CallMeAl (like Alan)

Free Software Enthusiast

  • 8 Posts
  • 17 Comments
Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: December 14th, 2025

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  • Thank you.

    He was one of the most disciplined people I’ve ever known. He rarely complained about anything. He spent every minute he could doing what he loved, researching and publishing. He wrote several books include an award winner. He won a Lifetime Achievement award from a prestigious body in his field at 84. He just kept going. At 86 he had nearly lost his eyesight but a doctor was able to restore partial vision, enough for him to continue his work and I never saw him happier. He did what he loved until his last waking moments. Then he closed his eyes and went to sleep, I imagine finally able to relax, all his commitments settled. I hope I get to go out the same way.



  • That was my father.

    At 80 he went to teaching only one class so he could keep his office and spend the rest of his time doing what he wanted.

    At 90 he finally retired. He wrote dozens or articles and finally left us in Jan this year at 92. The last day he was alive, he dictated a book review to me he had promised to a journal. His final wish, that I type it up and send it in for him and let them know he would not be able to take on any more book reviews.








  • It’s always funny to me to read a history of something I lived through written by someone who didn’t. I don’t think anyone who was in the industry at the time would say the Zip drive dominated the 1990s.

    To set the scene, most people in the 90s didn’t own a computer at all and the majority of people who did own a computer never owned a zip drive. While Zip was the most successful of the Superfloppies, it was never ubiquitous. By the sales numbers, 10-15% of computer owners bought zip drives. Compare to a floppy or CDROM which is close to 100%.

    The reason it vanished quickly was simple: Zip was never that good and CDRW was much better. As soon as the prices dropped for CDRW, Zip was a goner.











  • My work gave me a choice of a chromebook or a windows laptop when I started since the company uses the Google stack for everything.

    I asked if I could get a high end chromebook and it was approved. Its easy to install linux apps in the dev container and they run seamlessly with the the chrome apps on the desktop and the window manager has multiple desktops (which is how I like to do things). Since I have to use Gmail and Google Docs for work anyway, the chromebook is really not bad and much better than having to use Windows.