Dr. Stafford’s Neighborhood

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:

Vs-dec-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:

Vax11-780

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.

• 08:53 Gradually adding people to my twitter lists. Sexy ladies, if I've missed adding you, please DM me! #
• 10:44 I love @shitmydadsays but a sitcom based on a twitter feed is definitely a sign of the coming apocalypse. bit.ly/kv9s4 #
• 10:57 I'm getting lots of weird DMs. If you've put your twitter password into any site other than twitter, change it. You may have been phished. #
• 15:18 What's this retweet function that everyone is talking about? I don't see it. #
• 17:52 @docbrite I always think about that bit from "Drawing of the Three" abo ut defiling the strange ritual "Clearing the Customs". #
• 17:55 RT @drew If you wish to make a difference, you don't have to ask permission. Just do it. #
• 18:13 @JC812 no, I just manually retweeted like I normally do. The CEO posted something in his twitter about something that makes it automatic. #
• 18:13 @JC812 it appears to have a rolling launch, tho, so I guess it has not gotten to me yet. #

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.

CBM_8032

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).

• 11:35 @Jillzey what's the first sign? #

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• 18:13 Just got home. What an awesome trip. #

A spoof on the PC/Mac commercials.

Action Concept, the crowd that makes Alarm für Cobra 11: die Autobahnpolizei, has an English trailer for the show on its site. I am surprised no English channel has ever picked up the long-running series. Sure, it’s devoid of real plot and there are inconsistencies the size of Düsseldorf itself, but my gosh, is it fun.
   The budget has been cut since its heyday and the ratings are down, but from what I have read in the German press, it still outperforms everything else in its time slot.
   One problem is that the trailer is ancient. The German accent on the American English (why do announcers in Germany all sound the same—is this the same guy as on DW-TV?) might make it too foreign for some English-speaking countries, but who cares?

PS.: I have tried Vox at another office, and I have used it with another ISP. The compose screen either fails to come up or takes several hours. Something is afoot.

I've manage to catch some sort of plague-like infection and it's totally put a damper on my weekend. What I had intended to be a weekend filled with working on short story has turned into nothing but whining and coughing and sleeping and sobbing.

In general, I'm kind of a crybaby. Even on my very best days. When I get sick, I'm leveled. I sobbed through a "Roseanne" marathon this morning, and because that wasn't quite enough I decided to watch the original "V" I TIVO'd last weekend, and cried through a lot of that too. "The Amazing Race" too.

I didn't cry during "The Maltese Falcon" though, perhaps that's progress.

Read a fucking book, you're probably thinking. I thought that too, but the pressure and burning in my eyes made reading nearly impossible. In fact, I tried and gave up because it just wasn't working for me. Some people are really good at working through the sickness. I'm not one of those people. My brain doesn't function well when I have a cold. It just feels slower and filled with mud. I try to think, but fail miserable. I don't get jokes and barely understand what people are saying to me. It's not good. Really, all I'm capable of is laying around being generally unhappy and whining about how much being sick sucks.

It does suck. I'm going to bed.