I stumbled across this from an old Atari Magazine:

What do micro buyers want? Easy. They want 1000K RAM, 10Mb of hard disk space; 3-D color animated graphics with a resolution indistinguishable from broadcast TV; a built-in modem, laser-disk interface, and printer; stereo sound on a par with a Moog; and ease of use like the Macintosh.

Reading that made me do a double take. Did they dream of 1 GB of RAM back in 1984? No wait, 1000K is only 1 MB of RAM. Holy smokes. What can you run on only 1 MB of RAM?

I remember my first real computer: it was a Texas Instruments TI 99/4A. When you first turned the TI on, you would get a BASIC (programming language) command prompt. Technically, it had NO RAM and NO hard drive. If you loaded a program into it, it would place the program into 16KB of video memory. I spent hours transcribing programs from Compute! magazine. You would save these programs onto audio cassette tape.

My second computer was an IBM XT. If I recall, it's CPU ran at 4MHz, and it had 640KB of RAM and a 20MB hard drive. Ah, those were the days. This was a DOS-only computer, although somewhere I had acquired a text-based menuing system for it. It's monitor was CGA, which meant it supported up to 16 color graphics.

My third computer was a giant step up. At some point, my mother won an IBM PS/2 at a church raffle. Yay Mom! The PS/2 had 2MB of RAM if I recall. Windows 3.1 was installed. And I don't remember much more about that particular machine.

Moving on up the line, I purchased my very own PC when I had enough money to do so - a 100MHz Pentium 1. I'm sure it came with 16MB of RAM and less than 200MB of hard disk. It came with Windows 3.1, but since Microsoft was just about to launch Windows 95, I got the vendor to send me that CD for free. Sometime later, I decided to spluge and add 16MB more of RAM. It cost me $160 if I recall.

This brings me to my present computer - kind of. I have owned parts of this machine since 1997 or 1998. But I have changed just about every component in that time. I have been through five CD burners - they keep getting cheaper and faster. I have upgraded it's memory to where I now have over 1GB of RAM. I have three physical hard drives, of 8GB, 20GB and 40GB respectively. I have two monitors - one new LCD plus the original 17“ CRT. I have been through numerous video cards, two CPUs, two cases, numerous power supplies, and two motherboards. The modem is probably original though. ;)

Wow, it's amazing what can be considered top of the line over a 10 year period. If you look at the quote at the top of this entry:

1984: 1MB RAM, 10MB hard drive, 2MB or so 3D graphics, 8MHz CPU
2004: 1,000 MB RAM, 120,000 MB hard drive, 128MB graphics card, 3,000 MHz CPU
2014: 1,000,000 MB RAM, 1,440,000,000 MB hard drive, 8,192MB graphics card, 1,125,000 MHz CPU???

That's Moore's law isn't it?

I guess I'm not alone. Everyone goes through phases in their blog reading. First you spend most of your time reading the A-list, such as scripting news and the scobolizer. Then you add a few more interesting (non A-list) RSS feeds to your aggregator. Then you find yourself with dozens or hundreds of RSS feeds. And then you discover you have stopped reading Dave Winer or Robert Scoble altogether.

Personally, I'm at the point where I still subscribe to those two gentlemen, but I find myself skipping most of the content.

In fact, having read Scobolizer for so long, I'm sure Robert doesn't mind losing a few readers who are now subscribed to some of the same sources as him and don't need a human filter.

I don't watch many reality shows. I'm not into The Swan and really couldn't care less about American Idol.

I do admit to watching Survivor and The Apprentice on a weekly basis. I've never seen more than a few minutes of “The Restaurant”, but since it's another Mark Burnett production, it deserves a look. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun, however, since this year it's all about the battle for power over a failing restaurant.

Anyways, here is an interesting article on the not-quite-behind-the-scenes fight that is going on between the chef and the financier. There is some talk that this show is ruining or has ruined Rocco DiSpirito's reputation as a chef. The Restaurant might become a good documentary for business students on how to make sure a restaurant fails:

Step 1) Get lots of publicity before you open, so that you have no time to work out any kinks before the bad reviews come in

Step 2) Have the chef spend more time selling pots and pans on QVC than actually in the restaurant

Step 3) Spend $9,000 on 5000 business cards, for an average price of $1.80 per card

I guess there is another lesson here: the risks of appearing on “reality TV“. Anonymous contestants like in The Apprentice or Survivor have nothing to lose by appearing on a reality show. People like Omarosa can develop awful reputations, but still capitalize for their 15 minutes of fame if they want to. However, people like Rocco DiSpirito, who are already somewhat famous to begin with, can ruin a good reputation with a show like this. There's a larger downside for them.

Add to the fact that producers have a natural tendency to emphasize the negatives, to boost drama and hopefully ratings. So if you have 1 bad moment in a week full of good moments, guess which moment gets aired on TV? So you end up looking like a jerk when you might not be. Things are also probably aired out of context, so they show you firing someone but don't show all the things the person did to get fired.

Using dasBlog as my blogging tool, I can easily see the web logs, including the number of visitors and how they found my site (referer logs).

Interestingly enough, today someone found this blog by searching for “Scott Duffy” in Google. That's great, because if someone wants to look me up in Google, they are sent here first.

But it also makes me think... who was it who was looking me up in Google? A friend who forgot my email address? A former coworker? A stranger? A potential client? I will never know.

But to those of you reading this blog by looking me up in Google, I say “Hello and welcome!”. Drop me a note if you'd like to strike up an email conversation.

While I am sitting here in front of my laptop, reading my RSS feeds using SharpReader, I should take a moment to give some shout-outs to some of the better bloggers out there that I read on a daily basis:

Technical Careers @ Microsoft - I would LOVE to work for Microsoft. Gretchen and Zoe, are you listening??? ;)

Paul Vick - A member of the Visual Basic team at Microsoft

Joel on Software - Joel Spolsky writes some interesting stuff on the true nature of the IT industry

Wil Wheaton - Ensign Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation, who has now become a professional writer

Eric Sink - Another pioneer in the software industry who writes insightful stuff. I like his articles on career management best.

Josh Cagan - He writes for television and is quite funny on his blog. He has a unique brand of humour. Now that he has two TV shows in development, he writes a lot less. 

After watching Volume 1 on DVD a second time, I went to the local theater to see Kill Bill Vol. 2. In some ways, it was a completely different movie than Vol. 1. And I liked it.

I have to say I have gained a new respect for Uma Thurman as an actress. She has been a household name for more than 10 years, although other than Pulp Fiction I can't think of another movie she has been in. But in Kill Bill, she shows a range of acting that far exceeds what was expected of her in this movie.

She gets to express extreme anguish (waking up from a coma), determination (willing her legs out of entropy), and a whole lot of emotions such as panic, cold revenge, and a bit of madness. Anyways, it's a good overall performance from Uma.

I can't believe this is only the 4th movie from Quentin Tarintino. I need to rent Reservoir Dogs, since I bet its a good movie.

Mark Cuban has posted the second installment on how he got into business for himself.