Posts Tagged: ‘Reminiscing’

Goodbye Outlook (and other old friends) – Originally Published June 2014

September 16, 2014 Posted by Tiny

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

I’m saying goodbye to an old friend.  As you may or may not know, I’ve been an Outlook 2007 user for the last six years.  It’s still a pretty good organizer of email, contacts, notes and of course my calendar.

The only real problem is that it doesn’t play well with other operating systems.  For years I was a Windows Mobile user.  I got my first pocket computer in 2004.  It was a Hewlett-Packard IPAQ running Windows Mobile 2003.  (Doesn’t it sound like Apple should have made that machine?)  In July of 2012, I decided to quit waiting for Microsoft to catch up in mobile development.  I bought an Android pocket PC and haven’t looked back.  Now it is two years later and Windows mobile has become a pretty good mobile operating system again.  I’ve become vested in the Android mobile world.  I doubt if I’ll ever go back.

One benefit is that I’ve gotten a lot of new material for future lagniappe columns.  I’ve replaced Outlook 2007 with freeware and other open source programs.

My decision to change reminded me of other similar choices I made in past years.  Do you remember Sidekick?  It was one of the first personal information managers (PIM) created.  Like many other people, I spent my hard earned money to buy the program.  At the height of its popularity, it was more than software for your computer.  It spawned several pocket organizers that worked more like glorified calculators.

I really miss the old Infocom games.  To this day I remember their advertising slogan, “We put our graphics where the sun doesn’t shine”.  I’ve played a few of the modern “adventure” games, but they just don’t seem as difficult or imaginative as Zork, Planetfall or Trinity.  I think my favorite game of all time was Suspended.  I know you can still play the games online.  The problem is that they just don’t seem as good as I remember them.

My first web sites were designed with Microsoft Front Page.  It was a great program for a beginner web site designer and proved to fill my needs as my knowledge advanced.  Some of the pages on my web site today were originally created years ago in the program.  Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn’t sell the program any more.  (For some reason, I’m reminded of a labeling software.)

I guess as I get older, old great software has become like other things in my memory.  I know that modern automobiles are quieter, safer and getting better every year.  Even though, I sure do miss my ’54 Oldsmobile.

That’s all of my thoughts for June.  My mind is empty again.  Thanks for reading.

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Things I Miss About Gaming – Originally Published October 2013

August 24, 2014 Posted by Tiny

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

I’ve been thinking about buying a Minecraft gaming account.  The grandson has been playing the demo and it looks like a game that I might enjoy.  I mentioned to him that I might do that and of course he is in favor of me doing it.  I told him that it wouldn’t make a difference because I couldn’t download it to his tablet.

That got to reminiscing  about one of the things I miss about playing computer games in the old days.  I miss software that didn’t have to be installed and could be run off the disk.  You didn’t have to worry about how much hard drive space was available or about memory conflicts.  If you went to a friends house, you just had to pop the disk in the drive and play on their computer.  To some extent, we can still do that with portable programs that run off a flash drive.

I’m not much of a game player these days, but I sure miss the old Infocom games.  Their advertising line was, “We put our graphics where the sun don’t shine.”  That was because there was no graphics.  The games were all text adventures.  The puzzles were all difficult.  You had to both think and imagine to play.  Maybe someday I’ll make a monthly Mindbender with questions about old games.

When was the last time you plugged a joystick into your computer?  It used to be that you needed a good one to play any games.  Wolfenstein, Space Invaders, Pacman and the many flight simulators needed one to be playable.  I still remember the last time I saw my old joystick.  It was the night I blew the dust off it and brought it to the club meeting to put on the giveaway table.

Some of the best games were free from many computer magazines.  They printed the code and you had to type it in for the program to run.  I remember sitting for hours with my six inch ruler marking the line, tediously typing in numbers and the letters a through f.  If just one digit was wrong, the software wouldn’t run and you had to spend hours troubleshooting.  I used to get a lot of good games from a company called Softdisk.  They were based in Shreveport and published several “Disk Magazines”.  Each month, I would eagerly wait for my Loadstar disk for the Commodore 64.

With the use of emulators, you can still download and play a lot of the old games on your modern computer.  If you’re interested, check out My Abandonware or The Internet Archive.  The games are free, but they don’t seem quite as good as I remember them.

I still haven’t decided if I’ll try Minecraft.

Thanks for reading.

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Technology Generation Gap – Originally Published July 2013

August 21, 2014 Posted by Tiny

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

It’s hard to believe that July is here again.  This is the time of the year when I should be thinking of taking the grandsons to a baseball game.  We should be going to the park for a picnic followed by a romp in the water park.  In the cool of the early morning, I should be doing my walking at the golf course.  In the hear of the afternoons, I should be at the swimming pool checking out the latest fashions in bikini swimwear.  July is the perfect time of year for doing so many things.

Instead, I’ve been thinking about telegrams.  On July 14, the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) will be sending the last telegraph ever.  The BSNL is India’s state run telegraph company.  When I was much younger, the telegraph was the fastest way to get an important message to someone.  Modern telegraphy really died in 2006 when Western Union discontinued their service.

Telegrams are now just another part of the generation gap between my grandchildren and me.  They have been replaced by e-mail, FAX machines and electronic banking.

Of course, modern technology has relegated many other things to the generation gap junkyard.  The first telephone I remember my parents having installed in the farmhouse was a box with a big microphone sticking out of the front.  You had to hold another microphone shaped object against your ear.  There was a small crank on the side of the box.  You turned the crank several times to wake up the operator.  When she came on the line, you simply told her who you wanted to call.  It’s all history now.  Almost everyone has a telephone in their pocket.  We don’t even call them telephones any more.  Just plain phone.

Today’s generation mostly listens to their music on a machine connected to the internet.  There are still a few compact discs around.  Cassette, reel to reel, 8-track and vinyl records are victims of the technology generation gap.

Oh well, at least I can still drive my pickup to the library.  It’s time to go visit the grandchildren.  We might play a game of Monopoly, or maybe some dominoes.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Thanks for reading.

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Why I Like Computer Clubs – Originally Published July 2011

July 22, 2014 Posted by Tiny

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

One Monday last month, I told the Grandson I had to bring him home early so I could get ready for my computer meeting.  He said, “You sure go to a lot of computer meetings.”  I told him that each one was a little different.  Being just five years old, he didn’t quite grasp the difference between the regular club meetings, the staff meetings and a special interest group meeting.  Then he asked me a question that gave me the subject for this article, “Why do you like going to all of those meetings?”

I told him that it was because it gave me a chance to get out of the house and away from Grandma for a little while.  Later on, I got to thinking about his question.  Why do I enjoy the club meetings and functions?  Over the years I’ve been a member of several computer clubs.  There are many reasons that I keep joining them.

The most important thing about these computer user groups (clubs) is that they were full of people who meet to share information and to learn from each other.  Doesn’t that sound like our group?  All of them were informal groups with a common purpose of learning more about how computers operate.

Computer clubs offer a lot of knowledge and experience.  It’s almost like having tech support with a native English speaking support staff.  No matter what problem you may have, someone knows how to solve it, or where to go to find out how.

A computer user group gives you something better to do than staring at the wall.  The meetings are a fun method of learning something new.  Even though I’m fairly knowledgeable on many aspects of computing, there are so many times I get a new tidbit.

Our computer group has a monthly newsletter.  I’ll admit that I like to run my mouth and the newsletter gives me a chance to write about something that I like to talk about . It’s even more fun when someone tells my they particularly liked one of my articles.

Computer users groups are a fun place to meet new people.  Since I’ve joined the SWLAPCUG, I’ve learned from a professional photographer, a tax accountant, a Better Business Bureau professional, several writers, programmers, web authors, and many others.

The club has an easy to use website that gives me an excellent place to output more of my ramblings.  It is a great place to tell everyone about internet links they should check.

Where else can you get all of this and more for only two dollars a month?  The annual membership fee is less than you would pay for one computer class anywhere else.  Sometimes, that means we teach each other how to use Dropbox.  Other times, it means teaching how to use the Internet more effectively, to use a photo editing program, how to take digital pictures or how to research your family tree.  These are topics for ordinary people, not things for programmers.

Now that I’ve told you why I like the SWLAPCUG, I’m going to take a few more minutes of your time an tell you how you can help make our computer club even better.

Why not contribute an article to this newsletter?  Do you have a favorite program that you think would be useful to other computer users?  Take a few minutes and tell everyone about it.  Not only that, but Lane will really appreciate it too.

Why not bring a friend to one of our monthly meetings?  You can impress them with how smart you are by being a member of our club.  They just might decide to join and then we would all benefit.

Have you found a great website that everyone should know about?  Found a great deal on a new computer?  Heard a funny story that you just can’t wait to tell?  Have a computer question that can’t wait for the club meeting?  Why not post on our website.  It only takes a few minutes and is just the thing that would generate more interest in our club.

Thanks for reading.

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Planned Obsolescence – Originally Published April 2011

July 18, 2014 Posted by Tiny

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

After a year of cult worship of the iPad, the iPad 2 is now being sold.  There isn’t a lot of difference in the two models.  The iPad 1 is now $100 less than before (but I’m sure consumers weren’t being gypped before the price reduction).  The new model has a couple of cameras and a dual core processor.  The technology was available a year ago.  Why didn’t they use it then?

When I read about the iPad 2, I was reminded of a MAD magazine article I read about thirty years ago.  It was a satire of Thomas Edison.  There was a picture of him in his lab working on the phonograph.  On the shelves behind him was a reel to reel tape recorder/player, which at that time was the latest audio technology.  The caption said that Edison didn’t get rich by patenting his best products right away.

Ever notice when you buy a new phone, there will be a new model or major update long before you complete the contract?  Same thing for computers.  You can bet that within two months of buying one, there will be a better model released.  Even though it sometimes appears suspicious, I don’t believe that companies would stoop so low as to profit by withholding their best.  I think they bend even lower.

How old is your cell phone?  Does it work as good as it did when you first bought it?  How much longer do you think you’ll be using it?  How about your cassettes.  Do you still listen to them?  Maybe you listen to your phonograph records instead.  No?  It must be the reel to reel tapes that you like to listen to.  Why is it that you can buy a new computer, set it up and find that it is already out of date?

The answer to all of those questions and many more like it is planned obsolescence.  That is why so many things work great until about the time the warranty expires?  I think it is because companies deliberately design their products to fail early.  Is it a coincidence that printers quit printing when the ink is low, but not empty.  Doesn’t it seem that a lot of software isn’t compatible with prior programs or files?  Didn’t automobiles made fifty or sixty years ago last a lot longer than modern cars?

It isn’t just electronics technology that manufacturers plan to become obsolete.  Textbooks are revised every year even though with most topics there isn’t much change in the subject material.  When I was younger, my Mother had a Hoover canister vacuum cleaner that she must have used for at least twenty years.  These days, it seems like my wife needs to replace the vacuum every three years or so.  The cuckoo clock in my living room is at least 100 years old.  I wonder if I could buy a new model that would last as long.

I could probably rant on for another ten pages or so, but I think you probably know what I mean.  Companies plan for their products obsolescence so they can make more profit by selling new stuff.  Of course, that’s just my opinion.

Now that I think about it, it’s not just manufacturers that plan for obsolescence.  After all, next month this column will be obsolete.

Thanks for reading.

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Computing Memories – Originally Published August 2010

July 1, 2014 Posted by Tiny

A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch

This months computer club meeting topic of the Smart Table got me to thinking about how much technology has changed in my time.  One of my first computer memories was when I was still in high school and UNIVAC was in all the news.  No one really had any idea what the thing was good for.  The census used one to somehow make counting the population easier.  It was a different world back then and nobody really much cared about a machine that was bigger than the family car and needed a special air conditioned room.  The thing that really interested them was the Texas Instruments pocket calculator.  My daddy was a feed salesman and the company that he worked for provided him with one of these expensive machines.  I remember him getting it out to show us how he could add 2 and 2 without making a mistake.

When I joined the Navy, I had my first experiences with using a computer.  I got to run the keypunch machine.  If I made a mistake, a ship could easily get 10,000 pounds of butter instead of 1,000.  Back then, the Navy paid in cash.  In later years, our paychecks were actually an IBM computer punch card.  Now, many employers don’t even issue checks.  It’s all done electronically.

In the late 1970’s computers started to catch on.  IBM was the company created the home market.  Their 8086/8088 weighed about 30 pounds and had a whole MB of random access memory.  It blazed along at a speedy 4.77 MHz.  Other companies that built computers soon started advertising themselves as IBM compatible.  If you worked for IBM, you were required to wear a tie.

This is also the era when many of us started building our first computers.  Zenith Heath Kits were all the rage.  They didn’t work any better, but we were smarter because we built our own.

The operating system of choice in those days was PC-DOS.  There were many other ones, but the home market was mainly CP/M or one of the DOS systems from Apple, Atari or Commodore.  In the early 1980’s, a fellow you may have heard of bought an operating system called 86-DOS which was also known as Q-DOS (for Quick and Dirty DOS).  Bill Gates later renamed it to MS-DOS for the company that he founded.  I’m pretty sure that Microsoft is still in business today.

Home computing started to really take off in the 80’s when Radio Shack introduced the Trash 80 (oops. I meant TRS 80).  Apples home computer was the Lisa and Texas Instruments had something called the TI-99.  I remember the first computer I bought.  It was a Commodore VIC20.  I loved that computer with its 5 KB of RAM and the data cassette storage, even though it often took 3-4 minutes to load a program.  Incidentally, the VIC20 was the first home computer that sold a million units.  In later years the Commodore 64 was even better.

The first really innovative computer program to be sold was the spreadsheet VisiCalc.  Like so many other successful things, clones like Lotus 1-2-3, SuperCalc and Microsoft Excel were soon on the market.  Did you know that Microsoft’s Excel was first introduced for the Apple Macintosh?  It was only later that it was ported to Windows.  Wordstar was the first commercially profitable word processor.

The real software revolution were the games.  I don’t think you could walk 50 feet without seeing somebody playing Space Invaders, PAC Man of one of the many variations of Pong.  I’ll confess that my favorite games were made by Infocom.  They specialized in “interactive fiction” games.  I still remember their advertising slogan, “We put our graphics where the Sun don’t shine.”  Graphics adapters later put this type of adventure game out of business.  Their first game was Zork which debuted in 1980.  I still have it on my desktop computer.

In the old days, the only decision to be made when you bought a monitor was whether to have green or amber output.  The only sound you could hear was the tinny beep for the operating speaker.  The only mouse in the computer room lived in the wall.  Printers were all dot matrix and printed about 30 characters a minute.

Of course, one of the biggest changes in computing has been the internet and use of e-mail.  I’ve heard that e-mail was invented by a Nigerian that had a lot of extra money to spend. The browser choices were Mosaic or Netscape.  We’ve come a long way from logging in to the Bulletin Board.

I’m going to shut up for this month.  Please remember that I’ve just written about some of my computing memories, so the facts may not be 100 percent correct.  I’m just amazed at how far technology has advanced.

See you at the Smart Table.  Thanks for reading.

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