Power outage now my server asks for fck, what to do?

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 08 January 2021 13:59:56 Liam Proven wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Jan 2021 at 22:29, Gene Heskett <gheskett at shentel.net> wrote:
> > My first computer was a board with 256 bytes of ram, speaking 1802
> > machine code thru a hex monitor. I bought an s-100 board backplane
> > and built it, followed by $400 for 4k of static ram, and looking up
> > the hex in the 1802 programmers manual, wrote a program to aid
> > productions use of an automatic station break machine, reducing the
> > number of copy operations to make a commercial by one and making a
> > very noticeable improvement in the on air product, in 1978. I left
> > instructions on how to edit it to change the tape machine ballistics
> > as machines improved, then went on down the road, In Salem OR to see
> > an aunt who was approaching the end of her time in 1994, I called
> > that station to ask if my gizmo was still running, and was told it
> > was still in several times a day use.  That's eons in a tv stations
> > control room gear life.  And I still have a typewritten paper copy
> > on the shelf above me, an a broadcast audio cart with several copies
> > of it for backup.
>
> Very impressive!
>
> > I did much the same thing at my last tv station. We had bought a GVG
> > 300A/B production video switcher for a song when Penny's closed
> > their NYC production house which came with the manuals for its
> > config storage, but not with the storage since it was an extra $20k.
> >  So I wrote, for a color computer-2, running os9level 1.01, in
> > basic-09, the functional equ to their $20k toy. But where theirs had
> > a 2 digit switch to select the personality, mine had a video
> > interface with English filesnames, and was 4x faster than theirs.
> > Wrote the program on their time and it was in several times a day
> > use thru the end of that switcher and another much better condition
> > one just like it we got from KTLA, a span of 14 years. I retired,
> > and it was dying so when it was finally pulled out, they gave me
> > back that coco and its disk drives so they are stocking a box in the
> > basement right now.
>
> Ha! This one?
> https://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Gene_Heskett

Thats me, but is growing grey hair, the email addy changed several years 
ago after verizon proved incapable of maintaining a copper phone 
connection, and had the unmitigated gall to get PO's when I kept sending 
my experience to the WV PUC.  Rather than fix it, they sold it to 
Frontier, but by then I had bailed out to the cable folks, one of the 
smarter moves I've done in 31+ years at this address. 
>
> > I also used that comm channel into it as a
> > troubleshooting tool on many occasions.
>
> I don't know what any of that means, but I Googled what a GVC 300A was
> and I found this:
> https://www.grassvalley.com/media/mmqlityv/production_switchers_ds-pub
>-2-0572b-en.pdf
>
> It looks very complicated and sounds impressive.

That one is 25 year newer, a probably close to a million more.
>
> I am in regular correspondence with a friend of mine back in the UK
> who is a low-level programmer of manufacturing equipement process
> monitoring kit. He's trying to resurrect a decades-old business solo
> after the previous owners ran it into bankruptcy via mismanagement and
> that resulted in him losing a share of the business worth hundreds of
> thousands of pounds -- his retirement plan now. That's due in <5yr.
>
> He's found some horribly inefficient code in the Arduino dev kit,
> resulting in some checks taking hundreds of times longer than they
> should. Given that Arduino is so tiny and cheap, we had thought it
> would be simple and efficient, but no. Also given it's in very
> widespread use, I think he should productize his more-efficient code,
> but it's out of his line of business and he doesn't want to.
>
> But yes, long story short, I can well believe that it's possible to
> significantly outperform pro kit with hand-coded stuff now, 10 or 20
> or 30 years ago.
>
> I don't do much work on Linux distros but I have been playing around
> creating some DOS distributions recently -- PC DOS 2000 and 7.1, Open
> DR-DOS  7.01 and so on. It's refreshing to work with code from the era
> when a full-featured, modern OS came on a single-digit number of
> floppy disks. It doesn't do much by modern standards, but what it does
> is still useful and it does it well.
>
And likely faster.

> > Now I'm just another 86 year old fart, trying to stay busy with a
> > garage full of cnc machinery I've built till the end.
>
> 86! Wow!
>
> We've been on this list a long time, haven't we?

Since the middle of the first decade.

> >  And alone these days. The
> > lady standing beside me on my web pages front page for the last 31
> > yeas passed from COPD a month ago.
>
> Oh no. :'( I am so very sorry to hear that. My condolences.
>
> https://www.wdtv.com/2020/12/08/elladene-dee-heskett/ I presume?
>
> Well, I have no idea if this is any consolation, but you have given me
> a feeling of hope. I am 53 now, and I live with my partner of 3 years
> and our baby daughter Ada. She came as a big surprise to both of us,
> but a very big one to me -- you don't get to your 50s without kids by
> accident -- and the biggest of all is that I love being a dad. I
> reckon I must be close in age to the age you were when you married
> Elladene. 31 years is a pretty significant span, and you give me a
> reason to think that maybe I will have another few decades with my
> girls. So thank you for that.

You are most welcome, Liam, but my Elladene was not my 1st, she was my 
3rd.  I was a bit late getting started, caught by an Arkansas divorcee 
with 2 with CP who've since passed, when I was 23, who gleefully gave me 
3 more in 5 years, but had a stroke and passed at 34 in '68. They have 
all passed now, cancer & car wrecks. Picked up the local glasshopper at 
a bar in RCSD, who already had 3, and gave me 3 boys but had her own 
agenda so we ripped that blanket after 17 years.  Her own worst enemy, 
and she passed last year. By then I was the CE at one of the local tv 
stations where I stayed until I retired in 2002.  And I had been fixed, 
so since she was past child bearing age anyway, we have no offspring. So 
I have 3 sons doing well, and one stepson remains from the 2nd, those 3 
were all fathered by an MD victim, and Myotonic is hereditary, so the 2 
oldest have passed at about age 30. So I've 4 boys left, all doing well.  
And treating me like the father I tried to be.  It's been quite a ride, 
Liam, but now its nearing the end. My ticker is working from a 
pacemaker, at about 30% efficiency in spite of a new aortic valve a year 
back.  The Cath lab at WVU/RUBY knows all the incantations for miracles, 
so I'm still here. They take another survey the 12th.

Watching the mini-you's grow and absorb what you can teach them is a bit 
of a miracle itself, so don't let it pass you by. Its well worth the 
price of admission IMNSHO. Savor every second you can.

Take care and stay well.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>