Isotropic is …
... my personal blog. Anything I write here is simply my personal, probably ill-formed, opinion and does not represent the views, beliefs, positions, or opinions of any other person or entity.
Category Archives: Nostalgia
04 Mar 2010
Time Flies
“Ethan here: Today marks the 44th anniversary of Candelstick Park tornado that struck Jackson. 57 people died and 504 people were injured.” —@16WAPTNews I haven’t thought about that in years. My uncle was working there at the time; my aunt too, or maybe she was just visiting him. I vaguely remember them describing the experience. […]
26 Aug 2009
I’m psychic
It is totally worth it. I’ve on several occasions, inadvertently as well as intentionally, pulled a stunt like this. For example: once long long ago, when I was a teenager or just after, some friends and I were cruising around looking for some mischief to get into. Me: Let’s listen to some Pink Floyd … […]
19 Aug 2009
A Visit From DEC Corporate
I filled out the annual Customer Service Survey, dropped it in the mail, and forgot about it … until one day a nervous Field Service Engineer and a Concerned Corporate Suit showed up outside my office. Background This was back in the day when the numerous DEC (later bought by Compaq, then by HP) minicomputers […]
20 Feb 2009
The first Twitter?
Long ago, on a VAX cluster far away, I was systems manager. phone was among the many utilities available, and was quite handy for chatting with other users on the cluster. Students seemed to enjoy it a lot, so much so that some would randomly phone other users just to say “hi”. Unfortunately, college faculty […]
04 Jul 2008
Ten Years of lohnet.org
I just realized that June 19 was the tenth anniversary of my lohnet.org domain registration (why I registered it). It is still my primary email domain, but the web site just sends traffic here. I’ve not decided what to do with it once I get time to revamp it. Due to my own laziness, I […]
23 Mar 2008
Core Dump
Jeff Moser, in Computing History Matters, said ‘I had always assumed that the “core” referred to in the error message was an adjective for “main,” but when I saw real “core memory,” I realized that I had misunderstood the term for years.’ It’s an interesting overview; you should check it out. However, that particular comment […]
28 Feb 2008
Zenith Laptop
It’s funny what you can find in the back of a closet. I think this Zenith ZFL-181-93 was my first laptop. It can still boot from both the DOS and Minix diskettes — not bad for a nearly 20-year-old machine. Next? Probably a Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo). Flickr set: Zenith ZFL-181-93 Laptop
