PCS Elections and Annual Meeting
PCS Elections
The Prescott Computer Society will conduct its annual meeting on March 21, 2020.
PCS members will cast their votes for the Board of Directors election prior to
that meeting over the
Internet. The
Board of Directors is composed of nine officers
whose terms are for two years. About half of these seats are up for
election each year - four in one year and five in the next.
There will be four two-year positions open at this election.
Phil Ball
Phil Ball
Phil Ball was raised in southern Oregon but grew up when Renee married
him in 1972. She has continued to tame him in Arizona, where they moved
shortly after their wedding. Before they met, they had both served their
country in the military. The next few years were devoted to college studies
where Phil learned to love creating photographs. Upon receiving a chance job
offer from an instructor, they began to work in a photo supply store. This
led to a career for the rest of the century when they eventually owned and
ran Bradshaw Mountain Photo Company until 1999.
Just before then, Phil had gotten interested in computers and joined the
Prescott Computer Society to learn more about them. Shortly after joining,
Phil was elected to the Board of Directors and has served our Society ever
since. He has been Secretary several times and has made many presentations
to the Society in the firm belief that our motto says it all: "Share what
you know and learn what you don't." His learning continues today.
Both Phil and Renee do voluntary work for the Prescott VA Medical Facility
and Phil enjoys sharing his photography and computer knowledge with our members.
John Carter
John Carter
John Carter has 60+ years of computer hardware engineering and software
development experience, which includes more than a decade of customer
support and as a technical instructor. John's busy life includes preparing
and giving astronomy and computer related presentations as a facilitator for
OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) at Yavapai College. He is also the
president of the Prescott Astronomy Club (PAC,
prescottastronomyclub.org)
and president of the Prescott Macintosh Users Group (PMUG,
pmug.org).
In addition to teaching how to use a computer (Windows, Mac, and Linux),
John gives lessons on post processing digital photos using a variety of
applications. As a consultant, John installs and sets up complete computer
systems (without running wires throughout the house) and even an occasional
home entertainment system.
John's hobby is Astrophotography. His roll-off roof observatory contains a
14" telescope permanently mounted on a pier. His digital arsenal includes an
iPhone, an iPad, a MacBook Pro, and a Mac mini. The latter two are loaded
with Parallels Desktop for Mac with Windows and Linux guest operating systems.
Carver Smith
Carver Smith
I was hired by IBM in 1965 in Cedar Rapids Iowa for Chicago. System 360
was coming and they wanted to take their CE's, Customer Engineers, and move
them up to the mainframes and I was the backfill for the pig iron, key
punches verifiers re-producers and sorters. So when they knew mainframes
became popular they were producing dumps which nobody knew how to read or
what caused it so I moved up to being a PSR, program support rep. I was so
good that I used a black felt marker so that I always knew where I had been
of course I couldn't backup because it was covered. Ha ha!
I rode the train into Chicago every day I and spoke with a SE manager and
and became an Systems Engineer for 3-4 years working closely with IBMs
customers installing and using IBM hardware and software. Some of it was
interesting But..... I'm not sure I truly enjoyed that job as much.
My bosses boss came to me with a job description in I think about 1991 and
said "read this!" With my hardware background it looked very interesting. I
showed it to my wife and she said "that's you." So IBM was going to get into
what we now know as the Internet internally. Before Al Gore invented it. It
was all new. The people that did the networking work were in Raleigh North
Carolina and they wanted a small branch office to test this whole concept
with. The Raleigh office was only about 2 miles away and now if you look at
a map Raleigh and Chicago are not next door to each other so there was
remote support. That was fun and it was rewarding but all OJT because nobody
had done that before. The "network owners" of IBM, said "you're not going to
a tie personal computers to our network" but I think somebody higher-up said
yes you will. So that's what I did for the last nine years until I retired in 1999.
It's hard to believe that I've been retired for 21 years.
That was fun.
I was basically in Chicago the whole time, 1965 to 1999. From the Chicago
Loop downtown to an account in Northbrook called Allstate Insurance to
supporting a remote accounts outside downtown Chicago in Oakbrook, IL and
Bloomington, IL. We had some small customers Zürich Insurance CNA, Combined
Ins. plus State Farm, Allstate and many more plus the few biggies.
Murray Smolens
Murray Smolens
Murray Smolens was a civilian Logistics Manager for the US Navy for 26
years, planning and coordinating aviation component requirements for the
Navy and its international customers. He was a supervisor for 5 of those years.
He has had extensive volunteer experience with a variety of organizations,
including the National Park Service as a volunteer tour guide at
Independence National Historical Park, chairman of the Chalfont (PA)
Historical and Architectural Review Board, Secretary of the Board of
Directors of Prescott Meals on Wheels, docent and volunteer archivist at the
Sharlot Hall Museum, and assistant coordinator of the Prescott Centennial Committee.
Murray was also employed for 15 months by Centipede Tours of Philadelphia as
a guide, leading walking tours of the Old City area of Philadelphia. He has
been an on-the-job teacher and classroom instructor during previous tenures
at the Social Security Administration and the Navy Inventory Control Point
in Philadelphia. He possesses a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree in American
History from Temple University. He is currently Education Assistant and
Volunteer Coordinator at Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott.
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