No Country for Old Arduinos

 I was given this task in Facebook:

My response: No Country for Old Arduinos

 

I modified the original opening dialogue for the movie 'No Country for Old Men'

I was main programmer of this company when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was an IT man; father too. Me and him was programmers at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here. I think he's pretty proud of that. I know I was. Some of the old time programmers never even used an IDE. A lotta folks find that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough'd never used one; that's the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't use Do Loops up in Comanche County. I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. You can't help but compare yourself against the oldtimers. Can't help but wonder how they would have operated these times. 

There was this summer intern I sent to the electrical engineering summer camp at Huntsville here a while back. My recommendation and my testimony. He built a replica of a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to build a replicant for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to graduate school. "Be there for about fifteen months". I don't know what to make of that. I surely don't. 

The cyber crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to disassemble a circuit board to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his job at hazard. He'd have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this IoT world."

Worst Sauce

Someone asked a question on FaceBook:

Has anyone lived long enough to buy a second bottle of Worcestershire sauce?

I have easily emptied at least 6 large bottles as an adult, so that is easily more than one per decade of life. I remember buying a two-pack of bottles at Sam's Club once. I use Worst Sauce less now that I brought oyster sauce into my food prep several years ago but most likely less than ten. I still use Worse Sauce in my prep of Southwest Stew, which has been made 90 times at 1 tsp per batch, so 15 fl oz. and that would be 3/4 of a bottle of Worst Sauce consumed by just that one recipe in the 4 years & 4 months since starting The Stew.

I also use Worst Sauce to modify (already spicy) Spicy V-8 juice. I put in Worst Sauce, Sugar, and Tabasco sauce, 17.5, 66, and 5.4 grams according to the recipe that I have wrote directly onto the inside door of one of my kitchen cabinets.

I have seen reports from very old people who claim that Worst Sauce has allowed them to live past 100 years.

Today's Dog Lesson On The Fly

I have observed Hopper trying to grab flies in mid air with his mouth several times for most his entire life with me, all 1560 days. But I have no idea how often he gets one ..OR.. what he does with the fly after capture.

Tonight I saw that he was successful ..AND.. that he spit the dead fly out onto the carpet. After I told him that I was proud of him, he went back and inspected the fly, maybe to make sure it was dead.

I spend a huge amount of time getting to know my dogs! Right before the fly episode I was wondering how much they understand of my speaking to them. They understand some words & phrases extremely well, like: biscuit, bone, cheese, chicken, food, front porch, go bye-bye, go outside, go to the office, snuggle, spaghetti etc.

Who Is Reading Me in Sweden?

 There appear to be reader(s) from Sweden reading my blog recently. If these are real readers, please leave a comment.

UPDATE: I just changed comments setting so anyone can comment.

Thanks!

Frog Oasis

July 2nd 2021

Every summer we have at least one frog that lives at the wettest spot on the property: right by the back door step where rain easily accumulates and is always the last place to dry out, even though it is also the hottest place at 3 PM due to concentrated solar radiation.

As to the degree of just how wet this oasis is at the moment, this season is numerically classified as a Three Frog Summer.

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June 25th 2021

I turned the power off to my computer when the storm passed through. When I started my Windows PC back up, I was greeted with an image of nearby Palo Duro Canyon, Lighthouse Rock. But then I was curious because it looked ‘off’. I examined several photographs online, and it appears that the Microsoft image is reversed!

You might need to click on the second image to see the ‘correct’ orientation, at least that’s the one that has several similar views. Notice the small protrusion on the pathway that I highlighted with a red arrow.

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June 8th 2021

I have no idea why I am getting flooded with piano restoration ads in FB. I haven’t needed a piano stored or restored or been to a piano store in a veRy long time. Even then a decade ago I just wound up giving away a piano, baby grand; it never even made it to my house. I was warned that it never stayed in tune, it just had sentimental value, being in the family. But alas it was too cumbersome and large and far away. Another time I thought my wife bought me an old piano that she asked me to test drive between a pair of antiques at her church, both upright, but it somehow skipped my mind after that jam session and it obviously skipped hers. I need to ask her about that one sometime to see if she paid for it.

Four For Hopper

 Yea! It's been another year of getting to know and better understand the complex fur being that is my younger dog Hopper, 4 years together total. 

New things, behaviors & things I have learned during our most recent 4th year together.

Hopper prefers to go outside in the front yard all by himself to pee rather than go outside in the backyard with the other dog Pepper. I stand inside with the glass door closed keeping a watchful eye.

Our street route to and from the office downtown is usually the same, and Hopper has learned where the long stretches are in the streets where he can get out of his chair and I can hold him or pet him. If I tell him, “We are coming to a corner.” - I no longer have to include “... so sit down” for him to sit back down. Most of the time it has got shortened to “Here’s a corner” and he’ll sit back down.

We take a lot of trips to Amarillo together and we almost always make our last stop the dog park near the Love’s truck stop on Interstate 40 on the east side of town.

Food: it seems that Hopper doesn’t care for pizza anymore but he still loves spaghetti with a lot of hamburger in it.

He does not like to be left at home and pouts when I get back from downtown. He seems to completely understand short trips, such as when I take the trash to the dumpster, and I'm back in a minute or two. I try to always take him with me unless there is a good reason why he can’t come, such as dangerous outside temperatures. I get griped out veRy loudly when I return home from multi-day trips. He gets veRy loud, barky and sad, whereas the other dog Pepper is always happy-go-lucky & smilingly glad to see me.

New Annoying Habit: If I leave him in the cab of my truck while shopping, sometime I come back to find that SOMEONE decided to lick on my steering wheel.

Hopper and I enjoy our quiet time together on the front porch, with 'Front Porch' being one of his favorite words.

When a police-fire-ambulance siren will go off in the distance, both dogs will begin howling along, and humorously it seems that each dogs tries to outdo the other one in their loud undulating repeating moan, so I will let them go outdoors so they can be loud, joining the neighborhood dogs in chorus. I have learned each dog's howl.

During the late evening I will cut a chew bone in half and give each dog a half. I randomly select which dog gets each half based on whether the minute display of the stove's digital clock is odd or even. If it is odd, then Pepper gets the bone half of my left hand and Hopper get the other one. Even minute digit, its the opposite. But the bone half in my left hand is always given out first. Its all just silly fun with randomness. The dogs react completely different to me handing them a bone. Pepper will stand on his hind legs and joyously grab his immediately. Hopper always spends a couple seconds, at least, sniffing his bone, before accepting it but then drops it immediately on the floor to inspect it for several seconds. I tell him he is a wonderful dog and then he wanders off with his bone. Where do they go? It used to be almost anywhere in the living room but starting in the early spring of this year they both go to the carpeted hallway outside the bathroom.