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This site is hosted by Quicksilver Interactive Media, a fine company owned by my son-in-law, Brad Goettemoeller.
The files were converted to HTML with a variety of home-rolled SNOBOL4 programs running under 64-bit SuSE Linux. My thanks to Phil Budne who ported the obscure but simple and potent SNOBOL4 programming language to a variety of platforms, including GNU/Linux. And to my friend and neighbor Mark Emmer who taught me SNOBOL4. He ported it, and its faster cousin SPITBOL, to MS-DOS, and he's working on a Linux port for SPITBOL.
This site is plain and simple, and should work well with most common browsers. I have tested it with Firefox, Opera, and Lynx. So far as I know, it does not deposit any cookies on your system, nor does it collect any personal information.
Over the years, I've used a variety of computers for my daily work. I began with an Osborne I in 1984 that ran CP/M. I progressed through a variety of PCs running MS-DOS, and in 2002 switched to GNU/Linux. In the CP/M and DOS days, I wrote with WordStar; nowadays I use Jstar, a version of JOE (Joe's Own Editor, and thank you Joseph Allen) configured to work like good old WordStar. My fingers are comfortable with its commands.
In case you're curious, I generally type on a Logitech Elite keyboard, as it stands up pretty well to office grime and abuse. The same holds for the Logitech M-8T96 mouse beside it.
In June of 2010, I moved into a new computer; as usual, it's one I built myself. It's got an AMD 64-bit quad-core CPU and 8 gigabytes of DDR3, so it's fast. It's also almost silent, which was a pleasant surprise. I ran into a few assembly problems, and I thank my friend and neighbor Ernie Hatfield for his kind assistance.
The new hardware also included a 500-gb hard disk and a "green" video card that has no fan, along with an upgrade from Open SuSE 10.0 to 11.1. On the road, I use a Lenovo/IBM Thinkpad T43 which can boot either Windows XP Pro or Linux.
Columns were originally sent via modem from Salida to a special Denver Post telephone number always answered by a modem; these days, they just go by email. On rare occasions, I've faxed columns to Denver, and once I even hand-delivered one.
It comes hard to praise the phone company, but in all these years, there's never been a problem in getting my work over the 150 miles from Salida to Denver. That speaks well of the reliability of the service provided by Qwest and its corporate ancestors.
For a year or two, we got broadband internet from the local cable monopoly, Bresnan. The service was fast and fine as we upgraded from dial-up. As Martha put it, the difference was like getting indoor plumbing after using a hand pump in the yard. In both cases, you can get water when you need it, but turning the faucet is so much faster and easier. We switched to Qwest DSL because it was cheaper (although it seems a little slower), and we're still using it. In June of 2010, we upgraded to a higher speed, and Qwest is also our ISP
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