Howdy ! from Jim P
JimP
🖼️ 280 images Cartographer
Well, I am not going to break my camera, so no photo. My white hair is a fright anyway.
When I was little, back in the 1950s, computers were huge, the size of buildings. Or they were in scary movies about how they would take over.
I was an electronics tech in the US Navy for 6 years. 4 years aboard ship: our ship got brushed by a hurricane. Two guys got broken bones, the rest of us got out of it okay. The exterior of the ship had to be painted before we went into port, so as to not scare the families. Somewhere i have photos of Pompei and the Acropolis. I don't remember mention of Herculaneum.
Fast forward to university. My third major was computer science. No punch cards, I just missed using those. We did have a DEC VAX 11/730 to write Pascal programs on. Pascal went obsolete about 6 months after i graduated.
I had already decided to repair computers rather than write software. Which I did for a little over 30 years in various locations in the central and eastern time zones. Some were minimum wage, even with my Bacherlors degree, and one was $29 per hour. Hurrah !
Now I'm a retiree.
Oh, computers. First one I used was to do simple work in Calculaus, professor said it was simple calculus work, via a dial up modem to a university from the community college. That was one semester. The other professors and instructors there weren't too keen on them.
At the 4 year university I transferred to, had the VAX and a few ms-dos computers. Those were Tandy SX-100s, which are XT-compatibles. I mostly used the Tandys for word processing. Other students used them for Lotus 1-2-3. By the time I graduated, the computers had Windows XP.
Skipping ahead, I worked for several mom-and-pop computer companies, and a couple of Fortune 500 companies. IBM AS-400s, various desktop computers: Sun workstations, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Along with watching Cray computers for proper operation.
My first home computer was a 1kilobyte Sinclair ZX-81. I later bought the 16 KB ram pack to go with it.
About 11 or 12 years ago I found CC2. Bought it. I literally had no one to talk to about it, and we still had dial up in my area back then. This was before web pages. I did eventually find Yahoo groups, but we were still on dial up. Had to share the phone line with relatives.
I found a few web host and put up a few of my maps. I have had a domain for years now, and I put my maps up there. At first I used jpg, but was convinced to switch to png. Which I did. Crestar's surface maps were in 180x235 mile maps. Hundreds of them.
It is possible you can find my struggles with turning those maps into one huge map. After around a year or so, I gave up and went with 2 Fractal Terrains 3 maps. One for each hemisphere. Before I had only mapped the southern hemisphere.
Maps. Including my CC2 ones I have mostly taken down... I think I have made around 6,000 maps so far. So about 1,500 in CC3/CC3Plus.
Whew. I think that is enough.
Comments
@JimP wrote:
About 11 or 12 years ago I found CC2. Bought it. I literally had no one to talk to about it, and we still had dial up in my area back then. This was before web pages.
I think the years have passed quicker than you remember Jim. CC3 was released 14 years ago. Web pages are still a bit older than that.
Later 1990s is when I built my first web site at university. So my time scale is off then.
Another pretty awesome profile!
I feel like I've done nothing with my life in comparison with others now! LOL!
Thank you for sharing, Jim :D
I left a large amount of things out, too boring. Or too scary. Like almost being caught in a mountain pass during a blizzard, but the state troopers let us go down into the city on the other side, we made it.
Apart from mapping, Jim, what else do you do now. And have you any family? Any pics of your home -I know it is no use to ask for a personal photo, so I will have to imagine you as a Professor Julius Sumner Miller, (May 17, 1909 – April 14, 1987, an American Physicist and television personality. He is best known for his work on TV programs in North America and Australia). One of his famous quotes:
"We try to teach somebody nothing. This is a sorry endeavour for no one can be taught a thing. What we do, if we are successful, is to stir interest in the matter at hand, awaken enthusiasm for it, arouse a curiosity, kindle a feeling, fire up the imagination."
This is Jim, everyone, unless proven otherwise
That is not a precise take on my looks.
More details. No spouse, not dating. No kids. I like with relatives who have a number of kids. The other sibling also has several kids. My siblings are younger than me.
I play Everquest 2. I got tired of cooking when I go camping so I buy civilian MREs.
I don't do much. I am retired.
I collect dice. Lots of rpg game books from the 1980s.
edit: And I baked my own bread back in the 1980s for about a year. Whole wheat flour. I was accused of making a cake, not it wasn't chewy so they made that claim. My relatives and I liked it, but others didn't. It didn't take any effort, but when I tried it again in the 1990s, it was a brick. I haven't tried since.
Hmmm... I got to thinking about what Quenten said. I'm not sure anyone would be interested, but here is some beadwork I did back in the 1970s.
and my hiking site, such as it is. I barely hike. I would like to do more, like I did last century.
I loved looking at these Jim. Was Deimos for the Martian Moon, or the Greek god, son of Ares (Mars) and regarded as the God of Dread
Thanks.
Not sure about why Deimos was named that.
Great profile, Jim!
Thanks.
Okay, I confess ! Uhm, I'm Scot-Irish, Netherlands, a bit English, Norman, Norway, and looks like a bit Native American. Which Native American people ? Well, ancestry keeps changing their minds... in September I should get an update, maybe they will change something again. Went from Southest, to everything but Southwest Native American. With just maybe up into Canada.
Interesting life my friend. I swear my life has been the epitome of boredom in comparison to some.
Checked out your hiking page; that primitive site with the trees down looks a lot better than some I've camped at...at least it looks as though it had a decent covering of grass.
I just posted the interesting bits. Most of my life has been just the way I like it, boring.
Hmmm. Maybe I am just a 6' tall hobbit ? My feet aren't that hairy though.
Yeah, they changed it. England and Northwest Europe, Germanic Europe ( which they took out a few years ago, now added back), Ireland, Scotland. There are also some of the Islands near Scotland, but not all of them.And that tiny amount of Native American. They took out Norway. Oh, well. They'll update it next year, it will move again.
My Native American Ancestry is now leaving out most of the US Southwest, and adding in all of Canada.
Refining their methods, sounds more like they are tossing darts at a map.
Just don't arrive early on mowing day... it is a nice park. All state parks in Alabama are self-sustaining. No tax dollars used. This one has a CCC museum and an arrowhead museum. Several small trails in the park. The Pinhoti Trail goes close by the park.
A bit of an update, they keep moving my ancestry and percentages around Europe, Scandinavia, etc.
Oh, most of my websites have moved. So wherever you see a link that contains drivein-jim, it should now contain jimsmaps
I wont be moving all of them over to the new web host, and I will just be deleting those. I don't think any of the ones I'm deleting have been posted here.
Yeah, a necro while I wait for food to be cooking, etc.
I'm not editing the links, just letting you know what changes going forward.
All have been moved. Now on a SSD.