My Hollywood Bigwig Buddy

I just bought a new computer. As I was configuring it, I was reminded of this old story of how some software I wrote led to an unexpected payoff.

When I started with computers, I was using the ASR-33 and DECwriter II terminals to interface with them. The keyboards on these – and I believe on all other ASCII keyboards of the day – had the Control key directly to the left of the A key. (Yes, this is the article about the Hollywood bigwig. Bear with me…)

Then IBM introduced its personal computer (boo hiss), and they placed the Control key beneath the left Shift key. In its place, they put the Caps Lock key. This made a certain amount of sense; typewriters put their Caps Lock in that location, and of course they had no Control key. But on a computer, the Control key is used far more than the Caps Lock.

I found that, in 1983, at the age of 23, I was an old dog who would not learn a new trick. I wanted the Control key next to the A. Fortunately, some kind souls wrote programs for MS-DOS that made the misplaced Caps Lock key behave as a Control key.

When Windows 3.1 came out, I could not find any program to fix the Control key problem for me, so I wrote my own. I also posted it to various online sites so that other people could use it for free.

Years passed. Windows 95 came out and my program wouldn’t work with it. But Microsoft themselves offered an alternative, and I used that. I literally forgot that I had written this program for Windows 3.1, and I forgot that I had posted it online.

One day, I got an e-mail from a fellow named Dale. He said he had been using my program, but it didn’t work anymore, and could I help him? My first reaction was “what the hell is he talking about?” After shaking the cobwebs from my cranium and recalling what I had done, I told him that somewhere on Microsoft’s website, they had a program to solve the problem. I gave him some keywords to search for, but alas, they were the wrong ones.

Dale didn’t give up. He wrote to me again saying that he couldn’t find it. Could I help some more? So with a heavy sigh, I mucked around Microsoft’s website and found the program. I sent Dale the URL.

Dale wrote me once again. He thanked me and revealed that he was Dale Launer, a Hollywood writer, director, and producer. He would be happy to send me a tape of one of his movies for free. What movies? How about Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Ruthless People, and My Cousin Vinny? This guy was one of the most successful Hollywood writers of the late 80s!

It was a tough choice, but I chose Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I still have the VHS tape. I still have a VHS player to watch it on. And I’m still finding programs (like KeyTweak) to fix the Control key on my new computer.

Perhaps someday I’ll tell you the story about how me and my buddy, Stephen Hawking, hang together in Harvard Square. UPDATE: here it is.