Your historic IT moments...

[MD Draco]

I'm sure this has been done before, but I was just thinking to myself (I know I know, you knew you could smell something burning!!) about my own personal history in computers, and why I ended up working in IT being both Mac and Microsoft certified, along with a plethora of other Q's along the lines to do with fixing everything IT related... so, I figured I'd share my earliest memories of IT gear, as I suspect my parents getting me a computer before I could read / write properly had a lot to do with my career progression (thanks parents!!), so for one reason or another, here are my most memorable setups...

1. Atari 400 (Candy) (first machine I ever owned... thanks parents for getting me into computers so young!!!)
2. Acorn Electron (with tape drive... wasn't flash enough for the 5&1/4" disk drive)
3. Commodore C64 (again with tape drive... no cartridges or disks for me!!)
4. Commodore Amiga 600 (w00t... first disk drive... 3.5" & first machine I ever paid for on my own)
5. First PC: P100 with 16mb of RAM and a 1mb graphics card, 16 bit sound, CD ROM drive, and a 1gb HDD (my first modern (!?!) PC sporting Windows 3.11, later upgraded to 95, then 98)
6. First person I knew to get a P3: 1ghz P3 with 256mb of RAM, can't remember the graphics, this had a DVD RW Drive in it (they cost a pretty penny when they were released)
7. Second laptop, and first one to show any real character, my mom inherited this off me, and nearly 8 years past its purchase date, it finally died a slow death shortly after Christmas this year: Dual Core 1.6ghz Sony Vaio with 1gb of RAM, 120gb hdd, can't really remember the rest... but it was a nice computer!!
8. This beastie exploded after 3 years of abuse, but it was another goodie: Acer Aspire 6920G, Core 2 Duo T8100 2.1GHz, 2GB RAM (later upgraded to 4) , 320GB (later upgraded to 1tb), Blu-ray RW, Vista Home Premium (downgraded to XP, then upgraded to 7)
and finally my current build:
9. Apple Macbook Pro (15inch), 2.2ghz quad core i7 (Sandy Bridge), 4gb RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1gb RAM, 750gb hdd... My first venture to Apple products, and it's a good one ... I still use Windows on it as well though from time to time, and have been known in the past to have linux on there, though not at present.

I never owned a console until the release of the playstation, (my parents wouldn't allow it, they wanted me to learn how the computers I used did what they did) and even then, I got a second gen Playstation (the one that only had mono out, oh the woe!). I somehow got a Playstation 2 as part of a debt I was owed, and traded that for an Xbox because hey, I love the Halo games... Since then, it's been Xbox all the way!! Currently on my 5th Xbox (First RROD'd, Second got upgraded to an Elite, which got sold when I moved to NZ, couldn't live without so ended up buying another after a 3 month dry patch!! 4th got sold when the slim with kinect came out, and that's what I'm currently using).

I remember the dying days of the arcade throughout my youth (yes, I am an 80's child), and I always wondered what made them tick, and wondered how different they were to the machines I had at home, in fact; I remember always wanting to see what's inside just as much as I wanted to play the games, so if the tech was there, I'd be over his shoulder in a heartbeat! Probably explains my career choices, and why I'm on this forum building my first arcade machine!! Just wondered about everyone else... What makes you tick, what got you into computers, and what were your most memorable systems?

[EssexMame]

I've led a similar path it seems!

1. Acorn Electron (also tape only, did get the plus one for Joystick/Rom cartridges very late on)
2. ZX Spectrum 48k (late in its life, wondered what I'd missed by getting the Electron A: not much. The games were fun, but I think the Electron has aged better)
3. Commodore Amiga 500 (got a second drive, much needed for the ELEVEN disk Monkey Island II)
4. Playstation (one)
5. Playstation 2
6. Nintendo Wii
7. Playstation 3
Coming soon I hope! Mame Arcade cabinet

I've had various PC's - currently 2 desktops, one old banger which I'm using for Mame. AMD FX-60 is my main PC. Dated itself now, upgraded to FX-60 not so long ago via ebay.

I really want to put Electron/Spectrum/Amiga into my cabinet. The Amiga is plausible but Spectrum and especially Electron less so. The keyboards/different joysticks used cause problems but I'm sure I can do it on a limited game list at least. For Electron I was using a BBC Emulator though, Elkulator/Electrem didn't work so well as the tapes didn't seem to be loaded automatically in any way I could see!

[J_K_M_A_N]

I am not in the IT field but I mess with computers a lot.

1. Texas Instruments system....not sure which one. Hook it to the TV and use cassette tapes for saving and loading. It was a friends system.
2. Apple ][. Same friends mom was a teacher and she brought one home for summer break.
3. Apple ][+. First computer in our house. Loved it!
4. IBM XT with monochrome monitor. Traded the Apple ][+ with everything for that basic nothing. I didn't have any money and was going to go to school for programming on IBM XT's.
5. 286 then 386 then 486 and so on and so forth. Built many systems after that. I still build them all today. Mostly AMD now.

On the Apple ][+, I broke the space bar and I checked with an Apple store near me and they wanted $85 to fix it. I asked if I could just buy the key and that was only $5.95. So I bought that and took the whole thing apart and de-soldered the old key and soldered in the new one (with a really over sized soldering iron and no solder sucker. Can't believe it didn't fry the whole thing!) and it worked like a champ. That is about when I started taking most everything apart. Still do. I have recently repaired a few LCD monitors (super basic replace the caps type of thing) and that is very fun. And cheap!

J_K_M_A_N

[knave]

1. Commodore 64 with the 1541 floppy drive
2. IBM clone AT with 256K and a amber monocrome monitor. (I liked the C64 better)
AT was upgraded several times with hand-me-down parts untill it eventually was an xt with a meg of ram a 20 meg HD, two floppies and color graphics. (I think I hit most of the graphics modes. CGA, EGA, VGA and SVGA.
I got a 1200 baud modem and rocked the local BBS's (Ah...Tradewars...)
3. Was given a NES traded it for a Sega Genisis...that was my only console for 15 years I still take it out once and a while.
 Later...BYOAC encouraged me to build a video out for it so I didn't have to use that dumb switch box.
4. Family got a Pentium 120, with a 1.6 gig HD  a decent graphics card and soundblaster not to mention a 14.4modem later upgraded to a 33.6.
This was an awesome PC for this age. I played games did homework, and browsed the early-web with netscape. We used it for years.
5. a long list of PC's.
6. Playstation
7. Wii
8. Hacked Xbox(XBMC)
9. Xbox 360
10. PS3
(The last four were within the last four-five years.

[hypernova]

I thought this would be a thread about the incompetence of your average moron in offices and such.

[MD Draco]

hah hah hah, could well be! The only problem there is where to begin... Actually; personally I don't mind if a user doesn't know how to do something, (that's what I'm here for) what really gets me going is when a user doesn't even make a basic effort... I've had a few of those ... I work for an educational institute, and have worked for a few others in my time, as a result of which I have attended, and do attend a lot of "class can't work" calls, so user calls up and if it can't be fixed on the phone, I get sent to fix the issue and this is one of the things that came through; the user could see the image on the projector, the computer was working, but there was nothing on the monitor... I walked in, noticed it (the monitor) wasn't even turned on, pressed the power button and low and behold, it started working!! Amazing the things people will call for!!! lol

Worse than that though; was the time I got a call and the person giving the class started shouting at me the minute I walked into the classroom saying that the IT gear never works when they're in a class and that they always have problems, and nothing ever works how it should. During this tirade; I turned on the computer and the projector for said user, and everything started working. This user than had a barney at me asking why it always works when I walk in, so I told the user; quite loudly in front of students: "it helps if you turn things on before assuming they don't work" ... and left the class with the students laughing at said user!!

Please note; I've purposely left names of places out, and even whether the users in question were male or female to make sure they're completely unidentifiable, if this thread does take this route; please be aware that names and places should be changed and amended if necessary so that you don't lose your jobs!! Neither of these instances were during my current role, and I suspect I should keep it that way!!

[ark_ader]

I don't know about historic, but I wished I studied a proper trade than computers...

Ti994/a
Atari 800XL
Acorn Electron
Commodore 64
Commodore 128
Commodore Amiga 1000
Atari STFM
Apple 2IGS
Commodore PET (rescued)
Amstrad PCW 9512
IBM PC XT Clone (I built my own and sold them)
IBM 286/386/486 SX/486SLC/486DX 100/P60/P75/ you get the idea
Amstrad PCW 9512
Apple Quadra
Apple Lisa
NEXT
iMac

2600
ColecoVision
CDi
PSX
MegaDrive
NES
SNES
N64
PSX2 & 3
Dreamcast
Saturn
PSP x2
Gamecube
Wii
Xbox1 x3
Xbox 360

Certified as  MCP, A+, Network +, CNA, HNC, BSc IT, Prince 2 Practitioner, 25 years level 2 tech support. 

Yeah so about the same I guess.

[spoot]

I believe my historic IT moment was that I didn't shoot an idiotic "programmer" today for writing crap sql which nuked the DB again.      

[Drnick]

The day I got a job with a PC Manufacturer    Nothing but the best PC's available. Started with a 486sx (Which at the time was the newest and best) Then worked my way through the entire cpu range that followed , Anyone remember IBM's Blue Lightning,  Then onto Pentium chips that couldn't do math's properly and then onto the first of the P3 range.  At that point  I quit working on/with PC's for about 6 Years.

@Ark,  Damn 25Yrs continual.  I needed that break from it all. 

[MD Draco]

Wow! 25 years lvl 2... longer than me!! I hit 16 years this year!! More Q's too, though I have to say; awesome sauce! I do love working in line 2... something about it, get less of the mundane that l1 get, and still have a support structure for the "big issues" heh heh Nearly applied for a lvl 3 job... pay rise was good... stress level was not, decided I'd stay where I am for now!! lol

I did CCNA once a few years ago, and decided that the darkened rooms required to do such dark voodoo were not for me; we have a team of guys who love the darkness... Working underground for 9 years (ex forces) has left me with only one pre-requisite for all the jobs I go for... I either get to wonder about talking to people and fixing things on the move, or have a window that actually goes outside, so I can at least see daylight or moonlight and get a taste of what's going on in the world!! lol

[Drnick]

hah hah hah, could well be! The only problem there is where to begin... Actually; personally I don't mind if a user doesn't know how to do something, (that's what I'm here for) what really gets me going is when a user doesn't even make a basic effort... I've had a few of those ... I work for an educational institute, and have worked for a few others in my time, as a result of which I have attended, and do attend a lot of "class can't work" calls, so user calls up and if it can't be fixed on the phone, I get sent to fix the issue and this is one of the things that came through; the user could see the image on the projector, the computer was working, but there was nothing on the monitor... I walked in, noticed it (the monitor) wasn't even turned on, pressed the power button and low and behold, it started working!! Amazing the things people will call for!!! lol

I had almost exactly the same thing last weekend,  Called into work about 9am,  The guy doing the class is  jumping up and down going on with such comments as.  "Why is it everytime we come here things don't work?"  I think it took me 3 Seconds to see that they hadn't turned the power on for the projector.  I switched it on and much like you advised the class that things work much better when they have power 

[ark_ader]

Wow! 25 years lvl 2... longer than me!! I hit 16 years this year!! More Q's too, though I have to say; awesome sauce! I do love working in line 2... something about it, get less of the mundane that l1 get, and still have a support structure for the "big issues" heh heh Nearly applied for a lvl 3 job... pay rise was good... stress level was not, decided I'd stay where I am for now!! lol

I did CCNA once a few years ago, and decided that the darkened rooms required to do such dark voodoo were not for me; we have a team of guys who love the darkness... Working underground for 9 years (ex forces) has left me with only one pre-requisite for all the jobs I go for... I either get to wonder about talking to people and fixing things on the move, or have a window that actually goes outside, so I can at least see daylight or moonlight and get a taste of what's going on in the world!! lol

I used to do some consulting, and worked on some pretty interesting projects.  Level 3 is too demanding, and having to sleep with a pager, you cannot have a normal life with family.  The pay is great, but you have to justify the emotional cost.  Dealing with crap from management, clients and suppliers.  No thanks.  I'll let the up and comers and green IT folks take that on.

I am looking forward to some HCI design work, maybe some teaching in the summer and the chance to get my Doctorate in Information Technology.  It is nice to have the history of computing behind you.  Kids today are usually taught Microsoft Office or ICT.  I would like to teach a class starting at the basics of hardware all the way up to game design.  Why do you have to wait until college before you get taught all the skills needed to get a good job? 

My Mom was telling about apprenticeships in the 1950's.  Nearly every kid leaving school went on to work and learn a trade.  I think it would be cool to learn while earning, game design, databases or tech support  than having to sit through 3 years of freaking boring and expensive college.  They would learn a lot more, especially with communication and work ethic, running around getting all the coffees.   

[griffindodd]

Mine went something like this

- Sinclair ZX81 with 1k of ram and a dodgy power plug that would reset if you tapped it.
- Massive 16k upgrade pack for the ZX81 for XMAS - ZOMG MOWAH POWAH!!!
- Sinclair Spectrum 16k with rubber keyboard and OMG color graphics
- Commodore 64 - Now we're rockin'
- Commodore Amiga - Yeah I'm pretty much a God now
- Discovered girls
- Blurry 25 years or so
- Now build arcade machines in my garage and need a solid 8 hrs sleep every night.
- Level 2 and happy not to be level 3

[griffindodd]

Oh and last week...

Had a user trying to log into his computer at home with his work username and password...because he wanted to work from home................................ 

[Zero_Hour]

Various consoles in mid-late 70's until...
C-64 w 1541 drive and Smith Corona daisy wheel printer (sounded like gunfire whenever I printed a paper) + Apple IIe's and TRS-80s in High School
Amiga 500 w access to various PC clones on campus during undergrad
Pentium 100Mhz w Win 95in Grad School, w SGI workstations and Mac lab that used the infamous PC cards for dual platform badness (seriously great idea that rarely functioned reliably)

Then onto various pro gigs dominated by PCs of varying OS's

Now, I'm a stay at home dad and happy that the only troubleshooting or training I do is for friends and family.

[mystic96]

Ooh, ooh, ooh 

* Brother had a C64 when I was probably 6 or so? Didn't really use it, just played a couple games here and there. Mostly got beat up trying to turn it on when he was in the "Intendo" room.
* Started playing more games and learning to type on my mom's Apple iie that she would bring home from work.
* Built my first computer (not my computer) with my friend's dad... think it was a 386 box? Back when they had the turbo buttons, lol.
* -My- first computer was a P/133 with 64MB of ram and a 1.6GB hard drive (this was legendary at the time). Later upgraded with a scsi2 cdrw ($550!!!), an extra 128MB of ram, and a 4.x GB hard drive. Surprisingly, mixed cds for a buck a song were extremely popular in high school too 
* Next was a dual P3 450 system with ~80gb of storage and started my dive into video recording/editing/burning compilation discs of tv shows and other finds on usenet.
* Somewhere in between the P/133 and P3 system I picked up a Tandy 1000 for like $20 - had a sweet 5.25" 20MB external hard drive! Used it to code school stuff on because the 133 was too fast and any apps that relied on counting cycles didn't jive between the 133 and the IBM PS2s at school.

From there, lord who knows. My current system is an i7 hex core w/ 24gb of ram, mirrored SSDs for boot and a couple of whatever gb drives for temp storage and test VMs. My server is nothing great, but mostly used for media streaming and web serving. I think there's just a hair over 6tb in use.

Consoles... yeah you guys are talking about systems I've never even heard of. Did they make you use punch cards in those relics too? Let's see... in order, no less -- Atari something (7200?), NES, GB, SNES, Genesis, PS1 (bought with my first paycheck of my first job that I got the day I turned 16!), PS2, Xbox, XB360, Jaguar, PS3, Wii, XB360#2, XB360#3. Oh shoot, I lied... I have a GBA and PSP somewhere, no idea when I bought those.

You old farts are going to scoff, but I suppose I'm the young buck with only 15 years of experience. Started as a programmer for IBM when I was 18 using VB6 to create front end for SQL databases. Got tired of programming for the man, so fast forward and now I am an engineer for one of the big 3. 10 years in there were with a single company. The best and worst years of my life so far. Now I work almost a whole 40 hours a week and am never on call. I'd say, "Guess it worked out in the end." but the truth is I probably still have another 30 years ahead of me so who the heck knows. Hopefully Skynet comes online before then, because this whole "working past 40" thing sounds like a pain in the ass.

Oh, yeah no degrees and no certs. Although I did stay at a Holiday Inn once

[Drnick]

Ooh, ooh, ooh 

Consoles... yeah you guys are talking about systems I've never even heard of. Did they make you use punch cards in those relics too?

You old farts are going to scoff, but I suppose I'm the young buck with only 15 years of experience. Started as a programmer for IBM when I was 18 using VB6 to create front end for SQL databases. Got tired of programming for the man, so fast forward and now I am an engineer for one of the big 3. 10 years in there were with a single company. The best and worst years of my life so far. Now I work almost a whole 40 hours a week and am never on call. I'd say, "Guess it worked out in the end." but the truth is I probably still have another 30 years ahead of me so who the heck knows. Hopefully Skynet comes online before then, because this whole "working past 40" thing sounds like a pain in the ass.

Punch cards, not quite.  Although some of the systems mentioned would have been better off with using them

As for the working past 40",  I'll Let you know how that works out June 9th

[mystic96]

Ooh, ooh, ooh 

Consoles... yeah you guys are talking about systems I've never even heard of. Did they make you use punch cards in those relics too?

You old farts are going to scoff, but I suppose I'm the young buck with only 15 years of experience. Started as a programmer for IBM when I was 18 using VB6 to create front end for SQL databases. Got tired of programming for the man, so fast forward and now I am an engineer for one of the big 3. 10 years in there were with a single company. The best and worst years of my life so far. Now I work almost a whole 40 hours a week and am never on call. I'd say, "Guess it worked out in the end." but the truth is I probably still have another 30 years ahead of me so who the heck knows. Hopefully Skynet comes online before then, because this whole "working past 40" thing sounds like a pain in the ass.

Punch cards, not quite.  Although some of the systems mentioned would have been better off with using them

As for the working past 40",  I'll Let you know how that works out June 9th

I gotta say, it's so impressive (not to mention humbling) what was done with such little hardware back in the day. I recently watched a show called Atari: The Agony and the Ecstasy and I bow down to those devs... they worked freaking miracles. Buncha coke heads to be sure, but they still worked miracles.

But yeah, compared to some of the Atari 7x00 games I saw/played when I was younger, I'd have to agree with you! 

Re: 40 -- Don't do eeeeeeeet!!!!

[ark_ader]

Punch cards and paper tape (nightmare), three quarter inch tape,12" WORM, QIC, 8" floppies,  RLL & MFM 5mb full height drives and wait for it...EDSI. 

Yeah I'm showing my age....   

[Gray_Area]

.....I was expecting stories of happenings.

[Ond]

ehh why not...

Started out in high school, took a class in programming, did everything on punch cards, waited a week for them to come back with a printout to see if it ran OK.

The school got the first batch of TRS-80s with tape drives, whoohoo no more punch cards!

Occasionally got access to the school's Cromemco, that could play some kind of cool space game, I forget what it was.

Next a commodore 64 and a job in a Uni, where I was busy installing Apple II E's with crappy green screens.  The students could hear me plinking away in my office playing AMC on my color puter. That was a great job, all I did all day was help students - mainly females learn how to use video gear, lousy pay though.

Years whiz by largely without any IT stuff going on ( I was more interested in girls) and then an Amiga 1000, you could draw stuff with that thing, games were cool too!  Sold that for cash for a motocross bike which was way more exciting.
Whiz forward more and I find myself managing a computer shop with access to everything.  Good job except for idiot customers and shoplifters, still lousy pay.  The boss let us test anything, games, PCs whatever.  When they started selling PS1s we ‘tested’ them too.  I spent most of my time there repairing PCs working with some fun doods who were always playing practical jokes either on me or each other, stuff like:

          Ring up pretend to be irate customer with extreme indian accent.
          Balance Styrofoam cup fall of water on top of door to the backroom so it falls on someone’s head as they walk through it.
          Balance cardboard box full of packaging foam bits on top of door, so it falls on someone’s head as they walk through it.

One of the guys was this huge towering Serbian body builder – the G-Man.  I usually got him to deal with the difficult customers.  My favorite line the G-Man used when some smart ass know it all customer started talking techno crap was “are you asking me or are you telling me”.

We fixed anything and everything till the boss figured it wasn't profitable to have us tinkering all day when we could be selling computer games with a much better profit margin.

One day I accidently sold an obesely large woman Expert Diet instead of Expert typing.  This was an easy mistake to do, the software was all kept bunched up in a filing cabinet (boxes on shelves were empty to cope with thieves).  She came up to the counter clutching the Expert Typing package and I grabbed what I thought was the right disk and smilingly placed it in her carry bag.  Thirty minutes later she was back in the store screaming ruddy murder at me “HOW DARE YOU EMBARRASS ME, I OPENED THIS IN FRONT OF All MY FRIENDS!!!”  As I back pedalled the store 2IC started coming to my rescue, when he realized what I’d done he kept right on walking passed me and out to the back room, the woman stormed out to my “You couldn't possibly think I did that on PURPOSE madam” From the back room came the sounds of howling fits of laughter.

I got badly electrocuted in that shop through no fault of my own:

Ond climbs ladder to reach stuff on high shelves,  Ond grabs metal shelving to the right of him with one hand and a metal bracket to the left of him with the other hand.  Bracket screws unknown to anyone until that moment have been driven into 240v wiring inside the wall.  I get 240v right across my chest, my arm muscles spasm, I let go and fall off the ladder screaming expletives at the unfair universe.  Next week the owner shows me a letter from the Mall management re: complaints about the swearing in the back of the shop.  I should have sued him!

Fast forward more,
Diploma Electronic Engineering course, MCSE, various jobs, IT Support, SA, Consultant, Senior Consultant, Account Manager and now Senior BA.  Anyone in my field with half a brain contracts these days, I guess I’ll follow.  The money is good now but my heart is elsewhere.

[drventure]

Ok. I'm game.

My dad picked up an HP41C and I coded on it for a while till he finally broke down and got an appleII+

I wrote lots of silly stuff for that till one night he was talking about a problem he had at work routing wiring in a missile nose cone.

He described the problem, and I told him I thought I could probably write something that would optimize the wiring paths on the Apple.

Long story short, he had his secretary hand type all the wiring end points from the engineering drawings into text files on 3 floppies, and I wrote this app that shuffled wiring connections back and forth to find optimal routes. It took literally days to run. It was mainly based around a very special case merge sort as I recall. In the end he took the results up and months later told me they'd been able to assemble the missile with space left over because of the reduction in wire.

That got me hooked on programming.

Years later, I came across the apple floppy with that code on it (at least, it was labeled that way, the code was probably long since gone, and I don't have an apple II+ anymore anyways.

I thought "He probably just told the kid that his app worked to make him feel good" so I asked my dad what the deal really had been with the wiring app I wrote way back when.

He said it was kind of a big story around the shop for a while that a 13 year old had been able to optimize the wiring of that missile and it all actually worked in the end. He may still be yanking my chain, but I don't think so.

Still coding. But web stuff just isn't as much fun for me. So I hack addins for Mala 

[shmokes]

When I was young I loved computers, but we were way too poor to have one. When I was twelve (this would have been about 1990) my oldest brother moved back to Utah to attend college. His school was about an hour away, and he said that if I would let him share my bedroom on the weekends (during the week he lived out of the camper on his pickup truck, near his school), I could use his computer whenever I wanted. It was a 286 with a CGA monitor. The computer had the awesome Norton Commander on it, which gave me a sense of directory structure and file extensions, among other things. Eventually I was able to eschew NC for DOS.

I've never been very risk averse, so I was always tinkering with things, making changes just to see what would happen, or fiddling with autoexec.bat and config.sys files, trying to get games and such to run. Invariably I would make some change and restart the computer, only to find that it no longer booted to a dos prompt, at which point my heart would sink and I'd start sweating. At that point, I had until Friday evening to think about what I had done, understand it, and reverse it before my brother got home. I had some close calls--a couple of times I got the system sorted just minutes before he got back from school. But he never caught me. Not once.

I got my A+ certification while I was still in high school, and got a job doing phone tech support for Packard Bell, which paid like $8.50/hour, which was an incredibly high wage back in like 1995. They were also open 24/7/365, but had paid holidays for all employees. Holidays were staffed on a purely volunteer basis, at double-time-and-a-half, so I could work 4th of July, make over $20/hr all day, and still be home before any of the festivities started. Awesome.

Anyway, moved away to college, partied till I dropped out, got a job as a network admin for a government agency, went back to school and did both full-time, was getting bored of computers so I majored in completely unrelated subjects (though still minored in information systems). Went off and spent 3 years earning a non-IT professional degree. And now I find myself 100% back in IT, albeit in a legal/business capacity now (though I wouldn't have got the job if I didn't have the IT background too).

And so on . . .

[Gray_Area]

Now them is what I call moments. Carry on......

[MD Draco]

I got badly electrocuted in that shop through no fault of my own:

Ond climbs ladder to reach stuff on high shelves,  Ond grabs metal shelving to the right of him with one hand and a metal bracket to the left of him with the other hand.  Bracket screws unknown to anyone until that moment have been driven into 240v wiring inside the wall.  I get 240v right across my chest, my arm muscles spasm, I let go and fall off the ladder screaming expletives at the unfair universe.  Next week the owner shows me a letter from the Mall management re: complaints about the swearing in the back of the shop.  I should have sued him!

Oh now that brings back painful memories of my own! Twice have I been badly electrocuted, both times I will fully admit ... my own fault for employing stupidness as my driver rather than being an intelligent person and using my brain!! First time was in the forces, and I got thrown across the room... well, more accurately launched across the room at maximum velocity! I don't even know what the voltage really was, all I know was it F*ing hurt and I left a dent in a cabinet!! My own fault; I hadn't powered down a rack, reached in to check the cabling to one of the security devices, and found out the hard way what happens if someone hasn't grounded the gear properly!! Grrr! ... Needless to say; I always turned things off after that to avoid the same again, so I learned my lesson!!

The second and more painful one was the first installation I did when I used to do a bit of "work on the side" ... All taxable and whatnot, I registered!! But anyway, I was testing a UPS, so pulled the plug out of the wall to make sure the UPS would keep going... All good, I hear you say; except that I'd setup the plug in an unbelievably convoluted place to stop people pulling it out to plug in the vacuum cleaner (yes, it has happened, took us ages to find out why the power kept going off almost like clockwork, until I stayed behind one night and watched as the cleaner pulled my DO NOT TURN OFF plug out of the wall... I fitted a lock box over the lock in the end, but anyway, I digress...) so, I had to crawl under and between two desks, and still had to reach and twist, so the plug twisted in my hand, and I got a feedback shock from the UPS trying to detect if there was mains electricity!! THAT also hurt... for about 3 days afterwards!!!

Moral of the story... Don't play with electric, and just because it's off (Monitor's, power caps, UPS etc etc) doesn't mean they won't hurt you!!

[ark_ader]

I remember working on a electronic sign controller (one of my more interesting jobs) and my trainee was working with me.  I opened the case to swap out some dodgy proms so I got the trainee (yep I know) to power down the unit (240V) after getting the all clear I took off the top panel, swapped out the proms and was about to screw the lid down when my screw driver touched the PSU and I got a full 240V burst.  This threw my arm up and the screwdriver was embedded in the wall behind me.  Obviously my arm was no good for a few days after.

The trainee powered the box instead of powering it down by flicking the wrong switch, but I didn't blame him as the power switch light had broke on the front of the console, even though the lights on the board was not on.  I concluded that once the lid was screwed on it completed the circuit and powered the board.  Had the trainee decided to get behind me to over see the work, he would be dead, so there was some comfort.  Now I triple test all my gear to make sure it is not powered on.  It hurt really bad after the shock, though I have had a dose of 110V when I had the bright idea when I was a kid to get worms out of the ground using the house current and two metal poles.  I fished a lot and I thought it would be a cool idea to see the worms vacate the ground like little springs.    What I didn't know was it cooked the worms below...oops.

Kids do get up to all kinds of stupid things...

[shmokes]

This doesn't extend into the realm of pet peeves for me, maybe cos I get such a kick out of it. But "electrocuted" means shocked to death. Electrocute is to electricity what drown is to water.

[Ond]

This doesn't extend into the realm of pet peeves for me, maybe cos I get such a kick out of it. But "electrocuted" means shocked to death. Electrocute is to electricity what drown is to water.

Electrocute/Electrocuted can mean either injure or kill with electricity, the word Electrocution means kill with electricity.    Would you have been satisfied with "received a bad electrical shock" instead?  What is it you get a kick out of, grammatical pedantry?

The fact that I'm even bothering responding to pompous comments like this is a sure sign I've spent enough time on these boards for now.  Hasta la Vista babies!

[shmokes]

Not really. It means killed. And don't get your panties in a bunch. I get that you're joyless, but I suspect that you can see how one might find humor in a living person mistakenly saying that he was previously killed. It's funny. Lighten up.

[lilshawn]

first computer was an Apple IIe clone it was "Appco" branded.  learned lots about programming with that puppy. even had the 80 column card for increased text reading capacity.

Graduated from that to a toshiba t1100 laptop 4mhz with 640k memory and dual 720k 3 1/4 inch drives. CGA graphics on a monochrome widescreen LCD. Wordperfect 4.2.

Needed more powah. bought a Toshiba t1200 laptop. 1mb ram and a 20 mb HD (and single 720k drive) turbo speed 9mhz 8086 processor. really got me into videogaming with this machine with it's faster processor. still CGA 4 color graphics though. space quest 3 with magenta,cyan,black,and white FTW!

went to a Ratshack Tandy 4000 computer. 16mhz 386 prosessor upgraded to 4mb ram 80mb HD with VGA. OMG VGA640BY480WITH256COLORS!!!!! and windows 3.11

upgrade to Compaq 486dx-100mhz. 16mb ram, nothing special. Flipped that computer for a $200 profit 2 months later. my 15 year old self was baaaaad ass.

next was a pentium 133mhz. pentiums had just dropped in price. sold off the 486 for a profit and bought the pentium for nearly the same price. 20gb hd and high speed 56k modem. BBS here I come!

Overclocked my first computer with a Slot 1 Pentium II 400mhz, (to 440mhz) 64mb ram 20gb hd. Sold that computer to help finance my next computer (still overclocked)  .

stepped away from intel and bought an AMD Athlon 1.2 ghz, 80gb HD, 512mb ram, onboard graphics. This is where I realized onboard graphics really sap your computers processing power. got rid of that computer right quick. Even broke even on it.

went back to intel (after the AMD left a bad taste in my mouth.) spent the extra money to go to a 3ghz P4 with a gig of ram. still wasn't particularly impressed with the performance. At this time, i was still using on board graphics. a friend of mine mentioned that this was due to the on board graphics. Sold that computer to the company I worked for at the time. They probably still use it.

Managed to get my hands on an Athlon 64 2ghz computer used. (over clocked to 2.2ghz) (my first used computer) dual 120gb SATA drives... 2 gig ram. Radion 9550 graphics. gamed a ton on that system. upgraded the processor to 3ghz still have it down in my basement today. Albeit in parts, but still working.

bought all new hardware and going a little crazy this time around. Upgrading in stages until i'm satisfied with the final product. Started off with a 3.2ghz dual core athlon X2 and Asus mobo, 4gb ram. nvidia 9500gt video. Upgraded to the FX4100 3.6 ghz 4 core processor with Corsair H60 Liquid cooling...and recently to the FX8150 4ghz 8 core, with (in the works) custom liquid cooling. was overclocking the 8 core to 4.4ghz no problems, but the H60 can't handle the heat output that great at 100% loads even modded with an external reservoir to increase the fluid volume. So, I'm building a custom cooling solution with a triple 120mm fans on Koolance radiator. I'll be chopping the giant hole in the top plate of my case today.