[geeks] nerd reading for a Friday night ... old-skool waxed twine lacing

[Sandwich Maker]

" From: Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at verizon.net>
" 
" >From: Sandwich Maker <adh at an.bradford.ma.us>
" 
" <snip>
" 
" >[]
" >
" >--
" >we weren't encouraged to spend money [though it could look that way],
" >we were encouraged to feed our curiousity.  bell labs was structured
" >to get the -best- from its employees, not the -most-.  that's
" >something that pays dividends in ways that are difficult to
" >bottomline.
" 
" Bellcore was similar (we called them "flash" purchases. Stories of 
" workstaions bought "one piece at a time" were legion.[0] There were vendors 
" that would sell you power supply and case on one flash order, then the MB on 
" another, RAM on a third, and HD on a fourth. However, they would kindly ship 
" the orders in one box, as supplied by the Mfg. Eventually, Bellcore said no 
" CPUs could be sold on flash orders, unless they were upgrade CPUs ;^)
" 
" I got a lot of books from flash orders, that was real nice.

oh yeah, we had those too!  i mentioned the 730mtg in another post; it
and its predecessor 630mtg [different roms] cost ~$2700 iirc - but
they could be ordered in pieces: cpu/base, monitor, kbd/mouse/etc,
each of which was under $1k - and the supply partners who could bill
direct to project numbers would automatically write up 3 orders...

by the time i left though, competitive reality had started to rear its
ugly head and while an mts could theoretically approve $1k purchases
he'd better ask his boss first if it was over $100.  i as a lowly
contractor was never faced with that dilemma, though the amount and
range of stuff available through the stockroom was boggling - the
catalog of 9-digit numbers was 3" thick - and all of that was
available to me.
________________________________________________________________________
Andrew Hay                                  the genius nature
internet rambler                            is to see what all have seen
adh at an.bradford.ma.us                       and think what none thought