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Apologies for downtime

Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2019 12:12 am
by Bookworm
The power supply in the server went blooey, and then the boot drive went wonky.

So, I had to scavenge parts from the new server I'm building, replace the power supply, and clone the boot drive to a good one.

Everything should be okay now - might even be a wee bit faster on the newer drive. However, it delays the new server again until I get another power supply. *sigh*

BW

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2019 2:15 am
by AnotherFairportfan
I had a three-month old PSU in the new machine i built in April just quit cold with no warning last month. Luckily, Micro Center were willing to replace it instead of making me get an RA from Corsair.

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2019 9:40 am
by Dave
AnotherFairportfan wrote: Fri Aug 16, 2019 2:15 am I had a three-month old PSU in the new machine i built in April just quit cold with no warning last month. Luckily, Micro Center were willing to replace it instead of making me get an RA from Corsair.
You have to be careful when you build PCs for running word processing and document-production software. The components seem to suffer from a high rate of infont mortality.

(Dave places a vintage copy of "TeX for the Tech" into the Pun Jar)

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Fri Aug 16, 2019 9:48 am
by Just Old Al
Dave wrote: Fri Aug 16, 2019 9:40 am > The components seem to suffer from a high rate of infont mortality.
And true to type Dave Leads us down the garden path. You are truly an infont terrible....

AJ"who has actually worked on and used a Mergenthaler Linotype"r

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2019 1:06 pm
by TazManiac
Well, I used to be able to do 30-40 words a min on an IBM Selectric...

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2019 6:34 pm
by Bookworm
TazManiac wrote: Sat Aug 17, 2019 1:06 pm Well, I used to be able to do 30-40 words a min on an IBM Selectric...
Slow. 90wpm for me, and my mother was about 30 wpm faster than that.

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 2:51 pm
by AnotherFairportfan
Bookworm wrote: Sat Aug 17, 2019 6:34 pm
TazManiac wrote: Sat Aug 17, 2019 1:06 pm Well, I used to be able to do 30-40 words a min on an IBM Selectric...
Slow. 90wpm for me, and my mother was about 30 wpm faster than that.
Susan, my first wife, who did at least 120 wpm, used to watch me knocking out about 30 wpm, shake her head, and wander off muttering "Nobody should be as to type that fast with just two fingers and a thumb..."

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 5:20 pm
by Bookworm
AnotherFairportfan wrote: Sun Aug 18, 2019 2:51 pm
Bookworm wrote: Sat Aug 17, 2019 6:34 pm
TazManiac wrote: Sat Aug 17, 2019 1:06 pm Well, I used to be able to do 30-40 words a min on an IBM Selectric...
Slow. 90wpm for me, and my mother was about 30 wpm faster than that.
Susan, my first wife, who did at least 120 wpm, used to watch me knocking out about 30 wpm, shake her head, and wander off muttering "Nobody should be as to type that fast with just two fingers and a thumb..."
So, you are a huntin' pecker?

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 6:06 pm
by Typeminer
TazManiac wrote: Sat Aug 17, 2019 1:06 pm Well, I used to be able to do 30-40 words a min on an IBM Selectric...
Typing was my worst subject in high school. Grades kept dropping, because I got up to 35 wpm (on a manual typewriter) and plateaued for the rest of the semester. Gods being the evil-minded jokers that they are, my doom was sealed. :twisted:

Used to be able to set differential equations on an IBM Selectronic (the Selectric's twisted evil twin), but sometimes a page of copy took more than a day. The billing people called it penalty copy for a reason. That shop's main niche was half-assed work at a half-assed price. :mrgreen:

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 6:17 pm
by lake_wrangler
Typeminer wrote: Sun Aug 18, 2019 6:06 pmTyping was my worst subject in high school. Grades kept dropping, because I got up to 35 wpm (on a manual typewriter) and plateaued for the rest of the semester. Gods being the evil-minded jokers that they are, my doom was sealed. :twisted:
That seems somewhat ironic, considering your username which seems to have some form of typing origin...

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 6:40 pm
by Typeminer
lake_wrangler wrote: Sun Aug 18, 2019 6:17 pm
Typeminer wrote: Sun Aug 18, 2019 6:06 pmTyping was my worst subject in high school. Grades kept dropping, because I got up to 35 wpm (on a manual typewriter) and plateaued for the rest of the semester. Gods being the evil-minded jokers that they are, my doom was sealed. :twisted:
That seems somewhat ironic, considering your username which seems to have some form of typing origin...
Dooomed, I tell ya!

And my worst subject in grade school was penmanship. Nuns used to make me redo whole assignments.

Copy edited and revised a whole lot of manuscripts by hand before the customers bought in to pdfs. :mrgreen:

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 8:00 pm
by jwhouk
~60 wpm or so here. I loved typing in middle school. I still prefer keyboard shortcuts to mouse clicks - something I can't do here, sadly.

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 8:56 pm
by Dave
Typing was probably the most valuable course I took in high school... got more use out of it through my life then any other single subject.

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:23 pm
by lake_wrangler
I can't remember how many words per minute I typed, back in high school, but I can attest to the reusability of the skill... It's so much easier (and faster) to touch type a long text than to hunt and peck...

It's particularly useful when you are trying to either transcribe written material (i.e. a physical copy), or translating material.

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:55 pm
by Bookworm
Typeminer wrote: Sun Aug 18, 2019 6:40 pm
lake_wrangler wrote: Sun Aug 18, 2019 6:17 pm
Typeminer wrote: Sun Aug 18, 2019 6:06 pmTyping was my worst subject in high school. Grades kept dropping, because I got up to 35 wpm (on a manual typewriter) and plateaued for the rest of the semester. Gods being the evil-minded jokers that they are, my doom was sealed. :twisted:
That seems somewhat ironic, considering your username which seems to have some form of typing origin...
Dooomed, I tell ya!

And my worst subject in grade school was penmanship. Nuns used to make me redo whole assignments.

Copy edited and revised a whole lot of manuscripts by hand before the customers bought in to pdfs. :mrgreen:
Want that I should send you a fountain pen and bottle of ink?

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:55 pm
by Bookworm
lake_wrangler wrote: Sun Aug 18, 2019 9:23 pm I can't remember how many words per minute I typed, back in high school, but I can attest to the reusability of the skill... It's so much easier (and faster) to touch type a long text than to hunt and peck...

It's particularly useful when you are trying to either transcribe written material (i.e. a physical copy), or translating material.
Ooooh, yes. Especially when you're dealing with putting patches into code.

"Read from the laptop, type into the server.."

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2019 6:25 pm
by Just Old Al
Bookworm wrote: Sun Aug 18, 2019 10:55 pm
Ooooh, yes. Especially when you're dealing with putting patches into code.
"Read from the laptop, type into the server.."
Try it with an octal front panel sometime...and yes, I used to do it on PDP-11s... and 8s. And a few Sperry-Univac behemoths... :)

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2019 3:24 pm
by Atomic
Anybody remember Mavis Beacon? Don't remember my scores, but I really botched the tests at first because I kept backspacing to fix spellilng errroers!

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2019 7:24 pm
by lake_wrangler
Atomic wrote: Tue Aug 20, 2019 3:24 pm Anybody remember Mavis Beacon? Don't remember my scores, but I really botched the tests at first because I kept backspacing to fix spelling errors!
FTFY... ;) :P :mrgreen:

Re: Apologies for downtime

Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2019 9:39 pm
by Dave
Just Old Al wrote: Mon Aug 19, 2019 6:25 pm And a few Sperry-Univac behemoths... :)
Ah.... perhaps a Univac 1108?

I once used one of those to point out an error in my FORTRAN instructor's claims about FORTRAN functions. The program I wrote demonstrated that the Univac 1108 could be programmed to show that 2+2 equals 6 (and of course this is true, for sufficiently large values of 2).