Just Another Day in San Diego

I took the trolley downtown to return some books to the library and found the San Diego Computer Museum by happenstance. Stepping into the building, the past came rushing back with kaleoidoscopic intensity. I found my first home computer, the Commodore 64. I looked at the paper tape readers and punches I worked with at the Detroit News in the mid-70s (and learned the arcane art of reading the hole patterns like braille). The stacked computer disks in plastic cake holders reminded me of those in the newspaper's computer room, and the dresser-sized mainframes recalled the days when we had to flip switches on the front panel to reboot them in hexadecimal code. The punch card readers brought back memories of preparing the "automated" budgets at the Tank-Automotive Command (the punch cards also made good bookmarkers). The teletype machines telegraphed me to the days of the "twix" messages we sent from our contracting office in Germany at 5th Signal Command. And an old Texas Instruments calculator looked just like the one I gave my dad in the 60's to do his taxes with: this whiz-bang baby could add, subtract, multiply and divide—all for $100. Ahh, the memories. Maybe too many memories from too many years ago. I was disheartened to read the notices on these cutting edge machines of my youth: "Please don't touch the artifacts." Now I'm REALLY feeling old.

To get from the old technology to the Old Country, I hopped back on the trolley to catch the street art festival in Little Italy. The chalk artists continue the traditions of the Italian masters, replicating their masterpieces on the streets of this ethnic neighborhood. The art was beautiful to behold. The artists weren't bad either.