September 4, 2021 · 23:59

A Clear Night At Last

I tend to pay attention to the sky. It’s that whole “obsessed with space and astronomy and astrophotography” thing. So when every hour my watch bugs me to stand up and walk around for a bit, I often end up after dark out taking a lap around the yard and checking out the stars.

The last month or so has been marginal in Los Angeles for stargazing. There’s been a lot of coastal clouds and haze as well as a few days that were just totally clouded over. (No rain, just clouds, at least in our neighborhood. We badly need rain!) With all of the lights in SoCal, it doesn’t take much haze to reflect it back down at the ground and brighten the sky pretty well. In real terms what that means is that on a normal night these days you can see the Moon if it’s up, almost always Venus in the sunset sky and Jupiter in the east an hour or two later (they’re REALLY bright), and usually Saturn up a bit to the west of Jupiter. Near the zenith, where the haze and clouds will be thinner and more transparent, you can see the brighter stars in the summer sky. Vega in Lyra and Deneb in Cygnus are pretty bright and overhead. Sometimes you can see all four of the bright stars in Cygnus, which is a good test of seeing.

But off to the south, you might see the bright stars of Scorpius and Capricorn, or you might not. If all you can see is Antares, it’s too foggy.

But tonight was wonderfully clear. Off to the north I could see something down near the horizon under Cassiopeia that I figured must be a helicopter it was so bright and near the horizon. But a quick check of the sky map shows that it was Capella!

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September 3, 2021 · 23:52

The Red Queen’s Race

Yet, amazingly, I remain up to my eyebrows in deadlines. While I’ve knocked off a few big ones, others loom, coming at me like freight trains.

To remain semi-sane and get some of the pressure off of my timeline, instead of kicking back, having a BBQ, watching some football, and so on, I think I’ll be spending the three days running the Red Queen’s Race.

See the source image

At least I get to go to an Angels game on Monday. Thanks, Sister#2 and BIL#2!

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September 2, 2021 · 23:34

Adrift On The Calendar

I’m so glad that my watch and phone tell me what day and date it is. I realize that I’m now totally dependent on them to keep track of such things since my brain and body and schedule are so overbooked that I can’t spend the energy or the brain cycles to track such things myself.

In some ways I feel like the crew of that ship in “WALL-E” where they’ve forgotten how to walk or move independently. And like in that film where there’s a malicious, evil entity that has manipulated them to go down that road, we have the GQP and the Death Cult right-wingers and conspiracy nut jobs who are pushing us to spend so much time stressing over their bullshit that we’re losing our ability to keep track of little things like the date. We have so many bigger fish to fry.

Do you remember a “M*A*S*H” episode where BJ Honeycutt was messing with Winchester’s clothes, subtly a little at a time having them taken in or let out, convincing him that he was gaining or losing weight? That’s what our electronic devices could do, adding a few minutes to the work day here, taking a few days off the holidays there, putting an eighth work day into the week (“Wait, wasn’t it Tuesday a couple days ago? Why is it Tuesday again? Whatever…”) Forget about “watching the watchers,” is anyone watching the watches?

The only reference I seem to have is, “How many days until that next deadline? And the one after that? And the two next week? Wait, they’re THIS week?! Shit!!!”

The good news I guess is that I’m more or less keeping up with the deadlines, at least the ones that are critical and for which I’m getting paid. The volunteer gig? Might be letting a few slip there.

I think the French have a phrase for that.

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September 1, 2021 · 23:23

No Context For You – September 01

Welcome to September – for values of “welcome” which start with “Oh, GOD, is it ever going to get better again?” and go all the way to “JHFC, they’re doing WHAT in Texas now?”

Where every day feels like this in an endless loop:

Screaming is optional.

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August 31, 2021 · 23:53

Lounging Squirrel

How can I hate his furry, mangy, potentially rabid little butt when he’s this cute?

It was hot in the sun, but nice in the shade.

So the sidewalk was juuuuuust right for his tummy.

He was digesting and relaxing, haven eaten his fill of the birdseed that was supposed to be for the birds!

He might have just been too full to run away. His daily birdseed theft is one of the reasons for my hatred. But then he’s so cute…

I hope I don’t get bubonic plague from him.

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August 30, 2021 · 22:55

Grocery Jenga

I don’t know what the grocery store ecosystem is like where you are, but here in Los Angeles the self-serve checkout started moving in and taking over a few years back. Now, at any major supermarket, you’ll typically have one or two human cashiers and a dozen or more automated checkout systems. The only time I ever go to a human checker is if I have liquor of some sort. You can’t buy that at self-service because the robot can’t check your ID.

One of the problems with those automated checkout systems is that the area you put groceries in after you’ve scanned is is a bit on the small side. You don’t have an option of putting the scanned groceries somewhere else. The system is weighing each piece as you scan it, along with the overhead cameras and internal security cameras, to make sure that you’re not stealing. So if you have let some of the staples (canned goods, toilet paper, cereal, and so on) slide for a while and then decide to stock up, you can start to run out of room pretty quick.

When you have limited space jammed to the edge, then it’s time to start going vertical.

Grocery Jenga!

Our store has one employee attendant who babysits six stations and clears jams and helps those who are running into this system for the first time. My grocery mentor yesterday wanted to come and take a picture for winning this week’s “competition.” What the heck, why not? Do I win anything? Customer of the week parking? $20 off?

Let’s not be silly.

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Filed under Los Angeles, Photography, Silly Shit

August 29, 2021 · 23:48

Make Art – August 29th

For those of us who will have an “interesting” week ahead and may experience moments of incredible stress.

When those moments come (and they will), you can “Set SCE to AUX” (and that might well be the correct action to take out in the real world) but in your head, think of a scene like this or some other peaceful place you would like to be, perhaps with who you would like to be there with, and take a deep breath, hold it, let it out, and then get back to the crisis (it will still be there, unfortunately).

You will persevere and succeed.

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August 28, 2021 · 23:30

Random Season Changes

It seems that with the pandemic and work-from-home thing for 18 months and feeling busier than God 24/7/365, the “seasons” have cut loose from their traditional moorings. As a result it’s feeling more and more like daily life in the Twilight Zone.

One thing here in California is that it seems to now be open season for the GOP television ads on the gubernatorial recall to be shown on every channel all day. (I’m assuming – there are a LOT of channels I don’t watch, and never will, but they seem to be on every channel I’m watching. I must be their target audience.) I’ve seen them for four different candidates already today. It invokes absolutely no surprise to see that each one is a bigger douche canoe than the previous one.

That’s going to get really annoying really fast. I might turn into a crotchety, cranky old man over this one. I might have to limit my television between now and September 14th to “Ted Lasso” next Friday and the Chiefs’ game on the 12th. However, given that the Chiefs’ game is right before the election, the ads might make it unwatchable. Perhaps I’ll listen to that one on the internet radio instead, even if it is on TV.

And Halloween candy went on sale at the grocery store three weeks ago. My first display sighting was on the weekly grocery run on the 8th. I know they get earlier and earlier, but really? A full month before Labor Day and we’re already getting Halloween candy?

Any bets on when the first Christmas stuff will hit the grocery stores? This week?

When my faith in the future of humanity is taking heavy fire from all quarters on a minute by minute basis, this isn’t helping. If you see something on the news about someone going berserk in a SoCal grocery store over Christmas candy in August…

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Filed under Death Of Common Sense, Paul, Politics

August 27, 2021 · 22:51

Random Old Photos – August 27th

February, 2010. Marina del Rey, CA.

Specifically, at the California Yacht Club. I had attended the christening of my boss’ racing yacht, specifically built to win the TransPac race to Hawaii. (Spoiler: it didn’t.)

There with a whole slew of very rich folks wandering around in bare or stockinged feet because we weren’t allowed to leave any scuff marks at all on the virgin, white, unmarred deck. I was more concerned with the glass shards everywhere after the giant magnum of champagne was broken across the mast. I’m thinking that a fair amount of blood might have been a bigger mess to clean up than a couple of scuff marks, but what did I know?

The party was going strong but I was getting massive fish-out-of-water vibes, so as soon as it was politically correct I excused myself. On the way back to the car the sun was setting and I snapped this with my pocket point-and-shoot camera (too early for iPhones, my cell phone just made phone calls) and it turned out to be one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever been lucky enough to take.

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August 26, 2021 · 23:43

Rabbit Hole

Wow, what an internet rabbit hole that was!

To start, something came in to my personal email account that I needed to send to a couple folks at the company I work for. I decided to be lazy, and rather than send the email from my personal email account to my company email account and then forward it internally, I just sent it from my personal account. Now, I’m aware that my personal email account is really old and has a weird domain name, so there was a possibility of it being sent to Spam or blocked, or the folks I was sending to wouldn’t recognize that it was from me. On the other hand, my usual “first initial last name” user name was right there… What could go wrong?

But that got me wondering again about the age of that email account and domain name. I’ve looked a couple of times before but haven’t been quite able to ask the right questions. I vaguely remember some things, but it was a long time ago…

This was well before Gmail came along. This was before Google existed! This was before Windows XP. In fact, it was probably right around the time that Windows 95 came out, maybe just before. Now it’s administered by EarthLink, but before that it was Mindscape, and before that it was Netcom.

The email address is pwillett@ix.netcom.com. So how long have I had it, more or less, and what does the “ix” stand for?

I finally figured it out, more or less.

Yes, I remembered the Earthlink –> Mindscape –> Netcom evolution correctly. Netcom started in 1988, running as a local service in San Jose for college students who lived off campus. As they expanded and this thing called the World Wide Web started to be a thing, Netcom released a  program called NetCruiser. NetCruiser was originally released for Windows 3.1 in 1995, and I found a very old Cnet article from Jan 10, 1996 announcing that NetCruiser for the Mac would be available Q1 1996.

WOW! NetCruiser included the ability to display both GIF and JPEG files! It also included email, Usenet, IRC, Gopher, ftp, and Telnet! The Netcom/NetCruiser combo was $19.95 per month for 40 hours of peak time use and unlimited use off-peak (midnight to 09:00) and on weekends! And it worked up to 28.8 kbps, almost blinding speed!!

“Wow” indeed.

And that matches what I remember! I had a Netcom account for at least a while, a year or two maybe, before NetCruiser came out. I remember how much easier NetCruiser was than manually setting up programs for different parts of the Internet, like email, web browsers, usenet, and so on. I remember getting those CD’s with the NetCruiser distribution on them – probably have them buried off in the garage someplace.

So that places my ix.netcom.com usage back to at least 1994, possibly a year or two earlier. But where does the “ix” come from?

I finally found another article about Netcom that talks about that. The original Netcom email accounts were in the “user@netcom.com” format. But during the development of what became NetCruiser, the original name was “Internet Xpress.” They ended up making the name change to “NetCruiser” due to legal issues with the “Internet Xpress” name. But the “ix” prefix stuck.

So the account and address are at least 26 years old, possibly 27 or 28 years.

To come up with a more precise answer, I’ll bet that somewhere on an old enough set of back up disks I have backup copies of my Netscape or NetCruiser emails. But that rabbit hole will have to remain unexplored for tonight.

Today I also have a couple of different Gmail accounts, plus my work accounts, plus my CAF work accounts, plus… But the primary is always the “ix.netcom.com” account. Occasionally I’ll meet a fellow geek who recognizes it and knows that it means that I’ve been doing this for a long time.

Geek cred – gotta love it!

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Filed under Computers, Paul