One for my memoirs

[sbwertz]

In real life I am a computer consultant. For several weeks, I've been getting calls from an 89 year old client complaining that her computer is making a loud beeping noise, but by the time I could get there, it had stopped and I could not find any reason for the beeping. Today, she called me as soon as it started and I stopped what I was doing (working in the shop) and drove over there immediately...sawdust and all. I walked into her office and immediately realized it was coming from the desktop, not the computer, that was down on the floor. At first I though it was the modem, but closer examination showed it was coming apparenty from the led monitor. I couldn't figure out why the monitor would have any sort of alarm. As I inspected the monitor more closely, I realized it was NOT coming from the monitor, but from a small pen and pencil desk set....with a clock. Yep, it was the alarm on the clock. It had apparently been going off every day for weeks, but unless she was in the room with it, she couldn't hear it. And it only ran for a few minutes and shut itself off.

Fortunately I only live about 4 miles from her and was able to get there before it shut itself off.

 

[mark james]

Hey Sharon... Every time I turn the shop lights off and go up the steps out of the basement I get these weird voices in my head? Kind of like metallic rust growing on machines that are threatening me "not to go away for long." Not too loud, but like a splinter, you know it's there. Then when I turn the lights on, they go away???

Any suggestions :redface:?

 

[sbwertz]

Funny, but I get those funny voices in my head, too. Usually about midnight. "Did I turn out the shop lights? Did I turn off the air conditioner/heater?"

It isn't too bad in the summer, but in cold weather, it is drafty tippy toeing out there in the dark and the cold to check. 99% of the time, they were turned off, too.

 

[mecompco]

Sharon, that is hilarious! That kind of thing happens all the time at school (where I work in the IT department). Yesterday it was an Apple TV not working. "Is it plugged in?" "Oh, yes!" Our district spans three towns--drove the 10 miles out to see the teacher. The HDMI was plugged in, but not the power. I have also learned never to trust someone when they say they have "turned it off and on again", because generally they really haven't ("No, just shutting the lid and opening it again doesn't turn it off"). They joys of IT!

Regards,
Michael

 

[sbwertz]

A few favorites from a long career:

Flying from Phoenix to San Diego to put paper in the printer.

Crawling under a built in computer unit to plug all the components into a pre-deployed power strip by touch, and finding I had no power. Checked the switch on the power strip...still no power...maybe plugged in to a switched outlet? Flipped all the switches in the room...still no power. Got a flashlight and flat on my face on the floor peeked under and discovered I had indeed plugged everything into the power strip....including the power strip itself.

Doing telephone support back in the days of 5 1/2" floppy drives. "Put the disk in the drive and close the door." You hear them get up and walk across the room and close the door.

Make a safety copy of the disk....xerox copy.

Then there was the time...back when computers didn't have hard drives....when I drove 50 miles to the other side of the valley to set up a gal with accounting software on a floppy disk. All she had to do was insert the disk in the machine and turn it on and the program would come up. As I walked in the door after returning from her office, the phone rang. "The disk doesn't work." 50 miles back. Walked in and found she had the floppy disk stuck to the file cabinet with a refrigerator magnet so she wouldn't lose it.

 

[tomtedesco]

Great stories, wish you lived closer. I got this problem with my computer.............

 

[mecompco]

Ha ha--all kinds of stories! Back in the 90's when I had my own retail computer store I had a customer call. Her complaint? The mouse was working backwards. I asked her in what direction the cord was facing. "Why, towards me, of course". I got my start in the DOS days--good days, actually, one used to be able to make some money as an independent computer store owner building boxes. Alas, the bottom dropped out of that and I had to get a real job. Though I do still have an office and make a little scratch doing spyware cleanups, HD swaps and so forth.

Regards,
Michael

 

[CREID]

Ha ha--all kinds of stories! Back in the 90's when I had my own retail computer store I had a customer call. Her complaint? The mouse was working backwards. I asked her in what direction the cord was facing. "Why, towards me, of course". I got my start in the DOS days--good days, actually, one used to be able to make some money as an independent computer store owner building boxes. Alas, the bottom dropped out of that and I had to get a real job. Though I do still have an office and make a little scratch doing spyware cleanups, HD swaps and so forth.

Regards,
Michael

The good old dos days. People look at me funny when I tell them when I first started surfing the internet, it was all unix code, and they go huh?

 

[stonepecker]

I won't even begin.

Been there, have more then one t-shirt.
I use to drive 12 miles one way to get my dad's TV back up and running when he pushed the wrong button. My brother lived right next door......couldn't walk over and help Dad. Drove to the folks place one time at 3:30 am and picked up the step-mother and took her to the hospital. She didn't want to bother the brother.

Here's your sign!

 

[CREID]

sounds like my brother.

 

[leehljp]

The good old dos days. People look at me funny when I tell them when I first started surfing the internet, it was all unix code, and they go huh?

I joined the Tokyo Unix forum for one year back in the late '80s. Boy, that was a learning experience, just navigating that maze!


In the mid '90s, one of my co-workers who was single and in her late 60s, came back to Japan after 6 months in the States. She decided to get a laptop computer so that she could communicate with a few people back in the States via email. She didn't bother to learn how to use her computer while in the States, but instead decided that I would be the one to teach her. ( I had repaired a minor problem with her Cello earlier, so she decided I was the son that she didn't have.) Well, she brought some new software for the computer and a new (dial up) modem from the US and left the manuals for the slow boat crate. She contacted the local provider and got an account. I helped her get set up as best as I could figure but I sure needed that manual. I got it "working" just guessing between the Japanese ISP requirements and the modem/computer set up requirements She could log on and send email but it took too many steps - something was wrong.

The modem and email software manuals came in about 3 weeks later, I went over to her house (about 40 miles) from where I lived and began working on it. I was upstairs, she was downstairs. I started the computer, changed a couple of settings according to the manual, but could not connect to her service provider. Tried and tried. Uninstalled the software, re-installed, followed the book and all the instructions in detail. It didn't help that all of the ISP's instructions and pictogram dialog boxes were in Japanese, but in general, I could usually figure that out. After an hour and a half, I gave up, went downstairs and asked for a cup of coffee. Then the lady said, "while you were working on the computer, I have been on the phone with . . . blah blah blah."

I said "Evelyn, it just hit me what was wrong with the computer. I will have it fixed in a minute. But please don't get back on the phone until I finish setting it up your computer." I went upstairs, turned on the computer, dialed up and everything worked like it should. 2 minutes with her not on the phone line!

(There were modems that would let you know if the phone was in use, but there were a few that would not, and hers was one of those that would not.)

(By the way, to get to her house, I had to change trains twice (3 different trains) and take a taxi the last two kilometers.)

 

[Rockytime]

My first computer. LM64 with 64K memory, CPM operating system, dual Segate 8" drives and a US Robotics 300 baud modem. Price? $7000.

 

[CREID]

The good old dos days. People look at me funny when I tell them when I first started surfing the internet, it was all unix code, and they go huh?

I joined the Tokyo Unix forum for one year back in the late '80s. Boy, that was a learning experience, just navigating that maze!


In the mid '90s, one of my co-workers who was single and in her late 60s, came back to Japan after 6 months in the States. She decided to get a laptop computer so that she could communicate with a few people back in the States via email. She didn't bother to learn how to use her computer while in the States, but instead decided that I would be the one to teach her. ( I had repaired a minor problem with her Cello earlier, so she decided I was the son that she didn't have.) Well, she brought some new software for the computer and a new (dial up) modem from the US and left the manuals for the slow boat crate. She contacted the local provider and got an account. I helped her get set up as best as I could figure but I sure needed that manual. I got it "working" just guessing between the Japanese ISP requirements and the modem/computer set up requirements She could log on and send email but it took too many steps - something was wrong.

The modem and email software manuals came in about 3 weeks later, I went over to her house (about 40 miles) from where I lived and began working on it. I was upstairs, she was downstairs. I started the computer, changed a couple of settings according to the manual, but could not connect to her service provider. Tried and tried. Uninstalled the software, re-installed, followed the book and all the instructions in detail. It didn't help that all of the ISP's instructions and pictogram dialog boxes were in Japanese, but in general, I could usually figure that out. After an hour and a half, I gave up, went downstairs and asked for a cup of coffee. Then the lady said, "while you were working on the computer, I have been on the phone with . . . blah blah blah."

I said "Evelyn, it just hit me what was wrong with the computer. I will have it fixed in a minute. But please don't get back on the phone until I finish setting it up your computer." I went upstairs, turned on the computer, dialed up and everything worked like it should. 2 minutes with her not on the phone line!

(There were modems that would let you know if the phone was in use, but there were a few that would not, and hers was one of those that would not.)

(By the way, to get to her house, I had to change trains twice (3 different trains) and take a taxi the last two kilometers.)

That's funny.:biggrin:

 

[CREID]

My first computer. LM64 with 64K memory, CPM operating system, dual Segate 8" drives and a US Robotics 300 baud modem. Price? $7000.

My first computer was a DX2,66 I had a whole meg of ram and I again upgraded to 2 megs when i saved up the 100$ for that meg and my first modem was (i was fortunate) a 9600 baud. I remember when the 19200 baud came out, i bought one and wow, it didn't take too long for an email of text to go through. I started downloading audio books with a 56k and it would take 30 - 60 minutes to download a book. With cable it now takes about 5 minutes, for a large book.

 

[jsolie]

Sharon, your story reminded me of a co-worker who tried to prank me many years ago.

He had this device called a "Librarian Tormentor." It was a small circuit board with an attached speaker, a chip, a capacitor and a 9 volt battery. The device would slowly charge up the capacitor, and then release it by letting out a beep tone for about 10 seconds or so. He hid the thing in a box of DB9 and DB25 connector parts I had in a desk drawer. It probably took me 45 minutes to find it.

I then wrote a note "Wouldn't you like to know where it is?" and then stashed the device (after disconnecting the battery) outside of my office in an unused cubicle used to hold manuals, printer parts and spare power cables.

When I got back from lunch, I checked the drawer, and someone had spent considerable time moving things around in the drawer. A couple of hours later, the guy slunk into my office, sat down and in a very humble voice asked if he could have his device back. :biggrin:

We both still work at the same company (even through an acquisition) and we get along great. He's learned to not ever ever try to prank the guys in IT.

I just went and checked ThinkGeek, and they still have their Annoy-a-trons!

ThinkGeek Annoy-a-tron Prankster Pack | ThinkGeek

 

[TellicoTurning]

I must be really old, my first computer was a Commodore 128 that my son rejected in favor of a Commodore Omega D... he used that for four or five years until the army broke it shipping it to Korea for him... I used the 128 for a number of years and don't remember when I upgraded to a real computer.

 

[sbwertz]

I won't even begin.

Been there, have more then one t-shirt.
I use to drive 12 miles one way to get my dad's TV back up and running when he pushed the wrong button. My brother lived right next door......couldn't walk over and help Dad. Drove to the folks place one time at 3:30 am and picked up the step-mother and took her to the hospital. She didn't want to bother the brother.

Here's your sign!

Digging through a box the other day I found my old KayPro t-shirt. That took me back....CP/M.

 

[sbwertz]

I must be really old, my first computer was a Commodore 128 that my son rejected in favor of a Commodore Omega D... he used that for four or five years until the army broke it shipping it to Korea for him... I used the 128 for a number of years and don't remember when I upgraded to a real computer.

My first one...other than the teletype time-share terminal to the main frame out in the laundry room (too noisy for the house)...was an Atari 800. Then graduated from 6502 to Z80 and the CP/M Kaypros. Then to the 8088 DOS systems...etc.

Used to build systems...I built my first "power" system on AMD's 286-20...at the time it was the fastest chip on the market. 3 mb of static RAM...(you want EXPENSIVE RAM! $1000 a megabyte.) An 8 millisecond caching controller for the two 40mb ESDI drives, a board that backed up the hard drives to a VCR, a vertical paperwhite word processor monitor (It was taller than it was wide and would show an 8.5" x 11" page actual size. I did masters theses and doctoral dissertations for college students...with Perfect Writer and later Ventura Publisher,) a 24 pin dot matrix printer, and later a postscript laser printer.

Color monitors had 32 colors...a great improvement over the 4 color graphics!

My first modem was a 300 baud acoustical modem that you had to put the telephone handset into little rubber cups on the modem.

God...I'm sure older than dirt!

 

[TellicoTurning]

Sharon,
Honestly I don't know what all that means, but back when I was on the west coast and the PC's first came out, we had to apply for export licenses for those with certain BAUD rates... the application was about 4 or 5 pages long and took me about an hour to fill out since I really didn't know what I was doing... but I got my licenses to ship them over seas. The dept of commerce license program has pretty much gone away now except for centerfire ammunition and guns... then it becomes a Treasury (T-license) license. Shot guns and rim-fires aren't licensed for export, but may be licensed for import to some countries.

 

[leehljp]

What makes me feel old is when someone asks me what programming I first learned. Me: binary from my physics professor back in '63-'64.

I didn't really learn much of any other, except for some HTML, but I did learn how to use a text editor to alter a few things that I wanted on some program, . . . and the high scores on games while my girls were off at school. They never could figure out how I could always beat their score! :biggrin:

I too started with a 300 baud dial up - back in '86. I had to contend with Japanese dialogs and at that time I was not able to read that language. Just guess.

 

[sbwertz]

My husband was a mainframe programmer (he was on the team that wrote the very first ANSI Standard COBOL compiler). He also wrote the first disk sort for computers...worked for GE back when they made mainframes, starting in 63. I actually know the man who invented the backslash! They needed a key for computer keyboards that would be unique to use for paths. So he tipped the slash backwards and the backslash was born. Eric Klamens.

My husband was actually a Librarian. He has his MLS in Library Service from Colombia. But when he was in the Army, stationed at West Point, he volunteered to be a teaching assistant when GE came to teach programming to the cadets. It turned out he was a natural programmer, and was hired directly out of the Army by GE...never did work as a Librarian after he got out of the service. Worked as a mainframe systems programmer for 30 years.

 

[mmayo]

Thanks for the humor;it helped a bad day a bit.

I worked for a very big research lab at the USC School of $%#@ and our lab became infected from an email telling us to update our security software. Those in charge sent the virus-infected file! It took days to get the seven office staff and fifty researchers back to normal.

Love it.

 

[Rockytime]

Anyone remember Vic 20?

 

[wfsteadman]

In the 90's while in the Army I worked for a Computer Warranty company on the side. Got a call to go to a ladies house because the speakers on her Packard Bell were not working. Got to the house, reached under the bottom of the speakers and turned the volume up. Seemed her son was just tall enough to walk under the speakers and looked up and saw a knob and turned it. Was more amazed that the tech support number she called did not have her check the volume knob. Many more like that, oh the fun of a computer tech. But hey you only have to know 1's and 0's so how tough could it be

 

[sbwertz]

I had a dentist's office that called me and told me the monitor on their computer had failed. I went in and discovered the monitor was fine, but the computer, which normally ran 24/7 and sat on the floor under the desk, was turned off. A few weeks later, I got the same call. Again, the computer was turned off, but I noticed marks on the carpet from a vacuum. The system had a push-button power switch, and the cleaners were bumping it with the vacuum. I taped a quarter over the power switch...problem solved.

 

[TellicoTurning]

Anyone remember Vic 20?

The VIC20 launched my son's computer career... he got one when he was 10 or 11 and by the time he was 12, he was a full blown techie... after the army he went to Univ of Texas for 1 semester and figured he could make a living without spending the money for college... at 44, so far he has made a great living.

 

[MDWine]

... and here I was feeling sorry for myself because the reader chose one card out of 973 to chew up each time I ran the damn program...

Then I started playing on an OSBORNE I... man, that was slick, two disks and all that space! (512K)

remember "YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING. AROUND YOU IS A FOREST. A SMALL STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND DOWN A GULLY." ??

 

[Rounder]

My first was a TRS-80 by Tandy. Only had a cassette tape to save to. No disk. That was tough for a dummy like me.

 

[jsolie]

My husband was a mainframe programmer (he was on the team that wrote the very first ANSI Standard COBOL compiler). He also wrote the first disk sort for computers...worked for GE back when they made mainframes, starting in 63. I actually know the man who invented the backslash! They needed a key for computer keyboards that would be unique to use for paths. So he tipped the slash backwards and the backslash was born. Eric Klamens.

Sharon,I have a picture that I took maybe five minutes ago that I'm going to post . My hosting company is having trouble right now, so I'll post when they sort things out.

Anyone remember Vic 20?

Yep! We had a row of them appear in a class room in my final year of high school.

My first was a TRS-80 by Tandy. Only had a cassette tape to save to. No disk. That was tough for a dummy like me.

I remember those days. I think my dad still has that old TRS-80 sitting in box somewhere. Things got so much better when we finally got floppy drives--double density via a Percom Doubler to boot!

 

[mecompco]

The first computer I ever touched was a TRS-80 as a HS Senior in '82. Yup, cassette drive. Got my own Vic 20 a bit later, and Mom had a C-64 with 1541 floppy drives (had to run a fan on them to keep them cool) and a C. Ithoh 9 pin dot matrix printer--a top of the line setup in the '80s. Went to school and did a lot of work on the Apple II (and a CPM machine in Electronics class). Then, I found the new IBM PC the school got and fell in love. Built my own shortly thereafter. Bought an XT Turbo board and put it together--sourced a 10 MB full-height Seagate drive (track 0 bad, so had to boot off a floppy) at a surplus store. Hercules graphics, a 300 baud modem and 360 K floppy drive. Splurged on a Star 9 pin DM printer. It was a heck of a machine for cheap when the real IBM was over 5K.

Soon after, started building machines for sale and after spending a year at Digital Equipment Corp (Augusta, Maine plant), went to finish my CIS degree and opened my computer store. The 90's were great--made some pretty good money until the big boys came to town and ruined the business. It was lots of fun, while it lasted. Around 2000 called it quits, let my last employee go (was basically staying in business to pay him) and got a "real" job in IT for a school district. Lots of good memories of the (fairly) early PC days. Remember Arcnet, terminating resistors and the old-school networking? Things have sure changed! And yes, I loved Zork and all the text adventure games.


Regards,
Michael

 

[jsolie]

Okay, my image hosting company finally got back on the air.

Sharon, I took this pic at work this afternoon a few minutes before posting earlier. I've had this book for years (since the mid-1980's), and it's come in useful from time to time (though it has been a long time since I've needed it). This was one of those books that I decided to get rid of, and had set a date to for it to go bye-bye. About two weeks before that date, I needed it for something at work. Okay, so I'll give it a reprieve for a while and eventually set another date. The day before I was to get rid of it, I needed it again. Okay, I get the hint... For whatever reason, I'm supposed to keep this book.

 

[jsolie]

And yes, I loved Zork and all the text adventure games.

Last year, my youngest son got interested in playing Zork, on his iPhone of all things. He was having the worst time with the thief. I'm surprised that someone made a Z-machine interpreter that lets you play the old Infocom games.

 

[MTViper]

My first exposure to computers came in a computer science class in college (69-73). We didn't have a mainframe on campus, we bought time from another university. We each had about 5 minutes of computer time for the term. We were programming in Algol using punch cards. Oh the syntax errors I committed. Almost enough to make you want to go back to a slide rule ... which I also used and still can.

 

[sbwertz]

Remember the original "Adventure" game...all those twisty little passages all alike?
How about "Hunt the Wumpus? Trying to visualize a dodecahedron! Never played the graphics version, just the text version.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunt_the_Wumpus