For the Admins... a collective BRAVO!!!! and yes, THANKS!

[nadinbrzezinski]

[fascisthunter]

1. ?

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. They had a slew of database errors

it took Elad fifteen minutes or leess to do what he needed to do...

Database errors are a pain in the rear.

[fascisthunter]

3. ah.... ok. Thanks

[Kennah]

4. Kudos!

There are few things more invigorating than fixing a production database live.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. We fellow geeks understand

I had to do that ONCE and it wasn't pretty. I ended up scrapping the database and putting up a fresh one.

I expect a few burps, aka lost messages, but I am IMPRESSED.

[Kennah]

9. Once ...

... a fellow developer hosed the production database, and I remember my boss calmly coming to me to fix it. She was always very calm, quiet, and even demure. I asked a question or two about specifics, and she just leaned towards me and said, "I don't care. Just fix it." Yes, ma'am. Consider it done.

[hootinholler]

8. Nah, just throw a DBA at 'em

:rofl:

I suspect there's some overflow of a regular in which should be a BigInt or some such.

Now RPC marshaling errors...

-Hoot

P.S. This is to test if MyDU will show this reply now.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. You are mean!!!!!

[hootinholler]

12. Not intentionally so ;)

:P

Just an old school developer who remembers thinking "where we gonna get the bandwidth for that?" when the notion of the WWW was introduced.

-Hoot

[nadinbrzezinski]

13. You know what is sad, I never did development

but I get exactly what you are saying...

Ah remember those wonderfully geeky 300 baud modems?

GAD dating myself!

yesterday somebody posted Mosaic... jesus them were the days...

Having to watch my watch to make sure I did not blow my "free minutes" from AOL... or stay too long online...

Kids don't get it, do they?

[Hawkeye-X]

14. Ugh. Those AOL floppies and CDs

were constantly thrown into the trash.

And I wondered how much AOL spent on those discs?

I remember Prodigy.

And yes, I was a student at RIT when Mosaic was around. Netscape 1.0. IE was horrid, no matter the version (even 9 is a bad copycat of Chrome)

And we didn't even have ethernet in our dorms, but we did have the 'Net - unix shells and Solaris 2.5s.. we had to use RS232 to connect. After I left in '96, I heard they had the ethernet installed.

[Mojeoux]

20. One year at "Burning Man" there was

A 3 story, truck wide "door way" with a 3 story beaded curtain. The curtain was all cds and 90 percent of them were AOL cds.

It was beautiful and you could see it's sparkle for miles around.

[Raksha]

21. I've still got quite a few online friends from my Prodigy days.

My first computer with a modem came with Prodigy already installed. I think it took me three days or less to become a total Internet addict.

[rainbow4321]

37. Prodigy alum, here, too

OMG...that was my first real intro to online communicating, etc..

I remember how it would slow down around mid evening and everyone would groan and say the same thing "West Coasters just got home and logged on". But then it would "speed up" after a couple hours cuz the East Coasters would be logging off to go to bed :)

[Canuckistanian]

39. Former Compuserve user here

I'm not ashamed to admit it. Not after the years of therapy.

[hootinholler]

15. I've seen fire and I've seen rain...

And I hope I never see EBCDIC again, although i18n and UTF is getting just as bad, lol.

With the benefit of being a tech in the US Navy, I've experienced a lot of obscure tech that now only exists in the Smithsonian or other collections of relics. Drum memory? Check. Front panel blinken lights that mean stuff? Check. Hand loading bootstrap routines through front panel switches? BTDT, lol.

I knew I was getting old when one day a new developer asked me "What's a register?" and I had to explain it's kinda like a hardware variable.

Kids get it, just it's a different language for them, just as it was a different language for us when we talked to the gray beards.

Anytime you want to visit Mr Peabody, hit me up.

-Hoot

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. SDSU has a collection of old machines

it is wild to see my first word processor, a Tandy 1100 on display... and my first laptop, a Tandy as well... they ARE museum pieces these days.

It is wild....

And I once had one of the early CANNON portable printers, while writing my thesis. Laptop and printer weight over 10 pounds but that was portable. These days my Netbook is more powerful than any of that.

Oh the days, I had a x386 with a math co-processor... WOW!

And hubby in the Navy... they still got the seven inch floppies... that was like oh advanced.

[Hawkeye-X]

22. My father had a business called DMI

He owned a data processing center and sometimes my mom would take me to see him work, and I'd play with the paper punch and watch the tapes spin and whir. His whole computer setup was in the basement and it was QUITE loud. Even for a deaf kid back then.

And his brand new computer he bought last week for $400 beats about $250,000 he spent on those machines back then 100x in processing power.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. It is amazing, isin't it

These days I got my toys... but I really don't futz with them any more.

They work, that's all I care for.

Right now doing a full back up on the macbook.... see machine is going to the shop to get a new BIGEST DRIVE that will fit in it... as this is hubby's school machine now.

These days I keep them until they no longer work or they fall apart...

[toddaa]

25. Ever shuffle someone else's punch cards?

Goodtimes

[nadinbrzezinski]

30. Believe it or not the Computer labs at SDSU oh

back in 1984, still had them. One student dropped his stack. Wasn't pretty.

What was even funnier was my sis got her 286 AT to write her thesis on. I was deadly afraid to the damn thing.

These days I am the one that knows them and she is deathly afraid of them

[hootinholler]

35. Better than shuffle is to leave the reader in collate mode

If you had a sophisticated reader it would sort the cards into as many bins available like dealing a deck, lol. Or you could slip a lace card into their deck, but that would get serious trouble from the operators because they usually would have to clear the reader of the leftover pieces. Other fun activities were making chad bombs ;)

Anyone who had ever dropped even part of a deck quickly learned to mark a diagonal line across the top of it with a magik marker. It's relatively easy to get sorted correctly that way.

-Hoot

[rainbow4321]

38. Or the only thing distinguishing your online "name"

from someone else in your house was the "A", "B", "C" at the end of the same exact string of letters that came with your account when you installed it. That's what I remember about Prodigy.

[LiberalFighter]

18. There was bandwidth before the internet? Wow

[hootinholler]

19. Yes.

Absolutely, it is an old term from telcom networks, (as almost all network terminology originates) back when they were mostly analog and converting from click dialing to tone pairs.

-Hoot

[Hawkeye-X]

23. on the usenet group I frequent

was just discussing how far back they can remember computers.... some mentioned 1969 computers.

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. USENET is still around?

I thought they went away a while ago.

[toddaa]

27. alt.atheism and alt.scientology still going full throttle

groups.google.com if your curious.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. I found the old RGM Mecha

my intro to usenet.

Should look for some good US History group.

I even posted there. It looks dead.

But then again Battletech is mostly dead.

[Hawkeye-X]

29. Heh. I lurk at news.admin.net-abuse.email

Most of the time, it's quiet, but we do have a kook or two.

[toddaa]

31. It's a shadow of itself

There are a few groups that thrive, but it's now mostly a repository for pirated porn.

[hootinholler]

33. Indeed

Most have been subsumed by forums like this one.

I wonder if the comp hierarchy is still going?

I loved the wild west feel of the alt side.

-Hoot

[hootinholler]

34. Yes, but it no longer uses UUCP

:rofl:

-Hoot

[Warren DeMontague]

17. Is that what that was?

I thought maybe Grovelbot had gone over to the dark side.

[City Lights]

5. Indeed!

:applause:

[nc4bo]

7. My that was quick! Good job guys! nt

[Bluerthanblue]

10. agreed!

great job!!

[Stinky The Clown]

32. What time was all this?

[canetoad]

36. I know the survey results were confidential

But my answer to the question about what was best about DU was the level of technical expertise and user friendliness. Still believe that.