When Computers Weren’t For Everybody

I just came across a bunch of old manuals and documentation at work. Most of them were for Apple hardware purchased in the mid 90’s which are unsurprisingly beautifully laid out and designed. But among the bunch, I found a troubleshooting & repair manual for the IBM PC. I only took a quick glance through it and was immediately taken away by two things:

1. We’ve come such a long way in personal computing.
2. You had to be pretty smart to repair a computer back in the day.

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It’s amazing how such a wealth of knowledge can be bypassed and not even needed to fix a computer these days. It’s no wonder why HP wasn’t interested in introducing Woz’s first computer into their product line. Computers were just so much more involved back then. I mean, how many computer users do you know these days that know the hexadecimal address of their CMOS checksum?

I love a clean desk.

I grew tired of the Flurry iconset, so I decided to mix it up with some new icons.

Foto Friday

Throwback Thursday: Snowcraft

If you were around when Shockwave was the preferred plugin over Flash, you’ll probably remember playing this game.

Snowcraft by Nicholson NY

Double Rainbow Is Not Full On For My Mom

So I just showed the infamous Double Rainbow video to my mom. Her reaction?

I think my mom just pwn3d Yosemitebear.

My Life in Receipts

For the years 2007 and 2008, I kept almost all my receipts in a little green military box designed to carry hand grenades. It’s been stuffed to full capacity since then, so I finally decided to clean it out tonight. What I found was my entire life three years ago. In receipts.

To start off, here’s a literal overview of all my collected receipts:

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Obviously I didn’t keep a receipt for every single purchase I made, but I thought it’d be fun to put together some statistical data based on the ones that I actually kept. There were way too many to try adding up, so instead I thought I’d put together some basic numbers about my consuming habits. The receipt count for each category breakdown are as follows:

• USPS: 39 (Delivery Confirmations: 16)
• UPS: 5
• FedEx: 26
• Games: 19
• Electronics: 51
• Clothes: 49
• Costco: 24
• Gas: 8 (I rarely keep them)
• Utilities/Household/Auto/Misc: 72
• Grocery: 30
• Food: 65

Breaking that down into more general categories we see that aside from the combined category of “Misc”, I spent most of my time ebaying and shipping things out to customers. Then at a close second, I ate out a lot. Followed by buying gadgets and clothes.

Believe me, I’m not exactly proud of all the crap I bought, and how much of those purchases were a complete waste of money. But I thought it’d be kind of fun to document a little bit of my past.

To end I thought I’d share the one receipt that continues to represent my current day spending philosophy. And that’s my first generation iPhone purchase, dated June 29th, 2007.

Throwback Thursday: Julia Stiles in Ghostwriter

A few days ago, I happened to come across one of my favorite kid shows of the early 90’s, PBS’s Ghostwriter. It’s about a group of New York City kids solving crimes with help of their invisible-to-everyone-else-but-them ghost that can only communicate by reading and manipulating text. Through it’s limited 18 episode run, Ghostwriter surprisingly had a number of big name cameo’s including: Samuel L. Jackson, Julia Stiles, Spike Lee, Daisy Fuentes, Judge Reinhold, Robin Leach, Michael J. Fox, Salt-N-Pepa, Harry Connick, Jr., and CeCe Peniston. For Julia Stiles, it was her television debut playing a grungy teenage hacker by the name of Erica Dansby. A star in the making:

Date Patterns Happen More Often Than You Think.

Earlier today it was 08/09/10 11:12:13. Whoop dee doo. I find it mildly amusing how people like to make a little fanfare about these fun date patterns. Just this morning, I came across 3 tweets and 1 tumble noting today’s date pattern. *Paris Hilton didn’t really get it, but she tried.

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I gotta admit, I even like to take note of it myself. But what’s more amusing to me is how that fanfare is usually followed by awe and some kind of note saying “this won’t happen again for another XXX years”. But doesn’t it seem like there’s always one of these special dates every year? Even a couple times a year? It’s true that those specific date patterns won’t occur again for a long while, but many others will. Just in the past decade we’ve had over 2 dozen date patterns:

Descending (hh:mm:ss MM/DD/YY)

• 05:04:03 02/01/00 – February 1st, 2000 5:04:03am
• 06:05:04 03/02/01 – March 2nd, 2001 6:51:04am
• 07:06:05 04/03/02 – April 3rd, 2001 7:06:05am
• 08:07:06 05/04/03 – May 4th, 2003 8:07:06am
• 09:08:07 06/05/04 – June 5th, 2004 9:08:07am
• 10:09:08 07/06/05 – July 6th, 2005 10:09:08am
• 11:10:09 08/07/06 – August 7th, 2006 11:10:09am
• 12:11:10 09/08/07 – September 8th, 2007 12:11:10am

Ascending (MM/DD/YY hh:mm:ss)

• 01/02/03 04:05:06 – January 2nd, 2003 4:05:06am
• 02/03/04 05:06:07 – February 3rd, 2004 5:06:07am
• 03/04/05 06:07:08 – March 4th, 2005 6:07:08am
• 04/05/06 07:08:09 – April 5th, 2006 7:08:09am
• 05/06/07 08:09:10 – May 6th, 2007 8:09:10am
• 06/07/08 09:10:11 – June 7th, 2008 9:10:11am
• 07/08/09 10:11:12 – July 8th, 2009 10:11:12am
• 08/09/10 11:12:13 – August 9th, 2010 11:12:13am

Multiples

• 01/01/01 01:01:01 – January 1st, 2001 1:01:01am
• 02/02/02 02:02:02 – February 2nd, 2002 2:02:02am
• 03/03/03 03:03:03 – March 3rd, 2003 3:03:03am
• 04/04/04 04:04:04 – April 4th, 2004 4:04:04am
• 05/05/05 05:05:05 – May 5th, 2005 5:05:05am
• 06/06/06 06:06:06 – June 6th, 2006 6:06:06am
• 07/07/07 07:07:07 – July 7th, 2007 7:07:07am
• 08/08/08 08:08:08 – August 8th, 2008 8:08:08am
• 09/09/09 09:09:09 – September 9th, 2009 9:09:09am

If you start deviating from the standard US Time format, you can find even more! Anyhow, it’s just something that I’ve thought about whenever one of these magical dates occur. I’m looking forward to 10/10/10 10:10:10am.