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- March 15, 2018
- Stephen Hawking RIP
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Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Dr Stephen Hawking has passed this earthly existence yesterday at the age of 76 surpassing all the gloom and doom of a two year life expectancy pronounced when he was first diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at age 21 by an astonishing margin.
Dr Stephen Hawking
January 8, 1942 – March 14, 2018
British theoretical physicist
cosmologist, author
Director, Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology,
University of Cambridge
He claimed that his disease caused him to no longer be bored with life and allowed him to immerse himself in his studies and it is certainly evident in that productivity in the form of teaching, and publishing but more so cultivating a reputation as the foremost expert on quantum mechanics, or the math which deals with describing the motion and interactions of subatomic paricles and those associated principles.
Dr Hawking and I differed in faith, mine firmly rooted in the Christianity of my childhood; his passing by the wayside of atheism as happens with so many scientists.
He now knows for certain which one of us is correct in that spiritual respect.
One thing is sure, this academe turned television star and pop icon will be missed.
Rest in peace.
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- March 14, 2018
- Pi Day
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Today we celebrate the math constant known as Pi. Each March 14 (3/14 ... get it ?!!) the first three significant digits of Pi become the date.
The day is most profusely celebrated in Princeton, New Jersey where there are many events constituting a celebration of both Pi Day and the birthday of Albert Einstein.
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- March 13, 2018
- A John Holmes Memory
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When I was a pea brained sailor in Great Lakes, IL attending A School I frequented an area called "the gut". It was a short distance from the North gate and had a variety of venues designed to separate a dumb boy from his funds and I certainly acommodated them often during that time frame from November through the following April.
John Curtis Holmes
August 8, 1944 – March 13, 1988
American Pornographic Star
Scattered among the bars and arcades and other dens of inquity were shops which had porn sections and these all featured the work of one John Holmes, who was a mega star of the genre during that time.
It seems that being a porn star had a glitz and glitter side juxtapositioned with those darker aspects of that existence and he died in the late 1980s as the results of acquired immune deficiency syndrome which can only be characterized as a job related illness. I wonder if he got workman's compensation.
Though I certainly jest; I'd like to add that his end was fraught with suffering far beyond the scope of anything a person should ever have to endure and he is deserving of our sincerest sympathies for that pain he endured during the course of his illness.
It is alleged that he continued "work" after knowing he both was a victim and could pass the illness to others.
It is said that he participated in charitable works and engaged hobbies in addition to his primary employment which was engaging in all manner of sexual intercourse for the entertainment of the slathered masses watching his antics with both interest and amazement.
So there are:
• John Holmes the pornographic legend,
• John Holmes the charitable contributor,
• John Holmes the sculptor and wood worker, and
• John Holmes the myth.
The bottom line is John Holmes was not what many thought he was, more than some thought him to be, and all-in-all existed as just a man with all the frailties and shortcomings to be had except for a single one.
Whether it was "all that" we'll never truly know for no formal metrics were ever taken so therefore they don't exist.
Rest in peace.
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- March 12, 2018
- DST
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Daylight Savings Time slipped up on me this year. Yesterday I awoke to a number of clocks which were set differently than some of the others.
I suppose having so many clocks in a household makes you more date and time aware, but still; it had not ocurred to me that the "spring forward" aspect of the national time change went down until about my second cup of coffee.
Originally envisioned in 1895 as an energy saving measure, I learned from various sources that some jurisdictions don't implement it ... even in the United States.
Whereas I used to view it all as treasonous — over the years I grew to accept that notion that we all can't agree on everything and now I am convinced that DST may be an anachronistic holdover from times gone by and need to be eliminated.
All the complicated time keeping and episodic confusion gets to me sometimes. I suppose it's all well and good for those who are supposedly in charge of such things to make the call. I do know that the days will really grow longer with darkness coming much later as time progresses. I hope that you are not as ambivalent as I regarding daylight savings time. Love it or hate it we continue to observe it here in South Carolina.
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- March 11, 2018
- Johnny Appleseed Day
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.jpg "Johnny Appleseed (John-Chapman)")
John Chapman
"Johnny Appleseed"
September 26, 1774 – March 18, 1845In my youth one of those colorful and memorable characters I studied was Johnny Appleseed.
He is attributed to spreading apples across wide swaths of the country and living sparsely with few comforts along the way.
The 11th of March and 26th of September are sometimes observed as Johnny Appleseed Day.
The date in September corresponds to Appleseed's birthdate.
The date in March is during planting season and for that reason sometimes takes precedence.
John Chapman was the man known as Johnny Appleseed. His story was said to be that of an American pioneer who introduced apple trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, as well as the northern counties of present-day West Virginia and Ontario.
He became a legend in his own time because he was kind and generous providing inspiration and leadership in conservation.
The threads differ on his role somewhat with some portraying him as a for profit nurseryman and others the romantic imagery of wayfarer with few possessions other than a tin pot for a hat and a bag of apple seeds procured from various cider mills along the way.
Regardless, Johnny Appleseed has been one of those enduring portraits of the many special people who have populated the Earth before my time.
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- March 10, 2018
- National Mario Day
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Nintendo hasn't been a part of my life for decades now. Back in my gamer youth (my late 30s) I used to play video games as both a diversion and to keep those fingers nimble ... but I'm afraid that the rigors of the workaday world have precluded such activity for longer than I can remember at this point in time.
Today is National Mario Day. It celebrates Mario, that fictional character in Nintendo's Mario video game franchise. Mario is depicted differently depending on the era and the game in which you encounter him.
Early on he was a paunchy plumber dwelling in a fictional land called "the Mushroom Kingdom" with his brother Luigi, who is both younger and taller than he.
There have been movies where they are Brooklynites and the franchise has really become bigger than life to be the fantasy it all is.
The concept of National Mario Day is celebrated on March 10 because when the date is written MAR 10 it resembles the name MARIO. How totally quaint.
Anyway I don't begrudge Mario's success because he was there for me early on and the kids seem to love him still ...
And he is quite an industry in and of himself.
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- March 9, 2018
- Facebook Fatigue
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I have really been disturbed over the years with the various sheeples who hit the social media outlets thinking that everything is beautiful and that they are not being exploited ...
Like certain family members who like to take these little tests and see these little slide shows so that the so-called 'vendor' of the social media outlet can glean information and install various other hooks into the lives of those who aren't sophisticated enough to realize what's happening.
I was gratified to see a decline in some of the utilization of various outlets and I live for the day when the eyes of those on social media are opened such that they realize the full spectrum of meddling in their lives in the form of manipulation via algorithm.
The metrics show a decline in facebook use which is somwhat alarming to their stockholders. Data indicates that it's main interface lost some 18% in time spent which equates to 25% less in user time.
The algorithm imposed by the zuckheads seems to be tiring out their customers who likely would like to deal in real news and not the cooked reality such as that they shovel like the pile of horse manure that they are.
The aggregated consumption went up along with the user base which rose more indicating that the time per person went down some 9% or so.
Instagram shows similar losses in utilzation. Perhaps the social awareness increases in the social media crowd.
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- March 8, 2018
- Electric Chair to return to South Carolina
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I have seen videotaped executions. I have witnessed firing squads, hangings, electrocutions, lethal injections, beheadings, and even one draw and quartering.
In all of these morbid spectacles the overlying image projected into my mind was one of intense suffering in all but one case. That case were those condemned dispatched via lethal injection.
Then the pharmaceutical industry got all self righteous saying that their product couldn't be used for executions and therein lay the beginning of the end for an attempt at humane executions.
It is my personal opinion that those states who wish to utilize lethal injection seize the patents on whatever drugs they need, preferably the trusted tried and true three drug cocktail and go about their business and the pharmaceutical industry be damned.
Besides, the state will seize any OTHER patent it chooses for whatever reason it chooses to concoct. Why not do somethig which benefits the condemned for a change.
In a move which is secondary to the pharmaceutical industry alleging that they may control the use of products bought from them, the senate of the state of South Carolia has approved the use of the electric chair in those executions where lethal injection is unavailable.
The bill was initiated by William Timmons of Greenville in an effort to ensure certainty that the sentences imposed by law are carried out and not modified by some prosecutor seeking life terms in the name of expediency.
So we will devolve to a more savage time in history just one step up from the public hangings we all enjoyed as the troglodytes we once were due to the "forward thinking" pharmaceutical industries and their attempt to enact some misguided 'virtue signaling' which simply doesn't wash in the reality of that cruel punishment which now awaits the convicted in capital cases.
These pharmaceutical social justice warriors have simply relegated those they were trying to save to a more difficult end than would have been otherwise.
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- March 7, 2018
- Lady Hands
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Yesterday in the elevator a coworker said that I had "lady hands". I would have smacked her, but we were headed to the street so that I could meet her husband.
Not being a midwife, I do not have lady's hands ... nor a lion's heart. I just have a private nature which gets violated frequently at work.
My hands lack the callouses and sandpaper rough appearance of my youth. I attribute this to hours slaving over a hot keyboard day in and day out for about 40 years now. Were I engaged as a field hand chopping cotton during the same period my hands would certainly appear differently. Everybody acts as though I apply lotion and such — and indeed, my nails could always use a trim anymore ... but I am not a 'girly man' by any stretch of the imagination.
I don't feel as though I'm making the transition to old geezer very smoothly. I'm thinking about getting a brine tub and toughening my hands up as they were in the Navy. There was certainly no mistaking them for lady hands then.
Perhaps if I put the sleeper on a couple of females in my midst they might RECOGNIZE ... Lady Hands can't cause you to wake up drooling on the floor wondering where you are.
Lord help me not to be an overly sensitive candy ass in my old age.
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- March 6, 2018
- Coming to a Windows Update near You
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Ah, I love the smell of hacked computers in the morning. It smells like exploitation.
So Windows has decided to side step the dreadfully sluggish response of hardware manufacturers to produce microcode fixes for Spectre and will utilize Intel's set right in the windows update headed toward you ... sometime.
I smell trouble. Something about kernel mode and the HAL in particular is bugging me regarding those chipset modifications ... and I'm just hoping that your fix doesn't adversely affect my motherboard.
You see, Microsoft has a well defined history of half ass approaches to everything, as evidenced by the hijack of windows 8 users to windows 10 all over the place WAY before it was ready; and I just don't trust them for a long time now.
The dual route mechanism for updating the microcode and the requirement for a "compatible" antivirus package are further hitches which may or may not affect the transition to Spectre variant 2 protection.
Luckily the skylake processor line is their initial test case so at least I won't have to be a guinea pig in the process.
Sometimes I long for the good ole CLI MS-DOS days and that simpler place in time. Maybe that's why I've clung to unix all these years.
While I indeed hope that nobody has "risen to their level of incompetence" I just have a number of trepidations regarding microcode uploads during a live update session.
It's all too anxiety provoking when I ponder the possibilities for failure. Maybe they can just burn a recovery DVD up front.
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- March 5, 2018
- Remembering Patsy Cline
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Virginia Patterson Hensley
aka Patsy Cline
aka Patsy Ginny
September 8, 1932 - March 5, 1963When I was a child Patsy Cline was a staple in that music enjoyed by my biological father. His was a rural raising and the country music scene was part and parcel of his musical enjoyment ...
'Shit-kicking music' as he called it. Others know the genre as 'the Nashville sound'.
Having been eight or so when she died in a tragic plane crash at age 30, Patsy Cline has been well known to me over the years and I once could belt out a couple of her standards in the best redneck tradition of such audiophiles.
She was also a "crossover" success in the realm of popular music.
Hers was a professional life of live performances and black and white television venues and I have met so many over the years who love her music for the clarity, range, and rich contralto tonality she imparted to her numbers.
She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame a decade after her death and the accolades have continued thereafter as well.
Rest in peace.
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- March 4, 2018
- National Grammar Day
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grammar
When I was a kid in elementary school I wasn't doing too well in much of anything, including my studies of English.
/ˈɡramər/
noun
The entirety, including system and structure of a language usually consisting of morphology, inflections, phonics, semantics, and syntax.
A particular analysis of the system and structure of language or of a specific language.
A book on grammar.
As a consequence, my mom took her adult ed books and sat me down and drilled them into me over and over — along with the requisite yelling et cetera and it was all very exciting.
The results of all of this was I became pretty fluent with an ability to write far beyond skills demonstrated in my everyday speech.
This resulted in my English teacher at Wagener-Salley High School, a Mrs Mary Lou Willis, wrongfully accusing me of plagarism.
No one defended me in this matter and I recall her 'self righteous indignation' at my alleged "crime" though I was totally innocent having done all the work myself without a single reference.
This initiated a subsequent disconnect from all further public educational endeavors and teachers in particular as the stupid human beings they are generally and I make no apologies for this scathing opinion and invite anyone who thinks they can take me to task on the validity of stupid public educators to "challenge" it.
Today is National Grammar Day which we observe each March 4. The holiday was founded by one Martha Brockenbrough who is both a published author and established the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar.
The typographical error not withstanding, I have held proper grammar as paramount importance in my personal existence and this attitude has caused me to reject totally that stupidity which is called "ebonics" as well as the mendacity of those moronic individuals who think that a formal paper can be written in those shorthands of SMS texting and so forth.
There is a place for such goings on but it certainly is not in a formal report or any other written instrument nor on a work application as I have seen on too many occasions.
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- March 3, 2018
- Technology Breaks
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I have a long history in breakfix computer support. That part of information technology which involves cracking the case, having a look, testing, and either replacing components or the entire machine.
Yesterday I had a similar incident with my HVAC whereby I purchased a new high tech filter which never has to be replaced.
It has a high merv and really looked substantial ...
Except for the massive break in the frame on the right side of the unit.
So I took pictures and sent them to the manufacturer. I presume that this will be replaced and so far we seem to be headed in that direction nicely.
I was well pleased with what I saw other than the bent frame with fabric hanging out due to the shipper's obvious inability to transport fragile freight with finesse.
Probably dropped a 70 pound box on it in the back of some brown truck.
Boo !
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- March 2, 2018
- The Tek of Fasting, Ice Baths, and Yoga
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I once led the life of a superman. I put down the cigarettes and pursued a physique chiseled by miles of running and hours of exercise while on the west coast and turned myself into quite the specimen ... until I returned to the deep south and my Kentucky Fried Chicken addiction.
Alas, when I returned to the east coast I found the ammenities far lacking for maintaining some workout potential in the utter lack of opportunities in my midst — and ended up falling back to the big fat blivet I've always been and remain today.
It is being passed around in the threads by CNBC that some up and coming technology people are fasting and taking ice baths in an effort to push their bodies beyond the threshold of difficulty.
Their need to work much longer hours and handle inordinate amounts of work find these sources of "positive stress" enablers in those lifestyle choices involving career they have decided to undertake as activities of daily living.
Fasting, cold showers, hot yoga and restrictive dieting are how some are pushing the performance envelope in a world of technical demands and hours on end they are pursued.
I can certainly see the advantages these activities could provide in the way of supercharging an existence from the standpoint of both metabolism and endurance. So I tried just turning the hot water way down on my next shower only to determine that I'm QUITE beyond able to tolerate much in the way of planned stressors as I'm making ready to pursue my day.
Maybe I could drop back and punt ... you know, start taking walks instead.
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