• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Been a while

O

Ole Juul

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 15, 2008
Messages
3,982
Location
Coalmont, BC, Canada
I thought I'd put this here, though perhaps it should be under humour since I'm in a pretty good mood right now.

I haven't been around for a while, and I apologize to anybody that I should have gotten back to. It seems I just got tired of playing with computers, and then both my "browser level" machines finally died. Then I had no money and had to use my sweetheart's computer when available. That didn't work for me (or her) so I just waited until I got some income again and could buy new parts. I'm writing this from my new machine which just got FreeBSD on it yesterday. It looks like most things are working - hence the good mood.

I didn't completely stop daily computing. I had to write, and also read my regular sites so I used my DOS machine for that. Lynx is really a great browser when you use it for a while. This site, being a forum, just isn't suitable for text. Blogs work fine though.

I'll post some more about my endeavors at another time, but the main box now has an Intel core i3 on a Foxconn Z68 mother board with 8GB of ram. That should last a little while. I found a cool box too. This whole flurry of building also involves completely redoing my sweetie's computer and building her a keyboard table, computer stand, and printer stand. I also got a Xerox postscript laser printer.

I'm looking forward to playing with some vintage over the winter and chatting with you folks here again.
 
Hey Ole... as you know I'd been wondering what you've been up to. I thought maybe some 1000' sinkhole had opened up and swallowed Coalmont or something like that! :) I was sure glad to hear it was just some of the more usual puter related nonsense. Anyway, it's great you're back. Next time you plan to disappear how about letting us know in advance. :) :) :) Or at least go over to a friend's and let us know from there. BTW, I did a Street View of Coalmont and I'm not not sure whether or not you're the only internet-capable life form in the vicinity. :)
 
Wow... just yesterday I was looking for you wondering what's happened. I noticed that it'd been since spring since you've been posting on here, and then I dug up my old bookmark of the Coalmont Courier and saw that you were alive, just not on here.

Found the link for the Coalmont street view, too. Did a virtual walkabout, reminded me of when we went for that walk and you showed my daughter your neighbor's mini petting zoo.

You'll be happy to know that the Vectrex and the Coleco ADAM have had a lot of TLC and the ADAM is being upgraded with a CF drive/IDE interface card today!

Gotta go... good to see you back. :)

-Don
 
Stone said:
Hey Ole... as you know I'd been wondering what you've been up to. I thought maybe some 1000' sinkhole had opened up and swallowed Coalmont or something like that! I was sure glad to hear it was just some of the more usual puter related nonsense. Anyway, it's great you're back. Next time you plan to disappear how about letting us know in advance. Or at least go over to a friend's and let us know from there. BTW, I did a Street View of Coalmont and I'm not not sure whether or not you're the only internet-capable life form in the vicinity.
Click to expand...
No sinkholes here - but I do hit a vortex once in a while. As for internet, about half have the same wireless as me. Knowing the difference between Facebook and a computer though - that's my particular specialty in these parts. Also, my apologies for disappearing in a rather rude manner. I really do owe my on-line friends more respect. :)

Caluser2000 said:
You'll be pleased to know we solved the Windows 3.1 disk 7 of 7 mistery http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?30241-win3-1-installation-disk-7-of-7/page9
Click to expand...

I'm touched that you guys mention me there. :) Yes, the Coalmont Courier lives. And yes, give me a call. I just got three new numbers. One is in New York and might be cheaper for a USian. 914-977-5056. (I usually sleep 'til noon.) It rings the phone by my computer, then forwards to the rest of the house if I don't get it.

lotonah said:
Wow... just yesterday I was looking for you wondering what's happened. I noticed that it'd been since spring since you've been posting on here, and then I dug up my old bookmark of the Coalmont Courier and saw that you were alive, just not on here.
Found the link for the Coalmont street view, too. Did a virtual walkabout, reminded me of when we went for that walk and you showed my daughter your neighbor's mini petting zoo.
Click to expand...

The goats are still there, and so is Charlie the pot belly pig. Say hi to your daughter. I'm hoping to make it up your way before the snow.

You'll be happy to know that the Vectrex and the Coleco ADAM have had a lot of TLC and the ADAM is being upgraded with a CF drive/IDE interface card today!
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm happy to know that. I was wondering if you even got the thing to boot. . . . but a CF drive? I hadn't expected that!
 
About my recent resurrection of my two main computers, SCO and CDX; like I said there's some construction involved in all this. I'll post pictures in another thread, but so far, I've got the printer stand built. It's got casters and there's room for quite a few reams underneath. It's just made from scraps - actually cupboard doors from the 60's. I just had to buy the wheels and handles.

 
Last edited:
Odd, I figured most people here had a ton of parts or full machines that were somewhat modern as spares they picked up for free (your Intel I3 is newer then anything I own). Well could be worse having nice working machines and no ISP/internet. Nice to see you are back.
 
Unknown_K said:
Odd, I figured most people here had a ton of parts or full machines that were somewhat modern as spares they picked up for free (your Intel I3 is newer then anything I own). Well could be worse having nice working machines and no ISP/internet. Nice to see you are back.
Click to expand...

Thanks UK! :)

Yes, odd indeed. I felt kind of stupid without a decent modern box, but the experience was worth while. Of course, I was also getting tired of playing with computers and just did the things I needed to do, like the Coalmont Courier and community association stuff. Anyway, I'm all refreshed now.

The i3, of course, is a bit of a splurge for me. But I like to try to find something that will hang in there for a while and provide good long term value. And, of course nice to have a machine that doesn't cause more gray hair. I used to get "semi modern" stuff in the city, but it seems out here I can only sometimes get really old stuff, and otherwise it's just old and not very useful any more - like the P3 generation.

I find that nothing recent in the open source world will run well on anything with a single core any more. I know I'm limiting myself, but MS-Windows is out of the question for me, even though it is probably superior for lower resources. By "run well", I mean support an OS version that is compatible with the recent Adobe products. I like text only, and will even do without videos, but the amount of flash on web sites these days is insurmountable on slower machines. To deal with the stuff people throw at me, I have to be able to quickly click through stuff, process pdf's without lag, and deal with that stupid "docx" format. Even this forum was starting to be a real drag to click though - and that was with a 2.8GHz P4 and 3GB ram.

Ya, it's a funny world. On the one hand I can still navigate the best of the web with a text browser. On the other hand I can't participate in contemporary business. Actually, it's interesting to note that some web sites will give me a 403 (we don't want you here) code when I go there with Lynx. That really gets my hackles up.
 
I gave up trying to use anything pre Win2000 for web browsing ages ago. At one time I had a 386DX/40 running Windows 3.11 with 32MB of RAM under my desk that I used to IRC with just for fun. IRC was fine on that machine but people would toss up web links and even with IE 5 it was dead slow and would crash.
 
Welcome back! Crazy with the OS bloat these days isn't it? What window manager/browser are you using with FreeBSD? I do think OpenOffice supports docx and most common formats still.
 
barythrin said:
Welcome back! Crazy with the OS bloat these days isn't it? What window manager/browser are you using with FreeBSD? I do think OpenOffice supports docx and most common formats still.
Click to expand...

Thanks. :)

My new machine is now running KDE4. Part of the reason for using that, and not a plainer WM, is that Eileen wants KDE and it is also murder to set up automatic mount/unmount of USB devices without it. KDE looks after a lot of stuff for you. Yes Libreoffice (and OO too) support docx.

I'm just reinstalling the whole OS on her computer as I'm writing this. KDE took over 2 hours, and Gimp is scrolling in right now. It's fun to start a new system from scratch! Part of my plan here is to run the same OS version and apps on both computers. It will make maintenance and troubleshooting much easier.
 
Thanks Doug, Mike, and Trixter.

Trixter said:
This gave me pause. It's a sad day when text-based media isn't suitable for text-based browsers.
Click to expand...

I think the word "text" is actually loosing its original meaning. In a few years when someone uses the word, you and I will probably have no idea of what they're talking about. :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top