Something my brother once told me regarding the Foreign Service does fall in line with the title of this article "America's new crusader castles" - "Our American Foreign Service Officers are the next thing to Royalty", he said. This might seem true, especially to an Englishman.
But the globalization of the U.S. government has placed more agencies overseas than ever before. American embassies today serve as a base for the operations of as many as 40 other U.S. departments and agencies from the Department of the Treasury to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Yet, even today the U.S. State Department lacks the necessity of secure communications between it's employees, including the Diplomatic Security Office and the rest of the Intelligence community. Recently in testimony to the Congress Amb. Ronald E. Neumann admitted that at most posts his people had to use their own email accounts to send and receive email to other agencies when first assigned to foreign posts, especially those considered the most important, namely Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine the nightmare of this. I wanted to work with Network Communications rather than Security because my generation is the leading edge of the new technology era and I have stayed up with most of it. I wish I had that opportunity again. God bless Mr. Jerold W. Jacaruso (Saint Gabriel Cemetery Montgomery County, Maryland - Jacaruso, Jerold W., b. 1927, d. 1986), Mr.Joseph J. Paciorka. (Cynthia Barbara Meyer, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Manning Meyer of Palm Beach, Fla., was married yesterday to Robert Francis Cranshaw, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph J. Paciorka of Ashburn, Va. The bridegroom's father retired from the State Department, having been the chief communications officer at the United States Embassy in Brussels and, before that, at the United States Mission to the United Nations in Geneva.) Network Communication Division Chiefs, and John W.S. Channell, Diplomatic Mail and Pouch Chief. At least they didn't HANG UP ON ME.
We can now make clips of speeches rather than listen to the entire speech - - C-SPAN I love you.
The first personal computer I owned was a VENDEX HEADSTART TURBO 88-XT, manufactured by Samsung but sold by Vendex. I purchased it in 1988. A cheap model of the IMB above that cost $8000.00 - The XT stands for EXtended Technology and was introduced in early 1983. The computer had DOS only and booted up with a series of 5 1/4" floppy disks. I received my Associates Degree in 1988-1989 in BASIC and FORTRAN Programing. In 1992 I went to work for the Department of Energy in Oak Ridge where we were all trained in the use of Windows 3.1, advanced courses. This was the first year that Microsoft came out with a Windows platform.
U.S. Robotics was one of many companies to offer dial-up modems for personal computers. Prior to the development of standards such as the V.32 family of protocols, USR introduced its own HST (High-Speed Transfer) protocol in 1986 - one which operated at 9600 bits per second. In 1989, HST was expanded to 14.4 kilobits/sec., 16.8 kbit/sec. in 1992, and finally to 21 kbit/sec. and 24 kbit/sec. as phone lines improved and the protocol was adapted to transmit and receive more bits per second. Around 1992 I installed my first 56K modem in my 88XT. The USR Sportster 56k 117102 ISA modem supporting X2 and V.90 In On September 11, 2000 I began an intensive two week training program for a job with ClientLogic, Oak Ridge, Tennessee as a Computer Tech., supporting BellSouths ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, or DSL for short), where I learned a lot about the protocols needed to support this particular form of High Speed Internet Access.
I began using CompuServe in 1992 to access Genealogy Forums. Then with the invent of Windows95 around 1994-1995 I purchased my next computer, a Toshiba Satellite Pro laptop with Windows95. About this time I switched to America Online and still have that account.
