@shuttersparks I also brought other tech with me to the locale, not all of which the management appreciated. But that's another story.

@lauren Yes, other tech. Probably something related to telephones and possibly explosives. Maybe both together. Infinity bugs were quite easy to make, powered by the phone line itself. I found that a range of 100 to 150 feet was do-able using the FM broadcast band. I think I used 2N918 transistors but I'd have to check. Good thing there's a statute of limitations.

@shuttersparks Telephones is the right category. I've never done anything with explosives of any kind -- no interest whatsoever. But only the camp managers had phone lines, and unless you snuck out to a nearby campground to a pay phone, access to lines was extremely limited -- really only for emergencies and such. That was their theory, anyway. Ah yes, General Telephone.

@lauren Just as well on the explosives. Thinking back on some of the dangerous stuff I did back then freezes my blood today. Hahaha.

@shuttersparks There was a kid in my high school who always wore a black glove on his right hand, because he had blown most of it off due to a fireworks accident.

@lauren Yes, this is related to my "freezes my blood" reference earlier. And I did LOTS of things that could have killed or seriously injured me. You wouldn't believe.

The Force is with me or something. Today, I just shake my head.

@lauren Funny thing is, though, I don't regret it. Great experiences. Learned a LOT. Got away with it.

Would I do it again? Most of it, yeah, but there are ways of doing it that don't put your body in harm's way. Prudence.

I mean, do you really have to stand directly over the thing that you've buried in the ground while you light the fuse? Really? If this fails like it might you'll have a bunch of galvanized steel jammed up your ass. What is wrong with you??? As it turned out, I only lost the hair on my head and eyebrows. Instant skinhead. My mother was not amused. And that's just one of my countless "adventures in chemistry".

@shuttersparks I put most of my pre-computer efforts into telecom research.

@shuttersparks Funny thing is that eventually of course I ended up giving lectures at Bell Labs and having access to the KS libraries there and more.

@lauren Hahahaha. That is funny. Lmao. And very cool. You should publish a story.

@shuttersparks Over the years various persons have urged me to write a book or books about this stuff, but frankly I'm pretty sure nobody would care because there wouldn't be wild sex on every other page. And no, I'm not going to estimate what the page interval would actually be.

@lauren Yeah, well, I'm writing an autobio anyway, for the historians and genealogists of the future to use. It might fill in some useful details, make connections, reveal certain mysterious stuff. Making money isn't my goal, just archiving it in safe places for future generations. Plus, it's cathartic to tell the stories and set the record straight.

@shuttersparks Soon to be a major motion picture, no doubt. In the horror genre, perhaps.

@lauren Hahaha. What genre? Hmm. Probably "Nerdporn" if there is such a thing.

@shuttersparks I'm pretty sure there is. Late at night computer rooms are a whole 'nuther world with the main lights out and nothing but little blinking lights and the roar of the fans covering any extraneous noises.

@lauren So you've done that too.

@shuttersparks Little known tales of ARPANET Site #1.

@lauren
Unfortunately, I could not do this in the biggest installations I've worked in since they operated 24/7. Come to think of it, I don't even know where the light controls were for the 1 acre sized computer room at Litton Mellonics. I sure would have liked to and taken photos.

However, I did this very thing thing at Litton Aero Service / Westrex (Yes, THAT Westrex). I had a key to the building and on weekends had the whole place to myself. I would do that. Shut all the lights off. Just me and the computer in the dark. Haha. Yeah. Weird. Okay, I'm weird. I don't deny it, but I'm old and don't give a shit.

However, it was nowhere near the systems we had at Mellonics. That would have been an insane photo. A 370/168, 64 3330 disk drives, 56 2314 disk drives, 120 tape drives, 7 3211 printers, four-platter 6,000 RPM cache memory, two CDC 6600 machines in the corner, on and on. Serious fun. And Litton was very cool. On Sundays we programmers had the entire facility to ourselves to use for any personal projects we wished. There were about 8 of us who took advantage of it.

@lauren @shuttersparks What sorta books do you read? :D

You guys lived through one of the biggest inflection points in human history.

There's books to be wrote in there. Before it all becomes magic black box crap that nobody knows how got here.

@lauren Very cool of you to do that. I was a fanatic about the whole space program. (My career path through my teens was astronomer.) As it turned out, on the day and time of the Apollo 11 landing I found myself traveling and in Zurich, Switzerland. So I went into a bierstube (pub) and watched it on color TV there.

@shuttersparks Of course, the actual LEM camera was only black and white!