Leave it to a bunch of Rice graduates to turn a thread about athletics into a conversation about computers. Hilarious!

(01-29-2014 12:08 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(01-28-2014 12:54 AM)75src Wrote:  I have heard from a former athletic department finance director that the department did not have computers until he got there in 1985. He got them to order PCs. He is a fellow attorney-CPA.

To be fair, I don't think I touched a PC until 1988, and I was an SE major. I used MACs around campus probably starting in 1986. Aside from that, I used SUN workstations and I couldn't see the department needing those. I can't remember if I used typewriters while I was at Rice, but it wouldn't surprise me if most work wasn't done on those.

edit: I was about to add that PCs of the era weren't capable of much... very primitive Excel and Word programs, but I re-read your statement that he was in finance, so it would've helped him a lot, I imagine.

I was fortunate enough to have a old Compaq portable PC to work on with my employer in 1984. About 7 employees shared the one PC. In reality, only 1 of us at a time was ever on it (pre ubiquitous internet!), so I got a lot of use out of that thing. I loved Lotus 123! Made tabulating data a lot easier! I didn't know how good I had it until I went to my next employer in 1988, where a department of about 60 engineers shared 3 PCs!

I was firmly in the ICSA mode while at Rice. No fancy Macs for you! Sleepless nights in the basement using timeshare as well. Turned out to be good to know how to work the IBM 3270's since my 2nd employer also was still heavily invested in mainframes.

[quote='Afflicted' pid='10357249' dateline='1391024183']
Leave it to a bunch of Rice graduates to turn a thread about athletics into a conversation about computers. Hilarious!

I thought I was starting a discussion about the future of Rice athletics, not a geek nostalgia thread - who knew?

I loved Lotus 123 and VisiCalc before that and Excel after that. Also, I enjoyed having simple bookkeeping programs such as Moneycounts and tax programs that ran on PCs. It was a total bore to enter items in manual spreadsheets, journals and ledgers, and have to do tax returns either manually or on input sheets that were sent out to a tax return processor offsite. Computers really transformed accounting.

My father started a small CPA practice in December 1985 and he purchased a IBM PC XT right when he started. He tried it first by running it parallel with his manual process and he quickly found it worked better to do things on the PC.

(01-29-2014 11:00 PM)Vegas Owl Wrote:  

(01-29-2014 12:08 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(01-28-2014 12:54 AM)75src Wrote:  I have heard from a former athletic department finance director that the department did not have computers until he got there in 1985. He got them to order PCs. He is a fellow attorney-CPA.

To be fair, I don't think I touched a PC until 1988, and I was an SE major. I used MACs around campus probably starting in 1986. Aside from that, I used SUN workstations and I couldn't see the department needing those. I can't remember if I used typewriters while I was at Rice, but it wouldn't surprise me if most work wasn't done on those.

edit: I was about to add that PCs of the era weren't capable of much... very primitive Excel and Word programs, but I re-read your statement that he was in finance, so it would've helped him a lot, I imagine.

I was fortunate enough to have a old Compaq portable PC to work on with my employer in 1984. About 7 employees shared the one PC. In reality, only 1 of us at a time was ever on it (pre ubiquitous internet!), so I got a lot of use out of that thing. I loved Lotus 123! Made tabulating data a lot easier! I didn't know how good I had it until I went to my next employer in 1988, where a department of about 60 engineers shared 3 PCs!

I was firmly in the ICSA mode while at Rice. No fancy Macs for you! Sleepless nights in the basement using timeshare as well. Turned out to be good to know how to work the IBM 3270's since my 2nd employer also was still heavily invested in mainframes.

(01-29-2014 11:28 PM)owlman70 Wrote:  [quote='Afflicted' pid='10357249' dateline='1391024183']
Leave it to a bunch of Rice graduates to turn a thread about athletics into a conversation about computers. Hilarious!

I thought I was starting a discussion about the future of Rice athletics, not a geek nostalgia thread - who knew?

Well, look at it this way, Dr K is getting an idea of who constitutes his Parliament audience.

Not that a vision/plan isn't incredibly important, but look at the story behind TCU's invite into the Big 12..

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball...-in-big-12

Quote:“[DeLoss] comes out and says, ‘Who are you?' Chris Del Conte, Texas Christian U. He doesn't hear ‘Chris.' he hears ‘Del'. ‘Del, let's go get ourselves a drink and discuss it.'

“We went to a restaurant and had a little libation at 3:30. By the time 8:30 rolls around, we were [into it] pretty good but we got ourselves in a situation. I kept trying to give him my [binders]. He said, ‘I've heard enough, Del' and just walked away.”

(02-04-2014 03:26 PM)At Ease Wrote:  Not that a vision/plan isn't incredibly important, but look at the story behind TCU's invite into the Big 12..

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball...-in-big-12

Quote:“[DeLoss] comes out and says, ‘Who are you?' Chris Del Conte, Texas Christian U. He doesn't hear ‘Chris.' he hears ‘Del'. ‘Del, let's go get ourselves a drink and discuss it.'

“We went to a restaurant and had a little libation at 3:30. By the time 8:30 rolls around, we were [into it] pretty good but we got ourselves in a situation. I kept trying to give him my [binders]. He said, ‘I've heard enough, Del' and just walked away.”

And we got Greenspan-what a disaster.

(01-29-2014 12:47 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(01-29-2014 12:19 PM)texowl2 Wrote:  I was at a big 8 CPA firm in that era and with a staff of about 300, my guess is that we didn't have more than about 25. I remember working on the first IBM AT desktop about 86. Around 83 or so, we had to go checkout the Lotus 123 disk and floppies were handed out judiciously and believe it or not, were numbered-not sure I ever understood why though.

That was a Lotus licensing requirement.

I was using them extensively by 1983-84. I think they were 256k PC's. I remember moving from an Apple with 64k and Visi-Calc and thinking what a huge step up that was. We've come a long way, baby!

Our corporate controller had found a hijacked version of 1-2-3, so we all had copies. Then corporate said (correctly) that we couldn't use those and bought a copy from Lotus for each computer. We never opened the boxes, just kept using what we already had loaded (since it would boot without loading the floppy) but we had a box with a floppy for every work station.

Your _controller_ was passing out pirated software? Eeesh. Let me guess - Houston Natural Gas?

At D&B he says likely to be out in about a month. Will be running it by the prez first.

Goollllee! And he also announced that 13M of the 30M for the EZF has been raised. An AD who actually talks to alums. Who'd have thought we'd get one of those!

It's nice that he communicates with supporters, but to hear that only $13mil has been raised is a little disappointing

(02-06-2014 01:43 AM)Afflicted Wrote:  It's nice that he communicates with supporters, but to hear that only $13mil has been raised is a little disappointing

I think he also said he expected to have the full 30M by the end of the academic year.

(02-06-2014 01:43 AM)Afflicted Wrote:  It's nice that he communicates with supporters, but to hear that only $13mil has been raised is a little disappointing

Well, when you have a half-staff development office, it is hard to raise money quickly.

(02-06-2014 07:38 AM)d1owls4life Wrote:  

(02-06-2014 01:43 AM)Afflicted Wrote:  It's nice that he communicates with supporters, but to hear that only $13mil has been raised is a little disappointing

Well, when you have a half-staff development office, it is hard to raise money quickly.

And to make matters worse, the University-wide Sr. Exec of Development (Angela Young), who had responsibility under her for the athletic department as well as the Brown School of Engineering and a couple geographic regions, left Rice yesterday...and the Development Office is now down at least 3 senior positions since last Fall.

(02-06-2014 09:23 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(02-06-2014 07:38 AM)d1owls4life Wrote:  

(02-06-2014 01:43 AM)Afflicted Wrote:  It's nice that he communicates with supporters, but to hear that only $13mil has been raised is a little disappointing

Well, when you have a half-staff development office, it is hard to raise money quickly.

And to make matters worse, the University-wide Sr. Exec of Development (Angela Young), who had responsibility under her for the athletic department as well as the Brown School of Engineering and a couple geographic regions, left Rice yesterday...and the Development Office is now down at least 3 senior positions since last Fall.

There are quite a few openings on the staff. I assume some of the openings were created by JK wanting to hire his own people.

Right now we are short a Compliance Director, 2 of the 3 Development Positions are open(and I believe Marc is on leave at the moment), both Marketing Positions are open (insert snarky comments here about how could one tell if we had Marketing folks before). It will be interesting with who JK fills these positions with or if he changes the roles/responsibilities up a bit.

(02-06-2014 09:50 AM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  

(02-06-2014 09:23 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(02-06-2014 07:38 AM)d1owls4life Wrote:  

(02-06-2014 01:43 AM)Afflicted Wrote:  It's nice that he communicates with supporters, but to hear that only $13mil has been raised is a little disappointing

Well, when you have a half-staff development office, it is hard to raise money quickly.

And to make matters worse, the University-wide Sr. Exec of Development (Angela Young), who had responsibility under her for the athletic department as well as the Brown School of Engineering and a couple geographic regions, left Rice yesterday...and the Development Office is now down at least 3 senior positions since last Fall.

There are quite a few openings on the staff. I assume some of the openings were created by JK wanting to hire his own people.

Right now we are short a Compliance Director, 2 of the 3 Development Positions are open(and I believe Marc is on leave at the moment), both Marketing Positions are open (insert snarky comments here about how could one tell if we had Marketing folks before). It will be interesting with who JK fills these positions with or if he changes the roles/responsibilities up a bit.

Well, the development openings happened before JK was hired. Pretty sure the head marketing job also came open before JK came on the job as well. I've been wondering why these haven't been filled since they seem vital to the department and have been open for 4-5 months now. Sure seems like a bad way to do some cost cutting.

(02-06-2014 09:50 AM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  It will be interesting with who JK fills these positions with or if he changes the roles/responsibilities up a bit.

Does JK have any son-in-laws?

It's my understanding that capital campaigns usually start with a "quiet" phase where much of the money is already raised. That way, when you go public with the campaign, you're already 2/3 (or whatever) way to your goal, and that energizes giving because people want to hop on a bandwagon that appears to be successful.

So it is pretty disappointing that the EZF campaign, which was made known two years ago (?) has only $13 million in commitments for a $30 million goal.

(02-06-2014 10:36 AM)Barrett Wrote:  It's my understanding that capital campaigns usually start with a "quiet" phase where much of the money is already raised. That way, when you go public with the campaign, you're already 2/3 (or whatever) way to your goal, and that energizes giving because people want to hop on a bandwagon that appears to be successful.

So it is pretty disappointing that the EZF campaign, which was made known two years ago (?) has only $13 million in commitments for a $30 million goal.

Well, the EZF proposal has been modified since the one first brought out at the end of 2011/beginning of 2012. So, I'm sure there was a reboot on the campaign. As well, the lack of a development office makes it hard to raise money.

(02-06-2014 10:02 AM)d1owls4life Wrote:  

(02-06-2014 09:50 AM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  

(02-06-2014 09:23 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(02-06-2014 07:38 AM)d1owls4life Wrote:  

(02-06-2014 01:43 AM)Afflicted Wrote:  It's nice that he communicates with supporters, but to hear that only $13mil has been raised is a little disappointing

Well, when you have a half-staff development office, it is hard to raise money quickly.

And to make matters worse, the University-wide Sr. Exec of Development (Angela Young), who had responsibility under her for the athletic department as well as the Brown School of Engineering and a couple geographic regions, left Rice yesterday...and the Development Office is now down at least 3 senior positions since last Fall.

There are quite a few openings on the staff. I assume some of the openings were created by JK wanting to hire his own people.

Right now we are short a Compliance Director, 2 of the 3 Development Positions are open(and I believe Marc is on leave at the moment), both Marketing Positions are open (insert snarky comments here about how could one tell if we had Marketing folks before). It will be interesting with who JK fills these positions with or if he changes the roles/responsibilities up a bit.

Well, the development openings happened before JK was hired. Pretty sure the head marketing job also came open before JK came on the job as well. I've been wondering why these haven't been filled since they seem vital to the department and have been open for 4-5 months now. Sure seems like a bad way to do some cost cutting.

Kim's leaving was unfortunate time wise and of course the son-in-law left with RG (he was living with RG as well).