About Ray Tapajna in the Global Economic arena continues

My days with Honeywell HIS computers continues. At this point in time, the only mainframe computer manufacturer who was trying to do the right thing for themselves, the industry and workers in general was Control Data. Now they are just a footnote in history.
It should be noted that the computer industry rose from real world experiences on the factory floor and branch facilities across our land. The Data Processing Manager camem from these areas. As I noted before there were no colleges training people in computer science. The industry evolved from real world experiences. After concluding the mainframe industry was controlled by IBM philosophy of centralization, I wanted to find a way to keep it in line with the real world. I knew that once a local facility processing was transferred to a central corporate location, most good things happening in a decentralized way would disappear.   I observed the ramification of a local facility turning over their processing to a central location. Data processing was no longer a local dynamic energy and with the computerization in a central location, this dynamic energy faded away especially when local personnel lost their jobs.

Fortunately, Honeywell announced a new division called the Communications and Keytape Division where off-line processing was featured. I was asked to start up the region but really did not know how to go about it since I would have to raid other departments and divisions to staff the positions. I took too long and someone else took my place. It was ok because I knew it would be a very tough environment to do things the right way. I settled on being the lead sales rep for the new division. I became part of the first nationwide communications networks which featured off line processing and data entry.   I ended up being the top salesman in the region with a total of about 40 salesmen and one of the top ten in the country with a total of about 120 salesmen. I sold many who trusted me and had to stay all the way with them in installing of these systems. Doing this I put my next years quota in jeopardy .   I failed to install one major installation and took a big hit in commissions. In the attempt I became a communications " expert" trailing the communication hook ups up and down the east coast.
The new division was revised to a new small computer one which incorporated computers for processing in small businesses and local facilities for larger corporations. Still, IBM was still leading the way with selling the massive central systems which I knew would eventually not work and the coming micro computer era proved me right. However, it was time for me to seek a new endeavor more fitting to my nature. By then I  knew that the many systems and programmers at Honeywell were right when they kept asking the question What if? as they processed and outlined their procedures. I decided that the KISS principle was best for me - KISS = Keep It Simple Stupid as I sought a new job in the industry.
Some people I knew at IBM called me and got me an interview. I went but really knew any hook up with IBM was not a good thing for me. I was ready to quit the business and then I got a call from the new company that was in large data entry system. They featured a computerized data entry system that processed as much data as possible prior to processing on a central computer. The two parts were separate. I went with this company and sold the largest data entry system ever up to that time but wondered if we could ever make it work. I did not feel at home at all and left the company soon after that . I was a regional manager of the Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Toronto offices and even commuted to Toronto on daily basis at times.
I was beginning to find out that heavy computer processing was not my cup of a tea and wanted to find something more closer to the KISS principle for the sake of my spiritual life and my family. I went with BASF Magnetics.   At my first computer related job, I got into the manufacturing of computer tape and this industry was evolving fast. Manufacturing was changing from error free certified production to statistical production which cut the cost of making computer tape in half. The quality was not the same but the cost open the door to more useage of the product. BASF Magnetics was also manufacturing the latest in rigid disk drives and the disk pack media too. I opened their first branch office replacing a manufacturing representive organization. Things did not work out the way I had hoped and I took over their lines as a private rep until they could find someone else It is difficult to describe some of the bad things surrounding the business worlds and all I can say here is that many questionable ethical things go on in the business world across the board and it is difficult to circumvent these issues. A person from upper management told me that I had to get more in touch with the real world as it is and not as I wish it was.
I decided to go on my own and continue in the business as an independent business.   In time BASF found others more fitting than me for their way of doing things. In the end however, I found out that the only thing remaining in this country was the brand name. About 5000 workers lost their jobs and about 20 former salesmen out of about 100 sales reps became independent contractors pushing the BASF brand of products that were made in other lands. However, the face to the customer still remained as if the products were made here. It took me two years to find this out myself. This one situation of thousands of situations that forecasted of the ending of our industrial base in the United States. We had the best technology in our hands and we let it sift through our fingers like sand.

It's 1976, and my 25+ computer business is launched. It was time to say goodbye the the corporate world. Too many things were changing at one time. The new micro computer world was launched. As I observed all the events, I concluded it was best to go on my own. I decided to become a computer media and micro computer specialist. I knew how to do things better in these fields and I start supplying old and new customers with the best products I knew about at the right price.   We went into things like refurbished computer tape and the new floppy diskette products like the 8" hard hole diskettes that were part of the new computerized typesetting industry. I worked with Shugart 8" diskettes and many in the new typesetting industry quickly heard about how good these diskettes were to run their systems. Too many others were failing. The manufacturer was Alan Shugart who later became one of the founders president of Seagate hard disks which later employed 100,000 workers. During this time, I was called into a local manufacturing start up for cat scans. They were ready to ship their first machines until they found out their operating systems did not have error recovery and the best in rigid disk packs of that era had about 60 correctable errors on each disk pack. It would take a year for them to put in the correctable error program into their operating system and field test it. I then found out that even GE Medical was having the same problem along with other cat scan manufacturers. I went on a search for a good manufacturer and found the manufacturer who took over Shugart 8" hard hole diskette was able to make a 100 percent error free disk pack. The local cat scan manufacturer got some of them and they worked. Thus I became known as someone who knew about error correction and supplying 100 percent error free products.   I received orders from other cat scan manufacturing and was in my new business successfully.   I became nationally visible and even China called. An agent from China asked me to supply them with diagnostic and calibration tapes for their computers.   This evolved into their buying drives and other computer components from me and supplying them with vintage Control Data mainframe computers that were sought after in the second markets.  I did get some orders but failed to get through the red tape and this venture proved to be too risky to continue for more reasons than one. Later, I also became a specialist in vintage hard disk that some industrial computers could only use. I also became a computer supply specialist for other corporations and this too took off with a flury until --- a new company came on the map which was a front for a major transnational corporation and sold many products under costs. They lasted about five years and then could not continue when they tried to work on a margin. A funny thing occurred. They merged with the company that did the same thing to my first computer employer and after the merger both companies soon folded.
In the micro computer arena, there were many companies breaking ground and I was part of a group that was going to start a major contributor but everything fell apart when the main person was killed in an auto accident. By 1980, IBM announced their PC Compatible and gifted Microsoft with the operating system. ( See our story at http://tapsearch.com/flatworld ) As the story goes, IBM just wanted to throw a monkey wrench into the micro computer market to protect their money making mainframe computer business and were caught by surprise when they accomplished what no other micro computer company could. Just by their branded name IBM, they established a universal standard overnight.   ) With this we suspended our micro computer pursuits even though our region represented one of the leading ones in the micro computer startups. We give you most of the names of these companies at http://tapsearch.com/tapartnews/id17.html and can provide you with many others including companies in the mini computer market that lost out due to IBM PC compatible. The main problem was the components. For the first time in IBM's history, they elected to go outside their company to obtain the components and so the architecture hardware was not exclusive to IBM and foreign manufacturers could make these items for a fraction of the cost outside the USA. So, IBM by design or accident open the door to so called free trade which eventually backfired .
In 1980 I was an independent reseller for Dysan Corporation that made the totally free disk packs nationally. However, Dysan chose to go with direct representation and they asked me to open their first regional offices. This led to my going back to the corporate world with Dysan. Dysan led the way with many innovations in the rigid and floppy diskette technology. They created the best in magnetic storage that still is hard to surpass. They also funded 30 other startup companies in the computer field including funding Shugart's start up of Seagate. I received several calls from old friends who wanted to get on board with them. They seemed to be unstoppable because of their leading technology skills and their dedication to human dignity in the workday. We even had symposiums about employee dignity and there was a open door office policy by the president and president of Dysan . For the first year or two there were only a few titles with everyone supposedly being equal.   However, things did not last and Dysan chose to take on the Far East manufacturing companies that were literally copying all technology. Dysan lost. They were one of the first to lose the war in the free trade globalist battle. No one in government or the industry came to the rescue. So, all of the years of high end research was in essence stolen and given away. Alan Shugart went on to be successful with Seagate hard disks but only about 10,000 of his 100,000 employees were in the USA. It became a sad commentary of our times. In essence, Norm Dion the president of Dysan felt like we lost World War 2 fourty years after the fact. During these five years , I was with Dysan directly and traveled to the Silicon Valley on a regular basis where I became well informed on many matters in high tech field from a Silicon Valley viewpoint.  Dysan led the way in innnovations, starting 30 different companies n h high technoloy. The biggest success story is Seagate but they ended up with 90,000 workers outside the USA with only 10,000 in the USA.

With Dysan gone, I came back to my own company Arkline Computers and became mainly a trouble shooter supplyer to several corporations including some in the industrial computer manufacturing area. These companies were trying to adjust to the new foreign invasion of component parts. The U.S. companies were still runned by highly trained engineers who did not know how to adjust to inferior products. I read as many technical publications that I could to keep up with the situation and help these companies survive. However, how can a company survive if they field test a component part for six months or so and then do a destruct testing on the item when the particular part has changed internally with the same product code and no indication that they were revised. I fought the fight for them as long as I could but they went out of business too - one after another.  I had my own labeled micro computer under by own private brand Arkline for several years and had them assembled under my instructions and design. We supplied many accounts and worked with the latest research companies affiliated with Case Western Reserve University. We also became a reseller of Wells America who manufactured the last micro computer made in the USA. I fought to the end for this company and it was a mistake to do it but I had to do it. I actually thought the U.S. consumer and companies would finally realize that they could not survive if they gave all their middle class jobs away. I was wrong. The American consumer shopped their way out of their jobs and still do.
I had about a thousand customers and top prospects at one time. Virtually all of them are gone.   After seeing the writing on the wall, I tried to convert my business and started selling church furniture and revnovations. The company was 100 years old and I thought for sure they would not go out of business but they did. I also spent about four years, on a software weather project called Digital Radar and we were successful getting the product to  market but then the weather bureau changed the codes and four years of work went down the drain. With this software, we able to predict weather conditions on a continous basis a hundred miles away even indicating fog and road conditions. I also was a regional outlet for a top realist estate software package.

After this I started a computer repair business to augment my fading main business, and it took off ok but it was impossible to keep up with the changing contracts as a contractor. This ended with our heart attack and believing I had only a year or two to live, I went online writing as much as I could for my grandchildren to know what happen and hopefully could do something about it when they grew up. I still did some consulting work related primarily to disk storage problems but it was not consistent. During this period I also worked as a contractor as merchandiser to some super stores but this was not worth the effort. ( The government promised help to those who lost their jobs or businesses due to free trade but instead many incurred more problems from government agencies. Government represents the biggest hassle to overcome in being in your own business. And trying to do business with government agencies is usually a useless effort. Sometimes it cost me more to put in a bid than any possible profit out of the deal. ) The state was also sending me threatening letters about some supposedly corporate franchise tax, they claimed I owed. I did not know what they were talking about and after getting large bill with another threatening letter, I wrote a letter to the Governor and  Attorney General Offices to stop kicking a dead horse. It took me two years just to close down by corporation according to all the state processing .

The last full time job offer I ever received was for a manager position for the check in security personnel at the airport. My background as a Army Transportation Officer and my being with two cargo and passenger airlines at the airport plus my experience with an international airline qualified me for the position. ( It reminded me of a time when were able to walk from our hanger on the runway to the main tower facility. ) I never managed minimum wage workers before and did not want to start doing it as my last job . Thank God, I turned the job down about one month before 9/11/2001. I can't imagine what I would have happened to me if I took the job at that time.

I survived ten years after my severe heart attack.   I never knew I would be still writing and chose this time to open the door wider to my past for the coming generations to take in. Now my Tapsearch sites are many with thousands of references on the web - search under tapsearch, tapsearcher, tapart news, bizarrepolitics, therationale, arkline art. And if you search under the title of my most popular editorial artwork, you will find it is part of more than 3 million search results on Yahoo and Altavista - search under - Clinton Years American Dream Reversed.

All my sites, blogs and artwork are really all about you now in the global economic arena. I invite you to pick up the ball now and run it as I may be ending my stay on earth soon. Hopefully, the Lord will give me the energy to continue on.

The spiritual side of things- or should there be another side in the work day.
My national sales manger called me one day during the 1970s and told me that I had to face the realities of the business world. He said that he had similar spiritual experiences like me but had to adapt to the real world and that I should too.   About the same time, I read a report by a large church association that took a poll and reported that 70 percent of all church goers were unable to match up their work with their spiritual life. Sunday church was Sunday church but then came Monday of the work week.   I was part of a community at that time, that was trying to establish a better way.   A friend and I started a new counseling group related to this problem. We even put an ad in the business section of the main newspaper in town but we had only a few responses and were back a square one. I had made the Cursillo in 1964. The Cursillo is a short 3 day course in Christianity full of group dynamics and spiritual exercises. The 4th day is the rest of your life. The Cursillo had a great impact on many. The 4th day included a weekly meeting for all who made the Cursillo to carry on its impact. The meeting was called an Ultreya. It is a Spanish word meaning onward. I was the regional host of these meetings for about four years. I had introduced many people to the Cursillo but had difficulties deciding how far I should go since so many men were finding work a real problem in the 4th day including myself. One of the first things many did after making the Cursillo was changing jobs. As time went by, many got discouraged and stop coming to the Ultreyas and then faded away from the movement. I found again that the workday was the main problem for many, They were unable to match up their work with their spiritual life. I also went to the Cursillo leadership school which consisted of many courses in the evenings going deep into the church and the aims of the Cursillo. We were also trained to give well thought out talks at a Cursillo. I was given the action talk during the Cursillo which represents a change in the short course from piety and study to action. It is supposed to be the crossroads for those making the Cursillo. Back then I used a bit of evangelical persuasion which most l would most likely not do today and leave the listener for the Holy Spirit to handle better than me.   I had the privelege of giving the action talk at a Cursillo with Bishop Cosgrove acting as the spiritual director. Bishop Cosgrove made the Cursillo a few years before and lived the 4th day as an example to all.
Bishop Cosgrove spread his ministy to the central city and served the impoverished populations.  The Bishop William Cosgrove center still exists in Cleveland serving the homeless and in other services to the poor.
I also had a great priest in the movement as friend in Monsignor Novicky. Monsignor Novicky let himself be pliable to the Holy Spirit than most others would have dared. During this time, the charistmatic pentecostal movement was vibrant too. I was part of the first community and we were trying to find ways to form a better style of living in community. One of the first things you do is to agree on a pastor and we sought out Monsignor Novicky as the one to be our pastor. Monsignor agreed to an extent but did not necessarily hold our views related to the new charistmatic movement. He did this knowing that he would be identified with a group that was considered radical by many traditional Catholics including his peers in the hierarchy. After much study including a deep reading of Dr C G Jung about tongue speaking, I found it to be a valid part of the Catholic Church and something that needed to be studied further in the Church. The Church never came out with an approval or disapproval of this gift of the Spirit, but let scriptures sort it all out. I found Jung particularly interesting because he researched from a different perspective and found it a valid exercise too in the study of the subconscience state. The charistmatic movement in the Catholic Church had to processed this all in a ongoing way. Unfortunately the gift of tongues is still not defined in a proper authoritive way. I also read and listen to a prominent Pentacostal minister who was invited to the Vatican 2 conferences.

I leave this subject for another time and just wanted to show the setting behind the events during this wonderful period in the Church. I traveled to a large charistmatic community in Houston Texas to see what they were all about. Rev Pulkingham was leading the way in forming new Christian communities. It was then when I concluded, the zeal could be rated A+ but the cautions carried a much lower rating in my humble estimation. I understood how bad the work day was but I also knew it would take a long study of the common good to find roads out of our secular mess. As time went by, it seems the void was greater than I had imagined and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's overview of the New Harmony workers community experience proved to me that the free traders in a so called free market environment using Adam Smith's survival of the fittest theories as the real world way did not know much how to extend the common good in economics. As I noted before, coming from growing up in a small business free enterprise environment and working in factories while going to college, I found the business schools in our colleges a foreign alien thing.

The ethics in business, is not part of any curriculum of most business schools. I was confronted with simple moral decisions, some or severe and some of a criminal nature throughout my business career with most of these actvities left unsaid in our business schools. I left these things out too in my story in the business world since too many families would be hurt if they start making connections with my descriptions. From bottom to the top, human nature is on trial - see http://www.therationale.com/human-nature-on-trial   and unfortunately the global economy in centralizing business activity adds to the problem . President Franklin Roosevelt said - economic diseases are highly communicable - and in the global economic arena they are now accepted as doing things in the "free market" way. In other lands bribes are just a part of doing business. At least in the USA, people react when bribes are brought out in the open. The break down of ethics has gone international- a must read book is The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins.

When so called free trade and globalization centralize business activity , everything dark and evil surface that once were more controllable in more de-centralized ways especially when governments are brokers and deal makers in the flow of money and investments.

I tried in other ways to counteract the dark things in the work day. I also took the Gabriel Richard -Christopher Movement course and later its advanced course in becoming an instructor. The program encouraged those without a voice or who were afraid to stand up be counted, to make their point not only in a Christian manner but also standing up for what is the right thing to do.   It was exciting to see a factory worker or a housewife, become a polished speaker in just a few weeks.

However with all of these tools to pass on, I still found it difficult in confronting the dark side in the business world. I also found it difficult to put this all on men who were working to support their families. It was sad thing to see when some of my friends who were once idealistic had to compromise their values for the sake of their families. I fought the good fight but still wonder if it was worth the effort but in the end, we all report to the Lord on what we did or what we tried to change.

John Carroll magazine | 1955