- Raising Cane » Computing

I have a printer problem.

Chris Cane — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:57:32 +0000

Caller: Hi, our printer is not working.

Customer Service: What’s wrong with it?

Caller: The Mouse is jammed.

Customer Service: Mouse? Printers don’t have a mouse!!!

Caller: Mmmmm??.. Oh really?… I will send a picture

See below

Mouse Jammed in Printer

I have a printer problem. is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

The Calculator Story of 1972

Chris Cane — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 05:01:24 +0000

Sears is a wonderful organization. One wonders sometimes about their benevolent and easy going return policy, but there’s no doubt their customer service works and we keep going back for more.

Look No % Key!

When electronic calculators were just coming on the market, they were quite a novelty and sometimes they actually worked. This is a story about my ﬁrst calculator(s). It was about 1972 and the Bowmar electronic calculator hit the street. I went to Sears and bought one. I found a way to pay $124.95 which was a lot for me in those days. Today I remain an early adopter of technology. I probably always will. This ﬁrst machine was very limited in capability. It could add, subtract, multiply and divide. That’s all!

It worked for about two to three months when the battery would no longer hold a charge. I headed back to the store. On arrival the clerk looked at my calculator, and I was told they no longer carry that model. Technology was moving quickly. The new model available was essentially identical but had a percent key. One more button to play with. I was told that the new model was a different price and I immediately stiffened, only to hear that the new model was 99.95 rather than the 124.95 I had spent on the original. I left that day with a new calculator with a percent key and $25.00 plus tax! Not bad for a days work.!

You guessed it! The replacement calculator died in a few months, I can’t remember what happened, maybe the percent key got stuck when I spilled coke on it. Back to the store and the tale repeats itself. The model I had was no longer available. The latest and greatest now came with a bunch of new keys for the built in memory function and the price had dropped to $79.95. Yup! I got a new calculator and $20.00 plus tax back.

Buy one calculator for $124.95, trade it in twice and get a percent key. a bunch of memory keys, a calculator that worked and $55.00 back.

Not bad!

I love Sears!

The Calculator Story of 1972 is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog

The challenge of social networking.

Chris Cane — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 13:26:46 +0000

I used to be a pretty smart guy. There was a time when my knowledge of home computers and applications was second to none. I bought my first PC in 1977 and it was a TRS-80 with 4K of RAM and a 16 K Tape Drive (It was called a tape drive but it really was a reasonable quality audio cassette recorder that could be controlled in a limited way by the TRS-80). This machine was upgraded to 16K of RAM with an expansion box with another 16K of RAM. Imagine that, a 32K PC. Things grew and a flopppy disk was added with 175K capacity!

It’s hard for me to remember how elated I was moving up to an IBM XT with 640 K of RAM and a 10 MB disk drive in 1982. It did not take long before that PC was retired and seemingly an endless string of PC’s followed, each with more and more capacity and without fail, I filled them up and had to move on up!

I was doing OK with web development in my little world, developing many websites (see www.amjo.net for a current list) and along came SOCIAL NETWORKING! SO I joined

Twitter http://twitter.com/chris_cane
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/chriscane
FaceBook http://www.facebook.com/cscane
Google at http://www.google.com/profiles/chris.cane
FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/chriscane

and where is all this getting me! I wish I knew.

I need to to learn more about thsi (or is it a flash in the pan).

I’m gunna take a Twitter course at www.saleskonnect.com in January!

The challenge of social networking. is a post from: Chris Cane's Blog