[geeks] Goodbye, I guess

[N. Miller]

On Aug 30, 2007, at 1:39 PM, Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:

>
> For one horrifying moment, I read that as "camel dumplings".

Well, they have something similar, called horse dumplings--they go  
with the buggies. ;-)

Carmel dumplings are essentially sugar and bread, properly  
cooked...quite an indulgence.

>> My father left his family at that age and went out on his own (he
>> wanted to attend school).  He ended up joining the Army and is an old
>> school electronics geek.  I haven't been able to convince him to
>> learn *NIX, though he still has functional C= computers.  He never
>> would pony up for the Amiga, oddly enough.  I still don't think he
>> understands just how much I know about computers, because I dismiss
>> his interest in Windows. ;-)  I only do it because it irks him.
>
> Interesting.
>
> For some reason, most of the old-school electronics/HAM geeks I  
> know are
> Windows people, and nothing will make them change.
>
> Never have quite figured that out.

Pop got into computers by building his own kit microcomputer out of  
those mail-order catalogues, can't recall the name at the moment.  We  
had one of the first TRS-80's--definitely the first in our small  
town, I'm sure.  Then it was the Vic 20, the C= 64, and the 128.

In his day job he was an automation control engineer, so BASIC, flow- 
charts and all that were right up his alley.  He discovered DOS quite  
by accident when he forgot to put the Allen Bradley software  
diskettes into the portable programmer.  From there it was a downhill  
slide to Windows.  A few years ago, after 98 was EOL'd, I got the  
earful about his new computer that it wouldn't install on. XD  He  
finally capitulated and installed XP.

I presume it's got something to do with the serial interfaces that  
make the stamp boards and BASIC so easily handled on a DOS box.  I  
think it's also the perceived budget issues.  Most HAM/electronics  
guys want to save their $$ for other stuff that has more "bling" for  
them--coughing up the cash for a Mac wasn't in the cards.  Likewise,  
think about the advertisements you'd see a magazine of that era, and  
how much something other than an 8086 box would cost...

I never got into the TRS-80--the crappy cassette "datasette" that  
passed for storage just turned me off.  I read Byte mag and all that,  
but never really got into the computer per se; my nose was in books  
or I was playing sports, doing the HS journalism thing, and all the  
other crap kids trying to get a free ride in college do.

When I got to college, they had TRS-80's, Apple ]['s and 2-floppy DOS  
computers.  The first two years, I learned and used WordStar on DOS,  
then after my 2 years off, I started working in the library computer  
lab, so I learned Macs, DOS, and early 'doze.  Being a liberal arts  
major, I only used those computers for writing papers, until I  
started working at the lab full time after graduation.  At that  
point, I started learning more about the hardware, as we had a  
special card for our IBM PS/2 computers that worked similarly to the  
software we ran on the Apple ]['s and Macs for backing up software.   
(We had a "lending library" of software for use in the lab.)  Later,  
I turned my Mac knowledge into a computer support job, and taught  
myself rudimentary programming through having to maintain a DBIII+  
program that was written in Clipper.  Then followed the twisted path  
to *NIX.

I also had the <sarcasm>pleasure</sarcasm> of dealing with Microsoft  
support trying to typeset a book with files imported from MS Word on  
DOS to the _very_ first version of Word on the Mac.  That experience  
caused me to fall in love with FrameMaker as soon as I heard that  
it's save files were binary compatible across *all* platforms (not  
really rocket science, but they were the first).

Anyway...

=Nadine=