Hello from Germany (wider Frankfurt area)

ChrisRJ

Wizard
Joined
Oct 23, 2020
Messages
1,904
Hi,

Just wanted to provide some information on my background here. I have been active on the forums for a few months now and must say that I love the style and level of competence. It reminds me of the BBS times in the 1990s with FidoNet and UseNet. At that time (high school, apprenticeship, university) I was more on the infrastructure side than today. I played around with Novell (Personal NetWare, NetWare 3.12, IntranetWare 4.11) and Linux (started with SuSE August 1995). Since then I moved into the software world (middleware), but always maintained a liking for infrastructure. Today my main interests are around software engineering (SDLC, CI/CD, configuration management, DDD, TDD) and software architecture for distributed, large-scale, and business-critical systems.

I look forward to many good discussions here!

Kind regards
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,970
Chris, you have been a member for a while now and you are just saying hello now?

FidoNet, good memories. I ran a BBS around 1987 to 1990 on FidoNet, had to pay for that second phone line and always buying the next fastest modem. It was a fun hobby and I met a lot of nice and some odd people. I'm sure I was odd as well, after all who in their right mind spends almost half of a year under water each year? A submariner does. Back then I had my 5 Megabyte MFM drives connected to a nice RLL controller to basically double the capacity. Good times!
 

ChrisRJ

Wizard
Joined
Oct 23, 2020
Messages
1,904
Talking about odd people: I still remember my Fido address (2:2494/350.9). My first hard disk was a Seagate ST-251/1 with 42 MB and about 280 KB/s transfer speed. As to being on a submarine (6 six months under water imply nuclear powered), I can only try to imagine how that is. In hindsight, I would assume/hope, that mostly the good aspects stuck and so you have some fond memories about the guys who shared that life with you. An interesting book I read a few years ago was "Turn the Ship Around" from David L. Marquet, about how he took command of a boat with just a few weeks of preparation for that particular type. Fascinating from a leadership point of view. But I digress ...

Thanks for the welcome!
 

joeschmuck

Old Man
Moderator
Joined
May 28, 2011
Messages
10,970
I don't recall the exact model number of the two Seagate drives I had, only that they were only 5MB and that was a lot of space, then RLL and 10MB was tremendous space. i don't recall too much about FidoNet to be honest, I ran a BBS and had to use FidoNet for all the message traffic (I don't think we called it email back then, it was just messages.

The 6 months was not contiguous, it was broken up into 3 month periods, but it's still a long time to be out, and yes, the submarines are nuclear powered. And yes, comradery was generally very good and sometimes I miss those days. But I do like civilian life as well. Funny thing is I still work with the subs, in fact I was getting ready to head down to the boat in which I made my last patrol on but the work was delayed. Geez, my last patrol was 21 years ago. Time flies.

Books and real life are typically two different things. I can't say that I've read any books that gave a true and honest depiction of submarine life, there are some things you just can't talk about and I'll leave it at that.
 
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