It was my first year of university and Learn to Fly by the Foo Fighters was in daily rotation on MuchMusic. Searched high and low on the web itself, but I found a copy using our school's computer labs. Had to span it across as a.zip file on 3 floppies to bring it to my room. Did the same thing with Billy Gun's intro music from wrestling, which was at the time: "I'm an Assman".
I think that what a lot of people forget, is that hard disk size is steadily increasing. When CD burners first becoming popular about 5 years ago, they were 2x, held 650 MB, and the hard disks themselves were starting to hit 20GB. I just bought a 120GB hard disk last fall, and that isn't going to be enough to back up the entire disk. I think tapes will probably still be used for a backup tool. Optical technology just seems to be a few steps behind for use as a daily backup.
I remember the first time I played the demo for the LucasArts adventure game Full Throttle. After the short little stint of getting Ben's keys for his Bike, he drives off and we hear Legacy by the Gone Jackals playing for the rest of the demo in front of cut-scenes of the full game. The entire soundtrack was done by them, and I jumped at the chance to download a small program to let me rip the music as wave files (it wasn't encoded as Redbook Audio), and then dump them to MP3. I still listen to these guys to this day.
My machine at home is an Athlon XP 2000+ with a GeForce4 Ti4200. However I still use the some of the same hardware I had when it was a Celeron 300A. I use the same 15" Adi ProVista monitor (has bad moire problems, and it's only a matter of time before i smash it with a sledge); my Creative-Ensoniq AudioPCI soundcard (a $22 value); and my Zoltrix ZX-75 speakers (the right one just died the other day, so it's time to get new ones...hopefully with a new soundcard). Other than that, i still have the original case, keyboard, and scroll mouse. I just gave the original 6.4 GB hard disk away to my roommate too, in exchange for about $10.
Beyond that, I've done numerous "System-ectomies" where I pulled out the old 286/386/486 that lived in the case, and replaced it with BX-chipset based AT motherboard, and a Celeron CPU. (Easy upgrade actually). Did the same with my Dad's system: From a Pentium 100 to P3-550.
I worked at an ISP this summer, and I got a chance to install Irix 6.5 from scratch on a R4000 based Indigo workstation (I think those are circa 1991). Weirdest install I've ever done, but then again, I've only ever installed DOS/Windows and Mac OS software.
I'm surprised that Link to the Past wasn't included. It was just released a few months ago on the Gameboy Advance, so if you have a Gameboy Player you're going to have to get your SNES fix that way. Which honestly doesn't sound so bad.
The Super Nintendo had some of the best games for any system ever, and the GBA is really bringing a lot of these back. I think I'll pick up a Gameboy Player just so I can relive some pure gaming goodness.
Not office related, but still pretty good, and this is one you could probably pull in any University or College. A couple of years ago, we were in our senior Comp. Sci. computer lab, and we were just killing time rather than do our OS assignment. So we fired up cmd.exe on NT 4.0, and started playing with net send. First net send to the guy sitting beside you, then the girl behind you, and then to the entire workgroup. The problem was that once we figured out the workgroup one, we found it was being sent all over campus on the novell network. Whoops:-).
So to finish it off for fun, we fired off one last message to the general computer lab down the hall. "The computers are shutting down in 5 minutes for maintenance. Please save your work and log out." That was the funniest mass exodus we ever saw. Good times.
Really. It'll do you a world of good. Unless this is for business purposes (which it doesn't sound like it), it's not worth worrying about. Get some exercise.
When I first started this kind of thing, I just worked for somebody else who owned their own small shop in my home town. I didn't make too too much, but when you're 16, you'll take what you can get. I just started doing simple stuff like installing modems, networks cards, CD-ROMS, and installing Windows 95/98. Eventually got to the point where I was setting up networks for the other small companies that would contract work out to us. I screwed up a bit, but my boss was rather forgiving thankfully.
The bottom line is that I was doing and learning all this stuff without having to take care of the back-end accounting or any of that stuff I really didn't want to worry about.
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It was my first year of university and Learn to Fly by the Foo Fighters was in daily rotation on MuchMusic. Searched high and low on the web itself, but I found a copy using our school's computer labs. Had to span it across as a .zip file on 3 floppies to bring it to my room. Did the same thing with Billy Gun's intro music from wrestling, which was at the time: "I'm an Assman".
Lionel: I'm sorry you lost your case. Here's your pizza.
Marge: But we won!
Lionel: That's okay, the box is empty.
Offtopic, but I can't resist.
I think that what a lot of people forget, is that hard disk size is steadily increasing. When CD burners first becoming popular about 5 years ago, they were 2x, held 650 MB, and the hard disks themselves were starting to hit 20GB. I just bought a 120GB hard disk last fall, and that isn't going to be enough to back up the entire disk. I think tapes will probably still be used for a backup tool. Optical technology just seems to be a few steps behind for use as a daily backup.
I remember the first time I played the demo for the LucasArts adventure game Full Throttle. After the short little stint of getting Ben's keys for his Bike, he drives off and we hear Legacy by the Gone Jackals playing for the rest of the demo in front of cut-scenes of the full game. The entire soundtrack was done by them, and I jumped at the chance to download a small program to let me rip the music as wave files (it wasn't encoded as Redbook Audio), and then dump them to MP3. I still listen to these guys to this day.
My machine at home is an Athlon XP 2000+ with a GeForce4 Ti4200. However I still use the some of the same hardware I had when it was a Celeron 300A. I use the same 15" Adi ProVista monitor (has bad moire problems, and it's only a matter of time before i smash it with a sledge); my Creative-Ensoniq AudioPCI soundcard (a $22 value); and my Zoltrix ZX-75 speakers (the right one just died the other day, so it's time to get new ones...hopefully with a new soundcard). Other than that, i still have the original case, keyboard, and scroll mouse. I just gave the original 6.4 GB hard disk away to my roommate too, in exchange for about $10.
Beyond that, I've done numerous "System-ectomies" where I pulled out the old 286/386/486 that lived in the case, and replaced it with BX-chipset based AT motherboard, and a Celeron CPU. (Easy upgrade actually). Did the same with my Dad's system: From a Pentium 100 to P3-550.
I worked at an ISP this summer, and I got a chance to install Irix 6.5 from scratch on a R4000 based Indigo workstation (I think those are circa 1991). Weirdest install I've ever done, but then again, I've only ever installed DOS/Windows and Mac OS software.
Hardware fun......
I'm surprised that Link to the Past wasn't included. It was just released a few months ago on the Gameboy Advance, so if you have a Gameboy Player you're going to have to get your SNES fix that way. Which honestly doesn't sound so bad.
The Super Nintendo had some of the best games for any system ever, and the GBA is really bringing a lot of these back. I think I'll pick up a Gameboy Player just so I can relive some pure gaming goodness.
Not office related, but still pretty good, and this is one you could probably pull in any University or College. A couple of years ago, we were in our senior Comp. Sci. computer lab, and we were just killing time rather than do our OS assignment. So we fired up cmd.exe on NT 4.0, and started playing with net send. First net send to the guy sitting beside you, then the girl behind you, and then to the entire workgroup. The problem was that once we figured out the workgroup one, we found it was being sent all over campus on the novell network. Whoops :-).
So to finish it off for fun, we fired off one last message to the general computer lab down the hall. "The computers are shutting down in 5 minutes for maintenance. Please save your work and log out." That was the funniest mass exodus we ever saw. Good times.
Really. It'll do you a world of good. Unless this is for business purposes (which it doesn't sound like it), it's not worth worrying about. Get some exercise.
When I first started this kind of thing, I just worked for somebody else who owned their own small shop in my home town. I didn't make too too much, but when you're 16, you'll take what you can get. I just started doing simple stuff like installing modems, networks cards, CD-ROMS, and installing Windows 95/98. Eventually got to the point where I was setting up networks for the other small companies that would contract work out to us. I screwed up a bit, but my boss was rather forgiving thankfully.
The bottom line is that I was doing and learning all this stuff without having to take care of the back-end accounting or any of that stuff I really didn't want to worry about.