Poofy Goof Rant-O-Matic

I swear I posted this before but I can't find it... I have two motherboards with verified bad caps, and another that is suspect, although none of the caps are visibly bulging.

http://www.badcaps.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

Northern Soul was popular in the 80s in parts of Britain. the sound was built around out-of-print soul 45s from the US recorded primarily in the 60s, and by definition had a limited repertoire.

http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/steveparker/northern_soul_top_500.htm

CD reviews coming up?

gotta love phone system geeks. LincMad has information on the evolution of the north american numbering plan (area codes) at http://www.lincmad.com/ . Oregon's 503 is on that list, but southern california's 619 wasn't created until 1982. (that means my phone number was originally 714 when my family moved to San Diego in 1979.)

Kris asked me about the microvax-II again. the one in the small-filing-cabinet-sized BA123 case. it comes up every year or so when any work is done on the basement.

"When are you getting rid of that thing?" she asks.

"It worked the last time I fired it up," I said. it's what I usually say. this time I had to think about it for a while, though. I can't exactly recall the last time it was fired up. it has probably been over five years at this point. I don't think I've brought it up since the datacenter racks were installed in 2003.

After reading about the leica M9, I thought about my ideal camera, which would be an amalgamation of a number of cameras I've used through the years. here's what I've come up with. the M9 comes close, but there's no way I could afford it right now.

in my youth I spent hours designing cars for Steve Jackson Games' Car Wars, smashing or shooting them apart in slow motion. the engineering exercise of balancing between armor, weight, space, armaments, and speed originally drew me to the game, but lately I've been amused with the post-apocalyptic aspects of the game. Car Wars was a thought-out world based on speculation of what would happen in a future without cheap oil, weakening of federal government, and a grain blight.

Kris went to her computer this morning to check email, play some mafia wars, read some news, and she was met solely with a black screen with blinking cursor during bootup. her computer is an aging Dell Inspiron 8500 with a seagate ST9160821A hard drive.

Joachim Buss has collected quite a nice bit of information on old DEC gear at http://www.xanthos.se/~joachim/index.html , including a DECstation in ATX enclosure. nice to see someone else keeping those old machines chugging along.

my brother-in-law gave me a rollei 35S for my birthday last year. he (or rather his dog) discovered it in his hedge, after believing it had been stolen during a burglary many years ago. despite the years of bushy exposure, (luckily it was still in its case,) it was still in basic working order. I ran a roll of film through it, decided I needed the light meter fixed, and paid ~$100 for some professional CLA. I've been using it sporadically ever since.

crazy. a couple people took a trip from Vienna to North Korea. http://vienna-pyongyang.blogspot.com/