This page is still under construction. Much more to come,to bore you to tears!

Cortek Data Systems Ltd began when I decided I'd had enoughof working for someone else. 'Course, I still work for someone else now, onlyit's the taxman!!

I left school in 1984 with 8 out of 9 'O'Levels. Back then, the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) had a ComputerRegister. The idea was that local job centers would contribute vacancies to thisRegister, and ILEA would put students forward that matched the criteria. Inpractice, it meant that I interviewed for companies like NatWest and MidlandBank, for 'computer' jobs. In these cases, that was as a teller. This didn'tinspire me, but at that age I had no idea what direction my career should take.

Iwas very fortunate NOT to get any of the jobs I went for, instead, ILEA sent mefor an interview with an IBM Dealer called Planning Consultancy Limited (PCL).They were looking for several 'trainees' to work several months in eachdepartment, then they would decide where best to place us. I started work onSeptember 3rd 1984.

My first few weeks were spent working in theTraining Department. Most of this work involved moving boxes and pc's from onesite to another, and learning how they all went together. It was boring, but itwas £5000 a year. After this, I moved to the Library. Back then, software wasVERY expensive compared to today. PCL offered members of their Library thechance to borrow and evaluate software, prior to purchasing. It was a very greyarea whether they could do this, and eventually the Library closed. I moved intoConfiguration, based in Westbourne Park, W9. I was to spend the next 15 monthsin one of the happiest environments I've ever worked in.

Mymentor at the time, Niall Finucane, was a PC God! Our job there was to take theorders from Sales, get the relevant parts from stores, then put it all together,install the software they'd asked for, and put it all back in the box ready foran Installation Engineer to take to the customer. It's an excellent way to learnabout all aspects of the PC. Back then, Lotus 1-2-3 came on five 5¼"floppies, and could be run in 256Kb of memory! Wow! Things HAVE changed. 

Imet quite a few characters in Configuration. Mark Byrne, who started off as adelivery driver, and worked his way up to Engineer. Last I heard, he wasmanaging a bunch of engineers for Computacenter. Well done Mark. I stillremember the tale about the Police Sergeant and the finger!! But that's anotherstory! There was also Fabian. Very enthusiastic, but not much use. Andquite a few engineers that we had to train, fresh from the Army. Bright guys,but we knew that as soon as they'd learned enough, they'd be off to othercompanies for more money, and we were proved right time and again. PaulMilligan, our Technical Director, was a 6'2" John Cleese look-alike,moustache and all. A brilliant man, but not taken to having a sense of humour!

Afterthat, I moved back to the Pall Mall headquarters, with Niall, to work on theTechnical Support side. Niall eventually left, and I was given a mad Scotsman,Douglas. He was an absolute bear of a man.

Whenmy time came to leave, after three and a half years, Douglas grabbed me in abear hug to stop me from running away. I've always hated 'pomp' and ceremonies,and the idea of a 'leaving do' and presentation abhorred me. If he hadn'tgrabbed me, I'd have been gone!

Therewere also some not so nice characters. John Gutkin, the Financial Director, wasa short, fat, cigar smoking despot. He would walk around the offices of anevening, and if he didn't like the look of someone's desk, he'd sweep thecontents into a black plastic bag, and dump it in the bin for the offendingemployee to find in the morning.  I once saw a guy resign because of John'sarrogance. Steve was an electronics engineer who used to work on Video Arcademachines. He'd regularly cycle into work wearing bright lycra shorts and top,and then get changed into more formal gear to do his job. There is a pub off ofPall Mall called The Red Lion. Gutkin liked to think of it as his own. Steveonce turned up after work in the pub wearing all his lycra, having cycled acrossLondon for someone's leaving do. Gutkin took offence to Steve's appearance, andbawled him out in front of everyone for having the cheek to walk into 'his' pubdressed like that. The following morning, I watched as Steve quit and walkedout, saying he'd never work for anyone like that. We all knew how he felt, butthis was the eighties, and jobs weren't that easy to find.

in1987 I went to work for NCR, formerly National Cash Registers. I was being paidthe heady sum of £8250. I was in the UK PC Support department, consisting ofTom Forde, John Oxlade, Frank Patton and myself. Big team, huh? But we wereexpected to look after all of NCR's many corporate customers and dealers. Frankleft fairly early in my employment there, and we took on a wonderful man calledKersi Mody. He had loads of energy, and was always eager to get involved. We satalongside the Unix Support team, who outnumbered us by about three to one! Itwas good experience though, because it meant learning about Unix and theinfrastructure to support customers like Barclays Bank, Reuters and House ofFraser.Full credit to Simon Ravenscroft, who sat the other side of my partition. He putup with an awful lot of what must have seemed to him like stupid questions. There weremoments of complete madness too, like the rare occasion we'd play tennis,batting a piece of rolled up paper backwards and forwards till we were foundout.

We were managed by John Munday,quite possibly the nicest man I've ever dealt with in this business. Looking alot like Father Christmas, with a wonderful white beard, and shiny dome, heruled us not so much an iron thumb, more a plastic forefinger! He would give youhis support whenever needed, and leave you alone when you wanted. More than somemanagers I've worked for.

The salesmen were alwayssomething very different to the support staff. A lot of the time, they onlylooked at things as a percentage, or as their bonus. They didn't always care ifit worked, just as long as the customer bought it! Some of them however, werehilarious. Paul Gardiner, where are you? Let me explain the story of'toot-toot'.

 Notfinished yet. I'll get around to 'toot-toot' another time....

You'llhave noted that I have nearly always heaped praise on the people I've workedwith so far. Well, that's because in the main they WERE nice folk. Either thator they put up one hell of a front for all those years. I'm still in touch withquite a few of these people, even after all these years.

Ifyou're a former NCR or AT&T employee, then please do visit and register withthe NCR Alumnipage. We've already had several reunions, and hopefully, there'llbe more to come.