Buddy, we've had computers since at least right around 3000BCE. What're you tryin' ta say?wanted to know if they had computers back when I went to school.
Probably meant the question for Dave.Buddy, we've had computers since at least right around 3000BCE. What're you tryin' ta say?
--Patrick
When I worked at Best Buy in 2002, we kept a hammer behind the desk that was labeled Packard Bell Tool. They were so bad we refused to work on them.TRS-80 and a Win 3.1 PC (not sure about brand) were the two family PCs. My first purchase was a win95 packard bell.
Which is ironic because when I worked at Best Buy in 1997, they metaphorically held a gun to my head to make me SELL those same horrible Packard Bells.When I worked at Best Buy in 2002, we kept a hammer behind the desk that was labeled Packard Bell Tool. They were so bad we refused to work on them.
The one time that we made an exception to the rule, I was assigned to make a DVD of all the word documents, videos and photos that old PackBell. The directions from the original tech were vague. So I called to find out where she saved her files. She was super evasive to all my questions. So I just searched all the popular file formats and just copied them into photo, video, and document folders. I set the disc aside and called the user to come get it.Which is ironic because when I worked at Best Buy in 1997, they metaphorically held a gun to my head to make me SELL those same horrible Packard Bells.
That same card is what i used to wean my 2nd wife off of her mac and onto PC when I got tired of having to tech support her machineand later add-in OrangePC expansion cards to run DOS and even Win95 OSR2 natively alongside MacOS on the same machines.
The only card I've ever used that had close to as many hydra cables coming out of the back of it as that thing is RME's HDSP 9632, but that's probably because I haven't had to work with any camera video capture devices.That same card is what i used to wean my 2nd wife off of her mac and onto PC when I got tired of having to tech support her machine
Hold on... *does mental math* ... Pat, are you in your 50's?[Warning: Text]
Wow. Well, it's been a journey.
Growing up, computers were things other people had. Nobody in my family ever used* a (real) personal computer until after I left college, when I finally bought one for myself. Until then, I had to content myself with the (infrequent) opportunities to visit one of the handful of Apple ][+ machines around my school. An actual computer class finally gave me access to Apple //e's. A friend of mine owned a TI-994/A, which I remember using to play Hunt The Wumpus and also to try and program the drum track to Micheal Sembello's "Maniac" with some degree of success. I wanted a //c so bad, but my parents, possibly sensing my affinity for tech, instead got me a TS-1000 for Christmas one year, along with the 16kb expansion pack which they could not find for several months after (they were purchased separately and, well, got separated). The TS-1000 had some electronic problems which caused the video to flake out once it heated up. Attaching the 16kb pack helped, but there was something wrong with it which would cause it to disconnect and crash the machine unless it was allowed to hang suspended off the back of the unit, the gravity helping keep the contacts connected or something. I don't know, I tried to fix it by fixing the obviously poor soldering inside of it (some of the components weren't even fully connected!) but didn't really have much success. My father owned a Commodore VIC-20 for a while but never really did anything with it besides play a couple of (cartridge-based) games. That was really it for computers until college.
In college, I really cut loose. College was where I finally got essentially 24/7 access to computers. The PC labs were limited to business hours, a Mac room full of SEs and one SE/30, and a PC room full of (Color!) '286 machines, one of which also had a '287 FPU installed for the math students. None had internal HDDs, it was all about floppies. For me, it was mostly about Dark Castle and The Bard's Tale. But the thing I probably spent the most time using was the campus mainframe, which was a DEC VAX 11-750 running VMS accessible via any of a number of VT100 terminals around campus. I am not kidding when I say that I probably spent more time learning how to use that computer than I did in my actual classes, and got recruited to be on the campus IT squad only three months after I started college. I still maintain that they did this more out of self-defense to keep me where they could see me rather than because they liked the cut of my jib or whatever. The Mac lab later got upgraded with a IIfx and the PC lab got upgraded to '386DX machines (FPUs for everybody!) and the VAX was eventually replaced with an IBM RS/6000 running AIX (yay, UNIX!). Then I graduated, and shortly afterwards bought my first computer for myself, which was a Mac SE with a nice V.34 modem and an AOL trial subscription.
And then I was a broke post-college guy who couldn't afford to buy another computer for almost five years. This was the dark ages, where anything I couldn't do via the SE ended up being something I had to do at a friend's house or, a few times, at the library or community center computer lab they had set up for job seekers. I was eventually able to scrape up enough to buy a Mac IIvx (what a mistake that was, but at least it was color) which I eventually sent in to have the guts changed out to rebuild it into a 7100/80, later upgraded again with an AV card and a G3 accelerator card (which was quite an upgrade, let me tell you). I later upgraded to a full-on "Beige" G3 minitower.
Now I know I talk about Macs a lot, and I know there are plenty of Apple haters on the forum, and I'm sure you have your reasons, but I've left out that I was also using SoftWindows (at first) and later add-in OrangePC expansion cards to run DOS and even Win95 OSR2 natively alongside MacOS on the same machines. In 2000, I built my first "from scratch" PC based on SS7 (Soltek MLB, AMD K6-III CPU, TNT2 Ultra GPU) for Win98SE and it's been back and forth ever since as I've tried to make up for all that "nobody in our family can afford a computer" time back during my youth. I won't go into all the details, but let's just say I still own most of the computers I've described above, and I've left out plenty more that filled in the gaps or that people have generously donated to me "because you're that computer guy" and so far as I know, the majority of them still work. Some computer museum is going to have their hands full when I die, because some of this stuff is genuinely difficult (if not straight up impossible) to come by these days, especially ones that are working.
--Patrick
*Owned, I guess. Used? Not really.
Hold on... *does mental math* ... Pat, are you in your 50's?
I've already gone on record as saying that I got to see Star Wars (now retitled "A New Hope") and Airplane! in theaters, and that I'm privileged to predate the USA moon landing. I didn't join up with AOL until they started giving away ten hours free, though. I passed on getting in on the ground floor when they were still only offering five.Dave still has me beat by more than a few years, though.
I didn't see ANH in a theater until February 1997. Almost 20 years after the first time I saw it... in a drive-in with one crappy speaker barely hung into the driver's side window. Even with the stupid added scenes the 1997 experience was much better.I've already gone on record as saying that I got to see Star Wars (now retitled "A New Hope") and Airplane! in theaters, and that I'm privileged to predate the USA moon landing. I didn't join up with AOL until they started giving away ten hours free, though. I passed on getting in on the ground floor when they were still only offering five.
*sighs* I really miss not needing glasses to read fine print. It seems like so long ago (it was 7 years).
Ah, that's right, forgot about re-releases. I meant that I saw both films during their first run. We waited in long lines. They actually sold programs for it, probably worth some money now if younger me hadn't ruined it.I didn't see ANH in a theater until February 1997. Almost 20 years after the first time I saw it.
I understood, I wasn’t trying to say you didn’t, sorry if that came across that way. By that time that I saw ANH in theaters I had actually become friends with many of the actors from the movies. David Prowse, Jeremy Bulloch, Peter Mayhew, Kenny Baker, and several Jawas, Stormtroopers, rebel pilots and puppeteers. My most special memories from all Star Wars was seeing Phantom Menace at a private theater with lots of the cast of the original trilogy and when I was finally able to meet Carrie Fisher before Star Wars Celebration in Indianapolis in 2002, and watching all the faces that had gathered after Carrie arrived from the airport and the first thing they all heard her say was “I need a cigarette and I have to piss.” It was quite the sight.Ah, that's right, forgot about re-releases. I meant that I saw both films during their first run. We waited in long lines. They actually sold programs for it, probably worth some money now if younger me hadn't ruined it.
--Patrick
I wasn't implying you were, I had just completely forgotten that rereleases were a thing and could be used to technically tell the truth while simultaneously misrepresenting it.I wasn’t trying to say you didn’t, sorry if that came across that way.
What do you mean fake? It's original! It says so right there!The person in charge of collections urgently calls me, very concerned because someone showed up with a payment receipt that doesn't appear in the system, and she needs me to tell her why it's not there. Then she sends me a photo of the most pathetic fake payment receipt I've ever seen. View attachment 49475
The font did look a little suspect, but without having seen a legit original I wouldn't have been confident enough to spot this as a fake. I would assume, however, that a collections agent should have seen innumerable legit examples for comparison.Titulo de crédito is a document issued by the city to collect taxes or fees.
Can you see the text and the numbers that were clearly edited?
It's more like "Deed of payment." Pago=payment, página=pageMy grasp of the lingo is tenuous at best, but does that not just say "PAGE TITLE" right there in the middle of the page?
It is certainly appropriate for "Bad Meme Wednesday".The font did look a little suspect, but without having seen a legit original I wouldn't have been confident enough to spot this as a fake. I would assume, however, that a collections agent should have seen innumerable legit examples for comparison.