tech – A Jaunty Little Blog

August 14, 2024

What, Another Computer Post?

Friends,

A lot of years ago, when I used to work at the Omnipresent Charitable Organization, we got a donation of broken PowerBooks. I wanted to use one of them as my work machine, so I sent them out to Powerbook Medic for diagnosis. The doctor did not have good news: One had a bad logic board and the other had a bad power board. No way the charity would pay for repairs, so they had to go.

I bought them for next to nothing to see what I could do with them, and they spent a little time with my sister. Bad logic board machine charging batteries that would run the machine with the bad power board. That got tiresome (of course it did!) and they ended up on a shelf.

Fast forward ten years, and my interest was renewed. Why? A sale on PowerBook power boards showed up and I bought one. Old board out, new one in. Then the hard drive packed up and I gave up.

Another few years forward and a member on the 68kmla site asks if anybody has a line on Pismo parts. I was pretty sure one of the two was a Pismo, but wasn’t sure which. I pulled out the bronze keyboard big boys and discovered that the dead one was a Lombard, and the good one, the one I have now fitted with an SSD, is a Pismo.

Our 68kmla friend still wanted the Lombard, so we arranged for shipping and it went out the other day.

A working Pismo was not in my plans, but here it is. The keyboard is very good and it’s pretty responsive despite the small amount of RAM. I’m kinda digging it.

Your pal,

– bob

April 22, 2024

Did you try turning it off and on again?

Friends,

It’s been one of the Monday-est Mondays in a while, but here’s some good news that makes me remarkably happy. The engineers at JPL correctly diagnosed the problem on the Voyager 1 spacecraft that put it in a boot loop since November. They uploaded a patch (22+ hours from here to there) and have been waiting all day for confirmation that it worked. That’s pretty decent tech support for a 50-year old hand-built computer that’s 15 billion miles away.

I guess patience pays off.

Your pal,

– bob

February 14, 2024March 13, 2024

A Small Confession

Friends,

I’m using the Olivetti Lettera 36, an electric typewriter from the past that feels like it was intended to predict the future, to write this thing. It’s Italian, but I don’t think that has anything to do with my current problem: How do you make an exclamation mark on this thing? I’ve figured out how to make an apostrophe by rolling up the platen half a line and type a comma. I’ve even figured out that the lowercase “L” is a good substitute for the number one. The problem with this typewriter, as with many others, is that there’s no one key. On this machine, that’s been taken up by the “Keyboard Release” key. I think this machine has a problem with keys jamming in the basket and you need a special key to unjam the jam that they clearly considered to be inevitable.

I can’t say that I blame them. I find that as I grow more comfortable I with the machine, I’m coming perilously close to jamming it myself. Or it’s full of gunk, or rust. Also, let’s be honest, this thing is fairly loud. I’m concerned that the obsolete plastic gears or elderly drive belts are going to give up in short order. We’ll see…

Your best pal,

– bob

UPDATE: I just had to use the Keyboard Release button. I’m not sure exactly what I did to jam the keys, but the Release key did the trick. Super weird. Also, I could still use some help making the exclamation mark.

ANOTHER UPDATE: It looks like there’s a simple solution. Lowercase L for the number one. That was easy. For the exclamation mark, shift+8 for an apostrophe, and continue holding down the shift key, then hit period to stack the characters without advancing the carriage. I must’ve slept through typing class on this one. Amazing! Or, you know, amazing!

AN ADDITIONAL OTHER UPDATE: This post is part of The Typewriter Project. A post nearly every day on a typewriter, then scanned and posted here.

a_small_confession.pdf

September 9, 2023September 9, 2023

Where to begin…

Friends,

I had an idea, which is dangerous on its surface, but it turns out that this idea has been kind of expensive. The idea revolves around the idea of distraction-free writing. Which is in itself a misnomer. Who isn’t distracted by things? Dogs, coyotes breaking into the backyard trying to eat dogs, Nine Inch Nails suddenly popping up in the playlist, a smell, the garbage trucks playing catch-up from the holiday weekend speeding down the street. You get the idea. Life is hectic.

I thought that if I were to spend more time posting to this here endeavor, I could dig through the rubble of history to find a nice technological solution to get away from the social media and email notifications constantly ding-ding-dinging just in my periphery.

I thought that I might take advantage of one of the best compact keyboards from the mid-90s. None other than the Newton External Keyboard with a USB adapter.

It works great, but there’s that distraction again with the iPad happy to share notifications about EVERYTHING. Geez Karen, cool it.

Then I thought that I’d spend a little time resurrecting the trusty Palm Pilot. I already had the folding keyboard, so how hard could it be?

Hard enough. Palm desktop won’t install on Intel Macs. Palm Pilots of a certain vintage don’t have drivers for the keyboard built in, and Memo stinks as a writing tool. Also, getting files out is just as challenging as it is with the Apple Newton eMate. In either scenario, there needs to be an old computer sitting around as an intermediary. It doesn’t help that the more recent versions of macOS don’t play nice with Appletalk and the Apple Filing Protocol. Because, you know, progress.

Also, did the Palm Pilot screen get smaller? Just me? okay.

The answer for distraction-free writing, staring down all of us tech nerds, is the manual typewriter. Slamming slugs against an ink-drenched ribbon to leave some meaning behind. You’ve heard of it.

I got very silly and bought a couple machines through eBay. Machines that looked cool, but machines that I don’t like very much.

The key effort is too high for me and my now-noodly copywriter arms. Also, I wasn’t ready for the stadium layout of the keys. It turns out that I just don’t want to reach that high for the number row, since I’ve spent all this time on flat keyboards. I stopped by the Idyllwild Help Center today and found the machine everyone has been telling me I’d love—a mid-60s Olivetti Lettera 32. The key layout is nearly flat and the effort is so light that I could type on this thing all day.

It’s an absolute joy to type on, and once I put in a new ribbon, it should be a nice addition to the typing horde.

The plan is pretty simple(-ish). I have a sheet-feed scanner that I can connect to a computer that’s on most of the time. I’ll type a page, plop it into the scanner, and through some scripting I can recognize the text and save the image of the page, so everything just posts to the blog.

Like magic.

I guess we’ll see if that works when I post my first typed blog post.

The 20-something marketing experts offering advice on how to build audiences suggest not making promises in your blog that you can’t deliver. I can’t let them down, can I?

Actually, I don’t mind letting them down, but not you, dear reader. Let’s make this happen!

Your pal,

– bob

September 29, 2022September 29, 2022

What’s All Dat?

Friends,

It’s been a little while, hasn’t it? Since we last convened, I have injured my back rather severely, gone on a three-day work trip to New Orleans, Louisiana, adopted and brought back to life a very slow and very charming old computer, and I’m getting ready to put a roof on The Secret Alpine Laboratory. I also have very bad news about the Idyllwild Weather Clam that I can no longer suppress. Sufficiently teased? Great!

Remember to stretch

I thought that storm waters were flowing under the stem wall into the crawlspace under the cabin. Add some dirt, and the resulting mud flow had swamped some stacked drywall and lumber. Their stinky and moldy corpses were immediately punted to the landfill. However, it wasn’t local flooding at all. The problem was a perforated iron drain pipe from the kitchen sink. I cut it out, removed the mud, and jammed everything back into the garage.

Now, when I need to move equipment out, I’m navigating over a couple welders, around dead batteries, and through a narrow passage before I get them through the door. It’s tight and the obstacles are stabby. I grabbed the miter saw to chop the new custom threshold that was the wrong size. The first injury must’ve made a cartoon “sproing!” noise inside my back somewhere in the neighborhood of T10 or T11. The second part, where I turned the wrong way while still carrying the saw surely sounded like a Spanish galleon running aground on the rocky shores of L5-S1. I wouldn’t know because all I could see was white and all I could smell was pain.

That was on Labor Day.

Economy class

Three days later, I was on a plane headed for New Orleans to meet my coworkers in person for the first time. It’s hard to fault United Airlines for wanting to crowd as many people in each plane as possible. After all, the industry has received billions of dollars in loans and relief from American taxpayers over the last decade. They’re hurting for cash!

I haven’t been on a plane since our honeymoon before the pandemic. Since then, the seats have been moved even closer together, the cushions replaced with ones that are much thinner. Would the pain meds kick in soon? Maybe they already had and the pain from the back injury, plus the seats, plus the knees belonging to the woman seated behind me, was actually much greater than this.

This was the theme for the entire trip, unfortunately.

I had to plan ahead for every walking adventure. Is it too far? Can I make it back to the hotel on foot or will I have to call for a ride? After checking in at the hotel, I left to meet everyone who had arrived first and it was like old friends picking up where we’d left off. Except we’d never met in person. It’s a good group and we had a lot of laughs.

Even the next day, when we ventured out to hit a particular tourist spot, everybody had a great time.

Team building exercises, cajun bánh mì for lunch (You didn’t know that was a thing, did you?), then dinner at The Roosevelt. A packed schedule, for sure. The next day was just as packed. Vegetarian eggs benedict (Cajun style, ‘natch), quality time in an escape room, then off to the return trip home.

A funny thing happened on the way back. Same planes, but they were only half full. It took two planes to get home and both flights had a lot of empty seats, including the middle seat. I could spread out, stretch, and stop whimpering about the persistent back pain which had not relented.

It wasn’t until 10:30 or so that evening that I finally got home and was greeted by the welcoming committee.

Is this the party to which I am speaking?

Before I left on my trip, I won an auction for this little nugget…

Yes, that’s right. It’s an Apple Newton eMate 300 portable computer, from your childhood. This one seems to be in remarkably good shape, even though the battery was as flat as can be. It ran for about five minutes after a full charge, complaining about imminent automatic shutdown after two. Back to ebay for a five dollar nickel-metal hydride battery pack intended for a baby monitor. It’s the right shape, I just transferred the temp sensor so the charging circuit can detect if it’s overheating.

It’s that thing under the tape in the center of the batteries. Peel it off, cut the power leads and solder on the new ones. Stick the sensor down on the new pack and tape everything back together. Not only easy, but also peasy.

Now there’s the small problem of getting the thing to talk to any of the modern computers around here. Modern like the Clamshell iBook, or the 12-inch G4 Stuntbook. I installed the software and adapted the adapters, but still get a “can’t communicate with this computer” message. I’m stumped.

Cement pond

You know the old chestnut about how the cobbler’s children go barefoot? I never truly believed it, myself. Who’s going to raise a family with a fruit crumble? Absurd. (unless it’s peach. i love a peach cobbler. -ed)

Even though my Dad built pools for a living, he did next to nothing to repair the swimming pool at the family home. The tile was falling off, plaster cracked, diverter valves frozen in place, wiring strapped to piece of plywood held up by a single rusty nail. It was a real mess, but he was unwilling and later unable to do anything about it.

Since his passing, Mom has taken on the big projects, like rehabbing the pool. I have to say that it looks great.

An added bonus is that I’m the first person to actually go for a swim since its rehabilitation. I’m happy to report that it’s great. Wouldn’t change a thing.

The Sad and Tragic Demise of Big Fine Salty Mountain Tide Pool

As you know, we’ve been dealing with a longstanding drought here in California brought about by climate change. I’ve been doing my part to solve the problem, but not enough, apparently. Our gal, the Idyllwild Weather Clam was nowhere to be found when I arrived at my Secret Alpine Laboratory to have the roof replaced. Her tidepool was a dry and desolate place, since we’ve had next to no rain this summer and she has apparently packed up and left. Yet another climate refugee, I fear.

If you hear from her, please ask her to call and let her know that I put more minutes on her prepaid phone.

If only she had waited

Why am I still here at the Lab, you ask? The gigantic and very expensive roofing job had to be postponed for most of this week due to torrential downpours. A inch and a half of rain on Sunday and another inch yesterday. It’s enough to spook a roofer, so we start tomorrow, and by “we” I mean “they” start tomorrow. My involvement is to keep a fire extinguisher nearby and to see if my noise-cancelling headphones are good for anything beyond plane travel.

Whew! That was a lot. I’ve been having trouble with my web host, so this may not post correctly. Cross your things for good luck.

Your pal,

– bob

May 12, 2021May 12, 2021

Sometimes The Universe Just Knows

Friends,

I’ve been looking for a new gig for a while now and it’s really getting to be a drag. I’m spending a fairly large number of hours every day applying for jobs on various sites, responding to recruiter queries, chatting on the phone with talent acquisition professionals, and involuntarily twitching when an email from Phil at Ziprecruiter arrives with jobs that “he” thinks I’ll like. I just want to get hired for a job that I can enjoy and be fairly compensated for that work. That opportunity feels strangely elusive until today.

I had a nice chat with a talent acquisition professional who was lovely on the phone, did not seem to mind the spotty cell coverage at my Secret Alpine Laboratory. She suggested that I would move to the next interview round after consultation with another manager, so I’ll take that to mean that it went well.

Then, I spied in my inbox that a job I’d been passed over for a month ago is open again. It’s a weird one for sure; a high-paying custom picture framing job. Mostly production-type work, but they’re working on building their custom framing business. I can do that! I’ll even join the Professional Picture Framers of America to lend legitimacy to the effort. That sounds like good fun.

I hit Apply, then got a notification that the local company that’s been selling home automation gizmos for decades has an opening. You know how I love my gadgets, integrating X-10 Powerline stuff into Dad’s high-end swimming pool projects to provide rudimentary remote control. I automated the Lodge before that was a thing. Now I’ve moved to Homekit, but I think I better brush up on my Zigbees and my Z-Waves.

Yes, of course I applied. This could be very entertaining.

That’s a lot of fingers to cross, but I hope you’ll spare some phalanges for your best pal in the whole world.

– bob

October 29, 2020October 29, 2020

It Seemed Like A Good Idea

Friends

Here we go! I’m using a 33-year old Apple M0110A keyboard with a Drakware adapter to type this on my iPad, and it’s glorious. Spongy keys making noisy noises is just the start. The other great part of this is the keyboard’s physical height, which is absolutely perfect for typing from the couch in front of the teevee. The election is next week and this is looking like my weapon of choice to push my dumb thoughts to the blog that you (probably) can’t get enough of.

Except for one thing: There’s no good blog editor for self-hosted WordPress that works on an iPad. Not without crashing. Not without a lengthy session repairing the problems imposed by the editor.

Maybe this keyboard will work great on a laptop…

Your pal,

– bob

UPDATE: What’s that you say? Where’s the love for the Apple Desktop Bus? You know me, I’m down with the ADB. I picked up an adapter for ADB as well as the original Mac straight-through phone cord connector and I’m enjoying the Apple Keyboard II with the Apple Desktop Bus Mouse II. What’s missing? The second button on the mouse, which is easily solved with a Ctrl+click. Scrolling is a harder problem because windows on modern Macs have disappearing scroll bars. Grab them before they go away, because they will go away. Vintage computing is fun.

June 25, 2020June 25, 2020

Creaky Old Weirdos

Friends,

An update on Le Musée des Ordinateurs Anciens:

The Toshiba that caught fire after I soldered on the battery jumper backwards—in my defense, the battery terminals were mislabeled—is still on hold. Once burned, twice shy, I suppose.
The Toshiba Satellite I started work on has a bad and expensive to fix display, so that’s on hold for a bit as well.
But look here! The old Amiga 1200 is working! Sorta!

I cleaned up the Amiga after it spent some unfortunate time in the garage and it started right up. Its whopping 170 megabyte hard drive made a lot of clicking and clacking noises, but didn’t boot the machine. Time for a new hard drive.

Luckily, there’s a seller in the UK that sells brand new CompactFlash cards with the Amiga Workbench installed, and the hardware needed to hook it all up. I ordered it up and it arrived a month later. Can’t wait to see how the old gal runs after all this time.

BTW, got a spare a 72-pin 128 MB SIMM laying around? I’ll trade you a box of double density floppy disks.

Stay safe. Wear a mask, please.

Your pal,

– bob

April 30, 2019May 7, 2019

What Are You Doing? Calculator Edition (update)

Friends,

It’s been a little while since I wrote about the pretty dead and not alive Toshiba T1000. I think that there’s probably somebody who wants the bits that remain, like the display, case and floppy drive, so I was thinking about selling. There’s a lot of other stuff to sell as well, like clamshell iBook batteries, Powerbook G3 pieces, and other computer stuff.

What I’ve turned my attention to at the moment is completing the handheld calculator wing of Musée de l’Informatique Anciens. Sure, I’ve got Rockwell four-bangers, Casio melody calculators, and a model that didn’t feel the need to include a decimal point. They’ve got red LEDs, LCD displays, and the collection includes my very first calculator—a green LED Casio four-function. It’s my favorite, but the next one was a gem that was extremely popular…

The Texas Instruments TI-30 digital slide rule. Yeah, that’s right. They used that marketing to differentiate this student-focused model from the pro-level “scientific” models. Mine came in a package with a great book that I read over and over again, The Great International Math On Keys Book. I went from junior high pre-algebra failure to college math major by paying attention to the processes in this book (and a few others).

I still have the book, but I don’t know where the calculator went. Time to find a replacement, I think.

They made a bazillion of them, so it should be easy to find another one.

Your pal,

– bob

UPDATE: Replacement TI-30 has been ordered and is on its way! Very exciting.

May 25, 2016

Have You Left A Comment Lately?

A lovely centered picture of a very confused Mister McFeely.

Friends,

Just a housekeeping note. If you’ve tried to leave a comment, which I appreciate immensely, it may not have shown up for a very long time. The reason for this is two-fold. Even though the comments are moderated by me, I don’t have a mechanism to notify me if something’s awaiting my approval and because of the limitations of the platform, I never will. Second, on top of my lack of diligence in writing things here lately, I also have a less than stellar record of maintaining this joint—including moderating comments.

It’ll get better as I get back into the swing of regular updates. Thanks for your patience and continued readership.

Your pal,

– bob

April 25, 2016

Several In The Bush

Friends,

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted an update, but what a little while it’s been. Since I last wrote some words here and you’ve read them, I’ve taken a position working for the company that contracts to the company that provides Tier III tech support to an enormous multinational publishing company. The office I’m working in near some flower fields and a small regional airport is staffed with good folks who seem to like each other, which is a wild departure from my last office gig. What is not a departure is that the executives do not seem to know what happens in this office. It’s all a laugh though and I’m enjoying my time there.

This means that I don’t get to see my chunk of forest in person very often, so I’m with you having to make due with the webcam images. All of this could change at any time, of course. The people at the new gig could label me a fraud and a sham, sending me packing. A new company could call and offer me uncountable wealth for agreeing to share small pearls of wisdom with them. A large meteor could strike tiny Aguanga, California rendering the roads impassible (like they need any more grief. – ed It’s just an example.). These are things that could potentially happen, but will they? Probably not, don’t count on it, and surely not.

What I do know for sure is that recruiters keep calling and I keep picking up. At this point, though force of habit. They might have something else for me to do soon, but in the meanwhile, I’m happy to spend my day taking apart Dell laptops and resetting passwords.

Your pal,

– bob

September 28, 2015

Nothing But Trouble

Friends,

I wrote this for inclusion in an application package to write for an Apple-centric blog. I haven’t heard back from them, but I thought you might enjoy it. Please also note that it clocks in at 299 words, which seemed important.

Chris, the Time Warner Cable installer arrived early for the appointment yesterday. His detailed tattoos declared his love of mountain biking. His worn and too-large boots showed that he’d been around a while. It was time for me to make the switch from the rural-class DSL recommended by the realtor when I bought the cabin to faster and cheaper cable.

Connections complete, he poked around on his iPad to turn up the service while I poked around on the Mac Mini to see why the network wasn’t coming up. I should at least get a connection to the router, I thought, but Safari protested, “You are not connected to the Internet.” I’ve never used a Netgear modem with this Airport Extreme, but the modem’s lights were all reassuringly green next to the Airport’s ominous orange.

“Oh, you’ve got one of these,” Chris sighed, flipping the Airport around. “I have nothing but trouble with these things.” That can’t be, I thought. Apple stuff just works. After decades of troubleshooting and cussing and fixing PCs and third-party gear, I made an effort to keep my own home network as homogeneous as possible. I need to get actual work done, so only Macs, iOS and Airport will do. I’m all in.

I managed to change the network address settings in Airport Utility and hit Update only moments before Chris took matters into his own hands and pulled the router’s power. “There, that should do it,” he beamed. Green light, connection established, and I was ready to stream the Galaxie 500 deep cuts playlist. If I were a good Apple evangelist, I would’ve told him that the static IP settings weren’t working. Instead, I simply thanked him for his hard work and gave him a positive rating on the survey.

If you have comments, please leave them on your Pinterest or Instagram feeds and I’ll go look for them.

Your pal,

– bob

May 21, 2015

Tramway!

Friends,

How do you build a tram system up a steep slope before we invented anti-gravity boots and rock-climbing robots? Helicopters! These “mechanical dragonflies” hauled stuff up the hill to build towers and string cables so that a bunch of guys in the 1960s didn’t have to. This video is 25 minutes of your life that you may, as I do, find fascinating.

Also, the opening set-up shots are worth the time just to see the hotels and businesses that no longer exist—like Bob Hope.

Come for the nostalgia, stay for the crass jokes!

Your pal,

– bob

May 20, 2015

Oh, The Technical Issues You’ll Have!

Friends,

I’ve been working on cleaning up some of the issues around here, but it’s a bit of a slog to go back through ten years of posts to find what’s broken. Here are only a few of the fun things that have gone wrong at your favorite Jaunty Little Blog:

When I moved to the new hosting platform, some of the images didn’t make it over. There are broken links everywhere and I’m going through the archives to return the missing files. It’s a bit of a mess.
Changing to the new template has damaged some of the closing tags for links in the posts. This means that links are just spilling across entire articles instead of ending where the link is supposed to end. I’m not entirely sure why this happened, but I’m going through each post and editing tags. So far, I’ve made it back to 2012.

I’m sure there’s a lot more to do, but I appreciate your patience while I continue to work on restoring some order.

Your pal,

– bob

UPDATE: I’m having a harder time finding old pictures than I thought. It turns out that my naming convention wasn’t as air-tight as I thought. I hope the Wayback Machine can help.

January 9, 2015

Things I Learned While Staring At Trees

Friends,

I was really looking forward to having a respite in 2015 from the nightmare that was 2014. Make no mistake, 2014 was no picnic. I had to quit the job I relied on to get away from an evil boss. Racial turmoil and mass shootings roiled these United States. War, disease and privation made above the fold headlines every single day. Soft media concerned themselves with glossy asses and selfie sticks. Surely, the jackals could take a moment to reflect and step away for a while. This was not to be.

The Paris offices of French magazine Charlie Hedbo were shot up yesterday by Muslim extremists, killing 12 and shocking a nation. This was one of the few publications that republished the cartoons depicting Mohammed published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005, earning the magazine a fatwa.

The day before, a chapter of the NAACP in Colorado Springs was bombed, leading to hardly a peep of news coverage. Apparently, this wasn’t fireworks or a gas leak as some have suggested. Rather, this domestic terror attack was intentional, but the outrage machine has been mostly dormant.

The 2016 Chevy Volt was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show the day before that. One of its key features is the ability of the car to extend to you GM’s “commerce and engagement offering” by showing you ads and offering you coupons when you drive by participating businesses. You can also receive a discount on your insurance via the car’s built-in connection to Progressive Insurance by opting into allowing the car to tell them if you’ve been speeding or doing other naughty things. Hashtag: snitch.

We have also been bombarded in this nascent year with the news that our New Year’s snow storm did not put a dent in California’s drought. which is the worst that has ever happened in the history of forever. We will need, it is supposed, 11 trillion gallons of water to cure this deficit, which is an unimaginable and unattainable number. Therefore, we are doomed.

Or are we?

Okay, yes, maybe we are doomed. What has changed is that we’re being constantly beat over the head with our own failures and our own suffering. The bludgeoning by the media with the cudgel of despair must drive ratings or SEO or clicks or something, but I can see a way to manage the gloom…

Require the media to offer solutions.

None of this “spark a dialog” or “encourage a conversation” nonsense. I’m talking about real solutions. If the drought is caused by too many of those little silica desiccant packs in our packages drying out the air, let’s get rid of them. If the bombers in Colorado mistook the NAACP building for an Arby’s, let’s find a way to get them better maps. If French Islamist extremists don’t understand that cartoons aren’t actually photographs of the prophet, let’s give provide them with a better arts education.

Okay, I couldn’t think of real solutions for any of those problems except for this: Never buy a GM product with OnStar. Ever.

Your pal,

– bob