Introduce Yourself: What's your User Name based on?

[hugsnballoons]

Im old enuff to remember the vic, mostly as the vic64.,

So I guess you're a swede then?

thats correct, from stockholm i never had a 64, my friend had one and i was more or less there all the time. So thats a swedish branding "vic64" ?

[Jeff-20]

Let's see... I like hugs. I like balloons. I like 606s. Cool!

[ral-clan]

Ooops....I thought that was a Casio-VL Tone keyboard on hugsnballoons' CD cover there. Good eye Jeff. Those VL Tones are cool too.

[carlsson]

Perhaps it was known as VIC-64 in a few more countries, but the name probably survived the longest in Sweden. Regarding the manual, I think each country used their own cover picture, so your friend probably only was featured on the Swedish edition. That itself is quite a remarkable thing though.

[pitcalco]

My user name is short for Pitcairn Calculating Office. It was a small company I founded that did all sorts of calculations for hire. Even though I started the company in 1995, I used the Commodore VIC 20 for calculations, as well a slide rule and a 4-function calculator. I opened up with a budget of about 20 US dollars.

The company was incorporated in Pitcairn, however I have never actually been to that small Pacific Island.

[Jeff-20]

Just curious. How long did it take for the business to be profitable? Who were your clients?

[pitcalco]

Just curious. How long did it take for the business to be profitable? Who were your clients?

Well I was only 19. It helped pay for my studies, but I couldn't make a living at it.

My customers were often people needing accounting/bookkeeping/tax services, but since I was not a licensed accountant I could only call my business a "calculating office."

I also got math and physics students who wanted problems solved (I suspect some were simply cheating on their homework by coming to me.) This was not so lucrative.

On one occasion I got a bunch of raw data from a survey team wanting to draw maps. That was fun.

My last, and best, contract was for an astronomy club who wanted to print a planet-finding guide for 1997. I made an entire planet-finding program for the VIC 20 in order to produce the data.

Oh, sweet memories. That was 10 years ago, but my "pitcalco" user name and hotmail address remain.

[Jeff-20]

Paul, how did you market your company? How does a survey team even know you exist?

[pitcalco]

Well this was in Iceland, so I just put in a classified ad in DV, one of the daily papers.

The rest was word of mouth advertising. It is easy to spread any kind of word in Reykjavik.

I gather from the tone of your posts that you would be interested in starting such a business of your own. If so, I wish you luck. Like I said, I couldn't make a living at it, but perhaps you will have better luck. It really is a lot of fun, if you like math.

Just as a historical note, before World War II, there were many calculating offices employing dozens of people who received math problems by telegram and sent the answers back. During the war, calculating offices did ballistic trajectories, etc.

The advent of the electronic computer put calculating offices out of business. To my knowledge there are no dedicated calculating offices in business today.

[Wonder-Boy]

@pitcalco - Fascinating story!

And since I post in this thread I guess I should explain my own username. It was just a spur of the moment randomly chosen name that I picked when I joined a Commodore 64 forum. Wonder Boy is a Commodore 64 game and I also thought it was kind of ironic and funny since I am so bad at programming and I have very little connection to the "scene". I got interested in the Vic-20 as well and used the same name when I joined this forum. This is a good quality forum, by the way. Commodore computers have become a rather big hobby of mine and I learn something new every day...

[pitcalco]

@wonderboy

The name of the "Wonderboy" game rings a bell but I don't quite remember what it was like.

I for one really like, the VIC and C64. If I could I would use them exclusively. No start up time, no viruses, etc.

I thought getting old C64s and Vics would be easy and cheap, but now they have become collectors items and are getting more rare. Still I would like to network a bunch of VICs or c64s together to get them to multitask.

But alas I am rambling.

[Wonder-Boy]

Wonder Boy is not a brilliant game but it is pretty well known I think... You play a baby boy who runs from left to right on the screen in some wood and have to look out for wasps and stuff and you can sometimes skateboard which is good because then you get to the end faster. As far as I remember...

Vic-20s are pretty rare I guess, but Commodore 64s are easy to find, if you have trouble finding them you are not looking very hard. I see you are in Sweden too and the C64 sold very well here.

[carlsson]

I think Wonderboy is a Konami game, thus originally in the arcades and featured on MSX computers (perhaps even ported to Sega Master System and/or NES) as well as Commodore 64.

Late edit: Umm.. it appears to be a Sega game, but most of the rest of my reply holds true.

[TarkaTOtter]

Hi, Just bought my second Vic-20 - I had one when I was 12 ish - I was looking for advise on cleaning up the yellowing (not possible, so it seems). When I came across this group

As for Why TarkaTOtter? I just saw a british otter once when staying in Wales then read the book. I just like the idea of living by a stream and fishing all summer. I envy the simple creatures except when someone hunts them or there is little food.

I talk a bit too much so I had better leave off now

Bye for now

Tarka

[Victragic]

Hi Pitcalco,

just wondering if you still have any of the software you developed for the VIC during that time? It probably wouldn't make much sense to me, but it's fascinating to see what people use/d their Vics for, especially for business use which seems to be a rarity.

Cheers
-Glen