Ed Icionsub

Normally a web site is put up and not much thought is given to the web site hosting unless you have a lot of problems. The whole industry of web site hosting and servers is relatively new and what they can do changes all the time. There are new equipment and new software and new problems that come up and have to be handled – and handled correctly.

My server has had a couple of glitches. The web site would not load for a few minutes here and there because they were doing maintenance or upgrades. That was no big deal. My my friend Wendy has been having horrible problems with her server company. Her web site has been totally down for 9 days. The hosting company was sold to a different company and they moved all the data from one location to a different one. But the data migration had a lot of problems and her web site suffered the brunt of the problems.

That kind of problem should be rare, but when it happens to you it is very upsetting. I know that she looked at other server companies to see if it made sense to move. She was comparing prices between the top 10 best hosting services. She read the hosting reviews and tried to consider more than just the monthly cost. She was just about ready to pull the plug and then her site came back up yesterday.

I hope that the site stays up now and that the migration problems are all solved. I feel badly for Wendy, but I trust that she will give them one last chance and if necessary she can change web site hosting companies at any time.

Just saw a commercial for the Lenovo laptops. The commercial shows a cup of soda spilling onto the keyboard of the traveling businessman’s laptop. He just picks up the cup and blots the keyboard dry with a table napkin. So, how did they do that? I’ve seen laptop keyboards from underneath and can’t figure out how they would make the keyboard spillproof.

One of the really nice things about Facebook is that I have friended several people who are serving our country in the military and are deployed overseas.

The son of a real friend (as opposed to a Facebook friend) is in the Navy Seal training program. He is on a carrier in the Pacific and is able to post on Facebook almost every day. It is interesting to read his accounts of serving in the Navy and the discoveries of visiting other countries.

Another friend’s son is serving in Afghanistan. He has asked for several specific items to be put into care packages and sent to where he is stationed. Interestingly, something he requested was small, stuffed animals. The soldiers like to stuff their pockets full of Beanie Babies and other small toys and they when they go into villages they give them away to the kids in the village. I love that idea!

It was quite the historic moment 30 years ago today, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. That was the time and location of a world changing moment – the introduction of the IBM 5150 personal computer to the world.

Of course, other PCs were already on the market, such as:

the Apple II
the Commodore PET
the Osborne 1
the Tandy TRS-80

You have to admit, that even with the other PCs, the IBM PC was the first full featured, ready to use personal computer that was affordable for most businesses and many homes.

The IBM’s system ran Microsoft’s Disk Operating System, known as MS-DOS and booted from a 5.25 inch floppy drive. It sold for $1,565 with no software except MS-DOS. In today’s money, that would be a little over $3,700.

One of the best things about computers and the internet is the variety of games that can be played – both solitaire, against a computer robot or against other people in real time. The different types of games available are for all skill levels, from preschoolers to Bridge Masters.

I remember the very first game I played on a computer. It was a puzzle, adventure game. You had to type in each move as DOS code. You started out in t forest and you had to type in each move, going north or south, up or down, etc. It was totally addicting and everyone at work would try for weeks to solve the puzzle and beat the game.

Then we got a new computer that was pre-loaded with solitaire. The secretaries at work and anyone with a private office would spend hours at their desk playing Canfield, often caught by their supervisor and getting in trouble for playing games when they were supposed to be working. There was a lot of uproar among the ranks about feeling entitled to “take a break” and play a game or two on the company’s computer.

Now the computers allow us to get online and play thousands of games, often against real people from all over the world. It is amazing to be living and playing in the digital age.