Around 1977 I was working at a small high-tech firm in Burlington, MA. The company was producing a word-processing (the phrase really wasn't even in use then) system for newspapers. It took a whole PDP-11 minicomputer to do the job, and was completely dedicated to that purpose. MS Word, eat your heart out.

Anyway, there was a tech writer creating the manual for the system. We became fast friends, and I think it was he who pointed out "Star Wars" to me, and made sure I went to see it. Next he kept bugging me about this odd book - "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Yeah, yeah I said, I'll get around to it. He gave me the book, and somehow it wasn't for another 3 years that I got 'round to it' and YEOWZA! Yet another kick in the mental butt.