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Finally Uni Is Over
Just thought I’d share my excitement. Just finished my double uni degree.
I now have a Bachelor of Accounting/Bachelor of Computing.
I know accounting don’t ask.
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18 Replies
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Well done mate. Now there’ll be no excuse not to do well 😀
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That must have been tough going ,doing both together,
Congratulations :2thumbs: -
Congratulations.
You’ve earned a little celebration I think. :drink4:
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congratulations well done 😀
Lynn
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Thanks guys. It’s now good to be able to work full time.
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I don’t believe it!!!…. you’ve got too much personality to be an accountant AND a computer nerd :lol1: :lol1:
Just joking of course…. the nerd bit I mean…. not the personality…. digging a hole here… better stop now.. 😳
Congrats Jason, well done mate. 😛
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Thanks for the compliment Shane. lol I am a nerd. First computer was a Mac Classic II. Black and white and portable. I missed the whole Amiga era and wanted a PC as my first computer. But I got the mac for free so couldn/t complain. I became a master at Carmen Sandiego.
Although I’m not working directly in both fields they are both benefiting our business. I do all the books etc and I do all our web work and ordering systems online. Also build our own computers, setup the network, servers etc. Good to be able to save on those bills.
Cheers
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Man, that takes me back… good old Amiga 500 with a whopping 5Mb hard drive and, if memory serves, 128k Ram – thought that was outrageously huge at the time :lol1:
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quote Bill McMurtry:Man, that takes me back… good old Amiga 500 with a whopping 5Mb hard drive and, if memory serves, 128k Ram – thought that was outrageously huge at the time :lol1:
Ah yes, the Amiga.
I stated my selling career in sales for Commodre Computers.. The vic20, c16, c64, c128, PET cp/m business computers that ran on a data cassette, then the c64 with a single drive, 3032 cp/m with a whopping 32k RAM that ran full accounting software.
My sister and father developed the first computerised Cash Book on the C64, later the cp/m machines and then the 8082 machines. Sold them around the world…. I ended up the #3 commodore computer salesman in Australia in the early ’80’s. Won countless awards, a trip to the USA… ah yes those were the days :lol1:
I remember my biggest sale in one invoice was for a bloke that wanted to discuss business over a 6am breakfast… at McDonalds. Maccas had not long started doing breakfast here in Oz at the time. Turns out he offered 4 computer companies the same offer.. to discuss business over breakfast. I was the only guy that turned up… and I walked out of the meeting with an order for 120 computer systems. Turns out he was a buyer for one of australias largest business colleges. I learnt a very valueable lesson that day that I still abide by. That is, always consider any request in regards to doing business, no matter what time or place the client wishes to discuss it.
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quote :Shane said:
My sister and father developed the first computerised Cash BookThis wouldn’t be the Cash Book would it Shane sold by Acclaim Software?
Babs
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well done jason, good for you mate! have a breezer on me 😉
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quote Barbara Eden:quote :Shane said:
My sister and father developed the first computerised Cash BookThis wouldn’t be the Cash Book would it Shane sold by Acclaim Software?
Babs
Barbara, ours was the original. It was the first Electronic Cash Book ever sold on a PC. Many copied the program as it was so successful.
Dad opted not to continue with the program after he was hit ‘big time’ by software pirates out of Hong Kong, and after an American company negotiated the US rights to distribute the program. They purchased a few 1000 but never released it on the US market. They were the people behind a program now starting with a ‘Q’ and ending with ‘OOKS’. By the time Dad tried to get out of the contract he had with them, they had released their copy of our program called the M64 Cashbook, even though it was full of bugs. My dad was very naive then, in big business.. way too honest and took people at face value. Turns out they wanted our program off the market so theirs would be the only one available.
Our software was being pirated so badly, only 1 in 3 programs in the market were legit 🙁 , we pioneered the ‘dongle’ to ‘lock’ it from pirates, but the damage was done, and dad lost his house. The law was no help as it was still a new industry in those days. Interesting read on piracy here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64_software
Dad opted not to try and fund a rewrite for Windows, so we closed up our programming dept. We traded as Pittwater Distributors, and our UK Distributor was Dataflow, who also sold word processors in the UK.
The Acclaim software is very similar to our original concept, and it could be argued that ours was the forerunner to that software, at a DOS level. Its been improved of course. Its a very good program.
Interestingly, when we were in the market, we offered free support, a help line, free upgrades and a competitive price ($99 ea). M64 undercut our price at $69. When we withdrew from the market, their price immediately tripled, they no longer offered free support, and now you pay big money for an upgrade. We experienced first hand the predatory actions and aggression on a large scale.
Our DOS version of the software even had the Y2K thing sussed in the late ’70’s. We still had old clients using the DOS versions of our software around 2001.
Our programmers were kids that were misfits by todays standards. One guy taught himself to program on a trs80, and was a genius. The education system labeled him as a freak. My dad took him on and he was brilliant, an eccentric mind, but brilliant. The other kids were the same, we just left them alone with a bit of direction and they produced some mind blowing stuff for the time. Unfortunately when we let them go they couldn’t ‘fit in’ and 2 of them got into drugs and, if they are still alive, are probably in an asylum somewhere.
The third young Indian lady lost here father whom she idolized, and lost interest in life.
Interesting days.
Sorry to hijack the thread, and go on a bit, but it was a time in my life that has a lot of memories. Some bitter, but most enjoyable. 😛
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wow, very interesting read that shane! 😮
damn shame how things like this can happen though… 😕 -
Very interest stuff Shane. What a sexy 21 year old you were.
Your right about software companies today. Myob want $44 to change our serial number on our company file for the $600 software package we just upgraded to. That’s really beyond me holding our data at ransom when we just spent an additional $600 on their products.
I’m all for them protecting their software but we have the receipts everything they need and they have all this red tape for one guy to sit with their program and click on button to change it or leave it open for us again to reactivate. We get sign jobs in and out the door quicker then they can do this.
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Jason, Quickbooks and MYOB are nothing short of criminal in their treatment of their client based.
Forcing us to pay for upgrades, which in nearly every case is required because they’d uncovered a ‘bug’ or ‘security risk’ boggles my mind. If it was a token amount it would be one thing, but none of their ‘fees’ are cheap by any means 👿
My dad rang them the other day to describe an ‘issue’ we were having with our latest upgrade, and they wouldn’t talk to him until he gave them his credit card details. Dad said he thought the service was free because it was an upgrade issue. They said they’d decide if it was free after they got his card details. They suggested we should ‘trust’ that they would do the right thing.
Yeah right… 👿
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That’s an amazing read there Shane! Gotta love that hand painted lettering and gradient fill behind you in the photo – not a lot of computer cut lettering and fancy inkjet signs back then, eh? :lol1:
BTW, these companies seem to build themselves around a sociopathic business model – they hate people!
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Wow Shane, what an interesting life you’ve had 🙂 🙂 I’m sorry the Cash Book software isn’t your Dad’s-it’s such a wonderfully simple piece of software, really cheap(by today’s standards) and suits my KISS mentality 🙂 🙂 🙂 .But maybe I should still say a big thank you for setting the ball rolling.
Babs
Jxeureb: Sorry we hijacked your thread- and congratulations on your new-found freedom :2thumbs:
Babs
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Yeah Bill, I know what you mean. It was painted by a client who was an Amiga freak. A very talented man. He had and old OKI wax colour printer at the time, cost a fortune to run but nothing would stop him from printing reams of art. The old dot matrix printers didn’t do his pieces justice.
Barbara, I actually feel sorry for my dad and sister. They deserved the spoils that a successful program would have afforded them. It was a brilliant program that was so simple to use, my dad often complains that all he wants is something like our old cash book, nothing so complicated as whats around today. Don’t get me wrong, my dad and sister made good money in those early days, but it would have been better if they had been where QB or MYOB are now. But neither are ruthless like you need to be these days.
Of course, if things were different I may have been in IT now, and not being ‘creative’ in the graphics industry.
My dad was always ahead of his time in some ways. He opened a store dedicated to renting VCR’s and videos in 1976. Video players were not that common then, but dad was convinced that there would be an industry in video rental. He stuck it out for 9 months, with everyone telling him he was a clown… all the negativity made him change the shop into selling TV’s and Videos. 6 months after that, Video Classics started up their video rental group, and the rest is history 🙁
I could go on with lots of experiences like that Barb. My dad was always a very positive person, too positive sometimes. I was always taught that anything is possible if you give it enough thought. Since my dads near death experience in 2001 though, he’s changed to be very negative, which is unfortunate. But he still very encouraging to both of his kids 😉
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