After 34 years of marriage, my parents got divorced today. It took them a year and a half to get to the point where they could stand in front of a judge to tell them their marriage was over. Furniture has been divided. The house is being sold. And signatures are on the dotted line. It seems silly to me that these are the things to fight over. Furniture. A couch. An end table. That picture hanging in the hallway. After 34 years, these are the things worth arguing over, worth fighting furiously for.
What was your favorite class in high school? (And no, lunch doesn't count.)
French. Was my favorite college class too.
Would love to take more classes - or better yet, spend a year in Paris so I could be immersed in the language. I love the way it sounds.
Oh, well - I've forgotten the model numbers. This is what happens when you take the time at a party to learn someone's name - you learn their name and make the whole evening special but you sacrifice some other random piece of information. In this case, model numbers.
As far as I can tell, I used a PDP-10:
(Taken by Ed Thelen of material owned by Computer History Museum under the non-commercial rule.)
Followed shortly by a VAX 11/780:
Talk about good times. I had access to these only because I was friends with the system administrator at school. He set me up (I think I basically whined a lot until he did) with a user name and password. My first user name and therefore email address ever was "tomato". I don't know why I chose that. He said "What do you want for a user name?" and I spouted out "Tomato". So I was known as "tomato" for a few years. Whenever I logged in I'd hear "Hey, there is a Tomato on the system!". I had email and was able to send/receive with a few friends that were online also - mostly right there at the school.
A few years ago a customer was walking through my company and he was talking about how he had made all of his money in the "internet" and how he had his first email address in 1988. That's how he started his conversation. It was like "How did you get rich in the internet?" and his first statement was "I had my first email address in 1988". Obviously there was something else involved because I had my first email address in 1983 and I didn't make it big in the internet. Of course, the internet wasn't really there yet so much back then. I think there was ARPANET, etc - but I'm not going to go into all of that.
I didn't do anything really constructive on either of these systems at the time besides read newsgroups. Later, maybe around 1987 I had to have a "real" account because I had a class on the VAX so the "tomato" account went away and I moved to something like just "wilso_d" or something else mundane. At that point I was taking an operating system class and we had to write our own OS in something like C or Pascal. It's all vague at this point, but none-the-less, this was my moment to both PDP and VAX systems. Both were pretty good considering the time frame. All text-based as I recall with dumb-terminals. I think the world really was faster before the advent of fancy graphical user interfaces (aka Windows).
You can read more about the VAX here.
I think it's reasonable...well, except for maybe the Underwood.
Is it "Write A Blog Every Day For A Month" again? Because I'm already 10 behind. So here is a post from about two years ago where I said "Oh, I'm going to post about every computer I've ever used!" and then I stopped, right after this one. Lord Kalvan has been posting about a bunch of old computers and it reminded me of my original intent.
So here goes - I'm going to take a few posts to talk about the different computers I've used. I'll start with the very first one. This is the Commodore CBM-8032. This came out around 1980 and had a massive 32k of RAM. It had an 80 column by 25 line green monochrome screen. The CPU was a 6502 2Mhz.
This was owned by the science department at my high school. 1980 (10th grade for me) was well before the school had computer labs, etc. This was the ONLY computer in the school and we found it in the back of a store room where it wasn't being used.
It was beautiful. I used this from 1980 through 1982.
The base model used tapes, but the school actually had a dual floppy drive for it. I sent a letter to Commodore to see if they could send me any information on it, and they sent me a copy of their Commodore magazine. It was cool because it was filled with source code you could key in and also had instructions on how to do things with the system - like print. Yeah, this was before all of the magic we rely on today. Internet? Ha! I don't think so.
My first program was in BASIC and said something like:
10 PRINT "DEWITTE"
20 GOTO 10
and I'd run it... and run it.. and run it... There were three of us who started hanging around the back of the science room every chance we had - before school, after school, during lunch. We'd write programs and key in games and play them. One I recall the most is StarTrek (where you were a big E (for enterprise) and it moves around looking out for K (Klingons). Ah, good times, good times.
I would send a note to Commodore and when I received a reply, it would come from a different address. I thought something was up - they kept moving. Eventually I think they went away, but that wasn't until after the Vic-20, Commodore 64, and the Amiga. The only one of these I seriously used was the Amiga, but that's for another post.
I used to sit in the back of the classroom and just write mindless programs and listen to Supertramp on a cassette boom-box that I built (yes, built - and sad really because I don't have a single picture of it).
...watching my students work on their final group projects, I heard a loud sort of bang just outside our building. As a teacher on a largish campus, I now find myself worrying about school violence. I actually sat there and planned our classroom emergency procedure should a gunman ever enter our building. It included the shutting of doors, the turning off of lights, the straightening of desks, and the quick movement of students against walls hidden from view of the little window in the door.
Here I am again, two weeks in a row - woohoo! I probably won't get to do this next week since I only have three days in the office, but I am going to relish it today!
Notes from The Noticer:
"...a true friend holds you to a higher standard. A true friend brings out the best in you... A best friend...will tell you the truth...and a wise best friend will include a healthy dose of perspective." (p. 30)
"We grow up expecting everyone else to be just like us. And they aren't." (p. 42)
"I just think it's amazing...that a person could lose everything, chasing nothing." (p.49)
"...smart people get tripped up with worry and fear. Worry...fear...is just a misuse of the creative imagination that has been placed in each of us. Because we are smart and creative, we imagine all the things that could happen, that might happen, that will happen if this or that happens." (p.52)
About 8% of what we worry about are legitimate concerns (p.55)
"Most people spend so much time fearing the things that are never going to happen or can't be controlled that they have no energy to deal with the few things they can actually handle." (p. 55)
"...the seeds of depression cannot take root in a grateful heart." (p. 56)
Big takeaway from today's time: Perspective is everything.
A lot of you in my Vox Neighborhood are good photographers.
Not just good. Great.
Now that I oversee our church's website and various promo items, I am constantly looking for fresh, innovative, creative, original photos. On a limited budget.
Limited meaning I actually don't have a budget to purchase photos.
If you'd like to help a girl out by allowing me to occasionally use photos of yours that you've posted here or on other hosting sites, such as Flickr, would you send me a PM? I will let you know what I use, when I use it.
(I will not use photos that show any identifiable parts of a person, such as their face - I am looking for still shots, scenery, or photos with people's faces obscured - or just feet, legs, hands, etc. And if I am using a lot of your photos, it would move into a paying gig - or, I can give you a charitable contribution letter if you let me know the value.)
Gracias!
