This week, we continue reminiscing about my first and only full-time job as a computer programmer. I worked in the IU Department of Medical Genetics along with my college mentor, Dr. John Gersting.

Hi, this is Chris Young. Welcome to episode 76 of Contemplating Life.

This week, we continue reminiscing about my first and only full-time job as a computer programmer. I worked in the IU Department of Medical Genetics along with my college mentor, Dr. John Gersting.

I don’t recall what hourly rate I was paid when I went full-time at the genetics department, but it was substantially more than I made as a student programmer. I recall that my annual total came out to about $11,700 per year, which may not seem like much, but that would be about $56,500 in today’s dollars. According to a website I found, that is well above what an entry-level programmer would make in Indianapolis today. I don’t have statistics for how it ranks in the late 70s. There was a common conception that jobs in academia did not pay as well as those in business or industry, and computer programmers were in short supply in those days, so I probably could’ve earned much more elsewhere. But I really liked the job. I liked working with Gersting even though he was just a part-time consultant on the project, and it was very convenient for me.

As I mentioned previously, I would ride to work each day with my dad. I would arrive around 8:30, and most department employees began work at 9. I would leave each day at 4:30, while the others stayed until 5. My bosses were quite understanding. This schedule worked well for me and my dad.

As I had predicted, limiting my work to just 40 hours per week was a great relief compared to the frantic schedule of being a college student. The only challenge was it was quite tough to get up that early. Mom would get me dressed every morning while Dad was getting ready for work. Often, it felt like I slept through it. I joked, “Sometimes I wake up in the lobby of Riley Hospital and don’t have any idea how I got there. I have to wake up to drive to the elevator, go down to the basement, and to my office.”

The department had its own minicomputer, a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 11/70. The term “minicomputer” was relative to the huge mainframe computers of the day. This minicomputer had significantly less computing power than today’s desktop PCs, which are called microcomputers. The PDP 11 was a 16-bit computer, whereas today’s PCs are 64-bit. The minimum configuration of a PDP 11 had only 4k of memory, although the 11/70 was expandable to 4MB. I don’t know how much memory our computer had.

By size comparison, it was huge. It sat in a row of four cabinets about 2 and a half feet square and about 6 feet tall. The front panel has lots of blinking lights and toggle switches. See the YouTube version of this episode for photos of similar machines. One of the cabinets contained a 12-inch tape drive that we used to back up our data from the hard drives. In the center of the room sat two large cabinets slightly smaller than a washing machine. These were our RM05 hard disk drives. A removable stack of 12 disk platters that were 14 inches in diameter was inserted into the drive. Only 19 of the 24 surfaces of these platters were used for writing data. The others were protective platters or contained information that helped position the read/write heads and index the sectors and tracks of the disk platters.

Each of these two drives held only 256 MB. Your smartphone likely has at least 32 GB, or 8 times as much storage. My desktop has several drives that can hold 1 TB, which would be 8,000 times more than these washing machine-sized cabinets.

Periodically, we would back up the entire system. You would take the system offline, put a backup platter stack into one of the machines, and copy the other drive in its entirety. Then, you would remove both of those and copy the second drive to a backup.

We had two printers connected to the machine. One was a traditional line printer, and the other looked like a laser printer but used special chemically treated paper. I have no idea how it worked.

We had 4 CRT terminals and a DEC-Writer teletype machine connected by serial cables.

The computer room had its own air conditioning unit, but it wasn’t like we had to use clean room protocols in the area. We could come and go as we pleased. I remember the air conditioning being quite noisy.

As I mentioned, we were in the hospital’s basement. Next to the computer, they had drilled a hole in the concrete floor and driven into it a copper stake about 3/4 inch in diameter. Connected to the stake was a large braided copper cable that grounded the computer. About once a week, someone had to take a watering can and pour water around the ground stake so that it would make good contact with the earth. On occasion, we would forget to do so, and the computer would start acting crazy. We would water the ground stake and do a reboot, and it would work fine.

I’ve told you about the other student programmers who worked with me that one summer, but I’ve not told you about the three other full-time programmers who worked there while I was there.

The full-time programmers worked in three offices adjacent to the computer room, while the student programmers and I worked in an office across the hall. Adjacent to the room I worked in was a genetics lab. Apparently, they used mildly radioactive reagents in some of the lab work, so there was a sticker on the door with a radiation symbol and a warning that read, “Radioactive materials used inside.” Someone had written below that the words “pre-faded genes only.”

Unfortunately, I don’t remember all of the other programmers’ names. There was a guy whose name, I think, was Steve or Joe or something similar. For future reference, we will call him Steve, but I don’t guarantee that was his name. He was a talented programmer who managed to get that graphics family tree program working to a certain extent. He was a nice enough guy but a bit of an introvert and not very sociable. I didn’t get to know him well.

There was a very outgoing African-American woman named Dale who was very friendly, and I got along well with her. We joked around a lot. More stories about her in a minute.

The third woman, I think her name was Linda, was in her mid-30s, divorced, and I believe had a couple of kids. She had a grumpy attitude most of the time, but occasionally, she would come in Monday morning with a large smile and a cheerful attitude. We learned that on these occasions, she had spent the weekend sleeping with her ex-husband even though they had been completely divorced for a couple of years. This seemed to drive Dale crazy because her relationship with her ex was nothing like that. It was funny to watch Dale rant and rave about the situation.

Dale was a devout religious woman. She taught Sunday school in her church. I don’t know what Protestant denomination she belonged to. But one day, she was struggling with her lesson plan for, I believe, kindergarten or first-grade children. She said, “The Scripture reading this week is from the Book of Revelation, where it says that in the end times, the sun will go black and the moon will turn to blood.” She knew that I taught Scripture classes at my church and wanted my advice on how to teach young children about the end times. “What do I do,” she asked. “Have them draw a picture of the night sky and color the moon red?”

I asked her, “Why do you want to teach the end of the world to a bunch of 5 or 6-year-olds? Isn’t it better to say that someday Jesus will return, and there will be signs that we can see that he is coming back? Tell them to look at the leaves in the fall, which is a sign that winter is coming. Or tell them to look at the flowers and the grass in the spring, which is a sign that summer is coming. We don’t know exactly what kind of signs we will see when Jesus comes, but they will be there. You can’t get caught up in the details. Find the message behind the Scripture.”

I tried to explain to her that the prophecies of Revelation were symbolic. When it says that the sun will turn black and the moon will turn red, it’s just talking about solar and lunar eclipses. Naturally, during a solar eclipse, the sun goes black. During a lunar eclipse, the earth casts a shadow on the moon, and the scattering of sunlight through the Earth’s atmosphere gives the moon a red tinge. Ancient people believed that eclipses were an omen of something serious coming.

“But it doesn’t say there’s going to be an eclipse,” she protested. “It says the moon will turn to blood.”

I said, “Just so I understand– You really believe that at the end of the world, the moon will suddenly transform from a giant rock into a huge drop of human blood?”

“Of course not,” she replied. “It doesn’t say human blood. It just says blood.”

“Sorry, Dale. You’re on your own on this one,” I said.

I mentioned that when I first tried to inquire about the job, Dr. Coneally was in a weekly staff meeting with Dr. Gersting and others. Although I didn’t attend those meetings as a student programmer, I did attend once I worked there full-time. We met in a conference room on the ground floor. The programming staff, including Gersting, sat on one side of the table, and the genetics staff, including the department chairman, Dr. Merritt, sat on the other.

Because it is difficult for me to turn my head side to side, I generally sat at the head or foot of the table so that I could look slightly left or right to make eye contact with either side of the table.

The programming staff had difficulty explaining to the genetics people what was going on and what challenges we were facing in getting the software up and running. Similarly, the MDs on the other side of the table had trouble expressing themselves in language that the programmers could understand.

Of course, I understood the programming issues pretty well, and having lived my life with a genetic disease, I knew enough genetics to follow along even if I was no expert. So there I sat with PhDs on either side of me who could not communicate with one another because they were so stuck in their own jargon that they couldn’t speak plain English. Often, I found myself innocently saying something like, “So what you are saying, Dr. Gersting is…” And then I would repeat the same thing in plain English. And I occasionally had to reinterpret what the genetics people were saying in plain English. The response generally was, “Why didn’t he just say that?” That’s what I wanted to know. Why can’t they just speak plain English?

It frustrated me that I was surrounded by highly educated people with such poor communication skills.

After these Friday staff meetings, Gersting and the computing staff would return to our dungeon offices. Gersting would sit back in his chair and say, “I don’t know if we accomplished anything today, but the quality of the debate was much improved.”

I’ve been using that sentence for decades, especially during some of those contentious Finance Committee and Parish Council meetings that I had at Saint Gabriel during my years of ministry there. Sometimes, success is measured in such tiny increments that simply getting your point across can be considered a victory.

I’d like to think that in my two years working in the genetics department, I contributed to improving the quality of the debate.

In our next episode, we will discuss my remaining work at the department and the circumstances under which I eventually left for health reasons.

If you find this podcast educational, entertaining, enlightening, or even inspiring, consider sponsoring me on Patreon for just $5 per month. You will get early access to the podcast and other exclusive content. Although I have some financial struggles, I’m not really in this for money. Still, every little bit helps.

As always, my deepest thanks to my financial supporters. Your support means more to me than words can express.

Even if you cannot provide financial support. Please, please, please post the links and share this podcast on social media so that I can grow my audience. I just want more people to be able to hear my stories.

All of my back episodes are available, and I encourage you to check them out if you’re new to this podcast. If you have any comments, questions, or other feedback, please feel free to comment on any of the platforms where you found this podcast.

I will see you next time as we continue contemplating life. Until then, fly safe.