I am soooooooooooooo tired writing about the 'sub-slime' mortage mess, that I thought I'd changed the topic.

In this moring's Chicago Tribune (which I still read both online and in hard copy) there was an interesting story that both Microsoft and Intel were investing 10 Million dollars in a new research center at the University of Illinois' downstate campus in Champaign-Urbana.

And that brought back memories of my campus days and our ILLIAC computer, built in 1952. Right in the heart of the campus, there was this monstrous building with no windows. It was enormous and definitely gothic inside.

At the time, I was the "director" of classical music for our student radio station, which included daily programming and the Sunday Opera. As such, after the Sunday show, I would go to the computer center to pick up our computerized log. The log was run on the old green/white striped paper with the holes on either side. FCA requirements then were that we had to do station identifications and then sign the log and notate the exact time of the announcement.

The log printed out our entire week of activities and was printed out on Sundays. So, many times I would go there, and first show my WPGU identification to the guard. Once past the guard and signed in, I entered a dimly lit, temperature controlled head of the computer. Remember HAL from the movie? This computer hummed, buzzed and red and green lights flicked on and off. I'd enter at the top of the building, and then clinging to the metal wire bannister and being careful not to look down thru the wire rungs, I'd climb carefully to the basement. No other human in sight...just the hum, now growing louder.

Finally, somewhere in the bowels of Hades I'd find the gate keeper, probably one of our engineering students, with a plastic pocket protector jammed into his plaid shirt pocket, and a slide rule hanging from his belt. He'd look at me thru his thick, green glasses and say nothing. I'd request the radio log. He'd grunt and groan and get up from his messy table and go search in a pile of accordian pleated print-outs. With a flourish, he hand them to me, once I had signed for their release. Then the trudge upstairs and back to the radio station.

Today, my little hand-held calculator can do more sophisticated math problems that old ILLIAC.

(ILLIAC was the name given to a series of supercomputers built at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In all 5 computers were built in this series between 1951 and 1974) Yes, it really existed.

The new computer center will be focusing on making our cell phones more intelligent...but, can they change a baby's diaper?