I received an interesting reply to a post in rec.aviation.military
asking about
spinoffs from cancelled military projects like the AH-56 Cheyenne
leading to
the Pick database.

On Feb 27, 9:03 am, "guy" <guyswetten... (AT) googlemail (DOT) com> wrote:
I've never heard of such, does anyone here know the story?

Jeremy Thomson

panzerboy (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
Dick Pick never needed magnetic boots to walk across ceilings,
only C. Indica, Coors in the brown bottle and almonds.

--
frosty

On Feb 27, 11:33 pm, "frosty" <fros... (AT) bogus (DOT) tld> wrote:
I flew BA to LA and they tried to give me a second free Coors. I
lodged a complaint with the airline.

Mike Preece wrote:
LOL. Ill conceived? I think not. You're talking about
"The Coldest Tasting Beer in the World" after all.

--
frosty

On Feb 26, 10:54 pm, panzer... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:

I spent a day in the library at the University of Michigan trying to
track down any place that might still have the picture of Dick Pick
from the cover of (I forget the name of the periodical right now, but
it is in my notes somewhere) where he is hanging upside down in his
'gravity boots'. A couple of folks have said they think they have it
in their stashes of stuff that they are not going through right now,
but, yes, I have also heard the story of Dick Pick hanging upside down
when IBM arrived. That and the smell of weed wafting through the
rooms, or so the story goes, was enough for big blue to know that Pick
was not the OS for the personal computer they were working on.

--dawn

On Feb 26, 8:54 pm, panzer... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
I believe you are thinking of the 'Digital Research' Developer and
owner Gary Kildall. an he wasn't walking across the ceiling <sigh>

Hi
No Gary was not walking across the ceiling he was higher up. The story as I
remember it is that he was flying his new aeroplane and said IBM can wait.
Mrs Kildall, down on the graound, who had just got her new house with room
for a pony, would not sign the IBM secrecy agreement as it contained all the
usual threats and menaces. So they left.
Meanwhile Mrs Gates a major banking executive with contacts everywhere, she
may even have been on the IBM board, heard about it and tipped off Bill. He
organised some mates in Seattle to whip up QDOS over the weekend and DOS was
born.
To his dying day Gary said it was a rip off as there was a semi colon in a
particular spot and only he knew why it was there- Mark and others will
recognise the significance in this low level code. In much the same way I
recognised a rip off my software because of a particular fault that only
existed in our first cut and remained in what I considered a rip off to the
end of its days.
Peter McMurray
"dtsig" <dtsig (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote

On Mar 1, 7:23 am, "dawn" <dawnwolth... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
Has anyone ever written a Biography of Dick Pick?
I've heard many times that Dick was a 'colourful characater ;-)'.
There must be some interesting stories.

Jeremy Thomson

On Feb 28, 6:22 pm, panzer... (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
I (and others, I'm sure) have tried to convince folks like Jon Sisk to
do so or to write a screenplay. When he said it was likely still too
hard and painful for those who were close to Dick (and I sure found
that out when interviewing folks), I thought I might try my hand at a
screenplay. I have a lot of information from when I researched the
family tree and the stories were incredible, although it was clear
that there were many more stories than those I heard. Anyway, I
actually read several books on writing screenplays and started one.
(Everyone in CA has a screenplay in the works, afterall)

I found that I am somewhat capable of writing clever dialog (in my own
opinion), but not of writing about someone else's history. So, I
switched and started writing it with a present perspective as a search
for the holy grail (Don Nelson's flow charts), encountering all of
these fascinating characters with great stories in the process. So
the flashbacks were the Dick Pick storyline, but I had to inject
myself in the story (and I was NOT in the Dick Pick story) because I
haven't a clue how to write someone else's past, having a hard enough
time writing a character like myself in the present..

Anyway, I decided that I had too many other things I wanted to do that
I actually might have the skills to do already and didn't put much on
paper. But I would be happy to help a real screenplay writer with it
if anyone knows of someone who would be interested in writing
something. I agreed with Sisk that a book would be hard-pressed to
get a good audience, which is why I think the screenplay route would
be better even if still a huge long-shot. --dawn

On Feb 28, 8:17 pm, "dawn" <dawnwolth... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:
Dawn and group,
Years back when I first stumbled across "Pick" and was trying to
describe
the people in the environment to my sister, she stated that I wasn't
dealing
with a culture and database, so much as a religion. Now if that's
true, then
those of us with Dick Pick stories had better start putting them down
somewhere, as one never knows when years from now his history will be
written by whom?
If sql-3 ever gets here, a lot of interest is going to be directed to
the
only 3 dimensional model out here - which leads directly to Sir.
Richard.
My suggestion is ... maybe a wiki site - Dawn you can moderate - and
let
people post away. Then the good stuff can be gathered at Dawns site as
part
of an un-official bio. Then Mr. Sisk can do his magic - presto - a
book.
Maybe only an eBook.
My own story is about trying to get 100k from the man for an
enhancement I
wanted to do, and well, he sent me to see Ted at Ultimate, as he at
first
thought that I wanted him to do it, but when I explained that I wanted
to do
it and wanted him to pay for it... the idea was the seed for md menues
(his
solution was far short of what I wanted to do, but..)
I could go on, but I'd rather only write it once.
Regards,
Tom