Commander:
Neil A. Armstrong
Pilot: Columbia Command Module
Michael Collins, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF
Pilot: Eagle Lunar Module
Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., Colonel, USAF
Launched: 16 July 1969 UT 13:32:00 (08:32:00 CDT)
Landed on Moon: 20 July 1969 UT 20:17:40 (15:17:40 CDT)
Landing Site: Mare Tranquillitatis – Sea of Tranquility (0.67 N, 23.47 E)
Returned to Earth: 24 July 1969 UT 16:50:35 (11:50:35 CDT)
On-line Opinion Magazine featuring annoyed rumblings from the leading edge of the Baby Boom firmly tied to a reality-based world.
Established: 21 November 2004
The opinions expressed in Comments are those of the individuals making them. Truly absurd comments and opinions are subject to being cruelly mocked, but "flame wars" will take place on someone else's dime.
Your first comment, all comments with extensive links, and random comments that the software decides it doesn't like for no discernible reason will be held for moderation.
[Be aware that for unknown reasons the software rejects comments shorter than 15 characters, so if you want to leave a short comment fill the gap with periods ........]
43 comments
I still remember the grainy b&w TV images from when I was 12. 🙂 Still makes me smile and wonder…
As a child, it was the stuff of science fiction and dreams.
As an adult (and an Engineer), it fills me with awe that Man could do so much with so little. 🙂
Ah well… Those were the days.
I still remember the grainy b&w TV images from when I was a child too. Sad to say, the next generations have no conception of what it was like to live in a nation that could go to to the moon. Today we can barely even make it to orbit, much less the moon…
– Badtux the Wistful Penguin
And we have apparently lost not only the ability (which, after all, we could regain with enough work) but also the will. Apollo is lost, but far, far worse, the spirit of Apollo is lost.
Who will next rule the world of technology in the service of humankind, and how long will it take? America is now the ruler, not of the cosmos, but of the exploitation of fear for purposes purely political in nature, purposes with no positive aspects. What a hell of a thing to be Number 1 at.
I saw the transmissions from the lunar surface, but not what was being sent from the ground, and the picture was small and green on black. That stuff was coming from the moon, and we had the ability to tune for it. I saw it nanoseconds before anyone on the Earth, because, well, if there were problems on the ground we wanted to be able to maintain communications … it was our duty … sort of … that was our story and we stuck to it.
That was one of the few live ‘television events’ that I saw for most of the 8 years I was in the service. Most of the communications satellites were in geo-sync over the Equator and we couldn’t get a decent signal off of them in the Arctic.
We have lost all kinds of skills. The guy I work with on rehabs was a technician at the Cape during Mercury and Apollo, and he is ten years older than I am.
The US once led the world in precision manufacturing, now I have to take a tape measure with me to buy anything because you can’t trust the sizes on the labels of even lumber.
It’s sad.
the only thing I ever liked about the time I lived in Houston – it was during the height of the manned space program. looking back at that time from the anti-science, anti-big-spending, anti-government, anti-knowledge environment of today sometimes makes wonder if it really happened or if I just dreamed it.
I think you’ll get a loud AMEN! for that feeling, Hipparchia. We once did big, important things, things that will be remembered. This must be what today’s Egyptians feel when they look at the Pyramids, or the Greeks look at the Acropolis – we all wonder “What happened?”
Here’s an AMEN to Hipparchia on that! Like Kryten, I was a child when I watched, and like all young people I believed that great and wonderful things were reasonable expectations, and that there would be many more to come.
But I lived in the Bible Belt, of course, and from several adults heard the refrain “God didn’t intend for man to be on the moon, and he will punish us for it”. Anyone who lives in the south will remember that crowd.
After the disemboweling of our space program over these many years, I often wonder if those people weren’t closer to the truth than I was. Their children (spawn) are now the anti-knowledge, close down NASA and PBS, group. PBS really IS the work of the devil, you know…
Obviously eating from the “Tree of Knowledge” was the “original sin”, so having knowledge is a “mark of Satan”.
That gets a bit tricky when you have some child in the Sunday school class who wants to know, if that is true, then isn’t Sunday school and reading the Bible a sin?
Of course, knowing which plants were good for illness, made you a “wise person”, which then became wizard or witch.
Most of the people who proclaim their ‘anti-intellectualism’ wouldn’t last a week in the wildness without all of the ‘Satanic devices’ they decry.
As my maternal grandfather used to comment when someone would wax nostalgic about the “Good Old Days” – ‘Keep them yourself. I like indoor plumbing, running water, electric lights, and baseball on television.’ The one-room school he attended only went to the sixth grade, but he learned to read, and continued reading his entire life. His life started on a farm with hand-pumped water, kerosene lanterns, and horse-drawn wagons. He lived to see a man step on the Moon, and thought it was a good thing. He was a carpenter, cabinetmaker, cooper, and wheelwright, who came out of retirement to repair the wooden wheels on cannons for the Bi-Centennial.
I might be more convinced of their sincerity if fewer evangelical churches had sanctuaries that were video recording studios, and they stopped putting copyright notices on their hymns.
I might be more convinced of their sincerity if fewer evangelical churches had sanctuaries that were video recording studios, and they stopped putting copyright notices on their hymns.
And stopped being hypocrites… Stopped child abuse… other forms of abuse… greed… etc, etc, etc… (Perhaps not all, but too many!)
Their primary (though never mentioned) motto should be emblazoned across the front of their den’s of inequity: “Do as I say! Not as I do!”
I’d feel cleaner in a brothel than most Churches. At least they are honest and you know what you are in for, and the cost is up front! And you stand a better chance of feeling happier after! 😉 😈
LMAO
The hypocrites are a sideshow, Kryten, it’s the true-believers you have to watch out for, because they are the ones who go killing people who disagree with them. There really are people out there who believe that the way to put society on the right track is by stoning people who ‘sin’ in the public square, and those are the ones that worry me.
I met, and dealt with, a number of “True Believers!!” during my time in the 80’s Bryan.
I know them very well. And I know one as soon as I meet one.
It’s one of the reasons I chose not to carry any kind of weapon, even when working in civilian security. But I still have my years of combat training, though without a weapon, I’m only dangerous within striking distance. As a couple friends found out a couple weeks ago, I can still move very fast. It takes a great deal of effort sometimes to simply turn and walk away. Unlike the street wolves… the TB’s are too insane to know when to avoid people like me, so I have to consciously avoid them.
They are truly insane. I saw their handiwork, and I studied History quite a bit.
That’s where the suicide bombers come from, and there is no choice but to grant their wish for martyrdom.
People never got it when I would talk about how nice it was to deal with professional criminals. They were never a hassle, booking was quick, the process was smooth. It was the damn amateurs and people who thought they serving a higher purpose that ended with someone, often everyone, having to go to the emergency room [casualty department] before the processing can start.
That’s one of the things that really pissed me off about the police reaction to the Occupy movement in the US. The police were acting like amateurs. They were trying to pick a fight, and were beating people up. That was criminal behavior. That was thuggishness. They were acting like True Believers, not like peace officers.
” it’s the true-believers you have to watch out for”
Ain’t it the truth! I agree with you and Kryten, those are the ones with the strange look in their eye. You know the look, the one that says nobody human is really at home in there.
And most would be appalled that we think they are on the same side of the sliding scale with Islamic suicide bombers. But they are.
Hi Juanita. 🙂
Sadly, it is true. History is littered with the bodies of the people they “had to save! For their own good!” The Crusaders, Inquisitors, and of course, the abominable Salem Trials.
In spite of what many believe about those two years (actually, it was 15 months from Feb 1692 to May 1693, though others were still imprisoned after and died there), including children , the trials were purely motivated by extreme TB’s (the most extreme Calvinist Puritans of the time in fact). Most of the imprisoned or executed were protestants, Anglican’s, etc. The Calvinists absolutely forbade any form of music, dancing, celebrating of Holidays (including Easter & Christmas) and so on. Some were arrested simply because they carried a cross or rosary (they were forbidden). Some of those who entered a plea of witchcraft only did so after being subjected to “peine forte et dure”, in which the accused was pressed beneath an increasingly heavy load of stones until they made a plea. It was a form of torture of course.
Many think it was just a year of hysteria and was over and done. But it wasn’t and isn’t. 🙂 In fact it wasn’t until 1957 that the last 6 were wrongly accused and executed were cleared by the General Court at the demand of the decedents, but only one of them was formally named. It wasn’t until October 2001 when Governor Jane Swift (MA) finally created a resolution that formally named and proclaimed them all innocent.
It’s now believed that a possible explanation for the convulsions, visions, etc were a combination of biological and simple jealousy or spite by the accusers and judges. The most likely biological explanation may be that they were caused by eating rye bread made from grain infected by the fungus Claviceps purpurea, from which LSD is made. So, it took over 300 years for justice to be finally found (somewhat anyway) by the descendants of those murdered by the Calvanists in MA.
Americans don’t have to look overseas for terrorists and “True Believers!!”
When I last visited the USA, I was unfortunate to meet a guy who was fervently telling anyone who would listen, why white Americans were the only true Americans. I had enough fairly fast and asked him where his first American forebears came from? and we got into a loud argument. In the end I asked if he drank water. Of course he did. I asked if he only drank pure distilled H2O? He demanded to know WTF I was talking about. So I said “You drink water every day. Water makes up about 60% of your body. The water we all drink from various sources has many contaminants, particles that are not pure H20. Can you prove categorically that you have not one single particle in you that is not from non-white humans? No, you can’t. Just because you may look white, does not in any way prove you are a pure white anglo male! You retarded f* moron!” And then my two mates and I were asked to leave the bar, after the fight ended. 😉 😆
According to historical documents, it would seem that the first *white* male born in what is now the USA, was the child of a Spanish couple born in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, Florida in 1566. It’s interesting to note that St. Augustine, Florida is also the oldest continuously occupied European-founded city anywhere in the USA with the exception of Puerto Rico. The first female is believed to be Virginia Dare, born in 1587 at the Roanoke Colony of English parents. Of course, all this ignores the Norse Vikings, who were in continental Nth America around 1000 AD, when it was known as Vinland. Archaeology has proven that pre-Columbian Vikings discovered North America (some 5 Centuries prior to Columbus).
Many Americans have some very strange belief’s, in spite of any evidence to the contrary, or even common sense. 😉
Ehhh.. I debated whether to add this to the above, and decided not to. However, being human, I’ve changed my mind. 😉 😆
One very important fact is always neglected. And especially by those *True Believers* who take the Bible as “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”, and ignore any and and all science to the contrary. 🙂
All the atoms that exist now, are the same atoms that were created after the Big Bang. Atoms were formed in stars. Atoms form together to create molecules. Molecules form to create elements… etc. etc. Eventually, those atoms join together to create us. Every atom in our bodies are billions of years old. Hydrogen, the most common element in the universe and a major feature of your body, was produced in the big bang about 13.7bn years ago. Heavier atoms such as carbon and oxygen were forged in stars somewhere between 7bn and 12bn years ago, then blasted across space when the stars exploded. Some of these explosions were so powerful that they also produced the elements heavier than iron, which stars can’t construct. This means that the components of your body are truly ancient. 🙂
Another *interesting* fact is that most of *you* isn’t actually human! 😀 The human body contains approximately 10 times more foreign bacterial cells than human cells. 😉 So… I suppose it could be said they we are mostly bacterial, some parasitic, some beneficial (such as the bacteria in our gut). Isn’t that a pleasant thought? 😆
So there ya go. two scientific reasons why the entire “white supremacist” argument is a huge steaming pile of dingoes kidneys! LOL It could easily be argued that some or even many of the atoms that now make up the body of a *Supremacist* once belonged to dark skinned people, or baboons, or rat’s feces… etc. Someone here could have some atoms that once belonged to one of Hitler’s nose hairs, or from Cleopatra’s lips! LMAO
I could go on…. but I need a coffee! 😛
Juanita, they would have a conniption fit if they found out that most of Sharia law is an Arabic translation of Leviticus with some Arabian tribal embellishments which match to an amazing degree what that French lawyer, Jean Cauvin [aka John Calvin] came up with, so it is not at all surprising that fundamentalists of all flavors share the same disease.
Actually, Kryten, I remember seeing a documentary on the work of a scientist who went back through the records everywhere there had been a major witch hunt and discovered that in almost every case the weather preceding the events almost guaranteed that rye ergot would be in the grain supply. She also looked at descriptions of the visions and physical manifestations of victims, and they aligned with modern reports on ‘bad trips’ on LSD.
When you look at the “science” of those involved who thought that Christians would sink but witches would float, because witches didn’t have the ‘weight’ of a soul, you certainly don’t have much chance that anyone was checking for food poisoning.
Another interesting feature of witch trials is the number of women with property who were convicted of witchcraft. Property is a prime reason for “peine forte et dure”. If you died without confessing, your property couldn’t be seized, and would be inherited in accordance to your will. If you confessed the property was either forfeit totally to the crown, or split between the crown and your accuser, so there was a financial incentive to accuse people with property.
Talking about religious extremists, Jim Wright over at Stonekettle Station has a humdinger today where he lets go on them with the rhetorical firepower equivalent of a twin .50. He focuses on our favorite batshit crazy lunatic, Michelle “Crazy Eyes” Bachmann , but his field of fire is on the entire lunatic evangelical fringe of crazy true believers.
Off to bed now…
”most of Sharia law is an Arabic translation of Leviticus”
Really? Didn’t know that, but it sure makes sense based on their behavior, Bryan. And your thoughts about financial incentives truly strikes me as morbidly comical. It puts me in mind of “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Between our forfeiture laws and civil lawsuits, it’s still a classic case of that’s where the money is. Willie Sutton would be proud.
Kryten: Yes, and these days I feel more like the rat droppings. I’ve had three (!) cups of coffee this morning and still can’t kick-start any of my baboon atoms. Saw in a prior post where you’re working on a new project. Hope that is going well for you. Once again, I could understand about half of the post, and then you guys were waaaay over my pay grade again.
On second thought, Bryan, considering your group’s depth of computer knowledge, I’m rather proud of myself that I can understand half of it!
Thanks Juanita. 😀
Meeeah… The project *would* be going OK, If I wasn’t still trying to shake off the flu! Been almost 4 weeks now… *sigh* The old body isn’t as good as fighting these nuisances as it once was. 😉
I could understand about half of the post, and then you guys were waaaay over my pay grade again.
I’ll let you into a little secret my friend… we don’t really understand it either! We just like being smug and superior! 😈 (Of course, Badtux may disagree with this assessment, or at least the first part of it anyway.) 😉 To each his own, eh? 😆
Still, so long as you found the discussion at least somewhat interesting, that’s good enough. 🙂 We all learn little bit’s from each other. I like that. 🙂 And you can always ask questions you know. “There are no stupid questions! Only stupid answers!” 😉 😆 I shall endeavor NOT to supply any stupid answers, though I reserve the right to have some fun. 😀
I hear ya about the coffee too! I use a strong Blue Mountain brew now, and it just doesn’t seem to have the kick coffee did 20 or so years ago. I enjoy it, but just don’t get that *buzz* any more. Now I have to take fish oil and other supplements (like guarana, B vitamin’s, etc) to get the old brain into gear!
Hmmm… I was thinking along the lines of you having atoms that once belonged to Cleopatra actually. 😉 But it doesn’t matter (no pun intended… ahem), we are all made of “Star Stuff”! 😀 I kinda like that thought. 🙂
I am working as hard as I can to get my blog online. I’m currently working on the back-end (the Administration side mainly, and security of course, both mine and yours). I look forward to hearing everyone’s comments when it’s finally up. 🙂
Oh! And badtux m8, thanks for posting that link to Stonekettle!
I am goung to be chortling all day! Maybe all week! LMAO Ahhh… the blog reminds me so much of my old ‘Loaded Mouth!’ *sigh* I do miss that blog. 🙂 We used to write like that… About Bachman’s contemporaries, Malkin and the others.
She was just born into her citizenship, like some weak-chinned inbred hemophiliac idiot member of the royalty entitled to money and privilege. Bachmann, a six-year member of the US House of Representatives, a sitting member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, thinks that an Executive Order is like “waving a magic wand.” Like the men who fought to free themselves from the King of England were so damned stupid, as stupid as Bachmann herself apparently, that they somehow forgot to put a line in the Constitution that, you know, limits the power of the Executive.
Gold. Just gold! LMAO
As much as both sides like to forget it, Juanita, Jews and Arabs are close cousins. Abraham came from what is now Iraq; Hebrew and Arabic are Semitic languages that read from right to left, generally ignore vowels, and share sounds. Both were predominately desert dwelling nomadic goat herders with lunar calendars. That their laws are essentially the same isn’t exactly surprising, given the influence the Code of Hammurabi would have had on both. They keep emphasizing the differences so they don’t have to admit the similarities.
Jim was on a tear today, Badtux, but he made a common mistake about chins. Too many of the royal houses were afflicted with the Hapsburg jaw, which they tended to cover with beards so people wouldn’t notice how out-sized it was.
Kryten’s right, Juanita. If you want to know, just ask, because the three of us work in different areas, with different experience, so the discussions can get fairly dense with technical detail, and that experience goes back a very long way to things that the majority of people today have never heard of. There is a lot of history in the discussions, as well as cutting edge stuff, and much of it deals with the back room things that most people have never been aware of.
Jim’s right, Kryten, Michelle Bachmann has no idea how the government works, as has never made any attempt to learn, but she thought she was qualified to run for President. Now, she was certainly more qualified than Rick Perry, but so are most Golden Retrievers, so that’s a fairly low bar.
The thing that always amazed me about the moronic rethug Women, and proves just how moronic they are, is that they allow the rethug Men to treat them like pure sex objects and the only reason they want women in the party at all! No GOP Male takes any GOP woman seriously. There is plenty of evidence.
Bill Maher Calls Palin and Bachmann MILFs on CNN.
Vin Weber addressing Bachman’s *strengths* as Candidate: “She’s got hometown appeal, she’s got ideological appeal, and, I hate to say it, but she’s got a little sex appeal too.”
(Just FYI: All the completely WRONG reasons to be elected to anything!)
Joy Behar: “Let’s look at her. She’s pretty. I’ll give her that. She’s attractive.”
Tim Gunn: “Yeah, I mean, yeah, you strip everything off, she is — I mean, she has attractive features.”
Pat Buchanan: “Let me get back to Bachmann. I think she’s a very attractive lady.”
Bill O’Reilly: “And finally, No. 10, Michelle Bachmann, as you pointed out, associated with the Tea Party. But you know, here’s something interesting, Ann. Palin, Coulter, Malkin and Bachmann are all attractive women. They’re all good looking. And I think that the liberals, they resent that. They think that all women who are good-looking should be liberal women.”
I mean Jeez… I could go on and on for a couple meters down this column! And for some insane reason, women *like* these men and this party that denigrates women, and then have the insane gall to claim that the Left is sexist (not to mention racist). And they may well be, bot not in public to the extent of the rightwing nuts!
And just for the record, I really don’t think any of them are remotely attractive (Palin, Bachman, Malkin, Pam “Atlas Shrugs” Geller, and most certainly NOT Ann Coulter (whom I always suspected may be a transvestite or transexual.)). I did a stint working in the Modeling industry, and I saw many of them without the hours of work put into making them look as fantastic as possible (male and female BTW). Out on a normal street, you could pass by one and not recognize them. There are some exceptions of course. And I’ve met guy’s and gal’s that look somewhat ordinary, and then they smile… and everything shines! 😀 That’s beauty to me. 🙂 Whenever any of those I mentioned above smiled, It was just so false and insincere, and sometimes reminded me of a predator about to pounce!
There are two kinds of inner shine I think. the shining eye’s of insanity (as those above have) which make me want to run and hide, and the shine of intelligence, loving, drive… Nothing can beat that! And that’s true beauty to me. And yeah… I know this is a really touchy topic, and in these day’s of Political Correctness where we have to pretend we are all clones, and so on. *shrug* So sue me.
I’m not the only one who thinks most of the GOP are clinically insane either.
Lynnrockets’ Blast-Off Archive
That was a great blog! A shame it stopped a year ago. But there are still some great gem’s to be had there! 🙂 I always liked that she’d make up lyrics for songs relating to the blog posts. 😀 Like this:
THE WRECK OF THE SARAH L. PALIN (Version Two)
(sung to the Gordon Lightfoot song “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald ”)
😆 😆
Oh hey Juanita… I also read a blog now and then called Juanita Jean’s
“The Worlds Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.” 😆
She has a great sense of humor, and get’s to the heart of the matter. She’s Texan too. 😉 😀 From her Bio:
Ahhh… I do love satire! 😀
PS Bryan, Sir!! I LIKE Golden Retrievers! They have many good qualities, especially loving loyalty!! NONE of those retards on the right have any of the qualities of a Golden Retriever! They may be likened to fleas ON a Golden Retriever… but that’s as close as they get! And I’ve had two Goldies… so I know. And they are very intelligent dog also! HMMPH! Talk about insult by association m8! You go to far, Sir!
😉 😆 Heh… But seriously, they are parasites, and I truly do mean that! That’s all the GOP are. Parasites. At the very least, I think they should all be neutered. The gene pool is way too polluted as it is.
Just sayin. 😉
Oh! One example I left out (of the many) regarding The right’s only interest in women is as sex object’s, was probablo one of the rare ocasions Roger Ailes told the truth:
IMUS: When you interview her, will she be sitting on your lap? (LAUGHTER)
WALLACE: One can only hope. (LAUGHTER)
(As it turned out, Wallace was just echoing the company line. As Fox News’ Roger Ailes later explained of his addition of Palin to his roster of right-wing regulars, “I hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings.”)
From a blog on dKOS: Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and Murphy’s Law
Anyway… to get back on topic for a change (Apollo 11)…
Jim Wright @ Stonekettle pointed me (in comments) to his Apollo 11 post… I think he get’s it also. very much and sadly so.
One Small Step, A Bittersweet Anniversary
Yeah… bittersweet it is.
much of it deals with the back room things that most people have never been aware of.
Yessirree, Bryan, I’ll ‘fess up to that one! Some of your posts do get so arcane, it makes my brain hurt, and I appreciate that you are all open to questions. These days I wouldn’t know where to start (except I am fascinated by that Raspberry Pi thingy…)
I think the daily grind of taking care of someone with Alzheimer’s is taking it’s toll. To paraphrase Dolly Parton, there are days myself when I don’t know whether to “scratch my watch or wind my butt” (for all those people that still know what a watch is). I thought it was the person with AD that would lose their mind, but no, it’s also the people that live with them every day. Since you mentioned that you had been there yourself, I’m guessing you may know what I mean.
And Kryten, while I believe you are a very honest person, I have no doubt that you, Bryan and Badtux know precisely what you’re talking about. You all have every right to be smug and superior when it comes to that stuff. Heck, I would be!
Oh, I had time for a short read on Juanita Jean’s and she definitely is a hoot. She just called David Dewhurst a Texas State Tool!
Oh well, time to try and see if I can get some sleep. I never know when I’m going to have time to check back in, but like a bad penny, I’m sure I’ll show up. 🙂
In their world only white males are really people, everyone else is put in a lower species. As that is the only thing many of them have to separate them from the masses, they emphasize it as a mark of being ‘chosen’.
From their perverse perspective if they acknowledge that anyone not in their group has rights, that deducts from their power and privilege.
Sarah Palin actually wasn’t that bad until McCain decided to pick her as his running mate. She became a total rightwing nutcase almost overnight. She had been coexisting peacefully with the Democrats in the Alaskan legislature and actually pushed for reforms in the state Republican Party. She figured out the scam and has been running with it ever since.
That’s probably true for a lot of Republican politicians – they figured out how to make the big bucks and are willing to sell their souls to do it. It’s a lot easier than working for a living.
The most annoying thing is the way the media treats this freak show as if it was serious politics. It isn’t that difficult to fact check and discover that most of their claims are fraudulent, but they never get penalized for lies or distortions.
I have nothing against Golden Retrievers except the fact that those I have been in contact with were dumber than bricks. A dog that can’t remember its name is seriously stupid.
We were posting at the same time, Juanita.
I want to get back to the Raspberry Pi, but other things have been absorbing my time. It is like returning to the days of the Apple II, but a lot faster. Keep in mind we have been working with this stuff for decades, I started in 1970, so we can absorb it along the way, rather than trying to jump into the middle of it.
The computers on the Apollo spacecraft were programmed in machine code, which is nothing but numbers. It is very time consuming to do, but the resulting programs are as small and as fast as is possible on a computer. That’s why it was possible to land on the moon with a fraction of the computing power found in a television remote.
Steve Bates, and my late friend Andante both have dealt with parents who succumbed to Alzheimers. I have watched it steal the minds of some of my Mother’s friends. Being a caregiver is a very tough row to hoe, watching someone you love slip away from you day by day. We used to have daycare for Alzheimers patients and respite relief for caregivers down here, but they were victims of the cutbacks.
We wish you the best, because we are too far away to offer more help than that.
I suppose we do tend to get a tad esoteric at times. 😉 😀
I haven’t really thought about the “why’s” before, but I think that for me it’s just nice sometimes to be able to *chat* with a couple of people with whom I have little, if any, need to go into great depths of technical details for understanding. Where I am living now, I don’t think there’s anyone in the entire population here that I can discuss more than maybe 5% of the stuff I can here. Now I feel kinda sad. *sigh*
I am honest Juanita (you’ll just have to take my word for that, though I do have a reference from a very learned and widely respected gentleman that has known me about 30 years who confirms that.) However, I am also cheeky, irreverent (unless I should not be), and a just a smidgen “naughty”. 😉 Plus I love irony and satire, and use them. 😀 (The little winks I use are a clue that I am embodying one of those characteristics for those who haven’t figured it out yet!) 😀
You mentioned some time ago that you are looking after someone with Alzheimer’s, and I understand. So I like to try to give you something to smile about, even if only for a moment. It’s all I can do I am truly sad to say. I have a great deal of respect for you and anyone in your situation, because I’ve been there. Life really can get too serious, and I’ve spent a lot of my life in that state. So now, when I can, I just need to have some fun, and hopefully I can make others feel a little better. 🙂
Bryan knows as well as I do that it’s truly easier than most people understand to know when someone is lying, especially face-to-face. That said, I’ve made no secret that I can lie, and do so very convincingly. I was trained in the special forces and intelligence. It was necessary. I can even easily beat a polygraph, and I can give false “tells”. In the end, I couldn’t stand it. It truly is against my honor (which I take extremely seriously) and my integrity. To me, the human ability to lie is one of the biggest problems of humanity, and I refuse to be part of that particular problem. And yes, I have upset people because I won’t lie (though if I know the truth will hurt someone for no good reason, I’ll just stand mute). However, no matter how good someone is at it, over time, they will be found out. And that I know is a fact. And I have enough trouble these days keeping facts straight without having to try to remember any fabrications. 🙂 There’s just no value in it for me. *shrug*
So Juanita… You gonna get some pink Cowboy Boots now? 😉 (That is a funny blog!) Glad you enjoy it. 😀
Bryan, you must have known some weird Republican breed of Goldie then! 😆 They are used for Guide Dog’s (for the blind) you know. And a dumb dog leading a blind person is just *dead man walking*! One of the Goldie pup’s I had for a couple years was for the Guide Dog’s Association. I missed that pup, but I was proud that he was going to do something truly good and worthwhile! Not a great many human’s can say that, let alone a dog! 🙂 That said, one of the dumbest dog’s I ever had was a big black Labrador! Oooh, I could tell stories! 😆
BTW Juanita… you are anything but a bad penny!! (And you know it). 🙂 Please just remember to take some time out and have a laugh now and then. 🙂 Here, maybe this will help! 😀
This is a video clip from the BBC TV series “Red Dwarf” my alter-ego (Kryten) hails from. This is one of my favorite clip’s where Dave Lister is trying to teach Kryten to lie (from the episode “Camille”). 😀 (Ummm, if you’re not aware, Kryten is an android in the series). 😉
It’s a banana – Red Dwarf – BBC comedy
Have a laugh on me! 😆
“Life! Don’t talk to me about Life!”
Marvin, The Paranoid Android – Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Ehhh… What the heck! Now I’m in the mood… Here’s a few more Marvin quotes! 😉 😀
“Life,” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.”
“Funny, how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.”
“Making it up? Why should I want to make anything up? Life’s bad enough
as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.”
“My capacity for happiness, you could fit it into a matchbox without taking out the matches first.”
Marvin: “I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number.”
Zem: “Er, five.”
Marvin: “Wrong. You see?”
“You think you’ve got problems,” said Marvin, the paranoid human-hating
robot, as if he was addressing a newly occupied coffin, “what are you supposed
to do if you ARE a manically depressed robot? No, don’t bother to answer that,
I’m fifty thousand times more intelligent than you and even I don’t know the
answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level.”
“In the beginning, I was made. I didn’t ask to be made. No one consulted
with me or considered my feelings in this matter. But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way
through life’s mournful jungle, then so be it.”
“Simple. I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it,” said Marvin.
“And what happened?” pressed Ford.
“It committed suicide,” said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.
LOL OK… More than a few! 😉 😀 See… Things *could* be worse, you could be Marvin! 😈
Ahhh… Douglas Adams… He is missed! 🙁
I have to say that the most fun I’ve had while computing was when I was called upon to program the front panel display chip of a file server. This little doohickey was a 4×40 LCD display and 4-button keypad hooked to a 1mhz PIC chip driven by a 9600 baud RS232 connection from the main unit. The keys were connected directly to four pins on the PIC chip and had no debounce circuitry. The PIC did not have interrupts or UART hardware. The people I was talking to said it was impossible to bit-bang 9600 baud while simultaneously debouncing keypad presses and updating the display. I proved them wrong — I ran four state machines (receive, transmit, keybounce, display) flipping between them after a certain number of cycles. All of this was PIC assembly language of course — I had a whole 4K words of program memory and 512 words of data memory to play with. Each state machine would execute a slice worth of data, update its state word to point to the next state in that state machine (or leave it at the present state), execute however many NOP’s were necessary to cycle-count to the end of its slice, then jump via the next state machine’s state counter. This was made somewhat harder by the fact that each state had to be located within the first 256 words of program memory (which in reality turned into a jump table) because only a single 8-bit data word could be moved to the program counter.
It worked great. There was only one bug in the final program — I forgot to ring the doorbell when I put the byte out on the pins for the LCD chip’s input register, so it didn’t display. I re-flashed the PIC once I figured that out and fixed the program and it worked perfectly. The LCD chip was the only thing I couldn’t simulate via PICsim, and I was getting my keypresses debounced and properly received on the host side, so it was pretty clear where the problem lay…
When I think about how the Apollo guidance computers really weren’t a whole lot more powerful than that PIC, it’s amazing they got us to the moon. The Apollo computers had 32K words of program memory and 2K words of RAM and ran at 2Mhz. I.e., twice the clock rate and four times the memory of that PIC chip, but had to get a spacecraft to the moon and back in that tiny amount of memory and CPU horsepower. Talk about some heroic programming.
OK, Badtux, so why don’t you start making TV remotes for old geezers, because the guys who make the dozen or so remotes I have tried to get one my Mother can use comfortably all have a major problem with going to repeat too quickly. The mushy ones with back-lighting are nice, but they required a lot of pressure to work, and the small button ones ‘stutter’.
The market is getting bigger all the time, and the remotes are getting more complex and harder to use.
There should also be a way to increase the size of the channel display numbers on the TVs themselves. With all of the options on the menus of my Mother’s HD TV, she is stuck with dinky little numbers that she can’t read when she is far enough away to watch the entire screen comfortably.
Sorry about that, but a little programming on the processor would take care of the problem, and give people one less thing to complain about.
You know that TV’s are coming out now with Android embadded? You just need a kb & mouse (or some other input devices, heck some even have a capacitive touch display). 😉
Like these:
32″ Agora Smart LED TV (HD) – Featuring Android ICS, USB & Wi-Fi
42″ Agora Smart 3D LED TV (Full HD) – World’s first Android 4.2 Smart TV Series!
A friend got one and loves it! Get’s to stream vid’s from the ‘net and watches at HQ & no damned ad’s! 😆
Debouncing is an interesting subject. I could simulate my PIC in real time and had actual observed waveforms from pressing the physical buttons to feed into it, so I could get to see what came out on the other side of the debounce algorithm in real time. It turns out debouncing is *not* all that hard, it’s just a matter of hysteresis. I seem to recall I had two counters. The first was the delay between the signal switching state and actually accepting the change of state. The signal state delay counter got decremented each time through the loop and reset when the signal changed state, when it hit 0 that is the value I accepted. The second was the delay between accepting a value (and poking it over into the RS232 transmit register), and starting to repeat. So anyhow, the first counter too short made the button stutter, the first counter too long made it feel unresponsive. The second counter too short caused repeats when I didn’t want repeats, the second counter too long caused frustration waiting for the buttons to repeat and made it seem faster to just keep hitting the button multiple times. Oh yeah, the third counter. That was the counter that controlled the repeat rate. If it repeated too fast it was uncontrollable, if it repeated too slow it was frustrating. Anyhow, I had some general criteria I’d gathered somewhere on how much each delay should be, but I found that the actual hardware required me to adjust the counter values I’d gotten from a reference work because the signals coming in on the input pins didn’t respond exactly like the book said it did (I think because they had an RC circuit there to prevent voltage spikes, which also had the side effect of turning bounce spikes into a declining sine wave). So it goes.
Kryten, she could connect to the ‘Net if she wanted to with an Ethernet cable to a router, but those settings only work with the ‘Net, and don’t control what is coming in on her cable connection which is treated as a separate function. It is frustrating that there is no way to use the built-in menu system to increase the text size for channel numbers or the closed captioning. I would get her a larger set, but her house is wall-to-wall furniture.
I guess I don’t understand why they would have repeat on anything except the up-down keys for channel changing and volume control. If you don’t immediately release a number key you will end up with about 4 copies across the screen. They are too sensitive, and repeat too quickly. This may be great from teenagers, but it’s frustrating for seniors.
Bryan, it’s all about what was specified on the contract for the firmware. Taiwanese contractors are experts at finding loopholes to deliver crapware. My front panel firmware was supposed to be done by a Taiwanese subcontractor for our case manufacturer (who was in Taiwan) but the result, while meeting the specifications of the case manufacturer, did not actually work correctly. The subcontractor threw up his hands and said “what you’re asking for is impossible! I delivered what I was contracted to deliver anyhow, so there!” at which point I sat down, divided up clock cycles to verify that there were enough clocks to do everything, and after one more attempt to explain what needed to be done and how to do it (four state machines doing cooperative multitasking on a cycle count) that was met with more of the same, did it myself.
That was back during the Valley’s craze for “fabless chip companies” and “hardware-less hardware companies”. It turns out that if you don’t have hardware engineers on staff you aren’t a hardware company. Funny how that works, eh?
Oh, yes, I remember that from the days of the early PC clones, when only certain boards had boot PROMs that actually worked consistently, while others had PROMs that just sort of worked most of the time, but would fail if you actually tried to run anything other than the operating system. It took a long time before you could get consistency and buy whatever was currently available to build a machine.
If you don’t have the expertise to write the specs, you won’t get what you need, and the only way you get that expertise is by being able to do it yourself.
And if you have the expertise to do it yourself, why contract it out? But for some reason companies never figure that out. Well, actually, most startups here in the Silicon Valley have now figured that out, but only after many, many failed projects and failed startups…
There was an attitude for a long time in the business that you could just ‘find someone’ to provide a vital part of your product or program, rather than creating it yourself so you knew it was going to work. I seem to remember that ‘it will be faster and get the product out the door sooner’ was often heard. Funny how it never seemed to work that way.
Even when you worked in teams on a project it was a major PITA keeping people to the specs so that every team was receiving the input they expected, and produced the output that the next team required.
Popped back in tonight, and I really wanted to thank you for your kind words, Bryan. Appreciate the thought very much. I’m in the same boat on the Raspberry Pi stuff, I’m preoccupied with other things, too. I looked it up a while back, got some info off the net, and there it sits on my desk under a pile of other things that take priority. Sigh…
And Kryten, as much as I admire the writer at Juanita Jean’s, pink cowboy boots may not exactly be my style. 🙂 And yes, I do get your humor, that “honest” part was a bit of my own. Thanks for the Red Dwarf clip, it was worth the trip! Yes, a little light relief comes in handy.
As I need some dry days to finish several of the things I need to do before I can start experimenting, it is definitely going to be a while before I start working with the Pi.
Hey all. 🙂 Been away a few days, in Melbourne. Very busy and still getting over the last of this flu. Been freezing here! Even midday temp’s below 3C (was 0 a couple days ago). And windchill has made it a lot colder.
No worries Juanita. 😀 I figured you understand me somewhat by now. Just thought I’d take the opportunity to put things in perspective. I had a suspicion the pink boots weren’t gonna be on the shopping list! 😉 😆
I love Red Dwarf (well, the early series. the past couple have been… not up to the standard. Just seem to have been produced to capitalist on the success, ya know? Plus, when they started, they had an effects budget of about $500! Which made it even funnier! 😀 (and they had to get pretty creative). Now, the seem to rely more on money to solve effects issues, and less creativity. And it shows. Oh well… That’s the way it goes sadly. *shrug*
Here’s the second half of that sketch, if you are interested. 😀
Smee heee – Red Dwarf – BBC comedy
Well Bryan, spent a couple days with the guys in Melb. I really wasn’t a very happy camper. I tested a lot of products, and for the most part… they are absolute garbage! Look pretty, spec’s on paper are impressive… and that’s about it! I showed them what the problems were, and asked if they really wanted to sell a system with them in it as they could guarantee heaps of support calls and RMA’s! And some of the worst were big name brands (ASUS for one, Corsair for another!) Then I read the ASUS Warranty (and this is for a top of the line, expensive, Motherboard) and you would swear the warranty was written by M$! If you get a faulty product, even DOA, you have to ship it back at your expense PLUS some legal/admin fee, and wait (an unspecified time) for them to eval the board and *Maybe* send you a replacement, eventually. Maybe!
I told them I’ve lost interest. This is why I got out of this crappy retail game in the first place. You get screwed by both sides, suppliers and customers! Anyway… they twisted my arm (they are a nice family and staff, otherwise I’d have called it quits, plus they are paying me), so I’ll have one more go at it. But this is absolutely the last. It shouldn’t be this crazy. *shrug*
One of the problems is Intel. They have a really nice CPU in the new Haswell chip (i7-4770K) at least it would be if they got rid of their garbage GPU (Graphics processor) that takes up half the chip and power! And you can’t disable it, that would have been at least something! I know why they didn’t, because it would have absolutely killed their high-end 6-core crappy $1,100 CPU for a measly $350!! Heck, I managed to get it clocked to 5GHz, and it ran most benchmarks better than the i7 3970X! 😆 Imagine without the burden of the GPU, some extra cache… maybe a couple extra cores… I am sure they will replace the current old Sandy Bridge-E CPU’s with ones based on the new Haswell cores, and charge accordingly! And they have disabled some featured in the ‘K’ series4770 (this is the one with the unlocked clock/pwr so they can be overclocked. The others can’t). Mostly to do with Visualization and management (VT-d, Vpro, TSX-NI). So you HAVE to decide if you want to O’C & game, or do Visualization & remote management. (You can still do that with the ‘K”, but it’s all s/w and you loose out on useful technology that’s been disabled in the micro-code). But since it is in the micro-code, maybe someone will come up with a ‘patch’ to fix that. 😉 Wouldn’t be the first time. 😀
Meeeeh! I’ve always hated the way Intel does business, and now AMD seem to be trying to follow suit. Good luck with that!!
Ahh well… back to testing more h/w!
Ya know… this used to be fun… once.
Oh! I meant to mention (because I’m sure nobody here knows, maybe except Badtx)…
The one technology they disabled in the ‘K’ chips proves to me they are really afraid that people will buy these for $350 rather than the $1100 old fuddies! 😉
TSX-NI (Transactional Synchronization Extensions New Instructions) are a set of instructions focused on multi-threaded performance scaling. It essentially helps make parallel operations more efficient and improves control of locks in software.
It’s only been disabled in the ‘K’ model that can be O’C’d. If that had been enabled, some of the areas where the 3970X still has an advantage (multi-threaded op’s) would all but disappear with the 4770K @ 5GHz! Since the locked versions have it, it was disabled on purpose, and the only legitimate reason is because it made their expensive CPU’s look bad. *shrug*
ASUS is a weird company. Some of their stuff is great, but then they’ll sandbag you with a crap board or device. I spent a lot time looking at reviews before I decided to use the ASRock instead of the ASUS I looked at originally. The ASRock was cheaper and didn’t look at good on the specs, but the reviews were all positive. There were a few too many “it was fantastic after I got it to work” reviews for the ASUS. I seem to remember that getting the right memory was very critical for the ASUS boards among the reviews.
Yes, they all protect their cash cows from internal competition, even if it means limiting newer products. It’s all about maximizing profits, and it’s only going to get worse with AMD floundering.
Funny about ASRock! Now that they are independent (no longer an ASUS subsidiary), their game has lifted considerably. 🙂 Their recent products (with one horrifying exception!) are quite good and very well priced. 🙂 I’m looking at three ASRock boards. The ASRock Z87 OC FORMULA, the Z87 Extreme9/AC, and the ASRock Fatal1ty Z87 Professional board in the Z87 (Haswell LGA1150 series). Also a couple of X79 LGA 2011 boards, and Z77 LGA1150 boards. And that is one of the problems!! There are too many choices. Intel have three series currently and they all have good/bad features etc, and most of the manufacturers have several boards out for each series. I’m evaluating ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte, MSI, EVGA, and a board from ECS (as well as a couple Intel reference boards). Then, I have to test RAM from FIVE companies… It’s really becoming no fun at all!
ASUS QA sucks, it always has. I’ve had three ASUS Maximus VI Extreme boards, and each gives me different results and issues. And ASUS still tell *half-truth’s*. Like on that board, they stare they have 5 PCIe x16 slots. But the fact is, only ONE will work with 16 lanes. If you have two or more cards, the others will all be x8 lanes (so essentially unidirectional, rather than bi-directional). ASRock do make boards with 2 x16 slots, so if you have two vid cards in SLI (Nvidia) or Xfire (AMD), they will both run at full speed (that was a big problem with previous boards with 1 x16 and 1 x8 slot, the cards were not synced properly and it had to be dealt with in the software (drivers) which more often then not, would glitch now and then). 🙂
Yeah, ASUS still have RAM compatibility problems, though they have eased them somewhat with their new T-Topology design between the CPU & DIMM’s. But their rated spec’s generally work properly (on the Haswell CPU’s at least) with only two sticks rather than 4, and 2 or 4GB sticks, not 8GB (at the higher frequencies). Part of the problem is the RAM makers. They get cute with the timings or volt’s to make them look good on paper. *shrug*
Ah well… I’ll have a lengthy review for my blog… assuming I ever get time to finish it!
ASRock had some RAM problems with my board, but they were proactive about them, and gave useful information about how to avoid them. I followed their advice and things just worked. As long as the manufacturer acknowledges possible problems and provides solutions, I don’t mind. It’s the guys who deny the existence of a problem until there is court case that really pisses me off.
It is so simple to just admit something is off, like admitting that any one of 5 slots can be an x16 slot, but only one can be used as an x16 slot at a time. If you only need one x16 slot that is a feature, but if you need two, it is a bug. The first rule in marketing should be ‘Don’t piss off your customers’, but too many hardware companies don’t understand that.
Nothing worth doing can be done quickly outside of combat, so take it as it comes. 😉