Random Rants

[watcher1]

This fall, squirrels have made my backyard look like a golf course played by hackers. They have made so many holes. As soon as I fill them, they are digging new ones.  First time the squirrels have done this.

[Pornhubby]

This fall, squirrels have made my backyard look like a golf course played by hackers. They have made so many holes. As soon as I fill them, they are digging new ones.  First time the squirrels have done this.

Squirrels typically dig small shallow holes to bury seeds and acorns for the winter. If you’ve got a lot of squirrel holes in the yard, I’d be more concerned that you might have squirrels in your attic. TIL a group of squirrels is called a scurry.

I don’t know how large an area you’re talking about, but the experts say spraying peppermint, chili, or mint oils will drive squirrels away. Apparently they don’t like the smell.

[Shiela_M]

Also, squirrels will actually pretend to bury seeds and just in spots to help protect their stash. That way of a squirrel looking to steal others food, they wont k ow were exactly it was buried. Some of those holes could be decoy spots and dug up for jobs reason.

[msslave]

A few days ago I posted about having trouble with my keyboard connecting to the computer.
http://www.kristensboard.com/forums/index.php?topic=64375.msg637240#msg63724
So after being told to change the batteries. that's the first thing I did.

Nothing ARRRRRGGGGG

Saw my friend last night and he offered to stop over this morning. He cam by a little while ago. Sat down at the computer and confirmed keyboard not working. Yes I said I'd just recharged the batteries. He took another look at the back of the keyboard. Humm...the switch is turned off. 

Guess I hit it changing the batteries. Friend kept telling me the switch is s in a funny place and not to feel bad.

No I don't feel bad... just dumb and old.
Going to hire a 13 year old to watch over me when I'm on the computer.

[Pornhubby]

No I don't feel bad... just dumb and old.
Going to hire a 13 year old to watch over me when I'm on the computer.

My 21 year old is an IT Tech for the UT College of Natural Sciences. He sets up all the equipment for old professors and assists in classroom presentations. I call him first. I have never had a tech problem (computers, phones, audio, apps) he couldn’t solve in about 5 seconds.

[Writers Bloque]

No I don't feel bad... just dumb and old.
Going to hire a 13 year old to watch over me when I'm on the computer.

My 21 year old is an IT Tech for the UT College of Natural Sciences. He sets up all the equipment for old professors and assists in classroom presentations. I call him first. I have never had a tech problem (computers, phones, audio, apps) he couldn’t solve in about 5 seconds.

Don't feel bad, my oldest loves tech and she set up my home office for me. She tells me not to fear technology, but I tell her I read too many books. She laughs at it though.

[Clitical Thinking]

No I don't feel bad... just dumb and old.

It happens much more often than you might think. I had a Dell years ago, and I used to get annoyed whenever I called India and they asked me to double check if the computer was plugged in and turned on. 

I've heard a lot of "tech support" stories since then that make me understand why they ask that.   

[watcher1]

Me thinks the current squirrel issue is being caused by a neighbor who has been feeding loads of peanuts to the squirrels all summer. Why people think feeding wild critters is necessary. 

Shiela - did not know that about squirrels digging holes to mislead others. Interesting.

Any I T issues by us we usually ask the youngest grandchildren. Amazing what they know about systems at an early age.

[Clitical Thinking]

I'm young enough to where technology has played a huge role in more than half my life, but also old enough to remember life before the Internet and what it was like to finally pull a CD-ROM from that stack of America Online discs 25 years ago and fire up the modem for the first time 

So I was thinking the other day how I think it's awesome that we can go on a site like YouTube these days and in a way travel back in time and look at content people uploaded over 15 years ago, but that these days people are literally born into a time where all that will be part of their lives from Day 1.. hell, they can literally document their entire lives on YouTube and then look back at it in 50 to 60 years.

How cool would it be if all that had existed already in the 1940s and 1950s? 

[msslave]

My dad always enjoyed when something new came out. TV was exciting, though we only had two channels. After a few months a third channel went on the air. The remote was one of us kids...go turn to channel 8.

When transistor radios came out he quickly grabbed one up. How unique...no cord and you can take the radio with you to listen anywhere.

Many times when I talk with my sister she's mentioned how our dad would have been so excited about the internet, cell phones etc. I envy today's kids and what new wonders they'll see.

[Pornhubby]

My first computer was made by Epson. A vintage 286. No hard drive. Everything was on 5.5 floppies. Used an early version of Microsoft DOS.

By 1986, my friends and I subscribed to Prodigy, so we could send emails (wow!), using a dial up modem and all the screeching and pinging that involved.   Then on to the Usenet groups. You could download a porn photo in 30 minutes, if you were lucky!

Never imagined we would some day all have a supercomputer in our phones with technology and capabilities that truly seemed science fiction just 40 years ago.

[ObiDongKenobi]

My first computer was made by Epsom. A vintage 286. No hard drive. Everything was on 5.5 floppies. Used an early version of Microsoft DOS.

By 1986, my friends and I subscribed to Prodigy, so we could send emails (wow!), using a dial up modem and all the screeching and pinging that involved.   Then on to the Usenet groups. You could download a porn photo in 30 minutes, if you were lucky!

Never imagined we would some day all have a supercomputer in our phones with technology and capabilities that truly seemed science fiction just 40 years ago.

An Acorn Electron for me.  I couldn't afford its big brother the BBC Micro

[JBRG]

My first computer was made by Epsom. A vintage 286. No hard drive. Everything was on 5.5 floppies. Used an early version of Microsoft DOS.

By 1986, my friends and I subscribed to Prodigy, so we could send emails (wow!), using a dial up modem and all the screeching and pinging that involved.   Then on to the Usenet groups. You could download a porn photo in 30 minutes, if you were lucky!

Never imagined we would some day all have a supercomputer in our phones with technology and capabilities that truly seemed science fiction just 40 years ago.

An Acorn Electron for me.  I couldn't afford its big brother the BBC Micro

The first computer I owned was a Zenith EZ PC - 640k RAM, 2 3.5 inch floppies. That would have been back in '89 or '90.

First computer I used was a DEC PDP 11. Then, I went to work in a different area and had to us a PDP 8. Programming that puppy involved a row of switches. You would set the switch to either 1 or 0. At the end of the line of code, you would press the Enter switch. Then zero everything out and enter the next line followed by Enter. Until the program was loaded. Then you would press Run and hope you didn't make a mistake.

[Pornhubby]

First computer I used was a DEC PDP 11. Then, I went to work in a different area and had to us a PDP 8. Programming that puppy involved a row of switches. You would set the switch to either 1 or 0. At the end of the line of code, you would press the Enter switch. Then zero everything out and enter the next line followed by Enter. Until the program was loaded. Then you would press Run and hope you didn't make a mistake.

We learned programming in the early 80s using COBOL. You would type dozens of punch cards then stand in line in the basement of the statistics department, then feed them into a giant machine and hope you didn’t make a mistake. Printouts were on a matrix dot printer. Crazy times.

[JBRG]

First computer I used was a DEC PDP 11. Then, I went to work in a different area and had to us a PDP 8. Programming that puppy involved a row of switches. You would set the switch to either 1 or 0. At the end of the line of code, you would press the Enter switch. Then zero everything out and enter the next line followed by Enter. Until the program was loaded. Then you would press Run and hope you didn't make a mistake.

We learned programming in the early 80s using COBOL. You would type dozens of punch cards then stand in line in the basement of the statistics department, then feed them into a giant machine and hope you didn’t make a mistake. Printouts were on a matrix dot printer. Crazy times.

And these youngsters today think they have are hard done by. Let's time warp them back to the '70s/'80s and drop a stack of punch cards on the floor before they've had a chance to run their program.

[Pornhubby]

LOL.  Don’t you know it! 

I did a little research.  “Business Dean John White invested a sizable $75,000 to purchase an IBM 1620 Data Processing System (above left), a room-exciter-newsletterssize computer that could perform over 1,500 calculations per second. It was installed in time for the BEB dedication, and was a highlight of the building tour. ‘In preparation of the computer world of the Seventies and Eighties, all students in the College of Business explored the mysteries of this fantastic machine,’ explained the 1965 Cactus yearbook.”

[Dirtymind]

My first computer was made by Epson. A vintage 286. No hard drive. Everything was on 5.5 floppies. Used an early version of Microsoft DOS.

By 1986, my friends and I subscribed to Prodigy, so we could send emails (wow!), using a dial up modem and all the screeching and pinging that involved.   Then on to the Usenet groups. You could download a porn photo in 30 minutes, if you were lucky!

We had a CGA monitor with 4 shades of orange. I thought nipples were orange and square. Imagine my surprise

[Clitical Thinking]

I thought nipples were orange and square. Imagine my surprise

 

[Pornhubby]

Imagine the first time a Japanese sees a penis, and realizes it isn’t pixelated.

[Paige]

I'm not sure why this is now about computers, but my first computer was my MacBook as it paired well with my iPhone.