There are many of us in the energy industry who have been around (a loooong time) to see the ups-and-downs and ins-and-outs of this cyclical business. The incredible technology we use today may seem to young whippersnappers to be something that has always been. Not so. Thinking back to just the advancements in everday office machines, I feel 100 years old. I remember being trained in high school to make multiple copies of a paper document. My classmates and I used a manual typerwriter to type on a sheet of soft plastic. The typerwriter keys made holes in the plastic sheet in the shape of letters. The sheet was then affixed to the drum of a mimeographic machine and we poured ink into the reservior. We placed a stack of paper next to the feeder and cranked a handle to pull paper under the drum, where ink bled through the holes in the sheet, leaving an imprint of words. To make several hundred copies, we cranked around the handle several hundred times. When only making one copy of a letter or memo, we placed a carbon-backed sheet between two sheets of paper and typed. Hence, carbon copy, or CC: After high school, I worked as a full-charge bookkeeper at Southwestern Supply Co. I had cutting-edge technology, using one of the first accounting programs developed for use on a Radio Shack computer. There was no hard drive in the computer. The machine used two floppy disks, one containing a program for calculations and the other to store the data. Later, I was hired to create a technical library for Compaq Computers. I had access to an instant messaging system, called Vines, to communicate with other employees on our local area network. No email. No internet. Much later, I installed computers in the offices of UOP catalyst sales executives and taught them to use their mouse by insisting they play Solitaire until they won a game. Then I trained them to use WordPerfect for documents and Framework for math. No Micrsoft Word. No Excel. I also convinced them not to affix their data disks to their steel file cabinets by using refrigerator magnets. Guess my age?