In the beginning

It all began one overcast fall morning as I stood there bleary-eyed, staring at the contents of a nondescript beige office supply cabinet at 100 South Wacker in downtown Chicago. There I was, a newly recruited spindle in the corporate machine, looking for something to write on among the piles of legal pads, notebook paper, phone message books, and other assorted office gear, when I spotted something in the back of the cabinet: a sad little stack of lime-green steno pads with a faint red line running smack down the middle of each page.

Those little pads became my constant companion for the next few years, traveling with me on business trips all over the Midwest and the East coast. They were my second brain, a reliable repository for meeting notes, to-do lists, project ideas, and everything else. Eventually, however, two factors conspired to move me on: our company slowly migrated to lower-quality stenos with craptastic paper, and I became increasingly enamored with the idea of keeping everything in my laptop.

Going digital

Initially, I ended up writing a quick Visual Basic 3 program called Notepad, which allowed me to create little Post-It style notes all over the screen, resize and reposition them, and search through them.  But the problem with having the source code is that you can’t resist the urge to tinker, so I ended up spending more time tweaking the app than actually using it.

So for a while, I tried one massive Word document, formatted in landscape mode, with four columns and 8-point Arial text.  It was great: I could get a ton of information on the screen at once, it was searchable, and I could print out a copy for easy backup and reference.  But it wasn’t very portable - I had to have my laptop with me constantly, in meetings and at home - and it quickly grew to several dozen confusing pages.  I wasn’t happy.

Big Palm Fan

And then one day, my world turned upside down.  I got word that there was a new device on the horizon called the Palm Pilot. I ordered one sight-unseen, had it FedExed to work, and became obsessed. Every little scrap of my life - phone numbers, the average caffeine content of 20 beverages, passwords, lists of cities I’ve been in, ideas for 3D printers and open-source curricula - got poked into that little device.  I even started a newsletter at work, the PIP Sheet, that eventually picked up a circulation of nearly 6000 readers.

Man, I went ape sh-t with the whole Palm thing.  I used a Palm Pilot Professional, then the 2mb IR card, a Casio Cassiopeia, Palm IIIc, Palm V, Handspring Visor Deluxe, Palm Vx, Palm m505, Compaq iPaq 64mb, Palm VII, Palm i705, Sony CLIE PEG-NR70V/U, Palm m515, Palm Zire, AlphaSmart Dana, Sony CLIE PEG-SJ30/U, HP iPAQ H1900, Sony CLIE NR70V, and a Sony CLIE NX70V, but not necessarily in that order.  Fortunately, work bought many of those for me, although truth be told they were feeding a sad little addiction.

An analog recovery

Suddenly one Saturday morning, I woke up, fingers cramped from tiny little styli and eyes bleary from poking around on those miniscule screens, and set out on a mission to get back to paper.  Go analog.  Cold turkey style.

I was tired of shoehorning the texture and complexity of day-to-day life into that little block of electrons, the subtleties of real-time prioritization into a tight 1-5 rank order, the margin notes of life into neat little Datebook, Notepad, and Calendar apps.  I yearned to get back to scribbles, circles, arrows, and BIG FAT underlines when things were REALLY IMPORTANT.

But I had two problems.  First, it had become nearly impossible to find good steno pads any more, with the office supply superstores reducing their selection down to wirebound blocks of uber-recycled craptastic paper, and the specialty shops either dropping them altogether or being constantly out of stock.

Second, I had forgotten how to use a pen.

 

 

All Contents Copyright (c) 2006 Bill Westerman. All Rights Reserved.

100 south wacker

chicago, illinois

the Palm that
started it all