Problem with Amtrak

[white rabbitt]

Or Flo from "Alice"! (I AM old! )

KISS MY GRITS

 

[Ted Bell]

Wow. This thread has nothing to do with "Problem with Amtrak". I must be the only one here with OCD.

 

[D.P. Roberts]

Wow. This thread has nothing to do with "Problem with Amtrak". I must be the only one here with OCD.

Yes, this thread has nothing to do with "Problem with Amtrak", but on the other hand, I'm not sure that the original post had anything to do with a problem with Amtrack.

Besides, if the thread is going to digress towards a discussion of either "computers" (which is completely off topic) or "aunt flo" (which, unfortunately, isn't), I'd choose computers!

 

[Meat Puppet]

I'm pretty sure we used BASIC in my 7th grade computer class. We used Apples, and I remember writing code that went something like:
10 Run

20 something

30 something

40 something

50 Goto 10

I don't remember many details, just the numbers. I also remember using it to "draw" my house with something like "hplot 7,10" (for coordinates maybe?) This was back in 1989, so it's fuzzy.

I had a Journalism class in the 8th grade, and we used Appleworks to type up the articles. Orange text on a black screen. Awesome.

Run wasnt a line command it was used after the command lines to start the program. Hplot placed a single dot coordinate, HLIN, VLIN drew a line between the coordinates. I still have my apple II+, IIe and tower Mac.

And my Cider 10 meg hard drive which cost $1400 in the day.

 

[D.P. Roberts]

I'm pretty sure we used BASIC in my 7th grade computer class. We used Apples, and I remember writing code that went something like:
10 Run

20 something

30 something

40 something

50 Goto 10

I don't remember many details, just the numbers. I also remember using it to "draw" my house with something like "hplot 7,10" (for coordinates maybe?) This was back in 1989, so it's fuzzy.

I had a Journalism class in the 8th grade, and we used Appleworks to type up the articles. Orange text on a black screen. Awesome.

I had a similar experience, just a few years before you in high school. 20 years later, it's amazing how wrong they were about what would be considered "necessary computer skills". I don't know what computer skills are currently being taught in high schools, but I wonder if that knowledge will still be relevant in 10-20 years. Probably not.

 

[user 1215]

An aquaintance engineer (as in engineering, not train driving) STILL uses his TRS-80 Pocket Computer. Crazy!

 

[crescent2]

If you're going to frequent AU, get used to threads wandering OT. I actually enjoy most of those little excursions, and think the mods do a great job of only stepping in when something becomes very offensive. I'm only selectively OCD, though.

Just go with the fl..... Uh, NO.

 

[jis]

// JOB T
// FOR
*IOCTL(2501 READER, 1403 PRINTER)

 

[PaulM]

The first machine on which I did some serious programming and hacking starting in 1974, was an IBM 1130 (the academic version of the 1800 I am told), which is a generation after the 1401 and 1620

Ah, the IBM 1620. That's the one you debugged by watching which lights on the console were still lit when it crashed.

 

[leemell]

The first machine on which I did some serious programming and hacking starting in 1974, was an IBM 1130 (the academic version of the 1800 I am told), which is a generation after the 1401 and 1620

Ah, the IBM 1620. That's the one you debugged by watching which lights on the console were still lit when it crashed.

Also the NCR305/315/615, the Modcomp II/II/IV, the IMSAI 8080, Altair 880 and many more.

 

[Peter KG6LSE]

I know assembler for the 8085 . BASIC. C. SPIN. VHDL.

28 computers later From Macs to Old PCs to SGI!

I use right now OSX and debain ,crunchbang Linux ./ as the base then I VM the others I may want to use.

but have used in the past .......

Linux>>>> Fedora . redhat . ubunto . CentOS. feather , DSL ...

UNIX >>>> IRIX

WIndoze >>>>WIn3.1 Win98SE

others >>>> amiga . solairs

While I am a hardware Geek by trade , I am comfy with most parts of GNU/Linux . To the point were the only reason to have my Macs is that the CODECs needed for Real video / audio work do not play nice with the Linux world ........

I spent thousands on Software for AV use and I cant see my self ditching a working set of hardware and software ( Final cut Pro Protools and OSX,,,,, Ill just let it age and retire .... as I do Iam doing a rolling migration to all Debian ... If I REALLY need a mac in 2 years Illl just Boot a VM of my current mac and sandbox it. . same with windowz. ........... once you master VMs you are Really a computer god , the pritty sticker on the hardware you have no longer matters. you are free to take the hardware You Like and then put the software You want on it ..the way all computers are ment to be ...

Me I LOVE toughbooks for my portables ,. but I use mac minis as my home systems as they are peppy and TINY ! .

( they also rack mount well tooo )

Peter...

 

[Ryan]

Speaking of backups (which I think started this whole entertraining derailment), the second rule of backup (the first being the previously mentioned "If there isn't a backup offsite, it isn't backed up") is "If you've never restored your backups, it isn't backed up".

<voice of experience="on">

So last night, after a crazy day of work, running around in the evening and fighting to get the baby to bed solo, I settle into the couch with my newly acquired Thunderbolt -> Ethernet adapter. I keep a separate Aperture library for each years pictures, and it was time to move the ~150GB 2012 library from my laptop where I do all my photo work to the "Media Drive" on the main PC in the house (I wasn't about to try a file copy that big over wifi!).

Browse over to the media folder and think to myself "Self, looks like there's quite a lot less on this drive than there was yesterday. Wonder if Amy cleaned up some of the files I've been trying to get organized". Open up the "Pictures" folder. Crap.

Instead of folders for each year (2001-2013), a "To be sorted" folder for some pre-2007 pictures that I copied off of my parents computer and haven't been arsed enough to sort through and organize yet, and a handful of other crap, I see 2 folders, titled "Ryan" and "Untitled Folder".

This is where the panic sets in. Good thing I'm so uptight about backups, right?

Go upstairs to the machine and confirm that this the same thing there. Enter Time Machine. As it turns out, the default settings for Time Machine only back up the boot drive. At this point it's probably prudent to mention that the "Media Drive" is a 2TB spinning drive, the boot drive on the iMac is a 256GB SSD. So yeah. Nothing from the media drive is in my time machine backup. I've never had cause to restore anything from backup on this machine, so I hadn't noticed it before. Hence the Rule 2. Panic turns into dread.

I go to the Crashplan archive on the other computer in the house. That's only got my home directory backed up. What kind of idiot configured these backups!?!? (That would be me). In the pre-flood days, the media drive was automatically synced with an external hard drive that died in the flood. (more on that drive in a bit) When I hooked up the new backup drive, I did away with the manual sync and just let Time Machine handle "everything". Everything but the irreplaceable data I went on and on about a few days ago.

OK, one more step, the offsite backup. Certainly I would have been smart enough to include the media drive in the offsite backups, right? RIGHT???

Right. The pictures are there. Some other things are there. However, the pictures folder is empty. Panic starts to ramp up again until I notice the "Show deleted files" checkbox. Check the box and BOOM. All of the files are there, with dates that make them look like they were deleted on Monday.

Select All.

Start Restore.

The wheels start churning and 292GB of pictures start coming my way. Estimated time to completion: 3 days. I am impressed that Crashplan seems to be serving up the data at 10-12 Mb/s.

As the backup starts, I start fooling around with the Crashplan settings. Turns out there is a setting in there for "Remove deleted files after..." - the default is intelligently set to "Never". Every file I've ever deleted is still there in the cloud.

</voice of experience>

So. Learn a great lesson from my mistake. Ensure that your files are backed up. Ensure that they're backed up offsite. And maybe every once in a while try to restore something from those backups - you may be surprised to find out what is (or isn't!) in there.

So about that flood damaged drive I said I would get back to (you were hoping I wouldn't, didn't you?). The one that's hopefully a mirror of the Media Drive the day of the flood (last August). I'm really hoping that it is, as the "Amy's Files" folder on the Media Drive wasn't a part of the offsite backup. Wasn't a part of any backup. Unless they're on that drive, Alexander's baby through toddler pictures are gone. Vanished. I'm hoping that the drive itself survived and the USB enclosure is what died. A friend and I are going to crack into the enclosures this weekend and try to put the bare drive into a spare enclosure he has.

I hope we're successful.

 

[SarahZ]

Oh no. Did you put any of Alexander's baby pictures on Facebook, Photobucket, your own webpage, or anywhere else you may have posted them? You could also search your "Sent" email folder just in case you sent batches of them to relatives/friends in the past.

 

[KrazyKoala]

An aquaintance engineer (as in engineering, not train driving) STILL uses his TRS-80 Pocket Computer. Crazy!

Oh, how cute...I still use my TI-89 from my college/high school days...not as neat as this one though.