The writer of The Night Shift With Greg Sidor really works the night shift … just look at those posting times. MANNNNNN.
The most recent three entries, here, here and here, focus on women in the, um, entertainment professions, and make for very good reading.
I sit across from Greg for the brief hour that our work shifts have in common, the hour that stretches, 5 to 6 p.m., and I must say that it is a pleasure.
I don’t play poker, but I read about it a whole lot. It’s part of my job, you see, at the Daily News. We run the Steve Rosenbloom poker column (that him on the right) in the U section. Believe me, there’s more than one poker column out there, given the game’s popularity — it’s like miniskirts in the ’60s and granola in the ’70s (need I go on? I think not).
With the help of Daily News online master Armando Hernandez, we have created a one-stop poker education page — basically Steve Rosenbloom pouring all his poker knowledge into all the columns of his that we have run over the past months.
So if you want to speak poker, or play it and win, click on over and learn what to do if you’ve got the nuts.
The L.A. Times did a story on devotees of the old Commodore 64 and VIC-20 computers pegged to a user group in Fresno. That’s even farther back than This Old Mac:
In an era when a home computer’s power is measured in gigabytes, (Robert) Bernardo still counts kilobytes as a devoted Commodore user 12 years after the last machine was assembled.
Once the largest personal computer maker in America, the company behind the VIC-20 and the Commodore 64 introduced millions of people like Bernardo to the digital age. The company went out of business in 1994, but its legacy survives in dozens of Commodore clubs around the country.
Bernardo presides over the Fresno chapter.
Never mind that the VIC-20 has so little usable memory — just 3.5 kilobytes — that it can store only a couple of pages of text in its buffers. Or that Commodore hardware was notoriously clunky and buggy. Bernardo still manages all his e-mail on a 1980s-vintage Commodore 64.
“I’ve never considered the Commodore obsolete,” Bernardo said. “I can still do many things with it — e-mail, browse the Web, word processing, desktop publishing and newsletters. I still do games on it: new games that are copyright 2006, ordered from Germany.”
Web browsing on a Commodore 64? If that’s possible, anything is. Here’s one way to do it on the C64 and lots of other 8-bit hardware, including the Apple ][, VIC-20 and even Game Boy. Here’s another place to start for those who want to resurrect and/or trick out a C64.
It makes This Old Mac seems so … newfangled. And there must be millions of C64s lying around in closets, garages and who knows where. It reminds me of my first computer, a Sinclair ZX81, which actually sold for something like $99 back when “real” computers were still going for $1,000-plus. True to its name, the ZX81 came on the market — in both preassembled and kit forms– in 1981. The whole Sinclair c
omputer phenomenon was huge in England, but it did have some impact here, too. Start here for some Sinclair history. I kept my Sinclair stuff — including the crudely printed magazine I subscribed to that featured programs you would type in line by tedious line. At some point, I sold the whole lot at a garage sale for about $10. As you can see, they’re still big in Germany, and you can still buy one and build it yourself for $99.
I suppose that if you only keep a PC for a couple of years, you never have to even think about the battery on the motherboard that keeps the CMOS settings saved when you have it turned off.
But if you have an old PC, those batteries will go dead.
On This Old PC, the clock speed was very slow. It would lose whole days of time, not just minutes or hours.
I pulled the cover and found the battery, a typical button cell. I actually had a replacement in the drawer — who knows how long that had been there — and reinstalled. First of all, those batteries are a whole lot easier to get out than to get it, but I did manage to do it.
Did I forget to write down my CMOS settings, which I lost when pulling the battery?
Yes.
It booted anyway — somehow this BIOS can deal with the hard drives from scratch. The CMOS on this computer was pretty complicated — there are pages and pages of settings. I tweaked something having to do with the sound card, and everything worked fine.
But the PC kept losing time. Perhaps my replacement battery, old as it is, was too dead to use. Bruce suggested that the crystal in the time clock was bad, but I find that very hard to believe. A crystal is a hunk of rock — what could go wrong?
And the thing went totally dead — my clock went back to 1998 the last time I turned it on. I had to hit F1 to complete the booting process, but without doing any CMOS tweaking, it’s running fine.
Still, I’ll have to remember to get a new battery from Fry’s or Target. At least a $3 battery will do it. The PRAM batteries in Macs can run into some serious money, I’ve learned, and it’s refreshing to be able to get the PC battery at any reasonably equipped drug store.
I tried to install the Symantec antivirus software after I made the Windows 2000 upgrade, but when trying to do the install, Windows answers back that I needed a Service Pack before it can be done. That had to wait until I could get the DSL modem, which was connected to the Mac via Ethernet, going through the wireless router.
In the interim, Bruce told me that Avast was better than Symantic/Norton. And Avast is free for home users.
Once I got the router hooked up and had Internet coming to the PC, I installed Service Pack 4 for Windows 2000 anyway, and I didn’t opt to save my configuration, should I want to go Service Pack-less. Hopefully all will work fine.
I did get a message about a lack of virtual memory, but Windows said it was somehow adding to virtual memory, but some programs might not load. I’ll have to keep an eye on that. I do have the machine stuffed with RAM, maxing out for some reason at 262 megabytes.
I did the Avast install, and it seems to be running fine. You have 60 days during which to license the software, although it’s still free, and I think you have to re-up every 60, for what reason I don’t know, but maybe it’s so they can keep a tally on how many people are actually using it, as opposed to downloading and forgetting about it.
I’m not sure how they got turned off, but now they are back on. On Blogger, it appears that switching comments on or off only affects NEW posts, so the two below will be commentless, unless I repost them.
Brent Hopkins has a story today about “ghost traffic” on the 101, meaning mysterious jams on the freeway long after accidents have been cleared:
Phantom traffic blanketed the Ventura Freeway on Monday, snarling morning commutes, delaying work and confounding experts.
This insidious phenomenon, which seems to present itself periodically at the least convenient times, has no direct cause, no singular reason why it comes or goes. No lane seems open, no relief appears down the road. Though people joke you can get anywhere in Los Angeles in 15 minutes, on days like this, a simple trip takes an hour.
As a daily commuter, either on this freeway or the go-to street alternatives (Burbank and Victory boulevards), I think it’s just basic over-capacity on the freeway, and the days when it’s good are just about outnumbered on days when it’s bad.
I NEVER take the 101 home, heading Eastbound — it’s NEVER good. I always take Victory, but in the morning, heading Westbound, I got into the habit of taking the 101, since for the most part it hasn’t been too bad. Last week, however, was exceptionally bad every day, and I bailed off at Balboa Boulevard a couple of days and headed for Victory (that’s big V … there was no victory in the literal sense).
On the Westbound side, I think it’s pretty much a phenomenon created by Calabasas and Thousand Oaks becoming work destinations for people who don’t live there. After all, if you work in any kind of retail job, and there are plenty of them out there, chances are you don’t live in Calabasas, Agoura or even Thousand Oaks. You probably live somewhere else in the Valley, or even another part of Los Angeles, and you’re commuting in. So the morning-drive traffic no longer ends at Topanga Canyon Boulevard, but extends out to Parkway Calabasas and beyond. Lovely.
But there’s more: Amgen is in Thousand Oaks, Consolidated Electrical Distributors is headquartered in Westlake Village, and there are plenty more I don’t know about. So besides being a bedroom communities, these areas are work destinations for thousands of commuters, making it a two-way fight on the 101 every single day.
Brad Greenberg had a great story today about a homeless poker player Ellix Powers who both teaches the game in Reseda and plays at the big-money tables. His style of play is quite a bit different than the stuff I edit every week in the poker column. Mr. Powers is “a real character,” as they say. Here’s a taste:
In 2004, he incited the World Series’ second-most memorable moment, his 15 minutes of fame replayed over and over on ESPN reruns.
At the final table for limit hold ’em, Powers did everything he could to disrupt the game’s natural flow.
He bet and raised before being dealt cards. He offered patronizing apologies for his capricious play. He thanked opponents for losing while they were still in the hand. He flat out talked trash like former Laker Gary Payton.
“You’re disrespecting the game,” author James McManus scolded him.
“I can raise in the dark anytime I want,” Powers shot back, referring to his move of betting without looking at his cards. “I’m going to do it every time now.”
His erratic play got the best of McManus, who quickly called a bet from Powers when all McManus had was queen high. Powers taunted him, albeit inaccurately.
“You called me with a jack high? You called me with a jack high? He called me with a jack high,” Powers repeated after goading McManus into the bad play.
“This guy is nuts. I like him. He’s good for poker,” pro John Hennigan mused. “I’m having fun. I never have fun. This guy is making me have fun.”
Powers eventually got bumped in seventh place and strutted to the cashier.
“Do I get any money here? Do I get any money?”
He got $40,040. But Powers has only won about $12,000 at tournaments during the two years since, according to a database of pros at pokerpages.com. He’s also won and lost an unspecified amount playing in casinos and mostly online.
“Poker is a big, cruel beast,” Powers said in an interview. “There’s not a lot of sympathy in the game. There ain’t no refunds.”
The Wi-Fi was going great .. until we made a phone call with the cordless, and then the signal from the Netgear router would drop from the iMac until the call was done. I had heard that 2.4 GHz cordless phones had the potential to interfere with Wi-Fi, which also operates in the 2.4 GHz frequency range.
I went into testing mode. I took the cordless back to The Back Room, where This Old PC connects to the router about 9 feet away via an internal Wi-Fi card (Airlink Plus from Fry’s). No trouble there to stay connected to the router while making a phone call (cordless phone base station is in the house about 30 feet away).
Could it be the weaker wireless connection in the house just can’t take the telephone interference? I got a 900 MHz phone, hooked that up in the house. No interference. Would I have to get rid of my Panasonic 2.4 GHz just to achieve Wi-Fi nirvana. I noticed on the display for the 900 MHz handset that I was on Channel 01. You can change channels on a cordless telephone? My Panasonic 2.4 GHz doesn’t have a display at all … but it DOES have a channel-changing button.
One click on the channel button, and my Wi-Fi interference problem was gone.
Here’s where the problem begins:
So they’re pretty much right in the same place — and that could mean trouble. Since both the router and the telephone have a number of different channels available, it is a matter of changing the channel on one or the other to reduce or eliminate the interference. I believe you can change channels on the router by logging onto the admin page. On the phone, as I say above, it’s as easy as hitting the Channel button.
One thing that tipped me off to the problem was the marketing for the new cordless phones, which operate in the 5.8 GHz range. The boxes say, “won’t interfere with Wi-Fi” … yeah … unless you plan to use the new 802.11a standard:
Now, there’s no direct overlap there, so it might not be a problem, but some real-world testing is needed to make sure — and I suspect there will be 2.4 GHz phones on the market for awhile.
Interestingly enough, in my research (yeah, it’s Web surfing, but I call it “research”), I found out that most 2.4 GHz cordless phones transmit one way at that frequency, the other way at 900 MHz, to avoid interference: You see, since a telephone call is what’s called “full duplex” — meaning you can talk and listen to the other caller at the same time (and hear your own voice simultaneously through the earpiece) without saying “over” like a radio operator — the phones need to operate on the different frequency bands to a) avoid interference and b) extend battery life of the telephone handset (which I imagine transmits with 900 MHz and receives at 2.4 GHz for that reason).
An interesting quote from Hello Direct:
To keep neighbors from constantly hearing each other’s conversations, the FCC initially limited the output wattage for cordless phones to just .001 watt. But when digital and spread spectrum technologies (SSTs) made eavesdropping a less
valid concern by scrambling signals or dividing them across multiple bandwidths,
the allowable wattage for cordless phones was increased to 1 watt. This action made for clearer calls and increased a cordless phone’s range three- to fourfold. Meanwhile, the increased wattage covered up the fact that higher-frequency signals require more power to transmit.When 5.8 GHz phones were introduced, the allowable wattage was not increased—and here is where the buyer must beware. Because transmitting signals at a higher frequency requires more power, some 5.8 GHz phones use the new frequency only for the
base-to-handset transmission. Then, to make sure a handset’s battery has a reasonable life, handset-to-base transmissions are sent on the older 2.4 GHz frequencies.2 Although it will be some time until it is introduced, a protocol using 5.8 GHz technology is in development. This new protocol, 802.11a, will be able to send high-quality video. It will also interfere with the new phones.
It’s been months in the planning, but I now have Wi-Fi running at the house. In keeping with the surplus-computing ethos I espouse in This Old Mac and This Old PC, I tried to do it as close to free as possible.
Let me tell you, nothing is easy when it comes to technology. I’ll have to remember the last electronic thing I installed that worked as advertised, right out of the box, with no tweaking, pleading or help-desk haranguing. It did happen, but I can’t remember when.
But I’ve entered the 21st century.
First I got DSL.
Steven Rosenberg 