Well, I'm not sure what got into my head to try and figure all of this out, but anyone who know me knows that I can get a little obsessive about projects I get myself into :) ... Basically, I sat down one day and just started taking handwritten notes on every plane I could find in my small (at that time, at least) library. Once I got enough down, I started entering the data into my good old Commodore 128 using WordWriter 128 as my trusty word processor. I kept researching, writing, and typing until the file exceeded the memory limits of Wordwriter (go figure), and I had to split the file up into 2, then 3, then 4 separate files. This made it a real pain to try and enter/modify entries.

So, when I first started working with IBM PCs (286s), I was _really_ impressed and knew that that was my next step. I mean, they had hard drives that could hold 50MB :) !! So, I converted all of my files to text, and then had to painstakingly reformat them in WordPerfect (Version 4 I think) for DOS. Once I bought my very own 386-40, I was able to run Windows 3.1, of course, and then I had to fix the little bugs that crept into the conversion to WordPerfect for Windows (Version 5?). That was the format for a while, and I didn't fool with the file for a couple of years while I was in college (click here to see part of the reason :) ...). Seriously, though, I didn't think anyone else cared about the list, and I didn't try to market it at all, so it just kind of sat around. Also, with a slowdown in the defense industry, not a whole lot of new designations were cropping up anyway. Eventually, though, I bought a brand-new Pentium 100 that came with MS Office, so of course I converted to Word For Windows 6.0, of course having to once again correct annoying little formatting screw ups. That sat around for a while, too, but I decided recently to make the leap and post the list on my web page. Converting to HTML and preserving all of the formatting was surprisingly frustrating, even after I discovered the handy little PRE /PRE tags. Problem was, Word didn't seem to want to save to a text format that kept all of the tabs, etc., so using the preformatted tags didn't help any. I then tried to use Internet Assistant, an add-on to Word that would allegedly save documents directly to HTML. I thought I was home free, but of course my document was too big, and I had to convert in 6-page increments and cut and paste a couple of dozen times.

Finally, it is done and in HTML, but still looks kind of disjointed. I'm trying to fix it up, but it's slow-going. Thanks for being patient, and I appreciate any suggestions, criticisms, or updates. I am also surprised that you've actually read this far, because I'm bored enough myself...

Copyright, Andrew Chorney 1998

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