Page 12      Diablo Blue      January, 2000

11/19/1999, a Friday, was the last completely ODD digit day (where every digit in the day, month, and year are odd digits) until 1/1/3111. The next completely EVEN digit day will be on 2/2/2000, the first since 8/28/888. Just imagine, you just experienced the last odd day for the next 1,112 years, and in February, 2000 you will see the first even day to come along in the last 1,111 years.
WOW! Can you get your head around THAT combination? Enjoy the oddity!!

If someone tells you "DOS is dead," don't you believe it, 'cause here are a couple of my recent DOS experiences.
Experience #1:  About every two to three weeks, when I boot up my machine (400 MHz, Windows 98SE, 128 MB RAM, etc.), everything goes just great 'till I get to the desktop screen, then nothing shows but garbage (I think my computer BIOS is a little too old for my Matrox Millennium G-400 video accelerator card). My cure, which I can't explain, is as follows: I turn the computer off and then put a DOS boot floppy in the "A" drive. I power up the computer again (it must be powered down then powered up, a warm boot won't do it). Once it has come up in DOS I can remove the floppy and boot back up normally, and it works again for another three weeks.
Experience #2:  I was working in CorelDraw one day and the screen froze (not all that unusual in CorelDraw!). So, this being Windows 98, I just turned the PC off then re-booted (by the way, that procedure is not a smart move in Windows 95). When Windows 98 re-boots after a unusual shut down it runs a "disk-scan as part of the boot up sequence". This time the scan went to about 90% and then the progress ribbon then slid back to about 75% and froze. I repeated the boot-up, with the same result. Needless to say, I was a little shook up, but those wheels upstairs were still turning, so back to my DOS boot-up scheme. When I had the computer running off of the "A" drive (and in DOS, of course) I started the "disk scan" again (the DOS version this time, because I was running in DOS). It came back and told me that I had a problem -- there seemed to be something that Windows did not like had been put on my hard drive. "Did I want to fix it?" I was asked. So I entered a "Y" and the machine took off. It did not seem to be going anywhere very fast, but the disk activity indicator light was going crazy. I watched the machine for a while, then just went out for a while. It took over three hours to complete the scan disk. (I found out later that this is because when you are running under DOS there's no disk cache so the disk has to be read sector by sector -- nothing is buffered for faster operation like it is when you're running under Windows). But, after all that time, it was fixed, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
The net result of all this? I think we should appreciate DOS, until a new operating system, like Windows 2000, Linux, or something else, becomes a fact of life that we work with on a day to day basis.

If we listen to those out to there safely hiding in their bomb proof shelters, 01/01/2000 will be the cause of everything from World War III to an increase in UFO abductions.  So, if you need something to do before the lights go out and your computer becomes an attractive paperweight try this month's puzzle.