Fogbow

Well, it's happened. I got that call in the middle of the night because a client is having issues, and nobody knows where anything is, what to do, etc, etc.

It was *only* about five hours of my time to drive to and from the site, meet our on-call tech and the customer security team, show them the super secret location for the equipment (in an equipment room of all places shared with other equipment - weird), and then walk our guy through it. Basically a network problem that is out of scope for us, but it directly effected the radio system causing the customer call us instead of their IT.

It was bad enough that I fielded calls and emails last week on another system outage, but at least those were day time hours. That's still at least a half day given over to support a client and our people. I've kept track of the hours, and will turn them in this Friday. This will be my first part time timesheet. Should be riveting.

But hey - I got my shop fixed up. It's rebuilt and neatenfied. And the bed of the truck is loaded for the dump with a lifetime of cr*p to haul out. I was amazed that everything except the Christmas tree stand disappeared from the curb under a FREE sign. Chainsaw - gone. Box of 10000 boxed and sorted nails and screws - gone. Rusty plumbers pipe wrench - gone. Kids insulated winter boots - gone. Two rolls of carpeting - gone. Lengths of Carlon PVC conduit, 4ft ladder, rolls of wire, and a bucket of old hand tools - gone. Poof. Magic. Put to use in someone elses house.

I still haven't decided what to do with Grandpas old tools. I have two of his tool boxes from the 50's and 60's. One is his fencing tools, and other is his auto tools. In the fencing box there's a brace with several bits, several wire pliers, a handsaw saw sharpener, hand axe, and some other interesting stuff. The box itself is nearly rusted through on the bottom, but the tools are in good shape. The auto repair toolbox has a big assortment of 3/8ths and half inch drive sockets, open and box end wrenchs, with sizes going up to an inch and a quarter. He worked a ranch. So, he probably had a tractor or two to fix. Scads of flat blade screwdrivers, some with wooden handles, some with plastic, all of them well used as both chisel and pry bar judging by the tips. He even had a whole set of Ford wrenches that looked very 1930's. Everything in this box had a rusty patina. It could all use a wire brush. There's bound to be an antique tool guy around here that would know how to price this out, but I'm not hoping for a pile of gold. I just want them to go where they are wanted.

My wife's dad saved every nail he ever bent.

You read that correctly. When he passed he didn't have five tools worth saving, and I couldn't believe the quantity of bent nails. I reckon he was planning to straighten them some fine day

Sounds like some cool stuff. Somebody will enjoy them. I still have my dad's old hand-powered, twisty, spinny drill. It has a nice, but well-worn, wooden ball for a hand rest. I keep it in my toolbox and it always makes me smile.

I'm not that bad, but I did have two non-fucntioning Compaq 286 PC's, a box of 386, 486SX, and 486DX motherboards, modems, and enough serial cables to encircle the house (if not the planet). Those were probably stowed by wishful thoughts of resurrection that were long forgotten. Now they are bound for the ewaste pile at work.

Somewhere I have an external modem card made by a company that was once all the rage but is likely deader than a bent doornail. Also an iSight camera. Someone's gotta want that, right?

pipistrelle wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 8:47 am Somewhere I have an external modem card made by a company that was once all the rage but is likely deader than a bent doornail. Also an iSight camera. Someone's gotta want that, right?

I have some modem card as well, still in the wrapper. Oh, found a never opened ZIP disk yesterday. Takers?

I sent my Palm Pilot to the ewaste without hesitation. Unless you want to advertise on Ebay or Craigslist, which I don't, I suggest the same fate for your obsolete electronics.

northland10 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 8:49 am Oh, found a never opened ZIP disk yesterday. Takers?

I'ma send it to bill_g.

northland10 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 8:49 am Oh, found a never opened ZIP disk yesterday. Takers?

If it's an original PKZip disk, I had plenty from my days running TIDR (The Information Dirt Road). Though I never met Phil Katz, I did beta test a number of versions, and TIDR was a destination download site for the Western USA back in the BBS days. It's primary purpose was file compression, but it was also good for archiving (ie: combining multiple files into a single file to save space on the hard drive as well as organize them).

There was a way with PKZip to make a file an executable that was self extracting. That was fun. You could also make it continuously self extracting, and in the days when 100-300Mb drives were common, that could fill up a drive and turn a computer to stone in just a few minutes. Very kewl.

IIRC, pkzip was an archiving program. ZIP disks were a storage/backup solution, I used them for years. Like a music cassette, but for data.

You kids. I still have one of these stuffed in a storage box somewhere.

Foggy wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 9:30 am IIRC, pkzip was an archiving program. ZIP disks were a storage/backup solution, I used them for years. Like a music cassette, but for data.

This. As an example.

northland10 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 9:51 am

Foggy wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 9:30 am IIRC, pkzip was an archiving program. ZIP disks were a storage/backup solution, I used them for years. Like a music cassette, but for data.

This. As an example.
tmp_1657806276324.jpg

Oh zip drives. I remember having one whole disk that I kept and then they went away pretty quickly

northland10 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 9:51 am

Foggy wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 9:30 am IIRC, pkzip was an archiving program. ZIP disks were a storage/backup solution, I used them for years. Like a music cassette, but for data.

This. As an example.
tmp_1657806276324.jpg

Ah. Never had one.

neonzx wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 9:31 am You kids. I still have one of these stuffed in a storage box somewhere.

[img]https: //img.yumpu.com/38931911/1/500x640/40-megabyte-5-1-4quot-winchester-disk-drive-from-computer-memories.jpg[/img]

Me too. Two in fact. In the crate destined for the ewaste. Not gonna git romantic. Time to send them to the big storage space in the sky.

Graphic designers used them to collect jobs for print shops. I have a ton of them and Jaz disks, but no working Zip or Jaz drives. They were put out by Iomega in Salt Lake City.

pipistrelle wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 8:47 am Somewhere I have an external modem card made by a company that was once all the rage but is likely deader than a bent doornail. Also an iSight camera. Someone's gotta want that, right?

Heh. I really wish there was a better system for handling potentially usable ewaste. Some cities have places where people can pick through, others just scrap everything. ebay etc are too much of a hassle for people who just want to get rid of things and too expensive for people who just need parts.

Something I have found in my quest to grab an old minicomputer to try to restore... there seems to be ebay sellers who want ungodly amounts of money, and 'if you know someone' sources that just want it hauled away.. so either free or horribly expensive.

While we're on the subject, which reminds me, Happy Bastille Day, kids!

Foggy wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 9:35 am

Off Topic

My first computer I owned, when I gave up the street life and rejoined what passes for civilization, had a 125 MB hard drive. I soon accumulated more than 125 MB of software.

So I'd use pkzip to archive some stuff, and run the rest. I used it intensively, but today I mostly use one I like called PeaZip. There are too many to list nowadays.

I could not resist

Built Jan 2000

It has not run in years, and i have also a box of unused media cause storage technology moved so fast

You know what I loved? The apple clamshell laptop. I had one, already obsolete when I bought it, which is why I got it so cheap. In my head, I was going to pay for the innards to be upgraded, but the guys down at Apple just laughed and laughed...

So, if I understand our current status, we take all our old electronic stuff, send it to Foggy, and he will send it to Bill_G for his retirement. Got it.

I've kept track of the hours, and will turn them in this Friday. This will be my first part time timesheet.

By the way, bill_g, you definitely need to stop doing time sheets and instead offer them a consulting contract. If you haven't already done this, which I dunno.

There are people here with experience.