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I Forge Iron

hot steel and cold penguins


FlatLiner

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I change distros every time I change motherboards; been in UNIX based systems for a long time, (System 5, sun os, solaris, FT Unix; it's in the family; my Father chaired the committee that decided to make Unix a supported OS back at AT&T Bell Labs.

Worked with RED HAT, DEBIAN KUBUNTU, UBUNTU, Fedora Core, Arch,... It's windows I find a puzzlement!

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I love this.  normally I say linux and the response is "wut?" I have one laptop that I try distros out on.  Its older, so I'm always on the lookout for something lean.  Ubuntu seems to have gotten bloated.  Mint isn't much better, but I get a balance between usability and performance with the LXDE window manager.  Pure Debian works well, but it's such a pain to set up I usually give up and go back to mint.

I'll have to look at Startpage.  haven't heard about that one.

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That might not be a bad idea.  Call it "hot steel and cold penguins"?  How about "Slacksmiths" for those who have installed a certain distro from a pile of 15 floppy disks.

There is something to be said about similarities in the mind of a Blacksmith and the mind of someone who uses Linux.  It occurs to me that in each group there is a likelihood of using things that come to hand to make or rig or tool to accomplish whatever you need to without thinking "It can't be done".  Recycling also seems to play a factor.  Scrap piles and re-purposed stuff seems pretty common around here.  I tend to play with and use old computers and electronics and linux helps with that, where Windoze seems to encourage scrapping the old machine and buying a new one (with a shiny new version of Windoze, of course.)   I have a 20 year old toshiba laptop running Puppy linux whose sole purpose is to provide music for a stereo made of recycled electronics (Computer power supply, car amp,  old truck speaker box with speakers from a Saturn i used to drive...)  

I always feel like an idiot when reading man pages.  I usually find what I need but it takes forever as half of what is in there is beyond me.  Often what I find is that I should probably be looking at a different command entirely.

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There wasn't any "google" during my formative years online and I started with text only forums and so tended to describe things where others would post photos, (I also remember dial-up and monochrome screens and how excited I was to get a connection that was faster downloading then my reading speed.)

I remember running Fedora Core 1 for about a decade as it did what I wanted on that system.  No security updates to destabilize the system either!

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I learned on a IBM 360/370 mainframe in Unix, and ran an Ubuntu PC for many years.

A friend of mine had a hacker try to latch onto one of his Ubuntu machines, so he gave him a WIN shell to play in while he back-traced him. then had that hacker running in circles

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I doubt I could handle basic since the accident so I'll refrain from looking like an idiot by making a wise crack. 

A while back I was exploring  rabbit holes and came across a guy who hunted hackers and identity thieves. His thing was to lead them on while he hacked their system and sometimes trick them into permanently erasing their files, then the OS, sometimes he'd get entire hacker networks. He described what he was doing and how but it was so far over my head I just take comfort in knowing he and some friends are out there. 

Frosty The Lucky.

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We had an old, donated, PDP-11 in High School using teletypes and punched paper tape.  At college they has a IBM 370/168 and punched cards and worn out keypunches for the students...

When I was interviewing for a possible job at Sandia National Labs they took me by their history of computing display and were amazed that I recognized a ferrite bead memory unit---it's what we went to the Moon with!

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Ah, punched paper tapes.  I think I still have in my artifacts a punched paper tape of a cave surveying program that I did, possibly in Basic or Fortran.  If I ever wanted to use it again I'd probably have to go to a museum for a reader and computer that would interface with the reader.

One of the major decision node points in my life was when the bottom fell out of geology in the early '80s was what I was going to do with the rest of my life.  The choices came down to 1) a Master's in geology, 2) a 2d bachelors degree in Computer Science, or 3) law school.  I went with door #3.  Door #2 would have been my 2d choice.  Door #1 would have been a poor choice because 2 years later I would have still been an unemployed geologist with an MS.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

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How very odd; I too was in that crash of the early 1980's, living in OKC and working for Datalog well logging company.  I was unemployed for a year---remodeling a house; then spent a year apprenticed to a swordmaker. (6 days a week in the shop, no pay but 2 meals a day with his family type of apprenticeship), living off my savings.  Got married and had to get a job to feed a family, worked in a factory and took EEET classes until suddenly I had a chance to go to work for Bell Labs.   They told me that the Geo degree was all fine and good; but I needed to get one in something they were involved in. (Bell Labs used to have one of the most sensitive seismographs in the world---listening for Russian nuclear weapons tests, but they got out of that business.)  So I got a BS in Computer Science.

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Y'all 'r talkin martian fantasy greek!  and I cannot find a translator.  Learned some computereze on a huge machine at college (Texas A&M) with card punching.  Only Fortran.  Then was able to use a Dex machine at my first job with Fortran, but then went to XT or AT and command lines - whichever came first (I don't remember).  IBM lent me a real early machine when I was building a large assembly and shipping facility in KY for them.  The company financial guy commandeered it though.  At the time the company had an IBM 36.  It was an interesting time - one of the companies we owned and I got to stick my nose into helping them run it - was all Mac and I had to get familiar with that platform.  Man, that was like night and day then!  Other than that all I know is how to punch buttons!  Once a redneck - always a redneck.

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I feel for ya on that score.  I have one windows machine in the house, but only because I get paid by my employer to have it there.

I'm of a later generation.  I remember Dad telling me about programing in octal, using punch cards and paper tape.  I played with telnet on some terminals during my first attempt at college at NMSU.  I wish I could remember more about it, but an 18 year old in close proximity to Mexico.... Let's just say I was not too attentive.  

When I went back to school after a 5 year "semester off" I tried CS as a major and found out that I don't have the true knack that makes a programmer.  Machine language 1 showed me that I could not code my way out of a paper bag.  I was still pretty good with higher level stuff and switched to Information Systems.  For my advanced Networking class I set up a Linux server with Slackware (I got an A) and have been using Linux ever since.  Outside of video games, I have not come across a task that I cannot accomplish in Linux with free software.

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When I was laid off by Dell I used my employee discount to buy a windows laptop so I could send out resumes and know that all the windows based employers wouldn't run into any glitches.   Got a job near home (5 miles), that involved both my Geo Degree and my CIS degree; so I guess it worked.  Sure showed me why I dislike windows all over again.

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I deal with that every darn day.  I build and maintain MS Access databases.  I started as a plain old excel number cruncher where I worked and after about 6 months I pitched to my employer that we could do more faster if we ported everything over to a database.  We were also trying to filter the useful 20 or 30 lines out of a several thousand line report spewed out by SAP every day.  Well, now I have 6 different databases built for most of our tasks that I get to maintain and improve and that has become my full time job.  our grand poobahs have decreed that we already had Access so that is what we will use and we shall not deviate from it.  Oh, and we can't spend any money at all to have SAP do anything to make their own product better.

I don't think that's too bad for someone who can't code their way out of a wet paper sack.  And frankly, I forgive Microsoft every Friday, when my paycheck comes in.

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I'd like to see more selection in the IFI emoji menu too. I'd like a good YUCK emoji, spit in disgust would be a treat.

Apps remind me too much of state highway designers and what they do the general usefulness of the road system. They just MUST design something new and revolutionary to justify a paycheck, so Alaska is installing turning circles everywhere and lousy ones to boot! You see the same thing in "modern" parking lots, curbs and green zones designed to channel traffic, mostly designed by folks who probably don't have a driver's license. 

So every time my OS updates I have to go through my system and find where this update hid the preferences it reset to THEIR idea of what I should want. I can't download a file to a pre-selected folder with a name unless I find where the new update sent it so I can change it. 

It makes me want to do some choking if I could pry the programmer who thought THAT was a good idea out of his Mother's basement.

Grrrrr.

Frosty The Lucky.

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  • 3 months later...

Well, the hard drive on my laptop packed it in.  It developed a growing number of bad sectors and kept taking out the boot sector I think.  So with the help of puppy linux running off of a USB key I was able to recover the critical stuff

Yesterday, my new 500 Gb Solid State drive arrived!  Once installed, and with a fresh Peppermint Linux install on it the old laptop is now amazingly fast.

Peppermint Linux is quickly becoming my favorite.  It's pretty stripped down but has GUI utilities for most things making reliance on the command line a little less.

The new SSD also came with a dongle and software to turn a SATA hard drive into a USB connected external drive.

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