GaryOsberg.com

Good morning from Collegeville,

It is zero degrees out there, according to the on-board display this morning. We have been spoiled by the warm temps and the lack of snow. I have yet to hear the first Cardinal, but the amount of day light is on the increase. At least the rattle snakes are not sunning themselves on the rocks.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the St. Cloud Times was in the process of selecting ten objects to represent the area. We submitted the original telegram that is framed and on display in our lobby here at the Collegeville studios, authorizing KSJR to go on the air. It was chosen as one of the ten. There will be an article in this Sunday’s edition of the St. Cloud Times. Look for it.

I have often thought about what modern invention has most impacted productivity in the workplace. One that came to mind was Windows by Microsoft. When Jimmy Dorr and I opened a Knoll showroom at International Market Square in 1985 we had a desktop computer, but we had to shut down the word processor program in order to have access to the financial spreadsheet program or any other program. It was very time consuming. Now you simply minimize one ap on your desktop and you can switch from one program to another in a second.

Another candidate would have to be the bar code scanner. Can you imagine the time that we would be spending in line at Target if the check out person had to enter each price after reading the package? The first patent for a bar code type product was issued to Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver on October 7, 1952. It was a “bull’s eye” symbol, made up of a series of concentric circles. In 1970, the American company Monarch Marking began producing bar code equipment for retail trade use. George J. Laurer is considered the inventor of U.P.C. or Uniform Product Code, which was invented in 1973. In June of 1974, the first UPC scanner was installed at a Marsh’s Supermarket in Troy, Ohio. The first product to have a bar code included on the package was a packet of Wrigley’s Gum. The St. Joseph Meat Market still uses the old fashioned way.

The show this week is another live show from The Fitzgerald Theater in frosty downtown St. Paul. Special guests include folksinger Ann Reed, otherworldly chamber-pop chanteuse ‘My Brightest Diamond’ and vocalist Heather Masse.
Enjoy the show.

Mason Jennings is at The Paramount Theater in frosty downtown St. Cloud both Saturday and Sunday this weekend. Go to www.paramountarts.org

“My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy”. George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)