MLMUG Member of the Month
An Occasional Look at the Person Behind the Member

By Maria O. Arguello,
MLMUG Social Events Chair
& Occasional Ace Reporter

Jan Feigus

Jan graciously accepted my invitation to be January's MLMUG member of the month as her name was very fitting for this month. More importantly, inquiring minds wanted to know about Ms. Jan Feigus' family roots and her love for the Mac. Here's her autobiography, which spans many happy and devoted years of faithful use of the smiling Mac.


Jan Feigus
Jan Feigus

Experience her wit and charm in her own words.

Ok, so you probably think that I got involved in this Ms. January piece due to my name being Jan and Maria thought that would be cute. Well, that may work for Maria but the truth was that she approached me with the question, "Are you the oldest living lady MLMUG member?" This, I didn't need to hear as I approach 40 + 10 in the next few months, (at least hope to approach; now that she has me worried). Couldn't she have just asked if I was the longest MLMUG girl member? Anyway, I'm not. We know Linda's been around a lot longer than I, so there. But, Linda's already been on the front page. So you're stuck with me.

How did I get started? I'm not going to bore you with the part about my parents' romantic intentions, the big war being over, and my being at the tail end of the baby boomer era, etc. I started out in a coal-mining town in Western Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh. My mother moved us back to this area when I was around 8 years old, and my father became quite ill and was transferred to a hospital here. I spent the next 7 or 8 years in Elkins Park. This was the fabulous sixties. I don't usually think about this time much, as it seems we lost so many "heroes." Shortly after my father passed on, I watched and endured as John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy were taken away from us, but there are some good memories of the era. I watched the debut of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on The Ed Sullivan show, along with the talking mouse, Topo Gigio. We got to see mini skirts, white patent leather boots, and models with names like Twiggy. I remember seeing John Kennedy at the site where the Cheltenham Mall now stands. He was making his bid for President. It had been raining all day, mostly I remember a great deal of mud, and hundreds of people shmushed together all trying to get a peek at our next President to be. Back then, mostly, I remember being the child of a single working mother long before it was ever fashionable.

At some point I decided on being an art major in college, of which I had absolutely no idea of what I was going to do, armed with a degree in fine arts. Like this was unique? Back then our mothers wanted us to be nurses or school teachers, or better yet "go work for Bell Tel," I had promised to major in something at least practical, like advertising design, so I could at least get a job when I graduated. This was not to be. I became interested in photography during my first year at college, and that was it. At least I'd be able to make a living taking baby pictures in the malls. Anyway, it was during the time when everyone was a budding Ansel Adams, girls from Moore College of Art could be seen lugging huge 4 x 5 cameras up and down Market street to shoot.

I spent a number of years, before home computers evolved, working as a medical photographer on staff at a Philly hospital and also moved into multimedia for a Philadelphia bank. Back then, there was no such thing as a tabletop computer or even PowerPoint. We created the artwork by hand and in layers. Each layer had its own negative and you had to colorize each negative on an animation camera stand, making multiple exposures on each 35mm slide. One exposure for each layer of artwork; if you were lucky everything registered properly. We started doing shows using 3 projectors, with recorded audio and music. There were people out there—like Dale, no doubt—doing shows with 45 projectors.

At this point I still had no interest in computers. I think the Apple units had arrived. It was not until a few years later, when I had gone on a job interview to Rochester School for the Deaf, that I developed this interest. Actually, it hit me like a ton of bricks. The school had the best of everything in the way of equipment and toys. Well, what would you expect, they were right next door to Kodak.

I knew when I came home that weekend it was a turning point and I was going to get over my aversion to science and start learning to work with computers. At that point, I can remember schools in the area mostly having Apples and the PC. I started taking an evening course at Abington High, I think working on an Apple IIe. Actually, it was an AppleWorks style class; I sat in the back and played games the whole time. But, it accomplished one thing. It spawned interest in a new toy.

I sold my Leica camera equipment that I had spent so much time collecting to help pay for my first computer-the Apple GS. A truly fun computer, great art and music, had the little Apple on it and of course the Woz signature. (That's the real reason to own a GS; Woz is one of my favorites).

It was also around this time that I found PACS [Philadelphia Area Computer Society]. There didn't seem to be too many, if any, User Groups in the suburbs. I really don't remember how I ended up down in the Mac group at the LaSalle campus. PACS attracted hundreds of people one Saturday a month; meetings went on all day long. You could go in at 9 am and not leave until 5. The Mac group met in a large auditorium, and attracted a large crowd, mostly, probably due to the leadership of Ed Sullivan, no, no, not that Ed Sullivan. Mr. Achuff hung out there, and Linda, the Barton brothers, (yes there are two). Several more of our current membership hung out down there, also.

I ended up becoming a "Mac" person and sold my beautiful GS system to another PACS member and bought the little Mac SE, with 2 floppy disk drives, for about $3,000. That didn't include the extra memory I bought for $1,000 to take it up to 16 MB. Then, the SE went out the door for a color Mac II. I think it's during this time I found the Main Line Macintosh User Group (MLMUG) over at Radnor High. And my 2nd Saturday of every month became spoken for. We all squashed into a small classroom, I do mean squashed, literally. Later onward we went to Paoli, thanks to Dr. LeWitt.

Let's see, at some point along this time, I went back to school for my Masters in Instructional Technology, while I was working. The jury is out right now on what I'm about to try to do with this piece of paper, but over the last couple of years I've developed an interest in Distance Learning and Adult Education. Sorry, I'm getting off topic, and this should come under the, "Where are you going?" question which, I see with Microsoft's word count we don't have time for, anyway you've all lucked out.

I became a portable computer lover; bought a PowerBook 100; one of the first items I ever bought at CompUSA. (Sorry, Bill A.) Let's see, I think it maxed out at 8 MB of ram. I still have the unit, although it's not working anymore, and I think I'm still paying for it. Recently, I did find a mint-working unit for around $50.00 and grabbed it, just for old times' sake. I actually have it working and loaded with software. There's a really large crowd out on the web, working with and collecting older Mac units. Remember the cute little Color Classic, or the black MacTV? (Moe still has his MacTV).

Now, I really don't have anything against new and speedy, and I do have a more current unit, classic, mint, pristine, beige G4 All-In-One is sitting on my desk, as we speak, with 384 MB of RAM. And, yes, I even allowed a plastic iMac in my house. There's also, my little 2400c PowerBook. And, oh my Newton . which many of you make fun of. It's the last one Apple made, the 2100. Almost perfect handwriting recognition. The 2100 is like a small portable. It's amazing but people are still writing software for it. I can sync it with Entourage, go on the web and find the local Starbucks, or my way with Map Quest to the MLMUG meetings. One really good thing, probably due to how well made the Newton is, actually how all Apple products are made, is if needed, and only in a pinch, you could actually beat a person [senseless] with a Newton. Try defending yourself with a Palm V, and see how far you get. Oh, Oh, I see by the word count tool, that I've probably gone over my allotment of space, so I better quit here.

— Jan Feigus
— Maria O. Arguello


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©2001, 2002 by Maria O. Arguello, Jan Feigus & MLMUG
Posted 01/07/02