h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Dave. Just followed you from the Atelier, thoguht I would say Hi.
I am a huge hockey fan, but I can't skate (as a result I don't play). It's nice to make your acuaintence. Would I assume that you are a Bruins fan?

Marv

Hi Marv,

Nice to meet you! Thanks for stopping by. I am a bruins fan, in as much as I actually follow pro sports. I usually just root for the team my friends are rooting for, I don't follow it as much on my own. I've started wearing a Sabres "sweater" to hockey practice - the old school style - I'm from Buffalo originally.

I actually learned to skate and play simultaneously. They have a beginner's intramural league here at school, and that's how I got into it. I had skiing and roller blade experience, so the transition to ice skates was pretty quick and painless.

So what team do you follow? Do you ever play street hockey? I always want to do that during the summer, but everyone around here just plays ice year round

dave

I am a *huge* Colorado Avalanche fan. I have been an avid NHL fan since about 1998 but have loved hockey since I was a kid. The Bruins, Sabres, Leafs, and Habs and my favourite Eastern conf teams. I have a good friend in Buffalo who got me watching the Sabres, my best freind is a Bruins fan and I just like Montreal and Toronto.

No street hockey for me. I never had rollerblades and no one I know plays hockey without blades. The only hockey equipment I have is a collection of pucks.

Yeah, those are all great teams - I know people who are die-hard fans for all of them!

The Avs are great to watch. I have a friend who loved them, he had lived in colorado for 5 years as a ski-bum, when he got back here they won the cup

The night that they won the cup in 2001, I was driving back from Canada to a friends house in Montana. I barely missed it and only saw the skating around with the cup and the group photo.

OH NO! That's horrible! Were you listening to it on the radio at least? I'm actually kind of a bigger Red Sox fan than anything, and I couldn't bear to watch the last game of the series so I listened to it on the radio. I actually went back to lab to work to try to take my mind off it...then they lost.

Hey, on the offsite Atelier page it says you run the computer tech labs...what is that exactly? I've dabbled in programming myself...mainly for the purpose of scientific calculation. What kind of stuff do you do?

I came over here to say hello and find you already talking sports with Marv.

I loved that bit where you just picked your coat up off the floor.

The atelier is a wonderful sort of virtual place in that it tends to expand to include all conceivable (legitimate) interests. Also, we have robots to do the cooking and cleaning.

So I'm glad to see the computer lab get more use -- and you've brought in a rare bird. Just leave room for my Osborne.

It's a neat coincidence that he's into hockey, b/c I've really been getting into it lately!

I'm enjoying the atelier A LOT already. It's good to work those creative muscles, they atrophy sometimes.

I have to ask...what's an osborne? Also, I got a real great kick reading about someone having a terrible time trying to type on a Sun keyboard!! That used to kill me...they also switch the location of ctrl and capslock, so the fun is neverending *groan*

I've finally got apple II emulator for my PC that works...I've been killing way too many braincells and too much time playing Bard's Tale.

Thanks for stopping by! It's nice to meet you, and I'll see you around.

dave

An osbourne was a computer that was released in the early 80's I believe. It's claim to fame is that because the company touted the as yet undeveloped second release of the platform, no one bought the first ones and they went under.

It's always a kick for me to find a hockey fan!

By the way, Lil, our hostess at the Atelier, is one of the froodiest people on thie here Guide.

It was the first real portable -- looked like something pulled out of the navigation room of a submarine. Ran C/PM.

I'm also the Duchess of Munchkinstein.

http://www.machine-room.org/companies/130/

There are a couple of pics of the Osbourne on that site.

CP/m *sucks* It was a horrible OSen. I have played with it some on a friends Osbourne.

But it was all there was, unless you had 20 thou to lay out on a Convergent Technologies machine and run CTOS. You programmed in pl/m86 on that. onderful machine.

Or you could have one of the original Apples.

Neat computer...sounds like it was a real great new thing. I had to get some data off an old Minc-PDP-11, 8" disks...that old thing still works great 20 years later. I don't think any computer I've had in the last 8 years will last half that long...

I used to work at Kodak, in a theoretical calculation lab, and the old timers there had some awesome stories about programming in the early days...they had to write all the code themselves. So if they needed a lot of memory for a calculation, they had to write the virtual memory code, the page switching. They were a cool group to hang with.

So are the MIT hacks still happening? I hav read about many of them in the past. Sounds like a great tradition to build on.

CTOS was a totally transparent OS, right down to the data packet handling. The original machine had a 20 MB hard drive, an 8 inch floppy, lots of RAM and it came with a book by Stephen Morse called "The Central Processing Unit" which described all the functions of the 8086 and yer basic motherboard. That book should be taught in Computer Sci 101. Then Burroughs bought out Convergent in 1981 I think, and then became Unisys.

That osbourne came out in 1980? The 20 Mb harddrive is huge for that time. Sounds like the manual was sweet, really gave you everything you needed to make it sing.

The most recent hack was to celebrate the 100 yrs since the wright brothers...they made a re-creation of the plane on the main dome

Hey Marv

Funny coincidence, I'm heading to SLC tomorrow to visit my brother and a friend, and hopefully get in some snowboarding. My friend says it's unbeilavable out there - I can't wait, I've never skied or boarded in the west. Try to arrange for some fresh snow if you can -

thanks,
dave

Hey, what days will you be here? We should try to hook up for a beer if you would like. GDZ I am sure would like to meet you as well.

Give me a quick email at marvthegrate comcast net and I will give you my phone numbers to call me.

Sounds great! I sent you my brothers phone # in SLC, I'll give you a call when I get town. See you soon.

dave

So, how did y'all get on? Were photos taken?