Sun. Oct. 6, 2024 – hope I get something done today…

By on October 6th, 2024 in culture, decline and fall, march to war

And hope the rain holds off. We got just a thin spatter yesterday. Not even enough to get things wet. Still had to cover the truck bed with a tarp, just in case. I use magnets to hold it in place, so it’s not difficult, just a step I dislike dealing with. The humidity would have benefited from some rain to clear the air. Temps were nice all day though.

Did my pickup, went by my secondary location to drop some stuff off. Dropped off filters for the A/C at my rent house, and stopped in to chat with my auctioneer. He’s still not ready to start selling my stuff again. I also picked up some books from him. Good stuff like animal husbandry, small engine repair, and a multi volume “best works in English” set. Hit the Goodwill bins for an hour on my way home. Got some books for me, and some for eventual resale. Of course I grabbed some DVDs too.

Did a tiny bit of cleaning up and organizing. Mainly avoided working at home though…

So hopefully today I can get caught up with SOME of the tasks.

Maybe I’ll cook something too.

I will surely stack or restack something. You should too.

nick

42 Comments and discussion on "Sun. Oct. 6, 2024 – hope I get something done today…"

  1. Ray Thompson says:

    Half of TN is ecstatic, the other half is crying in their Cheerios. TN has not won against Arkansas in 27 years. Vanderbilt has not won against Alabama in, well, forever.

  2. lynn says:

    70 F here on the west side of Fort Bend County.  It is very dark and overcast.  Winter is coming.

    Lots more people die with extreme cold than extreme heat.  Are you ready ?  Got heat sources ?  Got food ? Water ?

  3. lynn says:

    My #25 Aggies stomped #9 Missouri yesterday.  People are freaking out as our pro style qb seems to be healthy again.

  4. Greg Norton says:

    Wow, that is very 1970s pricing for a microwave.  

    – it’s a really nice 30″ built in.   Lot of nice one button features too.  Pity that it’s not the dual that has a convection bake function…

    Modern high end appliances are crazy money.  Especially german, swiss, or other european imports.

    Built in. Not above the range, I imagine, due to size. Desirable if it works.

    Hopefully, you have the trim plate. That might be unobtainium depending on the age of the unit.

    Installed, with trim kit, any built in microwave is going to run around $1000 minimum in the end. I just went through that buying process over the Summer.

    Bosch was looking at taking over Whirlpool a few months ago when we were looking.

  5. Greg Norton says:

    “Although we remain about four days—give or take—from a landfall along the west coast of Florida, it is important for residents of the state to take Milton very seriously. We realize that some areas of the state remain dazed by Hurricane Helene, but this is a similarly threatening storm. Although we don’t have full confidence in precisely where the storm will track, it does seem very possible that it will directly impact the greater Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area, which has a population in excess of 3 million people.”

    Population isn’t the problem in Tampa-St. Petersburg but where the people live.

    People have lived in new places like the Pinellas beaches, South Tampa, Bayshore, and Shore Acres for over 50 years, but if you look on a map, all of the development up the Hillsborough/Pinellas county line since the early 90s was elevating swamp land to the 12 foot minimum required by zoning post-Andrew.

    Tampa Bay has been swimming naked for over 30 years.

  6. Greg Norton says:

    Half of TN is ecstatic, the other half is crying in their Cheerios. TN has not won against Arkansas in 27 years. Vanderbilt has not won against Alabama in, well, forever.

    Regardless of what happened in the back half of the season last year, Alabama has been in trouble since they rolled into Tampa last September expecting a blowout win over my alma matter and ended up 30 seconds and one blown call from surviving the scare with only a 10-3 win.

  7. Greg Norton says:

    My #25 Aggies stomped #9 Missouri yesterday.  People are freaking out as our pro style qb seems to be healthy again.

    The Red River Classic is next weekend.

    The rankings will be really chaotic and the coach’s seat may get warm if Texas doesn’t win that shiny metal hat for the strippers to wear at the alumni party in Dallas on Saturday night.

  8. drwilliams says:

    Deputy Mike DeStefano (@mikedapopo on TikTok) posts short videos about his life as a deputy in rural North Carolina, and is now using his platform to address those who are seeking to help his community.

    “FEMA’s playing a game of FAFO because free men don’t ask for permission.”

    https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2024/10/06/north-carolina-deputy-urges-people-who-want-to-help-western-north-carolina-do-not-donate-to-fema-n2180196

  9. Ray Thompson says:

    Pictures from local Friday night football.

    https://www.raymondthompsonphotography.com/Midway

    Time sink for a Sunday.

  10. Nick Flandrey says:

    83F and sunny here.   Humid too.   

    Stuff to do, stuff to do, and more stuff to do…

    n

  11. Nick Flandrey says:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anAFUYAzopg

    Wild West Hygiene Horrors: How Bad Was It? 

    – hint, it was bad.

    n

  12. Nick Flandrey says:

    If you are interested in music, especially why it sounds like it does, and it’s place and impact on our lives, you will enjoy watching this.

    The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse

    Rick Beato

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bZ0OSEViyo 

    I’ve mentioned Rick Beato before, he’s an industry insider, had a successful career, and is a thinker about the issues.   I’ve learned a lot about the industry I worked in and never understood by watching him.

    n

    In the world of film, watching the ‘making of’ for one of the new starwars movies, I think the one with Jar Jar,  will show you that they approach film editing the same way and the same thing has happened.   They can save a single word, replace half the scene, etc. and the editor comments that now they can’t throw away ANY take, as there might be something the director wants to use in it.

    As one of the commentors relates, they  aren’t capturing performances, they are creating them.

    n

  13. Denis says:

    Pity that it’s not the dual that has a convection bake function…

    One of the two ovens at the BOL is a Neff (Siemens) dual microwave / oven. It is a very nice, useful unit. I use it more than the matching oven-only unit, because it has less volume and gets up to temperature fast. It was not cheap, but was worth it. 

  14. Nick Flandrey says:

    Some thoughts about CDs and DVDs based on my ongoing efforts to rip all the media I own to my server.

    – if you want to keep it long time, keep it in its original case.   Use copies in your car.  The Case Logic style sleeves and movement will destroy the disc.  So will excessive handling.  I see a lot of scratches that were caused by loading mistakes or mishandling.

    – if you want to keep it a long time, buy quality to start with.   Thicker discs hold up better than thin ones,  and encoding rates matter.   If there is one movie on a disc it’s going to be better than if there are two.

    – some discs just will not rip.  This may be a ‘me’ problem with a worn out disc drive.  The discs look clean, but might have an error in a critical place.  I suspect that they write on a reserved area or outside of spec as a copy protection feature, since consumer grade gear is much ‘looser’ when it comes to what is readable.

    – ripping a couple of thousand discs will wear out your disc drive.

    – the printed coating is important, take care of the “non data” side of the disc too.   I have found discs with “holes” in the reflective part due to damage of the protective painted side.

    – copies don’t last as long as commercially produced discs, and are more fragile.

    – keep them in a cool dry place.  Some discs get ‘cloudy’ which looks like it might be caused by outgassing or heat affecting the disc.

    – clean discs rip faster than dirty.

    – it’s possible to improve scratches to the point where the disc is readable, but it’s most often a waste of time.  If you don’t like the artist of film, don’t bother.

    – keep them dry.  moisture will corrode and damage the printed side and the reflective layer.

    – a surprising number of DVDs and some CDs were clearly never played.   If you bought it, play it!

    – it’s worth getting them onto a server where they are easy to access.  You will probably watch/listen to more of your library than if it’s in a drawer or media cabinet.

    n

    (work avoidance, it’s a thing.)

  15. Nick Flandrey says:

    I use it more than the matching oven-only unit, because it has less volume and gets up to temperature fast. It was not cheap, but was worth it.  

    – it’s very convenient to use the smaller convection oven when just heating frozen stuff.   Kinda like an air fryer…   

    n

  16. EdH says:

    Some thoughts about CDs and DVDs…

    RBT did a lot of testing, back in the day, but manufacture & materials are sadly ephemeral, not sure how much is still relevant.

  17. Greg Norton says:

    Some thoughts about CDs and DVDs…

    RBT did a lot of testing, back in the day, but manufacture & materials are sadly ephemeral, not sure how much is still relevant.

    Taiyo Yuden “Hecho en Japan” blank CD-Rs were still solid when I bought a sleeve ~ six years ago, but I haven’t needed more since I switched my daily drive to a 2018 Camry, which lacks a CD player outside of the rental models.

  18. Nick Flandrey says:

    I have CD players in my Ranger, Expy, and wife’s Oddysee

    n

  19. Nick Flandrey says:

    And XM is now offering us $3/month for 36months to come back.   That’s like 5% of normal billing.

    n

  20. paul says:

    I had an XM offer a couple of weeks ago.  $3/mo for a while, maybe 36 months, I forget,  and then “the low price of $29.95 a month”.  Plus sales tax, I’m sure.

    It was sort of weird.  Lots of glorious text about so many channels on the truck radio and then 350+ more via their phone or web app.  They know I have a 2019 Frontier.

    They misspelled my last name.  Stuck an extra e in the middle.   It’s not hard to spell.  My domain is my last name spelled in reverse. 

    Directly into the trash. 

  21. Ray Thompson says:

    And XM is now offering us $3/month for 36months to come back

    I need to hop on their website on Monday, when chat is available, and see what they will offer me if I threaten to cancel. I am paying $19.00 a month for two vehicles. Wife likes it or I would probably dump it and just use the 3,300 songs on my iPhone.

    5
    0
  22. EdH says:

    And XM is now offering us $3/month for 36months to come back

    Same here, tho it was $4 – down from $25.   

    I kept a mental record and I listened to about six hours of music in 5000 miles of driving. Even at four dollars it just wasn’t worth it.

    I much prefer books on tape, i.e. Audible, which is $15.

    (tape … dating myself).

  23. EdH says:

    It was sort of weird.  Lots of glorious text about so many channels on the truck radio and then 350+ more via their phone or web app.  They know I have a 2019 Frontier.

    I never really tried the app, but there was an amusing comment a few years ago to the effect that the original app was so bad that it was easier to simply put a baby monitor in the cab of their truck and use that to listen in the house, than to reinstall it for every single use on a tablet.

  24. MrAtoz says:

    when you loses SNL:

    The Kamel Humper and Tampon Tim are going to win the election for tRump. How tone deaf do you have to be to Tweet: “I’m sending more money to Lebanon (not NC) for humanitarian relief” while US Citizens get “sorry, we’ve run out of FEMA money. Suck it up.” Every penny for Lebanon should go to hurricane relief in the US.

    I can only hope the sheeple get wise to these two grifters.

  25. Nick Flandrey says:

    This offer said cancel after the three years, no auto billing.

    I hate commercials so I’d do it if they offer it to me in the Ranger.   This particular offer was for the wife’s honda.

    n

  26. Greg Norton says:

    when you loses SNL:

    https://x.com/GrageDustin/status/1842783302437994936

    “I think what happened is that I went to EPCOT … I had a couple in the Germany section and I thought I went to China.”

    Hmmm. Gaffigan is interesting. If the line was improvised or he helped write the sketch, his real target may have been the personality type who likes to ‘have a couple” in the Gerrmany section of EPCOT.

    Man, I hate that personality type having lived near the parks for most of my life, and Gaffigan spends a lot of time in Central Florida. I don’t know if he lives there, but it would make sense.

    Gaffigan plays one of Uncle Ted’s “fixers” in the “Chappaquiddick” film, Paul Markham. Depending on your point of view, Markham went back to the overturned car to attempt to get the girl out either to make sure the truth came to light -or- help Kennedy hide what happened. Markham and the other “fixer” failed.

  27. Greg Norton says:

    Markham and the other “fixer” failed.

    Failed to get the girl out that is. The film portrays the fixers as encouraging Kennedy to tell the truth, but it was still a career risk for Gaffigan.

  28. drwilliams says:

    If  wanted clowns I’d go to a f*cking circus:

    From the NAGR:

    In short, the United States Supreme Court announced they will be taking up Mexico’s lawsuit against Smith & Wesson.

    This is all because Mexico is blaming an American gun manufacturer for their own failures to control the Mexican cartels.

    Additionally, the Biden-Harris Administration and the United Nations are cheering this case on as this is an attempt to get the UN “Small Arms Treaty” installed by the courts.

    The constitution states very clearly that treaties have to be ratified by the Senate. 

    The courts have no function in the process.

    “Installed by the courts” is a scare tactic.

    I am done with you.

    Remove my email from your files.

    What we need fast-tracked to the U.S. Supreme Court is a $1 Trillion lawsuit by the families of fentanyl victims against the corrupt criminal government of Mexico.

    If I’m not needed as Trump’s new science advisor maybe Border Czar is open.

    New policies after inauguration: 

    1. Caught trying to move fentanyl into the U.S., the drugs get divided into suppositories for each perp and administered immediately. 
    2. Fentanyl smuggling is proof that the Mexican government is not in control of the border, and thus fails the test of a sovereign nation.
    3. Each fentanyl death in the U.S. is given a preliminary claim in the amount of $10 million and billed to Mexico. If not paid within 30 days, land adjacent to the border is seized and held in escrow at the rate of $100 per acre. 

    That’s 156 square miles per death. They don’t shut the drugs off the whole nation is in escrow in 5-6 weeks.

  29. Nick Flandrey says:

    From FEMA.   Note the “received by the state” status.    Not “given to people in need.”

    Situation: Locally executed, state managed, and federally supported operations continue.

    Lifelines: (FEMA RIV SLB, as of 6:00 p.m. ET, Oct 5)

    Safety & Security:
    ▪ GA: 12 curfews remain in effect for Richmond counties
    ▪ NC: Unified local, state, and federal US&R operations ongoing in
    impact areas; mandatory/voluntary remain evacuation orders
    and/or curfews remain in place
    ▪ SC: US&R missions have been completed and federal resources
    are redirecting to North Carolina

    Food, Hydration, Shelter: (ARC, as of 7:50 a.m. ET, Oct 6)
    ▪ FL: 11 (-1) shelters / 432 (+3) occupants
    o 70 Food distribution sites; 15 food banks operational/1.2M
    meals received by the state
    ▪ GA: 8 shelters / 448 (-75) occupants
    o 3.5M meals/1.4M liters of water received by the state
    ▪ NC: 15 (-7) shelters / 825 (-90) occupants
    o 32 Mass feeding sites; 5M meals/7.5M liters of water
    received by the state
    ▪ SC: 1 shelter / 81 (-19) occupants
    o 28k meals and 688k liters of water received by the state
    ▪ TN: 4 shelters / 65 occupants
    ▪ VA: All sheltering operations closed as of 10/5; significant need
    for bottled water in impacted areas
    Health & Medical:
    ▪ GA: All hospitals have returned to normal power and normal
    water systems; 33 confirmed fatalities
    ▪ NC: All hospitals have returned to normal power; 70 (+7)
    confirmed fatalities
    ▪ VA: All medical facilities return to full power; 2 confirmed
    fatalities

    Energy: (DOE Eagle-I, as of 7:30 a.m. ET, Oct 6)
    o GA: 117k (-96k) (2%) customers without power
    o NC: 143k (-91k) (3%) customers without power
    o SC: 117k (-168k) (4%) customers without power

    Communications:
    ▪ GA: 0 (-3) counties remain with 50% cellular sites without
    service; federal disaster communication support enroute
    ▪ NC: 2 (-1) counties with cell sites with 50% plus sites down; 11
    (-6) of 241 comms towers operating on generator power
    ▪ TN: Cellular sites restoration efforts ongoing; Satellite Data
    Terminal kits and federal communication augmentation assets
    in theater

    [ despite almost all cell sites back on line]

    Transportation:
    ▪ GA: All state roadways are open; however, county roads are still
    being cleared; portions of freight/mass transit lines remain nonoperational
    ▪ NC: Significant road closures continue; all airports are now open
    3 airports operating with power/communication issues
    ▪ TN: I-40, I-26, and 7 US/state routes remain closed; 30 of the
    49 state routes originally closed are reopened
    Helene – Southeast & Mid-Atlantic

    Water Systems:
    ▪ FL: 18 (-8) Boil Water Notices; assessment and restoration continues
    ▪ GA: 330 (-39) active boil water notices are decreasing as systems resume fully
    operations
    ▪ NC: Assessments are ongoing for potable and wastewater infrastructure; 96 (-3) active
    boil water notices
    ▪ SC: Significant improvement to public water infrastructure; 1 Active Boil Water Notice
    Advisory
    ▪ TN: Water infrastructure restoration continues; 18 active boil water notice advisories
    ▪ VA: Wastewater treatment plants in VDEM Regions disrupted; 24 (-10) active boil water
    advisories 
     

  30. Nick Flandrey says:

    I tried to get XM streaming set up for a tabletop “internet radio” and failed.

    I got caught in a kafka loop, were I need a credential I  didn’t get set up properly to change the credential I didn’t get set up…

    Maybe I’ll try again.

    n

  31. Nick Flandrey says:

    Female teacher, 45, admits killing her parents and dismembering them with chainsaw after fight about money

    By Sonya Gugliara For Dailymail.Com

    Published: 18:52 EDT, 6 October 2024 | Updated: 19:10 EDT, 6 October 2024 

    A former Pennsylvania special education teacher admitted to killing her parents and dismembering them with a chainsaw.

    ————-

    When police entered the home, they asked Verity where her parents were. She allegedly responded, ‘They are dead.’ 

    Investigators said they found three guns with spent rounds – two registered and one unregistered – in Verity’s bedroom. 

    Verity’s lawyer, James Lyons, told NBC10: ‘While everyone in the family realized that she had mental health issues, no one recognized the seriousness of it or how serious it had become.’

    Lyons also told the outlet on Monday that Verity feels ‘remorseful’ and is ‘much more clear now.’

    Verity will receive mental health care while she is in prison. She will be held in the therapeutic wing instead of the maximum-security area.

    – everyone in the family knew she was nuts but she was allowed to continue spending 8 hours a day with kids.

    n

  32. lpdbw says:

    – everyone in the family knew she was nuts but she was allowed to continue spending 8 hours a day with mentally challenged or disabled  kids.

    FIFY

  33. Nick Flandrey says:

    I hate windows. 

    I’m trying to see why my youtube is stop and go…   I restarted firefox in troubleshooting mode, and man there are a lot of ads, but I’m still getting spooling, so I’m watching my network and disk activity.

    FFox is caching constantly.  Even though I thought I shut off prefetch.

    MS decided this was a perfect time to run windows update.  And Defender is running a disk scan.  AND system restore decided to run a restore point save so there is a sh!t ton of shadow copying going on.

    With all that, my swapfile is moving sh!te in and out.

    I’ve got 40GB left on my c drive…

    n

    5
    1
  34. drwilliams says:

    “I hate windows. ”

    Windows is proof of the ineffectiveness of cursing.

    6
    1
  35. Nick Flandrey says:

    If cursing was effective in our magicless universe Bill Gates would have erupted with suppurating sores and died a slow and painful death decades ago.

    n

  36. JimB says:

    Windows is proof of the ineffectiveness of cursing.

    Windows is a curse? Try VMS. Sorry if there are VMS pilots still in existence.

    I’m trying to see why my youtube is stop and go…   I restarted firefox in troubleshooting mode, and man there are a lot of ads, but I’m still getting spooling, so I’m watching my network and disk activity.

    FFox is caching constantly.  Even though I thought I shut off prefetch.

    MS decided this was a perfect time to run windows update.  And Defender is running a disk scan.  AND system restore decided to run a restore point save so there is a sh!t ton of shadow copying going on.

    With all that, my swapfile is moving sh!te in and out.

    I’ve got 40GB left on my c drive…

    You are having a bad day, in spite of the theme for today. I truly wish you well.

    Please take the time to set up Windows better than what you have. I am not familiar with Windows 8 (which you are running?), but in Windows 10 there are “operating hours” or some similar term. I have mine set to download update files, but wait for my OK to do any installations that require restarts. It just works. Pre-downloading really helped with my formerly very slow Internet.

    YouTube slowness with your really fast Internet? Ridiculous! Even though I now have typical 40 Mb down, I sometimes use my 4 Mb DSL, and even then YT vids almost never pause, even when running at 2X speed. Maybe it is Firefox.

    I ran Firefox on Linux, and thought it was OK, until I installed Chromium. When I went back to Windows, I immediately installed Chrome, and later Brave. I am constantly impressed with their speed. I don’t load them up with extensions. Brave doesn’t need any in my experience.

    C’mon, man, you are way smarter than me at this computing stuff. If I can get Windows to run well, you should be even better. I say this with the greatest of respect, and not blame. I will admit to spending some time over the years learning, but all that seems unnecessary in my experience with the NT based versions. They seem to run fine with mostly stock settings.

  37. lpdbw says:

    VMS is the best minicomputer operating system that was ever developed, and VAXClusters the best clustering software.   Period.

    Remember when Windows went from “reboot it every dady” -if you can make it that long – to  Windows NT?

    Yeah, they got there by copying the best parts of VMS.  Thanks to Dave Cutler, formerly from Digital Equipment Corporation, and sniped by Microsoft.

    I remember my first Unix and my first Windows cluster.  About half as good as what I had used 10 years earlier.

    I’m biased since I was a VMS performance tuning expert at Digital, and I built VAXclusters for several clients, and managed a couple of our internal ones.

    As far back as 1987, the rule was to reboot our VMS systems once a month, whether we needed it or not, to install patches.   

  38. Nick Flandrey says:

    Yeah, used to be I could run 8 YT streams at the same time w/out issues.  When it stopped working like that, I blamed YT for F’ing with people running ad blockers, which they were doing.  It never got better though.

    I think the problem is either my C drive is too full, because I mostly see pauses and delayed video when I also see disk activity involving the pagefile and MBR.   I’m stunned about how much disk writing firefox does with yt in several tabs.  it’s non-stop even when the vids aren’t running.

    I see Ffox only sipping B/sec for all the open tabs instead of KB or MB/sec when the vid is actually running.   

    I think I’m ready to try a new install of FFox, but I’ll have to export my bookmarks and saved log ins first.

    Something is screwed up because it used to work without issue.    

    n

  39. brad says:

    Some thoughts about CDs and DVDs based on my ongoing efforts to rip all the media I own to my server.

    I managed our music collection a couple of years ago. What a slog! In the end, though, we still don’t play music all that often. Dunno why – both the CDs and the ripped versions are easily available.

    I haven’t even tried with the movies. There are some I do value, though, so maybe I will eventually get a round tuit.

    I suspect that they write on a reserved area or outside of spec as a copy protection feature, since consumer grade gear is much ‘looser’ when it comes to what is readable.

    Yup. You’ve really gotta love companies that deliberately damage their product, in the hope and expectation that cheap readers will stumble over it without falling down.

    The Kamel Humper and Tampon Tim are going to win the election for tRump. How tone deaf do you have to be to Tweet: “I’m sending more money to Lebanon (not NC) for humanitarian relief” while US Citizens get “sorry, we’ve run out of FEMA money. Suck it up.”

    Sadly, I expect that will only have an effect in the affected states, which were going to vote for Trump anyway.

    Why is anyone sending money to Lebanon. If Lebanon stopped attacking Israel, Israel would not attack Lebanon. This is not difficult to understand. The civilians affected need to take their anger and outrage to their own government. Same for Gaza. Same for Iran, soon.

    YouTube slowness

    If you don’t have ad blockers, YouTube is intolerably full of ads. If you do have ad blockers, YouTube now deliberately gives you problems and delays. This was in the tech blogs a couple of months ago: rolling out by region.

    We block ads at the whole-house level (PiHole), and we exclusively use browsers (Vivaldi, Brave, Firefox) with ad blockers. FWIW, PiHole reports that it has blocked 2579 ads in the last 24 hours. Crazy. It doesn´t get everything, of course, only ads served from external ad servers, so the ad blockers in the browsers are still essential. If there’s something we aren’t allowed to see without ads? Fine, bye now. Don’t use Chrome or Edge, at least, not without both Ghostery and AdBlock.

    Pretty much every techie I know does the same, and anyone advised by a techie.

  40. JimB says:

    VMS is the best minicomputer operating system that was ever developed, and VAXClusters the best clustering software.   Period.

    I don’t doubt that. I was recalling our developers’ complaints about monthly changes to that OS, and the disruption they said it caused for a day or so until they learned what had changed. The OS was very stable, and so was the hardware.

    I was never a programmer, and not even an operator.

    My background was RF design (radio stuff) and digital control of in-house designed test equipment. I was drafted into a mainframe computer development effort in the late 1960s, where I designed hardware and worked on manufacturing test solutions. Hardware is still my comfort zone.

    In 1981 I was involved in setting up a hardware in the loop lab at a remote site using a VAX-11/780 computer with a couple of PDP-11s to interface with the hardware under development. I was mostly involved with power issues, and DEC helped a lot. Once set up, everything worked as needed. IIRC, the DEC hardware was very reliable, but sensitive to environment, especially power quality. Our power quality was terrible, and we spent a lot of money on conditioning.

    Later, I oversaw an operation that used an HP 1000 to run a test bay. We liked that system, and had good support from HP, just as good as from DEC. We explored using something newer for office computing. The cost was about half that of PCs, but we could see that it was becoming a dead end for low end tasks.

    Shortly after that, I became involved in outfitting a production operation with UNIX workstations. We had DEC, Sun, and later HP individual stations, separated for competition needs, so no networking. These were quite good, but very expensive, especially the software. I remember that Sun in particular was talking about a low end ‘NIX machine aimed at home use. It was to be cost competitive with PCs, but never became available.

    I got away from this for a few years, and when I came back, Windows had made some inroads. At first, the best folks could say was that the hardware was cheaper than the UNIX stations, but not especially high performance. The other cost issue was that people could use their computers for everyday office needs, further reducing costs. The high end office networks, particularly from HP, were doomed. HP had a slick setup, but was just too expensive to buy and support.

    Eventually, Windows systems took over, not because they were so good, but because they were low cost and good enough. I remember Jerry Pournelle pushing the Good Enough mantra, and agree.

    Just reminiscing. No offense to anyone’s favorite computer or OS. To me, they are all tools: use what feels comfortable. I can also reminisce about soldering irons. I was never a computer hobbyist; I just bought and built them as tools. Most of my use is for “business” stuff. I just finished my tax submission to my CPA. The most pleasant part of that ugly task was using the computer.

  41. Nick Flandrey says:

    In the early days of personal computing I was a hobbyist.   Radio Shack model 1 and 100.   Rented time on apple ][ to play games after school.   Used a terminal (and my model 100 as a terminal) with a big DG in school.   Supported an apple III used in a friend’s family business.   Had looked at the new IBM PC and clones but they were too primitive.

    In 2nd college, ran a CAD lab that had IBM PCs and apple Macs.   The PCs were primitive but worked for CAD and some db stuff.

    Left school and left personal computing behind for a while.   Started back up with a gateway lappy, with a slide out trackball.   Tried OS/2 Warp just for fun.   Went back to windows 3.1 and 3.11.   Tried a Newton but it was limited.  OK for a road machine if paired with a PC at home…

    And then just started getting better and better win laptops.   Dual monitors were cool.   My work exposed me to Sun workstations, SGI Onyx and deskside Onyx, HP *nix boxes, and eventually linux.    I ran Mandrake and Redhat, and SuSe on PCs at home…j

    ————

    now I want stability.  I want “just works”.   And I don’t want ads and spying.  I’m not a  pc otaku.  I’m not a hobbyist.   

    ————

    @brad, with my googlefu I can’t find current issues or resolutions regarding youtube messing with adblockers.   They used to, but most people seem to be back to normal.  Not me.   The first troubleshooting step is always asking “what changed” and I don’t have a clue if it’s not youtube itself.

    It’s dang near unwatchable with ads, and on my primary device, this pc, it’s dang near unwatchable with multi minute long delays with nothing happening but a spinning arrow…

    n

Comments are closed.