Your adrenaline was like wine
Sweet perfume was your endocrine
When I held your brain in my arms
But now your brain is gone and it’s left an empty hole
I gaze into your sockets but you’re just a hollow skull
I used to love a lotta
Your medulla oblongota
And your basal ganglia
I remember we would stroll
along your fissure of Rolando
When I held your brain in my arms
Well ... you know ... they don't need to use real cars. They could just get little models, put the camera up close.
What are ya talking about Cowboy Slim?
The cop show those kids are talking about.
We don't want them to do a cop show, do we? We want them to have fun right here at the corral.
#CowboyWho
In brief: In today’s post we discuss the best tool we have for determining “heat” during the summer time months, something called the wet bulb globe temperature. And we’re going to need this tool for the weekend, when air temperatures should spike into the upper 90s. Next week looks significantly cooler and wetter.
We are getting toward the spiky bit of summer—although to be clear, summer does not typically peak in Houston until late July and the first part of August—so I want to talk about heat. Air temperature is one factor in how “hot” it feels outside, certainly the most important. But other factors such as dewpoints (which indicate humidity, and are guaranteed to be high this time of year), winds, cloud cover, and Sun angle also matter as well. The most comprehensive measurement of all these factors is something known as “wet bulb globe temperature.”
That’s a funky sounding, non-intuitive name, but basically it means the heat stress you will feel when stepping outside into the sunshine at any given point in time. Matt and I feel as though this is the best tool for a “quick glance” at how truly hot our weather will be in the next several days, and when care should be taken for extreme conditions. So in the coming weeks and months we will occasionally be sharing the graphic below to indicate how hot the coming days will be. As you can see, our region’s heat will crescendo this weekend before backing down early next week.
Today won’t be super hot because we’ve got a chance for some lingering showers (perhaps 20 percent), and high pressure has yet to fully assert itself over the region. So expect high temperatures generally in the lower 90s, to go along with mostly sunny skies later today. Expect light winds, from the southwest, at 5 to 10 mph. Lows tonight will drop into the upper 70s.
This will be another day of temperatures in the low 90s with mostly sunny skies. We should also start to see the onset of hazier skies, as Saharan dust moves into the area after riding the trade winds all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. This will be a nuisance for people sensitive to air quality, but for most of us it will just dim the brilliance of sky a bit, and make our sunsets more reddish. Expect another warm night Friday.
Temperatures will peak this weekend, with highs in the mid-90s on Saturday for most locations, and pushing well into the upper 90s on Sunday. It remains to be seen whether the haze shaves a degree or two off the top end of these highs, but all the same it’s going to be stinging hot outside. We are also near the point of the year when the Sun reaches the highest point in the sky, so please protect your skin if you’re going to be outside between about 10 am and 4 pm.
High pressure starts to retreat next week, opening us up to a more unsettled pattern. By Tuesday or so this should bring us cloudy skies and cooler weather (highs in the upper 80s are possible). Rain chances will also be on the upswing Tuesday, with healthy chances daily for showers and thunderstorms. It’s too early to have much confidence in rain totals, but I expect much of the region to get a good soaking, with the usual threat of some street flooding with summertime rains. If you have outdoor plans during the afternoons and evenings next week, you’ll definitely want to have some back-up plans in mind. Beyond this, we can’t offer much specific in terms of which days are most likely to see rain.
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. I fell asleep in an on-camera meeting
So, today, I was on an on-camera Zoom meeting with a total of about 10 people, most of whom are substatially higher level than me. I slept poorly last night and, well, I nodded off a couple of times. I thought maybe it wasn’t noticeable? Unfortunately, the meeting was recorded, and when I reviewed the recording, I found that it was very noticeable indeed. Like, I did everything in the bad sitcom version of someone dozing in a meeting except fall off my chair.
I don’t know what to do now. Pretend it didn’t happen unless someone asks me about it? Send out a general apology? Run away to another country and change my name so that no one who saw it will ever find me again? (Gotta admit, right now, the last option is by far the most appealing.)
Sincerely,
A person whose face might never stop being bright red again
Oh noooo. Was your boss on the call? If so, I might send her a quick message saying something like, “If I seemed off my game in that meeting, I apologize — I slept very badly last night and didn’t realize how much it was affecting me until after the meeting, when I realized I wasn’t as present as I normally am.” (So you don’t need to spell out “I FELL ASLEEP” but you are acknowledging and explaining the context, not making her worry that you’re planning to blasély nap your way through meetings from now on.) Or if your boss wasn’t on the call, you could send a similar message to whoever was there who you work most closely with.
If you’re a generally a conscientious person who’s normally engaged in meetings and on top of your work and you aren’t doing other things to raise concerns, people will most likely understand you just had a bad day!
2. Job candidate got into a fight with my wife
I am on the hiring committee for a position that will interact closely with mine but won’t be on my downline. The hiring manager is my colleague Freddie, who is good friends with my wife. The third member of the hiring committee is Samara, who has a history of causing problems when she doesn’t get her way. Because the position is so specialized, the applicant pool is extremely small and can only really be filled via head-hunting.
Freddie brought in a candidate, Jason, who had been recommended to him by a friend. Jason’s background and skillset aligned really well with what we are looking for, and the interview gave me the impression that he would be really good at the job, but I wouldn’t be super excited to work with him. He struck me as a consummate professional and very diligent, both qualities that we need, but he was also a little bit abrasive and a few of his answers gave me the impression that he could be argumentative. So, not a candidate I’m excited about, but perfectly serviceable for the role.
Samara hated him, she thought he was horrible, and refused to work with him. When asked why, her answers ranged from “I just don’t like him” to “I don’t think he would fit in here.” Freddie loved him! He thought he was a great fit and wanted to bring him in for a second interview. I have to be the tie-breaker.
I go home and explain all of this to my wife, to get her advice, because I don’t want to piss off Samara but I also know that Jason is our best candidate and I really want this role filled (if we don’t hire Jason, it will sit empty indefinitely). I mention that Jason was recommended to Freddie by a mutual friend of him and my wife, and she goes, “Wait, Jason as in Jason LastName?” and tells me that she has met Jason before, five months ago, and they got into a huge, blow-up fight that was so bad she had to leave. Jason had said something wildly offensive to her and then doubled down when she called him on it, and she hadn’t hung out with the mutual friend since.
I know that I can’t hold this guy’s political opinions against him (the comment was political in nature) but I’m also even less thrilled to work with him now. On top of that, moving him forward as a candidate would mean going to bat for him against Samara and potentially causing conflict with her, but I really need someone to get hired, because I have to pick up everything that this position is supposed to handle until we fill it. Do I pretend I didn’t hear about the fight? Do I drop it? Do I have any particular obligations here?
Well, depending on the nature of the political opinion, you can hold it against him in hiring and in some cases should (for example, if he said something bigoted).
But why not just be up-front with both Freddie and Samara? “His skills are really aligned with what we’re looking for, but he was a little abrasive and gave me the impression he could be argumentative, so I have mixed feelings. Also, it turns out my wife knows him and X happened, which reinforces my initial worry about his interpersonal skills.” You’re not any more the deciding vote than Freddie or Samara are; you just happen to be weighing in last, but that doesn’t require you to say “and so we should do X.” You can just give your opinion, and then the committee as a whole should decide what to do.
If the committee is stuck and can’t agree, then suggest doing the second interview to see if that changes anyone’s assessment. There’s nothing wrong with getting more information; it doesn’t obligate you to hire him. And if the three of you still can’t agree after that, then it really comes down to how the hiring committee is supposed to function: is it majority-rule? Does the hiring manager have the final call? You, as a single committee member who is not the hiring manager, don’t have the final say on your own, and there’s no reason for you to frame this to yourself as “going to bat for Jason” or “going against Samara.” You don’t need to go to bat for anyone or push any agenda at all; just be honest about your evaluation.
That said, for Samara to argue so vociferously against a candidate who others like, she really needs to push herself to come up with something concrete beyond “I just don’t like him.” You could say something like, “I’d be hesitant about any candidate who you oppose so strongly, because I assume you’re picking up on something concerning. Can you use the next interview to try to pinpoint what it is that’s setting off alarm bells for you so that we have something more concrete to work with?”
Also! It’s not necessarily irrelevant that the one person on the hiring committee who’s strongly opposed to Jason is also the one woman on the committee … and Jason also had a “huge, blow-out fight” a few months ago with someone who, oh look, is also a woman. Push Samara to better articulate what’s setting off alarm bells for her, but keep that aspect in mind too.
3. Our calendar gives out too much information on people
I got a new job in December, and I’m questioning a practice in my department. We use cloud-based calendars that are shared in the department. One is for events, one has a schedule for who is leading weekly meetings, and one shows who is out sick, etc.
It is very useful to know when someone in the department is unavailable, as our work often overlaps. But the calendar also says why they are out. For example, I now know that my coworker Inigo is out on FMLA every Friday. Buttercup is out Fridays as well, on “comp” because she (and she alone) is allowed to work four 10-hour shifts instead of five eight-hour shifts each week. Vizzini missed a week of work this month because he was out sick, and Wesley is on vacation three days next week. Vizzini is bothered by Buttercup’s schedule privileges and thinks Inigo might be taking advantage of the FMLA system.
While I do like seeing that Humperdink is gone for two hours on a parts run so I know not to go looking for him, are we supposed to know about Inigo’s FMLA? Isn’t that supposed to be confidential? Every other job I’ve had has just labeled folks as “out” or “unavailable” rather than giving the reasons why they have the time off. And while I think Vizzini gets a little too invested in other people’s business, it is a little disconcerting to see “MyName — sick” on the calendar when I was an hour late because of a scheduled dentist appointment.
The calendar is managed by our office admin, Rugen, and he can be kinda persnickety about how things are done so I’ve been trying to stay on his good side. I suspect my supervisor won’t care to rock the boat. We do have a decent HR department; should I quietly flag them on this, or is it not a big deal?
It’s not illegal to share that someone is on FMLA leave, although employers shouldn’t disclose the reasons for the leave. But yeah, this is a lot of information that’s not needed! Ideally you’d raise it to either Rugen or your boss, but it sounds like you don’t think either of them are good options. You could talk to HR and point out that this is a lot of information and feels like more than should be shared, but as a new employee and where no actual laws are being violated, I’d lean toward just leaving it alone if you’re not willing to take it to one of the two major players (the person managing the calendar and the person managing your team).
4. My employee keeps viewing my LinkedIn profile
One of my team keeps viewing my LinkedIn profile.
I started this job about two years ago, and prior to my joining one of the people who I would manage viewed my profile every few days. It was a bit intense and off-putting but I understood they were curious about their new manager.
After I started, this tailed off but probably continued once or twice a month. I had several people I interviewed view my profile, with one looking repeatedly, and I made a point to tell the team about how I get notifications of people viewing my profile. For the last six months, pretty much every time I go on LinkedIn there’s a notification they’ve looked at my profile within the last day.
If they were a coworker or a previous colleague, I’d probably block them but I manage them. It bothers me and makes me feel uncomfortable. Any guidance on how to approach the conversation with them?
Why not just turn off the feature that tells you who viewed your profile, unless you have some specific need for it? It’s bothering you and it doesn’t need to! There are innocuous reasons why this person might keep viewing your profile — like that they bookmarked your profile ages ago to read when you were hired and so now when they start typing “LinkedIn” into their browser, it autofills your profile URL because it’s bookmarked, or all sorts of other strange things tech can do. But you’re reading things into it and it’s bothering you, and it would be weird to address it with them, so you’re better off just putting it out of your view by turning that feature off, at least for a while.
5. How to turn down a change to my job without harming my reputation
I am an in-house lawyer who recently returned from maternity leave with my first child. My typical hours before my leave were 9am-6/7pm, but since returning I work 8:45am-5:15pm to enable me to collect my child from daycare on time. I often log back on after my child is in bed to check emails but rarely need to do substantive work at that time.
One of the teams in the business needs a legal person to help them with their deals. My boss wants me to take this on in addition to my existing duties instead of hiring someone new to do it. have experience in this area and the team likes me. However, most of their deals are time sensitive (24-48 hours to get it done), and the team are mainly based in another time zone five hours behind mine. The time I take off to collect my child would fall in the most important hours of their day. I would likely need to do substantive work after my child’s bedtime and would miss out on quality time with my spouse as a result.
My boss argues that this would be a great way to increase my profile at the company and eventually get promoted. They said they will set expectations with the team to protect the time I need to collect my child and limit the late night work required. They also suggested I could start my work day later to make up for working late nights, and delegate more of my existing duties. I would not get a pay raise for doing this.
I … don’t want to do it. I get up super early with my child and need to go to bed early to function. I value my quality time with my spouse for my mental health. I also suspect that the company is just offering this to save money on a new hire. However, I am conscious of maintaining my good reputation as an ambitious, hard worker and I suspect that my boss and the team will be unimpressed if I decline the opportunity. Can you please offer me a script to respectfully decline this offer without making everyone angry?
“It’s something I’d potentially be interested in down the road, but I’m not available during the most important hours of their day right now, and that’s not something I’m able to change right now.” And if pushed anyway: “I’m not in a position to make such a significant change to my hours currently, but I will let you know if that changes.”
It’s possible this will indeed mommy-track you in your boss’s head, but a reasonable manager should understand the conflict. I can’t guarantee that you have a reasonable manager, of course, but this is the way to turn it down.
The post I fell asleep in an on-camera meeting, job candidate had a fight with my wife, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.
“After losing big with men under 30 in the 2024 election, Democrats have spent $20 million on a program called ‘Speaking with American Men’ (SAM) to help figure out which ‘spaces’ they need to show up in to fare better with this demographic.” — MSNBC
Sign all bills using one of those pens where, when you flip it upside down, the woman’s clothes come off.
Play beer pong on the White House lawn.
Say you totally liked Shane Gillis this whole time.
Have the Green M&M take off her glasses and scrunchy to reveal she was secretly hot all along.
During speeches, let everyone know if there’s a sick BBQ spot nearby.
Talk more about MMA and aliens and elk meat next time you’re on the Call Her Daddy podcast.
Execute an obvious pump-and-dump scam with crypto coin called $BRUH or $BOOBS or something.
Wear more flannel? Grow a beard?
More Borat quotes. Always.
Say your favorite character in Star Wars was Kylo Ren, wait, no—Finn. Actually, it might be Poe Dameron… Is it Yord Fandar? Stick with the classic: The DNC officially endorses Lobot.
Something about Sydney Sweeney? TBD
Windows 3.0 introduced WinHelp, a program for browsing online help files. The toolbar contained a series of buttons: Index, Back, Browse backward, Browse forward, and Search.
The icon for Index was a tabbed index card. The icon for Back was a trail of footprints. the icon for Browse was a pair of triangles pointing left (back) or right (forward). And the icon for Search was a magnifying glass.
The use of a magnifying glass to mean Search is fairly common nowadays, but back then, it was novel.¹ And the team learned that it was also not universal.
The fictional detective Sherlock Holmes is commonly depicted using a magnifying glass to search for clues. He is a well-known character in English literature, but not necessarily in other cultures.
The WinHelp team received a question from one of the overseas offices asking why the icon for Search was a frying pan.
To avoid confusion, they updated the WinHelp program in Windows 3.1 by simply removing the icons entirely.
The icons are all gone. The buttons just read Contents, Search, Back, History and Glossary.
¹ Many Web sites credit NextSTEP for introducing the magnifying glass icon to mean Find. NextSTEP was released on September 18, 1989, and Windows 3.0 was released not long after, on May 22, 1990.
The post The symbolism of the magnifying glass is not universal appeared first on The Old New Thing.
When you right-click a folder in Explorer, select Properties, and go to the Sharing tab, there is a section titled “Network File and Folder Sharing”, and in there, it tells you the network path by which this folder has been shared. (Or “Not shared” if it hasn’t been shared at all.) How can I obtain this path programmatically?
There is no one-stop-shop function for doing this. The property sheet calculates it on the fly.
What you can do is call NetShareEnum to enumerate all the shared folders (looks like level 2 gives you paths), and then look for one that is equal to or is a parent of the folder in question.
Note that there may be multiple matches. The “Network File and Folder Sharing” page shows what it thinks is the best match.
The post How can I programmatically find the network path by which a folder has been shared? appeared first on The Old New Thing.
A downtown avenue in Mexico City was once again the stage of a march in which hundreds of nudists celebrated the human body. What do you think?
“The only ones I wanna see nude in a parade are Garfield and Snoopy.”
Juan Gallo, Yolk Inspector
“How nude are we talking?”
Amy Sohn, Menu Editor
“Why do nude people need a parade when they already have St. Patrick’s day?”
Alfonso Picone, Breeze Analyst
The post Nudists March In Mexico City To Celebrate Body Positivity appeared first on The Onion.
HALIFAX – After the private information of more than 280,000 Nova Scotia Power customers was stolen and published online, Nova Scotia Power and parent company Emera are reminding customers to make sure they are leaking their own personal information during NS Power’s frequent service outages. “Unfortunately, the local conditions in Nova Scotia mean that it’s […]
The post Nova Scotia Power encourages customers to leak own personal information during service outages appeared first on The Beaverton.
Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto, reporting last week for NOTUS (“News of The United States” — a seriously good up-and-coming national affairs publication):
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says his “Make America Healthy Again” Commission report harnesses “gold-standard” science, citing more than 500 studies and other sources to back up its claims. Those citations, though, are rife with errors, from broken links to misstated conclusions.
Seven of the cited sources don’t appear to exist at all.
Shocking that these dipshits would generate their report with whatever came out of an LLM and not actually check — let alone, you know, read — the cited studies.
p. fish
![[img]:gosgxm](https://analognowhere.com/_/gosgxm/gosgxm.png)
Girl is reading a strange book, lying on a couch.
"After 4 days of tracking we finally caught up with one of MATA's last fully sentient companies. They stood no chance."
Penguin is hanging around, making coffee.
Penguin: "What's that you're reading?"
Girl shows him guiltily.
It's Puffy's War Journal.
Penguin: "Where did you..."
Girl: "Please don't tell him!"
Penguin: "Scoot over."
Girl and Penguin read together.
...
Puffy, Rabbit, Penguins and Cirno stand over a dying MATA soldier in a ruined city.
Man of Mata: "*cough* How does it feel to know you cannot win?"
![[img]:gosgxm2](https://analognowhere.com/_/gosgxm/gosgxms2.png)
Man of Mata: "You bicker amongst yourselves, arguing about some licensing fairy tale. Meanwhile over 80% of our war machine runs code you wrote.
Before this war even began, every third FOSS critter was already in our pocket.
All the knowledge of your pathetic ancestors that you hope to preserve - we have it all.
And you know what that means?
You cannot kill MATA-"
His head is blown off by Cirno.
Cirno: "Looks like the other 20% is used for bullshit generation."
https://analognowhere.com/_/gosgxm
Hard not to see the invitation and this new animation as a hint that the much-rumored UI redesign/refresh is, indeed, going to be glassy.
A reader recently sent me a cover letter that I want to share as a great example of explaining a maybe surprising job history: she had started in one field, then left it, then was trying to come back to it.
First, though, the caveats I’ve learned to give when sharing these:
First, here’s the context this writer sent to me, and then we’ll get to the letter:
When I was fresh out of my undergrad, I worked my butt off to get my dream job as a field archaeologist for an environmental consulting company, only to spectacularly burn out and realize that the industry was a lot more exploitative and geared to the needs of big industry than I had expected as a starry-eyed 20-year-old. I went to grad school to escape, but when it came time to apply for another archaeology job I just … couldn’t. I moved back in with my parents and took a job answering phones at a customs broker, and then I sort of stumbled ass-backwards into a career as a broker myself. I liked it well enough, but the pay was so low that I’d never be able to afford my own home. After eight years out of the industry, I was convinced I could never go back to archaeology and that door was closed forever. It was a little constant hurt on my heart to have lost that.
Then I found AAM and realized that changing careers was a totally normal thing that people do all the time and of course it was still an option for me. I could just explain why I had left and why I wanted to return. I always felt like writing resumes and cover letters was like translating what I actually wanted to say into a foreign dialect where everything was obfuscated and subsumed into jargon. I realized I could just, like, say what I meant, and it would be fine.
So I asked my friends in the industry which companies were good, responsible employers, and then I wrote the below cover letter. It was so, so freeing to feel like it was okay for my personality to show in my cover letter — if a job searcher learns one thing from AAM, I hope they learn that. I got the job, which paid 170% of what I made at my old position, I got back into the industry that I really care about, and I bought a condo. I really love my job now, and apparently this cover letter and the resume I wrote (highlighting what I achieved, not listing my responsibilities!) played a huge role in getting it. I’m really proud of this, so I’m attaching it below if you’re interested.
And here’s the letter, with identifying details changed for anonymity.
• • • • •
Dear Hiring Manager,
I am very excited to submit my application for a position on your reporting and regulatory team in technical writing and project management. This marks a return for me to the field in which I trained and wrote my MA, after several years in a different industry.
I started in archaeology in FirstCity working as a technical writer and field support, before moving north to work first as an archaeologist, then supervisor, and finally field director. Working in SecondSpot was a bootcamp in field work, a masterclass in commercial archaeology, and in many ways a disappointment. I was unhappy with what I felt was the prioritization of the needs of industry over all other concerns and the sidelining of Indigenous communities. I eventually left to pursue a master’s degree that allowed me to both indulge my love of speleology and completely nerd out over predictive modelling.
When I returned to FirstArea, I couldn’t quite bring myself to dive back into commercial archaeology. I ended up retraining in a completely different industry which turned out to require many of the same skills: budgeting, attention to detail, government compliance, and balancing the often-competing needs of various stakeholders. Customs brokerage is basically a system for analyzing and reporting data, which plays exactly into my professional strengths. While I can’t say I have the passion for customs brokerage that I have for archaeology, I’ve stayed in the sector because I genuinely enjoy the opportunities for teamwork and creative problem solving: people come to us with a job they need done, and we figure out how to make it happen, on time, on budget, and fully compliant. I really value the opportunity to work collaboratively, both as a project lead and as support for other brokers. My current company even let me talk them into launching an industry blog, because they know I am a dork who loves business communication. The blog now brings in a significant percentage of our new clients.
I’ve heard from a number of [Company] employees that it is what an archaeology company should be: community led, Indigenous-owned, responsible. In ten years, [Company] is the first company that has made me genuinely excited to return to archaeology. I thrive in environments that allow me to flex my skills in data analysis and writing, and believe I can offer [Company] unrivalled quality, expertise and conscientiousness as a writer and team member.
And if you need someone with expertise in logistics and organization, well, I can get a shipping container of medical supplies from the port of Singapore to a backyard in Calgary.
I’d love the opportunity to talk to you more about what I can offer [Company]. I work normal business hours but I can always schedule a time for a phone call or meeting with a few days’ notice.
Thank you very much for your consideration,
Me
The post here’s an example of a cover letter explaining you want to return to the career you left appeared first on Ask a Manager.
The previously mentioned warez dump on archive.org contains a lot of little gems that would have been otherwise lost. One of those might be 3Com’s networking package from 1989, the 3+Open LAN Manager version 1.1.
The software was released in August 1989, a few months before OS/2 1.2 became available, and well over a year before Microsoft released LAN Manager 2.0. In the late 1980s, Microsoft produced LAN Manager 1.x, but their distribution strategy mirrored OS/2 and DOS. Microsoft did not sell LAN Manager to end users but rather licensed it to OEMs, and 3Com may have been the biggest of those.
3Com collaborated with Microsoft on LAN Manager development and co-developed the NDIS specification for network drivers; that is why 3Com copyrights can be seen even in later Microsoft networking software.
The first order of business was turning fifteen ZIP archives into something usable. Unfortunately, incompetent pirates of old just zipped up the contents of installation disks instead of creating floppy images. Usually they at least the decency to provide the bootable OS installation disk in the form of TeleDisk image, but in this case they didn’t even bother with that.
I had to take an existing OS/2 floppy with the right kind of boot sector (looking for OS2LDR and not IBMBIO.COM or OS2BIO.COM) and extract the installation files on it. That produced a bootable floppy of MS OS/2 1.1… but not regular OS/2 1.1:
3+Open shipped with a “Server Adaptation” version of MS OS/2 1.1, updated in 1989. The Server Adaptation supported a much larger disk cache and also gave the user the choice of three different shells when installing:
The default was Program Selector, the same shell as OS/2 1.0. Also available was Presentation Manager, the default and only choice for standard OS/2 1.1 installations. The third option was “Minimum Shell” intended for dedicated servers that would not run any user applications.
It should be noted that the 3+Open LAN Manager server did not require the Server Adaptation of OS/2 and could be installed on any OS/2 1.1 or even 1.0 system with sufficiently powerful hardware (especially RAM).
Other than the boot disk, restoring the OS/2 system install floppies was trivial. The LAN Manager disks, on the other hand, were not quite as easy.
That is, unpacking the ZIP archives onto floppies was simple enough… but the resulting LAN Manager server could not be installed, and after manually working around the problem, wouldn’t run.
I quickly realized what the problem was: The ZIP archives didn’t store empty directories. And it just so happens that the LAN Manager installation depends on those. With a bit of informed guesswork I was able to re-create the missing empty directories and get a working LAN Manager server and clients.
The 3+Open LAN Manager can be installed in four different ways (all using the same installer on the SERVER_1 disk): OS/2 server, OS/2 workstation (aka netstation in 3Com parlance), a DOS enhanced workstation, and a DOS basic workstation.
The enhanced DOS workstation is functionally similar to the OS/2 workstation, with a full-fledged NET command and support for messaging and such. The basic workstation can only redirect drives and printers and has an very limited NET command, but uses less memory.
One of the ZIP archives was corrupted. Fortunately the disk included software for 3Com’s 3Station hardware, not necessary for 3+Open running on standard machines.
Installing the Server Adaptation of OS/2 was not particularly interesting, other than the shell choice mentioned above. It was also convenient that the OS included a driver for a PS/2 mouse.
As an aside, it is interesting that IBM chose a different tack with their Extended Edition. OS/2 1.1 EE never came with any limited or text mode shell, it always used the full Presentation Manager. It is likely that while a dedicated LAN Manager server would perhaps be placed in a closed somewhere and would not be used locally, IBM’s database and communications servers were not expected to be quite so hands-off.
The next step was installing the OS/2 based LAN Manager server:
The installation is not difficult (after fixing the installation disks), but there is one choice to make that probably isn’t obvious, and that is the networking protocol used by the server. After reading the documentation which is very helpfully available on bitsavers, I decided to go with the basic NBP (NetBIOS Protocol) which is supposed to be smaller and faster than the others. For interoperability with older 3Com networks, XNS would have been used.
It should be noted that 3Com’s NBP is not compatible with NetBEUI used by LAN Manager 2.0. Microsoft later published a KB article explaining the various options for getting LAN Manager and 3+Open LAN Manager 1.1 to talk to each other.
The NIC choice is almost entirely limited to 3Com adapters. When setting up client machines, the installer additionally offers the original 3Com EtherLink (3C501); for servers, it was considered inadequate. I used the EtherLink II emulation in VirtualBox for both server and clients and it worked without any trouble.
Next I set up an OS/2 1.0 workstation. The 3Com network installer is really not difficult to use and sets everything up. As long as all the usernames and passwords match, everything works great:
Interestingly, when there are frequent username or password mismatches, the server starts complaining:
That alert proved useful because it made me realize that I didn’t set up the user accounts correctly.
Next I went on to set up DOS clients, first the Enhanced variety:
And I followed with the Basic DOS workstation for good measure:
Both worked and were able to share files stored on the server.
LAN Manager provides a full-screen text based interface for basic configuration and management:
The interface looks the same on OS/2 (above) and DOS (below).
LAN Manager servers can be managed through the NET ADMIN interface both locally and from an OS/2 workstation.
It is notable that 3+Open LAN Manager 1.1 used NDIS based networking drivers on both OS/2 and DOS, rather than the monolithic drivers used in LAN Manager 1.0.
The archive included at least one disk that wasn’t part of 3+Open per se. It was LAN Vision, 3Com’s add-on product for server monitoring.
Not a lot of information has survived about LAN Vision. It was an add-on to install and run as an additional service on the 3+Open server. The service collected various statistics which could be analyzed and viewed on OS/2 workstations, or exported into a spreadsheet format.
There was a full-screen OS/2 version of LAN Vision which I couldn’t quite get to work, but there was also a Presentation Manager version that did work. Here is a list of various statistics that can be displayed:
The actual display is nothing all that special, just showing the statistics in a graph form. This was probably a lot more impressive in 1989 than it is now.
An interesting nugget is somewhat hidden on the DOS Basic Workstation disk. It’s called 3COMEMM, or 3Com Expanded Memory Manager. It must be installed manually, but it really does work:
It is obviously an OEM version of 386MAX 4.05. Qualitas supplied OEM versions of 386MAX to dozens of OEMs, and 3Com was one of them. On 386 machines (there were no 486 systems yet when 3+Open LAN Manager 1.1 came out) 3COMEMM allowed users to reclaim precious conventional memory, even when using the dreaded DOS 4.01. 3COMEMM obviously also provided expanded memory (EMM) emulation; EMM was widely used by late 1980s software since it was a technology applicable to any PC, from the original 8088 based machines to 386s.
For DOS users, 3Com shipped a customized version of DOS Manager, Microsoft’s early attempt to make DOS somewhat more user friendly.
DOS Manager was a predecessor of the DOS Shell shipped with DOS 5.0. It was only available through OEMs, not directly from Microsoft.
3+Open is a networking package for DOS and OS/2 1.0/1.1 clients, contemporary with NetWare 2.x. It is very similar to Microsoft’s newer LAN Manager 2.0, but 3Com shipped 3+Open with a fair number of protocol options and various add-ons, not to mention support for 3Com’s XNS-based networking software. It is also one of the very few networking packages that support OS/2 1.0 clients (along with early versions of Novell’s OS/2 Requester).
Although the 3+Open LAN Manager 1.1 supports 3Com’s own 3Station systems, it will run on more or less any OS/2 or DOS system. The only requirement is a 3Com NIC, although even that could probably be overcome with a bit of effort and the right driver in hand.
For the network server, 3+Open LAN Manager 1.1 ships with a curious “Server Adaptation” of OS/2 1.1 with support for a bigger and better disk cache and an optional minimal shell suitable for dedicated servers. The Server Adaptation of OS/2 was effectively replaced by HPFS386 in LAN Manager 2.0, which was installed on top of standard OS/2 1.2.
There is obviously a fairly straight line from LAN Manager 1.x to LAN Manager 2.x to LAN Manager built into Windows NT and to today’s Windows based file and print sharing.
Johnathan Gooch did a lot of wishful thinking throughout this legislative session. Most recently, he’s been wishing for soundproof walls.
“The worst thing about being queer in Texas right now is having neighbors, because I just want to scream all the time,” said Gooch, the communications director for Equality Texas, an LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group.
This session, the group identified and tracked over 200 anti-LGTBQ+ bills, more than any other state in any point in history, Gooch said. A dozen of those bills were ultimately passed by the Legislature and have made it to Governor Greg Abbott’s desk or already been signed into law. Those various bills could threaten to negatively impact queer Texans with restrictions targeting public schools and healthcare and new legal standards that could create unsafe environments for LGBTQ+ people, particularly children.
Though the deluge of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation isn’t anything new (in 2023, legislators filed 160 such bills), Gooch said that this session, the bills that gained the most traction tended to seem less overtly harmful. “[The harmful provisions are] sometimes buried in other bills or deal with complicated policy areas that might not be immediately evident to queer people or allies across the state who are concerned about what’s going on,” Gooch said.
One such bill is Senate Bill 1257, which will require insurance providers to cover any adverse consequences relating to gender-affirming healthcare, including procedures to reverse or recover from a gender transition. These procedures are uncommon: According to a 2021 study, about 1 percent of trans people regret gender-affirming surgeries. The bill may cause risk-averse health insurers to stop covering gender-affirming healthcare, Gooch said, making it more difficult for adults to access or afford. Abbott signed SB 1257 into law on May 24 and it will go into effect on September 1. This bill follows the state’s 2023 ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
Other bills, like House Bill 1106, enact seemingly innocuous changes in legal language that could have devastating impacts. HB 1106 amends the Texas family code’s definition of child abuse to explicitly exclude a parent who refuses to affirm a child’s gender identify or sexual orientation. “This exception, unfortunately, could enable a lot of harmful behavior,” Gooch said. “There’s a long history of using a variety of violent, physically abusive tactics to ‘reform’ young queer people. … If a parent is so aggressively opposed to their child’s orientation or gender identity … where is the limit? What are they allowed to do to force them not to be queer?”
Senate Bill 412, which the governor signed on May 19, similarly tweaks language, removing a legal protection that previously exempted parents, teachers, and librarians from prosecution for providing kids with material that could be considered “harmful” if it was done with an educational intent.
Emily Witt, a communications strategist for the Texas Freedom Network, said bills that put more power in the hands of parents are part of a larger project of “weaponizing parental rights.”
“Parents love their kids and want what’s best for their kids, and if they’re being told that there is this harmful agenda, or that there is something wrong with their kid being trans or LGBTQ+ … I think that parents are a lot more likely to go along with that.”
This weaponization extends into schools, particularly with Senate Bill 12 and Senate Bill 13, two of Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick’s priority bills. Witt said going after public schools is the first way to change the overall mindset of a population. “It has to do with how foundational our schools are,” Witt said. “Making our public schools places where kids can’t be fully accepted or don’t feel like they can talk to their teachers or be who they are is just another piece of how Republicans are attacking our public education system and changing it from what it’s supposed to do, which is serve our kids.”
Senate Bill 12, dubbed the “parental bill of rights,” would prohibit teachers from teaching LGBTQ+ topics and from helping students “socially transition” by using a name or pronouns that don’t align with their biological sex. The final version, which passed over the weekend, also clarifies that school districts may not authorize or sponsor clubs based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It also allows parents to have access to their child’s mental health records, which Gooch of Equality Texas said could pose serious risks to queer children.
“If a young queer person fears that their parents might not be affirming, they need an outlet to process that,” Gooch said. “Having access to counselors at school can be a lifeline to young queer people who are trying to make sense of how they fit in the world and also trying to maintain a healthy relationship with their parents.”
SB 13 would allow parents to access student library records and prevent their children from checking out certain books. It would also establish procedures to remove books with “indecent or profane” content. According to PEN America, of the most commonly banned books in the 2023-2024 school year, 39 percent featured LGBTQ+ people and characters. SB 13 was approved by both chambers over the weekend.
House Bill 229, one of several proposed bills seeking to classify people along binary definitions of biological sex, would codify the terms “male” and “female” and require government agencies to abide by these definitions in sex-based data collection. Witt said this bill could pose problems for trans Texans whose gender identity does not align with their biological sex and intersex Texans who do not fit into binary definitions of biological sex. “That’s just another way that we’re seeing lawmakers try to erase Texans and try to really attack freedoms,” Witt said. “They’re trying to control every aspect of trans and queer Texans’ lives. This kind of legislation really just feels like a way to push people out of the state and make them feel like they don’t belong here.”
Senate Bill 1188 similarly relies on the idea of biological sex, requiring health agencies to create a new field in medical records for sex assigned at birth. It doesn’t, however, prohibit health agencies from including gender identity information.
Still, the majority of anti-LGBTQ+ bills died during the legislative process, including Senate Bill 18, one of Patrick’s priorities, which made it to the House calendar but didn’t get a reading before the May 27 deadline. SB 18 would have prohibited public libraries from hosting “drag queen storytime” events, and Senate Bill 2920, which would have classified gender-affirming hormone treatment as prohibited steroid use for athletic competitions in the University Interscholastic League, met the same fate.
Though not much about the session surprised Witt—she said the amount of anti-LGBTQ+ bills was to be expected—she said lawmakers seemed less interested in listening to the testimony of Texans during hearings. “I think they are aware that they’re wasting time attacking a small community instead of passing meaningful legislation that actually affects most Texans,” Witt said. “They just think that they’re in charge and they don’t have to listen to the public anymore, and I think that they’re going to see that that’s a big mistake when it comes election time.”
Despite the onslaught of bad bills, Texans continued to show up, even at the end of the session: Witt said over 100 people came to a “read-in” protest of SB 13 over Memorial Day weekend.
“This is a minority of people who are extremists and have been given millions of dollars to push forth this anti-trans legislation, but they don’t actually reflect Texas,” Witt said. “We still have so many people who are willing to show up for each other and keep each other safe, and I saw that throughout the entire session.”
The post Here Are the New Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills Texas Passed into Law appeared first on The Texas Observer.
STANFORD, CA—In a breakthrough shedding crucial light on the commonly misunderstood mental health affliction, a new study by researchers at Stanford University revealed Wednesday that depression was most common among individuals who look into the mirror smiling only for their reflection to be sad. “Across all demographics, we’ve seen a strong correlation between severe depression and those whose smiley faces end up becoming frowny faces in a reflective surface,” said head researcher Jean Frances, adding that the depressive mood disorder was most commonly seen among those who walk past a shop window, seemingly in a good mood, before catching a glimpse of the unhappy face staring back at them in the glass’s reflection. “Our research indicates that those with unhappy, downcast, or glum expressions in the mirror are 60% more likely to commit suicide than those with smiles.” At press time, Frances concluded by warning that the likelihood of suicide jumps to 80% if an individual is also being followed around by a miniature rain cloud above their head.
The post Study: Depression Most Common In Individuals Who Look In Mirror Smiling But Reflection Sad appeared first on The Onion.
Mount Etna, the volcano on the Italian island of Sicily, erupted, spewing hot ash miles into the air and releasing lava in a pyroclastic flow. What do you think?
“God must be punishing them for being Italian.”
Aaron Cato, Ceramics Expert
“I’m sure the spewing ash and lava is just as good at Eataly.”
Gonzalo Viera, Ice Molder
“Makes you wonder when Mt. Fuji will finally get off its ass and do something cool.”
Trina LeCompte, Girdle Technician
The post Italian Volcano Erupts appeared first on The Onion.
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