Miphee wrote on 2021-05-05, 17:44:

creepingnet wrote on 2021-05-05, 17:07:

It took me a full year to get brave enough to change the furnace filter myself

When I did something similar (changed the flickering fluorescent tube nobody cared to replace) at my old workplace I was almost fired. Only a licenced electrician can touch the electrical system even if it's just changing a light bulb. When I asked my boss to get it changed she didn't listen. When I did it myself I was scolded.
They were right in some perverse way, I could've been electrocuted so I learned my lesson. Never going to touch anything outside my home, I'm just going to harass my boss until he gets shit done.

Been there before too. I used to work for a big name Game company when their IR based movement detection technology console was hot - just think white thing that's the size of a cheap DVD player with a blue light around the Disc port- I was brought on as an "IT Tech" but somehow wound up in "Dealer Returns" (by a then-idiotic contractor that knew not what they were doing).

One of my jobs was as a part of a testing/diagnostic line for the new touch enabled console and we had this cantankerous Zebra printer that kept shutting down the line. I got scolded for fixing it 4 times - every time this well known Japanese firm's "I.T." department fixed it, I came back and it would not work, halting the line - and effectively making us wait, sometimes for an hour - to get it fixed. Yet every time I did my thing with it - which was re-align the tray and rollers guiding the stickers that were printed out with the diagnostic - it worked perfectly until those "yahoos" in I.T. "fixed" it. Needless to say, I got sick of this and sealed the deal on a much better job in the parking lot a couple weeks later - where oddly, I got to fix a major aviation company's Zebra printers (among other much bigger things) on the regular and they almost never had problems with them as a result.

As for my apartment, they honestly don't give a crap about anything or taking care of anything as long as it does not mean they are liable for a lawsuit. The owners are in New York, we're in the western USA, and they mostly employ Gen Z kids who don't know anything about home maintenance and are likely just running off some kind of script.

A fine example of how much they don't care....our HVAC screwed up last year, I fixed it with a youtube video, after I spent six months trying to get them to come over and fix it and they said they called a repair man, who never showd up. What was the problem? Stuck switch in the back of the heat exchanger - I just gave it two good whacks per advice of a professional and the switch came loose and has worked fine ever since. They also took eight months to kick out a real problem child of a neighbor - someone who had the police out no less than 7 times over the course of 2020 for things like domestic abuse - and they basically gave me and mine PTSD from dealing with that drugged up ass. I'm hoping things stay peaceful like this until we can afford to put money down on a house of our own.

creepingnet wrote on 2021-05-05, 18:05:

A fine example of how much they don't care....our HVAC screwed up last year, I fixed it with a youtube video

I guess the saying is true: "If you want something done, do it yourself." (but don't tell anyone you did it)

Partly nostalgia, remembering all the fun with a particular system. Partly simplicity, it is often easier to maintain an antique system for some old games/software than jump through the hoops to run those on new systems. Kept an IBM Aptiva for years til, like many of us, it got old and cranky (probably leaky caps on mobo, too bad I can't use that excuse).

Oldest piece I have? a ModTech Acoustic Coupler, ca. 1976. Still used every day (makes a great doorstop). Buried in basement is an old HP punch tape recorder.

I'm trying to preserve hardware as much as I realistically can so I can show it to future generations.

gerry wrote on 2021-04-16, 10:01:

.... but one has to navigate heaps of nonsense to get to good things...

Sturgeon's Law - 90% of anything is bullsh*t

It was a time when life was “Simple”
The 1980’s and 1990’s
Most people did not have mobile phones.
The home was a place of rest and relaxation.
People would shop at the stores and malls.
There was NO Online banking, paypal, Amazon, eBay, Netflix, Pandora, iTunes, YouTube, or on line purchases.
People would hang out at book stores or rent a video on weekends.
Go out to restaurant's, roller rings, ice skating, play sports, movie theaters, music stores, etc.

The Smartphone is changing the way we live.
People are becoming hooked on there internet devices.

In the 1980 and 1990 the home computer was mainly used for playing games, office productivity apps, and email.
Internet searches and research for a specific item, product, study, etc,
But Online purchases was limited.
I think Wells Fargo Bank was one of the first nation wide banks in America to offer “Online banking”.

Tech workers in Silicon Valley use to hang out at book stores, city colleges, tech schools, restaurant's, Movie theaters.
It was dial-up internet at home with 56k modems.
So the only High speed internet was at work.

WebTV
https://youtu.be/yuvDkIZmU3s