Guy Parsons

Born in 1941, grew up a bit, went to school, didn't like it much, went to work, retired early and now am enjoying life a bit more. Whack! Down comes the ruler, "I said write a page, not a sentence".

OK you may notice the "I grew up a bit" at the beginning, the growing up didn't progress much past that initial bit. After Fort Street was North Sydney Boys High, but I was bored with school and never really realised my full potential, as the teachers may say. After high school, academic life did not appeal for the same reasons that school didn't appeal, so I went to work for the National Cash Register company after answering an ad about "get a career in electronics". That resulted in a few years of getting my hands dirty with fixing cash registers and accounting machines and other fully mechanical horrors of the time.

Then in 1963 the career in electronics started with hands-on work on a real room-filling computer using valves (vacuum tubes to many). Next year on another fully transistorised computer and then in 1965 a nine months stint in London learning a new largish computer. Now that was fun.

And on it went, plenty of overseas training and ducking around the country fixing computer problems, first with NCR and then later after another false start in a small company, with Digital Equipment up until I retired early in 1988 - I can't believe it was that long ago.

Got married to Lyn in 1970 (met her at NCR) and we have two daughters and now five grandchildren, both families living some 3 and 6 hours driving time away, so very little grandchild minding happens. Still in the same house at Berowra that we built in 1970, never will move, the trees and view over Berowra Creek are just too attractive.

Over the years we have done a little travel, both work sponsored and private trips with the most notable being six months away in Europe in 1983 with the family, visiting all over and behind the iron curtain of the day, and using a tent - and a car to carry it all of course.

Since about 1960 my consistent hobby has been photography and that now carries on via my web pages at homepages.ihug.com.au/~parsog/photo/ which is a motley collection of information pages about various items of interest to me (needs a severe overhaul, just like me). Spent a few years heavily involved in camera clubs and initiated some of the photography web pages, but camera club committee life didn't suit me so I dropped all that and now just help people via my web pages or email or photo forums as the questions roll in.

Other interests seem to be house renovation and various woodwork projects and of course travel now and then to exercise the photography bug. A late hobby has been a return to model trains, so one day I will have a gauge 1 garden railway (1:24 scale) running, maybe in a few more years after some house repairs are done. Since that early retirement all I seem to do is still work on computers as friends and relatives keep ringing for help. You, reading this, are not a relative, and maybe not a friend, so please don't call me about your PC problems.

As Frank mentioned somewhere, it's weird that the most vivid school memories seem to be from Fort Street, but I always seem to have been a bit of a loner and never did keep in touch with anyone after the school days were over. Of curious interest is the school dress up party showing me as a convict. Not so many years ago some research into the family tree revealed two First Fleeters, one Second Fleeter and a whole bunch of others coming out on those early sailing ships with about half of that initial dozen doing the free trip in chains, so there may be some convict genes still coming out to cause that choice of dress up. But then, I seem never to have been on the wrong side of the law since, so it may have been an eerie fluke.

Above is the thing I have morphed into after many years. Just a random shot in 2007. Despite my photography hobby, I do have very few photos of me.

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