On the path to the scrapheap...

An old note caught my eye in something I was throwing out. It reads: "2/24/83 - I am now the proud owner of a CONFIDENS 300-baud modem, for which I paid $42.50 at a garage sale."

Three hundred baud was slow enough to allow the unit to operate by seating a telephone handset into rubber-lined sockets located on the top surface of the modem. Finding this note brought back the distinct memory of seeing telecommunicated characters appear on the screen of my Osborne-1 for the first time, from a local BBS. (This, after painstakingly rearranging wires and pins in a couple of RS-232 connectors of the respectively proper gender to create a simple null modem cable.)

Until the next generation of modem came out (1200 baud!), that CONFIDENS was a valuable part of my computing inventory (even if the brand name seemed, frankly, more appropriate for a line of condoms). If I am not mistaken, my first electronic submission to a computer magazine was sent through its circuitry.

Things sure do operate faster today, though. :)

Cheers...

...like bones in a stew

I've managed to translate almost 10,000 source words of the PowerPoint presentation that's currently the only occupant of The Plate, which leaves something like 4,000 words left. This puts me in good stead to finish the job tomorrow, for delivery on Thursday morning, which is an improvement on my initial estimate to the client, of a Friday delivery.

Yesterday's email brought news of a death in the family of an old friend, and thus thoughts concerning mortality have been bobbing up and down in my mind all day long.

I think I'll go take a walk with Shiloh.

Cheers...