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Editorial -in the third part-  

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What does it all mean? Since late April 1997 this has evolved into a hobby that has dusted off the grey matter and kept me away from the evening news. I'm not going to stew in the past but keep an eye open for any and all good reasons to poke holes into things. This you may say is the real reason to get your digs in but as far as OS platforms go it could be summed up as this. If you want to get something done, buy a Mac. 'nuf said. Does go on all the time? Well yes. I have the column format of a newspaper and the stuff just keeps coming to fill the spaces and a lame attempt to keep the columns balanced seldom works. This go around has me ranting about the health system and of course the dark side of computing. Time honoured poking fun at PC's gives me great joy because it is so easy, they are such 2 bit machines running an 8 bit code from a ..... you know how that tale goes. Both wife and daughter will be in the hospital during March and April. This makes me uneasy as always. Yes Mrs. does do the hospital often and yet despite promises and faith on her part we go back to what they claim is the finest. This maybe so but I have doubt and concern about the damage these people can do. Granted they are always there with concern and yet the past demonstrated track record is sad. I know what you maybe thinking and yes we have sought out several and varied so-called-experts and found the best available. At the same time damage has set in and yet conformation of this will never occur we press on. More detail as the events unfold..... Today's rant 990228 - All this hospital crap has me wondering and shaking my head once again. What is the reason a person could not check into the building and get attention and results the same or next day? X-ray equipment is in the same building, the drugs are there, the nurses, the doc's, the beds, etcetera. But yet it takes months! The problem is known and the course of action is known so what is the real deal? Politics? Money? Or just time honoured mismanaged and poorly run institutions. No other industry do we stand for this kind of treatment, imagine taking in your car and the guy says it will take 6 months for a change of oil! Or 10 weeks to paint your house, nada, won't happen. The hospitals have to change but will they, not on your life. It is a sad day that the highly educated and self governed body will not change to suit the real world of helping their fellow man. It's a wonder dentists have not got in on this hurry up and bugger off method of health care. Oh, oh you need a filling but you have to come back 3 more times and this will take 4 months to complete. Think this would go over, why do the hospitals get away with it? continued top of next column....

Perhaps in my car & paint comparison the doc's and nurses should be paid what mechanics, painters, carpenters are paid. They can get what ever job done on time as promised within budget through whatever difficulty and with the training and skill required to do the job as necessary. But they are paid MUCH less than the health people. Does this allow them to putter around and do nothing while buying Benz's with abandon from a morning filled with golf? Don't give me this crap about saving lives, of course they do and they have the skill and knowledge that was partly paid for from us as it was. They are doing their job as we do ours and life goes on with all of us adding just a little bit to the whole picture. With my countless visits to hospitals in this city I see and still cannot believe a single thing they have to say in their defense. Pick any day and go for a stroll down the hallways and look into the rooms. You will notice that most of the rooms are empty and ALL the nurses are at the desk on the phone. Without fail. The ER is different and my hat goes off to them, but they will still not get to the root of your problem. It's true. They will call the necessary specialist to fix your need and until they get there they keep you calm and alive, but if the band-aid is just so it might require a consult from a what-ever-specialist. This is good but still the fact remains the staff have what appears to be no authority to do the right thing. Don't get me wrong they are great people and some are very good at what they do, but they are at the mercy of a pack of fools for bosses. You know as well as I do the new management style of the 90's is to put the onus on the employee, but this becomes bunk when the employee (nurse, tech, etc.) does make a novel and perhaps correct decision. Correct in the eyes of the patient is different in astronomical proportions from correct in the eyes of the hospital management. Have I vented enough? I had to say it because I have lived it, and once again going to see it.

The Office (now that's another story) Chapter Three was due to budget cuts postponed. This is chapter four. 990301 - The DOS bocks story is ever changing. The blue screen of death and the network from hell is a constant source of entertainment. The Dilbert method of survival must be applied liberally each day. What next you say can this guy whine about? There is an endless supply of failing DOS box tales and the current tale is thus: There is a "roaming profile" phrase the IS people like to use and how this explains what the DOS boxes do not do as told is another source of yuks. This has never worked from the first day they come up with it nor have the fellow brethren that have the patience with these IS types have ever solved it. The office mentor has the patience and he has tried, and tried to get it solved. You know as well as I do this will not go away as long as there is a ratio of less than one person to DOS box and even at that I have no evidence to say that it will actually work. Seeing is truly believing. Eh? Software appears to be the same on each and every PC. Tell me why does the odd one work and yet most do not? I have a job that takes me to use one of perhaps 30 PC's and I have yet to see any 2 work the same. Remember they are all networked and equally equipped all with same hardware and software. The directory is identical on each PC and the only thing that might be different is the paper supply in each printer. What gives? Well if you have not caught on by now it is the lack of a fruit like symbol on the front of the equipment. 991001 - You know what, it's getting worse. Several weeks ago the network of DOS boxes crashed due to "they say" a virus. I know you are not asking but of course I was not surprized. What does surprize me is the myriad of virus finders and a host of IS people that are waiting to take your call, but yet it still fails. How, tell me, with a staff of dozens that devote their lives to protecting the fragile network of DOS boxes from us who are the vermin users, could possibly allow a simple little virus in? Without going into a long tedious detail of how it should work I can safely relate how it does not work. It seems I can only do my work on one of two DOS boxes as we speak. This is of course contrary to what the going excuse is. 991004 - Today I pondered out loud about several years ago they made a promise that all would be equipped with suitable hardware to navigate the network for mail and other hyped issues. I estimated this time period to be about 8 to 9 years ago. We had it much better back then with the unfailing mainframe based mail and applications. Once you learned the fundamentals it was a breeze. And it always seemed to work, OK once in a while you had to get another session going or reset your terminal but it would work again within seconds. Ahhh, the good old days, when computers / terminals worked. They laugh at the AppleTalk / LocalTalk method but think for a sec, when did it ever fail? Slow granted but it always works.

The Site

990302 - Today I have added a Map and dialogue subdirectory of early Calgary.

Energy Saving Initiative In a continuing effort to save electrons, the rest of this space will be left blank.

Electron Recycling Continued here as well.

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