Convenience über alles!...

[rbowman]

On 06/06/2022 04:51 AM, Don Y wrote:

On 6/5/2022 8:30 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 06/05/2022 05:54 PM, Don Y wrote:

Yup. Most jokes were ethnic, in nature. And, universally entertaining
(even if your ethnicity was the brunt of the joke -- as you could identify
with the stereotype being highlighted!)

The only real enmity I remember were some Greek and Armenian friends who
really hated Turks. Moot point since there were no Turks.

East, there were small, highly localized clusters of individual ethnic
backgrounds. This street would be irish, two blocks over, italian.
And, local \"festivals\" applicable to each region. (Plus the various
_____ Political Clubs)

That applied to churches too, the Irish church, the French church, etc.
I miss the North Boston festivals. You\'re not going to find scungilli
salad around here. For that matter I doubt you could find a canolli.
Even the vanilla offerings of Johnny Carino\'s only lasted about three
years.

Unless they are of the same ethnicity as your upbringing. In which case,
they are invariably a disappointment in their \"blandness\" (americanization)

Same as the Indian place Geraldo\'s, run by an actual Mexican, went out
of business although Cafe Rio lives on.

It\'s hard to introduce others to more authentic meals as the flavors
are usually too \"foreign\" for their palates. E.g., I\'ll prepare
butterflied /kielbasa/ cooked over a grill and served on a Kaiser roll
and find it better received than *boiled*. And, won\'t even bother
with /golobki/. Likewise, won\'t waste my time preparing /Scacciata
Siciliana/ or /cavatelli/ made from chestnut flour as the effort would
be lost on most palates.

I suppose you could grill kielbasa but it never occurred to me. We
always boiled it. I was going to check but I assume the markets around
here carry it although you can\'t get too exotic. Blutwurst or boudin
rouge is something I haven\'t seen in a long time.

I should make a batch of golumki.At least I know I can find the makings.
Dolmadakia ain\'t going to happen.

> Stick to hot dogs and pizza! <frown>

At least I can get manakish until the nice ladies running the food truck
starve. They\'re trying to start a fixed restaurant with another group
that does kebabs and falafel. That tends to be the kiss of death. Food
trucks have drawbacks particularly in Montana\'s climate but you\'re not
paying rent and utilities 365 days a year either.

Note that, unlike poker where you have a *single* hand that
plays against others, here you have a choice of how you will
arrange your cards into TWO hands -- given that you need to
beat *both* hands of the banker!

After you mentioned it I watched a video. The dealer was pretty but it
looked too complex for me. A friend tried to teach me cribbage but she
eventually gave up. Lack of interest more than anything else.

Or, in the case of the nooks, implicit links that provide access to
every word\'s definition, on the fly.

I have a taste for Schwedenkrimi and a lot of it gets translated to
German before it makes it to English if ever. Crime novels don\'t employ
an extensive vocabulary but every now and then I run into a word I\'m not
familiar with and the instant definition is easier than digging out a
dictionary.

I\'ve since realized that folks want (need!) the (customer) *support* that
goes with the chair; we\'re not going to give them that. And, I imagine a
lot of that is factored into the price of the chair and options -- as a
\"sale\" often involves a lot of the vendor\'s time/labor (getting user
measurements, configuring options, submitting claim to insurer, etc.).
It\'s not like buying a process control system or a TV.

No, it\'s not like buying a recliner. You\'re going to be in the thing for
12 or more hours a day so it better be right.

A bit of common (engineering) sense enabled me to sort out an easier
way to replace the batteries when failed:
- open main breaker (this isolates the DEAD batteries from the chair)
- connect chair to charger (I think this provides ~8A to the chair
albeit through flimsy \"charger\" wiring)
- sever the \"inhibit\" signal presented by the charger (intended to
ensure you can\'t operate any of the mechanisms while the charger
is connected; you can do this easily via a special little adapter
that provides continuity for power and gnd from the charger but
reroutes the inhibit signal)
- taking care NOT to engage the drive wheels, activate the elevator
(with no load on the seat!)
Why isn\'t this codified in the service manual (which is very detailed)?
Instead, one has to keep track of the special tool that is only
occasionally used to manually elevate the seat! (idiots)

Too easy. The same friend has a UPS for his bed. It sounds weird until
you realize if the lights go out he\'s stuck in whatever position he\'s in
for the duration.

> Maybe the fasteners... <grin>

I\'m surprised they don\'t have a head pattern designed to keep meddlers
out. When I went to replace the thermoswitch on a Mr. Coffee I found the
screws were Tri-Wings. I suppose the American thing to do is buy a new
$25 coffee pot when a $4 part fails but I\'m stubborn. One more set of
bits added to my collection.

Thankfully, at least they were reasonably consistent in their choice
of fasteners so the number of tools required is few.

No fun. When Harley went to Torx they used a #25 on the chain inspection
plate and a #27 on the clutch derby. A lot of Torx sets didn\'t include a
#27 and using the #25 almost works until it strips the head out.

Then there is the mixture of metric and SAE to keep you on your toes.

But, if you are honest with yourself, you KNOW that having 10 times the
desk space would just result in ten times the clutter! Hence the appeal
of an old school -- you can simply move away from a project and start fresh
with a \"virgin\" work area. In a seemingly limitless way (for small values
of limitless)

Yeah, I always did have a problem with my grade school report cards with
the \'keeps desk neat\' check. \'keeps busy at worthwhile activities\' was
another problem. That one was because my definition of worthwhile and a
sixth grade teacher\'s weren\'t in the same universe.

All of our domestic water is sourced from wells. *My* drinking water comes
from a well ~100 yards from here (technically, it feeds the distribution
network but you can safely assume that the majority of the water coming
from my tap came from that well!).

It gives you pause when you\'re spraying herbicide on weeds. Or, watching a
neighbor drain a pool.

The city water is all wells. I\'m out in the country on a private well
but they\'re all relatively shallow. I\'m not a fan of string trimmers so
I\'m liberal with the Spectracide but stay away from the pump house. I
prefer diquat to glyphosate as slightly less toxic.

I\'m as guilty as anyone. Old motor oil is great for keeping the dust
down in a gravel driveway.

As a kid, motor oil either was burned in the tempering oven where my
dad worked or poured into the storm drains -- to become someone else\'s
problem.

We lived on a creek. The septic system of most houses along the creek
was very simple. You learned to swim with your mouth shut. Compared to
what the factories were pumping into the creeks and river that was nothing.

There was one swimming hole downstream for a dye works. When the whistle
blew you got out of the water because they were getting ready to dump
the dye vats. Regardless of Pete Seeger\'s overall politics he did a lot
to promote cleaning up the Hudson. By 2004 when I was back in the area
Albany had a very pleasant riverside park something that would have been
a joke in the \'60s.

I\'m convinced water will be the biggest problem that we face (as a nation
and as a people) going forward. Our abuse of it is largely ingrained.

I think it was three years ago when I first crossed the new bridge at
Hoover Dam. I\'ve lost track of the years with covid. I stopped and
played tourist, admiring the spillway that last saw water in the Reagan
administration. Even then LV was getting ready to dig deeper to keep the
water flowing. Now they seem to be literally finding out where the
bodies were buried.

More convenience uber alles to say nothing of stupidity. Things like
retiring, moving from Michigan to Phoenix, and wanting a lawn just like
back home. For that matter growing cotton under irrigation in Arizona
while they\'re turning cotton fields in the Mississippi Delta into
catfish farms. \'Cadillac Desert\' is very dated and could use a new,
revised edition.

Maybe it\'s time to reread \'The Milagro Beanfield War\' too.

 

[rbowman]

On 06/06/2022 10:46 AM, bitrex wrote:

On 6/3/2022 3:50 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jun 2022 12:04:13 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, June 3, 2022 at 10:56:59 AM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jun 2022 09:53:43 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:

On 6/2/2022 2:20 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 1 Jun 2022 17:24:08 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:

On 5/31/2022 10:40 PM, rbowman wrote:

\"There is no birthright to transportation, other than the
right to
walk.\"

Then again, nobody ASKED to be born into a country called the
USA that
was designed around the automobile and had much of its public
transportation infrastructure dismantled in favor a long time
ago.

No. The USA was \"designed around\" horses and mules and canoes and
sailing ships and wagons. People like to move themselves and
their
stuff around. If anything designed our country, it was the
collective
personal preferences.

The roads in many areas of Boston tend to be laid out about
where the
carts went, there doesn\'t seem to be a lot of design to it though.

When you start with a town square that really is an irregular
pentagon
things go to hell in a hurry. Then you have to remember the Back
Bay
really was a bay and the Fens a tidal marsh. Even the Fens got
redone
when they dammed the Charles and it went from brackish to fresh
water.

It adds charm. I enjoyed walking around the town when I had work
in the
area. \'Walking is the operant word. I\'d drive down from NH
Sunday night
and park the car, only retrieving it to drive home Friday
afternoon.


The \"charm\" also then tends to mean nobody wants anything built
in or
near their charming neighborhood.

Housing in San Francisco and Boston proper is a terrible value
for what
you get, this $448/month unit in Tokyo (also some of the most
expensive
real estate in the world) is fantastic for the rent.

https://youtu.be/ooh1aoEJKZc?t=732


You\'d be hard-pressed to find anything as nice within the Boston
city
limits for three times the price.

People who want to live in SF or Boston bid up the rents. They
obviously think it\'s worth it.

Google grossly over-pays them anyhow. Property values escalate within
walking distance of the google bus stops.


Yeah I will agree I\'ve only rarely met anyone in their 20s or 30s
paying
several thousand a month in rent who seemed like they had a skillset
worth whatever their Boston employer was paying them to be able to
afford that.
Google and Apple and Facebook and those guys pay big bucks to bright
kids. And the kids can get a tiny condo or apartment to sleep in and
spend a lot of time outside.

$200K income, $400K for a couple, and $2-3K per month for rent can be
fun.

One of the reasons the university system in the US has become such a
racket and they can charge anything is that if you\'re rich, and you\'re
white, that degree is still a pretty reliable ticket to a white-collar
job. Someone will almost surely hire you eventually in a way that a
person without the credentials would not be even if they had the same
skillset.
This is interesting and very well researched:

https://tinyurl.com/2p8sc2xp

On conclusion is that going to Harvard is not much better than going
to some cheap state college.

A lot depends on the student body because the school tailors its
curriculum for them. Most state schools are full of people with no
respect for scholarship and they\'re there to party and get their
ticket punched. And I can\'t believe the number of people in that
relatively mature age group who participate in organized cheating in
some way- seems very childish to me- oh well the government has to
get its applicants from somewhere. Even a decent community college is
better than that.


His point is the genes dominate. Harvard is very selective. Harvard
grads are good mostly because the entering freshmen were good.

Good book. Lots of interesting stuff.

Jeez, you think the Ivy League is some kind of pure meritocracy? Get real..

I worked for a company where the owner\'s son was a Harvard Business
School graduate. His first triumph in the real world was driving a
successful Boston runners\' store into the ground. Needing a new victim
he went t work for his father and managed that one to a chapter 11. Not
impressed.

 

[rbowman]

On 06/06/2022 07:01 PM, bitrex wrote:

On 6/6/2022 8:08 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Jun 2022 16:17:07 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 6/3/2022 5:54 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/06/2022 22:08, bitrex wrote:
On 6/1/2022 4:49 PM, Martin Brown wrote:

Evidence for this? They had a false dawn around 1910 but then were
outpaced at every turn by the internal combustion engine. Until the
advent of modern Nd magnetic materials and lithium batteries they
were always in very real trouble for power to weight ratio.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g15378765/worth-the-watt-a-brief-history-of-the-electric-car-1830-to-present/



Battery and motor technology were just not really up to it until
comparatively recently. UK had daily milk delivery vehicles powered
by lead acid cells when I was young but that was about it as far as
electric vehicles went. (advantage of nearly silent operation)

Trams were OK because they could avoid carrying the battery weight.

Wow, were the milk trucks run on battery so they wouldn\'t disturb
residents early in the morning?

Got it in one. They didn\'t have to be very quick either since it is
entirely short bursts of stop start driving. The weight of the
batteries
was huge though. The odd one would have hand brake failure on a hill
and
run away down it destroying whatever it happened to hit at the bottom.

They were not quite silent either since the bottles would make chink
chink noises rattling around in their metal frame carriers.

That\'s different than how things are in the US where all service
vehicles that come thru your neighborhood early in the morning seem to
try to make as much noise as they can unless your neighborhood\'s
median income is 100 grand or over

Par for the course these days. Our bin men don\'t get to my village
until
about lunchtime so it isn\'t a problem for me.


My girlfriend used to live down the street from a major hospital. There
was a reason the rent was a bit low for the area I guess..

My office is three blocks from SF General (ie Zuckerberg) Hospital,
the main trauma center in town. So I get all the ambulances and fire
trucks outside my window, and for some reason packs of idiots doing
wheelies on motorcycles. Maybe those are related somehow.

The hospital campus in Providence RI takes up about a quarter of the
city proper, the complex is at the lower left of this pic:

https://imgur.com/a/iK9MhAJ

So \"down the street\" is a bit relative as in that town just about
everything is about three blocks from everything else. She could sleep
right through the sirens and car stereos at night, I\'ve spent most of my
life living in rural-ish suburbs so never really got used to it.

I lived relative close to a firehouse and a railway track. The hotel at
the end of the block burned down one night and I slept through the whole
thing. The freight trains weren\'t a problem either. One night there was
an earthquake and I did wake up for that. Somewhere it the deep recesses
of my brain something was saying \'there isn\'t supposed to be a train at
this time.\'

Inpatient hospital rooms IME are lousy places to sleep, beeping machines
and nurses coming in and out every 20 min to check this or that. Anyone
resting for very long in there is likely receiving sleeping pills.
Probably helps convince people to move on out who don\'t really need to
be there.

The 3AM check on your vitals is annoying particularly when you\'re wired
to an oximeter, heart rate monitor, and other shiny equipment that would
presumably tell them if you were dead.

OTOH I\'ve rarely had food that was that bad in a hospital in New
England, breakfast is usually the best.

I spent some time in a rehab facility and the food was good but hardly
what I eat at home. Oatmeal with a couple tablespoons of brown sugar,
French toast with syrup, pancakes with more syrup, meals with plenty of
pasta or other starches, snacks like mini-muffins, ice cream, or granola
bars. Damn, I miss those snacks delivered to my room...

I was only in the hospital proper for four days but they were sort of
heavy on sugar and starches too.

I didn\'t gain weight but I didn\'t lose any either.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Tuesday, June 7, 2022 at 7:07:50 AM UTC+2, rbowman wrote:

On 06/06/2022 10:46 AM, bitrex wrote:
On 6/3/2022 3:50 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jun 2022 12:04:13 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Friday, June 3, 2022 at 10:56:59 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jun 2022 09:53:43 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:
On 6/2/2022 2:20 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 1 Jun 2022 17:24:08 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:
On 5/31/2022 10:40 PM, rbowman wrote:

<snip>

His point is the genes dominate. Harvard is very selective. Harvard
grads are good mostly because the entering freshmen were good.

Good book. Lots of interesting stuff.

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

Jeez, you think the Ivy League is some kind of pure meritocracy? Get real..


I worked for a company where the owner\'s son was a Harvard Business
School graduate. His first triumph in the real world was driving a
successful Boston runners\' store into the ground. Needing a new victim
he went t work for his father and managed that one to a chapter 11. Not
impressed.

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.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Don Y]

On 6/6/2022 8:51 PM, rbowman wrote:

On 06/06/2022 04:51 AM, Don Y wrote:
On 6/5/2022 8:30 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 06/05/2022 05:54 PM, Don Y wrote:

Yup. Most jokes were ethnic, in nature. And, universally entertaining
(even if your ethnicity was the brunt of the joke -- as you could identify
with the stereotype being highlighted!)

The only real enmity I remember were some Greek and Armenian friends who really
hated Turks. Moot point since there were no Turks.

\"Heated arguments\" were a fact of life. But, there was never any
outright animosity/grudges. You\'d be red-faced, shouting at each other
and sharing a meal/drink a few moments later.

In many ways, it was a simpler form of interaction.

East, there were small, highly localized clusters of individual ethnic
backgrounds. This street would be irish, two blocks over, italian.
And, local \"festivals\" applicable to each region. (Plus the various
_____ Political Clubs)

That applied to churches too, the Irish church, the French church, etc.

Yup. Mass said in Italian/Polish/etc. (with the required bits of Latin
/sotto voce/)

> I miss the North Boston festivals.

These were common in most Italian neighborhoods. Often, a statue of some
patron saint of the local church would be hauled out and paraded down the
street to start a three day \"festival\". Always looked tacky to see money
pinned/taped to the statue! But, I guess any way the church could bring
in a few bucks was game!

You\'re not going to find scungilli salad around
here. For that matter I doubt you could find a canolli. Even the vanilla
offerings of Johnny Carino\'s only lasted about three years.

Part of it is the lack of vendors, but, also, lack of market.
Canolli shells can last for a while -- esp here, where it is nice and dry.
But, not indefinitely. Unless someone comes along and BUYS them, they
are wasted.

I always found it amusing to see *stuffed* cannola on display as you\'d
never do that until the sale was made! (If you have to put one in the
display case as a *prop*, you\'ve got the wrong customers!)

From time to time, I make them (and inevitably burn myself on the oil).
But, my other half *inhales* them -- and then bitches about what *I*
am doing to her weight (funny, *I* don\'t recall twisting her arm!).

[Of course, you can\'t win...]

Unless they are of the same ethnicity as your upbringing. In which case,
they are invariably a disappointment in their \"blandness\" (americanization)

Same as the Indian place Geraldo\'s, run by an actual Mexican, went out of
business although Cafe Rio lives on.

Most of the ethnic restaurants, here, are run by mexican. And damn near
*all* have Mexican cooks! (likely the price of labor). There\'s just
some weird disconnect, there...

It\'s hard to introduce others to more authentic meals as the flavors
are usually too \"foreign\" for their palates. E.g., I\'ll prepare
butterflied /kielbasa/ cooked over a grill and served on a Kaiser roll
and find it better received than *boiled*. And, won\'t even bother
with /golobki/. Likewise, won\'t waste my time preparing /Scacciata
Siciliana/ or /cavatelli/ made from chestnut flour as the effort would
be lost on most palates.

I suppose you could grill kielbasa but it never occurred to me. We always
boiled it.

Ditto.

Now, imagine all of that \"stuff\" (grease, spice) that would end up floating
on the water never gets a chance to leave the meal. It tastes completely
different.

And, a 4-5 inch piece makes an ideal sandwich (on a bulky roll).

I was going to check but I assume the markets around here carry it
although you can\'t get too exotic. Blutwurst or boudin rouge is something I
haven\'t seen in a long time.

Chicago has a large polish/lithuanian population so relatively easy
to find it in a ma&pa market. I\'ve not even looked for it, here, as
my other half would turn her nose up at it (and buying a whole kielbasa
for one person means lots of \"repeat\" meals <frown>)

I should make a batch of golumki.At least I know I can find the makings.
Dolmadakia ain\'t going to happen.

I most miss *good* bagels (instead of these fluffy \"life savers\").
And /Siciliano Pepato/. And, a certain type of biscotti that I\'ve
been unable to find (or recreate!), here.

Stick to hot dogs and pizza! <frown

At least I can get manakish until the nice ladies running the food truck
starve. They\'re trying to start a fixed restaurant with another group that does
kebabs and falafel. That tends to be the kiss of death. Food trucks have
drawbacks particularly in Montana\'s climate but you\'re not paying rent and
utilities 365 days a year either.

Yup. All the whining about restaurants going out of business due to covid...
c\'mon, restaurants ALWAYS go out of business! (I think it\'s 1 in 4) So,
what\'s the big deal? Maybe we don\'t need quite as many \"food options\"
esp when most of them are at or below par...

Here, it is not uncommon to see \"a lady\" with a grease-stained, brown grocery
bag standing outside a store hawking tamales. Or burritos. I\'m sure they\'re
\"authentic\"... but wonder about *how* they were made!

Note that, unlike poker where you have a *single* hand that
plays against others, here you have a choice of how you will
arrange your cards into TWO hands -- given that you need to
beat *both* hands of the banker!

After you mentioned it I watched a video. The dealer was pretty but it looked
too complex for me. A friend tried to teach me cribbage but she eventually gave
up. Lack of interest more than anything else.

One advantage that the game has is there are lots of pushes. So, you
can play for a long time without going through your bankroll.

My \"interest\" was solely in acquiring enough knowledge of the games,
the probabilities involved and the \"right\" strategy to codify in an
algorithm. I *design* gaming devices; I don\'t *play* them! :>

Or, in the case of the nooks, implicit links that provide access to
every word\'s definition, on the fly.

I have a taste for Schwedenkrimi and a lot of it gets translated to German
before it makes it to English if ever. Crime novels don\'t employ an extensive
vocabulary but every now and then I run into a word I\'m not familiar with and
the instant definition is easier than digging out a dictionary.

I would find it most useful for medical texts. You can\'t really fault folks
for using the \"natural\" vocabulary for their field. But, it does make it
harder for \"outsiders\" to consume!

I\'ve since realized that folks want (need!) the (customer) *support* that
goes with the chair; we\'re not going to give them that. And, I imagine a
lot of that is factored into the price of the chair and options -- as a
\"sale\" often involves a lot of the vendor\'s time/labor (getting user
measurements, configuring options, submitting claim to insurer, etc.).
It\'s not like buying a process control system or a TV.

No, it\'s not like buying a recliner. You\'re going to be in the thing for 12 or
more hours a day so it better be right.

And, there\'s a fair bit that \"experience\" can bring to the table for a
knowledgeable salesman. E.g., knowing how to inflate a ROHO makes
a huge difference in comfort levels AND how your posture in the chair.
I\'m too tall for mine so often have to run with the legrests elevated
(so they don\'t \"bottom out\"). This isn\'t particularly comfortable.
And, leaves me feeling vulnerable (as my legs aren\'t in a convenient
place to come to my aid if the chair tips/falls as I cross a curb)

A bit of common (engineering) sense enabled me to sort out an easier
way to replace the batteries when failed:
- open main breaker (this isolates the DEAD batteries from the chair)
- connect chair to charger (I think this provides ~8A to the chair
albeit through flimsy \"charger\" wiring)
- sever the \"inhibit\" signal presented by the charger (intended to
ensure you can\'t operate any of the mechanisms while the charger
is connected; you can do this easily via a special little adapter
that provides continuity for power and gnd from the charger but
reroutes the inhibit signal)
- taking care NOT to engage the drive wheels, activate the elevator
(with no load on the seat!)
Why isn\'t this codified in the service manual (which is very detailed)?
Instead, one has to keep track of the special tool that is only
occasionally used to manually elevate the seat! (idiots)

Too easy. The same friend has a UPS for his bed. It sounds weird until you
realize if the lights go out he\'s stuck in whatever position he\'s in for the
duration.

Yup. A deaf couple had a battery (not UPS) to backup their doorbell/phone
annunciators. Imagine being asleep and not knowing if the doorbell or
phone has rung, during an outage.

Maybe the fasteners... <grin

I\'m surprised they don\'t have a head pattern designed to keep meddlers out.

No. The load-bearing screws are all 5mm hex cap screws with a few smaller
ones, where size constraints dictate. You can service the chair with just
a few hex wrenches, no screwdrivers, etc. (IIRC, you may need an open-end
wrench for the connections to the batteries)

When I went to replace the thermoswitch on a Mr. Coffee I found the screws were
Tri-Wings. I suppose the American thing to do is buy a new $25 coffee pot when
a $4 part fails but I\'m stubborn. One more set of bits added to my collection.

Yup. One of the few things HF is good for -- disposable, oddball \"security\"
bits!

Thankfully, at least they were reasonably consistent in their choice
of fasteners so the number of tools required is few.

No fun. When Harley went to Torx they used a #25 on the chain inspection plate
and a #27 on the clutch derby. A lot of Torx sets didn\'t include a #27 and
using the #25 almost works until it strips the head out.

Then there is the mixture of metric and SAE to keep you on your toes.

Yeah. Fun when you have 1/2\" and 12 or 13mm hardware on the same device
(\"Why doesn\'t this fit properly?\")

But, if you are honest with yourself, you KNOW that having 10 times the
desk space would just result in ten times the clutter! Hence the appeal
of an old school -- you can simply move away from a project and start fresh
with a \"virgin\" work area. In a seemingly limitless way (for small values
of limitless)

Yeah, I always did have a problem with my grade school report cards with the
\'keeps desk neat\' check. \'keeps busy at worthwhile activities\' was another
problem. That one was because my definition of worthwhile and a sixth grade
teacher\'s weren\'t in the same universe.

Mine was penmanship. <shrug> I wonder what they\'d have thought had
they foreknowledge of how much TYPING would replace writing?

All of our domestic water is sourced from wells. *My* drinking water comes
from a well ~100 yards from here (technically, it feeds the distribution
network but you can safely assume that the majority of the water coming
from my tap came from that well!).

It gives you pause when you\'re spraying herbicide on weeds. Or, watching a
neighbor drain a pool.

The city water is all wells. I\'m out in the country on a private well but
they\'re all relatively shallow. I\'m not a fan of string trimmers so I\'m liberal
with the Spectracide but stay away from the pump house. I prefer diquat to
glyphosate as slightly less toxic.

No storm drains, here, so runoff just follows the road to the nearest
wash... and into the soil. You *know* all of the sh*t folks spray
on their lawns is only one rainfall from the water supply!

A neighbor is out spraying her yard at the first sign of anything
\"green\". I casually mention the water supply thinking she MIGHT
have some concern given that she has grandkids. But, hey, if *they*
end up with health problems down the road, *I* won\'t be around to
see!

I\'m convinced water will be the biggest problem that we face (as a nation
and as a people) going forward. Our abuse of it is largely ingrained.

I think it was three years ago when I first crossed the new bridge at Hoover
Dam. I\'ve lost track of the years with covid. I stopped and played tourist,
admiring the spillway that last saw water in the Reagan administration. Even
then LV was getting ready to dig deeper to keep the water flowing. Now they
seem to be literally finding out where the bodies were buried.

More convenience uber alles to say nothing of stupidity. Things like retiring,
moving from Michigan to Phoenix, and wanting a lawn just like back home. For
that matter growing cotton

, or pecans,

under irrigation in Arizona while they\'re turning
cotton fields in the Mississippi Delta into catfish farms. \'Cadillac Desert\' is
very dated and could use a new, revised edition.

Maybe it\'s time to reread \'The Milagro Beanfield War\' too.

I suspect folks in other parts of the country will find the change
(to reduced water consumption) considerably harder to accept. You
never thought anything about \"hosing off\" the driveway. Or leaving
the hose running while you\'re soaping up the car. Or *washing* the
car instead of HAVING it washed (uses less water).

Many years ago, I watched one of the \"facilities\" workers at a clients
place using one of these. Simple design. Easy to operate. Durable.
To me, it was an instant hit and I went out and bought a few.
<https://i1.wp.com/lonn.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/products-dsc_0248-scaled.jpg>

 

[server]

On Mon, 6 Jun 2022 23:22:28 -0600, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On 06/06/2022 07:01 PM, bitrex wrote:
On 6/6/2022 8:08 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Jun 2022 16:17:07 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 6/3/2022 5:54 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
On 01/06/2022 22:08, bitrex wrote:
On 6/1/2022 4:49 PM, Martin Brown wrote:

Evidence for this? They had a false dawn around 1910 but then were
outpaced at every turn by the internal combustion engine. Until the
advent of modern Nd magnetic materials and lithium batteries they
were always in very real trouble for power to weight ratio.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g15378765/worth-the-watt-a-brief-history-of-the-electric-car-1830-to-present/



Battery and motor technology were just not really up to it until
comparatively recently. UK had daily milk delivery vehicles powered
by lead acid cells when I was young but that was about it as far as
electric vehicles went. (advantage of nearly silent operation)

Trams were OK because they could avoid carrying the battery weight.

Wow, were the milk trucks run on battery so they wouldn\'t disturb
residents early in the morning?

Got it in one. They didn\'t have to be very quick either since it is
entirely short bursts of stop start driving. The weight of the
batteries
was huge though. The odd one would have hand brake failure on a hill
and
run away down it destroying whatever it happened to hit at the bottom.

They were not quite silent either since the bottles would make chink
chink noises rattling around in their metal frame carriers.

That\'s different than how things are in the US where all service
vehicles that come thru your neighborhood early in the morning seem to
try to make as much noise as they can unless your neighborhood\'s
median income is 100 grand or over

Par for the course these days. Our bin men don\'t get to my village
until
about lunchtime so it isn\'t a problem for me.


My girlfriend used to live down the street from a major hospital. There
was a reason the rent was a bit low for the area I guess..

My office is three blocks from SF General (ie Zuckerberg) Hospital,
the main trauma center in town. So I get all the ambulances and fire
trucks outside my window, and for some reason packs of idiots doing
wheelies on motorcycles. Maybe those are related somehow.

The hospital campus in Providence RI takes up about a quarter of the
city proper, the complex is at the lower left of this pic:

https://imgur.com/a/iK9MhAJ

So \"down the street\" is a bit relative as in that town just about
everything is about three blocks from everything else. She could sleep
right through the sirens and car stereos at night, I\'ve spent most of my
life living in rural-ish suburbs so never really got used to it.

I lived relative close to a firehouse and a railway track. The hotel at
the end of the block burned down one night and I slept through the whole
thing. The freight trains weren\'t a problem either. One night there was
an earthquake and I did wake up for that. Somewhere it the deep recesses
of my brain something was saying \'there isn\'t supposed to be a train at
this time.\'

Inpatient hospital rooms IME are lousy places to sleep, beeping machines
and nurses coming in and out every 20 min to check this or that. Anyone
resting for very long in there is likely receiving sleeping pills.
Probably helps convince people to move on out who don\'t really need to
be there.

The 3AM check on your vitals is annoying particularly when you\'re wired
to an oximeter, heart rate monitor, and other shiny equipment that would
presumably tell them if you were dead.

OTOH I\'ve rarely had food that was that bad in a hospital in New
England, breakfast is usually the best.

I spent some time in a rehab facility and the food was good but hardly
what I eat at home. Oatmeal with a couple tablespoons of brown sugar,
French toast with syrup, pancakes with more syrup, meals with plenty of
pasta or other starches, snacks like mini-muffins, ice cream, or granola
bars. Damn, I miss those snacks delivered to my room...

Mo just baked an apple-blueberry galette.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/upx43oxtdqmdgyp/AppleGalette.jpg?raw=1

I can cook grits.

I was only in the hospital proper for four days but they were sort of
heavy on sugar and starches too.

I didn\'t gain weight but I didn\'t lose any either.

My big problem was my gay nurse. He was hilarious. I was screaming at
him \"Earl! Stop being funny! I have a broken rib!\"

I complained about the food once and he glared at me and said MY
MOTHER COOKS HERE. Maybe that\'s a hospital joke.

I also complained to a bigwig MD doing rounds. He said that the food
was a cognitive test; if you like it, you have brain damage.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/748uepqwy0dpa8y/Brain_1.jpg?raw=1



--

Anybody can count to one.

- Robert Widlar

 

[rbowman]

On 06/07/2022 07:21 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> I can cook grits.

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.

 

[server]

On Tue, 7 Jun 2022 07:51:54 -0600, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On 06/07/2022 07:21 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
I can cook grits.

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.

Plain grits. White grits. Yellow grits. Cheesey grits. Fried grits.
Shrimp and grits.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ncz5m2tjan2qg3x/Shrimp%2BGrits_2.JPG?raw=1

(hey, my Spice sim has finished 2.4 milliseconds!)




--

Anybody can count to one.

- Robert Widlar

 

[bitrex]

On 6/7/2022 10:05 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Tue, 7 Jun 2022 07:51:54 -0600, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On 06/07/2022 07:21 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
I can cook grits.

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.

Plain grits. White grits. Yellow grits. Cheesey grits. Fried grits.
Shrimp and grits.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ncz5m2tjan2qg3x/Shrimp%2BGrits_2.JPG?raw=1

(hey, my Spice sim has finished 2.4 milliseconds!)

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

<https://imgur.com/a/9HD1hAt>

 

[rbowman]

On 06/07/2022 02:12 AM, Don Y wrote:

Now, imagine all of that \"stuff\" (grease, spice) that would end up floating
on the water never gets a chance to leave the meal. It tastes completely
different.

Yeah, a kielbasa leaves an oil slick like a sunken submarine. Good though.

Chicago has a large polish/lithuanian population so relatively easy
to find it in a ma&pa market. I\'ve not even looked for it, here, as
my other half would turn her nose up at it (and buying a whole kielbasa
for one person means lots of \"repeat\" meals <frown>)

Troy had two pork stores, one of which was called the Troy Pork Store.
Both had plenty of wurst varieties. While there were a lot of Poles,
Ukrainians, and Russians I don\'t remember a store catering to meats.
There was a bakery that I\'d hit at least once a year for the paska.

I most miss *good* bagels (instead of these fluffy \"life savers\").
And /Siciliano Pepato/. And, a certain type of biscotti that I\'ve
been unable to find (or recreate!), here.

Luckily we have a local source.

https://www.bagelsonbroadway.com/our-craft

Sue did it right and made a pilgrimage to NYC to learn how to make a
bagel. Last week they filmed an episode of Yellowstone at the courthouse
across the street. Other than screwing up traffic since that\'s the main
street, it was a real windfall for the shop. Actors and their entourage
have the appetite of a school of piranha.

That\'s better than Ruby\'s Diner where another scene was filmed. People
walk in, look around, take a video, and leave without buying a meal.
Increased traffic doesn\'t always mean increased sales.

Here, it is not uncommon to see \"a lady\" with a grease-stained, brown
grocery
bag standing outside a store hawking tamales. Or burritos. I\'m sure
they\'re
\"authentic\"... but wonder about *how* they were made!

You\'re not supposed to wonder. I was in TJ one time and a street vendor
was selling clam cocktails. He would shuck a couple of clams into a
paper Coke cup, squeeze in a lemon, and add a few shakes of hot sauce.
They were great. I suppose the clams were raised on only the finest San
Diego sewage. I followed that up with an ear of roasted corn made by an
old woman squatting on the sidewalk at a bus stop. She wasn\'t the only
food vendor there either. It\'s convenient to have a snack or two while
waiting for a bus that\'s running on Mexican time.

I would find it most useful for medical texts. You can\'t really fault
folks
for using the \"natural\" vocabulary for their field. But, it does make it
harder for \"outsiders\" to consume!

I bought a German dictionary in a Tucson bookstore that\'s great. It\'s a
little different since it\'s all line drawings and organized by topic.
Turn to \'Machine Tools\' and there a several pages of detailed drawings
of lathes, vertical mills, verniers, and so forth numbered.

It\'s detailed. A micrometer, die Feinmessschraube, is broken down to die
Messskala (scale), die Messtrommel (thimble), die Messspindel (spindle),
and der Messbugel (frame). Poultry Farming is the same, everything from
the egg, chicken, and brood frames spelled out with all the parts.

Mine was penmanship. <shrug> I wonder what they\'d have thought had
they foreknowledge of how much TYPING would replace writing?

I had a mercifully brief stint as a math and science teacher in junior
high. (whatever made them think a fresh graduate from an engineering
school knew squat about teaching kids escapes me). Supposedly I devoted
a half hour during the homeroom period teaching penmanship. I\'ve
actually been complimented on my printing, a holdover from time on a
drawing board, but my Palmer script is illegible. Plus, I\'m left handed
and don\'t get along well with chalk boards. The kids and I had a tacit
understanding that they could do whatever they wanted as long as it was
done quietly and we wouldn\'t discuss handwriting.

I suspect folks in other parts of the country will find the change
(to reduced water consumption) considerably harder to accept. You
never thought anything about \"hosing off\" the driveway. Or leaving
the hose running while you\'re soaping up the car. Or *washing* the
car instead of HAVING it washed (uses less water).

The early \'60s was a drought period in upstate NY. People were irate at
having to ask for a glass of water at a restaurant or other water saving
measures. For a place where too much rain was more common it was an
adjustment.

 

[server]

On Tue, 7 Jun 2022 10:35:41 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 6/7/2022 10:05 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 7 Jun 2022 07:51:54 -0600, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On 06/07/2022 07:21 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
I can cook grits.

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.

Plain grits. White grits. Yellow grits. Cheesey grits. Fried grits.
Shrimp and grits.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ncz5m2tjan2qg3x/Shrimp%2BGrits_2.JPG?raw=1

(hey, my Spice sim has finished 2.4 milliseconds!)



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

https://imgur.com/a/9HD1hAt

Since the Katrina diasporia, there\'s a lot more New Orleans food all
around the USA. Good; it needs it.

(Spice runs better if Firefox isn\'t running. FF spins up 20 or 30
processes.)


--

Anybody can count to one.

- Robert Widlar

 

[Don Y]

On 6/7/2022 7:56 AM, rbowman wrote:

On 06/07/2022 02:12 AM, Don Y wrote:

Now, imagine all of that \"stuff\" (grease, spice) that would end up floating
on the water never gets a chance to leave the meal. It tastes completely
different.

Yeah, a kielbasa leaves an oil slick like a sunken submarine. Good though.

Grilling lets it sit on the surface of the sausage -- it glistens!
Unlike a hotdog that just chars...

If you tried a boiled piece and grilled piece side-by-side, you\'d
lament never having tried the grilled sooner!

Chicago has a large polish/lithuanian population so relatively easy
to find it in a ma&pa market. I\'ve not even looked for it, here, as
my other half would turn her nose up at it (and buying a whole kielbasa
for one person means lots of \"repeat\" meals <frown>)

Troy had two pork stores, one of which was called the Troy Pork Store. Both had
plenty of wurst varieties. While there were a lot of Poles, Ukrainians, and
Russians I don\'t remember a store catering to meats. There was a bakery that
I\'d hit at least once a year for the paska.

Small polish deli/sandwich shop, here. But, their selection is limited;
pierogi, kielbasa, kolackzki, potato pancakes... the rest is pretty
much \"american fare\".

There are 1.5 \"decent\" italian delis in town. The \"0.5\" being relatively
close by -- but the selection is boring. The other is a fair drive from
here and tedious to locate (it\'s in a maze of little streets; they\'ve learned
to fly a flag HIGH so folks can find the place!).

But, they can\'t get the hard/aged version of the (grating) cheese I like.
And, the owner makes a biscotti *similar* to the one I seek but way too
small (like the size of a finger -- instead of ~4 oz ea) and way too much
vanilla flavoring (\"No, I won\'t share my recipe with you!\" \"Fine, I
won\'t be buying any of your biscotti cuz they don\'t taste good!\" Sheesh,
does she think I\'m going to go into business selling biscotti?? Big
market, that -- NOT!)

I most miss *good* bagels (instead of these fluffy \"life savers\").
And /Siciliano Pepato/. And, a certain type of biscotti that I\'ve
been unable to find (or recreate!), here.

Luckily we have a local source.

https://www.bagelsonbroadway.com/our-craft

Sue did it right and made a pilgrimage to NYC to learn how to make a bagel.

I\'ve always wanted to try baking them. But, you need to want to eat LOTS
of them to make it worth the effort!

Ditto donuts. I\'d *love* a good fresh donut. But, how many do you have
to make (and then EAT) to make the effort worth your time?

I\'ll be baking bread in the next week. Five 2lb loaves. Eat one while
hot. Eat the next one the following day. Give three away (cuz it doesn\'t
\"stay\" long and freezing it would be sinful!). Shitload of effort for two
loaves of bread!

Ice cream, OTOH, is ALWAYS worth the effort. (would love to learn how to
make good ices but that appears to require special kit)

Last week they filmed an episode of Yellowstone at the courthouse across the
street. Other than screwing up traffic since that\'s the main street, it was a
real windfall for the shop. Actors and their entourage have the appetite of a
school of piranha.

But, then they leave and the business falls back to prior levels. So, an
inconvenience for the locals, in the interim -- though maybe a bit to gossip
about...

That\'s better than Ruby\'s Diner where another scene was filmed. People walk in,
look around, take a video, and leave without buying a meal. Increased traffic
doesn\'t always mean increased sales.

Yup. The \"1.0\" deli I mentioned is a little hole in the wall. Originally
a sort of wholesale outlet (I\'d buy my anise, /Prosciutto di Parma/,
chestnut flour and /Fusilli col Buco/). Then, they started offering
premade meals (e.g., buy a lasagna for your family). And, most recently,
opened up a small seating area to cater to the local businesses for lunch.
I think they have *three* parking spaces so don\'t ever show up at lunch
hour if you\'re just looking to make a purchase!

The trend is in the wrong direction from my perspective as they will
undoubtedly commit more resources to less ethnic offerings (as witnessed
by the \"store\" section\'s shrinkage). Only a matter of time before \"Peanut
Butter and Jelly\" adorns the menu...

Here, it is not uncommon to see \"a lady\" with a grease-stained, brown
grocery
bag standing outside a store hawking tamales. Or burritos. I\'m sure
they\'re
\"authentic\"... but wonder about *how* they were made!

You\'re not supposed to wonder. I was in TJ one time and a street vendor was
selling clam cocktails. He would shuck a couple of clams into a paper Coke cup,
squeeze in a lemon, and add a few shakes of hot sauce. They were great. I

A common practice on the beach in MX. \"Cook\" shrimp in lime juice for
a quick snack. Ceviche. Always seemed dubious but no harm, so far!

Before we lost it (to a prolonged freeze), we had a small lime tree that would
produce ~400 large fruit (not the dinky little things you see in stores) in
each crop. Of course, there\'s very little you can DO with that many limes!
(sorbet?) So, we\'d bring them to the \"laundry\" at the local hospital (workers
being almost exclusively mexican). *They* would have no trouble consuming that
many limes!

[it\'s a common practice to cut a wedge of lime and slip it under your
lips, flesh to teeth. You\'ll see many mexicans with \"acid etched\" front
teeth as a result of this practice!]

suppose the clams were raised on only the finest San Diego sewage. I followed
that up with an ear of roasted corn made by an old woman squatting on the
sidewalk at a bus stop. She wasn\'t the only food vendor there either. It\'s
convenient to have a snack or two while waiting for a bus that\'s running on
Mexican time.

Like the pretzel vendors in NYC... just don\'t look at their *hands* as they
hand you your purchase! <ick>

I would find it most useful for medical texts. You can\'t really fault
folks
for using the \"natural\" vocabulary for their field. But, it does make it
harder for \"outsiders\" to consume!

I bought a German dictionary in a Tucson bookstore that\'s great. It\'s a little
different since it\'s all line drawings and organized by topic. Turn to \'Machine
Tools\' and there a several pages of detailed drawings of lathes, vertical
mills, verniers, and so forth numbered.

It\'s detailed. A micrometer, die Feinmessschraube, is broken down to die
Messskala (scale), die Messtrommel (thimble), die Messspindel (spindle), and
der Messbugel (frame). Poultry Farming is the same, everything from the egg,
chicken, and brood frames spelled out with all the parts.

Did it come with a set of crayons? :>

Mine was penmanship. <shrug> I wonder what they\'d have thought had
they foreknowledge of how much TYPING would replace writing?

I had a mercifully brief stint as a math and science teacher in junior high.

I\'d never have the patience. \"Do you WANT to learn, or not?!\" Well, for
youngsters, you know what the answer to THAT question would likely be!

OTOH, I\'m good in one-on-one situations as many friends/neighbors/colleagues
have asked me to \"help out\" their kids -- the results are usually very
dramatic and \"sudden\". I suspect because they don\'t see me as an \"adult\" :>

(whatever made them think a fresh graduate from an engineering school knew
squat about teaching kids escapes me). Supposedly I devoted a half hour during
the homeroom period teaching penmanship. I\'ve actually been complimented on my
printing, a holdover from time on a drawing board, but my Palmer script is
illegible. Plus, I\'m left handed and don\'t get along well with chalk boards.
The kids and I had a tacit understanding that they could do whatever they
wanted as long as it was done quietly and we wouldn\'t discuss handwriting.

Yeah, I can recall *drawing* (what else would you call it?) letters in drafting
class. And, getting hammered over how round your curves were, how balanced
the horizontals of various glyphs, etc.

But, in hindsight, it was a worthwhile experience. I still draw my 8s in
four strokes!

I suspect folks in other parts of the country will find the change
(to reduced water consumption) considerably harder to accept. You
never thought anything about \"hosing off\" the driveway. Or leaving
the hose running while you\'re soaping up the car. Or *washing* the
car instead of HAVING it washed (uses less water).

The early \'60s was a drought period in upstate NY. People were irate at having
to ask for a glass of water at a restaurant or other water saving measures. For
a place where too much rain was more common it was an adjustment.

Yeah, I recall it (southern N E). And, how \"odd\" it felt NOT to be able to
do things that *seemed* \"natural\" (\"Well of course I\'m going to hose down
the driveway! How else can I get it clean?!\" \"Well, this is a broom...\")

 

[rbowman]

On 06/07/2022 08:35 AM, bitrex wrote:

On 6/7/2022 10:05 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 7 Jun 2022 07:51:54 -0600, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On 06/07/2022 07:21 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
I can cook grits.

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.

Plain grits. White grits. Yellow grits. Cheesey grits. Fried grits.
Shrimp and grits.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ncz5m2tjan2qg3x/Shrimp%2BGrits_2.JPG?raw=1

(hey, my Spice sim has finished 2.4 milliseconds!)



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

https://imgur.com/a/9HD1hAt

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

 

[bitrex]

On 6/7/2022 1:07 AM, rbowman wrote:

On 06/06/2022 10:46 AM, bitrex wrote:
On 6/3/2022 3:50 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jun 2022 12:04:13 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, June 3, 2022 at 10:56:59 AM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jun 2022 09:53:43 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:

On 6/2/2022 2:20 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 1 Jun 2022 17:24:08 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:

On 5/31/2022 10:40 PM, rbowman wrote:

\"There is no birthright to transportation, other than the
right to
walk.\"

Then again, nobody ASKED to be born into a country called the
USA that
was designed around the automobile and had much of its public
transportation infrastructure dismantled in favor a long time
ago.

No. The USA was \"designed around\" horses and mules and canoes
and
sailing ships and wagons. People like to move themselves and
their
stuff around. If anything designed our country, it was the
collective
personal preferences.

The roads in many areas of Boston tend to be laid out about
where the
carts went, there doesn\'t seem to be a lot of design to it
though.

When you start with a town square that really is an irregular
pentagon
things go to hell in a hurry. Then you have to remember the Back
Bay
really was a bay and the Fens a tidal marsh. Even the Fens got
redone
when they dammed the Charles and it went from brackish to fresh
water.

It adds charm. I enjoyed walking around the town when I had work
in the
area. \'Walking is the operant word. I\'d drive down from NH
Sunday night
and park the car, only retrieving it to drive home Friday
afternoon.


The \"charm\" also then tends to mean nobody wants anything built
in or
near their charming neighborhood.

Housing in San Francisco and Boston proper is a terrible value
for what
you get, this $448/month unit in Tokyo (also some of the most
expensive
real estate in the world) is fantastic for the rent.

https://youtu.be/ooh1aoEJKZc?t=732


You\'d be hard-pressed to find anything as nice within the Boston
city
limits for three times the price.

People who want to live in SF or Boston bid up the rents. They
obviously think it\'s worth it.

Google grossly over-pays them anyhow. Property values escalate
within
walking distance of the google bus stops.


Yeah I will agree I\'ve only rarely met anyone in their 20s or 30s
paying
several thousand a month in rent who seemed like they had a skillset
worth whatever their Boston employer was paying them to be able to
afford that.
Google and Apple and Facebook and those guys pay big bucks to bright
kids. And the kids can get a tiny condo or apartment to sleep in and
spend a lot of time outside.

$200K income, $400K for a couple, and $2-3K per month for rent can be
fun.

One of the reasons the university system in the US has become such a
racket and they can charge anything is that if you\'re rich, and
you\'re
white, that degree is still a pretty reliable ticket to a
white-collar
job. Someone will almost surely hire you eventually in a way that a
person without the credentials would not be even if they had the same
skillset.
This is interesting and very well researched:

https://tinyurl.com/2p8sc2xp

On conclusion is that going to Harvard is not much better than going
to some cheap state college.

A lot depends on the student body because the school tailors its
curriculum for them. Most state schools are full of people with no
respect for scholarship and they\'re there to party and get their
ticket punched. And I can\'t believe the number of people in that
relatively mature age group who participate in organized cheating in
some way- seems very childish to me- oh well the government has to
get its applicants from somewhere. Even a decent community college is
better than that.


His point is the genes dominate. Harvard is very selective. Harvard
grads are good mostly because the entering freshmen were good.

Good book. Lots of interesting stuff.

Jeez, you think the Ivy League is some kind of pure meritocracy? Get
real..


I worked for a company where the owner\'s son was a Harvard Business
School graduate. His first triumph in the real world was driving a
successful Boston runners\' store into the ground. Needing a new victim
he went t work for his father and managed that one to a chapter 11. Not
impressed.

Once upon a time there was this President who attended an Ivy League
school who didn\'t know how to get a blowjob without anyone else finding
out. To be fair I guess they don\'t offer a course on that.

 

[rbowman]

On 06/07/2022 08:33 PM, bitrex wrote:

On 6/7/2022 1:07 AM, rbowman wrote:
On 06/06/2022 10:46 AM, bitrex wrote:
On 6/3/2022 3:50 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jun 2022 12:04:13 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com> wrote:

On Friday, June 3, 2022 at 10:56:59 AM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 3 Jun 2022 09:53:43 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:

On 6/2/2022 2:20 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 1 Jun 2022 17:24:08 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net
wrote:

On 5/31/2022 10:40 PM, rbowman wrote:

\"There is no birthright to transportation, other than the
right to
walk.\"

Then again, nobody ASKED to be born into a country called the
USA that
was designed around the automobile and had much of its public
transportation infrastructure dismantled in favor a long time
ago.

No. The USA was \"designed around\" horses and mules and
canoes and
sailing ships and wagons. People like to move themselves and
their
stuff around. If anything designed our country, it was the
collective
personal preferences.

The roads in many areas of Boston tend to be laid out about
where the
carts went, there doesn\'t seem to be a lot of design to it
though.

When you start with a town square that really is an irregular
pentagon
things go to hell in a hurry. Then you have to remember the Back
Bay
really was a bay and the Fens a tidal marsh. Even the Fens got
redone
when they dammed the Charles and it went from brackish to fresh
water.

It adds charm. I enjoyed walking around the town when I had work
in the
area. \'Walking is the operant word. I\'d drive down from NH
Sunday night
and park the car, only retrieving it to drive home Friday
afternoon.


The \"charm\" also then tends to mean nobody wants anything built
in or
near their charming neighborhood.

Housing in San Francisco and Boston proper is a terrible value
for what
you get, this $448/month unit in Tokyo (also some of the most
expensive
real estate in the world) is fantastic for the rent.

https://youtu.be/ooh1aoEJKZc?t=732


You\'d be hard-pressed to find anything as nice within the Boston
city
limits for three times the price.

People who want to live in SF or Boston bid up the rents. They
obviously think it\'s worth it.

Google grossly over-pays them anyhow. Property values escalate
within
walking distance of the google bus stops.


Yeah I will agree I\'ve only rarely met anyone in their 20s or 30s
paying
several thousand a month in rent who seemed like they had a skillset
worth whatever their Boston employer was paying them to be able to
afford that.
Google and Apple and Facebook and those guys pay big bucks to bright
kids. And the kids can get a tiny condo or apartment to sleep in and
spend a lot of time outside.

$200K income, $400K for a couple, and $2-3K per month for rent can be
fun.

One of the reasons the university system in the US has become such a
racket and they can charge anything is that if you\'re rich, and
you\'re
white, that degree is still a pretty reliable ticket to a
white-collar
job. Someone will almost surely hire you eventually in a way that a
person without the credentials would not be even if they had the
same
skillset.
This is interesting and very well researched:

https://tinyurl.com/2p8sc2xp

On conclusion is that going to Harvard is not much better than going
to some cheap state college.

A lot depends on the student body because the school tailors its
curriculum for them. Most state schools are full of people with no
respect for scholarship and they\'re there to party and get their
ticket punched. And I can\'t believe the number of people in that
relatively mature age group who participate in organized cheating in
some way- seems very childish to me- oh well the government has to
get its applicants from somewhere. Even a decent community college is
better than that.


His point is the genes dominate. Harvard is very selective. Harvard
grads are good mostly because the entering freshmen were good.

Good book. Lots of interesting stuff.

Jeez, you think the Ivy League is some kind of pure meritocracy? Get
real..


I worked for a company where the owner\'s son was a Harvard Business
School graduate. His first triumph in the real world was driving a
successful Boston runners\' store into the ground. Needing a new victim
he went t work for his father and managed that one to a chapter 11.
Not impressed.

Once upon a time there was this President who attended an Ivy League
school who didn\'t know how to get a blowjob without anyone else finding
out. To be fair I guess they don\'t offer a course on that.

What else is college for? Did I miss something? Drugs, sex, and
rock\'n\'roll baby!

 

[rbowman]

On 06/07/2022 08:57 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Tue, 7 Jun 2022 10:35:41 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 6/7/2022 10:05 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 7 Jun 2022 07:51:54 -0600, rbowman <bowman@montana.com> wrote:

On 06/07/2022 07:21 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
I can cook grits.

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.

Plain grits. White grits. Yellow grits. Cheesey grits. Fried grits.
Shrimp and grits.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ncz5m2tjan2qg3x/Shrimp%2BGrits_2.JPG?raw=1

(hey, my Spice sim has finished 2.4 milliseconds!)



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

https://imgur.com/a/9HD1hAt





Since the Katrina diasporia, there\'s a lot more New Orleans food all
around the USA. Good; it needs it.

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.

 

[Don Y]

On 6/7/2022 8:31 PM, rbowman wrote:

On 06/07/2022 12:22 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 6/7/2022 7:56 AM, rbowman wrote:


Sue did it right and made a pilgrimage to NYC to learn how to make a
bagel.

I\'ve always wanted to try baking them. But, you need to want to eat LOTS
of them to make it worth the effort!

They\'re a lot of work. You proof the dough, shape them, boil them, and then you
get around to baking them.

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.

Ditto donuts. I\'d *love* a good fresh donut. But, how many do you have
to make (and then EAT) to make the effort worth your time?

I miss Dunkin Donuts but it\'s probably all for the better.

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...

I bought a German dictionary in a Tucson bookstore that\'s great. It\'s
a little different since it\'s all line drawings and organized by
topic. Turn to \'Machine Tools\' and there a several pages of detailed
drawings of lathes, vertical mills, verniers, and so forth numbered.

It\'s detailed. A micrometer, die Feinmessschraube, is broken down to
die Messskala (scale), die Messtrommel (thimble), die Messspindel
(spindle), and der Messbugel (frame). Poultry Farming is the same,
everything from the egg, chicken, and brood frames spelled out with
all the parts.

Did it come with a set of crayons? :

Not hardly. Sadly I think it\'s out of print. All I see on Amazon is used.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/744843.The_Oxford_Duden_Pictorial_German_English_Dictionary

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!

I\'d never have the patience. \"Do you WANT to learn, or not?!\" Well, for
youngsters, you know what the answer to THAT question would likely be!

The school used homogeneous groupings into 4 sections, A through D, D standing
for dumb. The same syllabus was used for all.

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)

While a few of the A kids might
have been interested in the Babylonian sexagesimal system the D kids sorely
needed to know how to make change in the decimal system for their careers at
McDonalds. That was the late \'60s; now the computer tells them that although I
swear some could use icons of dollar bills, quarters, and so forth rather than
$3.27.

(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!

Yeah, I can recall *drawing* (what else would you call it?) letters in
drafting
class. And, getting hammered over how round your curves were, how balanced
the horizontals of various glyphs, etc.

But, in hindsight, it was a worthwhile experience. I still draw my 8s in
four strokes!

No curves at RPI.

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

This was straight engineering drawing any curves were in the
exploded view of a variable pitch propeller. I considered myself lucky to have
missed the ink on mylar phase.

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\")

Yeah, I recall it (southern N E). And, how \"odd\" it felt NOT to be able to
do things that *seemed* \"natural\" (\"Well of course I\'m going to hose down
the driveway! How else can I get it clean?!\" \"Well, this is a broom...\")

We had a shallow dug well in the cellar. When it started to go dry there I was
driving a sand point from Monkey Wards with a 10lb sledge. Good times. My
mother eventually had a real well drilled. 250\' and they hit sulfur water. More
good times.

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... :<

 

[rbowman]

On 06/08/2022 06:50 AM, Don Y wrote:

On 6/7/2022 8:31 PM, rbowman wrote:
On 06/07/2022 12:22 PM, Don Y wrote:
On 6/7/2022 7:56 AM, rbowman wrote:


Sue did it right and made a pilgrimage to NYC to learn how to make a
bagel.

I\'ve always wanted to try baking them. But, you need to want to eat
LOTS
of them to make it worth the effort!

They\'re a lot of work. You proof the dough, shape them, boil them, and
then you get around to baking them.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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)

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.

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

http://www.behtek.com/DD/7-Alphabet.pdf

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.

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\")

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.

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)

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.

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... :

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.

 

[Don Y]

On 6/8/2022 7:40 AM, rbowman wrote:

Sue did it right and made a pilgrimage to NYC to learn how to make a
bagel.

I\'ve always wanted to try baking them. But, you need to want to eat
LOTS
of them to make it worth the effort!

They\'re a lot of work. You proof the dough, shape them, boil them, and
then you get around to baking them.

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.

I thought about making cheesecake once but got stopped in my tracks when I got
to \'springform pan\'.

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 haven\'t had really good cheesecake in a long time.

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!]

My favorite espresso place had peanut butter cheesecake the last time I was in.
Not bad but not as good as it sounded.

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!)

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!

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.

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>

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)

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.

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 (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talcott_Mountain_Science_Center>).
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.

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

http://www.behtek.com/DD/7-Alphabet.pdf

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.

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 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\")

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.

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.

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)

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.

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>

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... :

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.

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!]

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.

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...

 

[rbowman]

On 06/08/2022 11:24 AM, Don Y wrote:

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!).

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

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 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...

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/86888/show-tell-calvin-coolidges-electric-exercise-horse

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

https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/john-james-audubon-the-double-elephant-folio

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

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.

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.

\"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.

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?\'

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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)

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

https://www.dhs.gov/publication/cad-systems

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

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

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).

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.

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\"!)

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.

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

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.

[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!]

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.