Minutes for 6502 Group Meeting of Sept. 8, 1998

It all started normally enough, for a 6502 Group meeting night.

Loren and Richard met to get the SX-PIP proto to exhibit some useful behavior. Then they went to a meeting at the new Certex building by the Highline Canal. Afterward they met with Loren's brother for huge (and cheap relatively speaking) hamburgers at Alexanders in the Park Meadows area. While eating, clouds rolled in. Afterward, the drive to Golden displayed very nice lightning flashes over west Denver.

In the Green Center, Gunner and Sourdough were already there. Sourdough had an interesting book on spy satellites (Eye in the Sky... , published by the Smithsonian Institution. Gunner had a manual for Commodore 64 ADA; yea right.

Gary came in with a box of old manuals including a manual for Apex, XPL0 and TECO. Margret borrows some printings Gary made from things he found the Net. Gunner and Sourdough leave. Jim talked about Linux stuff. Richard announced the SX-PIP results and how it was done. Margret leaves early.

So far so good. Richard needed to leave early which of course never actually works... Loren, Gary, Jim and Richard all leave together. Gary walks into the parking lot to get his big car to pick up Jim (and Richard) at the back entrance.

As Loren is walking toward his car, which is parked along the street, he looks into the dumpster. "There are computer tapes in here. A lot of them", he says. Jim goes and looks. "These are 5 Gigabyte Exabyte tapes" he says. "I have a drive that uses these". Jim wants them, all of them.

We start dumpster diving. Gary gets there with his car. And parks near the dumpster. Loren wanders toward his car. Eventually, Gary is completly in the dumpster getting tapes. This is when the Mines campus cop sees something suspicious at the dumpster. He drives around and comes back. "What is going on here", he says. "We found these tapes in the dumpster. They sell for $12 each! I just couldn't let them go to the dump.", Jim says emphatically. The cop asks if we have ID's. While he goes back to his car to check if we are mass murderers or the like, Loren strolls back to give us moral support. It's a good thing he did since he started it all. Cop gives the ID's back. No handcuffs are needed. He lets us go. He leaves us there.

Well, he's gone now so we get the rest of the tapes. Loren gets a flashlight and shovel to make the job easier. The estimate is that there are about 400 tapes. Sure they are used but they do cost $12 new.

9/9/98 Richard Ottosen


Editor's Note, 16-Mar-2001: photos of a not-quite-entirely unrelated episode may be seen at the Old Programmer's Home web site.
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Copyright 1998 Richard Ottosen

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