Non-working thumb drive - For once MS was right

Well, 512 MB is quite a bit if you're keying in the data by hand.

The National Weather Service installed its first network of computers in the late 1970s and 1980s which we booted up using toggle switches and had to do it enough times that we probably all memorized the sequence.

When I worked in the turnkey real estate computer biz, I was sent out of town for a job in another city. Meanwhile, in my absence, my colleague had some problem with the system that required contacting company tech support. After it was resolved, he was told to push this button and that button, toggling bits, etc., because the company was used to directing every little thing due to hiring not-too-competent (or suspecting them of being so) locals to run the sites. But the system would not boot up, so they were sweating bullets. They placed a call to me.

I heard them giving the instructions to my colleague and noted that they made a mistake by assuming that we had a "normal" HP 2100 CPU, whereas in fact we had one of a few with an error in the boot ROM requiring a certain bit to be toggled off in the booting. As soon as I heard that, I asked, "What about bit 13?" They answered, "Oh, you have one of those..." I said, "Here's how you do it: Bob, boot up the computer." Up it came. I explained that being retired military, when given orders he follows them, so if you give the wrong orders, he follows those too. But he knew his job and could boot properly. Being as the company had obviously failed to keep track of which sites had been shipped the oddball CPUs (or had not consulted the list if they had), they couldn't complain too loudly about our performance in that morning's fiasco.