Dinner with 
mystful
Last night, gnomi, farwing, and I had dinner with mystful at our local kosher Chinese restaurant, Taam China. (Tonight, gnomi and I are having dinner there again, this time with my former student moneypenny.) mystful was one of the students in the writing workshop we facilitated at Harvard last month, and since she was kind enough to get in touch before the workshop, we wanted to spend some time with her.
She's a fascinating person, who has accomplished a lot for someone so young. It turned out that as a high school student she had spent a year in Beijing. She speaks Mandarin Chinese, so we introduced her to the owner of the restaurant, and the two of them had an extended conversation in Mandarin. I have no idea what they talked about, but from context it was probably about her experiences in China.
We also talked about writing, of course, and why one shouldn't use too many adverbs as dialogue tags. (Seegnomi's post here for a link to Tom Swifties.) But on a personal note, what got me was how much Harvard has changed since I've been there. I knew that they had wired the dorms for the Internet, but starting next year all the dorms are going wireless! < old man grumpy voice >In my day, we didn't have this "wireless" Internet in our dorms! If we wanted to check our e-mail, we had to shlep all the way to the Science Center, through the snow, uphill, both ways! And we didn't have any of these sissy front-end programs! We had to know how to use Unix or VMS!< /old man grumpy voice >.
Okay, I'm done now. :-)
gnomi, farwing, and I had dinner with mystful at our local kosher Chinese restaurant, Taam China. (Tonight, gnomi and I are having dinner there again, this time with my former student moneypenny.) mystful was one of the students in the writing workshop we facilitated at Harvard last month, and since she was kind enough to get in touch before the workshop, we wanted to spend some time with her.She's a fascinating person, who has accomplished a lot for someone so young. It turned out that as a high school student she had spent a year in Beijing. She speaks Mandarin Chinese, so we introduced her to the owner of the restaurant, and the two of them had an extended conversation in Mandarin. I have no idea what they talked about, but from context it was probably about her experiences in China.
We also talked about writing, of course, and why one shouldn't use too many adverbs as dialogue tags. (See
gnomi's post here for a link to Tom Swifties.) But on a personal note, what got me was how much Harvard has changed since I've been there. I knew that they had wired the dorms for the Internet, but starting next year all the dorms are going wireless! < old man grumpy voice >In my day, we didn't have this "wireless" Internet in our dorms! If we wanted to check our e-mail, we had to shlep all the way to the Science Center, through the snow, uphill, both ways! And we didn't have any of these sissy front-end programs! We had to know how to use Unix or VMS!< /old man grumpy voice >.Okay, I'm done now. :-)
We had an ADM-3A in the basement, with a 1200bps modem attached.
I'm not kidding.
(Instead, I'd just use my Mac as a terminal from my room; for the years I had roommates, we negotiated the phone time issue; once I had a single, it was no longer a problem.)
Harvard WIFI
Re: Harvard WIFI
Re: Harvard WIFI
For just checking email and light websurfing, though, T-Mobile's GPRS is adequate, and can be had with unlimited traffic for $20/mo on top of an existing voice plan.
Related to that, MTV has a show starting July 5th called "The '70s House" were a bunch of teens/20somethings have to live in a house with only 1970s level of tech and decor. I find it amusing in that MTV only dates back to 1981.
Punchcards and paper tape anyone?
The first modem I ever used was a 300 baud with acoustic coupler. You took the receiver of the phone and stuck in it a special container to communicate to the mainframe, that was across the room.
If they do "70s House," will the kitchen appliances be in avocado or gold?
Re: Punchcards and paper tape anyone?
I remember punch cards. My half-brother Danny used to program with them, or whatever it is one did with them.
I remember being introduced to PINE after I graduated and thinking it was really cool.
Ahh, CCTV...
Thanks again for dinner and for editing my story!!!
You're welcome for the story edits. If you manage to do a rewrite I'd be interested in seeing it. And don't forget to check out the Turkey City Lexicon.