Fortune 32:16 (was: Amusing book cover)

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_panix.com>
Date: Sun Oct 13 13:01:00 2002

On 13 Oct 2002, Frank McConnell wrote:

> Moonlighting With Your Personal Computer
> Waxman, Robert J.
> World Almanac Publications, 1984
> ISBN 0-345-31652-5
>
> What's so amusing? The cover photograph is of a Fortune 32:16, and
> placed to the left of the title and blurb "An Insider's Advice on How
> You Can Earn Thousands of Extra Dollars".


  Way Back When - I was sent by the rat-box computer store I was working
for to attend the Fortune Service Seminar - to learn basic-level fixit
stuff. It was a one-week class in another city, rather expensive plus
transportation and lodging.... not four months later they went belly up
and no one would touch the remaining (expensive) machines left in stock...
I still have the glossy silver-and-blue Certificate we got at the end of
the class.

  They weren't badly built, IIRC - they were mechanically modular the way
DEC stuff is, or the newer Mac G4s... the documentation was lucid and
nicely done... the company just didn't make the cut. I've once in a
while gotten the bug to get one - but I remind myself of the List of Lists
of Projects....

  Actually a similar thing went on with Molecular - which I thought were
quite advanced machines for the time. We sold several of them, got
horribly burnt when the one running a lawyer's office went irremedially
casters-up: Molecular was on it's last legs and couldn't support it, and
we ended up buying the machine back *and* providing another complete
system free of charge. Store policy changed thereafter to "Never sell
anything to any more Lawyers!" and then I left to go on to bigger and
better things - swearing certainly to never, ever, ever again work any job
having anything to do with Retail anything.... but I digress.

>
> Oh well, I thought it was funny.
>

  It was such a snazzy name: Fortune 32:16. A business name - substantial,
executive - not like having Fruit on your desk... or a business computer
touted by... Charlie Chaplin???? Puh-leeeze!

   Cheers

John
Received on Sun Oct 13 2002 - 13:01:00 BST