Convenience über alles!

And John Larkin didn't understand it all that well.

The Harvard Master of Business Administration is unique in two ways (or at least it used to be). It did more for your starting salary than any other qualification, but once you'd had it for five years it was essentially worthless. Regular academic qualification tend to put you on a salary that keeps on getting bigger than that of your unqualified contemporaries, but the Harvard MBA didn't generate that sort of profile at all.

In other areas Harvard degrees do keep on paying off, and the rest of the Ivy League will be the same, but the Harvard MBA was something else.

That's a plus. My brother told me a story about another engineer working at Redstone in the '50s. The Bomarc project was going well and they were all stressed out. The guy would go to the diner every morning, order his breakfast, and say 'No grits'. Being Alabama, no grits wasn't an option. After about a month of this he picked the bowl up, swiveled around on the counter stool, and threw it through the plate glass window. 'No goddam grits!'

I don't mind them but I wouldn't go out of my way for them. I do put hominy, not grits, in when I'm making pea soup. That might be a Quebec thing I picked up from my grandmother.

Even some Rhode Island restaurants have grits, though there aren't nearly as many options...I had the bacon & cheddar grits not long ago:

Like possums and armadillos the invasive species are moving north...

Well the beignets aren't bad. When my work in Ft. Wayne was done I took the long way home to do Mardi Gras. My pickup only has a shell over the bed, not a full blown camper so discretely parking on the street was no problem. I made sure I was close to a supply of beignets and coffee for breakfast. It was interesting. William Shatner was Bacchus.

I liked the efficiency of the booking buses scattered around for the convenience of the cops.

Yes. I'm not afraid of the work (my cheesecake is a 5 hour stint at the stove) but, rather, consuming enough of them to justify the effort.

We had a ma&pa place up the corner. They would make a batch of donuts in the morning, then CLOSE when the last ones sold. So, if you wanted a donut, you had to arrange to be there early!

I lament not trying to get a job (volunteer!) with them just to get a good first-hand education on the process. But, suspect regular consumption of donuts ON THE JOB would not be good for my health...

Lots of interesting things go out of print pretty regularly. Two of my favorites: _Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames_ (you likely didn't catch the joke and, thus, the intent) and _The Yum Yum Book_. Both are delightfully creative!

Yes, of course... that makes sense -- NOT! It's a wonder that ANY student gets an effective (albeit far from ideal!) education. Thankfully, I had really good teachers along the way who "found stuff" with which to challenge me (as the "standard fare" was a big yawn)

(sigh) You'd think it would be one of the first things taught and stressed! Regardless of the nature of your future job, EVERYONE needs to be able to understand if they've been charged the correct amount and given the correct change!

Didn't you letter/dimension your drawings? Or, was the font entirely composed of straight line segments?

I used to like writing with a Rapidograph. But, got tired of keeping them clean. It did, however, cause me to invest more time in the act of writing (as it made the results so much "prettier")

We were always on municipal water. But, lots of reservoirs around (I used to wonder how the water was kept *safe* from "bad actors" as there was nothing to prevent you from approaching any of them)

However, the mindset was that water is "free" and limitless. Leave it running while shaving, brushing teeth, washing dishes, etc. Not so, here -- unless you're a business that feels a sense of entitlement to water a lush lawn! We're apologetic about our water usage but mainly for the fruit trees. OTOH, we harvest a few thousand pounds of fruit, annually, and *consume* it. Others let theirs rot on the tree... :<

I thought about making cheesecake once but got stopped in my tracks when I got to 'springform pan'. I haven't had really good cheesecake in a long time. My favorite espresso place had peanut butter cheesecake the last time I was in. Not bad but not as good as it sounded.

I volunteered at the library in NH when they were thinning the herd. One of the criteria for keeping a book was if it was in 'Books in Print'. I thought a better test would be if it was worthwhile and not in print. I brought home a complete set of John Burrough's essays that were in the discard pile.

I was fortunate. We didn't have 'junior high' or 'middle school' but the math and science curriculum was spiced up after the nation suffered an 'oh shit' moment watching a Soviet beach ball orbiting. The high school had an EC (enriched curriculum) program that I was in. It was sort of a homegrown AP. RPI was literally across the street from the high school so there was talent on tap.

Single-stroke gothic. We may have done inclined in the Engineering Drawing class but I never used it at work. Most of what I did was ladder diagram electrical schematics, nothing fancy, and I had a complete set of templates for limit switches, timers, control relays, and so forth. Same thing when we got to solid state, templates for the various gates and components.

Never had one. It was all pencil, first with the lead holders and the whirly-gig sharpeners then with the 0.5 mm type like Pentel that didn't need sharpening.

Not too many bad actors back then. There were fantasies or paranoia depending on which side you were on like salting the Ashokan Reservoir with LSD but nobody had that much acid to spare. 2001 was the wake up call.

At least in the city letting the fruit rot on the tree is frowned on. There are enough bears wandering around looking for pet food without attracting them.

There is a recreation area that includes a few old homesteads. The buildings are gone but some of the fruit trees remain. It amuses me in the fall to pass the apple trees along the trail and see the beaten paths around each tree where the bears have been circling around to see if supper is ready yet.

I make mine (a much "lighter" variant) in a 9x13 glass baking dish (though finding ones with vertical sides is becoming increasingly difficult; any time I stumble across one in a second-hand shop, I buy it!)

I strongly dislike cheesecake (and am only fond of "cheese" when melted on pizza or grinders -- or sprinkled on pasta). Especially NY style (like a block of solid fat!).

[But, then again, I don't like most of the things that I bake! :-/ This is interesting as it means I have to tweek my Rxs based on my interpretation of comments made from folks who consume them. Took me almost 30 years to "perfect" my biscotti Rx!]

I make a pineapple variant. It takes about 90 minutes to "reduce" the pineapple to a thick paste. Almost an hour to make the crust (butter/flour/sugar/baking powder) and "tap" it into the pan in a very thin layer (the role of the crust is just to keep the pineapple from contacting the baking dish). Another large fraction of an hour to make the filling (must be smooth as milk as any "lumps" transfer directly to the final taste sensation). A bit over an hour to bake (and you can clean utensils while doing so). Then, a very long,

*controlled* cooldown (to ensure it doesn't crack) before transfer to refrigerator.

As most of these are eventually gifted away, the chilled cake is then frozen, cut into pieces and transferred to wax paper (to make it easier to extract from the "gift box").

I've been told "you can trade this for sexual favors" (!) so now take to describing it as such. :>

But, it is grossly unhealthy! I think something like 5500 calories (cut it into 250 calorie pieces so folks don't feel "too bad" eating them... of course, the *second* piece kind of negates that economy!)

The local librarians (many branches of one library) make these decisions somewhat informally. I think the biggest criteria they use is how often/recently it has been checked out. So, there is a huge churn in titles -- especially of "popular" titles and DVDs (when was the last time someone checked out _The Wizard of Oz_? Does that mean it's not worth keeping in the collection??)

[Libraries have changed over the years. Now they want to be "social gathering places". You'd be hard-pressed to do *research* in one! OTOH, they have been very effective at locating particular documents or texts that I needed for my work efforts. (This is apparently an expensive undertaking. So, I reciprocate by volunteering, making goodies for the folks at the local branch, etc.)]

The discards are fed to a volunteer organization that holds frequent book sales benefiting the library. Yet, the taxpayer foots the bill for all the new titles purchased (the book sales fund special programs or furniture purchases, etc.)

SWMBO has literally hundreds of art books acquired through those sales. The sorts of titles you'd expect to find as, say, *references* at a place like, maybe, a LIBRARY... <frown>

My public education was actually quite good. But, I tended to be assigned to the better/best teachers, etc. No idea how those in the "business" path fared.

"Field trips" were pretty common (Washington DC, Philadelphia, Boston, NYC, etc.) so we saw a lot of things first hand that others likely just read about.

The school district (well funded) also spent quite a bit on "gifted" programs. I attended a summer school program hosted by the school system for reading and science programs from about age 10. At 12, I started attending an out-of-town program on Saturdays & summers for advanced science underwritten by the school district (

).Was pushed by my guidance counselors to start taking college classes (nights) from age 14 (because the school system had nothing comparable to offer). And, eventually pushed off to college when I ran out of high school courseware! (I had to return to high school, later, to "graduate" as there were basic requirements that had to be met for a high school diploma -- like 4 years of English, 4 years of PE, etc.)

My point being that they didn't hesitate to push as much education on kids that could benefit from it.

Ah. My drafting class was in JrHigh -- along with metal and wood "shops". In business, I used a lettering guide to keep my schematics pretty.

I keep lead holders by each workstation and a lead pointer that always seems to be somewhere *else*. But, try to do most of my drawings in electronic format as it is SO much easier to make changes when the connections "rubber band". The days of D & E size drawings are gladly behind me! (I design to a D size but render on B paper)

Rapidographs are considerably classier. But, also less forgiving as they use india ink.

Yup. We are woefully "trusting" in our infrastructure. The local well is

100 yards from here, "protected" by a 6' wall that could easily be scaled. The chlorine concentrate sits in a 55G barrel out in the open sun; drill a hole in it and you can introduce anything to the water supply. Is it assayed in real-time? Or, just periodically? Is the assay upstream or downstream from the chlorine injector? etc.

Likewise, natural gas lines, electric substations, etc.

Sadly, we are reactive instead of PROactive. Everyone (i.e., the powers that be) will be "surprised" (as in "not having foreseen that") when something new happens. And, they'll rush to put a bandaid on that without further thought as to OTHER vulnerabilities that should suggest.

<frown>

Ah, I'd not considered that! We're far enough INTO town that the only real wildlife are bobcat and javelina. A bear in the neighborhood once but that was an exception (though the image of him climbing over the wall gave new meaning to "hung like a bear"!)

I think most folks just don't want to be bothered with the effort to grow good *tasting* fruit. They have one or more trees and notice that the fruit is small, dry, tart, etc. and dismiss it in favor of store bought. Folks who "know better" are equally lazy and more opportunistic

We had a neighbor move in and, in the process of introducing ourselves to them, the wife admired our citrus trees and was *foolish* enough to add, "Oh, don't bother growing citrus! Just make sure you have a neighbor who does!" I wonder if she's sorted out, after all these years, that we don't gift fruit to neighbors (except fruit that we have in OVER-abundance -- like limes)?

Another neighbor admired our limes and commented that he uses limes in his cooking. I quickly pointed out, "Good thing YOU have a lime tree on your property!" (i.e., you can harvest your own limes, thankyouverymuch!)

[Always amusing when folks find something too costly or difficult for THEM to do -- but not too costly to expect OTHERS to do FOR them!]

Ha! One of our dogs used to sit under the big Navel and sniff the scent from the blossoms, watch the fruit mature, etc. We'd share bits of the fruit with her and wondered if she had actually made the connection: "These are mine!"

Sadly, no (good) apples, here. Too hot, I guess. I miss the Macouns from home (sweet and firm). Can't find them in markets so possibly a very regional variety. For a while, I enjoyed the juice of a Sanguinello orange but it got whacked in one bad winter. The juice was such a delightful color and sickeningly sweet!

No fruit in my diet, presently (save tomatoes). Obviously a deficiency that I *should* address...

I like cheese in all it's various forms. What I don't like is that stuff that starts with Jello.

My wife was a librarian and started at the Forbes in Northampton MA which is also the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library. Among the usual stuff they have his electric horse. She would never let me ride it...

Anyway while poking around in the dusty stacks she came upon an Audubon double elephant folio

It wasn't clear the library even knew what they had.

Nor do I. The homeroom included some business or shop people but when the bell rang we went our separate ways. They took typing and Spanish among other subjects. The college entrance kids took two years of Latin followed by a modern language, French for the liberal arts bound, German for the engineers along with the usual courses. In later life I realized Spanish and typing would have been a lot more useful.

We did have a few field trips like to the Stratford CT for Lear at the American Shakespeare Theater, and a rather poorly chaperoned (thankfully) trip to NYC for Spoon River Anthology. A couple of friends and myself went to the World's Fair on GE's dime but that wasn't a school trip. GE was trying to lure potential engineers.

They weren't much of a trip but RPI had a number of events to pique people's interest.

I did take a summer biology class that was mostly field trips. That was fun. Well, maybe not the trip to the Albany sewage plant. A worked sidled up and asked 'You kids get extra credits for coming to this place?'

Calculus wasn't normal high school fare but I took it after normal school hours. The teacher was from RPI so it was their freshmen calculus course. His name was Dis Maly and he lived up to it. The previous summer I'd taken a summer course in linear equations in preparation that was taught by his wife, a wonderful teacher.

Like I said there was a bit of a panic after Sputnik for STEM education so the schools were on their good behavior. Being in NYS helped too. The Regents exams were state wide and schools didn't want to look incompetent at the end of the year.

We had a shop class. The best thing that could be said was everyone left at the end of the year with all the body parts they started with.

My drawing days were pretty much behind me the CAD started taking over. Strange to say I'm a CAD programmer -- Computer Aided Dispatch.

We've had a couple of very confused people at job interviews that had failed to do their due diligence.

Yeah, Yellen's 'Who'd ever thunk it?' didn't impress me. I have no expertise in economics, foreign affairs, etc. etc. so I wonder why I often can predict the outcome better than all the king's men (and women).

The city isn't that big and the edges are at open spaces. The university prides itself on being the only school in the country with a mountain on campus -- which also means wildlife on campus. The bears are no big deal but the cats raise more alarms particularly in the vicinity of school bus stops. As far as deer, there is no need to buy kitschy lawn ornaments. A couple of rivers run through town and there are a number of islands that aren't utilized since they flood every year. That led to a moose on the loose one year but that was a rarity.

There are some orchards down the Bitterroot but they tend to produce small, lumpy Macs. There are a couple of (hard) cider operations that absorb a lot of them. There is even a part of town called Orchard Homes. They were productive in the early 20th century but blight and drought hit them hard in the '20s and they never recovered. There were also problems getting the apples to the markets. It's a minor part of Steinbeck's 'East of Eden' but refrigeration wasn't available.

Climate change strikes again. The start of the 20th century was abnormally wet in Montana and many people were sold homesteads in eastern Montana that promised to be productive farms. Then the climate went back to normal.

One company I worked for did contract electronic assembly for people like DEC and GTE and the workforce was mainly women. A delegation approached us and asked if the company would sponsor a softball team. No problem. we would but the uniforms, pay any fees for the ball fields, and might even occasionally pick up the tab for a post game party. So far so good but when we said we were NOT going to run the team the interest faded away.

That would probably be entertaining! Though I would assume not as intense as the "bulls" in cowboy bars (?)

"Homeroom"... I'd forgotten that concept!

In JrHigh, we were offered a choice of Latin, Spanish and French. None seemed particularly useful to me so I opted for two years of French. So, by the time I'd made it to High school, there wasn't much reason to start with another language (esp as the curriculum assumed you'd already had that language previously)

No need for Spanish in Lily White suburbia so it wasn't even a consideration. Everyone (?) took a year of typing in JrHigh so no option there.

Now, of course, Spanish would have been a considerably better choice (living in the southwest). But, I can often get a clue as to what is being said based on *some* similarities to French.

[And, SWMBO enjoys foreign language films (English subtitled) so is amused when I can understand the french ones]

I recall seeing _Carmen_, there.

Every 5th grade class produced/acted a Shakespearean play (for my year, it was _The Merchant of Venice_).

Most trips were tie-ins to things we were learning in classes. E.g., Boston/Concord/Lexington/Philadelphia/DC all had "American History" tie ins (two years of Amer History required to graduate along with two years of Amer Literature). NY we'd visit the UN, Empire St, etc. DC was monuments and museums (I still feel sorry for folks who've not had the opportunity to tour the many museums, there!). As nuclear power was "new and exciting" (?), we toured the Connecticut Yankee facility. I recall a tour of Pratt & Whitney. Mystic seaport. Local newspaper. etc.

While we tended to welcome the trips (as it meant we weren't *in* school), they also tended to be really long days -- leaving before dawn and returning after nightfall. But, you knew there would be no "pop quizzes" on those days nor any *homework* assigned!

One of the most entertaining was a trip to a local bakery. Lots of "samples"!

Calculus was part of the college prep curriculum, senior year. As my "schedule" was accelerated, I took it as a Junior -- after having had two semesters at college (nights).

So, teacher would let me do my *other* homework during class which usually meant I could go home without any work to do.

I remember taking lots of "standardized tests" but can't recall what they were for (other than SATs). Being a good student meant the tests were just inconveniences for me.

I liked shop. I think I enjoyed metal more than wood as we also did castings, turned parts on the lathe, etc. I made a nice little ball-peen hammer with knurled handle that I still have, somewhere. And some lamps that were still hanging in my bedroom until that house was sold.

I would LOVE to have a brake. And, spot-welder. But, prefer having the space they would otherwise occupy.

[Local maker house doesn't have a brake else I would probably join. Most of the other tools they'd offer I could work-around, but not a brake!]

I was an early adopter; I started drawing schematics with FutureNET in ~85 (?) and still find its interface considerably more productive (for drawing) than anything that's come along since. But, it's a dead product -- along with most of the rest of that "suite". A shame as it meant all of the libraries I had created at that time were useless.

I've adapted to whichever toolchain clients have used to make the incorporation of my documents into their "process" easier. There's a lot of variation in terms of quality and ease of use that most folks never experience (cuz they stick with ONE toolchain)

I've had the same problem with "gaming" -- esp as I've worked in both interpretations of the term (video games and gambling).

It's a question of *thinking* about the situation instead of just observing it.

I'm *really* (REALLY!) good at finding bugs in people's designs because I can easily think of everything that *could* happen instead of just the things that SHOULD happen.

That's similar to here; nothing much beyond the city limits for tens of miles.

We've got the southernmost ski slope! :>

There is a popular "national park" in town at which folks regularly hike recreationally. But, you're on THEIR turf while there. People tend to forget.

I am cautious when walking the neighborhood after dark. It's not uncommon to encounter coyote, javelina or bobcat. Alarming to find them in your (walled) backyard! :<

I grew up essentially surrounded by apple orchards. We would routinely go pick our own fruit -- fun as a kid where climbing was more recreation than chore. Now, I think I'd rather someone else do the picking!

The Macouns are pretty delicate -- look at them funny and they bruise. While living in Denver (I think... maybe Chicago), my folks shipped me a bushel of them -- each one individually wrapped to survive the trip. It was a delightful treat.

It's amusing to see how quickly people want *power* -- but how strenuously they avoid WORK and RESPONSIBILITY.

That was an interesting problem at night in Japan too but even more of a problem was the police chasing them whilst obeying the speed limit and using a loudhailer to ask them to stop making a noise (I kid you not!).

ōsōzoku Where I lived wasn't a big problem but in the expensive foreigner ghettos they liked to go for a ride and annoy the expats like my boss.

In the UK anything without a silencer would be fairly quickly pulled over by the police. Is that not the case in the USA too?

Some custom cars here have silencers that deliberately resonate or backfire under rapid acceleration but are just within the letter of the law. UK police seem to be getting sloppy about enforcing some laws.

Latin theoretically would be helpful. I don't know more than a few words in French which led to some amusing moments while working in Quebec.

My 'tour' of P&W lacked a lot. I was given a minder who escorted me the the machinery I was repair. It was surrounded by welding screens so I couldn't get nosy. At lunch time he gave me two choices. We could go to the office cafeteria where all the pretty secretaries hung out, or we could go to the workers cafeteria where we could get two bottles of beer. He was relieved when I chose the beer. Times have changed and I doubt that beer is on the menu anymore.

It seems to have gotten pushed back to high school. The standard fare for senior year in my high school was spherical trig. I didn't take it because of the calc path. Again in retrospect I can't remember the last time I used calculus but I do a lot of GIS work where spherical trig is somewhat helpful.

We had the Regents exams, the SATs, and the National Merit Scholarship exams. I was a mediocre student, then came the tests. I had the highest score on the Regents scholarship test in the county. When that was announced over the PA during homeroom period the general reaction was 'Who is that?' I wasn't one of the bright academic lights. Not only did that net me a scholarship but the opportunity to work for the NYS Dept. of Education summers. The was a runner up for the NMS, but didn't get that and the SAT scores were similar. All of a sudden they were adding another name to the National Honor Society induction ceremony.

Because of the performance on the Regents test I also got a prize for excellence in biology. It was all of $50 but it pissed off a girl who thought she had it in the bag. I'd been unsuccessfully pursuing her and that completely put an end to that.

In college I resumed my gentleman's C performance for most courses that didn't capture my imagination.

I'd like a welder although I'd probably go with gas as being more versatile. I was semi-competent with a stick back in the day but it's been decades.

The new library has a lot of nice toys, scanners, 3D printers, laser cutters, and so on but I don't know if they have a brake. The library opening was delayed because of the plague and when it finally opened masks were required so my exploratory tour was brief. At least so far they've dropped the masks. I just heard on the radio that they're now required for Federal buildings at Glacier NP.

I was an early adopter of 'portable' (a 21 pound Osborne 1) computers. I could bring my happy little environment into a client's plant rather than using whatever weird lashup they had. Compared to using a cross compiler on an elderly PDP11 that was hogged by the bean counters it was heaven.

I don't know if they're still in business but there was a video poker company out in Bozeman that I sniffed at but I couldn't work up a lot of interest.

My day will probably be looking at some code that was based on optimism. A crash was reported by one of our ops people training at a new site about 1700 yesterday. I took a brief look and I think it's been a problem for the last 5 years but nobody ever used the 'feature' twice.

Mt. Lemmon doesn't count...

When I wintered at Why AZ, walking in the dark was interesting. My favorite was the sidewinders that would run out of gas after sundown and curl up wherever. Even in the day it was hard to figure out exactly which direction they were headed in.

I'd left some weevily rice outside that I was going to take to the dump the next day. While reading I heard noises outside and found a herd of javelina helping themselves. I treated it as a photo op and they didn't seem to mind. The park is called Coyote Howls and that isn't overselling. At the end of the season when there weren't many people around I'd be reading and a coyote would casually stroll by like a domestic dog.

I hear them at night sometimes but they're shyer up here. When I hear the yipping I figure another cat done gone.

Upstate NY was apple country so fall was a great time. There were a lot more cultivars available since everyone hadn't homed in on mass market favorites. My favorite for eating were the Northern Spys.

Power is fun! Taking responsibility is something else.

In theory, it would help with roots of words. But, I wonder, in practice, how many folks actually *use* that skillset (assuming they took Latin AND remember enough of it).

Local company, local kids, good for PR. Kids aren't particularly nosy (show them something *big* so they can say "Wow!" and that's about it).

I recall seeing some 24" diameter bearings marked "scrap". Gotta wonder who's weeks pay THAT was!

Most of our high (and jrhi) curriculum was preset. E.g., if you were a freshman, you were taking geometry; a senior, calculus. Likewise for "science" (biology, chemistry and physics, in that order -- I forget the freshman science course as I skipped it).

Requirements for English meant everyone got the same dosage. But, if you opted for only 2 years of science, you could likely pick WHICH two subjects (by planning which YEAR you were going to take them).

[Oddly, I don't recall 4 years of science or math being required. But, *do* recall 4 years of english and PE as I had to bring proof that I'd taken them at college in order to graduate high school. Silly system!]

I was awarded a NM scholarship. Plus some dinky little ones "locally sourced". I never got to take the PSATs as my counselor essentially told me I had to leave school due to lack of remaining courses -- and rushed to get me into a SAT sitting Junior year. (I remember being sick when I took them, in an unheated cafeteria, wearing a winter coat -- but had no alternative for scheduling as I needed to apply for schools THAT year)

Heh heh heh... we had a group of students that would "compete" in math "tests" around the state (math jocks?). My teacher made the mistake of registering me as a Junior (which, technically, I was, as it was my third year of school) instead of a Senior (which could also be claimed as it was my LAST year of school). So, instead of getting a $500 scholarship as highest performer, I got some silly calculator (um, isn't that like giving a bicycle to a champion sprinter?)

I enjoyed much of the material to which I was exposed in college. Not keen on the election of 8 required "humaities" courses to graduate -- so, I took things like American History and Amer Literature ("gee, I already know this stuff!")

[Thankfully, my American History professor was an economist. So, I got reexposed to history without the patriotic bias but with an economic basis. Actually made it considerably more interesting!]

I rely on friends for those things. As space is at a premium, I have to be careful which "big" things I acquire as that means lots of LITTLE things will have to be shed. That means lots of decisions to make. By contrast, shedding a big thing is a *single* decision! :>

Nothing beyond PCs at our libraries. Though color prints are only a dime (which makes it silly to own a color printer!)

Maker house has laser cutter, CNCs, 3D printers -- plus metal and wood shop stuff. But, they've been unable to acquire a brake (relying largely on donated kit/money) or spot welder.

I had an Otrona back in the day. Eventually a Compaq Portable, then Portable

386 and a Sun Voyager. I still have the latter two (Portable 386 has a 2-slot ISA "bag" that I can use for ISA add-ons)

First products were developed on an '11 "owned" by accounting. So, you learned to use a "pocket assembler" (crib sheet you kept folded in your wallet). But, the i4004 was such a toy that it wasn't rocket science to do this stuff in your head.

First "development system" was MDS800 which was infinitely better -- and incredibly worse! (cuz now you adopted fancier development methodologies and were dependant on the tool chain more) We'd get two turns of the crank in an 8 hour shift (by the time you burned a set of EPROMS, erased the previous set and reassembled/linked your new image)

I quickly learned to start designing with SRAM compatibility to download code images into RAM (which you could then write-protect with a physical switch) to get more iterations per unit time.

[Now, I PXE boot products so it's a one-button effort!]

It wasn't until the early/mid 80's that i was regularly using a PC for engineering. And, most of my work at the time was in hardware and semi-customs chips.

The appeal of pai gow poker is the learning opportunity it presented. Poker is well understood. Ditto black jack, etc. Pai Gow Poker is something you have to really think about before developing a strategy to codify.

[Interesting aside: not all "card games" have to obey the rules of probability embodied by a regular deck of cards. Local gaming commissions decide how "card images" can be used. E.g., the aces can be equivalent to cherries -- there's no need for there to be exactly four of them with a probability of 4:52 of appearing. Players who think in those terms can be thusly manipulated]

What's that say about your firm's testing strategy? <grin>

I write specs (increasingly as "manuals") and enumerate all of the "what ifs" before writing any code or designing the host hardware. This sort of top-down approach makes the subsequent efforts pretty straightforward; you KNOW how it has to resolve, from the user's perspective (even if the "user" is another service/device).

It also gives folks a script for designing test suites as they can see the cases that have to be exercised and the results expected.

Sure it does! Snow, hill, lift... what more do you need? :>

They're practically blind. As long as you aren't threatening (or they with cubs), you're safe.

But, they're dark as the night so easy to stumble upon and STARTLE if you can't *see* them!

Our front yard is covered with wildflowers (seasonally). They apparently like the *flowers* (blossoms) but ignore the rest of the plant. Annoying to come out in the morning and find all the blossoms chewed off!

We see them in the neighborhood periodically. Have had a few "bedding down" under our citrus trees at night. Again, I want them more scared of me (and high-tailing it out of the yard when I turn on the flood lights -- rather than stumble over one!)

Or dog.

The equivalent, here, is sampling fruits at the local nurseries. Figs, citrus, pomegranates, saguaro, etc. But, I'd much prefer apples.

I don't mind responsibility -- if given AUTHORITY. The idea of being tasked with implementing someone else's "mistakes" just doesn't fly, with me.

OTOH, I've no problem asserting "THIS is how it's going to be done" -- and then making THAT happen!

I'm drawing a blank too.

English was interesting. One teacher applied her makeup with a trowel. Another was semi-senile and half deaf. The crueler students would whisper their answers until she cranked her hearing aid up. Finally the creative writing teacher, a young guy, eventually was fired for inappropriate relationships with female students and embezzling funds from a student club.

I wasn't very interested in being in an engineering school. Like many blue collar families the first generation to go to college is expected to become engineers. If I'd had my druthers I'd have gone to Columbia. Fortunately that didn't happen. I was 16 in my freshman year and becoming a bit wild.

The old one had a minimal make space but they went all out with the new one. I would prefer more books rather than some of the fancy areas but it's the way libraries go these days. The chief driving force for me to vote is if there is a bond or mil levy on the ballot for the library or open spaces. The city does well on both counts. They've acquired quite a bit of land to head off the developers.

I don't remember the Otrona, just the Osborne and KayPro. I even bought a couple of Osborne Executives the Boston Globe was selling when they went to PCs. They worked fine for my purposes since I was targeting embedded microcontrollers.

One company I worked for had a couple of Mostek development systems I tried to ignore. That was my day though, put the EPROMs in the cooker, make coffee, work on the code until the EPROMs were ready.

I loved SRAM particularly when designing a board so I didn't have to jump through all the DRAM refresh hoops.

With a 25 year tail of technological debt? We have a PM who groans when I start with 'Well, in 1997 Andy decided to...' The crash did turn out to be two separate areas of code worked on by two different people. It was a homegrown Motif date picker that I doubt many people knew about or used.

We're trying to develop some sort of testing automation. Something like Puppeteer looks interesting but I can hear the arguments. Testers can't write scripts and programmers are lousy testers.

I've never been to the top. Sometimes if I was staying over in Tucson I'd drive out Catalina until I found a quite place to car camp in the pickup. The last time I had the Yaris and a tent so I went up to Catalina SP.

Every year I think about a garden but then I realize it would be a war all summer with the deer, skunks, raccoons, and so forth.

Fresh figs are fine. Pomegranates are a lot of work. I prefer them squeezed and in a bottle. Every now and then my timing was right to find ripe prickly pear tunas.

I was not a fan of English, in any variety! I was in the orchestra pit at an award ceremony (played an instrument) and heard *my* name called. "For English? What idiot made THAT determination??!" (Math and Science were foregone conclusions but someone must have screwed up with English!)

I was planning on attending UMinn as I had been doing some research with a professor, there, and they'd already accepted me as a sophomore (skip *two* years!). I was actually putting my registration letter in the mailbox when the acceptance letter from MIT arrived. At that point, the decision was out of my hands -- any attempt at logical argument fell on deaf ears...

[It's too cold; it's too far; it's just as expensive as MIT when you factor in travel costs (did you think I was going to *commute* from here??); etc. Parents can be vain -- esp when they didn't have an education] <shrug> OTOH, I *truly* enjoy my career -- but, largely because I've made it what *I* want and not left that decision up to employers. I have to imagine I would similarly have "adjusted it" if I'd gone into a different field.

And, I had a sh*tload of fun at school! So, it wasn't all that bad...

We have to vote on something nearly every year -- sometimes twice in a year. I "do my duty" and make the effort to read up on whatever they are proposing.

But, I *refuse* to sign petitions to PUT things on the ballot! "You get the required signatures and I promise I'll study the issue and cast a vote when/if it's on the ballot" (but, no, I'm not going to sign your petition just because I was unfortunate enough to have been noticed as I climbed out of my vehicle...)

I had a "Mega Board" on which I could develop Z80 code (a Z80, a few DARTs/SIOs, CTCs and 512KB or DRAM that you could set up as a RAMdisk

*or* 8 contexts for MP/M) I still have it -- and the 8" floppy drive that I used with it. I'd have to tip(1) into it, now, though.

But, I never got around to putting it in an enclosure... just some ceramic standoffs along the sides.

Zilog ZBoxes were the bane of my existence. I actually developed a small development system that we manufactured for our own internal use. And, managed to convince employer to buying a low-end ICE for me to use (previously, all our debugging was done via home-grown multitasking monitors -- very effective but crude)

I designed a board with a 16K chunk of address space that mapped onto a bank of "?x1" DRAMs. If you stuffed it with eight 16Kb devices, you had the basic 16KB of memory. But, you could replace any of the devices with 64Kx1 devices and the software would treat the extra 48K bits in that bit position as "mass storage" (serializing data into that area and deserializing on retrieval).

Hardware costs were always a concern so recurring dollars had to be spent wisely.

But, I learned to always design the hardware to directly support SRAM in place of the EPROM that was commonly used -- to make development easier (with our monitors, you could live-patch the code in a running system). In the past, I'd make SRAM modules that could plug into an EPROM socket and fly-wire to /WR with a test lead. But, these were really fragile and the last thing you wanted to be doing is troubleshooting your program memory!

[It was also essential that you remember to write protect the SRAM as we often wrote code that wrote to ROM *relying* on the fact that the contents wouldn't be altered.]

Can you spell "dead code"? Or, easily MADE dead? :>

There's no glory in testing. So, the only way to encourage it is to humiliate writers of buggy code! But, this often has a long lag associated.

Not much there besides the ski (ahem) "resort". Summer time its a great place to escape the heat in the valley. But, there are no conveniences up there (gas station, medical care, etc.) so "a nice place to VISIT but you wouldn't want to LIVE there!"

[Many residents have a "summer place" either at Summerhaven or Pinetop. I can't see the value in maintaining TWO homes!]

Most recently, the front yard was covered to a depth of ~30 inches in lupines. And, by covered, I mean you couldn't see the soil ANYWHERE!

Very impressive to look at. But, a colossal PITA to clean up when they go to seed (and become eyesores).

We're now trying to get rid of the poppies and bluebells but there's so much seed "stored" in the ground that it will likely be many years for us to win that battle! (both varieties have really tiny seeds, producing hundreds per plant)

Not a fan. Grandpa grew them in N E and put a lot of effort into keeping the (1) tree alive, despite the climate. I never understood why (as they didn't appeal to me)

As are pistachios. I think that's part of their appeal. OTOH, I quickly meet my fill of pomegranates but will only stop eating pistachios when my fingertips scream at me!

[One year, my folks bought me *48* pounds of Zenobia pistachios. Finestkind! I shit red for weeks!]

Yeah, I was in the habit of drinking a short glass of it each morning. Costco sells it. But, it's a rude thing to do to your mouth right out of bed! (my attitude towards most juices -- save the sanguinello)

RPI was a done deal but I visited Clarkson University. My father and I drove up during the Christmas break and the last pavement was seen somewhere around Lake George. The freshmen dorms were over a mile from the campus and a dog sled would have come in handy. No thanks.

The guidance counselor was a Dartmouth alum and was pushing that but I wasn't interested. In retrospect it might have been the better choice. I would have learned BASIC rather than FORTRAN IV. Dartmouth was ahead of the game. RPI considered the 360 as a glorified slide rule that you might use someday rather than an end in itself.

The most worthwhile part was four semesters of Resnick and Halliday. A good grounding in physics takes you a long way. I also picked up quite a bit of experimental psychology -- neurophysiology and Skinner behaviorism, not the 'how does that make you feel?' crap. The rats wouldn't have answered anyway. 20 years later I would have gotten into cognitive science. I played with neural networks in the '80s but ultimately went in a different direction.

School levies come up about every six months and usually get shot down. Wait another six months and try again. Sooner or later... The problem is the voters are interested enough to ask exactly what they plan to do with the money and the answer seldom has anything to do with improving the classroom experience.

My warped sense of humor got me into trouble. The company was Orion Research and a completely unrelated company named Orion made a 8048 ICE that I saw in a magazine. At a meeting I made a quip about with a name like that it must be good and they bought it. Interesting thing with a FORTH interface but not exactly ready for prime time. iirc ZAX made one that worked.

/dev/nul ... AIX had a good sense of humor about trying to read or write 0x0000. Porting the code to Linux, which was completely humorless, was interesting.

Some of it isn't as dead as you might think.

Too long... One programmer received his share of humiliation but he left about a year ago. Now everything is his fault. To be fair he made design decisions based on an ill-defined and moving target.

Like most projects when I mentioned we'd all learned quite a bit and it was time to start fresh using our collective experience I was treated as a leper for a while.

No, if you want a little cooler locale going to Flag makes more sense.

This morning I noticed a mushroom growing in the lawn I'd mowed a couple of days ago. Not a good sign. June typically is high water for the river and the report is rain all weekend.

I wondered whatever happened to red pistachios. I haven't had any in the shell for a long time but I recall taking several passes at the low hanging fruit until all that were left were closed up as tight as a clam at low tide.

Sunflower seeds are another thing I never mastered. They grow a lot of sunflowers around Jamestown ND and they're not all for export. I went to the races there and everybody in the bleachers had bags full. They looked like squirrels and the area around their feet looked like one of those stumps where a squirrel has sat shelling pine cones.

The most creative way to handle tedious tasks was explained to me by a Navajo. Packrats love pinion nuts and will shell the cones and cache the nuts. So you find the rats cache and steal the nuts, making sure to leave enough corn for a fair trade. No wonder why the rats decorate their nests with cholla joints. I'd love to see one in the act of gathering the joints.

My dorm was literally across the street from the main (practical) entrance to the building complex (almost all of the buildings are interconnected so you can get to any of them without ever going outside -- save some of the outliers like the magnet lab)

We used to stand on the roof and throw snowballs at cars who ran the light (no intersection there... just an extremely WIDE crosswalk that was NYC-busy with students crossing into the complex)

My first exposure to machines was with an ASR-33 and 103 modem at the previously mentioned science center. Interpreted BASIC on a Nova (located in a movie theater at the base of the mountain... no idea why the theater owner thought it good business to timeshare a minicomputer!)

Night classes was FORTRAN, flowchart template, punched cards, etc. Somehow, that didn't seem unusual -- despite the prior/continuing interactive use at the science center. As the machine was right there, I guess I rationalized it as being bigger and, thus, requiring that sort of usage.

Ha! I knew it as Halliday and Resnick. Took me a moment to make the connection.

But, I wasn't fond of physics as it seemed like a digression from my primary courseware. One of those courses you had to take to "round out" your education (instead of being directly pertinent)

I never had any of the "liberal arts" type courses. We were required to take 8 or 9 (?) elective courses (round out, etc.) but opted for things like material science, american history, etc. I treated those as sort of check-off requirements -- like PE in high school.

Here, the trick is to identify which "temporary sales tax increase" is about to expire and then try to convince the voters to repurpose it (for the next 10 years) on something else -- as it "won't raise taxes". So, lots of things that would never pass if they required that same *increase* in sales tax squeak through.

There is also a deliberate effort to find times to put it on the ballot when folks aren't motivated to vote (e.g., off years)

ZRDOS was actually a well thought out OS, given the sort of boxes it was deployed on (desktop processing). But, the hardware was incredibly frugal (hard sectored 8" floppies... I think the floppy disk controller was little more than a shit register attached to the read/write head)

By contrast, the box I designed was considerably faster and a small fraction of the ZBOX's size. And, of course, cheaper.

OTOH, we had to do a fare bit of massaging of our sources as assemblers are notoriously not portable.

We had a guy who regularly RE-bugged the math library. Jeez, what's your goal, here? A 0.3% increase in performance? Rearrange some of the conditional jumps so the default action was a few T-states faster??

People really can get micro-focused on stuff that doesn't matter.

At the other end of the specturm, I saw a guy use an 8Kx8 EPROM as a logic array -- that could be replaced with a NAND *gate* and an inverter (another NAND gate). Really? You want to put all of that cost AND LABOR into the product, just because you didn't want to think about the function BEFORE you laid out the board?? <rolls eyes>

One place I worked treated software "modules" as components -- and assigned part numbers to each. The thinking being that a good portion of each new design could quickly be built from previously written AND DEBUGGED "components".

But, the idea never went far enough cuz there was always application specific code (that had no part number to be called up). And, invariably, the "premade" modules had to be tweaked in some way (cuz we were really sensitive to cost, size and performance)

[I blush when I think of how many machine cycles I now throw away without blinking an eye!]

Too far. Even Summerhaven is an ~hour trip up the mountain.

First spattering of rain, tonight. I suspected we'd see it, today, as we topped 110F and that much energy in the atmosphere has to go somewhere!

Of course, now it's just humid, afterwards. But, nightfall keeps it from being steamy.

No longer red but I suspect still just as good as past experiences:

Yeah, I never liked those nutmeats. I'll do pistachios, cashews and peanuts. Almonds and pecans in baked goods or ice cream.

Walnuts? ick. Hazelnuts? double ick. Macademia? <frown>

[I use a lot of sliced almonds in SWMBO's biscotti. And, a fair bit of walnuts in homemade "walnut bark". Brownies without walnuts just don't taste correct -- despite my dislike for them]

OTOH, Italian chestnuts don't seem to register as "nuts", for me, and I'll gladly take my fill of them (which is easy as they are so big and *rich*)

I think they switched the order when it became 'Fundamentals of Physics'. It was a two volume set just titled 'Physics'. Robert Resnick was a professor at RPI so he got to come first.

Montana does not have a general sales tax. One recent ballot had two marijuana excise tax questions. Medical marijuana has a 4% excise tax and recreational is 20%.

My pet peeve is people who write complex code to handle any foreseeable future requirements. That would be well and good but in many cases the potential future uses never happened in the last 20 years.

We have a rather important object id that was originally a short to save all those bits. Going to an unsigned short bought a little more time. Like the 32-bit time_t everyone is studiously ignoring bumping the size means pain as all the structs change. Hey, it was a good idea in 1997...

I think we may almost make it to 70 tomorrow. 110 is a bit much even if it is a dry heat.

Speaking about work, peeling chestnuts is right up there. I have fond memories of NYC street vendors selling chestnuts they roasted over repurposed 55 gallon drums. Somehow the ones I cook are never as good.

We have a state sales tax, county sales tax and city sales tax. I think these total to something over 8% (if you are in the city+county+state). It adds up.

E.g., we went looking at a chair, today. If we buy it at the store that we visited (nearby), it will cost $100 more (due to the addition of the

2.5% city sales tax) than if we buy it at another branch of the same store located just outside the city limits. Buy a car, and that $100 becomes $1000.

Of course, the item purchased isn't any different -- just WHERE it was purchased.

When I designed my latest RTOS, I looked at a variety of other (microkernel) designs -- many of them from academia. It was obvious that most were "camels" (designed by committee) and lacked a cohesive strategy. As if they were collections of exceptions and not clean from the ground up.

I was most heavily influenced by Mach but it was completely bloated. Function calls to do all sorts of things that seemed to be afterthoughts; as if they were trying to fit a particular application (e.g., hosting a UN*X) and kept finding blemishes in their original implementation that needed to be patched. IPC/RPC had argument lists that made native X APIs look simple!

At the other extreme, you had offerings that tried to do as little as possible (e.g., L4) and fit their solution to specific platforms (yeah, that's always a winning strategy -- NOT!). So, to make them useful, you ended up having to build additional layers atop their primitives. (And you know there will be folks who will want to short-circuit those layers and BREAK the stuff on top)

So, figure out what you *really* want and how to cleanly implement it so you don't end up with these bloated kludges that require lots of man pages for a developer to sort out what he wants to do and how the API expects him to do it.

I have a relational database that tracks ALL of the files that I have, on all of the media (spinning rust, optical, etc.). It's a simple schema: ID bigserial Name text ContainerID big I.e., an ID for every file, "folder" and volume. (additionally, all "archive" file formats are treated as volumes -- so each file/folder/archive! within an archive also gets an ID)

No question -- use "bigs" (longs).

OTOH, I store hashes of each *file* in a RELATE-d table. Using a GUID data type is considerably more economical than trying to create a 16byte data type (due to alignment issues in the DBMS). If you're going to be storing billions of file handles, then an extra 8 bytes per handle adds up really quick!

When folks make that comment, I reply: "Tell that to the turkey on Thanksgiving!"

This is the worst time as humidity is climbing as heat is peaking. Worst THI possible. Once monsoon sets in, the rains should lower the temperature.

It's a matter of luck. I cut a cross (+) in each before firing. Then, try to peel back those (now flared) corners around the incisions. Sometimes the meat just falls out, nice and clean. Other times, the shell sticks and has to be chipped away. Or, worse, that inner "furry skin" clings to the meat and has to be scraped off.

But, as with pistachios (some of which open easily), part of the appeal is the effort invested in eating them. Shelled chestnuts (or pistachios) would be boring. While peanuts in the shell are similarly fun to eat, shelled peanuts don't take away from that experience!