175 karma · joined April 9, 2019
You can contact me at the username without the punctuation at gmail.
I have heard of a, probably now apocryphal story, of field on a Multinational's paper report that was always supposed to be 0. When the IT team that did the automation of the report, discovered field was the number of bombs that fell that week on a property owned by the company during the London Blitz. Not a big consequence to the company but the story had been lost.
At the end of the cycle I can barely run the base phone let alone the menagerie of apps the world would like me to run.
I have opted out of app only service such as a Loyalty programs that forced me to transfer point from a partner only if I installed an app on my phone. They have enough info on me from purchase, they don't need more. (I even offer my card to strangers in the grocery cash if they did not have the loyalty card so they would get a discount and I would get a list of products I never buy in my loyalty list. Its a small, willful act of rebellion )
Do you know of any examples of these "walking wounded" applications? Can we bring some attention to reduce their foot print.
When one of the skills click (some try 2 or 3 of the ones we teach) and they start working the says that life is happening for them. The failures, in retrospect, become steps the had to take to get where they are. Perseverance is probably good personality trait to develop.
I chose my handle to have the word prosaic in it because I did many thing in tech (and other fields), none at extraordinary levels, but all done by learning by trying things out. You don't have to be wildly successful in life, prosaic can be good enough.
This would have been within the contemporary Dos and disk capabilities and size of 160-360kBytes, although slow (5-15 seconds).
When Dave Cutler moved from DEC to MS I expected the Dos console under windows to get that same feature. Disappointed. A gajillion lost hours could have be saved.
Doing the same thing I have been doing since I was your age. Learning some that interest me now that could be useful.
Started out as a math and science geek: Organic Chemistry was the target. Two chance encounters: one with two real working chemists that warned me to get a PHD to get a real job. I was to impatient to do that much school so the second chance encounter was with a obsolete computer that was plotting graphs and space games on paper. Three years os CS later I was working on Flight Simulation. The 1st PC era happened and 5 years later I switched to install 1st gen PC networks. Then Unix got big and I did Sysdmin on that for a while. Then Perl programing which morph into webdev for handful of years.
Then I was "old" at least to the HR 15 guy, years my junior, who would not hire me, so I became a manager. Then there were to many managers I went back to school and got an accounting degree. Did that for a bunch of years and started teaching System Administration. Now looking for my next obsession.
Without the symmetry then the creators has to make sure to keep up the pace on the global progress or be label as distracted by the tool creation.
Worst case the tool creators get separated from the main production and have to maintain the core groups utilities (which will become any code they don't want to maintain).
Tools have to be short to build, widely useful, and placed in a repository that is collectively maintained.
Remember the context that created the need for the tool may move on and the existing tools will have to be upgraded. The group should have a plan how to handle that.
I typically paid 150 to 250 Canadian. They last 2 to 3 years and meet my needs right up to the next purchase. I am due this year for a switch.
As for PCs and Laptops. All are old BF buys or rescued "garbage". I am setting up a Dell Latitude E5420 (2013) for a current need. (Official disposed by my employer and intercepted before sent to electronic recycling.) Other resurrected acquisitions that are operational are from 2013 and 2015. I can do this because "what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career".
I like keeping this systems out of the garbage for a few more years.
I am well past 60. For the first 30 odd years I was an individual contributor in both programming and system administration and manager of the same.
When one of the financial crises and ageism ended my management career, I went back to school and switched fields. After a few years I got the chance to teach new computer support professionals in vocational program. I have been doing that for 15 years.
As a side note for ageism "victims" our school is growing and is struggling to find enough competent teachers (Window/Linux Admin, Database, Scripting, Networking, VMs, Cloud, Mobile devices...).
Check out your local vocational programs. You can find permanent or bridge work teaching at this level. Usually industry experience is more important for these jobs than a teaching degree.
I am glad that the skills developed in working on ROS are transferable to another area.
At the top end is a program asking built in function or library to print some text. Many layers down is the final hardware receiving the text and displaying it. These two video will cover the lower layers
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypFWff2QjXCW...
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypFbtuVMUVXN...
Usagi Electric 1-Bit Breadboard Computer P.01 – The MC14500 and 555 Clock Circuit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPA8dHtf_6M&list=PLnw98JPyOb...
12K is a lot for ROV (other comments suggest the could be cheaper ones) but the good news is the operator has had 10,000 hours practice on a Xbox. The Engineer/PM/Accountant in me hopes the ROV is reusable and will be used over many years spreading the cost out over time saving many people.
Hopefully the saved will come to Jesus (pronounced "heysous"), I mean the local teen working at the swimming pool who has a knack for teaching adults to swim.
I bought it 15 years ago and have run it on about 200 drives. My anecdotal results are in thirds with about equal results for drives(both spinning and ssd) that have measurable slowdown from new. 1. No visible improvement of the situation. 2. Moderate improvement in speed or identification of "bad sections of the drive". 3. Significant improvement in speed or readability.
For the third group especially backup times were horrible or failed so the idea of doing the backup not the rescue first were not successful so we had no option but try the recuse.
In this case after the rescue the backup worked. I then backup up the backup because one copy is not enough (min 3 on different media and at least one offsite). Then restore/image the disk and boot up the system with a new disk and put the old one on a shelf until you have appropriate back ups of the new one. Then destroy the old one so no one can use it.
30% success rate for a $89 expense over 200 drives in 15 years is more than enough anecdotal evidence to say it was worth it.
Now I dusted off a couple of old Arduino Unos and a ZIF socket and I will get one of these.
What could I build....?
Backing away from the assembler.
If a billionaire funded museum could run into trouble (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34831880) what hope is there for anything else.
PS. I have a cache of ~10,000 1980s and 90s DIP ICs (8032 Micro controllers and support chips) that I want to find a use for. You could contact me at my account name without the punctuation at gmail.
Just how many thefts are linked to its use.
Criminals will be add FZs to their gun and drug shipments to Canada
It may not be authoritative but you can start with https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/i-15/page-1.html which should be.
HOWEVER, the real culprit are the MANAGERS.
After 50+ years of skanky software development policy aimed at low balling cost its time to blame the right people. No amount of cajoling, "business/budget" speak manipulation is going to fix a fundamental flaw in how managers at that level are trained and behave.
We have stop being apologists for mistakes not of our making. If using QA techniques would increase the managers bonus then we will see it being used. If all it does is make better software then this post will be rewritten in 50 years and would still be relevant.
Exiting the build you feel the change in the typical double door entry to public building. Its an "airlock" entry in that one person cannot hold open both inside and outside doors at the same time. Most likely to preserve heat inside in the winter.
I took this job 15 years ago because prospective employers looked at my then 30 year career and repeatedly said you cannot adapt to new tech and are too expensive. So I took my sysadmin, programming, and management skills and taught them to younger people who did get the jobs I was rejected for. Hopefully some of my work ethic will have rubbed off on them and when they hire they will do it with less "ism".
Now I get to play with the newest tech and teach it.
We used Netscape Fasttrack as the server.
After 15 years (much more the 10,000 hours of use) it was hard to forget. And that over 15 years ago. Once you have it in your brain it does not go away easily.
I teach Python but I still think in Perl.