A friend of mine went Caltech in the late 60's, I think. He had a Heathkit FM receiver kit (remember them?) which he never had time to put together.
One night in a frenzy he assembled it, connected it to speakers, turned it on, and heard "this is Radio Free OZ" - at which point his jaw dropped as he tried to contemplate exactly what kind of receiver he had built.
(the connection here is that he just happened to tune into Firesign Theater's weekly radio program. He claims to still have tapes he made of those programs - I should bug him to digitize them)
"Unhappy Macnam, unhappy Macnam...." is one of the first of those memorable lines that comes to my mind, more proof of geeky-ness, I suppose.
But we still use "He's no fun, he fell right over" quite a bit around here.
I thought I was the only one that thought Annals of the Former World is one of the best nonfiction books ever written.
I first read it in bed, a little bit each night, and kept poking my wife (who was trying to sleep) every couple of pages, to say "listen to this!".
I have a USGS topographical map of the US on the wall outside my office (the same one that is used for the section heading in the edition I have) and I get to point out interesting features & recommend the book whenever someone stops & looks at it (which they do quite regularly)
Lisa@36
I'm running Eudora v6.2.4 (paid) under Leopard.
It seems to learn about Junk mail.
Is the issue that the free version doesn't learn about junk, and you can't get the paid version anymore?
If so.. would it be legal and moral to spread around the reg code that turns the free version into a paid version? (& would that really solve the problem?)
Keith@82:
From what you say, you know why you are doing what you are doing to be successful, and you are looking for ways to be even more successful.
Well, there's what I do (the "question authority" meme from the 60's stuck with me), and what others do.
Often people are either too busy, intimidated by the reputations of those that proceeded them, or lazy (in that order, I suspect) to do anything beyond what the previous project has done.
You can succeed by emulating the purported behavior of successful people
. This is the key to the cargo cult. To enjoy the success of another, just mimic the rituals he claims to follow.
. Your idol gets the blame if things don’t work out, not you.
------
That one cuts close to home. In work-speak, we call that a BKM: Best Known Method. Also applies to our "Copy Exact" manufacturing principle.
Of course, Best Known Method is subject to change by finding something better, and people are not discouraged from doing that exactly (though they then have no one else to blame if it fails)
The Butterfly Book(s): before I even learned to read, I looked at the covers of the paperback books on the shelves in the basement. One of them was an Ace Double of Andre Norten's "Sioux Spaceman" and "And Then the Town Took Off " or something like that, and another "No Place on Earth" by Louis Charbonneau. The covers captivated me; I eventually read the second, though at that age I understood only a little of it.
Butterfly Meeting: running across a guy in the high school library who was drawing weird diagrams on a piece of paper, which led to my current profession (he recently wrote a book called iWoz)
Moths & other coincidences: finding out that fandom existed by reading about an entire library of it run by the MIT Science Fiction society, which together with a recommendation by a fan (though I didn't know he was at the time) that if I was interested in computers, then I should go to school somewhere where they had lots of computers.
Which lead to walking by someone's office at school who had a poster for Boskone (a science fiction convention! what a great idea!)
which lead to other science fiction conventions and groups
which lead me to meeting my wife of 27.5 LHM years
which led me to India, where I'm currently writing from (returning in a couple of days)
In yet another bit of surreality: we watched the inauguration live from our cheap little hotel room in Bijapur, India.
Many people ask us "from what place are you" or words to that effect. When we say "America", they often reply "President Obama!".
When we ask them who their president is on the other hand, they don't know.
It looks like the rehab facility hasn't starved him - he looks pretty good (though as tired as I feel). And he has better T-shirts than I have.
This is great.
Figures - a weekend away from the net, so I just read this now. I think if I wait a few more minutes, I'll be able to claim the #500 spot on this thread, but I can't wait.
My standard advice to issues here at work is "if it hurts when you do that, don't do that". I'm not quite sure how to apply it to this situation, though.
I'm inordinately pleased to have friends that not only remember good common sense advice (e.g. 911/aspirin) but follow it.
Please continue to be bored for a bit, OK?
Wow - there's got to be a fan artist Hugo nomination or something in there, at the least.
I'm impressed - that's a pretty fine example of literary research.
Ah, but if only you could put that perserverance and fine investigative mind to good instead of evil...
ooh, they're coming to Berkeley next month. Yum.
I used to give to the Alzheimers Association here. That did get me on their mailing list, as Don suggests. With a vengeance.
That got me more than one begging letter a month, some of which even
had return address envelopes with stamps. Not counting ones to
alternate spellings of my name, or Donya's.
I stopped giving to them - the percentage of what I give them that goes to junkmail must be ferocious.
Does anyone know of an Alzheimers group that will put the money you
send them into, like *research*, instead of wasting it on a huge volume
of junkmail?
Ayse@#117: narrow shelves
When we built our house, we made sure it was accessible. That meant wider than usual hallways, and don't think we didn't notice that paperback-depth bookcases would fit there. We also moved some doors a few inches to one side so that paperback bookshelves would fit behind them.
I have two brothers with serious clutter problems. On marriage dissolved because of it (though they're still friends), and another's significant other is either just as bad or just doesn't notice.
The first brother has gotten worse since the heart attack that eliminated his short term memory - he buys stuff because he simply can't remember whether he has one or not, and he's afraid to throw anything away because once its gone, its permanently gone - he won't even remember he had it (or, if he did, whether he got rid of it).
Its a nasty problem - he knows he has it, but he's paralyzed every time he has to make a decision regarding cleaning up.
The second brother says the first brother has spurred him to clean up - but he has nasty ADHD, and never gets around to it.
I managed to (mostly? partially?) avoid the problem. I have categories of stuff I will generally keep:
tools - ever useful,
financial papers (culled yearly)
collections - of which I have a bunch
We do set aside stuff to donate or freecycle or sell - that works, but we have a compensating estate-sale habit which feeds the collection(s). though, even though
Xopher @94
Koyasan is a cool place, and depending on the time of year, quite literally. There are a large (50+) number of monastaries there that rent rooms - its how they make money. There are a couple that cater to foreigners. The rooms aren't necessarily cheap.
We went in November, I think. For some reason there was a big thermometer on a stand in the hallway. The reason was that the indoor temperature was about 32F. The room we had was rather huge by Japanese standards, overlooking a beautiful garden. It came with nice thick comforters - we were comfy despite the chill.
Traditional Japanese architecture doesn't know about double pane windows, and this was very traditional. The room also had a kotatsu and kotatsu-take, one of those gridded tables and blanket covering that are intended to go over a hibachi to keep you warm in the winter. We didn't have a hibachi - we had an small incandescent light bulb under the table instead. Worked amazing well, to our surprise.
We were expected/invited to attend morning prayers. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who can't sit on their knees comfortably, but otherwise it was quite interesting.
The food was very vegetarian, and quite good. No natto, to our relief.
Don't some of those windup radio/flashlight thingies have a DC-out plug? They could be used as an emergency battery (depending on voltage, etc).
The solar charger is a great idea as well, and less tiring.
If you're worried about infrastructure breakdown, then some kind of water filter is a really good idea. Someone just told me about one that works via ultraviolet - and it has a solar recharging option.
Bluegrass couldn't have less cello, after all, but yes..
Thank you, thank you Patrick - now I have to go out and buy Crooked Still CDs. I thought I'd been Bluegrassed out at Hardly-Strictly-Bluegrass a few weeks ago. I was wrong.
Pretty amazing pedigree for this band; I'd wager there aren't many professional bluegrass musicians (or non-bluegrass - yea, I know about Brian May) with Phd.s (from MIT, no less).
I saw (new fiddler) Brittany Haas playing with Dave Grisman at a Bay Area fundraiser while she was still in high school, I think - so I'm going to have to pay attention to when they play around here. Their tour dates seem to be mostly east coast, though.
My favorite was the one after
"B52 Found on Moon!"
when some earnest reader took a photo of the moon, with the area in question enlarged, and sent it to WWN to show that, in fact, there was no B52 on the moon.
"B52 disappears from Moon!"
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