Did you ever play Myst? It was a 1990s-era computer game that took place on an island stocked with a bunch of strange machines that you had to figure out. The look of the machinery was that of top quality laboratory or industrial equipment from the 1890s. The overall effect was a weird combination of… [Read More]

I took my new iPad to a meeting yesterday. An issue came up that made me want to look at an attachment to an old email. I whipped out the iPad and found the right folder, but the e-mail wasn’t there. In fact, I could find none of my old emails. When I got home,… [Read More]

Years ago, when I was at Echelon, we worked with several PC manufacturers who had an acronym for the experience that the user had when setting up a computer for the first time: OOBE, pronounced to rhyme with “scoobie” (or, if you are an aging hippie, “doobie”). It stood for Out Of Box Experience. I… [Read More]

In 1996 or 1997, when I was running engineering at Echelon, Intel sent us a computer to test. It was equipped with special hardware to allow it to go into a low power mode. We called the computer “Dozer.” Dozer occasionally had a hard time waking up. There were jokes about Rip Van Winkle. Around… [Read More]