I loved having hundreds of c64 games with no manuals. So with this one, we thought you needed to fly the plane out the only visible door in the hangar, which was the one the pilot comes in through, and it was barely bigger than the plane. Seemed impossible to line up. Not like you could look things up back then, and if you were lucky enough to know some friends who played it, they’d often have the same issue. Can’t get out of the bloody hangar. Then one day, one of my brothers puts his feet up on the computer desk and kicks the F7 key on the bottom right of the keyboard while I’m flying the plane around the hangar, and the wall opens up. Well, shit. From there, it was pretty fun to make the Zaxxon-like run to the Kremlin and then pick it apart with your RPGs. Lots of good memories of this one.

I can’t be the only one who thinks the birds sound like a siege tank.

Cool, I’ve wanted an OS ROM chip since the early nineties, and often wondered why nobody seemed to be doing it. Guess they were all along!

You technically didn’t have to park the old MFM and RLL drives, but if you didn’t, then you just had the drive heads resting on the platters after you shut them down. Then if you bumped or moved the PC at that time, it could scratch the disk like a record. If you never tried to move it, there probably wasn’t much risk.

From the sound of it, the HDD in your Tandy probably would have been an MFM or RLL drive, and depending on the drive model, it either autoparked the drive heads or didn’t. As a PC clone running MS-DOS, the command was probably supported, but maybe not needed. Or you may have just been the equivalent of one of those rebels who held down the power button every time they wanted to shut down the PC and always got away with it!

This taught me many lessons in life, but the one I carry in my heart to this day is piracy.

Yeah, old drives didn’t autopark like the IDE drive in your spiffy 486. I had an XT growing up, and dad was militant about having us remember to park the drive when we were done with it. I think by the end of the 80s, all drives were IDE and were autoparking, so the command was deprecated.

The one I remember best was having to use the DOS ‘park’ command before you shut down the PC. I guess I am that old.

Gotta have room to fly downstairs to the kitchen for that late night glass of water.

That family in particular would have banked everything on mom. I know families (plural) where mom will wake everyone up when it is their turn for the bathroom. And families share cell providers, so a major vendor shitting the bed would most likely take out all of them. That happens more than it should. Same with power and no charge. It seems like everyone’s phone is on empty by the end of the evening. This is at least as probable as nobody’s alarm clock having a battery backup. They all had them in the 90s, unless you were using a mechanical alarm clock, whick would have worked. At any rate, the alarm clock fail was just one of many problems here. This is a family who managed to not notice one of their kids miss an international flight.

Mom forgot she turned her notifications to silent to watch a movie the night before. Mom got no sleep and hit snooze. Mom forgot to charge her phone and it died. Dad tripped over the charging cable and knocked it out. Power went out and the phone didn’t charge so it died. Heck, you could even have a carrier fuck up maintenance and knock out cell service across the country for their customers.

Also had problems with his choice of dog names

Or Kevin is eight years old and his parents reasonably assume he is too young to have a cell phone.

I did three days once and was still lucid. Wasn’t even really tired, so I even went clubbing until 5am on the last night. I could have stayed up longer, but I had no reason to be up anymore, so I got four or five hours of sleep and was back on schedule. Some people just can’t do that kind of thing, and it seems to be easier for others. Dude from China sounds like a machine though. I’d guess be was the right combination of the kind of person who doesn’t require a lot of sleep and stubborn as hell.

Ok, this is brilliant.

Yes.

According to everything I have seen and read on the matter, most kids seemed to have a shit time with online schooling during COVID. Too easy to be distracted, frequent technical problems, no hands on activities or labs, no socialisation, no arts programs, no physical education, terrible support for kids who had learning problems or who otherwise required customised education plans, and the much larger class sizes meant an overall poorer quality of education.

For many, it was an unmitigated disaster, and most kids are much happier to be back at school in person. A handful loved it though. My daughter was one, though she also is very happy to have music classes again, so even she prefers being back in school.

Our conservative provincial government liked the cost savings though, so they tried to introduce an online course requirement to get your high school diploma, but due to popular demand, they had to include an opt out option. Since the opt out was so popular, they are now making it harder to access by requiring that you fill out a form for it available only by contacting the school guidance office.

Let’s face it, online education is not popular because it sucks unless your program only requires a lecture, you are very motivated to learn and study, you don’t need or want to discuss anything complicated with profs or peers, you have no learning or hearing disabilities, and you prefer to avoid people. It is great for work you already know how to do, which is the reason my daughter loved it, and why I like working from home. But default online education? Correspondence school has long been a thing, so if that’s you, fill your boots. It seems most would rather pass on it.

Can’t say that I know, but I shall be avenged.

This is my hole, it was made for me!

In case you want to use it more than once.

Earl really waited too long to fix that one.

without undie restrictions

Nice.