07 September 2021

For Me, A September Birthday Gift From Microsoft – Why Not, Bill Gates!?


The above composite image is a surprise – I did not compose it; Microsoft’s Windows 10 did! Magically. This is my unbelievable story.

I have been using for 2 years Windows 10 along with Microsoft Word 2016for writing, editing, blogging, desktop publishing, including cropping images. And yes, I have blogged at least 5000 long essays and desktop published at least 20 books with earlier versions of Word since 2005!

Much earlier: On Innocents Day 36 years ago, 28 December 1985, I started learning word processing – a girl helped me with an IBM desktop PC at the Director’s office of the UP Los Baños’ Farming Systems & Soil Resources Institute (FSSRI), with WordStar 1. She was grumpy – she told me, pointblank, “Mabuti ka pa, libre ang aral mo! Ako, nagbayad.” (Good for you! You’re learning free, while I had to pay.) I said nothing. I had requested the Director of FSSRI, my classmate Elpidio L Rosario, to tell her to teach me, and she had to follow orders. When she lent me the complete WordStar guidebook (I forgot how many pages), I began typing the instructions (I was already a fast typist at that time), and in a day or two I had my copy of the WordStar instruction manual – I returned the original with thanks. Thus I began to roam the digital world!

Around 1987, at the headquarters of the Madecor Group, also headed by Pids Rosario, I met a common friend, Jerry A Canonizado (JAC) and I bragged that WordStar 4 was the best word processor. Pointblank, JAC said, “How can you say that when you have not even tried Microsoft Word 4?” Shame on me.

Afterwards, I tried Word 4 – and I never left Microsoft!

Like I just told you, I’m now using Windows 10, and I have in my folders a collection of accidental Windows 10 collages, 445 “individual” images. I put the word “individual” in quotes because, like the image above, you can see composite images that I did not compose, my Windows 10 did!

Above is my LumixFZ100 digital camera’s image of my desktop laptop’s external ViewSonic monitor. Onscreen, it says, “03:13 Tuesday, 17 September.” My God! That’s my birthday! (year 2019, image number P2140619, jpeg).

It’s not the first such image I have with exact time and date – the first Windows 10 collage I have in my folder is dated 21 April 2018, some 18 months earlier.

I have googled for – “Windows 10” collage images –  and saw too-formal, nice-looking images of shapes and figures. But none exciting as the one you see above.

Of course, when I work for my own blog or my own book, I must be excited. Those Windows 10 collages I have, accidental as they are, have directly provided me more impetus – and more fun – working with Microsoft Word in my blogging. Accidents happen, and these collages are the kinds that even Microsoft Corporation should welcome!

Microsoft, doesn’t Frank A Hilario deserve a special award for dis/uncovering a special talent of Windows 10? Thanks!@517

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