This labor day, the United States has the highest COVID-19 death toll of any country.
Get the vaccination!
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Friday, July 30, 2021, is the 22nd annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. to commemorate this special international day of thanks for System Administrators – here are 7 signs you have been in IT for too long. Apologies to Jeff Foxworthy.
Have you burned critical files to a CD (or DVD) as a backup? There was always the risk of an unreadable disk, especially if you used rewritable (CD/R+) media or cheap media. Writing in one device and reading in another could be tricky too. Good luck getting a new computer with a CD reader in it to read those disks if you still have any.
Floppy disks were called that because they were floppy. You could bend them. They come in different sizes. In my first tech job, I spent a lot of time with 8-inch floppies IML-ing (rebooting) IBM equipment. Image the amazement when the 3.5-inch rigid floppy disk that held 1.44 MB came along. A full Windows 95 install required 21 1.44 MB floppy disks (and several hours).
Before the days of cable modems and 5G we had to connect to the Internet with phone lines. The modem would convert the computer’s digital signals to some analog noise, that would be transmitted through the wires and reconverted to digital again on the other side. A typical connection speed was 9.6 kbps.
If you ever had to use *70,,xxx-xxxx to disable call waiting (rb- Yes- only seven digits too). You had to add these special characters to your modem dial string to prevent call-waiting from dropping your glorious 9.6 kbps connection in the middle of an AOL session.
Before COVID killed tradeshows – you could always score a few coffee mugs for SWAG at trade shows. Now I am going to have washout my coffee mugs.
Before personal computers were a thing, companies used mainframes. In order to program the mainframe, people had to use punch cards that could hold 80 columns of data. They would need to punch a deck of cards, keep them in order and feed them to a reader.
I never had to deal with punch cards in the workplace. I did take a Business Computing class and did have to write a “hello world” COBOL program. That was enough.
I remember going to Sears and getting Pong. We came home and attached the splitter thing to the antenna terminals on the back of the TV, turned the dial to Channel 3 (rb- No remote controls in those days) and presto we were playing PONG for hours. Sure looking back at the low-resolution images (sometimes a ball would look more like a square), the 3 monotones of the blob moving back and forth, and controllers with just one button, pale to what an Xbox puts out. But it was a lot of fun for an 8-year-old.
rb-
All of these things on the list were disruptive in their day. But they were all solving problems, helping us move forward and get to the point we are today.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
For many Americans, the Fourth of July is a day of vacation and a time to picnic and barbecue with family and friends — but many people don’t know the facts behind some of the Fourth of July’s biggest traditions.
Fireworks are an American tradition dating back to 1777. Today, there are around 16,000 Independence Day firework celebrations every year. John Adams, 2nd President of the United States, wrote to his wife, Abigail, that Independence Day should be celebrated with
… Bells, Bonfires, and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.”
Taking a cue from John Adams’ call for “Bonfires and Illuminations,” Congress in Philadelphia, adjourned to light up the night with fireworks. The Philadelphia Evening Post reported that on July 4th, 1777,
… at night there was a grand exhibition of fireworks (which began and concluded with thirteen rockets) on the Commons, and the city was beautifully illuminated…
Boston saw its own Fourth of July fireworks display in 1777. Colonel Thomas Crafts of the Sons of Liberty reportedly
…illuminated his park on the commons, threw several shells, and exhibited a number of fireworks.
In 1783, Boston was the first city to designate July 4 as an official holiday. The tradition of Fourth of July fireworks to celebrate Independence day spread as the country grew.
The American Pyrotechnics Association (APA) says that today, Americans spend almost $1.4 billion on fireworks each year for displays and backyard use. In 2019, people used 273 million pounds of fireworks on the Fourth of July! 99% of Independence day fireworks are imported from China.
The APA estimates that small towns spend between $8,000–$15,000 for a fireworks display. Larger displays can cost millions of dollars.
Firework displays cause Ohh’s, Ahh’s, and injuries. They accounted for 7,300 firework-related emergency room visits in 2019. The CPSC also reports that:
Men are far more likely (66%) than women (34%) to suffer a fireworks-related injury.Barbecue is the most famous 4th of July food tradition is the all-American barbecue, which brings many American families and friends together around a grill. The 4th of July is the country’s most popular grilling day. This year, the National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts Americans will spend around $6.5 billion on food to celebrate the Fourth of July. This included food and other cookout expenses, averaging out to about $77.00 per person participating in a barbecue, outdoor cookout, or picnic. Spending peaked in 2017, at $7.15.
European colonists barbecued large animals over a pit. A style they adapted from native Americans. The tradition of grilling out didn’t get going in earnest until the early 1800s. Barbeque’s popularity spread as political leaders began staging rallies to mark Independence Day and drew crowds by staging massive feasts featuring whole pigs and oxen.
By the 19th century, America was a little more established and politics started going full swing. Political leaders would host rallies, gathering people to hear their opinions by hosting massive barbecues. This move was especially popular with the Democrats in the southern states where these rallies would be held on Independence Day, which was not yet a National Holiday. Local farmers donated meat and simple food was served; sliced cucumbers, watermelon, early harvest vegetables, and fresh bread.
The Salt Lake Herald, September 20, 1888, described one such event.
CINCINNATI September 19
There were 600 people at the Erlanger barbeque eight miles south
of here to see Speaker Carlisle and Senator Blackburn and hear
them speak ... The barbeque consisted of four carcasses of
oxen twenty four carcasses of sheep and no end of chickens also
of 100 gallons of soup that had been cooking three days and
2000 baskets of bread ...
The Maysville KY Evening Bulletin, September 03, 1892, describes another event.
Herndon, Ky. Sept. 3.
General Adlai Stevenson was welcomed to the scene of his
birthplace yesterday by 6,000 people who had ... and in order
that the Democratic gathering should not suffer from hunger,
an enormous barbeque was prepared. Fifteen sheep aim one
hundred hogs were sacrificed...
The political barbecue tradition continues to this day.
You can’t have a barbecue without the classic hot dog. On the Fourth of July each year, Americans eat an estimated 150 million hot dogs. 150 million hot dogs laid out horizontally, would stretch from Washington, DC, to LA more than five times.
The sausage has been around for a long time. Even Homer’s Odyssey makes mention of sausage. How sausages become hot dogs in the U.S. is open for debate immigrants brought sausages to America. However what is know is that in 1916, Polish immigrant Nathan Handwerker opened Nathan’s Famous hot stand in Coney Island NY.
The Coney Island location is home to the annual Fourth of July hot dog eating contest. According to legend, the contest started in 1916, when a group of recent U.S. immigrants settled a bet about who was the most patriotic by seeing who could eat the most hot dogs.
The contest results weren’t officially recorded until 1972. Since 1972. The event is now so big that it’s broadcast on ESPN. The reigning champ, Joey Chestnut set the world record for most hot dogs eaten in 2020 when he scarfed down 75 hot dogs (and buns!) in 10 minutes. To win the mustard belt for the thirteenth time.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
Every year thousands of visitors attend Memorial Day remembrance services Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington National Cemetery is the final resting place for many of the nation’s greatest heroes. The interred include more than 300,000 veterans of every American conflict, from the Revolutionary War to Iraq and Afghanistan. Some other facts about the national cemetery include:
Stay safe out there this Memorial Day !
Related article Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
I think we can all agree that 2020 sucked. Covid-19, Trump, COVID deniers, a plummeting economy, TP hoarding, Australia burning, U.S. wildfires, police shootings, civil unrest, anti-maskers, a derecho, murder hornets, 5,000 pets killed, and the fly. Now that 2021 is here it is time to detox from 2020. Here are some steps to take the help you welcome 2021.
Write it down – Review the events of 2020 the good, the bad, and the ugly. Write the highlights and the lowlights down on a piece of paper. Identifying the good as well as the bad brings them all to mind.
Let go – Let go of the good and bad with a fire ceremony. If you can, give thanks first. Summarize the challenges and then burn the lists. Or if you live in NYC the Times Square Alliance offers an industrial-strength shredder to detox the unpleasant 2020 reminders are printed and shredded.
Home Cleansing – You may need a little extra help getting the 2020 bad juju out of your home. In Feng Shui, clearing is healing. So, cleansing our spaces is important to replace old or stagnant energy with positive and new energy. Cleansing will impact your physical and mental well-being activating the positive feelings and emotions we are looking for in 2021. Practitioners of Feng Shui believe clearing the energies at home brings peace, and connects you with your home so that together you can achieve your 2021 goals. New energies support and nurture each person who lives and spends time at home.
Step 1: Open the windows to allow the energy to move freely.
Step 2: Start the cleansing process from the back of the house to the front. Light a sage bundle and start walking from the back of each room to the front. Walk around the room covering as much of 
it as you can. Using a hand fan, waft the sage smoke into the corners of the room up to the ceiling. Make sure to go into every room as you move from the back of the house to the front. When you’ve reached the front, walk out the door and smudge sage around the door and frame.
Step 3: Sounds also clear up energies. Ring a bell to remove stagnant energy behind furniture, under the bed, and hidden spaces.
Digital detox – Technology dominates the way we live our lives. It is not hard to see how people are unable to go a few hours without using their phone or tablet. On average, a person in the US spends almost 5.4 hours on their smartphone while kids and teenagers spend 5.7 hours. A typical user taps, touches, or swipes their 
phone a staggering 2,617 times per day. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania recently published research linking the use of social media sites such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram to decreased well-being. The results revealed that limiting social media use decreased symptoms of depression and loneliness. A digital detox is a way to stop being so dependent on technology, taking steps to cut out how often you check your phone or use it. Here are some key ways to detox yourself from your tech.
Step 1: Turn off push notifications – Turning off push notifications cut-down how frequently people check their phone. You won’t receive notifications from apps. Cutting out some parts of social media at the start of the detox can be crucial later when you only allow yourself certain times to check social media sites.
Step 2: Invest in an alarm clock– Most people use their mobile phone as their morning alarm. They have their phones in the bedroom with them every night. How many times do you check your phone through the night? Scrolling through Instagram at 3 am rather than getting 40 winks, is surely not the best way to spend the early hours of the morning.
Step 3: Delete social media apps – Uninstall the apps that you check most. Only check your favorite site from another device, or in a web browser. Schedule social media time that suits you, and stick to the schedule to cut down on how often you use them.
Step 4: Make your phone screen grayscale – Many phones offer the choice to have a color screen or not. Set it to grayscale. Colors can make you more likely to check apps and look at your phone. Sites purposely use blues in their design because the color communicates trust. Blue light is used to boost attention and moods. At night they can lead to lack of sleep and even bad skin. As simple as it sounds, switching your phone to black and white can stop you from using it so often!
Step 5: Designate phone-free times during the day – Start with one hour a day, at mealtime or before bed. Leave your device somewhere instead of carrying it around. Or turn it off. The more time you spend away from your device, the more likely it is that you will stop depending on it. There are simple ways around not using your phone for tasks like checking the time.
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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.
