noefingway

In the early to mid-60s I built a shortwave radio and a digital clock. Unfortunately neither survived. I still think about that clock sitting by my bed, glowing reddish orange. Sigh....

Every time the SR-71 pops up, it's brings back a memory of seeing it do a flyby at Dulles Airport. IIRC it was supposed to be the last flight as the program was ending. This is probably 1989. I didn't know about it until the day of the event so I didn't have my camera with me.

I think my entire engineering department and a bunch from the production floor (about 15-20 of us) went over to the airport to see the bird. Back then you could drive up to and park at the upper departure level. So there we are, waiting... Someone brought a portable scanner along and was listening to air traffic control, so we knew when it would pass over.

First thing we heard was the sonic boom as it passed over (I believe this flight set the west coast to east coast speed record.) After some interval of minutes we heard which direction it would be coming from. All other landing and take off traffic was suspended while the bird circled the airport. Then turned a made a low level (like about the height of the tower) really slow. We got a really good look at it. He hit the afterburners, and took off. I've never seen anything move that fast. It practically disappeared, like something out of a movie jumping into hyperspace. Absolutely incredible, no matter how much I read about the SR-71 and the program, I'm just in awe of the designers and engineers that made it happen.

Just finished reading "Ubik", I found it partly amusing and also prescient that to get thru a door or make coffee required putting a nickel in the slot. Practically everything required a small payment in order to use it. We seem to be almost there: cars, ovens, tv's, dishwashers...the list goes on.

I highly recommend cold brew coffee. We make it once a week or so. My wife grinds her mix of beans, into the toddy, add cold water, let steep over night and drip the next day. Add some brew to a cup and top off with hot water. Cold brew will keep for quite a while in the refrigerator. No fuss, bother and filling the landfill with little plastic cups. IMHO too many simple tasks are over-engineered into ready to fail products.

Just like good old country ham here in the US. I get one every year, been eating it since I was a kid. Dry, crusty, some mold on the outside. Clean it off an slice it, or soak it for a couple of days then bake it. Either way it's staple here on the farm.

I remember doing these. Air raid sirens would go off, we would dive under out desks, wait until teacher said we could get up. Sometimes we did drills to all march, in an orderly manner, out of the classroom into the basement of the classroom building, or to the locker rooms at the gym. IIRC during the Cuban missile crisis we got sent home early one or two days, but my memory is a bit fuzzy on that. This was in Bethesda, MD, adjacent to DC.

I've lived near Camp David and Site R for 50+ years, so we always joked that if the missiles ever started flying, we'd be the first to know and go.

Ditto for "Command and Control". Good read, very terrifying how much lack of control there was/is.

I can recommend "Raven Rock" as another good read. How very rational people and be totally irrational. Living near Raven Rock and Camp David for over 50 years, we always assumed that if the missiles started flying, we be toast in a nuclear wasteland.

I would recommend watching Kenneth Branagh's movie adaptations, particularly Henry V. You get a good feel for the power of the language, the pathos and the humor. I used to have recordings (i.e. vinyl records) of the Royal Shakespeare company reading plays, makes them much more accessible when you read along with a great actor speaking the words. I've been reading and re-reading Shakespeare all my life, the words never get old.

Aaron Copland: "Fanfare for the Common Man", goose bumps, chills and shudder every time I hear it

https://thecounter.org/who-really-owns-american-farmland https://www.motherjones.com/food/2021/05/bill-melinda-gates-...

where I farm our (60 miles from DC and Baltimore) not very productive red clay is going for top dollar and not to farmers. Not necessarily hedge funds, but high income earners buying up property for investment.

"The Network Information Service (NIS) was formerly known as Sun Yellow Pages (YP). The functionality of the two remains the same; only the name has changed. The name Yellow Pages is a registered trademark in the United Kingdom of British Telecommunications PLC, and cannot be used without permission."

current prices can be see here: https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/gx_gr210.txt

in Maryland where I farm, there has been a surplus of chicken litter on the eastern shore. Good for farmers there, but moving it around is expensive. I get litter from an egg operation near Gettysburg. It used to be free but now is $10/ton. I just bought 5 truck loads (120 tons), cost me $700 per load. I expect that price to go up. On-road diesel just hit $4.00/gal in our area which puts off-road prices over $3.00/gal. Input costs are getting to the point where there is no net profit in raising a crop.

Ditto that - I'm in MD

Has he been nominated for a Darwin Award yet?

I totally agree with this. I used to listen to a lot of classical music (radio, vinyl, in concert). There seems to be something about the mid-20th century conductors where all their recordings are slow, ponderous and somnolent. Beethoven in particular, but many other composers get the same treatment. Hogwood's recordings are great. IMHO the best recording of Beethoven's 9th that I've heard is Leonard Bernstein's.

a fantastic and inspirational read. also great cookie recipe! made them many times

Brings back some memories. First UNIX I worked on was, IIRC, was System III on a Pixel Machines box. We ported a management tool for Dept of Transporation that had been running on an IBM TSO system. Deployed 5 of these around the country, setup uucp to send data back to home base. Xenix came along a few years later and, if memory serves, it's what we ran on some Altos machines. Fun times.

As a long time subscriber to the Risks mailing list, I would have to note the extensive discussion of this incident:

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/search?query=therac

Currently using this one https://github.com/pramsey/pgsql-ogr-fdw for an image migration project. Using it to pull image metadata thru ODBC. While it's primary design is for GIS data, it works well for any ODBC database.

Keep at it! I'm 68, started programming when I was 17 on a PDP-8 with Dartmouth Basic, paper tape and a teletype. Moved on from there to mainframes, minis, workstations. Still working and learning.

Agreed. It's a scene like that which separates the very good actors from the truly great. While I enjoyed the remake, I don't think it comes close to the original.

Thurmont MD - I work with a small company in Shepherdstown, WV. It's about a 50 min drive, no traffic, country roads. I go in once a week, rest of the time is at home (farm). I've been fortunate the last 10 years that I've been able to find work close by. Before that it was commuting up and down 270, which has some of the worst traffic in the country.

yes - raising grains for distillers and millers, while coding too. Gets hectic at planting and harvest time!

a hammer is my go to tool for anything thats stuck. a good whack usually get things going ;-)

Highly recommend Henry Petroski's book on bridge building https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/to-engineer-is-human-the-role-...

I grew up around Washington DC which had some fine large screen theaters. One had a curved screen (the Uptown, IIRC, movies were all in 70mm format) so if you sat in the first few rows, the screen almost wrapped around you. IMHO, the only way to appreciate some of these great movies (2001, Lawrence of Arabia, How the West Was Won) is to see them on a large screen. IMHO, you just don't get to see how spectacular the cinematography is when you watch on a TV or a small screen theater. Unfortunately, most of the large screen theaters have disappeared.

Harvesting ice in the winter was a common and wide spread activity in North America (and most of Europe). Short article on Hudson River ice harvesting http://www.genealogy.clifflamere.com/Aid/History/IceHarvesti...

I read "1491" and "1493" recently. The big take away for me was how the pre-European population successfully managed their environments in both North and South America. The environments that Europeans encountered were not so much wild and as they were managed. In North America fire was an important tool in managing forests. Something that BLM and the forest services have only recently come to understand, after hundreds of years.