<portions snipped for brevity>
I had run on too long and my message had appeared,
then dropped off the server. Since it was over 12k...
I thought maybe there was a 10 k limit.
I broke it down into parts...but only the second portion posted...
so I had to re-post the first part second.
Of course...the original post which had dropped off the server
came back.
Then happened one more time...so I started a new thread to observe the
behavior of my news server
I like to do nice things for people, BION, but generally speaking I am
totally useless. It's a long sad story. I /can/ fix a lamp :-)
I assure you that if you can fix a lamp...
you can fix a computer.
Though I go way
back and took my first course in FORTRAN IV at Milwaukee
School of Engineering back
in 1968. I was *shocked* that punch cards were being used.
I still used them in the late 70's when I worked (summer job, I never went
ANYWHERE) in the registrar's office of my college. The closest we got to
computers at the time, until 1980 IIRC, was an IBM Selectric with a tiny
memory for mass "customized" mailings etc.. That was pretty damn snazzy I
thought! But you still had to type in every address manually!
Though I prefer my old manual typewriter I have at least
one Selectric up in my attic. I also have one of IBM's original
electric typewriters. The museum in my city has one on display.
My favorite thing is the dial where you can set the keyboard
pressure for the number of carbon copies you are making.
The dial goes up to 10 !
If I set the dial to "ten copies" but just put a single sheet of paper
in the machine...if you hit the "0" it will punch a hole in the paper!!!!
It seemed absurd! Eleven years later when I went back to
school to get additional education for my job,
I was mortified that we were still using punch cards! It
seemed insane. After constructing a 68000 based machine for
one of my advanced courses...in May 1982
or so...I eventually grew to HATE computers so much that I
swore I would never touch one again.
Was it such an awful experience?
I don't know if there are any folks who hang out here
who are my age or older...but I can assure you that it you
had to write programs, then submit them on punch cards...
it was a good reason to hate computers. If you made as much as one
typo even the omission of a non-ambiguous parenthese...
the program would be "spit out" and you'd not only have to wait in line
to get at a punch card machine, you'd need to wait in line to re-submit
you program...then wait for others to submit...as they were run in batches.
I am not kidding you...it took an entire week to get one program
up and running. Today, you could do that work in a few minutes
if you are smart...but even a programming dummy like I am could
still get something running within a few hours.
Yes. I hated computers !!!!
<snip>
Wow. I was pretty clueless at the time and my college was an art school...
The closest I got to a computer was a basic video editying system and a
video synthesizer - but that was analog to begin with, and really not much
of a computer. I remember watching short analog computer graphics films
(conisdered valuable works of art) which the Whitney brothers (and others)
made at /great/ pains and then seeing almost EXACTLY the same things in
screen savers...
Great that you went to an art school. Though I do mostly photography
now...I've done quite a bit of art in the past.
The GF is a full time artist and is the executive director of the gallery
she runs within the auspices of the NPO where I do my volunteer
work. It was her volunteerism there, that has also gotten me involved.
More reading here: http://www.iccd.org/default.aspx
<snip snap>
absolutely nothing tougher!
I ROAR with laughter if someone on Usenet tries to insult
me. There is nothing like
a live Chicago crowd out to kill you!
I totally understand.
I've performed in Manhattan too...and finally pretty much
retired from poetry
when I finally won a poetry slam in Milwaukee!
Congratulations :-)
I got a tee shirt when I won. It took me six years to finally win a slam.
Some folks could win a slam on a monthly basis...
but it toughened me up. Even the Kadaitcha man..who is the biggest insulter
on all of Usenet is a rank amateur with his insults <G>
The highlight of my poetic career was in 1995... when I was
invited to the Peace Museum in Chicago
to read two of my poems at the commemoration of the ending
of WW-II with the bombing of Nagasaki.
The poem was deeply inspired by stories my father told
me...as he was among the first US troops
to go into the city after the bombing.
Wow. That must have been quite an experience for him.
I am haunted by the stories to this day. My father
was such an excellent story teller that I feel like I have walked
the streets of Nagasaki and have personally seen the destruction.
He brought home a jack knife he found on the streets
and I often thought about the person who owned it.
I later realized that the person who owned the knife
had been instantly vaporized...and the knife was all that was left.
One day my father discarded all his WW-II mementos...
stating : "Bad memories." But I have the entire jack knife memorized
and still see the broken blade, reground...and the cork screw used to open
bottles of Saki. I feel that I am forever linked to the departed
soul.
Anyway...Colleen was the one who got me interested in
computers when she gave me her old Packard Bell
back in 1999. I was with her when she bought it new in 1995
for $1600. I thought she was nuts!
The price was , if anything on the low side...
even for the time...I doubt it was top of the line.
It only had an 850 meg drive and 8 megs of RAM
In 1995 better machines were available.
Though Packard Bell was often maligned...
I am partial to them even to this day.
I had completely upgraded that machine as far as it could go...
and only retired it a few years ago. I restored it back to how it
was originally, and put it back into the original cardboard carton
That does sound a little expensive, even for those days. I guesss it must
have been that top-of-the line brand name!!!
Since the machine was a freebie...I took it home and
figured..might as well see what all this computer stuff is
about. Then I go hooked. When she owned the machine I would
never go near it, and if she ever wanted to show me
something... I literally ran out of the room screaming.
I would have liked to see that /laughs/.
I *really* was afraid of it!
<snipo>
It's horrible how these things have invisible yet SO powerful tentacles,
huh?
Yep!
<snap>
I had never even /heard/ of Linux then. The day MAY be approaching
though...
I started out with Red Hat 5.2
Sheesh, I did not even know what a partition was when I started...
from the time I got the CD...until the time I actually had Linux installed
and configured...was six months. The X-server...which runs
the GUI had to be manually configured. It was a lot of work!
Today, with Linux...you just boot off the cd and away you go...
many distros are even easier to install than Windows.
<more trimming>
I will NEVER get that far. My father used to write computer programs for
the huge boxes at universities they used in the 60's and 70's (does the word
mainframe apply to those?) to do his psychological statistics calculations,
but the closest I ever came to programming was making an IBM PC (the one
with 2 5¼ flopppies) draw a circle on the screen. It /was/ very satisfying.
Yep back in those days...they would have been main frames all right.
At the original company I worked for, our programmer was a guy
who had started out back in 1952. They transferred data (on punch cards)
between cities, using a pickup truck!
Every time I repair a machine...I look at
it as a new opportunity to learn something. To me, it's a
cheap education...way better than any college course I had
ever taken. I went to school for more years than
I'd care to admit...but learned much more on my own.
Same here.
<snp>
You are much more inquisitive than I am... I tend to get really nervous
and sweaty when things get really hairy and prefer to just start clean. And
I have never "worked" with computers - except when I did DTP and general
office boy crap at my last job, I /somehow/ quickly turned into the person
who had to show everyone how to use their computers. Yet I remained the
lowest paid person in the company. Even then I never built one, I was just
fairly good at software - I actually READ entire manuals just on principle!
The only actual "fixing" experience I've had is with my 3 machines (the 3rd
is an HP Vectra 486/66 which I can't even remember last firing up - but it
is built like a tank!) and a few friends' machines - but that just leads to
very unpleasant "misunderstandings". I have sworn to myself to NEVER help
any friend again.
If you work on old junk,there is nothing to get nervous about...
but if it's for a friend...that's a whole different story.
I have one friend who is a professional photographer and I build
and maintain all his machines. His work is so amazing that he keeps me
on a retainer.
Though I deeply respect the guy, I have to treat him like a kid
when it comes to telling him to *always* back up the data.
One afternoon, he lost a 200 gig HD (This was back when a 200 gig drive
was the largest one could get.) It was not detected in the bios...
so he brought the entire machine over to my shop.
He was worried sick. The drive contained thousands of images. Though they
were all scanned from 35mm film and he had the film stored properly...He had
about a years worth of Photoshop work on that drive...
cleaning up the images etc...and only a partial backup.
I sent the guy home and tried everything I could possible think
of...and still, though the drive would spin up...
it was not detected in the bios, no matter what I did
and I tried it in other machines.
By two in the morning...I went over the electronics
with a bright light and magnifying lens...and *thought* I found the
problem. One of those tiny surface mount capacitors had a seemingly bad
solder joint...and one end seemed to have bee lifted slightly.
I grabbed the smallest soldering iron I had...
but the tip look enormous. I was fatigued...so in a flash of good judgment
( something I rarely have) I decided NOT to work on it that night...but
instead tried to go to sleep. But had horrible nightmares
and woke up every hour in a cold sweat.
The next day I got the drive up and running.
then tackled a second drive that *merely* had a read/write error...
and the data recovery for that drive only took me about two more days
of continuous work <G> !!! Sheesh, did my friend ever get a nice
lecture...and today I think he owns more HD's than Maxtor!
<more snip>
I simply load a light Linux distro onto those.
Generally, Damn Small Linux (heck I can put that on a
100 meg drive and have plenty of room to spare)... then
offer the machines on Craig's list.
I never heard of that distro. Perhaps it is not as beginning-
user friendly as it is small?
Damn Small Linux is great. It's just a 50 meg download
so even folks with a dial up connection can get it, no hassle.
You just boot from the cd and it's a live distribution. You
can run it right from the CD..and the machine does not even need a HD.
There is a hard drive install option and it's quite quick and easy to to.
For older machines that can't boot from a cd they also have a floppy
available...which will access the cd and start the installation.
<snip>
Good for you. I am guessing me you are a conscientious and hard worker,
but that a lot of your time is spent in just sitting and watching things and
making sure nothing screws up - /then/ you spring into action like
WonderWoman! (I hope you don't mind the comparison.)
So you spend a fair amt. of time on the Usenet so you won't go crazy from
boredom. Or am I totally off?
When my mind is set to it...I am the hardest worker on the planet.
(or so it seems) Once I start a job, even if it takes all day...
i just go, go , go. Don't talk or eat until it's done.
The biggest job I was on was in a nuclear power plant.
I did need to take a few breaks there. Not only did we have all the
engineers and technicians from my office in there...we had to hired a bunch
of temps too. We worked 16 or 17 hours a day, six days a week
for six weeks continuously! That was one hell of a big job.
The project was way behind schedule...but the fault was not on our
end... We were paid a premium I assure you...but If I had to do it all over
again...they could keep the money.
The best part of the entire job was the fact that I had a higher security
clearance than the owner of the company I worked for.
(I was cleared to work unsupervised...as I was in fact one of the
supervisors. )When the owner of my company came in to see the job
progress, I was required to keep him in my sight at ALL times...
even when he had to go to the bathroom! That was quite humiliating
for him I assure you!!!
However. In addition the being such a hard worker...
I am also the laziest bum on the planet...
I went for something like 15 years on my job working 20 to 30 hour
weeks...until one day...someone mentioned to me kindly:
aaah, we do pay you you for 40 hours you know.
Of course, how could I tell them that I do about two hours worth of work
for every hour I am on the job?
Basically, I just worked slower and longer for a few months
until that blew over <G>
I have saved their butt so many times, they don't dare say too much.
<snip snap snout, this tale's told out>