APPLE flops that drive current success

My first job out of college was with a cotton company that was on the "cutting edge" in those days and we had one of those! We had a "disk-pack" running mini-computer, a PC AT with an enormous 60Mb hard drive, and an XT as well. Maybe that had to do with why I'm all into computers. We had 5 employees and 4 computers...pretty tech-oriented for 1985!

Yup; I just didn't know any better at the time. I had spent a fair amount of time around computers even in those day, so I thought it was just normal. My first job in college was typing in the programming to punch cards for a professor and running the stacks for him ("Do not Spindle, Fold or Mutilate"). At around the same time, my brother was working for the computer division of TI so we had a 99/4a around the house as well. Then, there was working of that company with all the equipment, which I didn't even include the terminals for a coop system called Telcot which allowed us to look at and purchase bales of cotton from all over West Texas, Western Oklahoma and Eastern New Mexico electronically. In the months after ginning season, I spent most of my days on it shopping for cotton based on electronically measured specifications of each bale loaded into the system. Pretty advanced for the early 80's!