Yeah. I was referring to applications like Excel. You youngsters don’t appreciate how primitive the office was 50 years ago!
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I actually went from spreadsheets (supercalc, visicalc) at my non-actuarial 1st job to mainframe (m op please load tape number ### on to reel number ###) at my 1st actuarial job
only used punch cards in college
I am curious if by chance you remember how many rows those spreadsheets had. The policy at my work place was changed only when excel got 65k rows in excel 2007 iirc otherwise we used a mainframe too. I also used a lot of Fortran and COBOL and the good old calculator.
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The paper ones had maybe 60 rows or so, but no theoretical limit to how many pieces of paper you could tape together.
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Yeah I did paper a lot. With the rate books, the slide rules etc. That was a pain.
Not all that WTF, since NJ was the site of the first alien landing, in 1938…
The headline makes me wonder, what is more “traditional” than eyesight?
Anywho, my second thought is “Google Maps.”
What! They didn’t have excel for papyrus?
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Bear-snowboarder collision on the slopes, with video
https://www.snowboarder.com/news/bear-collides-snowboarder-lake-tahoe
In the video, you can clearly see the bear mouthing the words, “ON YOUR RIGHT!! ROARRRRRR!!”
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I worked as a computer operator at a bank during college. There were ladies who balanced all the batches from the tellers and they had hand written spreadsheets and used 10-Key adding machines to do the totals for rows and columns. By the time I left in '87 they had gotten their first PC and were doing them in a spreadsheet. It didn’t seem to increase their speed much.
When I started my first job I was given a spreadsheet for generating the reserves for SPIA’s. I had to input values then copy them down the columns then print the results out. It was in Lotus 123 and I was shown how to do it by rote and didn’t realized that / was the command to bring up the menu and that it had a quit option so I would just turn the computer off and back on when I was done with the spreadsheet and once it was back up get back into 123 and follow those memorized steps the next time I needed to do that. After a week I went out and bought a book called “Using Lotus 123.” Within a couple of months I was one of the company experts in 123. Within 6 months, the experts that I would go to were coming to me.
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Maybe not news since it happened over 100 years ago, but definitely a WTF?
Confirmed by Smithsonian Magazine
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I remember as recently as the 1960s, in the rural Ontario community I grew up in, that parents regularly sent small children to their grandparents for babysitting via the rural mail delivery if it was on the same route. Of course, everyone knew the mail deliverer personally.
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Yeah, the stork-looking guy…
Here is a baby with eyes of blue, straight from heaven, right to you**
Is this a WTF for Presidential pardons?
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The one that annoyed me is Rita Crundwell:
yeah, I’m going to do an update on that one
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Why is he pardoning these particular characters? Were they loyal Dems? I expected better from him.
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The Judge one makes zero sense.
It was not a mistake and that judge caused serious damage to many kids.
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My understanding: non-violent offenders who were already on “compassionate release” due to COVID… and well, COVID ain’t going on now.
So they were looking at going back to prison, so… there were blanket commutations for these folks.
Let me see if I can find the stuff to back this up
from the ACLU:
President Biden heeded the calls of advocates and families today by granting commutations to close to 1,500 people who were released to home confinement at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic under the CARES Act and pardons to 39 additional people, including many veterans and women.
The CARES Act, passed in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, allowed certain groups of people to serve part of their sentences at home to mitigate the dangers of COVID-19 in federal prisons. Since then, thousands of people have been allowed to serve part of their sentences at home, securing jobs, reconnecting with loved ones, and reintegrating into their communities. The American Civil Liberties Union advocated for the CARES Act and has been urging President Biden to provide clemency to CARES Act release recipients since 2021, launching a six-figure ad buy, engaging grassroots supporters, filing FOIA litigation, and more.
“We are thrilled that President Biden has allowed people to remain with their families and communities, where they belong, said Cynthia W. Roseberry, director of policy and government affairs at the ACLU’s Justice Division. “The CARES Act was an unprecedented experiment in decarceration, and the data tells us it was incredibly successful. Of the over 13,000 people released, more than 99 percent have safely and successfully reintegrated into their communities. We urge Congress to build on the remarkable success of the CARES Act and pass other decarceration policies that prioritize compassion, redemption, and public safety.”
“President Biden’s actions today also remind us of the incredible and unique power of executive clemency,” Roseberry continued. “The ACLU has long advocated for the categorical use of clemency to address unjust outcomes of the criminal legal system. While today’s announcement is wonderful, there is more to do in the final weeks before President Biden leaves office. We strongly urge President Biden to use his power to address this country’s failed death penalty by commuting death row sentences.”
According to data the ACLU obtained this year through FOIA litigation, the vast majority (71.8 percent) of those on home confinement had less than one year remaining in their sentence. Almost a quarter (23.5 percent) of CARES Act clemency recipients are older than 61 and over half (59.4 percent) are people of color.
“Biden’s announcement today means I can finally breathe a sigh of relief after 3.5 years of living with the fear of being sent back to prison for no reason,” said Won Lee, released on CARES Act home confinement in May 2021 . “The second chance I got through the CARES Act allowed me to take care of my aging parents, restart my career, pursue a graduate degree, and receive treatment for the cancer I was diagnosed with shortly after returning home. Today’s decision means I will no longer have to live with the uncertainty and fear that I will be unjustly uprooted from my life and family, who now depend on me. I am incredibly grateful and thrilled to sleep soundly tonight knowing I’ll remain at home.”
Learn more about the ACLU’s campaign to commute death row here: President Biden: Commute the Row | American Civil Liberties Union
This judge & Rita Crundwell were just a few of the 1500 people
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