Friday, January 14, 1994 - Norfolk, VA

Took the bus to Newtown Road. Walked the rest of the way to the Don Richards agency, where I signed up for bookkeeping and accounting jobs. They have all levels, from flunky to CPA, and pay accordingly, so I might be able to get something halfway decent here. They gave me hands-on tests, thank goodness. Did much better with this Lotus 1-2-3 test. It was divided into three parts: mandatory, general, and advanced. I scored 100% on the mandatory, 83% on the general, and 66% on the advanced. The bookkeeping test was a cinch. I aced it.
When I left the agency, I ate a baked potato at Wendy's and then took a bus to a place that had advertised for data entry operators for eight days at six to seven-fifty an hour. Had a hard time finding the place, and when I finally did, all the jobs had been filled.
Walked six or seven blocks to Egghead Software to see if they had a compiler that would run on this little critter. They had an assembler that only required 512K of RAM, but it was on 5 1/4 inch diskettes. My drive is 3 1/2. The clerk said they would be getting in a compiler on 3 1/2 inch disks, but it cost $330, which was somewhat beyond my budget. He suggested I phone Microsoft directly; he said I could buy a compiler from them for less, but when I phoned them, they wanted more. They said they had to charge the highest price, so they wouldn't be competing with their dealers. Their price was $495.
On the way home, I passed a place that rented software, so I phoned them to see if they rented compilers. The woman who answered the phone barely spoke English. I had a hard time getting her to understand what I wanted and a harder understanding her reply, but I finally gathered that they didn't rent compilers; they sold them, and they'd just sold the last one they had that was the kind I wanted. Guess I'll give up on compilers until I have room for a larger computer, or they miniaturize computers sufficiently to fit one with 4 megabytes of RAM on the boat. Of course, by that time, compilers will require 50 megabytes of RAM.