A Bit Of Personal Nostalgia...

[Jim Frye]

Back when I was working as an IBM Systems Engineer, the mid-sized systems were shipped to the customer site on a large pallet that had a plywood ramp included to allow the IBM Customer Engineer to roll the system down off of the pallet onto the customer's floor. The ramp was a 3/4" thick, 5 ply, void free 30"x48" piece that appeared to be southern yellow pine. The ramps were sanded smooth and extremely strong as the systems units weighed as much as 1,100 pounds. I put out a bounty to the CE unit in our office of $5 for each ramp brought to me. This was back in the '80s and I was able to gather a fair sized inventory before I retired (and the CEs caught on to the value of the wood). Today, sadly, I cut up the last of the ramp wood for a project. I don't think I've seen pine plywood of this quality (I'd liken it to baltic birch) in the stores since. Even the local plywood store doesn't carry anything like it. I showed them a sample and the reply was BB.

[Black walnut]

Hind sight, thinking you should have found the source back then. I have many times found something that was just right only to have it disappear from the market when I want it again.

[cwsmith]

Hello Jim,

I did not know that you worked for IBM at one time.

Off the subject, but did you ever have reason to visit any of IBM's facilities here in the NY Southern Tier. IBM Endicott, Glendale Labs, or Owego (Federal Systems Division)? I also used to do business regularly with Fishkill, Poughkeepsie, and Wappinger Falls.

Over rhe last year or so, 'IBM Endicott' has mostly been torn down, and at present the eastern end of the vast facility is nothing more than block after block of rubble, covered in large tarps because of asbestos and other hazardous waste. On the west end, BAE now owns several of the old IBM buildings which they renovated.

CWS

[Jim Frye]

I was in a Project Management class in Manhattan once and a management prep class in East Fishkill, but nearly all of my time outside the branch office territory was spent at the Rochester, MN development and manufacturing facilities. Sometimes, I would get "loaned" to an office somewhere else in the country to work on an especially troublesome systems issue. I spent my entire career in the General Systems Division (S-3, S-32, S-34, S-38, AS/400, iSeries).

[Jim Frye]

I forgot to note my title was Advisory Systems Specialist. The acronym was not kind.

[pearson]

Old good times. Posts like this bring back memories for a lot of us—sometimes it’s the tools, the smell of sawdust, or even just a project that sparks something personal. For me, I get that feeling when I hear from old friends or reconnect online. I once reconnected with someone through ourtime https://ourtime.pissedconsumer.com/review.html, and it felt like revisiting a chapter from years ago. Nostalgia always has a way of sneaking up.