Between 485 & 705 SQ/FT Bob Heine's Auto Emporium
- Thread starter Bob Heine
- Start date
Workspaces between 485 and 705 squarefeet.
PugetDude
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Not as impressive as a Tandy 1000
floridafarmer
Well-known member
I still have my Osborne with 64k of ram and 2 floppy drives and then I upgraded to a kaypro with 512k of ram (still have that one too!)
In all fairness, while my very first computer class was on a DEC-10 mini, one of my later classes used a TRS-80 with an 8" floppy drive. Ahhhh... the good old days (not). On the plus side, it wasn't a cassette! Got my first job in IT just after the Tandy 1000 came out.
Got my nose fixed yesterday. My sinuses got messed up in my 1965 dance with the train. Had the worst side worked on in 1971 so this is round two. Signed a lot of papers last week at the doctor's office, typed a lot of answers in the outpatient surgical center's website and signed more papers at yesterday's check-in. More paperwork than our last house closing. Doctor's service charge almost matches the price of our first house.
I approved the following procedures:
The doctor's office is 5.4 miles from our house but the outpatient surgical center is 0.4 miles away. Well within Liane's driving comfort zone. Gave ourselves 10 minutes to get there for my 11:00 am check-in. Five hours later Liane made the drive to pick me up.
Very little pain, lots of bleeding but no packing in my nose so I slept with my CPAP mask on. They did put me pretty deep under the anesthesia so I'm still feeling groggy today. No bending over or lifting and open mouth sneezing only.
I approved the following procedures:
- Bilateral functional endoscopic sinus surgery
- Balloon septoplasty
- Bilateral inferior inferior turbinate reduction
- Bilateral concha bullosa reduction
- Image guidance system
The doctor's office is 5.4 miles from our house but the outpatient surgical center is 0.4 miles away. Well within Liane's driving comfort zone. Gave ourselves 10 minutes to get there for my 11:00 am check-in. Five hours later Liane made the drive to pick me up.
Very little pain, lots of bleeding but no packing in my nose so I slept with my CPAP mask on. They did put me pretty deep under the anesthesia so I'm still feeling groggy today. No bending over or lifting and open mouth sneezing only.
OutlawDrifter
Well-known member
Glad it went okay! Now heal up and get back out there 
Roger, you realize we're dating ourselves. Linda turned 77 last July. Jimmy Durante died 44 years ago (January 1980)
I know!
Kay, I fit your description to a T. I learned machine coding on a 1401 and discovered I'm dyslexic when it comes to numbers. All of my errors were inverted numbers: 91 vs. 19. That was when I learned the bookkeeping trick for transposed numbers: the difference is always divisible by nine.
@gilr, the deadlines were never impossible. They were all based on the fact that human babies take nine months, software babies only take one -- you impregnate 9 women.
@Wiz02, my customer was JC Penney and they used punched tags created on Kimball machines. Our 1401 inventory system had a prototype Kimball tag reader that had to read 2,000 tags a minute to meet their contract. The tags were read into the 1401 and converted to punch card format and output through the 1402 Card Punch machine. The Kimball tag reader suffered erratic catastrophic failures that turned out to be the fiberglass bucket the tags fell into. Once the static charge was enough to cross the gap to the machine, the lightning bolt would clear the core storage memory in the 1401. Fix was a ground strap attaching the bucket to the tag reader.That's how I started too.
At least paper tape was being phased on and only used for catastrophic recovery situations when I started programming.
[By JoelShprentz - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14863925]
Kay, my nightmares including shredding a critical punched card. The person in charge of the SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) air defense program had to keep 62,500 cards in order. Just one out of sequence card would crash the system.
@Squankum, my 60-something children know who she and Jimmy were but I know none of their 9 children do.
Roger, JC Penney had one print job that was huge. They had about 2,000 stores in 1965 and the company-wide inventory was printed out every 6 months. We installed the fastest 1403 printer IBM leased and did a two-day preventive maintenance routine on it before they started that job. It ran 24 hours a day for three days, stopping only to change paper and ribbons. If a sheet shredded in the middle of the run, the job had to be started over.
Shorty, I never used one but I thought they did do simple ac-counting.
Commodore Perry only made it to 63, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
Got my nose fixed yesterday. My sinuses got messed up in my 1965 dance with the train. Had the worst side worked on in 1971 so this is round two. Signed a lot of papers last week at the doctor's office, typed a lot of answers in the outpatient surgical center's website and signed more papers at yesterday's check-in. More paperwork than our last house closing. Doctor's service charge almost matches the price of our first house.
I approved the following procedures:
- Bilateral functional endoscopic sinus surgery
- Balloon septoplasty
- Bilateral inferior inferior turbinate reduction
- Bilateral concha bullosa reduction
Finallygotit
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Bob, I hope you heal quickly. I bet it will be nice to have the nose functioning as it should.
kaymccampbell
Well-known member
I wrote a complex scheduling program that had a card deck that had to be brought in with a pallet mover. The data deck was significantly smaller. It was a proud day when I got my own removable disk pack.
PS - glad you're better.
PugetDude
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Bob, glad the sinus surgery went well. This place wouldn't be the same without you nosing around...
casmurbax
Well-known member
Hi Bob,
Hope the honker heals quickly and is a success for you.
I can't get over that your wife could leave you there, any day surgery I have had, last was wisdom teeth a few years ago, someone had to be physically in the waiting room the whole time.
Hope the honker heals quickly and is a success for you.
I can't get over that your wife could leave you there, any day surgery I have had, last was wisdom teeth a few years ago, someone had to be physically in the waiting room the whole time.
sawduststeve
Well-known member
I’ll see your Tandy 1000 and raise you a
Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
Bought to you by the same guy that gave us the
C5 , wanna ride this death trap through central London.
Bob, hope you feeling better soon.
Steve
bugnut
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Bob, hope the healing goes quickly!
jon72vega
Well-known member
Bob,
I prayed to our joint friend upstairs that you heal quickly, and have a good outcome.
I prayed to our joint friend upstairs that you heal quickly, and have a good outcome.
@Squankum, looks like I need to upgrade our mask collection. The ones in the great room are pretty tame...With a scary mask?
...but the one in my office is a bit closer.
I was thinking more like the Bee Gees song.
Dan, it seems to be progressing nicely. I stopped taking Eliquis three days before and four days after the surgery so I'm not bleeding out. I do have a saline firehose that I'm supposed to use to flush out the blood clots -- GNARLY!Bob, I hope you heal quickly. I bet it will be nice to have the nose functioning as it should.
Kay, I was always impressed by the operators who dealt with the huge card decks. My year with the Post Office taught me to handle pretty good size stacks of mail but nothing like those card decks. My sort and print program was a pretty small deck but the stack of branch office spare parts cards was more than ten times bigger.
In more modern work environments, the printer and copy machine operators impressed me with their ability to unwrap and stack reams of letter paper into the feeder.
Scott, thanks for the kind words. I try to keep my nosybody tendencies just shy of prosecutable stalking.
Hi John,
I'm pleased with the way it's progressing. I am reminded how much better this procedure is compared to the one 53 years ago. I am able to breath through my nose this time.
The on-line check-in process offered the option of her going home and waiting for a call. Had she been required to sit in the waiting room for the five hours, Liane would have done it but she probably wouldn't have been OK driving me home. When I told the nurse we lived four tenths of a mile away they laughed.
Steve, if that thing is meant to be driven on the road, it might need to be renamed Suicycle.I’ll see your Tandy 1000 and raise you a
Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
Bought to you by the same guy that gave us the
C5 , wanna ride this death trap through central London.
Bob, hope you feeling better soon.
Steve
I am feeling unexpectedly well. Main side effect is having only one detectable flavor at the moment -- unseasoned steak tartare.
Thank you Joel!
Jon, she's apparently still listening. Thanks for putting in a good word.
Bret, I'm sure the prayers are working. I have a temporary reprieve from any task that involves bending over.
PugetDude
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Sometimes the witty retorts almost write themselves.
Wiz02
Well-known member
@Bob Heine, so glad to hear that your recovery is going well.
Here's my punch card story. My first Engineering job was working for a process controls company that used DEC PDP 11s to control power plants, water treatment facilities etc.
The company hired quite a few green kids right out of college. One of my buddies was also a young guy and he loved playing practical jokes.
The engineers kept their card decks in cardboard boxes on their desks and when a program was updated, the old deck was thrown in the trash.
One of the middle aged engineers had a short fuse and didn't take kindly to practical jokes, so my friend was always doing something to annoy him.
After a new box of punch cards was placed on the middle aged engineer's desk when he was at a meeting, my friend took the new deck and hid it. He then pulled the old deck from the trash and put it back on the other guy's desk.
When the other guy got back from the meeting, my friend walks over to his desk, and starts mouthing off. My friend concludes the tirade by taking the box with the card deck and throwing it up in the air and of course cards go everywhere.
The other engineer thought that it was a joke, but after checking a few cards, he realized that they were from his project.
The guy turns beet red, grabs my friend by the neck and jacks him up against a building support column by the neck.
It took three of us a few minutes to pull him off my friend (probably because we were laughing so hard) and my friend was almost strangled.
I can't imagine what HR would do to everyone today.
PS we did return the new card deck.
Here's my punch card story. My first Engineering job was working for a process controls company that used DEC PDP 11s to control power plants, water treatment facilities etc.
The company hired quite a few green kids right out of college. One of my buddies was also a young guy and he loved playing practical jokes.
The engineers kept their card decks in cardboard boxes on their desks and when a program was updated, the old deck was thrown in the trash.
One of the middle aged engineers had a short fuse and didn't take kindly to practical jokes, so my friend was always doing something to annoy him.
After a new box of punch cards was placed on the middle aged engineer's desk when he was at a meeting, my friend took the new deck and hid it. He then pulled the old deck from the trash and put it back on the other guy's desk.
When the other guy got back from the meeting, my friend walks over to his desk, and starts mouthing off. My friend concludes the tirade by taking the box with the card deck and throwing it up in the air and of course cards go everywhere.
The other engineer thought that it was a joke, but after checking a few cards, he realized that they were from his project.
The guy turns beet red, grabs my friend by the neck and jacks him up against a building support column by the neck.
It took three of us a few minutes to pull him off my friend (probably because we were laughing so hard) and my friend was almost strangled.
I can't imagine what HR would do to everyone today.
PS we did return the new card deck.
kaymccampbell
Well-known member
The older engineer was an idiot. I had all my code decks index tagged. All my source data was indexed, and all my output decks were tagged by my programs. Drop the deck, or several at once, and a quick trip through the sorter, and all was well.
Wiz02
Well-known member
No drama if he had done that and he wasn't that organized or neat.
Finallygotit
ALLIANCE MEMBER
You're right Scott!
@Wiz02, it was a different time. And what is this HR you speak of?
Kay, as I recall a lot of folks just brought their deck(s) to the computer room and shoved it through the window. The 'operators' took over from there. You went back the next day and picked up the deck(s) and printouts.
@Wiz02, I bet he had nothing to do with the creation of the cards or most of the rest of the process.
Dan, today I can taste salty.
Finallygotit
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Interesting evening yesterday. Liane complained about the [dimmable LED] lights in the master bath. The dimmer was full on and most of the lights barely glowed. The fluorescent light in the laundry room next to the bathroom wouldn't go on at all. Flashback to some problems with the lights a couple of months ago but this time it got really weird. I tested GFCI outlets and flipped breakers on and off but nothing changed. I finally gave up and started dinner. Nothing fancy, soup for me and a hamburger for Liane. The microwave heated my soup OK but I couldn't get any of the burners on the stove to heat up at all. I thought I was having a panic attack over the possibility the control panel on the stove has STB because there was a dim whistling in my ear. I turned my head away from the stove and realized the whistling was from the battery backup alarm in the office going off -- the desktop had powered off. Back to flipping breakers with the same result -- nothing changed. Managed to cook the burger in the Ninja out on the patio. While I was out there I decided to check the digital meter on the power coming into the house.
I'm no electrical engineer but a digital power meter reading 8888888 and 888.8 volts doesn't seem normal. Called FPL (Florida Power & Light) and the computer voice told me everything was fine. I responded that the lights were flickering and that triggered a call to a live human being. A half dozen "Please hold while I ...." and I learned the power to my meter wasn't right. I was given a trouble number and a half hour later a man in an FPL van asked if he could check the pole. He came back a few minutes later and told me it looked like one leg of the power line coming off the transformer was loose. An hour later two big FPL trucks arrived and attacked something in the back yard. They disconnected our power for about 20 minutes and everything was working when they turned it back on. I went out and thanked them and returned to the house to reset 26 timers and clocks.
I'm no electrical engineer but a digital power meter reading 8888888 and 888.8 volts doesn't seem normal. Called FPL (Florida Power & Light) and the computer voice told me everything was fine. I responded that the lights were flickering and that triggered a call to a live human being. A half dozen "Please hold while I ...." and I learned the power to my meter wasn't right. I was given a trouble number and a half hour later a man in an FPL van asked if he could check the pole. He came back a few minutes later and told me it looked like one leg of the power line coming off the transformer was loose. An hour later two big FPL trucks arrived and attacked something in the back yard. They disconnected our power for about 20 minutes and everything was working when they turned it back on. I went out and thanked them and returned to the house to reset 26 timers and clocks.
kaymccampbell
Well-known member
Oh, that's so cute! A deck you could carry by hand! Not since I was 16 did I own a deck that did not require a bankers box and a hand truck. Most of mine were kept in datacenter storage, either as cards or tape or removable pack. I actually did own a bunch of JCL-ECL-WFL-etc decks that were tiny, but they still required the other bone crushing decks to do anything.
@Bob Heine - Glad your power issue got resolved. A couple of years ago, we had a neutral jumper break off at the pole in our front yard. Was just dangling up there. Had a weird power flicker and some hum when it happened - about 8:30 in the evening. That pole feeds the run alongside our property line and serves houses on a couple of streets that all converge around us. SoCal Edison was right on top of it when we called and just put a new clamp on and we were all good-to-go. Probably 20 households affected.
sawduststeve
Well-known member
Bob, a tea spoon full of Coleman’s English Mustard, should get the taste buds going , if it doesn’t come out your nose first.Snort some onion powder and worcestershire sauce! YUM!
It’s the only thing to go on steak.
Steve
Kay, my IBM career was odd because most of it didn't directly involve mainframes. At JC Penney I fixed keypunches, verifiers and sorters. I did get to hand carry a 100K core storage upgrade (their IBM 7010 mainframe had 60K memory and 24 tape drives) from the Port Authority bus terminal to the headquarters building at 1301 6th Avenue (sorry, Avenue of the Americas). At the IBM East Fishkill facility I wrote manuals for the chip and module manufacturing machines, which were mostly relay logic so the programs those engineers wrote were pretty crude. At the IBM Boca Raton facility I was in charge of some of the IBM Series/1 hardware and software manuals and eventually the IBM PC software manuals (my sincerest apologies for some of them).
For my Garage Journal friends, I'll try to remember to translate acronyms we know as words in the IBM (International Business Machines) and BUNCH (Burroughs, UNIVAC [Universal Automatic Computer], NCR [National Cash Register], CDC [Control Data Corporation' and Honeywell) worlds. JCL (Job Control Language), ECL (Enterprise Control Language) and WFL (Work Flow Language) were scripting languages that told computers how and where to to run a program. I like the Wikipedia entry for ECL:
"ECL was initially designed and developed in 2000 by David Bayliss as an in-house productivity tool within Seisint Inc and was considered to be a ‘secret weapon’ that allowed Seisint to gain market share in its data business. Equifax had an SQL [Structured Query Language]-based process for predicting who would go bankrupt in the next 30 days, but it took 26 days to run the data. The first ECL implementation solved the same problem in 6 minutes."
Roger, I've been pleasantly surprised by the Florida Power and Light company's response in recent years. In 2005 hurricane Wilma took out the power for a huge number of Floridians. We were expecting ours to be out for several weeks, based on the rate they were fixing the damage. Luckily my neighbor worked for FP&L and he pulled a few strings because my 93-year-old mother fell out of bed in the dark and had no idea where she was (we brought her to our house from her second floor condo, knowing she'd be stranded without an elevator). Our power was restored in less than a week so my FEMA generator was barely broken in.
Steve, I knew I should have saved that rusty tin of Coleman's from my mother's spice cabinet. I may have to give one of the other brands a try (fire extinguisher is there for a reason)...Bob, a tea spoon full of Coleman’s English Mustard, should get the taste buds going , if it doesn’t come out your nose first.
It’s the only thing to go on steak.
Steve
...and I do have a chilled jar of Babushka mustard as well.
Wiz02
Well-known member
@Bob Heine , thanks for the trip down computing company memory lane. No apologies necessary on the PC manuals. I used them all the time back in the Cro-Magnon computing period.
kaymccampbell
Well-known member
That's new ECL. REAL ECL was the job control language for Univac/Sperry mainframes, it ran on the Supervisor series of OSs, IIRC.
PugetDude
ALLIANCE MEMBER
Based on his posts I believe Bob also wrote the operating manual for the Abacus.
Wreckster23
Well-known member
Had me a bit nervous with that power glitch. I would have been thinking the worst - bad line somewhere. I guess that was correct, but it was at the pole.
Horseradish.. let me tell you, my father and I are the only ones that like it strong enough to singe nose hairs.
Horseradish.. let me tell you, my father and I are the only ones that like it strong enough to singe nose hairs.
casmurbax
Well-known member
I think you are the 2nd or 3rd thread I read in the past week or so that had half a leg not working. Why is it called a leg anyways?
My brother had one leg go bad in his neighborhood they lines are all buried. He had to have new cable installed and it had to be in a conduit, where the original was just buried wire. House is just about 20 years old. Glad your fix was relatively easy , except for the clocks needing to be reset.
My brother had one leg go bad in his neighborhood they lines are all buried. He had to have new cable installed and it had to be in a conduit, where the original was just buried wire. House is just about 20 years old. Glad your fix was relatively easy , except for the clocks needing to be reset.
ERMAGERD IT'S TOTALLY THE ECLIPSE!