In the summer of 1994, I was working as a research associate at Queens College of the City University of New York, in Professor Robert Bittman's research group. My research topic was the use of glycosylated synthetic lipid ether as cancer cell growth inhibitors. During my research, I had already written an article in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry on the subject, had a patent, and had created a terminology to describe and group these types of compounds: GAELs. I was so proud of it!
Due to my work, I spent countless hours in the laboratory. For our research group, there was a computer that we used primarily to search and read summaries of articles published in an online library by the American Chemical Society. That was progress!
Having a computer in the lab also allowed me to use it to save on my phone bill and "chat" with Christina. Christina would log into her lab computer at SFU and we'd have these snippets of daily delight.
We used a Unix-based program named "talk". We would login to the terminal and wait for the "talk" request to come in. When the program started the screen would split in two and she would type on one side and me on the other. We could both type at the same time but we would use it as a conversation. I would make so many spelling mistakes! There were no squiggly lines under the misspelled word to warn me so I had to type with my heart in my hand! Fortunately for me, I had Christina telling me about my mistakes whenever she could. It was a daunting task for her believe me!
On a summer night, a talk session ended differently and it went like this:
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