[SunRescue] good news

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Wednesday, October 4, 2000 at 01:47:14 (-0400), Tim Harrison wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [SunRescue] good news
>
> Is there some kind of Toronto Old Computer League I should be joining?
> :)  Is there some place to store big toys? ;)

I keep forgetting to reply to this....  :-)

I'll reply to the list as well since there are, I think, more
Torontonians lurking....

Jim's been hosting (though that's not exactly the right word) a Monday
evening get-together for geeks for a few years now.  It sarted out down
at the "Rat Sass Bar" (and yes it was pronounced with the words slurred
together, but it's now long gone and replaced by the "Love Sexy Bar" :-)
Later we migrated down to Dirk Gently's.  Jim christened the event
"Reptiles Pool Night" (his domain is reptiles.org and he usually
sponsored free pool tables at the bar).

Lately we've been gathering up at the Bow & Arrow up on Yonge St. just
north of Davisville (on the west side).  There's no pool table there,
but the name's stuck.  Some people start showing up after work, and the
rest of us drag our heels in any time up until about 9pm or so.  Usually
after at 10pm or so and everyone's had something to eat (if they want)
people are already getting ready to leave (my wife leaves early since
she's got to get up early! ;-), and some of us head down to the Silver
Dollar where there's the Danny Marks blues jam every Monday.  You're
welcome to show up if you'd like -- the bar staff usually reserve a
table for us if you're early.... 

Many of those who often come out do in fact have at least some
collection of old computer gear and it's the only semi-sociable group of
people I know (actually we're quite sociable -- but we may not all have
the best social skills! :-) who do have old iron (though there's a few
more in what we all the "Unix Unanimous" group that that meets on the
second Wed. of every month down at the UofT).

Toronto's one of these strange places where too many small-town and
rural people have come together with many many different backgrounds and
cultures.  It still has many small communities and everyone's always
keeping very much to themselves while at the same time spying on all
their neighbours.  There must be 10,000 or more people involved with
Unix computing alone here, but in all the past ten years or so I've
never seen any organisation garner any level of collective interest from
any more than about 10% of them.  Even when there was a vendor group to
pay for bigger rooms and we were able to hold free seminars and talks
there were still only 50-100 people ever showing up (and many of them
came into downtown from outlying areas!).  I.e. it's very hard to form
special-interest communities that cross these other community
boundaries, and Torontonians in general are very apathetic if they think
they can get away with it (and they can most of the time!), though that
of course might be due to the fact that most people have time and energy
only for a very few interests at a time and in a city as big and diverse
as Toronto there's always far too many things that might be of interest
to any one given person.

Meanwhile I just acquired another Intel CPU and motherboard yesterday (a
P-Pro/200MHz for $99 at FactoryDirect) and was stunned when I counted up
the number of PC-based systems I've got running vs. all the rest (6 PCs
vs. 4 sparcs).  Once upon a time I swore I'd never run any Intel x86 cpu
as the main processor in any server.  However I ended up with a mostly
free IBM server and another Intel system, and then went on to agree with
a decision by a client to use similar servers and ever since then I've
been accumulating spare parts that sometimes come to life.  I guess I'll
have to get busy trying to revive my small army of DEC-Multias and a
couple of DEC PMAX systems to even out the balance again!

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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