Recent Comments

1. about 18 hours ago on The Other Coast

   When I was stationed near Napoli (Italia) in the late 80’s, early 90’s, I was told to be careful of seafood caught near to shore in the bay. I was told that they dumped sewage directly into the bay and fish would come in to eat and the fishermen would come in to catch them there (despite rules saying they shouldn’t). I can’t really confirm that rumor but I can confirm that I’ve never had food poisoning as bad anywhere else I’ve lived.

   That being said I also ate a lot of great food there that didn’t make me sick, so there’s that.

   It was definitely an educational experience.

2. 13 days ago on Clay Bennett

   both

3. 27 days ago on Clay Bennett

   And the obligatory xkcd about rate of change…’

   xkcd.Com / 1732

   I can’t believe I’m the first to post this obvious fact and it’s in convenient cartoon format so that the deniers might, possibly, be able to understand it.

4. 29 days ago on Working Daze

   Let’s see… according to my resume:

   bash, korn, borne and C shell scripting, Perl, HTML, CSS, dBase/Clipper, SQL, Pascal, FORTRAN, COBOL, C, Assembler, BASIC. Familiar with Python and PHP.

   There are several more but I never considered myself well versed enough to mention them on the resume, that and I wouldn’t want anyone to know I’ve ever had anything to do with object oriented languages. I also didn’t know how to best say I knew several different assembly languages and still keep it short and to the point. And, as someone is bound to point out, a couple of those are not, strictly speaking, a programming language… but they do define the display of data which is an ultimate goal when using “actual” programming languages.

   And then I know words (but couldn’t have a conversation on a bet) in German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Korean. I’ve always envied those folks that can learn and converse in more than one spoken language.

5. 30 days ago on Bill Bramhall

   prayer to any of the made up gods mankind has kowtowed to over the millennia is, as always, a waste of time and just talking to yourself.

   What is NEEDED is to get out and VOTE and VOTE BLUE all up and down the ballot!

6. about 1 month ago on Non Sequitur

   For a while I was a shift supervisor on an older flight simulator and at the end of a shift one cold day I found my gloves stuffed full of the bits from the bit bucket. Sim troops tended towards the practical joker type and even supervisors weren’t entirely safe from being a target 8^)

7. about 1 month ago on Non Sequitur

   so many quotes… so little time… 8^)

   I know this doesn’t make the anti-education lot here very happy but let’s start with:

   “Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.” — Aristotle

   But I most certainly concur with:

   “Those who can Neither Do, nor Teach – become (mostly Republican) politicians.”

   And then there are some related quotes:

   “There is only on thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience. " — Archibald McLeish

   “Experience teaches only the teachable.” — Aldous Huxley

   “Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first, and the lesson afterward.” — Oscar Wilde

   Good judgment comes from wisdom. Wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from… Bad judgment.

   Experience is what you have right after you needed it.

   Experience is that little voice that tells you this was a bad idea the first time.

   Experience is what allows you to recognize your mistakes when you make them again.

   With age comes experience. With the willingness to learn from experience comes wisdom.

8. about 1 month ago on Speed Bump

   For the first 11 years of my military career I maintained and operated flight simulators for the Air Force. It’s the next best thing to flying and a job I really miss to this day.

   fwiw…. the only reason I stopped doing that was because I had to. Some out of touch MBA type further up the food chain decided it was better to contract that work out to civilians and I had to find another job or get out of the service at the 11 year mark. I stayed in, despite some second and third thoughts at the time, and never regretted it (well… not much anyway 8^)

9. 2 months ago on Moderately Confused

   I started collecting them in the late 70’s when I was TDY to Beale AFB… my first was a SR-71 coffee cup. Between military and civilian acquisitions over the decades I’ve lost count of how many I have. The display problem became such an issue that I started in on shot glasses a few years back to save space 8^)

10. 2 months ago on Clay Jones

    Well… if they’re going to outlaw “obscene” material then that means no bibles for them. There isn’t anything more obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile.