TRC_MA

I gave up smoking about 15 years ago too. A few years back I was in a pub for new year with a couple of friends, and at midnight put two hamlet cigars in my mouth and lit them up and was going to pass one to each. They both start crying out at me "noooo you can't!!". It takes me a moment before I realise they're concerned not for my health but getting kicked out for smoking indoors.. I hadn't thought about that one for a while!

Excellent, thank you very much. I have a very long list of recommendations but it will probably end up skipping the queue and end up near the top of the pile.

Paraphrasing: Dr. Emmett Brown: "It works! It works! finally invent something that works!"

Against Me! I only had two of their songs when I was a teenager but loved them! Must dig them out again. Edit: just looked them up as "Laura Jane Grace" confused me, I didn't realise she came out as transgender since. Is the book "....Confessions Of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout" ? I'm going to have to find a copy myself. I reread Tank Girl: Armadillo recently, which I thought was fantastic for being so odd.

Oh and Care Bears. I was looking through the DVDs in a charity shop. ..and Panini sticker albums, of which I actually had a Care Bears one which my mum dropped in the ocean. I was inconsolable.

I still wince when someone types Google in the address bar but know it's not worth trying to explain either the dedicated search box or that you can search directly from the address bar. Edit - formatting turned it in to a link - they type wwwdotgoogledotcom

Newsreaders/people on TV reading out loud "visit our website at H T T P colon forwardslash forwardslash W W W dot......" edit: And from the TV show 24 "Chloe open me a socket" being called out every few minutes, and then finding out years later what that meant.

I/Os, IRQs, DMA, NMA, COM/LPT assignments, "Soundblaster", calibrating a MIDI joystick for X-Wing(?) every single time, most of the stuff on my 2003ish A+ exam which wasn't even relevant then, clock speeds being an indicator of performance, SCSI version/speed/bit width. And sadly decent X-Wing/TIE Fighter, Freespace type games.

"Hi, guess where I'm calling from! No I'm outside! I bought one of those "mobile" telephones!"

"Finally, 6pm - time for free off peak dialup"

This is exactly what I do except physically, but you could virtualise - https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=69ql6sbcqnb81f8t60p6bgcd41&board=37.0

My USB DVD drive arrived today, for a laugh I read the manual. "To install the driver for Windows 98 please use the floppy disk" - it didn't come with a floppy disk.

I've never soldered in my life, I suppose I really ought to learn. This will actually go in a rack though, and I have plenty of old CAT5 stuff I can ruin as I go.

Today alone I have bought a DVD drive for home and had to look up the connection settings for a serial console. I'm actually more surprised by the fact I would ever need to read a DVD again outside of work. Still happens once in a while - "That sound effect on that TV show/film was the sound of a door opening/button being pressed from the original XCOM game". I still have those three floppies and the manual for the anti-piracy codes. And just now, downloading software from NetSupport - "Do I meet the requirement of Internet Explorer 4.01 service pack 2 or above"

Good afternoon, I had this idea a while ago and was wondering how feasible it was. I've had to stop a job today for the want of a serial to 3.5mm cable to update the firmware on an AP. If I got a hold of the wiring diagrams, an RJ45 patch panel and a bunch of cables I was thinking of cutting off the ends of various leads and punching down the wires so that on the other side I just use a CAT5 patch cable to connect both sides. I already have a box of DB9 serial cables and some old headphones, why spend £10 on a new cable? I may do CCNA soon, If I had several devices that needed console access and only one COM port on the management PC that might help.. I've never done anything like this before, has anyone got any advice? Should I worry about grounding/shielding, wires too thin to punch down, anything else? Thanks in advance.