One year ago today: August 31, 2015, my barber gets robbed.
Five years ago today: August 31, 2011, boycott Hershey’s – on principle alone.
Nine years ago today: August 31, 2007 , $15 for a bean can!
Random years ago today: August 31, 2012, adventure in Aurora, Colorado.
MORNING
Last day I made mention of a database called File Express. It’s doubtful you ever heard of it, since it is flat-file and came out around the same time as MicroSoft began to drive true innovators out of the market by tweaking Windows so it would not run competitor’s apps. Ah, didn’t know that, did ya?
The big spreadsheet was Lotus 1-2-3. Microsoft quickly introduced a bug into Windows 95 that would not run 1-2-3, and then corrected it in Windows 98, shortly after Lotus declared bankruptcy. Oops, sorry, they said. MicroSoft sabotaged Netscape Navigator (today called FireFox) by giving away a free browser (IE) until NN went under. It is hard to imagine how advanced computers would be today if MicroSoft had never existed.
I kept my old copy of File Express (FE) as shown here. Flat-file means it is not a relational database. Each record has the same fields and length,and they do not “relate” to fields in other records. This arrangement is pretty much all anybody needs in everyday life. It is DOS-based and thus has certain other advantages in the Internet era that were not obvious at the time.
I’m looking at it again for my blog index. While it won’t cut and paste, it will export comma delimited files that can be picked up by Notepad. I’m considering using this year, 2016, as the testbed, since if I start now, I may actually make headway by year-end. Sadly, I’m out of practice with FE and forget a lot of the commands. I’ll see if I can find a manual on-line.
People could learn a lot about what led to the mess that computers are in today by looking at some of these older applications before MicroSoft became the 800-pound gorilla. They are, by and large, extremely well-produced programs compared to anything that ever came out of Redmond. They had to be, they were not being subsidized by IBM as was Bill Gates. I often laugh at people who idolize Gates and say Steve Jobs was a nobody. Those people should look into what Gates did before calling him any kind of hero.
By 9:30 in the morning, we already have a problem. I’ve always maintained the IBM format for file structure was designed by massive nincompoops. You know the structure I mean, it looks like this:
C:\Documents\Letters.cdc.gf\08012016\bozo\the\clown.html
The problem is, not only is that hard to read, it is difficult to type, and worse yet, encourages newbies to blindly accept it as tradition and start to add more of the same. Soon, file names are in excess of 50 characters—something only a complete shithead would think is normal. The address of the August 19th blog here is: August 19, 2007, which is too long to display on a DOS printout, maximum 80 characters per line. (Click on the link and look at the address bar to see the URL.) But I’ll think of something, probably parsing, then reconstructing the string on printout. Some of the older print commands will issue 120 characters in landscape mode.
But another generation of Millennials will give us file names a thousand characters long. You can’t teach morons that small groupings are more manageable.
Way too much time . . .
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
Caught in the library all afternoon by a rainstorm, and I wound up driving home it anyway. So I made pork chops, bacon bit mac & cheese (from scratch) and corn on the cob. Then biscuits for dessert with coffee. Not buttermilk biscuits, they aren’t as good as Carnation milk. Having the time, I looked into drywall screw technology, alternative tape measures, and vinyl soundproofing material.
I further found a factory that is making insulation out of old blue jeans. That’s correct, the article quotes some impressive tonnage of demin thrown out in the USA annually. The pricing, however, once again shows that in America, the biggest part of the cost is often shipping and handling.
For curiosity’s sake, I took a look at the local rental situation. Same as Broward, those who can afford to rent tend to be the higher priced properties. No such thing as driving around looking for signs any more. This is a prosperous area and you would be lucky to get a room with a shared bath down the hall for less than $500 monthly. The going rate seems to be around $750 for a room, $560 for a mobile in the toonies, and $850 for a place similar to mine.
NIGHT
That was a good workout, but I got another joist done. At one a day, I’ll be done in a week. I could have gone faster, but remember up until last weekend there were people sleeping in that room so I had to remove all the furniture and flooring again to get at the joists. This kind of back and forth is a normal part of renovations where the bulk of the work is done indoors.
Some of the joists have been warped so long they don’t want to return to straight. This will be cured by some extra long deck screws. I would have begun that tonight but an hour after dark it is still raining. Ah, but what a difference being in a house during the rain or the cold. It’s not the same being cooped up in an apartment. I had time to write an interesting bass line called “What She Got”, not to be mixed up with a Millennial pseudo-rap piece already out there.
Now for one of the stalest jokes yet. I admit, I married for looks. After I cooked our first meal, my beloved said, “I’ll wash the dishes.”
I said, “Honey, we don’t have dishes yet, these are paper plates.”
“That’s okay,” she said, “I’ll just erase them.”
This is great, to work only when one is inspired. And I took to writing the formulas for the blog index. Have you ever done text arithmetic? Most instructions are given on how to construct strings, but the reality is that most of the time on-line, you will be picking segments out of those ridiculously complicated IBM-style strings. Here is the [blog] URL for August 20, 2015.
The month name varies in length, from 4 to 9 characters. This is done by starting at position 54 (that is, 45+9), and counting the characters until you hit the first hyphen, at position 60 in this example. You can now use the MID function to find the word “august”. Then extract the 20 using similar formulas, and the final four digit year is simple.
Note, you must develop the formulas, you cannot hard-code the months of the year, as there are 12 and the dominant spreadsheet, Excel, can only deal with seven levels. Then you put it all back together with this formula:
If you decide you like spreadsheets, all this will be on the exam.
ADDENDUM
I’m nearly finished the paperback “Stigma”. Very well-written but around the half-way mark the plot gets tangled, hard to follow. The killer and hero, along with the storyline, become increasingly familiar, the old former elite forces good guy/bad guy, now archenemies heading for the big showdown. And the Ivanhoe Factor becomes incredible, with people randomly finding each other by accident in the Guatemalan jungle. At night. During rainstorms.
The theme is outstandingly accurate—if you are lucky enough to understand genetics and recombinant DNA, that is. This doctor looking for a malaria cure carefully modifies mosquitoes whose bite inoculates rather than infects the victim. His idea gets stolen by the bad guys, naturally. Here’s where the tale gets complicated, but read on. You’ll learn something.
Human DNA is exceedingly repetitious. So is the DNA of many other species. Current theory is that these replica strands are what you could regard as back-up copies. They act as self-correcting duplicates so that the genome doesn’t get too far out of whack during fertilization. Without this mechanism, there would be far too many birth defects.
Anyway, this mad scientist with a name of “ponderous consonants” wants to use the mosquitoes as a vector to vaccinate humans against hereditary conditions. And everybody knows that is genocide because only Nazi doctors want to eradicate disease whereas politically correct doctors want to keep patients alive until the money runs out. Against the patient’s will if necessary. Do I have to teach you everything? Oh, and in the book, of course the Chinese are involved up their elbows.
My conclusion: this book would make a very complicated movie. The ending of the book is convoluted and doesn’t match the intensity of the lead-up.
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
