mrau wrote:

im still not sure why you would talk about "letting the kid learn on his mistakes" in such a situation.

I think you are referring to:

clueless1 wrote:

Well, yeah. There's that line every parent struggle not to cross (rescuing their kids instead of having them work it out for themselves). You want your child to learn and grow from mistakes. But when they don't realize they are being teased or made fun, and are laughing along with the teasers, that's just not fair.

What I mean is there are times when a parent steps in, and times when you let the child work through it themselves. Sometimes as a parent it is difficult to tell when to step in and when not to. But in a situation where they are being made fun of and don't even realize it, that is a time to step in and intervene. Not only for your child's benefit, but for the benefit of the kids being mean. I believe that behavior is learned in the home, and if I can have a positive influence on these kids by showing them their behavior towards my child is not cool, then it might (just might) have some small positive influence on them.

Hi my names Barrett. I'm 38 and married with 2 boys ages 14 and 9. I'm self employed with my brother as a business partner. We own and operate a small garden center in central Illinois. Besides vintage computing my other hobbies are veggie and flower gardening, newer computers, and cars(mainly mopar). I don't listen to a lot of music anymore as I tend to stick to talk radio on the AM band. I do like Radiohead and the Beatles though. I don't do a lot of gaming anymore either but I am a Star Citizen backer. I hop on the server once or soo a week to play around with my ships.

I got into vintage computing last year around this time. I wanted too build the computer I could never afford as a kid but always wanted. I completed that build over the last year. I'm not really into collecting though. Just wanted to build the one and that's it but I like the community here so I pop in every couple of days too see what you guys are doing. 😀

Anyway, not much too add beyond that. Heres a pic of my wife and I from our summer vacation out west. Don't tell her I posted a pic of her online...she hates it! haha

I'm 24 years old and I've always been a big fan of Windows and computers in general. I also have a soft spot in my heart for PowerPC Macintosh systems, especially with Mac OS 9.

Over the course of this decade, I've come to realize what I love most in technology and video games is in the past. I don't care much for what this decade has had to offer so far, which is why I post here on VOGONS.

I'm certainly no scrub at the likes of Windows 9x and ATX PCs, but I'm not a know-it-all either. The lot of you regular VOGONS-ers put me to shame at times. I don't think I'd have the patience or desk space for an actual AT PC of some sort. I've come to really appreciate older laptops, they have all the functionality of a desktop, but they're self-contained, portable, relatively cheap, can be shipped and what I like best is they have a luck-of-the-draw aspect to them, where you must hunt in order to find a laptop with just the right hardware inside it. Everyone loves a good hunt, right?

I'm 47 yrs old, married, and with a pre-teen son.

Currently I am a one-person IT dept for a small business. System Administrator for a mostly Windows environment with 50ish PCs. It's pretty much my dream job after spending most of my career in the family manufacturing business. And it's a job I never thought I'd get a shot at, given I ended up graduating with a degree in the Social Sciences after failing the 1st year combinatorics course in Computer Science and changing majors with my tail between my legs. One of my biggest regrets is not sticking it through and getting the computer science degree.

My interest in computers started in grade school. My neighbor across the street had an Atari 2600, and when he invited me over to play, I was hooked! So I started to beg my parents for the next better thing--the Intellivision. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we got one. Those were some of the funnest days I remember. My gradeschool friend would come over after school and we'd play all the classic sports games: football, baseball, and basketball, which the Intellivision disc controller was very well-suited for.

Then in middle school, one of my friends got an Apple II+. Again, I'd go over his house after school and we'd play games and dial in to BBSes. And again, I begged my parents for one. It was probably the best investment they ever made because I used the Apple IIe daily from middle school all the way through university. Middle school was another period that was super fun. Another friend had a C64, so we'd go over each other's houses and play games. I'd make fun of his slow cassette drive load times (we'd look through gaming magazines while waiting for games to load, and hope there was no error that forced us to start over), and he'd flaunt the C64's superior graphics and sound.

It was only near university graduation that I got my first PC. It was a graduation gift from my parents, and it was a Packard Bell 386sx 20Mhz. The games I remember playing most on that system were Wing Commander I and II and Ultima VII: The Black Gate. I kept that system for a couple of years before building my first PC: a 25Mhz 486sx. From then on, I built/upgraded my systems exclusively.

I had a weird interest in hard drives and in the late 1990s I spent a lot of time on the storagereview.com forums. I ended up getting to know the site owners and they eventually asked me to help review products. I was the short-lived optical drive reviewer for them...over the course of about 20 months I wrote and published 36 articles with them. Optical drives were not very sexy, but I had a lot of fun learning testing methodologies, dealing with manufacturer PR depts, and getting some free stuff. It was around this time that I met my future wife, and shortly before we got married, I resigned my position. I was approached by Anandtech around this time about doing reviews for them. But it was time-consuming and the only pay was occasional free hardware, so I declined. If I was younger and still single, I would've jumped at the chance!

I've always been the nostalgic sort, so when I stumbled across Phil's YouTube channel a little over a year ago, the passion was reignited. And here I am! 😀

Hi clueless1!
Nice to have some background on a person, and to know you've actually seen the whole personal computer evolution.

I don't understand only one thing... why your avatar looks like a duck.
All I can see is a hand with fingers and a duck beak. 😀

James-F wrote:

Hi clueless1! Nice to have some background on a person, and to know you've actually seen the whole personal computer evolution. […]
Show full quote

Hi clueless1!
Nice to have some background on a person, and to know you've actually seen the whole personal computer evolution.

I don't understand only one thing... why your avatar looks like a duck.
All I can see is a hand with fingers and a duck beak. 😀

quack.png

It's my homage to Duck Duck Go. 😉

🤣...nicely done, James!

kanecvr wrote:

@ Brostenen - dude that food looks awesome. Now I'm hungry 😀

I'd love to see some of your paintings. Maybe you can post some here?

Yeah.... Cooking is just one of many interrests of mine.
I had to take some pictures of a couple of paintings first, sorry for late response.

The blue one is a kind of dreamy deepsea inspired one. It is gobles/jellyfish were the sun nearly does not reach.
And it is painted with oil-paint. My brother named it: "It's Blue"

The other one are just me, playing with triangles, and the blue triangle are just to "break" the experience.
Or at least, that was the intention. The end result are just a nice one. (it's my avatar actually)

clueless1 wrote:

I admire you for getting where you are undiagnosed for so many years.

Well... It has not exactly been a smooth dance on roses. One of my many "tools" that I used in the past, was to flee the scene. When things became unberable, I tended to search for something new to do, in hope of finding the right spot for me. This has resulted in me, never been able to hold a job for more than 1 to 1,5 year. Sometimes only 3 months. I have basically started on a new education, dropped out after some time, getting unemplyment check a brief time, getting a job and holding it for a brief time, stopped working and getting back to school or unemplyment check for a couple of month's. And started the circle all over again. I have never really given a sh*t about money or large posessions. So yeah... By trade, I am fully educated ASP.NET C# web programmer, 1/3'th pedagogue, 1/2'th IT supporter, 1/6'th pottery maker, 1/6'th industrial machine technician and 1/6'th electrician. 🤣

22 years old, been bouncing between seasonal jobs mostly due to my place of residence being dead in the winter. Graduating HS class of 25 and a school district tech department consisting of 2 people, was one for years. Collect coins, work on computers, play video games with my best friend online. Just moved to Bellingham so things should be more interesting soon.

clueless1 wrote:

me.jpg

I love that t shirt.

I am 34 years old. Been married 10 years. Have 4 children ages 9,8,4 and 3. I love gaming both modern and retro, music (listening not creating I have no musical talent what so ever), and science fiction and fantasy books, movies, and TV series. I live outside St. Louis, Missouri in Midwest USA.

I also love technology of all sorts. I work at a technology company, and tinker with technology in my spare time. Speaking of time, I have very little of it considering my 4 children and a very demanding job. I find myself investing in new toys to play with without any time to play with them. (Toys meaning pretty much any techgadget you might think of modern or retro). Even if I can't find time to spend hours doing this stuff myself I can come here for a little bit and look at what others are doing and live vicariously through you all and get ideas for new projects I might buy stuff for and not find time to follow through on.

Growing up like many on here I had many social issues as well. I still do but in some ways my career has helped me get around them at least within the context of work. I don't do well in social situations where people are expected to make small talk, but I can take command of a work conference call like no one's business.

Well, I guess I'll throw my hat in the ring 😀

I'm just an 18-year-old college freshman studying aerospace engineering at the University of Colorado who now has absolutely no time any more for retrocomputing other than to get on these forums and give people snarky advice 🤣 I live in Boulder, CO, and I love it here. The education I'm receiving is excellent (even though I may not have made the most of it so far... 😒 ), the Christian community is very vibrant (I'm a devout Christian, so that's important, especially in an area where there aren't very many of us), and the campus is beautiful.

My hometown is in southern Idaho (flat as a pancake and very dry - yes, that's where we grow the potatoes, and yes, they are the best in the world 😀), but my family vacations often in the Sawtooth mountains, where we own a tiny cabin and live pretty small 🤣 I have one sister who's awesome, loves birds and wildlife and is also an excellent photographer (here). She also is into DOS games; she spends a lot of time actually playing games like Tyrian, Keen, Jazz, Doom, Quake, Elder Scrolls, etc. while I build the computers that run them 🤣 In three years she'll graduate and maybe go to CU (fingers crossed) so we'd have one year together which would be awesome.

This is extra but I don't have much luck with women 🤣 At this time of my life I've decided I'm not near mature enough to have a girlfriend or be dating someone, so I just try to make friends but most of the time I get over-excited, screw it up and accidentally make them think I'm hitting on them or something 🤣 Guess I'll figure it out eventually. Someday I'll be happily married and have children (:D) but that's far into the future I think.

I'm a total science geek; I can't even number the various projects and engineering endeavors I've embarked on over the years. In my parent's house's third car garage there sits a two-seater go-cart made of aluminum tube stock and held together with bolts and flanges (I can't weld, let alone aluminum), several old radios, several attempts at building radios, experiments such as the Edison foil recording device (pro tip: foil sucks), the remains of a flamethrower I made that uses coffee creamer as fuel 🤣, and a giant cash register from 1925 that I got from a local business for $75 and was able to clean up and fix 😁 You'll also find a great many typewriters sitting in various places around the house. I actually do use them, believe it or not. I also have a pretty comprehensive collection of old cameras, everything from the original Kodak Brownie (the first affordable camera; they sold for $2 back in 1900 which is about $50-60 today. The previous model sold for $25, about $600-800 😳) to the original Polaroid pack film camera, the one where you have to peel the picture off instead of watching it develop before your very eyes. You can still buy film for these cameras; I use them as often as I can 😀 So as you can tell, I love old technology of all types, not just computers, and I don't just collect, I try to put everything to practical use.

I love music more than just about any other recreational activity except for sitting and talking over coffee (I'm very naturally social). I play the piano and sing in choirs as much as I can - just got done with four holiday concerts over the weekend in fact. Loving that being in college gives me the opportunity to sing in choir but since I'm not a music major they positively refuse to allow me to use any of the practice pianos 😠

And here's me:

This is at the aforementioned cabin in the mountains 😀

Nice to learn more about you, keenermaster486. 😀 Good to know a fellow Christian on these boards too. Thanks for sharing, man!

kanecvr wrote:

I got my first computer in 1995 for my birthday - a 133Mhz cyrix 586 with 8MB of ram, 800MB HDD, cirrus logics 54xx video card, 14" color monitor and a OKI Microline dot matrix printer.

The earliest production dates for an official Cyrix 5x86-133/4x were the 49th week of 1995, so around Dec 15. And these chips seem a lot rarer than the 1996 produced chips. When in 1995 did you receive this computer? Even if you received it 31 December, it seems unlikely that this CPU would land into your lap so quickly off the production line. Perhaps you remember the date incorrectly?

Regarding religion... Well... I am one of those that have no god or gods.
And then I do have an opinion, that if religion is what people need to have in their life, then it is totally cool and fine.
We have a saying about religion, in some places here in Denmark.

It goes something like this:
"Religion is somewhat like a p*nis. You don't show it in publich, and you don't force it down someones throat"

Here in DK, it is a bit different regarding religion. Most people only use the church when someone i buried,
someone getting baptised, someone getting married and when it is x-mas day.
Only about 2 to 5% of the population are going to church regulairly on sunday, so it's a bit different.
98% of the population are paying church tax. In other words. We are paying for something we do not use.
I do pay that tax, well knowing that the pastors can get a paycheck and the buildings can be renovated.

brostenen wrote:

... you don't force it down someones throat"

Milquetoast. Sometimes, you gotta be willing to try new things. Expand your horizons. Step outside your comfort zone. Learn a new safe word. Truly, I am reminded of the wise words of America's greatest president:

How you doin'?

KT7AGuy wrote:

... words of America's greatest president

Seems more likely that America's latest president said that 😵

brostenen wrote:

Regarding religion... Well... I am one of those that have no god or gods. And then I do have an opinion, that if religion is wha […]
Show full quote

Regarding religion... Well... I am one of those that have no god or gods.
And then I do have an opinion, that if religion is what people need to have in their life, then it is totally cool and fine.
We have a saying about religion, in some places here in Denmark.

It goes something like this:
"Religion is somewhat like a p*nis. You don't show it in publich, and you don't force it down someones throat"

Here in DK, it is a bit different regarding religion. Most people only use the church when someone i buried,
someone getting baptised, someone getting married and when it is x-mas day.
Only about 2 to 5% of the population are going to church regulairly on sunday, so it's a bit different.
98% of the population are paying church tax. In other words. We are paying for something we do not use.
I do pay that tax, well knowing that the pastors can get a paycheck and the buildings can be renovated.

One day people will be glad those churches are there but the church so to say in much of the west in general has been hollowed out and really isn't a good experience. I don't like the dry bones churches and no one should either, I just wait knowing that the real thing will be back someday.

KT7AGuy wrote:

Milquetoast. Sometimes, you gotta be willing to try new things. Expand your horizons. Step outside your comfort zone. Learn […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote:

... you don't force it down someones throat"

Milquetoast. Sometimes, you gotta be willing to try new things. Expand your horizons. Step outside your comfort zone. Learn a new safe word. Truly, I am reminded of the wise words of America's greatest president:

How you doin'?

"126% of quotes on the Internet are made up." - Albert Einstein

SquallStrife wrote:

KT7AGuy wrote:

Milquetoast. Sometimes, you gotta be willing to try new things. Expand your horizons. Step outside your comfort zone. Learn […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote:

... you don't force it down someones throat"

Milquetoast. Sometimes, you gotta be willing to try new things. Expand your horizons. Step outside your comfort zone. Learn a new safe word. Truly, I am reminded of the wise words of America's greatest president:

How you doin'?

"126% of quotes on the Internet are made up." - Albert Einstein

^That deserves an upvote!