Close to exactly two months ago (May 13th), I asked “Luetta” at work for copies of three specific MS-Word documents that I needed to update for a project I’ve been working on for last few months. One is called a user’s guide - and it’s a couple of hundred pages, a shorter one is called the programmer’s guide - a much smaller doc [Sorry, I didn’t write down the exact page counts]. The third one … [Read more...]
Working with a colleague, trying to determine why “Read-only” checkbox is checked on MS-Windows file.
July 4, 2024 By
Just another short blurb tonight (lol). Just another fantastic day at work today; a colleague had issues with a program he had developed, and QA (quality assurance) was testing; he was informed by QA either late last week or this past Monday that ‘something was wrong’, and I’ve been helping him try to determine the root cause. The irony here is he’s a seasoned cobol programmer (and I’m not), … [Read more...]
The question was “what exactly was/is a mainframe?”
April 3, 2024 By
So - in my opinion, “back in the day” - BEFORE windows/Linux/unix/intel/dell (from 1950s thru, let’s say: 1985-1990 - before Unix/windows NT servers came into existence), and take this (at first) with a grain of salt: A mainframe was not ‘commodity’ hardware; each computer manufacturer (before AND during the advent of the seven dwarfs / BUNCH), had their own proprietary hardware AND OS software. … [Read more...]
Modrl Railroading – structure building summary for 2023
January 31, 2024 By
Since late last summer I’ve been beating myself up with regard to my model railroading ‘structure building’ hobby. It all had to do with me finally getting motivated last yr around this time (Feb/2023), getting back to my hobby table building my “kits” (I hadn’t done anything project-wise during all of 2021 nor 2022). So, it was a big deal to getting back and start making things again. Then, … [Read more...]
Programming in Assembler and/or using JCL
October 27, 2023 By
So I’ve joined a few Mainframe computer FB groups “recently” (last few weeks), and since the market was 80-90% IBM, most of the posters to the group are former “users/programmers” of the IBM System 360/370, etc. platform. They are dozens of gobble-gook acronyms which seem to be some sort of commands, and they then talk about programming in Assembler Language and they “seemed” to love it, … [Read more...]
Model Railroading – kit building – LaserKutModels
June 7, 2023 By
It’s pretty tough starting a mom & pop business out of your garage these days. Decades ago, you could put an ad into the various hobby related mags, announcing your new model railroad kit manufacturing company, and hopefully, via these magazine ads, as well as by word of mouth, your mom & pop business just might get enough customers to make your start-up a successful one, like Art’s Bar … [Read more...]
Me – master paper clutterer
April 23, 2023 By
Hopefully this will be a short one. ===== No, it’s definitely turned into a long blog post. You will, and should, just skip to another post or whatever from your FB ‘feed’. This is long, and, very boring. You’ve been warned. ===== I’m a clutterer. I hoard misc papers (no, not newspapers - who reads physical newspapers there days?). Just papers, not going to explain any more but some of … [Read more...]
Model Railroading – recent thoughts – motivation
March 29, 2023 By
So…as some of you have noticed, I’ve been sharing my recent builds (after almost two yrs of being in a funk and not having any motivation to work at my project table). And, I’ve been getting the “likes” as well as some nice comments. But, the following comment this morning truly surprised me: “I am never going to be a great scale modeler but your work is inspiring.” This following (after the … [Read more...]
Being down – and how I (temporarily) fixed it.
March 13, 2022 By
Several weeks now, I’ve been kinda down. Lots of reasons. But, once I knew BFF Rick was going to come over (originally yesterday but we moved it today), I got my stupid, sorry, depressed ass off the couch, out of bed, out of the funk, out of the mope, whatever, and started cleaning and tidying; I’m the type who doesn’t make the bed each day; and I sometimes ‘laugh’ (or, roll my eyes) when I see … [Read more...]
Model Railroading – FSM – Swakhammer’s Welding Co.
December 10, 2020 By
Hmm. I’ve been pretty lax for the last three months, not posting progress reports on any structure builds, so I’m a bit behind. I started this kit in mid September, and have been making slow progress especially during the month of November as I was preparing to move back home to MN from NC. The particular kit (manufacturered in 1990) is from a company called Fine Scale Miniatures (“FSM”), in … [Read more...]
Unsure what the title of this should be
August 19, 2020 By
A long one, folks. You can read and be bored, or you can skip - doesn’t matter to me. I’m not ranting this time, nothing to rant about; all my ranting was expended last week. With this post, I start on a topic because something I read “just now” (ha, an hour or two ago) stirred some memories from my childhood. It later progresses into misc thoughts of my adult life... ====== I’m reading a … [Read more...]
Election related – summary of electoral college stats
August 11, 2020 By
1932, landslide Roosevelt 462, other guy 59 1936, landslide Roosevelt 523, other guy 8 1940, landslide Roosevelt 449, other guy 82 1944, landslide Roosevelt 432, other guy 99 1948, Truman 303, other guys 189, 38 1952, landslide Eisenhower 442, other guy, 89 1956, landslide Eisenhower 457, other guy 73 1960, Kennedy 303, other guys 219, 15 1964, … [Read more...]
Hertz bankruptcy
May 24, 2020 By
Hertz car rental bankruptcy. How can a company with “only” $9 billion in annual revenue even think it will ever be able to pay off ~$17 billion in debt? Their debt load is almost twice as much as their annual revenue. Either way, even before the virus situation, the expected average annual earnings (profit) of a Fortune 500 company is around 8-10 percent of annual revenue. So, let’s round that … [Read more...]
quote from randy peprock re pandemic re-opening
May 22, 2020 By
“Reopening everything and pretending like the pandemic is all over is like when you're watching a Friday the 13th movie and you think it's safe for the campers to come out of hiding after Jason is "killed", and then he jumps back out of the lake with a butcher knife. Stay safe. We're not out of the woods yet.” … [Read more...]
Vigilante murder in Georgia
May 14, 2020 By
Vigilante/cold blooded murderer/redneck: (paraphrasing) “well, I thought he had a gun, he reached into his pants”. The young man in question, was out jogging, and had shorts on. Here are my thoughts: When I wear shorts to go to the store, i usually carry my cell phone and my wallet in my short’s pockets, having just those two items tend to weigh down the shorts at times, causing me to have to … [Read more...]
Pandemic – reopening – rude people
May 11, 2020 By
What is the world (i.e., these United States) coming to? A small business owner runs an ice cream parlor, and re-opens his business with social distancing rules for ordering, etc., and within the first day (or evening), people coming into the place are so rude to his staff that he has to then close it up again. It’s just ice cream, folks. You can live without … [Read more...]
Originally posted on FB – some thoughts on my structure kit building
June 14, 2019 By
A shout-out to Doug at FOS Scale Models, and Art and company at Bar Mills: both of these gentlemen (and, Art’s crew) are master designers of structure kits. In the last two yrs, I’ve built ~three dozen kits from these two kit manufacturers (and, one, so far, from Kenny Crump’s KCWorkshop), and I just love the “character” of their designs. It just makes building the kits a lot more fun, and also … [Read more...]
Originally posted to FB – structure kit instructions
May 24, 2019 By
So, a few days ago, I wrote a short post praising a new kit manufacturer, for doing a really fine job with their instructions (yea, Mine Mount Models). Today, I’m going to share one quote from the instructions from a now out-of-business (OOB) kit manufacturer (not OOB due to their kits being bad, but most likely due to their retirement), and will then share something (vis paraphrasing) I read in … [Read more...]
Originally posted on FB – shoutout to Mine Mount Models
May 22, 2019 By
Received my first kit (Palzer’s Plumbing Supply) from “Mine Mount Models” this morning, and have to say I love the way this guy did the instructions. Might be “too long” for some people, but they are quite “readable” (“professionally” formatted), with numerous photos, all in color (I believe), showing lots of angles, and all sides of the final structure. Not to show disrespect toward my other … [Read more...]
Charter cable – argh
February 13, 2019 By
I go online to charter/spectrum, and want to check out how much it’s going to cost me to add a new service to my account. They will provide pricing (via the web) if it’s a brand new account, BUT will not provide pricing if it’s an existing account. They force you into talking via phone or online chat to a live person. So, I open a stupid chat session, after actually logging into my spectrum … [Read more...]
