Category Archives: Uncategorized

While editing a college textbook on cybersecurity (still a secret project at this time), I’ve run across a description of the Morris Worm. This was the first true Internet worm, released in 1988, and it ravaged the early Internet. At … Continue reading →

One of my earliest jobs was that of a programmer at Nevada National Bank in Reno, Nevada. I wrote programs in BASIC on a new IBM PC running DOS 1.0 with two floppy drives. The file system in DOS 1.0 … Continue reading →

In mainframe shops with line printers, printouts are produced on continuous “greenbar” paper. Often, the users of these reports would want these greenbar reports “bursted”, meaning that each page was separated from the next, and the printout stacked. Users usually … Continue reading →

Several of the first computers I used had core memory for RAM. Core was reliable, and one plus is that it retained its contents when power was removed. Some computers took advantage of this and, upon bootup, could save the … Continue reading →

While employed at the university computing center, I had an opportunity to visit the university’s program library. In the days of punch cards and mag tapes, a program library was not a THING, but instead it was a PLACE. In … Continue reading →

Early in my career I did a lot with punch cards.  My first encounter with punch cards was in a Freshman level introduction to FORTRAN programming class. At the University, programming was done on punch cards; the computer: a CDC-6400, … Continue reading →

Not long into my first full time employment in a data center (the DEC PDP-10 mainframe), we had an operations manager who was a little ornery and liked to prank his employees. We had a young computer operator named Rose; … Continue reading →

I was employed at an agency that had a DEC PDP-10 mainframe. A year after my arrival, we migrated our applications to a Unisys 1100/60 mainframe. The Unisys occupied a brand new raised floor computer room with all the latest … Continue reading →

JR’s recent post about a failed UPS test reminded me of a similar event. In the late 1980s I was employed as a software engineer / systems architect for a company that built casino management system software. We had a … Continue reading →

Most of us who started off operating computers, and later networks, had to also become the first facilities engineers for the rooms that housed our toys.  All over the United States in the 1990’s various broom closets, unused offices, and … Continue reading →