{"id":376,"date":"2011-08-20T01:09:51","date_gmt":"2011-08-20T01:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucebramson.com\/2011\/08\/20\/in-the-beginning-at-m-y-o-b-3\/"},"modified":"2025-04-29T08:03:23","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T15:03:23","slug":"in-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/?p=376","title":{"rendered":"IN THE BEGINNING!"},"content":{"rendered":"

January 11th, 2009<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of my mother\u2019s favorite expressions was, \u201cMind Your Own Business!\u201d (often reduced to its acronym, \u201cEm Wye Oh Bee!!\u201d) My two older brothers and I heard it often, and as my years have rolled by, I\u2019ve often thought it was far more widely applicable than just to the three of us. How about \u201cMYOB\u201d as a guiding principal for our whole nation, for example?<\/strong><\/p>\n

THE START<\/strong><\/p>\n

My life began, as you can see below, in Sacramento at 9:20 AM, February 8th, 1936:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Birth Certificate That Started It All<\/p>\n

When and where it will end remains to be determined. That it WILL end is the only certainty in my life, so I have no curiosity about what\u2019s in store: whatever it is, I am BOUND to find out. I settled that years ago, which left my mind uncluttered by religious dogma and other crutches that so many people rely on. It left me to live my life as I saw fit, and that life \u2212 at least many aspects of it and many occurrences during it \u2212 will be the general subject of this blog, along with many opinions: I have lots of them, and I don\u2019t care whether any one agrees with them or not. They are mine, all mine!<\/p>\n

From time to time I may make comments on the current scene, or throw in some favorite off-color jokes.<\/p>\n

Let me commence by stating that for something purported to be \u201ceasy to set up and use\u201d, I find WordPress very difficult to comprehend! This is likely because I have no programing experience to fall back on. HTML and SQL strike me as more appropriate in a dungeon or leather bar. This, despite the fact I\u2019ve been using computers for almost a quarter of a century. When they work, they are fine. But when they fail, I have NO idea what to do: all those little black gismos that reside on the mother-board, where (presumably) electrons tear around like mice in a maze can\u2019t be fixed. I\u2019m a mechanical genius: given time, I can figure out how to fix anything that has parts that move. Some wag told me those little black thingies are built with smoke: if you let the smoke out, they don\u2019t work any more. That\u2019s about the extent of my knowledge of computers.<\/p>\n

My computing, such as it is, began with a Commodore C=64, not unlike this one:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Commodore C-64<\/p>\n

I used a six-inch TV set as the readout, because I could also watch TV programs on it. At the time, I was in Bellevue, Nebraska [my bother always said I’d “wind up in Bellevue”, but he had a different place in mind!] It was in the middle of winter, and a horrible place for a native Californian like me! At the end of each day I\u2019d tabulate a bunch of data and send it via telephone-modem to the Head Office. I\u2019d back up to a plug-in 5\u00bd\u201d floppy drive, then switch to watching the TV which, then as now, usually put me to sleep. Fortunately, this was a temporary assignment, and before long I was back in California.<\/p>\n

The company was really gung-ho on computers, but the only thing I could operate at all was the C=64! Since I was in a remote office by myself, the company bought me all the stuff I needed: another C=64, a 9-pin printer, a larger CRT and another floppy drive. Now I could take work home if necessary, and I could produce useable paper documents for the company when required.<\/p>\n

Then, someone got the bright idea of having us all file time-sheets electronically! This meant my C-64s had to go, because they were utterly incompatible with the company\u2019s main-frame. So, they \u201cupgraded\u201d me to a cast-off IBM PC-XT, with a monitor so far gone I could scarcely see it! That set-up looked a lot like this:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

IBM PC-XT<\/p>\n

This was fine as far as work went, except that I had to learn how a PC system works (quite different from the Commodore). I managed to erase the word-processor program in the first few hours, which meant getting the stack of floppies to re-load it. Mistakes, I made in abundance! But I learned. I also learned that having different systems at work and at home was a complication I could do without!<\/p>\n

This led to a succession of PC computers both at home and at work: 286, 386, 486, Pentium, and so forth, each becoming more complicated and difficult to comprehend! Likewise, it led to a succession of Bill Gates\u2019s software, each also becoming more \u201csophisticated\u201d and more subject to crashing. I still keep my house accounts on a little Pentium the company cast off because they thought it was not \u201cY2K compliant\u201d (remember that debacle?) using Windows 98! And in my little repair shop I use Vista now, though I threaten almost daily to throw it away and revert to 98.<\/p>\n

I became so turned off by Bill\u2019s buggy software and almost daily updates, that early in 2008 I began the switch to MAC. Bought myself an iMAC and a notebook, and have not looked back. I LOVE the MAC graphics! It is almost \u201creach out and touch\u201d perfect.<\/p>\n

GETTING ON LINE<\/strong><\/p>\n

I discovered bulletin-boards in the early \u201990s. At first it was just various forms of chat, which really did not interest me much, but one day I discovered the local BB had some photos to share, and I went to have a look. This began a collection that now must include at least 100K of \u201cfeelthy peecture\u201d files. By far the largest folder, though, includes guys in some sort of garb: often only shorts. There is much to be said for leaving something to one\u2019s imagination. One of the first pictures I ever found, which I still think is one of the very best, is of \u201cJoe\u201d:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Top of Joe<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been searching ever since for a photo of Joe\u2019s lower half, to no avail!<\/p>\n

Like nearly everyone else, I got myself a freebie AOL account, and for several years used it exclusively to access UseNet. From the looks of things, UseNet is rapidly becoming pass\u00e9, but for a long time it was a gold-mine of images of guys of all sorts, all ages, all colors, and my \u201ccollection\u201d grew enormously in those days. When AOL dropped UseNet, I dropped AOL!<\/p>\n

Now, with You-Tube, X-tube and dozens of file-sharing web-sites, UseNet seems rather quaint, as far as photo-sharing is concerned: perhaps its text-only forums will live on.<\/p>\n

***********<\/p>\n

If you are interested in what I have to say and write about, start reading MY BLOG HERE<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

January 11th, 2009 One of my mother\u2019s favorite expressions was, \u201cMind Your Own Business!\u201d (often reduced to its acronym, \u201cEm Wye Oh Bee!!\u201d) My two older brothers and I heard it often, and as my years have rolled by, I\u2019ve often thought it was far more widely applicable than just to the three of us. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":499,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucebramson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}