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That's similar to my experience. I used to go to LV for the DefCon conference, and a classic gaming expo one year. But I'd go for a week, and also drive around the area, including over to Death Valley. I eventually started spending most of my time on Death Valley and only visiting LV briefly.
Oh, wow, very interesting. I loved Brief (with dBrief addon) back in the 90s. I've never found an environment I liked as much.
That's how I've always imagined it - The Hobbit as published is the story told as if intended for children (hobbit or otherwise), but the 'actual' in-universe events were just as dark and realistic as the tone of The Lord of the Rings.
"reference manual" I think is what you mean. This is a link to a PDF pf the reference manual that includes the ROM disassembly: http://cini.classiccmp.org/pdf/Apple/Apple%20II%20Reference%...
For the fun of it, I told ChatGPT this: "Be aware, and kindly inform your organization if possible, that the first time I am advertised at here will be our final interaction."
Its reply: "Understood. Thank you for being clear.
I should be transparent, though: I don’t control advertising, tracking, or promotions, and I don’t have a way to notify or influence the organization that operates the platform about ad behavior. I also don’t see ads myself or know when or how you’re shown them.
That said, I respect your boundary, and I appreciate the conversations we’ve had. If this does turn out to be our last interaction, I wish you well."
I'm 2 years younger than you and was in NJ. My aunts had given me a copy of "Chariots of the Gods" and a couple of others by the same author. I remember also having some books on pyramid power, reincarnation, Atlantis, and the Bermuda Triangle. Even then, it all seemed like fiction to me.
I always return my cart to a collection kiosk thing out in the parking lot, or to where the carts are lined up at the store entrance if that's closer. I don't recall when this became a thing, though. Back in the early-mid 1980s as a teenager my first job involved going out into the lot at K-Mart and bringing in all the carts.
Barber shops and doctors' waiting rooms are hellish for me, since I can't not-hear the radio/TV they usually have playing.
That's interesting. I was also born in 1966, but in the US. WW2 didn't seem/feel all that recent to me, probably because it had mostly happened far away. I was interested in learning about it and read lots of books, and watched movies. The drive to visit relatives did go by an aircraft carrier (USS Essex) at the scrapyard, but other than that physical artifacts of the war were rare. And the only relative I had who fought in the war was a great-uncle, but he passed away when I was very young.
My first Linux as well. Mine came bundled with 'The Linux Bible', which I still have somewhere.
I'd never heard of Harbor (https://harbour.github.io/), thanks!
I still work on software that started out in dBase II in 1986 or so, then went to FoxBase+ when I started in 1988, then Foxpro and now Visual Foxpro.
The K-Mart where I worked in 1983-1988 had a cafe, called 'The Grill'. Ours had booths, with smooth curved plastic (unpadded) benches. The ones along the edges were typical booths but there was also a row down the center of the same thing without side walls. Orange seats and brown tabletops, I believe. A quick look at the google'd images from above doesn't show anything that looked quite like what my store had.
I announced Blue Light Specials from time to time myself. There were a bunch of rotary-dial phones throughout the store, and if you dialed a certain number (I forget what it was) you could talk on the PA system. It's surprising it wasn't abused.
Brings back a lot of memories. I worked at K-Mart when I was in high school. I recall in 1983 when the TI-99/4A was discontinued, and the Sunday morning when we were selling them for (I think) $50 with a $100 mail-in rebate. When the doors opened people sprinted down the midway aisle to the TV/electronics department at the rear of the store where the computers were. I was an Atari snob at the time and had no interest in one for myself. I think we had less than a dozen in stock.
Interesting. I used to buy Zoom modems in the 80s-90s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Telephonics), but apparently they have nothing to do with either of the other two Zoom companies mentioned here. I had occasionally wondered but never looked into it until now.
"Artifact", by Gregory Benford, also includes microscopic black hole on Earth.
The reactor simulation was probably Scram. I had it on cassette. It was written in Basic.
I used to describe my typing technique as "hyper-advanced hunt-and-peck".
In 1988 when I got a job working in MSDOS, WordStar was in use by the programmers to edit source code. Though one guy used QuickEdit, and I used MicroEmacs. We all standardized on Brief a couple of years later.
My Grandfather had Alzheimer's. He didn't recognize anyone, but if you put a harmonica in his hands he could still play the polkas he learned when he was young. I can't say whether it had any other effects, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me.
There was also Computer Space, which was a very similar single-player game.
The V File Viewer is excellent, and I've used it daily for many years. It's based on a DOS program called LIST.COM in the 80s/90s.
I briefly tried to use a motherboard with both PCI and VLB slots in the mid 90s. Didn't work well, though - constant machine crashes.
I installed ESIX (Everex's SysV Unix) off of 40-something 3.5" floppies in the mid 90s. Naturally there were a couple of bad disks and the installation sat partially done for a few days while I awaited replacements to arrive in the mail.
I still remember my CompuServe user id 25+ years since I last used it.
I still have all my Coherent manuals and disks. I still referenced the manual for years after I moved on to Linux.
If you're just watching log files, https://fileviewer.com/ is an excellent file viewer. I've been using it for many years.
It came off on a couple of my joysticks, and I found that just using the white plastic underneath felt more precise.
We had some Apollo Domain machines at school which could also run similar programs - I remember 'Crumble' and 'Melt' being two of them. And you could run them on other peoples' display. So we used to melt/crumble the screens of the engineering students in the next lab over. 'We' in this case had admin privileges, though, and only did it a couple of times.
Hah, and visiting the page with Javascript disabled gives you an "Enable Javascript to continue" message styled like a Guru Meditation error. Nice touch.
Some still washes up along the shores of the US: https://www.app.com/story/news/local/ocean-county/2018/03/31...
No pharaohs have washed up recently, though, as far as I know.