One year ago today: September 29, 2016, other than that, we’re free.
Five years ago today: September 29, 2012, blame it on loneliness.
Nine years ago today: September 29, 2008, we’re busy, not rich.
Random years ago today: September 29, 2006, Quickbooks sucks.
I took a drive out to my barber, a forty-mile round trip. He told me that an entire patch of my hair behind the left ear was burned down to stubble. I never noticed, never felt a thing. But I like that drive and there are neat thrift stores out there. I bought a small shop vise for $4 that sells for ten times that much at Harbor Freight. One thing I did for fun was investigate that practically new typewriter at the local thrift. It is a 1958 Remington Quite-riter Eleven. The Eleven refers to the width of the platen, meaning a maximum of 10-1/2” typing width.
What do you think? I dunno, but I am the one who got furthest into finding out how the thing operates. Yes, I did take typing classes, back when I was 14. One of the smartest things I ever did. However, I was probably allowed to attend the course only because my parents did not spot it as being a potentially useful skill. In that case, they would have forbidden it. I talked one of my pals into taking the course with me because Monica, the living doll, was in the class.
It’s amazing, with Monika right there, how Brock and I ever learned a thing in that class. But the fact is, we aced the course. Naturally, the talk was that I could type because I “played the piano” but that is sheer excuse-making for poor performance. For that matter, Monica played also but she never topped 30 wpm. It was approximately three years later that I was on a teletype machine at university.
That was an interesting turn of events. I was the only person in that male-dominated class who could type. Even Susan, the only babe in the room, was hunt-and-peck. It is entirely possible that it was typing ability that got me through that course. It was the first time that “computer science” was taught at that school. And only maybe 25% of the course had anything to do with actual programming. But, I did the labs and passed the courses because there was nobody to talk to about the material, nobody to study with that knew a thing more about it than you did.
The one thing the school never taught was how to go out and program an actual computer. To this day, I can only run programs on my local computer that have obvious requirements, like a compiler or and IDE. I was amazed when the Internet came along that teens were able to program the thing because we had never learned any such thing. One day I should tell you about the great ideas I had for Internet pages that I could never find anybody to help me put the code on-line. Remember Art, the database guy? Everybody was like him, thinking they could use me to steal a good idea and get away with not teaching me how the code was going on-line.
Paris, a “before” picture.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Is it clear what I’m saying here? I can easily code in HTML and CSS, the language of the Internet. But I don’t know what is required to get a web page and put that code into it so as to have a working, functioning system. Of course, I would be adverse to letting anyone else do it for me. Look what happened when Zuckerberg got his hands on some winning code. Going back to my teens, it was the same old story. I could type and program, but there were no good ideas on what to do with it. We were never taught the types of things that computers could perform. I suspected even the instructors and teaching assistants did not know either.
The picture is just a hurricane-snapped palm tree at the post office parking lot. I figured it looked good here. The dead leaves are still littering the city in drifts two weeks after the storm. I kind of believe the entire city of Lakeland, Florida, has only one street-sweeping machine. And it’s top speed is maybe ten blocks per hour.
That consistent look of posts over the later years evolved in much the same way as my typing. Regardless of the rules, some things looked nicer when done certain ways. When I returned to college in my late twenties to get my degrees in programming (my earlier credentials were no in the computer field), I was able to hand in fantastic looking code, designed to make the instructors life easier and I consistently got the highest marks. Often, I would print out raw code and then go back over it, inserting comments and headings so that in the end product, even the page breaks came out in a manner to frame my coding.
So you’ll know, I attended school part time, working my day job full shifts. And at the end of three years, I was awarded a Senior Certificate in the same time the full-time students received only their standard diplomas. But there’s your time line. By age 32, I already had a job that paid much more than programming, so the awards were used mainly to keep me poised for any plum jobs that came along.
In the following nine years, the company went into decline. They missed the boat on cable TV, cell phones, and the Internet. By the time I was 38, the writing was on the wall. No outsiders were being promoted and the company was automating everything they could. It was cheaper to have new hires run in new wiring than to have the oldsters around who knew how to test and repair the gear. I was definitely an outsider on every count. No daddy in management. And being a single white man with a non-English last name, I had a shivering hope at best. As you know, three years later I took the buyout package and never looked back.
“April arrives like an idiot
babbling and strewing flowers.”
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
Skipping a needed siesta, I went to the library and read up on what’s happening with SpaceX. They want a mission to Mars by 2022 and a manned flight within a few years afterward. That kind of blows NASA out of the water, since they’ve been sitting on their haunches since the 1970s. And don’t even talk to me about space shuttles and space stations. Nothing but shoddy publicity stunts. Fire the lot and send them packing.
This photo is from the SpaceX site showing a planned Martian city. Please let me live long enough to see this thing started. I totally identify with the recent spate of failures with their cargo and launch rockets. Because they are getting better and I subscribe to the old maxim, “To you my friends I will impart the secret of success. Fail, and fail, and fail again, but less, and less, and less.
The other thing about SpaceX is they are not as dictated by political correctness. There is a far better chance of a triumph because NASA is just dumb enough to overlook fitness for the mission and send “one of each” to muck things up. There are just certain types of people that nobody, even more of their own kind, would want to spend cooped up with in a space ship for six months. Are you listening, Whoopi? Did you get that Justin?
ADDENDUM
I’m still not recovered totally, so I took the evening off to read a book on calligraphy. Not the how and why, since I already took that course back in the 80s. More like the history of writing styles. I expect it to be interesting because I know nothing about the development other than isolated examples of ancient writing in magazines or textbooks. Of course, I’ll keep you informed if I find anything really useful. Here’s a passage I found interesting about camper trailers, concerning what to take along.
Brilliant, if you ask me. Here’s a photo of the latest teardrop trailer on the market. It weighs 900 pounds, it would be too much for a sidecar, but even a mini car will handily tow that. These start at around $6,000 but they are overkill for what I know I’ll need. There is a propane stove and small galley. The newest model has an extendable cab that slides forward over the tow bar. To bad they don’t sell just the shell and let the customer put what he wants inside. The sleeping area as shown here is six-foot-six, so I’d have plenty of comfortable room inside. It is also too wide for one person, I’m saying if you somehow met a gal on the trail, you’d have saved up enough money to get a decent hotel room, nomsayn?
Last Laugh
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