Tag Archives: Priola, Debbie

1985-1999 TSI: Administrative Employees (Rockville & Enfield)

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The record-keepers. Continue reading →

This may be the most difficult entry for me. I worked with all of these people, but I only worked closely with the last few. I hired only the last few. Sue hired most of the rest.

TSI’s administrative area had much more turnover than any other area. Some of the people whom we hired did nothing but bookkeeping. Some were hired primarily to help with marketing. Some were hired to be Sue’s assistant, which meant they could be doing anything or nothing. I am not even sure what responsibilities some of these people had.

I do not remember interviewing any of these people or talking with Sue about their qualifications or salary. My impression is that they just sort of appeared in the office.

Our first administrative employee was Debbie Priola. Her story is told here. Kate Behart was hired either just before or just after Debbie left. Details of her employment at TSI are posted here. For several years Kate, Denise Bessette, Sue and I were the core group, first in Rockville and then in Enfield. However, we often had additional administrative people—one, two, or even three at a time. I am pretty sure that I have completely forgotten some of them

One of Sue’s primary sources of new employees was our client base. One of the earliest of those hires had been Caroline Harrington, who did the bookkeeping for Darby O’Brien Advertising (DOB) (described here). I never really understood this. I worked closely with Caroline during the installation of the GrandAd system at DOB, and I thought that she did a really good job. One day she must have either called Sue or been called by Sue, and somehow she ended up as our employee. I don’t know why she wanted to work for us. It always seemed to me like a step down from her responsibilities at DOB. Then again, I am not sure how Sue described what her responsibilities at TSI would be.

I did not work much with Caroline in TSI’s office. At the time I was spending at least half of the business hours out of the office at one client or another. When I was in the office I spent most of my time preparing work for Denise or going over work that she had already done. If I had any time left, I spent it writing programs, dealing with support issues, or writing proposals or contracts. Also, I took a nap every day after lunch.

Caroline’s employment did not last very long. I don’t know why she left or where she went; one day I learned that she was no longer working at TSI.

Another person whom Sue does not remember was a young woman who worked for us for one summer between her junior and senior years of college. I don’t remember what she did for us, but I do remember that I was impressed with her. However, the impression was not strong enough to prevent me from forgetting her name.

I had hoped to recruit her as a permanent employee until she told me that she planned to move to Japan after she graduated.

Crater.
Coyne.

I remember absolutely nothing about Linda White, whose name I found on TSI’s payroll for 1989. Sue remembered her. Apparently she worked for us for a week or two. Then one day she went out for lunch and never returned to the office or called. She might be holed up in parts unknown playing cutthroat pinochle with Judge Crater1 and Thomas Coyne2.

I remember Kim Ouellette. We hired her shortly after we moved to Enfield in 1988. I don’t remember what her precise role was at TSI, but I do recall that at Christmas that year she was my “Secret Santa”. She gave me three pairs of wool socks. I lost one of the socks, but I still wear the other pairs on cold winter days.

Chris Vegliante (she/her) worked at Group 4 Design, one of TSI’s clients (described here). I don’t recall what caused her to leave Group 4 and join our staff. Nor do I remember when or why she departed.

No badminton here today.

I remember two things about Chris. I am pretty sure that she came over to our house once, the summer that we decided to host the summer outing at our house in Enfield. I grilled some burgers and dogs, and we set up a badminton net in the yard between two of our maple trees. Those two trees in 2021 have grown to the point that they nearly touch in the middle. No one would consider playing badminton there today.

My other recollection of Chris is about the day in 1988 on which I received two telephone calls from the Hartford Courant. When the second call came, she announced “I think that you won that short story contest!” The whole event is described here.

For a short period in 1989 a woman named Judy Morrill3 worked for TSI, specifically for Sue. She even came over to our house for a visit once. She brought her young son, who was terrified by our cats, Rocky and Woodrow. He screamed for five full minutes.

Both cats were completely harmless.4

Galilee Pease5 (she/her) was a college student who worked for TSI over two summers. She was an excellent employee. Everyone liked working with her. We had much more success with college students than with permanent employees.

When we were looking for someone to help with the Y2K project, she mentioned that her brother Fred, who stayed up all night playing computer games, was available. She warned us that we might not like him.

Bernice Gannuscio6 worked at Keiler Advertising, but she lived in Enfield. She asked us if we might have an opening. I thought that she could be a valuable employee for TSI. The problem was that we wanted her to answer the telephone in the office, but she had hearing problems that prevented her from being able to do this very well. She investigated hearing aids, but none that she could tolerate seemed to work for her.

Titus?

Titus Britt7 had the distinction of being taller than I was and just as skinny. He was also the only Black person who ever applied for a job at TSI. He lived in the southern part of the state, and so the drive to Enfield was considerable. Because he loved his Camaro, he did not mind too much.

I was never quite sure what Titus’s role at TSI was, but when he heard that TSI’s sales rep, Tom Moran, and I were planning to fly to Seattle to demonstrate the AdDept system for The Bon Marché, a department store chain in the northwest, he asked if he could come. I don’t remember why we agreed to this—from a business perspective it made no sense—but we did. I think that he had family there.

Terri.

Terri Provost8 came to work for us in the late eighties. Her previous employer was Colonial Realty, the company that bamboozled thousands of people in Hartford in the late eighties. The scam and its results are described here. Terri was a secretary for William Candelori, one of the company’s principals. Even after the scheme unfolded, she still had great respect for him. He was charged only with tax evasion. The other partners went to prison or committed suicide.

Evidently, although CR treated its investors with disdain, it was very nice to some of its employees. Terri told us that the company took its employees to a casino in (I think) Atlantic City. Her boss even gave her some money with which to gamble. I never adopted such a policy.

Not Terri.

Terri and I went on a sales call in Manhattan once. I wrote about it here.

We had no dress code at TSI. As an army veteran who was forced to wear a uniform at work for eighteen months I felt that this was my right. It was never a problem. Most of us wore shorts in the summer and jeans or something similar in colder weather. On more than one occasion Terri came to work in a short dress and back-seamed stockings. I did not know what to think of this. It seemed totally inappropriate to me, but I have never in my life criticized anyone else’s sense of fashion. I said nothing.

Terri came back to visit the office with her young son.

Terri had a baby while she worked at TSI, but the child died after a few days. She kept a picture of him on her desk. I certainly would not wanted to be reminded of a sad event at work9. I said nothing.

My recollection is that Terri became pregnant again and decided to quit her job at TSI. By then she was working for Michael Symolon. I don’t think that they got along too well. I know that Michael was more than happy to replace her.

The woman that Michael hired to replace Terri was Linda Fieldhouse10. She was a joy to work with, and she seemed to like both Sue and me. I am not sure why she quit. I vaguely remember some health problems.

Two from this can, please.

I remember a woman who worked for us in a period in which both Sue and I seemed to be very tense. Both of us drank coffee, and one of the prime responsibilities of the administrative person was to make sure that the coffee pot was not empty. We always made the coffee with two scoops of regular coffee and two scoops of decaffeinated coffee. This employee did not get the message and made it with four scoops of regular coffee. So, for a week or two, Sue and I consumed twice as much caffeine as we thought.

I think that this may be the same lady whose favorite task was the printing of program listings, a task that required very little skill or knowledge. Mostly it was just making sure that the printer did not jam. Everyone else just let the printer do its thing, but she enjoyed monitoring it.

This lady left TSI soon after the coffee incident was discovered. I don’t remember her name, but I found evidence that someone name Bettijane Kaschuluk11 worked for TSI in 1987. Neither Sue nor I remember anyone with that name.

Ann Locke12, who was married to Sue’s cousin, Jimmy Locke, worked for TSI off and on for a while. I think that she mostly did cleaning. I once remarked that she “brought a little bit of Appalachia to TSI.” Denise later told me that she was shocked when I said this, but she later told me that she understood what I meant.

My sister Jamie was married to Joe Lisella Jr. for the decade or so that she lived in Simsbury, CT, and West Springfield, MA. She worked for TSI for part of that time. Her daughter, Cadie Mapes, also worked for TSI part time. That period is discussed in detail here.

1. Judge Crater disappeared without a trace in 1930. His story is here.

2. Thomas Coyne was scheduled to appear on the fourth episode of the podcast Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone in 2018 . He never showed up or called to cancel. The cast organized an international search that lasted for months but he was never spotted by any “nobodies”. However, I don’t think that any listeners looked form him at the survival school in California that he runs.

3. I think that Judy Morrill still lives in Enfield.

4. This was not strictly true. Rocky never hurt anyone, but Woodrow, although extremely friendly, had an alter-ego whom I called Nutso Kitty. His eyes glazed over, and all bets were off. Once while I was napping Nutso Kitty pounced on my left hand and ravaged it with all twenty claws. I had to throw him out of the bedroom, and I mean that literally.

5. Bernice now goes by Bernice Zampano. Her LinkedIn page is here. It does not include her experience at TSI. I think that she lives in Portland, CT.

6. Galilee is now known as Galilee Simmons. I think that she lives in Utica, NY. Her website is here, but I don’t think that it has been updated in years.

7. I think that this may be Titus Britt’s LinkedIn page. He has had a lot of jobs, but he did not list anything as far back as the nineties. This person does not look as skinny as I still am.

8. Terri Provost, who now goes by Terasia Provost-Darr, in 2021 is a realtor in Vernon, CT. Her LinkedIn page is here. Neither TSI nor Colonial Realty is listed as part of her experience.

The view from my desk.

9. My current office includes pictures of Mark Twain, W.C. Fields, Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, and my photograph of the statue of Constantine’s head in the Capitoline Museum in Rome. Nearby are a plush slipper of my guinea pig Chardonnay, action figures of Wonder Woman and Pope Innocent III, and a plush toy wolverine wearing a tee shirt with a block M whom I named Mitch Egan.

10. Linda Fieldhouse lives in Vernon in 2021. Her LinkedIn page is here. Don’t bother to look for TSI on her experience list.

11. A woman named Bettijane Kaschuluk who is a little older than I am lives in Stafford Springs in 2021.

12. Ann Locke still lives in Enfield in 2021. Her Facebook page is here.

1983-1985 TSI: GrandAd: The Datamaster Clients

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A good fit for several agencies. Continue reading →

IBM’s Datamaster was widely disparaged in the technical press. PC’s and Macs were the rage. The reasons for this evaluation were persuasive, if a little superficial.

  • A Datamaster cost a lot more than a PC.
  • The Datamaster’s programs only ran on Datamasters. Many hardware vendors were offering PC’s that were “IBM compatible”.
  • The Datamaster could in no way run PC programs.
  • The Datamaster’s peripherals—displays, printers, keyboards, and hard drive—were very limited.
  • The Datamaster’s specs were inferior. The processor looked very slow.

Nevertheless, the Datamaster was a very good computer for TSI. It was extremely easy to program, and it was very good at the two tasks for which it was designed—data processing and word processing. It was also quite reliable. PC’s crashed all the time. Some of our clients used their Datamaster’s for years without ever making a service call to IBM. Those who did were uniformly satisfied with the attention that they received.

For the ad agency application there was one other overriding advantage. Up to four Datamasters could use the same hard drive. This allowed the media department and the accounting department to have access to the same data. In the early eighties personal computers were totally personal. Reliable networks were many years away.

Yes, the Datamaster was horrible at other tasks such as spreadsheet, and it had absolutely no capacity for graphics. However, most of the people who owned and ran small businesses in the early eighties were interested in addressing business problems. They did not care much about system specs, and the fact that IBM sold and supported the system was of paramount importance to them.

I am almost positive that our third ad agency client was Communication & Design (C&D)1 in Latham, NY, just north of Albany. The principals were Fran (a guy) and Theresa Lipari2. The agency purchased two Datamasters and a hard drive. I am pretty sure that by this time TSI was in IBM’s Business Partner program as a Value-added Remarketer (VAR), and C&D bought the hardware through us. We only needed to make minor adjustments to the software system that we installed at Potter Hazlehurst, Inc. (PHI).

It was a long drive, but unless there was snow on the highway, it was never stressful. Best of all, the sun was never in my eyes.

Nevertheless, I made the drive to Albany quite a few times. There was no avoiding personal involvement at several stages in these installations. The transition from manual ledgers to computerized accounting systems was never trivial. The first few monthly closing processes never went completely smoothly.

For several years I worked very closely with the woman most involved with C&D’s system. She was definitely the bookkeeper. She might have also been the office manager. I found her to be intelligent and very easy to work with. I am therefore embarrassed that I cannot remember her name. I recall clearly, however, that she was a big fan of the New York Giants football team. She had even bought vanity license plates for her car that said “NYGIANTS”.

When she left the agency, she was replaced by a woman who was as tall as I was. I don’t remember her name either, but I think that it was French, maybe Bissonet.

I also dealt with the media director when they implemented the media system. I don’t remember her name either, but she was, I am pretty sure, also a principal in the business. She explained to me about inserts3—the advertising pieces that were stuffed into the middle of a newspaper, usually on Sundays and Thursdays. From a database perspective they had pages like direct mail pieces but schedules (lists of newspapers and dates) like newspaper ads. Since we were already using the same set of files for direct mail and newspaper ads, it was not too difficult to set up ad types for inserts.

I remember meeting with Fran after the whole system had been in place for a while. He told me that the media director had started her own agency, and she had taken some of his best clients with her. I never encountered any business that was as “dog-eat-dog” as the ad agency business.

I generally drove up to C&D early in the morning and back at night. I sometimes stopped for supper at a restaurant in East Greenbush. I generally listened to WAMC, the powerful NPR station in Albany. Once I heard—for the first time—the entire recording of The Phantom of the Opera. On another occasion I listened to Lt. Col. Oliver North defending his actions in the Iran-Contra hearing.

A couple of times I stayed overnight. A Howard Johnson’s hotel was right across the street.

Perhaps our easiest installation ever was at The Edward Owen Co. in Canton, CT. The owner was Ken Owen, who was a few years younger than I was. We had (and still have) similar interests. He majored in the classics at Harvard, which prepared him well both to teach Latin and/or Greek somewhere or to take over the family business after he graduated. He chose the road more taken.

The company was named after Ken’s grandfather, who had built the business up to be one of the most successful in the Hartford area. Ken’s father had apparently undone most of that. When we worked with the company Ken had only a part-time assistant and a resident artist who was not on the payroll. His father, who taught Latin at Avon Old Farms school, stopped by occasionally.

It was an easy installation because Ken was the ideal client. He understood and could explain exactly what he wanted. Furthermore, no one else had their fingers in the pie.

Ken and I initiated a lifelong habit of greeting each other on Exelauno Day4 (March 4). Sue and I also went to visit him, his wife Patti, and their two sons a few times. He drove to our house for one of our Murder Mystery parties, too.

This requirement alone would leave me out.

Ken was a serious runner. The advertising agencies in New England sponsored a mile run for CEO’s every year. He easily won whenever he entered. I often asked him for advice about running, although what I did he would probably call strolling. I was never close to being in his league.

I don’t remember the name of the artist who worked there, but I vividly recall the nice drawing that he executed for us. It showed three people in choir robes singing from three different hymnbooks labeled “accounting hymns”, “media hymns”, and “production hymns”.

We also asked Ken to help us with the one and only advertisement that we ran. It appeared in one issue of AdWeek New England. That experience is described here.

We created one new module for Yellow Pages advertising. The unique thing about Yellow Page advertising was that the agency only ordered it once. It then ran year after year until someone canceled or revised the ad. Ken’s father said that it was the best kind of advertising. All you had to do was open the envelope every year and endorse the check. Unfortunately, none of our other clients ever had a used for this module.

Ken’s business near Route 44 was next to a strip mall that contained a Marshall’s. We did not have stores like that east of the river. I often popped in there to see if they had anything cheap in my size.

Ken’s company is still in business. He moved the company to Sheffield, MA, which is south of Great Barrington. He also changed the focus of his efforts to, of all things, custom programming. The company’s web page is here.

As you can probably guess, Group 4 Design, which had offices on Route 10 in Avon, CT, was not a full-service advertising agency. They did not place any ads, and, in order to avoid charging sales tax, they were careful not to deliver anything tangible to their clients.

In other ways, however, they were like an ad agency. They billed the time spent by employees, and they could use the job costing and accounting functions designed for ad agencies. So, we treated them as an advertising agency without a media department, an approach that seemed to work well.

This was Group 4’s headquarters. Google says it was permanently closed, but Frank still lists himself as president..

I am not sure who the other three members of the “Group” were, but when we worked with them the firm was definitely run by Frank von Holhausen5. Once the system was up and running he seemed satisfied with it. The only thing that I can remember about him is that he was in a dispute with the state because his company had not been charging its clients tax on Group 4’s services. At the time the state had a tax on services6 and the only services exempted from the tax were legal and accounting. Frank complained, “They want to tax my brain!”

I worked almost exclusively with Joan Healey, the bookkeeper. She had difficulty with the first few monthly closings, but after she understood the process, Group 4 was a good reference account for TSI.

Adams, Rickard & Mason (ARM), an ad agency in Glastonbury, CT, used the GrandAd system until it merged with another agency in 1988. I never met any of the principals. In the negotiations and the initial installation we dealt with the head of finance for the agency. His name was Dave Garaventa7.

We met at the house in Rockville. Debbie Priola and Denise Bessette were in the office working. Sue and David and I sat around a table in the office. We were going over some reports that he wanted included in the system. Four of the five people in the room were smoking. After about an hour of this I felt horrible. I excused myself and walked outside to get some air.

At the time of the installation ARM was in the process of moving into offices that someone at the agency had designed specifically for them. Visually, they were quite striking. However, half of the building was on stilts. the area beneath it was used for parking, However, in the winter that half of the building was always cold because it was surrounded by cold air on all sides.

All of the employees were forced asked to take a pencil-and-paper multiple-choice test to determine whether they were “left-brained” or “right-brained”. The results were interpreted as a multi-colored strip that was displayed beneath names on offices and desks. I am not sure why the agency did this. I researched hemispheric specialization pretty thoroughly in college. This was bogus.

Our software maintenance contract with ARM was the same one that we had with every other client. We offered free telephone support during business hours, which were clearly explicated in the contract.

My fingertips were on the keyboard, not each other.

Weekends were sacred to me. I had virtually no time available during the week to program. I spent those days driving around to clients and prospects, training Denise, setting up her work, and writing proposals and documentation. On Saturdays and Sundays I worked on the custom programming that I had promised our clients from before dawn until I got very sleepy in the evening.

On one Sunday morning the phone rang. It was Dot Kurachik (or something like that), the bookkeeper at ARM. I worked with her for almost an hour and solved her problem. I sent her a bill for $75, our minimum charge at the time. She refused to pay. I talked with her boss, and he overruled her.

Cronin and Company of Glastonbury, CT, might be TSI’s only Datamaster client that is still functioning as an ad agency in 2021. Our primary contact was Mike Wheeler, who was, I think, the head of finance. He seemed very level-headed. We did only a little custom work for them.

Cronin did not have this door when I spent time there.

The main computer operator’s name was Jeannine Bradley8. After using the GrandAd system for several years, Cronin was persuaded to convert to a different software system. We did not get an opportunity to bid on this. We would have proposed a System/36 or an AS/400.

Jeannine called our office about something (I don’t remember what), and she confided to me that they now thought that they had made a mistake when they bought the new system.

I don’t recall any strange or funny stories about this account. The employees always seemed straightforward and competent to me.

The strangest of all of our installations was at Donahue, Inc., an ad agency in Hartford. We did not sell them a Datamaster. They somehow obtained one that had been purchased by Harland-Tine back in the early eighties. The installation at Donahue began in the first months of 1988. It was TSI’s last Datamaster installation.

You could say that Donahue Inc. was “old school”.

Donahue’s building did not look like it housed an ad agency or any other business. It looked like an old school, which is close to what it was originally used for. It was the custom-built home of the Cathedral Lyceum9. That designation was clearly etched above the front door.

I don’t remember ever talking to a principal there about what they hoped to accomplish with their system. Their goals, which were explained to me by a woman whom I hardly saw again, were relatively modest. They just wanted to automate their billing and accounting.

The only person whom I dealt with after that was the bookkeeper, a young inexperienced guy. He knew nothing about computers and very little about either bookkeeping or advertising. He and the Datamaster and the printer shared office space with the agency’s kitchen, which was on the ground floor of the building. The first few monthly closings were a nightmare.

Did I mention that there was no heat in the kitchen? The two of us sat there wearing overcoats and stocking caps. The person not operating the Datamaster wore gloves. People wandered in, got a cup of coffee, and quickly retreated to the area of the building that was heated.

The young man who did their books and operated their Datamaster confided to me that his goal in life was to become a real estate agent for Century 21. He really thought that their trademark blazers were cool.

Darby O’Brien.

Darby O’Brien Advertising (DOB), a full-service ad agency in downtown Springfield, MA, was not actually a Datamaster client, but I included them is this blog because they used the version of the software designed for the Datamaster. Darby10 insisted on using a Wang PC sold by one of his clients, a store that sold and repaired computers. We grumbled about this plan, but supporting their system this way turned out not to be too difficult for us.

A Wang PC.

They needed to purchase a license to use Work Station Basic11, a DOS-based product that supported all of the syntax used by the Datamaster’s version of BASIC. We also charged them for converting our code to a format that the Wang12 PC could use, but that took less than a day. In the end they probably paid more for a demonstrably inferior product. Unlike the Datamaster, a Wang PC could run other applications such as Lotus 123, but to my knowledge it was never used for that purpose.

When we installed the system, the accounting person was Caroline Harrington. For some reason Caroline resigned her position at DOB and came to work for us. Sue must have arranged this. I certainly did not recruit her.

In the eighties DOB’s offices were behind one of these two doors.

The agency’s building was in a rough part of town. It was less than a block away from the stripper bars. I was still relatively bullet-proof then, but I did not like to be there after dark. We did go there at night once, and we had a great time. The agency threw a party, and they invited all of their clients and vendors.

A very good live band played oldies from the fifties and sixties. The highlight of the evening was when they played the Isley Brothers’ hit, “Shout!” Everybody (except for me and my monkey) knew when to get down low, when to raise up, and when to shout. I hate rituals, but this one sort of made me wish that I had gone to at least one mixer.

The restrooms in the DOB offices were easy to find. The door to the men’s room was decorated with a three-foot high picture of Elvis Presley. The ladies’ room had a similarly sized portrait of Marilyn Monroe.

1. The ampersand was important. It was emphasized strongly in the agency’s logo.

2 .The Liparis’ last name was pronounced Lih PAIR ee, unlike the island just off the coast of Sicily, which is pronounced LEE pah ree with a trilled r. I am pretty sure that Fran and Theresa reside in Plymouth, MA, in 2021.

3. I later toyed with the idea of using inserts as the basis of a new business for TSI. Details are here.

4. Ken told me that “Exelauno!” is the Greek word for “March forth!” Google translate does not agree. I sold my ancient Greek dictionary at the end of my senior year. So, I can’t look it up. The origin of this custom is documented here.

5. Frank von Holhausen is now listed as the founder and Chief Design Officer at Forge Design & Engineering of Oxford, CT. His LinkedIn page is here.

6. Frank’s lament and the difficulty that TSI confronted in determining how much of what we did was service and how much was product acted as a key plot element in the short story that I wrote in 1988. The details are here.

7. Dave Garaventa died a year or so after we installed the system.

8. In 2021 Jeannine Bradley lives in Cromwell. She might still work at Cronin. She was promoted to accounting manager in 2012.

9. The Lyceum was built in 1895. You can read about it here.

10. Darby’s agency is still in business, but it has changed locations a few times. The latest headquarters is in South Hadley. He tells his own story here. I can’t believe he let them photograph him wearing a Yankees hat in Massachusetts.

11. Workstation Basic is described in some detail here.

12. Wang filed for bankruptcy protection in 1996.

1981-1985 TSI: The Office and Employees

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Who did what in the early days of TSI. Continue reading →

When we moved into the Elks Club’s front house in January of 1981, Sue and I possessed an IBM 5120 computer, a lot of hope, and not much else. Our new dwelling had a spacious place for an office and two extra bedrooms in case we needed to expand. I think that we set the 5120 up in the office with a table and a few chairs. I don’t remember where we obtained the furniture. Sue probably scavenged odd pieces from somewhere. I remember that Sue eventually had a big wooden desk in the spare bedroom.

Downtown Rockville: Crystal Blueprint is on the right.

We also had little in the way of office supplies. Fortunately, Crystal Blueprint & Stationery, a nicely stocked office supply store was in downtown Rockville within easy walking distance. I remember walking there often to pick up a copy of the local newspaper, The Journal Inquirer, from the metallic yellow box, and some index cards or an accordion file from Crystal Blueprint.

That shopping center1 also contained a grocery store called Heartland Food Warehouse and a men’s clothing store, Zahner’s.

Our first EVP.

Our first employee was Nancy Legge, a debater at Wayne State who came to visit us in Rockville during the summer of 1981, as described here. She stayed with us for a week or so after her traveling companions left. We put her to work stuffing envelopes for a mailing. I don’t remember if we paid her, but I do remember giving her the title of Executive Vice President of Sales Promotion.

Our first full-time employee was Debbie Priola, who had been employed by one of our Datamaster clients, National Safe Northeast. In 1982 (I think) Sue hired her to answer phones and to do bookkeeping and other clerical functions. I do not remember that Sue interviewed anyone else for the position, but she might have.

Debbie drove to Rockville every morning from New Britain. She was a smoker. Throughout most of the eighties so was Sue. So, I learned to live in a smoke-filled environment.

By the time that we hired Debbie we certainly had access to Datamasters. We may have kept manual books for a month or two, but we soon used the Datamaster for Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, and General Ledger. Sue was in charge of all of this, and she also did the payroll.

Debbie was really into celebrities. She brought copies of People and Us magazines to work and read them at lunch and during slow periods.

Debbie possessed a trait that I found unbelievable. She was a very good artist. She explained that she saw shades of colors rather than objects. I was (and still am) the exact opposite. I hardly even notice what color things are. I had no problem working in the same office as Debbie, but our radically divergent views on so many things might have made it difficult for me to work closely with her on projects. Fortunately, I don’t remember ever having to do it.

I found it in the basement.

I remember that for Christmas one year Debbie bought me a book about Laurel and Hardy. I guess that she must have heard me praising W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers and concluded that I liked all old-time comedians. I don’t.

After she had worked for us for a while she got a new boyfriend, who, I think, was trying to start a business of some sort. At some point—I think that it must have been 1985—he prevailed on Debbie to loan him some money. She did, but part of what she gave him was TSI’s money. Sue discovered the discrepancy when she closed the books at the end of the month. She confronted Debbie in private. Debbie promised to pay it back, and she did. At that point Sue fired her.

I had never fired anyone, and up until then neither had Sue. In my opinion she did a very good job of handling this difficult situation.

In the eighties the best way to reach prospective employees was a help-wanted ad.

We finally had enough business in 1984 to justify hiring a programmer. This time I placed ads in the two local newspapers, the Hartford Courant and the Journal Inquirer, which covers the eastern suburbs of Hartford. I don’t have the text of the ad, but I am sure that we described it as a starting position and requested applicants with some programming experience. It also mentioned that familiarity with BASIC or the Datamaster would be a plus, but we did not expect anyone with such a background to respond. We interviewed two people in our office. Both were women in their twenties.

If it had been left up to me, I would have hired the other lady (whose name I long since forgotten), but Sue was very impressed with Denise Bessette, who was married and lived in Stafford. Denise either called us after the interview or wrote us a letter that indicated that she really wanted to work for TSI. So, we asked her to come in again, and I agreed that we should hire her.

At the time Denise was working for Royal, the typewriter company. At the time Royal was trying to break into the personal computer market. She wrote small programs to demonstrate to prospects the potential of the system. The programming language that she described to me was incredibly primitive, probably to compensate for the memory and storage limitations of the hardware. In those days it was difficult to get a PC to do anything more complicated than a simple game.

At one time Royal was a major employer in Hartford.

I assured Denise that the programming environment that TSI used was much more powerful and was also much easier to use. I don’t think that we even talked with anyone that she worked with at Royal. She may have just been a contractor there. I am certain that I talked with no one. Sue might have.

Denise also smoked. In the eighties the pernicious addiction seemed to be more prevalent among young women than young men. Almost everyone whom I knew who smoked and was my age or younger was female. I don’t know why.

For a while TSI had four employees, and the other three all smoked. During this period I experienced headaches pretty often. I carried Excedrin with me wherever I went.

Before we hired Denise we had bought a Datamaster with a letter-quality printer. When she was in the office, I let her use the computer. I worked on it before she arrived—I was usually in the office by 6AM—and after she left. When Denise was in the office, and I was not training her or explaining a new project, I wrote out new programs by hand or edited program listings. If the weather was good, I went outside in the courtyard behind the house to work in the sun on a card table.

At night I printed listings of programs. I had written a Datamaster routine that accepted a list of program names and created a text file with a list of commands that could be executed to print the listings for the designated programs one after another. Occasionally the paper would jam. When I awoke I fixed the jam and then had it resume printing. I could work on the computer while the printer was active.

Our listings, by the way, were on continuous 8½x11″ paper. We filed them by program number in accordion files for the client. When I visited the client I brought the accordion files in a sample case.

I spent most of the first few months of Denise’s employment helping her learn BASIC and the tools available on the Datamaster. Within six months she was up to speed, which I defined as meaning that her efforts were saving me more time than I spent explaining, checking her work, or redoing what she had done. Six months may seem like a long time to reach the break-even point, but most programmers whom we hired never ended up saving me time.

Denise primarily worked on TSI’s software for ad agencies. It was difficult enough to teach someone the agency business. There was no need to get her too involved in the vast array of other businesses that are described here.

Denise had a very young child, Christopher (NOT Chris), when we hired her. When he got a little older she brought him to work occasionally.

Denise wanted to be a Smithie.

After she had worked for us for a few years, Denise asked us if she could shift to part-time. She wanted to finish her college education and get a masters degree. She told us that she had applied to prestigious Smith College in Northampton, MA, and had been accepted to study math and economics.

At this point Denise was a very valuable member of the TSI team. She understood how I approached projects, she appreciated the need for consistent programming structures, and she had learned enough about advertising to make many decisions on her own. I informed her that TSI would take as many hours as she was able to give us. However, I knew that it was likely that I would need to hire another programmer, which meant, in the best case, six months of reduced productivity from our #1 programmer, me.

Denise and I worked together for thirty years. Giving in to Sue on the decision about who should be our first programming hire was probably the best choice that I ever made. My life would have been unimaginably different if we had hired the other candidate.

Our third full-time employee was Kate Behart, who lived somewhere west of the river near Hartford. We wanted to hire someone to help with marketing and administrative tasks that neither Sue nor I wanted to control. I don’t remember interviewing her. Sue must have done it.

We later learned that Kate had changed her name. It was originally Sally Stern. She didn’t get married, and she was not in the witness-protection program. Rather, because she did not get along with her father, she did not want to be associated with him.

Kate was into some New Age stuff. We later discovered that she also used the first name Saige in some of her activities in those areas.

Kate was picky about what kind of chair she used. We let her pick one out, but she brought in a pillow to sit on when she used it.

I guess that this is a thing.

I never saw any of Kate’s cats, but she was definitely a cat person. She told all of us that she liked to pick them up and smell their fur. I can understand that impulse better now, but at the time I had never owned a cat. I am not sure that I had even petted one.

The most peculiar thing about Kate was her interest in Connecticut Lotto, which the state instituted in 1983. She had bought a book that contained strategies for playing the numbers. She allowed me to read it. I told her that it was utter hogwash. Although she was a pretty smart person, she seemed to believe the book’s claim that “hot” and “due” numbers existed. These games are incredibly bad investments. If they weren’t, states would not rely on them for revenue.

I upset Kate quite a bit once. We drove to Boston together to make a presentation to a potential client. I used the phrase “guys and girls”. She was greatly offended. She considered the term “girls” demeaning. Maybe so, but once the word “guys” left my mouth, I could think of no better way to compete the thought. No one says “gals” any more.

Kate once sent a letter to an ad agency in New Jersey on TSI stationery. She did not ask me to approve it, and, in fact, I had no idea that she ever wrote letters to prospects on company letterhead. This one made some claims about a software company based in Dallas that specialized in ad agencies. Some of the statements were not true. Kate evidently misunderstood something technical that I had said in the office.

The president of the offended company sent me a letter complaining about Kate’s letter. It threatened legal action. I was shocked to learn what she had done. I told Kate that I needed to approve all correspondence and told her that the company was threatening to sue us, which they were. Kate was suitably contrite. I sent out a letter of apology to both the prospect and the software company. We heard no more about it.

Kate worked with us for several years. I don’t remember why she left, but I think that we parted on amicable terms.

Our phones looked like this, but they had a few buttons on the bottom

My strong impression of the first few years of TSI was that Sue spent them on the phone, and I spent them on the computer. By the time that we hired Denise we had ordered a second phone line and installed Contel telephones. I think that we still had only two receivers, one in the office and the other in the spare bedroom, which had become Sue’s office. There was a rollover feature from one line to another, as well as a way to put clients on hold. My recollection is that we used this system until we moved in 1988.

We were never able to communicate directly with our Datamaster clients’ computers. If a problem needed to be fixed immediately, we had two choices: drive to the client’s or talk someone through keying in program changes over the phone. Sue drove to F.H. Chase pretty often, and I was on the road in the Hartford area several days a week. One car—the Duster—was no longer enough.

This car looks very familiar. I think that my Celica was this color, and Sue’s was darker.

In 1982 we both went shopping for cars. We decided to purchase Toyota Celicas. At the time there was a self-imposed quota by Japanese auto manufacturers. There was only one person at the first Toyota dealership that we visited. He was sitting at a desk reading a newspaper. He did not budge when we entered. We had to walk to his desk to get his attention. He told us that they had no cars. He wasn’t even interested in talking with us.

Eventually the market loosened up a bit, and we were both able to purchase new cars. The idea of bargaining for a better price was never even a consideration. Both cars had standard transmissions. Sue’s had air conditioning. I would never have paid extra for such a frivolous feature in an Arctic state like Connecticut. I don’t remember precisely what either car looked like, but I remember that I loved to drive mine.

TSI still used continuous multi-part forms for billing and statements for as long as we stayed in business.

Sue established a relationship with a gentleman at Desco Data Systems, the company in East Windsor that provided the computer used by Sue’s sister Karen at their father’s company. I don’t remember his name, but he specialized in custom forms. He did a good job in providing us with web-mounted letterhead and multi-part invoices. We recommended him to all of our clients, and most of them used him for their custom computer forms. I never heard a bad word about him, and our customers were not shy about complaining about problems.

Jim Michaud in action!

Our IBM customer engineer was Jim Michaud, who lived in Rockville. I remember that he came to our office on several occasions, but I cannot remember why. I cannot remember any serious problems that we ever encountered with any of our Datamasters. Maybe there was something that he needed to do when we initially took delivery on systems for our clients.

I also remember that Jim had two cars with vanity license plates: ICANOE and IKAYAK. They both had roof racks.

1. Crystal Blueprint stayed open in that location until 2018. Heartland and Zahner’s (which still operates stores in neighboring towns) moved out much earlier. I remember walking into Heartland one day and being shocked by its half-empty shelves. It closed shortly thereafter.

2. I think that Jim Michaud is still active in the sport of white-water canoeing. He has a Facebook page devoted to his photos. An interview with him in 2015 is posted here.