[CentOS] Re: Curmudgeoning (was Re: Problems with writing Dual Layer DVD)

Bill Campbell centos at celestial.com
Sun Aug 31 18:20:06 UTC 2008


On Sun, Aug 31, 2008, Lanny Marcus wrote:
>On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 7:35 PM, MHR <mhullrich at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 5:27 PM, Bill Campbell <centos at celestial.com> wrote:
>>> I still have a Tandy 4000, 386-16 no cache, that is used occassionally to
>>> program EPROMS.  This same machine ran Xenix for years before being abused
>>> by installing DR-DOS on it.
>>>
>>> I have a Radio Shack Model 100, the first laptop, in the closet beside an
>>> HP-97 programmable calculator.
>>
>> Well, all I have that foes back that far is a 2nd gen IBM PC (the 64k
>> m/b) that would probably work if I knew where any of my 360k MS-DOS
>> floppies were.
>>
>> Wait, I have a Pascal Microengine in the garage that I never did get
>> to boot!  You know, the ones that ran on the 8" floppies, like the old
>> Teraks we used at UCSD?
>
>8" floppies. Now that does bring back a memory for me. I was working
>on a project in Texas. The customer was in Kentucky as I recall.
>I fixed a problem and gave an 8" floppy to our Shipping department, to
>send to the customer. The customer called me on the phone, to
>inform me that the floppy had been bent, so it would fit into the box.
>As I recall, it did work, after he straightened it out. For the rest
>of the time that I worked there, I packed things myself, before they
>were shipped, and that wasn't my job. I couldn't believe someone in
>the Shipping department was that stupid.

Never underestimate the level of stupidity/ignorance of people (after all
most of the were ``educated'' in government schools :-).

When I first encountered a customer who had disk drive problems such that
we replaced the 8in drives in their Radio Shack Model II several times, it
wasn't until I went on-site to find that they were storing their floppies
by sticking them to the file cabinet with refrigerator magnets.  The
amazing thing to me was that I found that this was a fairly common problem.

Then there was the person who stapled the floppy to a cover letter.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
Voice:          (206) 236-1676  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820
Fax:            (206) 232-9186

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good
in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs,
or impede their efforts to obtain it. -- John Stuart Mill, 1859



More information about the CentOS mailing list