Hogg & Mythen Architects, Part Two
WILD WEST COMPUTING
About six months into my employment at H&M, one morning I arrived at work to find a brand new IBM XT PC sitting on that fold-out conference room desk. Okay, it wasn't a real IBM; it was a no-name locally-grown clone, but still…it was 1987 and this was a personal computer! It sat there for several days until I asked, "Is anyone going to do anything with that?"
Nick replied, "We were hoping you'd ask. It's all yours."
And so began my descent into the madness that would lead me to my current career.
Bernie (my ex, with whom I was sharing that flat with) was working as a legal secretary/assistant/word processor and had more experience with personal computers than I had. (To this point my only exposure had been with a Commodore VIC-20 about five years earlier.) I told him what had been loaded on the machine: DOS 3.1, Wordstar and some database program whose name eludes me. I'd started teaching myself Wordstar when Bernie said, "Fuck that. You need WordPerfect, and promptly supplied me with a set of 4.2 installation disks.
He was right. WordPerfect was much more intuitive and allowed me the opportunity to start creating fifteen years of obsessive, self-absorbed Journals that are at this point cringe-worthy reading.
Prior to moving to San Francisco, I had worked for a firm in Tucson that was on the verge of converting to AutoCAD. They brought Autodesk in to demo their product, and even then in the prehistoric days of 8088 processors and CGA displays, I knew this was the direction architecture was headed. Unfortunately converting the entire office was so cost-prohibitive (not to mention the initial loss of productivity that was expected) the project was shelved. But that spark of "the future" had taken hold in my imagination, and when the opportunity to obtain a copy of the program presented itself to me in San Francisco, I jumped on it.
Two roadblocks stood in the way of converting H&M to this new way of doing things: (1) I had to gain enough expertise with the program that my productivity wouldn't be measurably impacted and (2) sell the whole concept to the bosses.
By this time I'd gotten my own PC at home, so teaching myself AutoCAD consumed me. Prior to this you would find me at the beach most every weekend (weather permitting) and sometimes even after work. That—and my meticulously curated tan flew out the window thereafter.
(As an aside, one of the things I most loved about this firm was on the first sunny day after a long, wet winter, Nick would often just close the office and say, "Go to the beach! Enjoy the weather!")
All that came crashing down once I welcomed the electronic demon into my home. I was literally moving objects in my dreams by calling out cartesian coordinates—that's how thoroughly and completely AutoCAD had consumed my consciousness.
But it paid off. After I felt comfortable enough putting my own set of architectural floor plans together, I suggested to Nick that on our next project we try it live. If it works, great. If not, then we continue drafting the old fashioned way.
He went for it—and many more instances of pushing the envelope—allowing me a degree of freedom to learn and explore that has been unmatched in any position I've held since.
The office's original XT class computer had only a monochrome "Hercules" display. It was unbelievably crisp, but differentiating layers in AutoCAD was difficult and time consuming. I convinced them to buy a color monitor to make life a bit easier and offset the amount of money we were wasting on plots that didn't come out looking the way they should because items weren't on the correct layers. It wasn't a high-res setup, but the colors at least cut down on the errors.
As time passed, the four of us settled into certain roles. Jack was the one who brought in the work, Nick managed the projects, the office, and the accounting. Neill became the de facto firm designer (he avoided doing CAD for years), and I was the guy who created all the production drawings. Life was good.
As the years went by, my knowledge and expertise increased. DOS gave way to Windows. AutoCAD and Wordperfect were purchased and regularly upgraded. We finally gave up on WordPerfect altogether after their initial foray into Windows crashed and burned spectacularly, forcing our hand to MS Word. I also somehow managed to teach myself Excel during this transition, something that's paid off many times over the years. After spending hundreds of dollars to have our drawings printed at the local blueprint shop, we bought our own plotter. The original XT-class PC was replaced by a 286, then a 386, and by the time I left in 1995, a 486 machine. It was augmented by three others, eventually being crudely networked thanks to Windows for Workgroups.
EARTHQUAKE
On 17 October 1989 I left work about fifteen minutes early. I don't remember why; only that I did. I was about three blocks from home, walking down 12th Street, when I rubbed one of my eyes and the contact lens rode up onto the top of my eyeball. As I was struggling to get it repositioned, the ground started shaking. "That's odd," I thought. And then I realized what was happening.
As my contact lens finally made it down to where it was supposed to be, the shaking continued, and I looked up to see the cantilevered billboard at the corner of 12th & South Van Ness wobbling vertically. I heard glass breaking and people screaming. The shaking stopped. A few errant car alarms could be heard wailing.
I arrived home to find my then-roommate Frank, mopping up water from the fish tank that had sloshed onto the floor. That—and the fact we were without power for several days afterward—was the extent of the damage we suffered.
The same could not be said for the H&M office at 2nd & Mission, however. Nick (who was the only one in the office at the time) related that when the shaking started, the shelves (which had not been secured to the wall) began to fall and he sprinted for the exit.
The building was red-flagged.
If I'd left work at my usual time, I would've been on the underground when it hit.
Like a lot of places in the aftermath of Loma Prieta, the office was closed for an extended period as the Bay Area dug itself out. But Jack and Nick—being the type of folks they were—continued to pay us as the search for new office space began.
(to be continued)