Re: My national tabloid love affair with a computer

From: Doug Jones (djones@xcor.com)
Date: Mon Apr 09 2001 - 13:40:35 MDT


KPJ wrote:
>
> It appears as if Jim F. wrote:
>
> |I wonder if anybody on this list ever had a love affair with
> |a PDP-11/45?
>
> I programmed MACRO-11 on earlier PDP-11 forms...
>
> Before that, I used a PDP-7/9...
>
> I have the PDP-4 source for the first interactive LISP...

You had dirt?

 When I Was A Boy

 Copyright © 1997 by Frank Hayes,
 Firebird Arts & Music (BMI)

 When I was a boy our Nintendo
 Was carved from an old Apple tree
 And we used garden hose to connect it
 To our steam-powered color tv.

 But it still beat that ancient Atari
 'Cuz I almost went blind, don'tcha know,
 Playing Breakout and Pong on a video game
 Hooked up to the radio.

 And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
 Barefoot, uphill both ways,
 Through blizzards in summer and winter
 Back in the good old days.
 Back when Fortran was not even Three-tran
 And the PC was only a toy
 And we did our computing by gaslight
 When I was a boy.

 When I was a boy all our networks
 Were for hauling in fish from the sea--
 Our bawd rate was eight bits an hour (and she was worth it!),
 And our IP address was just 3.

 And you kids who complain that the World Wide Web
 Is too slow oughtta cut out your bitchin',
 'Cuz when I was a boy every packet
 Was delivered by carrier pigeon

 And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
 Barefoot, uphill both ways,
 Through blizzards in summer and winter
 Back in the good old days.
 Back when Fortran was not even Two-tran
 And the mainframe was only a toy
 And we did our computing by torchlight
 When I was a boy.

 When I was a boy our IS shop
 Built relational tables from wood,
 And we wrappered our data in oilcloth
 To preserve it the best that we could.

 And we carried our bits in a bucket,
 And our mainframe weighed 900 tons,
 And we programmed in ones and in zeros
 And sometimes we ran out of ones.

 And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
 Barefoot, uphill both ways,
 Through blizzards in summer and winter
 Back in the good old days.
 Back when Fortran was not even One-tran
 And the abacus? Only a toy!
 And we did our computing in primordial darkness
 When I was a boy.

--
Doug Jones, Rocket Plumber
XCOR Aerospace
http://www.xcor.com



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