By Jean Hollands

Jean on the Job

Dear Computer: When you are good, you are very, very good. You are reliable, quiet and uncomplaining and do everything I ask. You demand very little in return. Maybe a new ink jet or a hard drive now and then. Maybe more memory.

When you are bad, though, you are horrid! You allow other lovers to break your code and hack away at our work together. You forget our security promises. You fail me just when the report is due.

Sometimes you stare at me with that blank screen, forgetting we were ever lovers. You are unwilling to budge.

When I call for an intercession, our MIS person, you are sometimes still stubborn and uncooperative. You just don’t seem to care.

Having written 350 words a page for 250 pages - that means 20,000 words, and with edits and rewrites 50,000 words (a McGraw-Hill book) - you have been pretty good to me lately. You forgot only a few pages, a few lines, a few corrections

I want to thank all the fathers of the computer and the mothers who helped too.

I want to thank that mettlesome little wizard and my beloved MIS man, Bob Curlee, for getting me through.

Thank you, my precious computer, my writing tool with a brain, who spells, paginates, cuts and pastes.

I will return your faithfulness forever, with a little memory loss and a blip now and then.

Jean A. Hollands, CEO, Growth & Leadership Center, was voted Business Woman of the Year in 1986 and 1996. Write to GLC, 1451 Grant Road, Mountain View 94040.