Earlier today, around 2am, I saw a Facebook post on an awesome DH/Blondie fan page, to a link to an article:

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/andy_warhol_paints_debbie_harry_on_an_amiga_computer

It is really fascinating to me to read this today.

Last night, I was looking for something… which unfortunately seems to be a central theme of my existence, but I found a printout that was given to me by someone who was once a good friend a very long time ago. It was at the very beginning of my new career in 1996.  I had just changed jobs.  I’d left one that I truly loved for another that paid a lot more and that I truly believed in..
I’d accepted it for a new opportunity, and I had a passionate career and me and the people I worked with made real contributions to technology.  We created things that changed your lives although our names weren’t attached to it unless you knew how to get to it.

Just as I started on that new adventure, I found out that I was hired by people who worked at Commodore.  They were based very near where I live now.  The people I worked with designed and manufactured the Amiga.  The computer that Chris Stein had before I met him.  The computer that Andy Warhol used to create that image of Debbie Harry, one of the first digitally manipulated artworks ever.  Perhaps the very first one… I don’t know for sure.

Andy Warhol did that on Commodore Amiga.

The person I mentioned, who used to be my friend, was a technician of some sort at that event.  I don’t remember the details, but I remember he told me he saved that file.
He saved to disk Andy Warhol’s artwork of Debbie Harry — and proved it to me.

He wouldn’t let me have a digital copy of the file back in the late 90s, but he did make me a color inkjet printout on quality paper, and I just found it when I was looking for something last night.
Here is *my* scan of that image:

I remember being in awe to work with people who had invented this computer when there were no computers.
And being amazed at the foresight of this person who, instead of shutting down the computer, first saved the image to a disk (and made a copy).
That was the caliber of the people I worked with then.
Engineers were on their way up in the world.  It was almost another Renaissance.
Politics and bullshit, deception, and the concentration of wealth eventually killed us, but those people who hired me, who I got to work with, they were the real deal, visionaries.  Extinct now that that environment is destroyed.

But I remember.

I remember someone in a cubicle across from mine, who saved Andy Warhol’s image of Debbie Harry to a floppy disk and made me a printout.
It was around then that I couldn’t repair Chris’s Amiga 2000, but I did try.  Then I built him a PC and taught him how to use it.