As a tribute to MJ, I’m watching “Captain EO” via YouTube:

It’s pretty crazy to think Michael Jackson is dead. Even though he was pretty strange, he did create some amazing music.

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 – July 25, 2008) gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium.

In his moving presentation, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals:

In Memoriam: Randy Pausch (1960-2008). For more, visit www.cmu.edu/randyslecture

Two of my favorite things growing up as a kid were playing with my Lego’s and watching Monty Python.

As time passed and I was no longer a kid, my Lego’s got passed down to my younger brother and I found new things to do with my time. Computers and girls

Even though I didn’t have my Lego’s anymore, I still had Monty Python. My VHS tapes are pretty much toast now but they’ve since been replaced with modern DVD’s.

This morning I went on a quest… a quest for the Holy Grail… hehe… run away! run away! and I found this awesome nugget of two of my fondest memories as a little geek:

Yeah. My day will now be complete that I’ve had my fill of both Lego’s and Monty Python.

Side note, for those who care, today is also my birthday. Feel free to send Lego’s or back up copies of Monty Python videos.

Flashback to 1986 – I’m 14 years old and sitting in my room with my Commodore 64 hooked up to my 13 inch black & white television, typing in a 7 page long basic program from a computing magazine.

I knew IBM “clones” existed, but I knew I had it made with my trusty C64. If you weren’t around then or if you were a Commodore hater, you missed some really cool years of computing.

Early Macintosh snobs were always cracking on C64 users, granted I learned on Apple II computers in 2nd grade elementary school.

Yes, the Macintosh had better graphics, a mouse, a user interface, etc but, the C64 world had something even better: game/program trading galore or as some would call rampant piracy.

Now, I know people have always copied this and that, but I remember C64 trade fairs where you’d leave with a shoe box full of 5.25 floppies packed full of goodies.

It would take weeks to go through all of it. Ah the memories.

If I had seen this commercial back then, it would have probably driven me to IBM clones much sooner.

Fortunately this is (or was) a TV commercial for the Commodore 64 home computer that aired in 1985 on Australian television and well, I’m from the USA.

December 31, 1999: The world braces for chaos as midnight approaches. Will computer systems crash when the calendar switches over to 2000?

Although the answer turned out to be “no,” and the so-called Y2K crisis never materialized, the potential for disaster seemed real enough in the days and weeks leading up to the final day of the 1900s. Fears within the computer industry and the resulting media frenzy it produced certainly helped to fan the flames.

The problem, as some saw it, was that older computers still being used for critical functions might break down when the date switched from 99 to 00, since the numeric progression convention, programmed to store data using only the last two digits of any given year, wouldn’t recognize the logic of a century change.

As far as these computers were concerned, it would be 1900, not 2000. How much data might be lost as the result of this 100-year miscalculation was the great, unanswered question.

Y2K fears were real enough to make governments around the world take remedial action before the event, which had the unintended benefit of actually strengthening the existing computer infrastructure.

Systems were upgraded or, when they couldn’t be replaced, were given additional backup. Billions of dollars were spent fixing the original source code in older computers.

If the threat was real — and there are still plenty of people around who say it was — then the precautions paid off. If Y2K was a form of mass paranoia — and plenty of people believe that, too — then a lot of money was wasted.

As for the midnight switchover itself, 1999 passed into history with barely a whimper. A few glitches were reported here and there, but nothing catastrophic occurred.

The industry would be in crisis soon enough, but as January 1, 2000, dawned, nobody saw that one coming yet.

Source: CNN

“Time for Timer” was the collective title for a short series of public service announcements broadcast on Saturday mornings on the ABC television network starting in the early 1970s.

The animated spots featured Timer, an anthropomorphic block of cheese cartoon character, usually wearing a bow tie and top hat, who promoted healthy eating and personal hygiene using clever songs and animation.

The most well known segment is probably when Timer became a cowboy in “Hanker for a Hunka Cheese”.

This should bring back memories for a few of my readers:

“Time for Timer” ran concurrently and interchangeably for many years with ABC’s other educational spot Schoolhouse Rock!

They generally appeared between cartoon programs on the hour and half hour marks interspersed with regular commercials.

Yay for being a child of the 1970’s.