What I did this weekend

From: Wirehead Prime <wirehead_at_retrocomputing.com>
Date: Thu Jan 15 23:09:39 1998

> I don't usually frequent the 5 or 6 thrift shops around here, and flea
> markets and yard sales I don't have time for usually, but sometimes when
> I'm going somewhere else, I have this "feeling", a sixth sense if you will,
> that I absolutely have to stop at these places. When I do, I usually find

Well, aside from a sixth sense that tells me when someone is scum (when
you get a successful business going scum come spewing out of the
wood-work wanting to spend your money on all kinds of goofy schemes) and
a sixth sense that tells me when a house is haunted (yeah yeah I
know...think what you want...it's true anyway), I also have a sixth sense
that tells me where a problem is located in a malfunctioning computer or
program or network. I also have this thing where I can walk around our
office and "hear" that a machine is malfunctioning. I'll just be
wandering around, as I'm wont to do occasionally, and stop and say to
someone, "Do you hear that?" and they'll say, "What?" and I'll walk over
to some piece of equipment, turn on the monitor and it'll be malfunctioning.

That still freaks out my co-workers.

The best example...and I swear on a stack of Holy Literature that it's
true...is one evening I'm sitting on my couch reading a book and I
suddenly got this funny feeling. I got up, walked downstairs to the
computer room and logged on to one of my unix boxes at work and noticed
things were funny. Looking around I discovered that three of our
machines were being hacked and was able to lock everything down long
enough to repair the damage and keep the miscreants out.

I then went down to work, where a couple of my co-workers were still
working, and sat down and immediately...almost effortlessly...found the
hidden directory where they were keeping their evil replacements for
things like netstat, ps, login, etc etc. It was not in an obvious
location but I just kind of found it.

That REALLY freaked out my co-workers...to the extent that they briefly
accused me to fabricating the whole thing. It soon became apparent,
fortunately, that that was impossible when they saw telnets coming in
from loser-wannabe.hackers-from-hell.com etc etc. =-)

> >I do that too stop at garage sales and couple stores on my way from work. I
> >guess it was mostly meant for major events. For 'casual' shopping we
> >probably can E-talk before making a move (the machine is probably not going
> >to disapear overnight).

I mostly pick up my fun machines at hamfests and by just mentioning to
people that I collect old computers. I mentioned to a web customer that
I collect old computers and he asked, "How old?". "Oh, sixties,
seventies, eighties. DEC, S-100, etc." and he put me onto the 8i's in
St. Louis that I picked up.

Every time I go into a thrift store some skeezy guy is looking at dresses
and ladies' underpants. The computers either look like they were used in
a cigarette testing lab or are far over-priced for what they are. And
there always seems to be some guy who sincerely believes that I am
personally to blame for his broken MS-DOS machine and, by way of
compensation, I should have to listen to him lecture on the evils of
Macintoshes and Unix.

(Of course, that's nothing compared to the book sale I went to last year
[yes, this is off topic]...I'm standing at a table looking at books and
this guy across from me is talking to himself and suddenly looks directly
at me and shouts, "Cleveland!" and wanders away. Later, he wanders back
repeating over and over, "No WAY they're gettin' me to Ohio...No WAY...do
ya hear me?????? NO way! Not OHIO!") I swear it's true.

Anyway, sorry about the off-topic post.

I now have a complete manual set for RSX-11M and a fairly complete
collection of PDP-8 manuals and DEC logic handbooks as well as many others.
There, that was on topic. =-)

Anthony Clifton - Wirehead
Received on Thu Jan 15 1998 - 23:09:39 GMT