Articles

• A day in the life (on fidonet, too)
• Frank's New Toy

A day in the life (on fidonet, too)

In 1988 I was still working. I was driving busses - and I had been driving cars for a living for the last twenty years since 1968, when I got my drivers licence. Trucks, tank-trucks, taxis, you name them.

In 1991 a strike broke out where I worked. Peace and order was a thing of the past - and in fact I haven't been working since.
Today - do I regret it? NO!

I remember I then said to my collegues that I wished I could find a way to get pensioned - thus not having to work any more.

Maybe the LORD heard me - and then fulfilled my wish HIS way. Today I don't know whether I should have kept my mouth shut - or not. Back in 1994 I was brought to the hospital in an ambulance. It turned out to be a DOUBLE trombosis. The doctors told me later, that I was lucky I could still speak and understand what other people said.

What I couldn't do anymore was driving cars. My left hand - arm - leg - they are a little stiff now. My eyes doesn't work like before. It looks like there is a constant "cloud" in the left field of my vision. However - what I CAN see is normal enough.

I had started with computers around 1985 - and with BBS's and fidonet around 1989. It was via fidonet that my life really took a change. Is there somebody saying, that "romance" doesn't exist in fidonet? ___ Just read on, then.

In 1997 I saw an echomail in ASIAN_LINK that asked: "How quick goes fidonet?" - it came from ... let us call her Maria ... in Belgium. I answered her in an echomail in ASIAN_LINK and in a directly send or chrashed netmail - in both mails I said when her mail where received in Roskilde, Denmark.

In those mails - in fact they were CC (carbon copies) - I said if she could remember when she did send her question, she could figure it out herself.

That was that - I thought. However humans should NEVER try to predict the future - that is a prerogative of the LORD. See above.

Maria answered me - also in a netmail - and the chain of netmails turned into a chain reaction - of more than 1500 - one-thousand-five-hundred - netmails. in 1998 I was able to move (thanks to the help of friends of hers) to Lanaken, Belgium.
Her friends later became my friends, too.

I slept in Roskilde, Denmark Friday night, woke up saturday morning at around 03:30 - and went to sleep in Lanaken Belgium on Saturday evening after a more than 800 kilometers move.
Boy - was I/we tired :-)

I live now in Lanaken and I intend to do so until the sun grows cold or I die (whichever comes first) - because I have no more family left in Denmark - no father or mother - they're gone a long time ago - and I was their only child.

My pension is sent from Denmark to a bank here in Belgium.
Why in eight storms should I stay in Denmark? ....
Give me just one good reason - huh?

No - I'll stay in Lanaken - because here is "Maria" !!

In between all that I've experienced hard disk crashes - I once saw a cpU being burned into silicon dust, just because the CPU ventilator didn't want to function anymore. (damn no-name vent.)
Don't EVER buy cheap no name ventilators.

My very first computer had a 33 MHz 8086 CPU (was it 33 MHz?) compared to that my present one (Pentium AMD duron 600 MHz) has turned into warp drive. Booting-up is something like 6 seconds.

Greetings everybody .... Jan Andreassen
CUL8R (on my (SVGA) screen :-)

StarFleet fidonet/virnet HQ Lanaken, Belgium.
2:292/111 V34,V42B,CM,XA,MO
AKA 9:321/308 V34,V42B,CM,XA,MO
e-mail: NCC_1701@vt4.net

Frank's New Toy
By Frank Vest
1:124/6308

It is nice and fast and fun. I like to play with it and see what I can get it to do.... but, I should start at the beginning.

Some two months ago, my son (stepson, actually) dropped by to pay us a visit. He wasn't in a good mood and that was part of the reason for the visit. One of his buddies that he was sharing an apartment with had decided to move out. There was no warning, just here today, gone tomorrow. This left both remaining buddies with a real problem since they couldn't pick up the rent cost left by the third one. Long story short, Jon needed a place to stay and was wanting to move back in with mom and dad. Without getting into all the arrangements and gory details, let's just say that he is now moved back in with us. No problem.

With the move came another computer in the house and the need to vacate a room that I had taken over as an office. That has been done and all worked rather well. Along with the computer, and all that, came the desire of the son to have the cable modem that he had when he lived at home. Since he was paying for it, why not.

Along with the cable modem came an offer by the son to share the connection with the rest of the computers in the house. That was a nice gesture and, with the LAN already in place, adding a fourth node was not a real problem.... a little connection sharing and there we are. :)

So, now I have access to a cable modem. Of course, it is through a peer to peer network, but still faster by far than a dial-up account. I've been playing with the connection and I must say that it is nice. E-mail has a small problem in that I can receive e-mail through the cable modem via my ISP (separate ISP from the cable company's), but can't send unless I dial into my regular ISP (Texoma net). The smtp server just won't allow outgoing through another server. It's an aggravation, but livable.

You might wonder when I'll put up a telnet system and start doing all the mail feeds and such as that via the cable modem.... Answer is, I won't. This is temporary since as soon as the son gets back on his feet and pays off some bills (car payment is the main one), he will be leaving again and the cable modem will probably go as well. I just can't afford it right now.

I'm looking at DSL, but the money factor is there as well. I'd like to know how DSL and cable modem compare to each other. I've read the compares from web pages for companies that offer each service and, of course, the cable modem company(s) claim that their service is far better, faster and all that in comparison to the DSL. The DSL company(s), of course, claim just the opposite. <sigh>

That's what is happening so far. Maybe some day I'll have all these nice toys that I read about in the echos and I'll be able to "play with the big dogs". For now, I'll just be;

Frank Vest, Sysop: Collin County Station
1:124/6308(.1)
flv@texoma.net
editor@fidonews.org