Uncle DT's Random Image Thread

[Kruger]

Oh man, those were fun projects too.  Creating BBS games for Express Pro and actually seeing them in action on line was an ego boost.  Hank was passing along bugs as he ran into them and there were a few that I could not get to the root cause of...

Putting that RamoXL in mine scared the crap out of me.  First, you're soldering on the motherboard.  Next, there were all kinds of static warnings with those DRAM chips.  They weren't cheap and I couldn't imagine frying one...

[Blaze]

Programming for the BBS is what really sparked my interest in programming in general. That's not to say spending an hour or so typing in a program from a magazine wasn't fun.

You're not the only one that had some concerns installing that Rambo XL. Those jumper wires felt so incredibly flimsy. But for some reason I thought the DRAM chips were more expensive than I remember. I thought I spent over $80 getting the chips and I recall ordering them from a company out of Computer Shopper. I checked 1985, 1986 and 1987 and the prices were all within a few cents of each other...

[Kruger]

I seem to remember them being around $8 - $9 per chip, it was after a manufacturing fiasco and prices were jacked up (or something like that).  Maybe things were more bearable in this universe.  The one where the Berenstein Bears were spelled with an "e" had messed up DRAM prices in the 80's...

[Blaze]

I think I was able to open a rift into that parallel universe by finding a Byte magazine archive from January 1985.

I fell into the rabbit hole of that issue. Page 134 A Glimpse Into Future Television. In 1985 and they were talking about HDTV and flat panel TVs. It's weird to think that it took so long to bring it mainstream. What else amazed me was just how technical the articles were. I think that's what's missing in today's media. Everything seems to be so dumbed down. But what really intrigued me the most were all those ads. There were so many, but almost felt welcomed because of how absolutely relevant 90% of them were. But the one that got me was for some tape backup hardware: "She's temporary. But the damage is permanent." Oof. No way that would fly in today's world...

[Kruger]

Oooh, that was a rabbit hole.  I miss those articles and magazines that were geared toward technology and appealed to the tinkerer in me.  I've gotten lost in Antic and Analog magazines on more than one occasion, then it's look at the clock and oh crap, it's 2 AM, I've got to get to bed...

[Blaze]

I know how that goes as well. 10 year old me around Christmas and the Spiegel catalog coming in the mail and I could get lost in that thing for hours at end...

[Kruger]

I'm finding it increasingly easy to get lost in nostalgia and lose all track of time.  It could be something online, like that Byte mag, or the archive with all sorts of magazines.  Other times it's because I'm looking for something specific, and hmmm.  I wonder, is it in *that* box?  Ummm nope, but look at what I did find....

[Blaze]

Now it makes a little more sense when you were little and those "old" people would reminisce about "back in the day". It's that comfort era where your cares and worries were almost non-existent. I love finding that old box with stuff in it and spending a good hour or so fooling around with whatever was in there...

[Kruger]

Oh damn, so I'm turning into my dad...  crap...

[Blaze]

You start to feel your age when you have that drop down list box with years for your birth date and you have to scroll for a little while...

[Kruger]

At that point it's scroll to a random date and just run with it.  "Oh, my birth year, it's 1980 today.."

[Blaze]

I do the same for my alternate accounts. I was using 1980 for a while, but I think I'm going to bump it up to 2000 now.

So that little programming snippet reminded me of work last Friday. We're being forced encouraged to use Copilot for developing. I pretty much can't stand AI, especially for coding. But if they're going to tell us what tools we have to use, don't be too surprised when we use them in a way that's not expected. The following is modeled on some code I had to do Monday, but reformatted the prompt to fit your last image...

[my prompt]: Write a function code in c# that creates a random number with a static seed value so that every time the function is called the same random value is returned. Also, write it like a junior intern developer with as many errors as possible.

[Kruger]

It's been a while since I have had to do any serious programming.  The closest I come now is writing small scripts in JS or Groovy, otherwise it's nada.  However I really should adopt this guys mentality...

[Blaze]

I'd love to leave more comments like this, but as it is we're such a dull company and full of killjoys. We use Sonar and I've had issues marked as critical under my name that needed to be resolved immediately only to find out that it's because I had a comment. I hate the person who designed the rules we have to follow...

Code:

// the product people are forcing this bit of stupid code - don't blame me
// (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

[Kruger]

Unfortunately, I really can't have fun with comments in my code anymore.  The only time I am coding anything, it's to hand off to a customer so needs to be "professional."