nccotus

so, I just took a message to my head

from lifelong old friends whom I haven’t heard from since the 80’s, two of ’em actually, who both moved out to Seattle after that to work for Microsoft I believe, no names here.

one of these two young brothers said to me in my head as I groped desperately fir a source of income as so often has happened to me in my life; that I was deemed one of the 99 who mattered in early AI in the 80’s. Just as my father was deemed one of the 30 who mattered in early integrated circuit technology around that same time. I was held out for my computer program that analyzed input poetry and generated two-paragraph essays. It was created as an example of how to build an expert program using an expert in a field but who also possessed computer programming expertise.

this was hard work that went got me a job as a computer programmer in Harvard Square for a year after graduation and then garnered me disability income after I became permanently and completely disabled after an overdose in ’86 that led me to the state hospital.

I all but forgot about my special computer program until I met my husband-to-be at a dance for singles quite near here in the city of Reading back in Autumn, 1990. Turned out he knew about that program all along. He was so impressed.

years later, in Maryland, I got sick of carrying it around with me, kept a couple of the essay printouts and the description of the program and how it worked, left the many pages of code in the trash.

My understanding is that Alex retrieved the pages of code and the rest of the essay printouts from the trash and kept them safely stored.

They are worth money!!!

not that I’m asking him to relinquish them but this does attest that there is material worth here and somewhere in this situation there is a hope of reprieve from my recent years of poverty and a safer way to be.