How I Loved Thee, Google

"Oh, how I loved thee, Google,
Let me count the ways . . . "

I started my third real job in May 1970. Stock Clerk again, but instead of Woolworth's, this was for the State of NJ Bureau of Data Processing. The days of the 80-column punched cards. The days of the 256k magnetic core IBM mainframe computer. I worked hard for nine years, mostly as a Computer Operator, running that 256k mainframe, then a 512k mainframe, then larger and larger until I knew JES2 and Job Control Language (JCL), by heart. And taught others.

And in early 1979 I confessed to management something I should never have done at work -- search thru the director's desk papers for news of promotions or layoffs. I was verbally fired immediately, but after much begging, was transferred to Resource Development, a planning and procurement set-up unit, run by Chris Reid. A hard taskmaster. And I'm always grateful.

Best thing that ever happened to me except for meeting Janet in high school, and running across the Baha'i Faith. All three major milestones. So in '79 I was in a grey padded chair in a cubicle looking at a computer screen for hours, and typing with two fingers. Not any computer most of us would know today. Lotus and Visicalc instead of MS-Excel, WordPerfect instead of MS-Word. No MS-Office.  E-mail? Unknown to us stringent IBMer's until PROFS in the early 80's; but no major use to the '90s.

Jan and I had bought a Commodore 64 for kids games like The Hobbit and Barbie in the early '80s. Later I produced a 2-page area Seeker Newsletter on it. So I'm no expert, but familiar enough with computing, PCs, browsers, applications, e-mail systems et al.

Eventually, after Compuserve and AOL elsewhere, came Microsoft's Internet Explorer in '95. The Google search hit in the late '90s, followed by release of Gmail in 2004. I had always used AOL, but the spam was ridiculous, until our friend Abbey sent me a Gmail invite circa 2007 (or 8?). Its spam filter was far superior to AOL's, so I switched permanently. By 2009 when I retired and started RR Energy & IT Consulting I had 3 Gmail accounts/email addresses. In 2012 when I started ABLiA Media Co LLC for publishing my book(s), it was the fourth.

Three of these Gmail accounts I use every day, the earliest one maybe once a week. But, I have over 200 email subscriptions to IT, energy, writing, publishing and many, many more subscription sites. I receive 150 emails a day from all four. Many are important, many informative and I either print or archive those, and 40% of others can be deleted 'cause I have since dissolved my RR Energy company.

Be that as it may, these four accounts are my lifeblood to the Internet; to hundreds of friends, acquaintences, colleagues and family.

But Google has now abolished three of these important accounts. No matter how hard I try, Google, with this new "One Account" BS, will ONLY let me get to the same account address!

My Mission: Find easy access to my legitimate Gmail addresses! Like it used to be!! more soon.

By Rodney Richards, copyright 2014.  Email to 1950ablia@gmail -- will get a delayed response.

Subscribe for free by clicking on the right, and/or check out my recent memoir Episodes at 
http://www.amazon.com/episodes-rodney-richards/dp/0615914705