In response to Lorelle on WordPress’s weekly blogging challenge, I am considering the changes computer software has wrought in my life.

I can still recall hearing the name Microsoft sometime in the early 80’s, and wondering just what that even referred to?!

At that time, the computer I had at my disposal at work only ran off a floppy disk, (this is of course before computers had any memory to speak of) which had to be inserted into your compter’s disk drive to make anything happen. I wasn’t even aware I was USING software and often wondered what software looked like and what functions it could be expected to perform.

One of the first programs I owned was a grades management application, essentially a large spreadsheet into which you could enter your students’ names and grades on specific assignments, and then it would tell me what grade each kid had at that moment in time. This program revolutionized my teaching life! I could be on top of my students’ progress and grades in an instant, and had so much more time to spend planning great lessons as opposed to sitting with calculator in hand late into the night. If I was meeting with a parent, I could pull up the spreadsheet and show them just how their child was progressing. Commonplace today, but a huge leap forward back then.

Today, as an entrepreneur and self-employed person, I choose the kind of services I am providing and, therefore, the types of software on which I must be proficient. If it weren’t for AdobeSystems and Apple Computer, I wouldn’t be making a decent living in my present career as a Virtual Assistant specializing in web development and graphic design.

The longer I reflect, though, I can’t help but think about the activities that I just don’t find time for anymore, thanks to the advent and evolution of software that entails quite a bit of study and practice to achieve even basic proficiency. I’m drifting off to the good old days when I had time to garden, cook great meals, knit and sew on top of working a full time job and raising a family.

I’m looking out my office window at a gigantic pile of mulch that waits patiently for me to spread it. Too bad I don’t have some software that could do that for me…

Trading outside employment for self employment, I earned the right to being the sole decision maker when it came to purchasing new equipment (I love checking that box on surveys). My pride in being my own boss also means burning the midnight oil so that I can be up to speed enough on my latest technology purchases to be able to turn out a job the next day. Blaming software for what is probably just a downside of self-employment is unfair. But, it IS expensive and it DOES have to be upgraded all the time and there is NEVER an end to that cycle.

In comparison, my gardening (trowels, etc.), knitting (needles, etc.) and cooking (pots & pans) hardware have never been replaced and my sewing machine is 50 years old and still going strong. Not to mention the kitchen software (tablecloths, potholders and aprons) I inherited from my grandma, which are older than me.

Lost and gone forever? Not quite.

I thought that some of the software that I truly valued in the early years of my own computing experiences (and which led to my current ball and chain relationship with my technology) seemed either to have languished or altogether vanished. Not so in all cases.

• The now obsolete ClarisWorks was my first wordprocessor. I stubbornly held onto it until it turned into AppleWorks. I still run that morph of ClarisWorks for everyday wordprocessing tasks that don’t need to be delivered to clients. Read about the history of this one here.

• The tools which kept me organized when I first became a solopreneur were NowUpToDate and NowContact: I never met anyone else who used or had heard of them back when they were my workhorses. Does anyone still use these forerunners of contact management software? I just discovered they are still being distributed!

• Before there was Photoshop, there was Graphic Converter. Way before I could afford Photoshop or Photoshop Elements or Jasc’s PaintShopPro, this program got a daily workout in my office. It is a terrific graphics editing program that came as a free utility with one of my first computers. I have kept it installed ever since. I once had an issue about which I contacted the company and I heard back from the developer, Mr. Lemke, right away. I even got to meet him briefly at this year’s MacWorld 2008.

• Justin R. Cohen’s Baby Smash came installed on my first Apple IIe and my kids loved it to death. In fact, today they’re all grown men but they sometimes yell out “BabySmash!” at random moments, like other (normal?) people might holler “Bonzai!” I don’t think you can find it any longer, but here’s a newer alternative. And here’s a newer program, same name, that might be fun for those with little ones.

Thanks, Lorelle, for this somewhat provocative writing challenge. Maybe I’ll modify my work/life balance, so as to get back to churning out a little more of my own favorite software, uh, soft-ware, like the little green sweater pictured above.