01-Enter_The_Spreadsheet (in Amiga)

2020-08-19

It didn't take long for the A2000 to be incorporated into our home. The 1084 monitor had a composite video input + stereo audio, so with a cheap VCR, it became our colour TV too. I was quite smitten with Arexx, Descarte, Dpaint, fractals(!) and much else. The popular MS-DOS pc's had 16 colors of ascii text. Apple macs were greyscale. Amigas had 4,096 colours and 4 channel stereo sound! My wife played ENDLESS hours of Crystal Hammer, Ports of Call, Defender of the Crown and Mahjong. I didn't, and still do not, play games. Ever.

At this point I had a student loan and I had married two more student loans. Therefore I had two lab assistant jobs: comp-sci (macs-gag) and the phys/chem lab. I also had a retail job in a flooring store on Saturdays. I had worked for them at 15 years old prepping floors in new construction for 75 cents/sq.yd to pay the bills. By college years I cut material, handled the odd customer and took off blueprints to bid commercial jobs. I also had a couple of students after supper during the week - I tutored math and physics 11 and 12.

It happens that carpet shop guy had been pestering me to do his book-keeping for several years of the ten I had known him. I knew zip about counting beans and hated the thought of it. Basically, he just wanted someone he could trust and he was *sure* I learn it. I had always said no. Yuck.It happens that he and a business partner had just bought 66 strata titled 2-3 bedrooms apartments spread across 3 buildings the book keeper (actually a cga) had just given her notice. I shocked him by saying "Yes, I'll do it." A wife, a one year old daughter and a full course load have a marvelous way of informing your decisions differently to when you were single and simply did not give a fuck about very much at all...

Part of the sell job on me was that the accountant would teach me all I needed to know to keep the records, cut cheques and enter deposits. Easy-peasy. Sure...

I went to the lady's home-based office where she met me at the front door with a cardboard box full of vouchers, a hardbound paper spreadsheet and a display/printing desktop calculator. She had every intention of simply handing it over to me with zero explanation or instruction! I begged. She relented - kind of. She gave me about 5 minutes of explanation with the synoptic open while I still stood at the door. Thrown into the deep end of the pool. Again. Story of my life really.

The good news is that double-entry book-keeping is elegant, clever and simple. So much so that no one's really messed with it since a Croat named Benedikt Kotruljević first wrote it up during 1458 in the city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik). I always thought it was an Italian monk. Shows what I knew...

| Date | Description | Bnk dr| Bnk cr| Inc1 | Inc2 | Exp1 | Exp2 | Row Sum|

|-------| ------------- |-------|-------| -----| -----| -----| -----| -------|

| Nov 2 | Deposit #93 | 25.00 | | | 25.00| | | 0 |

| Nov 9 | Chq #55 | | 10.00 | | | 10.00| | 0 |

| Dec 8 | Chq #56 | | 15.00 | | | | 15.00| 0 |

|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| Ttls: | | 25.00 | 25.00 | 0 | 25.00| 10.00| 15.00| 0 |

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lower right corner cell instantly shows mistakes. Table is 79 char wide.

Just learned Gemini compresses plural spaces... :-(

|…Date……|…Description………|…Bnk…dr|…Bnk…cr|…Inc1…|…Inc2…|…Exp1…|…Exp2…|…Row…Sum|

|-------|---------------|-------|-------|------|------|------|------|--------|

|…Nov…2…|…Deposit…#93………|…25.00…|…………………|………………|…25.00|………………|………………|…………0………|

|…Nov…9…|…Chq…#55…………………|…………………|…10.00…|………………|………………|…10.00|………………|…………0………|

|…Dec…8…|…Chq…#56…………………|…………………|…15.00…|………………|………………|………………|…15.00|…………0………|

|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

|…Ttls:…|………………………………………|…25.00…|…25.00…|…………0…|…25.00|…10.00|…15.00|…………0………|

|----------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Take that evil protocol fiend!

Oh, wait. I already forgot the 3 back-tick trick in lesson one from Tomasino. DOH! Ah well... Next time :-) Gawd I'm helpless...

The good news is that no one has improved on this idea in over 550 years, so 5 minutes was actually 'enough' instruction to get me going. This is on paper remember. I needed to use that printing tape calc at least twice to sum each row and column - and there were many more columns than shown above. If they didn't match, then a 3rd time. I had memorized ascii for programming POS systems with a keypad, so my fingers knew what they were doing, but it was damn tedious! Damn tedious. I was a hardware guy, but I read Byte magazine and others - I had heard of Dan Bricklin's invention. I can't remember the name of the spreadsheet program I used, but it made damn quick work ridding me of the drudgery of filling in the paper spreadsheet!

Thus began my long slide away from board repairs and toward software. It happened so gradually that I didn't even notice at first...