Selectric i thought i had died and gone to heaven because i thought oh they're so wonderful well then um
oh i have one of those yeah mine's broken at the moment but
yeah ours really needs to have some work done on it but but then my husband um worked at TI and i got a um this has been years ago he doesn't work there anymore but he got a um
um the the TI Professional and brought that home and i learned WordStar on that and boy once that happened there was just no way that i could ever go back to doing anything of length on a typewriter
oh
yeah i learned i i learned WordStar uh i did some typing for my father when he had the company and so i learned that on there too that was
uh-huh
yeah have you ever used do you use WordPerfect ever have you ever used WordPerfect or
i haven't that's the one that my father well i guess i have used it once or twice uh it's the one that's on my father-in-law's computer he's got an IBM and uh so that's the program that they're using there
uh-huh
right
yeah yeah that's probably where you've used it
uh-huh yeah um i have that on my uh computer here and
also um i work do some work at UTD and um that's what they have there and it was just so nice to be able just to step into the position and
and already know the language you know already know the the software and um i don't know from my own experience um WordPerfect just just so much better than than WordStar at least the version of WordStar that i used to have it may be improved by now but
that's what i've heard
yeah it's uh WordStar was never very intuitive to me i mean you know you some of the commands just had nothing to do with what you know what you were supposed to be doing what they what they did on the computer computer but uh i mean like going um
uh-huh
forward and backward a word or up and down a line that sort of thing just you know didn't match with the kinds of keys you were using
yeah you had to memorize it and
yeah and but WordPerfect is just a lot more intuitive in a lot of ways and you and it does a lot of things too that if you if you do any kind of uh
research or anything like that where you have to uh use footnotes it is just wonderful because it keeps track of all your footnotes
oh
oh that's neat
and if you add it if you put a footnote in in the middle you know if you come up with some new piece of documentation and you put that in the middle of your paper and have to footnote it you just change um it just automatically changes all your footnoting numbers for you
oh how wonderful
so you know it's just
that i had heard that that was better that was a better one
yeah yeah and i think about how it used to be if you were doing a paper you had to go back and retype everything and uh it was just awful so um i don't know i think we have just become
really spoiled but i think it's a nice kind of way to be spoiled so um well i have not really paid much attention to a clock although i think we've probably been talking at least ten minutes so um
yeah
yeah i agree
if you um unless you have some other things you want to talk about as having to do with PCs
not too much what kind of what kind of things do you write
well um i was a technical writer for many years um and my husband and i actually met in a computer company um i was a tech writer and he was an engineer and uh so i did tech writing for a number of years
oh
go talk to daddy about it
oh sure
excuse me go on and talk to daddy about it tell daddy i unplugged it for you but you don't need to drag it down the hall
got a problem huh um
daddy daddy came home and found her playing with the telephone that i had unplugged
oh oh trying to figure out what all that was about huh but um i have um that that was the majority of my writing although um i have also done oh freelance magazine writing and some educational writing and
yeah
um for a while i had a um uh a partnership with a in an advertising agency with another woman who is a an artist so i did some advertising and PR but um
hum
now i'm actually actually i'm i'm not working anymore i'm a student i'm a graduate student so i'm doing a lot of writing but uh now all of the scholastic scholastic nature so i've done a little a lots of different kinds but
yeah
i i just know right now that i couldn't have put out half of what i did if that much without the being in computers so that's been really great and uh i'm so i'm real spoiled
yeah i'm anxious some day to have one here i'm they just talked to the other day other day about
yeah
setting something up again so hopefully pretty soon we'll at least have the word processing my nine year old i've decided to teach her how to type using the computer so yeah i've
uh-huh yeah
good
that's great
yeah well those are skills that she certainly will is going to need early on and you know the and it seems like it's getting earlier and earlier with the children so
that's right
uh-huh
um i think that that would be a real a real uh advantage to to her to have that and uh do it early so uh do you do
yeah
we've been we've been uh writing a story together and so i and i wanted her to put it into the computer and then print it out and make a book with it you know
oh neat
yes
right
oh great
and so i decided well if she's going to do that it would be a whole lot easier if she could type so we'll slowly learn to to type here and then then put the story in
right
that's great
well that's a that's a skill that she can use for the rest of her life so might as well start now huh
yes yes i agree
well Nola i have enjoyed talking with you thoroughly this is really going to be fun i think and um my husband is a ham radio operator and i think about all the people that he talks to all over the
yeah
