There are ten windows on my Ericson and they don't provide much insulation against the outside air and the wind when it is blowing as it is now. When you live in a building unless it is a tornado or hurricane you can't sense the wind and its direction. On a boat the wind moves you around and if I look around anything hanging will be swinging around. After living here for several years I have become unaware of the movements. Last night my main halyard started to slap and it banged all night long.
If I turn on my idiot box on in the morning the local news is filled with traffic reports and freeway congestion. WTF I ride a bicycle and today I will wait for more sunshine before pedaling. Yesterday afternoon I rode my fake fixie to the market and almost got knocked over by a cross wind. I only watch the weather on TV to look at the cute weather ladies and weekends KTLA is the best in the west.
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| Paddling before wind started |
My son has always been involved in taking videos and started filming while sitting on his skateboard. Not sure how many cameras he has wasted. His YouTube channel is entertaining and I often read the comments.
One comment mentioned Live Stream and being from the old school computer ice age I knew nothing of that but it takes only a few keystrokes to make me another Google knower genius.
Live Stream was pedaling (not a bicycle but selling) a Mevo which after searching I found there was another electronic device I couldn't live without if I had Donald's money.
Somehow we are being buried by all this new technology. This cave-in caused a short circuit in my synaptic vault (probably too much orange juice) and I suddenly remember how to wire up the options on a Ma Bell 201A Modem. Myself and my boss Steve Young were attempting to attach a modem to the RJE terminal we were building. The Pacific Telephone employee dropped it off at our office and gave us the manual which since there wasn't any YouTube available then we had to read it.
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| We bought ten Potter Line Printers (total POS) |
After we got the modem attached we tried to communicate with an IBM mainframe at Long Beach Douglas. After a day of scopes, screwdrivers and wire wrapping tools and some key punching we made contact. The RJE terminal we were building was a knock off of an IBM 2780. Steve had been working on the design for over two years. Stevegot a million shares of stock and I got an option. He was a millionaire on paper that still saved his paper lunch bags and my stock option went up in smoke when the company (Data Computer Systems) went broke after five years.
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| I installed a system in St. Louis |
An RJE terminal (remote job entry) allows a job (computer program) to be transmitted to a large computer where the job is processed on the computer and the results (data) is sent back to the RJE terminal where the information is printed out on paper or punched on cards.
We put all of our electronics including power supplies in Wright Line Cabinets
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| All that would fit on a finger nail now. |
An example of one of our early installations was at a Boeing Factory outside of Philly. The terminal (our CP4) was placed in an Engineering department and it sent data back and forth using a modem to the computer in another building. The factory was making helicopters for Vietnam War. To sign on in today's world you make a few keystrokes and login. Then you punched a sign-in card added your JCL cards and placed them in the hopper on the card reader. You used the telephone to dial the number of the modem at the computer site and after you made a valid connection you pushed the start key on the terminal then you pushed the start key on the card reader. The information on the punched cards were then sent to the computer to be processed. After batch processing the process was reserved.
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| This is very similar to our CP4 |
Things have changed since that time when we needed to use a moving van to install one of our systems which included the card reader/punch, processor and line printer. More that once I did installs where there were not any elevators or the moving van gone stuck in a snow storm.
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| We used Honeywell printers and reader/punch |
Somewhere is my daughters garage there are some pictures of our CP4 and the project that didn't make me rich.
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