Trivia and other useless but interesting items

Ahh, Oct. 1987.

Some of the above brought back memories. I haven't heard the term "scratch tapes" in over 25 years (I used to manage a couple of data centres). One of those was halon protected, too.

Some years later, I was managing the buildings in which the data centres were located. For a number of areas, large UPS systems had been installed. One day, the mains went down at one of the buildings. Usually not a problem, the UPS would take the loads until the standby generators came on line.

Only they didn't. The batteries were shot. My plant maintenance team had been regularly checking the battery terminal voltages but, as we found out, that wasn't a reliable system of monitoring them. After it was all over, we went to also checking ripple voltage when on charge - good batteries have minimal ripple. But we did find that the other same brand UPS systems at our other sites had the same batteries so they were checked and found to also be on the way out. The were soon changed!

Oh, does this look familiar? I used it as a storage box in my P38A.

Attachment 151285

Quote:

---

One for all the old school computer nerds. To explain, a VAX was a minicomputer that was made by Digital Equipment Corporation (whom I may have worked for once). This is an old yarn but a pretty good one, I'll leave you to google the significance of the date at the end of the yarn.

---

If anybody is still awake after reading the above: [thumbsupbig]

The original IBM-PCs, that had hard drives, referred to the hard drives as Winchester drives. This is due to the fact that the original Winchester drive had a model number of 3030. This is, of course, a Winchester firearm.

Loved that one Tote. On a similar theme

Tattersalls runs a few pokies in victoria. Networking to allow jackpots was all via a nice secure server set up on St Kilda Rd somewhere. Back Up Power, Back up power for the back up power. hot swappable raid arays mirrored to other hot swappable raid arays ( Lots of Hard disks for memory to put it simply)

Every thing had back ups+++

A electrican cut just one wire out side the secure area. Pokiegeadon with every club and pub pokie crashed instantly. [biggrin]

On other triva

Elvis never performed a single encore, so when he left, he wasn't coming back. Hence the phrase 'Elvis has left the building.'

As a result of company history, for about thirty years, engines made by Morris motors used metric threads - with Whitworth nut and bolthead sizes!

(When Morris started making cars in 1912, they used engines made by White and Poppe. In 1914 they started fitting engines built by Continental and imported from the USA. In 1919 this became impossible because of import restrictions. White and Poppe had merged with Dennis, and were not interested.

Meanwhile, the French firm Hotchkiss had hastily moved their machine gun factory from France to Coventry, ahead of the German advance, but in 1919 the market for machine guns had almost disappeared, and they were looking for work. They started making engines for Morris that bore a suspicious resemblance to the Continental engines, with many parts interchangeable - except that since their machinery was all metric, all the threads were metric.)

My Dad spent the second World War years designing and developing the first working Mach Meter.

My father-in-law spent part of the war as Australia's engineering officer on the Bailey Bridge project - after he had a run-in with General Blamey over refusing to put his signature on a pack of lies. (And apparently got blacklisted from front-line appointments, being sent home from PNG; he also had malaria.)

Maybe we need to start a separate Family History thread.

My grandfather was in the US army at the beginning of the First World War. His father became critically ill and although he was entitled to compassionate leave, my grandfather was refused leave so he went awol.

When WWII began, my grandfather’s mother wrote to President Roosevelt, explaining what had happened and President Roosevelt gave my grandfather a pardon.

My grandfather was in Australia at the time and became an engineer working in a number of boat yards on the Brisbane River, building PT boats.

I and my relos in the USA have spent the last 2 years trying to find out if we can get a copy of the pardon. No luck yet.

My grandfather on my mother's side owned the first taxi in Coffs Harbour.
My wife's great grand father was a Lord who owned both a village, named after him naturally, and a chain of newspapers in England.
Everyone in the world with my surname originated on a single farm in Devon.
Family history is interesting.

My grandfather started, in the Twenties, a salacious newspaper called Beckett's Budget. It had headlines like "White women, black lovers"

Attachment 151294

Many years back I was talking to a 95 yo lady who remembered it and how her father who bought it would keep it hidden from the family. Obviously, not very well - a bit like ones father keeping Playboy hidden (I don't think Dad ever bought Playboy, he wouldn't have had the money.)

Puffy jackets and Oxygen for Everest! Us colonial scoundrels[biggrin]