I went directly over to Office Max and bought the DVD burner. It was off sale, so that cost me full price of $90. If I get some video here, it will be forgotten. The problem is that the new V-Stream software does not seem to work unless it can detect a burner. That is bad software, since that would prevent you from working on projects using any computer you pleased. Here is an incident that happened in the store. The manager did not know about proof of purchase theft until I showed him. He was dumbfounded. Plainly Office Max does not pay their managers enough to attract any winners. (This is where somebody takes a knife and cuts out the bar code that is proof of purchase on the box. There are many places that will give you a rebate without a receipt. It does not take long to get a few thousand dollars worth. My point is, this major corporation did not figure this out on their own.)
As usual, people who see me read specs start asking me questions. When will I learn my lesson and start teaching for money? Some day. I should record one of these conversations and maybe include a transcript here. I soon had a crowd around me and I had a hard time getting away to class, in fact I was a half-hour late. It is hard to walk away from people who sincerely need help and have been as frustrated trying to get a straight answer out of anybody these days. The topic today was laptop information.
I merely explained to the group that the internal workings of a laptop are identical to any other kind of computer. Only the size and arrangement of the parts are different, plus the fact that you usually cannot interchange anything between makes like you can with desktops. From their reaction, I think there is somebody telling people you cannot download information from a laptop hard drive to another computer. Six strangers would not all tell me the same thing by coincidence. Not only would a hard drive you cannot download from pretty useless, there are actually quite a number of ways you can get the information off one drive on to another without having a CD/DVD burner.
I’m glad I went in today; it was a very good selection of videos about the early internet. [Author’s note: the original entry did not specify where I went into.] For me it was agony being as close to the thing and never getting in with the development teams. I would have loved to be there even if I was part of the majority that never got rich off any of it. The Internet was one massive money-maker that had been overlooked by all the big players. I wanted to work on software but I too missed the opportunity, because the first Internet browsers took me totally by surprise. It was an area of software I never even heard of until I saw Netscape Navigator. Then I find out today there was even an earlier version called Mosiac. Don’t blame me too much, mind you, because part of the reason I knew nothing is because, well, there was no way to browse, so like, how was I supposed to browse for a browser?
Author's note 2015-03-04: The above represents one of the final times that I went to this street party. It was losing it's Latin flavor and becoming more of an Americanized carnival. With the $12 burgers and the imported New York bands with their 200 channel mixers. Also it was too commercialized. Before JZ could just tell me to meet him over there and I'd find him in few minutes by just walking around. Now, it is insane, overcrowded, and priced retail.
