- Matt Bracken's novel Enemies Foreign And Domestic will be available for free Kindle download on Thursday, March 1st. Pass it on.
- Computing Then and Now: I remember having a BBS sigline in my off-line mail reader (ask your parents, kids) that read "...and this is not my one-gig drive!" a la the Talking Heads. How quaint that seems.
- One of those things that blogs do is give you glimpses into things you'd otherwise never see: I had no idea that some EMT's regard the term "ambulance driver" as pejorative. Huh.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Tab Clearing...
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16 comments:
Doggerel from Back In The Day (sung to the tune of Mr. Ed):
A host is a host from coast to coast
but no one will talk to a host that's close
Unless that host (that isn't close)
is busy, hung, or dead!
Good times, good times.
Hmm, I always thought the insulting term was 'ambulance chaser'
Calling an EMT or paramedic an "ambulance driver" is like calling a pharmacist a "pill counter." It minimizes the more technical aspects of the job.
With that being said, it usually didn't bother me, unless the person doing the calling was a patient who was just using me and my rig as a taxi.
The joke goes: "What is the difference between a taxi and an ambulance?" the punchline varies:
"It is against the law to not pay for the taxi."
"A taxi requires payment."
"Taxis don't accept medicaid."
"A taxi can refuse to take you where you want to go."
you get the picture.
One gig?!?
Mine was 650MB :(
Peter,
When I had that sigline, a 1 gig drive was fantasy. Hence the Talking Heads reference. At the time, I was running SLMR on a virtual 40MB drive on my ex-boyfriend's machine because DOS couldn't access all 100MB at once...
Tam,
I go back to floppies, as in 81KB on 5.25" running CP/M (ca1977). I still have that and it's operational.
Since then I've been through every iteration of bigger/faster.
The latest was someone handed me a 2TB drive and said its' good just not big enough.
What???
Seems their disk needs are 50TB!
Eck!
I followed that Matt Bracken link. What is the deal with those WRSA people? Are they for real?
Eck!,
Me too, but the linked post was about the early '90s.
BTW, this confirms my theory. ;)
Heh. I had an external 60 meg SCSI drive under my mac. Paid about $600 1990's dollars for it.
The damned seagate started having sticky bearings ... you had to give it a few sharp horizontal twists to get the drive to start spinning up if you turned the poor thing off accidentally.
Showing my age:
I build an IMSA 8080, and a SW Tech 6800 - we used 8" floppies that stored I think about 180K. Then we got the nice 5 1/4 drives - then the Double Density Drives, then the Double Sided - Double Density Drives, I used punch cards, and paper tape. My first Hard drive was 10 Megabytes and cost $2,500.
My first manufactured computer was a Kaypro Z80 running CP/M - Scream'n machine - had 64K ram (that I'd upgraded from 16K. (had to unsolder the old chips and solder in new ones. I think it cost me about 2K for the machine but that was a while back :)
Heh. I remember rewriting [1] a BASICA program such that it sent startup AT commands to allow a 300 baud modem to race along at 450 baud. This mode was supported by a few BBS at the time. [2]
[1] with the help of my dad
[2] Barefoot, in snow. Uphill, both ways. ...and we marveled at the technological advancement too!
-SM
For those who don't have a Kindle or compatible eReader, there's a free downloadable Windows app at Amazon.
Barnes & Noble have a Nook app as well.
Cafe45 ... we made an IMSAI8080 in our HS computing class.
Had to burn our own ROM to get the floppy drive to boot up the operating system, but it was a vast improvement over toggling the instructions into the front.
And then we carried that IMSAI to school in 2 feet of snow, going uphill both ways.
( Tam: I have never met Mr. Babbage, or Ida. )
"Ambulance driver" rolls off the tongue much better than "meatwagon driver," as that's my name for the vehicle they operate most days. And the only "pill-roller" I knew was the actual Doctor at the clinic when I was at college, as you'd go in, describe your symptoms, and he'd write your a script to take down the hall to the pharmacy; hence he was rolling pills at your problem. Oh, for the days when a couple of pills *would* take care of whatever health problem was bugging me!
Yep. We're real. Thanks for stopping in.
CIII
I once bought Charles Babbage a beer after a long night of teaching him to code.
Yes. I stole that.
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