His website doesn’t have the message saying he’s not taking orders:
http://home.earthlink.net/~life2all/dougswebspace/index.html
Yes, Doug is open for business! See his note here in this post:
I haven’t been called Mr. Tipple since I was a high school teacher 20 years ago. Tipple is an easy name to mess around with, and the kids tried out every variation that they could think of. No one called me Fipple, though, because that was before the days of the internet and the now famous Chiff & Fipple. I chuckle when I think of the computer that I had in my classroom. If I wanted to do anything with it, I had to write a program in Basic, a language for computer idiots like myself, and tell it what to do. Otherwise all that you got was a prompt cursor. At least it was a PC. When I started college, I used a Bendix computer that ran on punched tape, pretty much like the old player pianos. I bet most of the people posting don’t even remember the IBM punch cards that came next. If you got one punch wrong or a card out of place, you got a rejection notice from the computer operator and you had to try again the following day. I digress.
I didn’t use computers but I do remember dropping a very large box of what I believe were punch cards that I was carrying for someone. She didn’t hit me, actually she restrained herself quite well, but it was clear she would carry them herself in the future. I offered to help put them back in order but apparently I had done enough damage.
Hopefully she had access to a card sorter machine.
I remember the punch cards way back in high school. That is precisely why I had no interest in computers back then!!! As far as I was conerened, they were a BIG deterrent!
YOU MEAN THERE WAS SUCH A THING AS A CARD SORTER MACHINE???
AAAARRRRGHHH!!!
Roger
ROTFLMAO
(from a college FORTRAN class dropout)
Welcome back, Mr. Whipple! 
Sheesh. I wasn’t even born yet back then, and I know about card sorters.
Gee, I don’t really know. 
She didn’t mention a machine but perhaps there was. Maybe that’s why she didn’t actually hit me.
But … but - don’t you recall me calling you Mr Tipple last year after you hinted that it wasn’t appropriate to call you Duggy Wuggy? Hmmm?
During the big pre-millenium scare about computers not being able to handle the change to the year 2000 (00) a sudden surge of openings appeared for people who could still type into those tape and card punch machines. A lot of people came out of the woodwork and made some pretty decent coin for a little while. It struck me as interesting to see how such an obsolete ability should suddenly come back onto the market again.
djm
Y2k Joke: A Cobal programmer wants to avoid Y2K, and has himself cryogenically frozen, to wake up centuries later, in the year 25,000, or something like that. Unfortunately, he is awakened early.
Cobal Programmer: Well, I’m not supposed to be awakened until the year 25,000. What’s wrong?"
People who woke him: “It’s the year 9999, and we heard that you know how to program in Cobal.”
I hope that this comes across as funny as it was when I heard it, but I just can’t tell jokes very well… :roll:
I spent many a late night punching and sorting cards in the basement of the Math Science Building on the Purdue campus in W. Lafayette (just across the Wabash from Mr. Tipple’s home in Lafayette, for those of you not versed in Indiana geography).
I worked with punch cards a little in high school, and then again in a computer security job I had while in the Air Force.
Always reminds me of the old Foghorn Leghorn cartoons: “Fortunately, I have my feathers numbered for just such an emergency.”
Bob
Once I had a job in a factory in Chicago making punch cards.
It was insane.
I’ll never forget my college roommate, upon completion (barely) of his computer class, dancing maniacally around the hibachi burning his punch cards one by one. There were a lot of cards. I had to leave…he was freaking me out. k
I work for a software company. We use “input files” for the main input for our software (a FEA mechanical engineering application). Sometimes, people around here (myself included) still call these input files “decks” and associated entries in these input files “cards” as throwback to the day when, in fact, the program’s input was actually a deck of cards.
Funny stuff.
(BTW, talk about your serious OT thread creep here – sheesh!)
It’s all Mr Tipple’s fault! He went and got nostalgic on us, and we just fooolowed!!! 
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate this thread!