Monsters, Diablo, and musings

Giggle-watts

Today's cast tour of Monsters Inc Laugh Floor was great fun and everyone had a blast. That show is a fast pace blend of computer technology, camera shots, and improv comedy. Our tour guide seemed to enjoy himself as much as we did. The people working there are very talented and having wayyyy too much to get paid for it.


The Secret Cow Level

The countdown is on. Blizzard is going to make an announcement Saturday. All the evidence points to it being a new release of Diablo - Diablo III. Boo-ya!! Diablo is my favorite online game. It's a great game to play alone or with others, and there were no monthly fees to play it online.

Of course that was before WoW took over the universe.

Will the announcement be for Diablo III? Will it be free to play online? Will it require a massive computer system to play? Will it have a new secret cow level? Will it run under Wine? I no longer have Microsoft Windows running on any computer system in my house, nor do I intend to let Diablo force me to. It better run under a VM or Wine, or a Mac.

We'll know in 1 more day.


RSTS/E, RSX-11 and VAX/VMS

If you'd like to see the computer systems I started my career with, check out this video of a PDP-11, DECwriter, and ASR33. Ahh if only the smells of those machines could come through as well.

In that world, I was a king. I was an expert that other experts sought out. You could eat and sleep computers if you wanted - no need to have social skills and interact with non-technical people. You took pride in coding your date function smaller than someone elses. It was the time after mainframes and cobol, but before the personal computer. The new world was timesharing, multi-user, multi-tasking, and networking. There was no SPAM, no viruses, and no rebooting systems to fix or prevent problems.

Digital Equipment Corporation was the #2 computer company in the world, firing arrows at IBM's mainframe universe with small multi-users systems. Microsoft was a kid selling home computers, competing with Atari and Commodore.

Gone are the days of multi-platter hard drives, magnetic tape spools, card readers, paper tape, rubbing erasers on circuit board pins, and toggling in boot programs. Unfortunately also gone are the days of 5 year system up-times, assembly language programming, uninterrupted time to your programming assignment, and engineer controlled data centers.


Free Credit Report dot com

Am I the only one that enjoys the songs in these commercials?

WELL I WAS SHOPPING FOR A NEW CAR
WHICH ONE'S ME?
A COOL CONVERTABLE
OR AN S-U-V
TOO BAD I DIDN'T KNOW MY CREDIT WAS WHACK
CAUSE NOW I’M DRIVING OFF THE LOT IN A USED SUB COMPACT
F-R-E-E THAT SPELLS FREE
CREDIT REPORT DOT COM BABY!
SAW THEIR ADS ON MY TV
THOUGHT ABOUT GOING BUT WAS TOO LAZY
NOW INSTEAD OF LOOKIN FLY AND ROLLIN FAT
MY LEGS ARE STICKING TO THE VINYL
AND MY POSSE'S GETTING LAUGHED AT
F-R-E-E THAT SPELLS FREE
CREDIT REPORT DOT COM BABY!

They say a man should always dress for the job he wants.
So why am I dressed up like a pirate in this restaurant?
It's all because some hacker stole my identity.
Now I'm here every evening serving chowder and ice tea.
I should have gone to free credit report dot com.
I could have seen this coming at me like an atom bomb.
They moniter your credit and send you e mail alerts,
so you won't wind up selling fish to tourists in t shirts.


I actually believe they could put together a CD of these and it would sell.

Syndicated 2008-06-27 03:56:35 (Updated 2008-06-29 05:02:10) from Keith