Sloughfoot changes course

[geolivestrong]

Congratulations on the retirement! I really wish you the best and I’m sure you’ll find plenty to keep your time occupied. I hope to run into you on the trail again one day soon!

[BakRdz]

A big congrats John. I know you two will make the best use of your new found “free time.”

[Frizz]

John, I hope that you will be as successful at retirement as you oviously were at your job, except I hope that you get in more than 30 years of retirement! Good luck.

[Sparse Grey Hackle]

John, congrats on your new adventure(s)!

We hope to see you two along the trail sometime real soon.

And who knows? Maybe there will be some cookies too! 😀

SGH & BB

[JimandLinda]

Hey, John! I’m having some computer problems! Do you work cheaper now?

Have fun in the next, best chapter of life! 😀

[Sloughfoot]

Mrs Sloughfoot didn’t tell me that she was starting this thread, so she had to tell me to go look at it. I don’t usually spend a lot of time on the forums. Thanks for all of the good wishes, I think maybe you just want us to hide a bunch more caches. That might happen we have about 15 ammo cans in stock.

It was in April 1967 that I hired on with Honeywell in Madison. We were two 19 year old kids with a 9 month old son. We loaded everything we owned in a 1963 Falcon and a small U-Haul trailer and took off for Wasington D.C. with a six month stop in Boston for training. The first surprise was toll roads. By the time we reached Bean Town we were about broke but Honeywell was a great company and we made out just fine. You didn’t need much money to see all of the historical spots around Boston and later Wash DC and it started an interest in history that we still enjoy.

We all love our pc’s and Macs right. We couldn’t enjoy our sport without them. It took a long time and a lot of miniturization to get them to the point that they are at right now. I wasn’t the inventor of anything but I managed to fix anything the engineers designed. Computers went from living room sized with card equipment ( remember “dont bend, spindle, or mutilate”?) to even larger room sized monsters. There were no monitors on computers just large control panels or maybe a Teletype. I can remember the first green monitors, some people called them scopes. Then WOW, amber text, what a variety. The first computers had no RAM, it was called “core” and you could actually see the wires going through little magnetic cores. The first system I worked on was 2K core ( 2048 bytes) and with that you could read and punch cards, print and put data on mag tape. The first Honeywell computer had 3″ mag tape and a full reel weighed 42 lbs.

As computers got faster and smaller we started trying to connect them together. Modems had acoustic couplers and were at first 110 Baud or about 10 bytes/second. Eventually of course Al Gore invented the Internet ( yea right ) and things progressed to the point we are at right now. I can only let my mind wander and imagine what will happen in the next ten years.

We spent 13 years in Virginia and three more years in Germany before we decided that Wisconsin was a pretty nice place to live and raise a family so we came back in 1982 and have lived in Appleton ever since. We are only moving a few miles down the road to our cottage near Portage so we will still be in touch with all of you and will meet on the trail or at the M&G’s.

As for Jim and his computer problems. Jim I plan to do a memory erase so these will be the new definitions.
“Windows” Open when it is warm, closed when it is cold.
“Mac” Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun
“Hard drive” It is a long way to the next cache.
“Mouse? What the cat is good for.
“Floppy” Can’t be discussed here.

[gotta run]

@Sloughfoot wrote:

As for Jim and his computer problems. Jim I plan to do a memory erase so these will be the new definitions.
“Windows” Open when it is warm, closed when it is cold.
“Mac” Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun
“Hard drive” It is a long way to the next cache.
“Mouse? What the cat is good for.
“Floppy” Can’t be discussed here.

Very nice! 😆 ….and congratulations!

On the Left Side of the Road...

[sandlanders]

Nice computer (and Team Sloughfoot) history lesson there, John. And the ending is a great way to sum up your new life!

[JimandLinda]

Love the bio, John! 😉

[Sagasu]

Ditto on the bio! John and Gail, look forward to seeing you again, not far down the road….

[Lacknothing]

Loved the bio too. Have never met you guys, but have done plenty of your river caches, enjoying them all. Couple that with the bio and I feel like I do know you. Best of luck in retirement. Portage is a great place….there is some really good German restaurant down that way…not in Portage, but that next town over….and of course, the Wisconsin River….

The views expressed here are that of myself only and do not necessarily represent that of the WGA board.

[sandlanders]

Dang! I forgot to post last week when the actual last day was to occur. Think as of March 19, sloughfoot has put his feet up for good.

Let the non-stop caching begin!

[Sloughfoot]

Unemployed for the first time in 43 years and loving it! We still have a few more loads to move from one place to another but there was talk about geocaching just this morning. Catch you all on the trail.[/u]

[Sagasu]

May the wind be always at your back and the sun shine warm upon your face, John….. and the same for Gail, until we meet again…. 8)

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