Tonight, we had a chat session, to catch up on news after the Holidays…Going around the table, we heard from Dave, Corey, Jon, Glen and Karen.
Dave announced that they have Art Authority Virtual Routing & Forwarding (VRF) to display Louise Nevelson’s work called SkyGate showing the Twin Towers prior to the 911 destruction. 17′ high by 32′ wide.
They are starting to review the work.
Q: That’s a virtual display?
A: Yes.
We need high res versions of it and rights. We can see rooms by Period. There are a few hundred artists with their own rooms. You can pop-up a window and view “art like this”
There’s a Mac version…navigation is not done yet.
Corey.
Got the system running again. One server after another displayed power issues. UPS issue; no power to UPS’s. Two UPS’s for the whole 911 system?! Corey got everything running again. This was at the Sheriff’s Office… So they got more space for their UPS machines. They now have enough room for the equipment.
Jon
Operations. They store everything as pdf’s. The active directory server locked-up. They couldn’t get the picture…the pdf’s. Couldn’t look at the billing documents to do the billing, since the system kept failing. It’s so convenient to use the NAS to display the .pdfs. Sometimes one document can be ten pages long. They are still running on Pick; Universe
Karen to Jon
What programming languages are used these days? Python. Comes with Universe now.
Dave: Opposed to Python; not strongly-typed. Indentation, not curly braces, indicates blocks.
What do people use Javscript for? It’s dead.
Corey: Use html; use C# with VB
Corey: With AI you don’t even have to know code anymore. Vibe Coding.
What kind of applications do people want? Oregon has been declared a new tech center…
Corey: We use standard biz applications…
Use SQL Server for databases. All integrated.
Karen: I don’t grok OO. I miss Pick OS.
Dave: Nice thing about C# and C++ and other things is you can totally staying within the C family.
Who wants to present next month?
Corey: I can probably find something.
Dave: We’re converting VMware to Hyper V. That can be a big project.
While we’re on the subject of next month…What do you think about meeting on second Thursday instead of first Thursday? Great! Unanimous!
Mentioned Chad; he’s moving to Klamath to be near his new true love.
Charlie, who was hoping to do a presentation on AI last month and then his schedule was inundated with medical stuff, was not present. He’s hoping to return soon. We miss you, Charlie! Get well soon!
Someone named Dan something from SOGGY emailed me to get on the Broadcast List. He did not respond to my email.
Gunnar was busy this month.
Corey: What do you want to talk about?
How to write documentation.
How to create a Wiki; either technical or for dispatchers.
Amazing powerful tool.
Dave: The old Art Authority app was hypercard wasn’t it? Nope.
Corey: The increased cost of hardware. How Apple has really controlled their distribution. Up to a year ahead. So you’re not seeing price increases, that’s why. Also: memory is built-in to the CPU, so they fab’d the device and the costs are the same.
PCs and Macs are about the same.
Prices on servers have gone up 50%…
Corey: Started switching over about 4 years ago. But those servers weren’t support by Win11.
Dave: Veratasium just did a show on ASML which is the company that makes the chips. The descriptions of the angular accuracy of the laser that fits the mask is so precise that, if you placed a dime on the moon, it would tell you which side was up. Built in Netherlands. $350,000,000.,Mirrors that are so flat that if you scale them up to the size of the earth, the greatest aberration would be the thickness of a playing card. They’re building chips that are 100 layers deep and the maximum that they can be mis-registered is 5 silicon atoms. Amazing!
Worth a watch.
Glen: One of the reasons that modern society will not come back quickly, if there’s a real serious problem, is because we actually can’t make more chips easily. Maybe after another 100 years, maybe.
Review of Holiday Celebrations…
Family stuff.
Corey is headed to Cancun on Sunday. Fly-in and stay at the resort the whole time. They have 12 restaurants and 11 bars.
He’s never been to the east coast of Mexico, so he’s hoping it’s nice.
Corey mentioned that a friend of his couldn’t find any kinds of beer except Mexican, so he started his own brew pub; he’s very successful.
Update on Glen & Karen’s garage rebuild. Exterior is done. Need to do a bit of finish work inside. Karen is Project Manager for that project.
Dave’s standing desk died, after 13 years. The motor died. The company is out of business…He bought a new one: 4-legs, 4 motors, can lift 660 pounds. After he got a new one, he actually was able to fix the old one.
Discussion of types of cruises. Viking is for seniors…
Corey will present next month: Building your own Wikipedia. Great!
We all paid our checks and exited.