P.S. A Column On Things

Start of July 7 Column. More or Less Continuous News Service since 1998

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Back in the Old Days

My first home computer ran Basic (which I learned in high school according to the original Dartmouth specifications) on a CP/M Z80 machine, the Exidy Sorcerer. I copied a BASIC horoscope  program line by line, from a computer magazine. Thanks to Bill Gates' scuzzball move of ditching Darmouth Basic punctuation in his interpreter, I  had to change all the commas and semicolons. I still have horoscopes I  printed  out on an IBM MT/ST printer (basically the industrial version of a Selectric) through the ASCII/EBCIDIC converter built by a friend of mine. Everyone else at that time was using crap dot matrix, or at the very high end, daisy wheel. Nothing beat an IBM Selectric.  I got the printer off some company's discard pile. 

Three Wishes Joke

Regular reader Robert E. Malchman wrote this as a comment. It is too good not to share.

An advertising art director, copy writer, and account exec are going out to lunch.

They pass a park bench that has an old-timey oil lamp on it. The copy writer says, "Hey, look at that. It's like something out of Arabian Nights. Wouldn't it be wild if rubbing produced a genie!"

 "Let's try it," says the art director, who picks up the lamp and rubs it. Suddenly, dark smoke emerges. The art director tosses the lamp back on the bench, but in two seconds, a genie in classic Middle Eastern garb materializes.

. "I am the Genie of the Lamp," he intones. "You have liberated me, and in reward, I will grant each one of you a wish."

"That's crazy," says the account exec. The art director says, "I always wanted to live in Italy and paint beautiful landscapes and portraits that would hang in museums all over the world."

The genie says, "Your wish is my command," and poof, the art director disappears.

"Where'd he go?" demands the account exec. "He is in Italy, living in a villa, painting beautiful pictures," says the genie.

"My turn," shouts the copy writer, shaking with excitement. "I always wanted to write the Great American Novel. I wish I had a mountain house in New England overlooking a lake where I could write novels that touch and move readers worldwide." The genie says, "Your wish is my command," and poof, the copy writer also disappears.

The genie turns to the account exec and asks, "What is your wish?" "I want those two assholes back in the office right after lunch."

Geezer Test

Geezer Test

A high score means you’re a whippersnapper. A perfect score of 0 indicates you are me.

Give yourself 1 point for each thing you've NEVER done:

1. Used a rotary phone
2. Used a floppy disc
3. Used a typewriter
4. Taken photos with a film camera
5. Listened to music on a CD
6. Listened to a cassette tape
7. Listened to a vinyl record
8. Listened to music on a Walkman
9. Listened to music on a boombox outside
10. Watched a video from a VHS tape
11. Sent or received a fax
12. Recorded music from radio to cassette
13. Rented a video from Blockbuster
14. Accessed the internet by dial-up
15. Used a phone book
16. Sent a postcard
17. Used a paper map to get somewhere
18. Owned a dictionary
19. Owned an encyclopedia
20. Paid with a paper check

Next week: purity test

Meme O' The Week: Department of Stupid Warnings

Life Advice From The Kitchen

• Everything is a little better with a little wine in it and a lot better with a lot of wine in it.
• There is no such thing as too much garlic.
• Salt is the magic flavor enhancer (except for those of use with high blood pressure, for whom it is the magic death enhancer).
• Cumin is the sexy spice (according to a demo at Macy’s in 1980).
• Be sure you can eat it with your eyes. Your dish should have different colors on it.
• Never clean up the kitchen until you are done cooking (Tante Marie, 1977).

Every single one of these has an analog outside the kitchen (obviously eat it with your eyes, for example). The application of, say, "Your dish should have different colors on it" is intuitively obvious to the casual observer.

This and That

Blood Test Joke
The nurse gives me four vials for blood tests. I say, “Am I going to have any blood left?” Then I chuckle and say “That never gets old.” She says “Not for you.”
...
YouTube start/stop times
The jargon term is timestamp. What it means is you can link to a particular start and stop time by following my extremely simple instructions. You’re welcome

End of July 7 Column (No. 988)

Start of June 30 Column. More or Less Continuous News Service since 1998

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Wit/Maybe

I have always personally thought of wit as a clever and amusing Bon Mot composed on the spot. So, while I love Douglas Adam’s, “This must be some new definition of (fill in blank; first usage was fun) with which I wasn’t previously familiar,” I’ve seen him use it twice in person.

So, in the “breaking my arm patting myself on the back” department, I was in line in the Starbucks counter at Safeway, asking for a rubber band to hold my chives container closed. I don’t have an indoor voice, so chances are everyone in the line heard my response, when the barista asked why I needed to do that: “I worry about my chives. They are domestic; who knows what will happen to them in the wild?

Maybe you had to be there, but I am proud to say the barista and all four people behind me in the line laughed.

As Oscar Wilde said, “You can fake intelligence, but you can't fake wit.”

Fourth Of July: Fates Of The Signers

(see my more detailed version).

Five signers of the Declaration of Independence were captured by the British. However, none of them died while a prisoner.

Richard Stockton of New Jersey was the only signer taken prisoner specifically because of his status as a signatory to the Declaration, "dragged from his bed by night,” and imprisoned in Provost Jail like a common criminal.

John Witherspoon of New Jersey saw his eldest son, James, killed in the Battle of Germantown in October 1777.

Nine signers died during the course of the Revolutionary War, but none of them died from wounds or hardships inflicted on them by the British. 

Carter Braxton suffered financial reverses because his ships were a prime target for the British. He did not "die in rags."

Was Thomas McKean "hounded" by the British during the Revolutionary War? He wasn’t chased for being a signer: it was probably because he served as a militia leader. He did end up in "poverty.”

Several signers’ homes were looted. Many signers lived in occupied areas, yet those homes were not looted or vandalized, so it's hard to make the case that signers were specifically targeted for vengeance by the British.

Did Thomas Nelson urge the bombardment of his own house? The story is probably a conflation of two events: an order to fire on his uncle's home and a friendly bet with the French as to whether they could hit his home

Memes O’ The Week: 2FA

Will it never stop? After a flurry of AI cartoons, the Zeitgeist has shifted to two-factor identification, as with Rhyme with Orange on June 18. Cartoonists are a clanny bunch; maybe they have challenged each other to do Two-factor Authentication jokes.

Even Information Week, a trade publication for the IT industry and my erstwhile employer, is getting into the game.

Would You Want Them Following You?

The National Press Corps Described Perfectly. And along the same line,

“Those of us forced to read the London papers sometimes speculate about which is greater: the average British hack's sloth, mendacity, ignorance, obsequiousness, capacity for drink, or aversion to paying for that drink. Smart money tends to split between the latter two.”
--Larry King, an American journalist in London, April, 2002

Also:

Keillor is reported to have said the President had to
"sit and eat fish with a group of people who would regard your downfall as a professional opportunity."
-Garrison Keillor, NPR (from memory by a correspondent)

This and That

Spaceballs
I already know next year will be as good as this year. First Naked Gun revives a dead franchise (1994), now Spaceballs revives an even deader franchise(1987), with much of the original cast returning.
...
Call Center Kudos
I know good call center experiences are as rare as hen’s teeth. And you often skip the “how did we do” or vent. But I had an amazing recent interaction, and so relied on the Boy Scout Oath, If apt, call your agent helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, and cheerful. That will make them stand out from the crowd.

End of June 30 Column (No. 987)