Had a yard sale, wound up with a job

[HeartBreak]

This was an insane weekend. I had a yard sale, and the guy who owns the local Shell station offered me a job as a cashier. The best part about it is, it's right next door to a Jack n the Box and Arby's. Ya never know when a job just might hit ya, lol.

 

[Monkey Wrench]

Congratulations man! Good for you!

 

[4u2nv]

I worked at a Amaco station when I was younger in high school. Was one of my fav jobs. Got paid ass, but made good with the cops and never would get tickets in town..lol

 

[HeartBreak]

Thanks - it was quite literally the last thing I was expecting. What had happened was, the owner of the station had his pumps go down, so he asked me to diagnose the system (which, trust me, it's rather odd, to say the least). About two hours later, it was tracked down to a scrambled floppy disk.

Yep, you read right; the register/point of sales terminal, which is a PC with a flatpanel LCD, is ran off a floppy disk.... He couldn't take credit or turn the pumps on in the station. It supposedly "warm boots" off the "Gilbarco" card, but I have yet to figure out how to get the bios to boot over a RS485 connection.

It gets even better from there; the terminal uplinks to another machine (a 386 which boots off a hard drive - thinking about ghosting this ones' drive and installing the new one into the floppy-booted terminal, since its the same software), which runs the pumps (the credit transactions). That machine is the old terminal, which in turn, is uplinked yet-again to a server in the backroom, which then uplinks out to a satellite dish on the roof.

I have literally never seen so much Cat5E in my life (and I have about 500 pounds of the stuff in the shed out back)!!

Next time you're standing at a register paying for the gas/beer/jerky, remember; the computer behind the counter is probably older than you are.

 

[NvNitro]

Whad he say!!! Lost me in the 2nd paragraph bro.. Glad you got hooked up with a job thou. Nice to have some cash come summertime.

 

[dougc]

Whad he say!!! Lost me in the 2nd paragraph bro.. Glad you got hooked up with a job thou. Nice to have some cash come summertime.

Same here and I thought I was a nerd when it came to computer stuff. lol

 

[HeartBreak]

LOL, you'd be amazed how complex, yet how simple these machines are. If you picture 6 network-type jacks on a plate, for two plates (total of 12 jacks), that's the "Gilbarco" card. It's actually called a G-stop card. It controls stuff like the little readout that has the item name/price on it, the keyboard, the reciept printer, barcode scanner, drawer, credit card scanner, and a couple other things, as well as the uplink. It also controls the pump controller. All of this is off of RS485/RS232 (serial).

What tops it all off is, it's on a full-length ISA (legacy) card. And, it's supposed to be bootable, like a network bootup. Why it doesn't boot, is beyond me. All I know is, it's the first time I've seen a celeron 533 with just a floppy in it. No CD, no HD, just the floppy.

Trust me, it's enough to cause your frontal lobe to spontaneously collapse.

 

[olds97_lss]

Ok... not to be rude... but you know all that and your going to be a cashier?

I'm glad you got a job, but it sounds like you could set the bar just a touch higher!

Seeing anything use a floppy let alone boot off and run off a floppy is amazing this day in age... hell, get a usb card and call it a day!

 

[Monkey Wrench]

I friggin' hate it when a flex capacitor craps out on my 386 warm-booting floppy drive with USB and firewire! It just bunges up my CAT 5e, then I have to uplink the downlink through a triple-ripple-butt-plug but the UHF interferes with the coding so I just call it a day!

 

[HeartBreak]

LOL @ Monkey - thanks man, I needed that one. I'll have to print it out and stick it on my monitor.

Olds; Yah, I have been doing the independant nerd thing for a while now, but business is slow this time of year (seems that everyone crawls out of the woodwork when the sun comes out), so this job will help ends meet. Besides, I have to replace the car that just died out on me, and this job will help do that.

You know the ouch part of all this? I don't have any college behind me; just lots and lots of tinker-time with computers. Getting work, much less a chance to show off what I can do is hard without that slip of paper.

 

[AC48]

I friggin' hate it when a flex capacitor craps out on my 386 warm-booting floppy drive with USB and firewire! It just bunges up my CAT 5e, then I have to uplink the downlink through a triple-ripple-butt-plug but the UHF interferes with the coding so I just call it a day!

LMAO! That is absolutly hilarious MW, I fell on the floor lauphing after you uplinked the downlink through your tripple-ripple-butt plug.

 

[digger]

Damn, technology is leaving this old dude behind. The flux capacitor, triple-ripple-butt-plug, RF decoding, card-plugging stuff always looses me.

Heartbreak, the 'ol lady took 2 years of college. She couldn't get a job in the field. Now she works at wally-world. Everytime something happens to ours, she starts screaming for me to help her. I never had any school. I suck at it. But if I have a problem, I surf the web.
It's not what classes you took or even if you took any. It's hands on experience and staying on top of what is coming out.


Good luck with the job. Sounds like they need you.