Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/02/bee-with-butterfly-wings/
It rained today. Monsoon season in Illinois.
I got wet walking from our NetDev Beckman upgrade to the CSIL meeting. Between the wet clothes and the extreme Air Conditioning I was freezing myself cold – silly cold!
So I walked home with a cold can of Coke in my hands. I was drinkin’ it. I went to recycle the can at a receptacle. I had to walk through mud. After gettin’ rid of my aluminum, I noticed a bee, stuck by his wings on his back, well her back, to the garbage can by water.
I don’t like bees, you probably don’t either. Gandhi said though that one should be kind to all living creatures, and I suppose I should try to respect that once in awhile. A Puff of breath righted the bee. I dunno if she could fly so well, but she was upright, and didn’t seem quite so distressed about being stuck in a very vulnerable position.
Good deed done.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/14/netdev-party/
Well, momma picked me up on Sunday, that was nice. Turns out she’s a bit pickier about speed than Uncle is. Okay, so I had to keep to no more than 75MPH, ah well … it was still a nice drive.
The week before that was pretty frenetic … Beckman upgrade! Ripping out BNC thinnet cabling and installing twisted-pair 10baseT ethernet. I’ll spare the gruesome details, but I let ya know I let me hair grow out in part because I kept hitting my head on the undersides of desks, digging around.
See, also upgrades work better if things aren’t defective … bad jacks, bad splitters, bad cables, all somehow unavoidable and so we gotta keep dealing with them. Not to mention a few old Macintoshes that just wouldn’t listen to an AUI transceiver and were very interested in just sticking with their thinnet.
By week’s end, my mantra had become, once again, “Computers suck!”
Ah, it wasn’t all that bad though, really, just a little more stress-ridden than anyone likes I think.
Paul’s party was very nice. I followed Mike’s example and made myself a little keychain out of a BNC connector. Mike was making one for Paul, but I thought it cute too. Right now I’ve got a tee, a barrel connector, and three terminators on my keychain as well as a wrench I bought to fix the front wheel on my bike. I think the whole ensemble could double for a weapon in a pinch.
Brats, those were good … good food, good desserts, extremely humid and occasionally rainy weather, and soggy chips that went stale absorbing moisture out of the air as a result. We watched “Beavis and Butt-Head do America” on Mike’s DSS setup. It was an excellent movie indeed. I don’t think we ever got around to margaritas, after the movie. Plenty of beer though. Mike boils the brats in cheap beer I guess, and we drink the good stuff.
Paul couldn’t stay long, they have a cat on a feeding tube … if that’s not good devotion to a pet I don’t know what is. Anyhow, this cat gotsa be “fed” kitty goo every few times a day, and Paul comin’ down from Chicago.
We hung up Beckman thinnet around Mike’s yard, told Paul he had to “debug it” … ookey yeah we’re geeks, but there was also … I think his name is John … juggling lit batons! Just wait ’til I get this one picture scanned! Yeah …
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/18/rust-spots/
A long, long time ago –
I can still remember,
How that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance,
That I could make those people dance,
And maybe they’d be happy for awhile …
Excerpt from the Lyrics to “Miss American Pie”
Well … got that van fixed up some. It’s quiet, so now the shimmy is far more noticeable. The shimmy can be fixed by a set of new tires. Mom suggested perhaps I could buy it some tires and hold on to it for awhile … yes, a car downstate … should think about that. Bert over the weekend recommended Sears as they offered him free rotation and whatnot for the life of the tires. All four or just two? Mom says one is kind of new, wouldn’t want that money wasted … wouldn’t it make a nice spare though, perhaps?
Well, to look into. I walked Max down to Fair Muffler, so he could ride back. He likes cars, though maybe he was disappointed because I didn’t really take him anywhere.
Have to read the gas meter also. I tried to do that earlier today but none of the meters I could find had the same numbers as the one on the sheet I’m supposed to fill out. Okay … have to drag Uncle in on that one.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/18/mashed-potatoes/
So we took Mom out to Baker’s Square to celebrate her birthday. Turns out they stop making pies after 6PM, preferring to run out of pies instead of having too many … but it’s Baker’s Square! This was likened to McDonald’s not making any burgers after 6PM because they didn’t want to have too many. End result was the birthday girl couldn’t get her French Silk pie, and had to settle for the inferior Chocolate Cream. Our waiter was dumb also, but at least he forgot to charge for the drinks. I liked the busboy better, and gave him two dollars of what I might normally give the waiter, even though he stole my fork!
On a different note, I’m sick and tired of places that don’t have real mashed potatoes! I mean, it’s a restuarant, the place is supposed to be good, no?
Well most places sell reconstituted potato flakes and call them “mashed potatoes” and it seems wrong to me dammit! It’s dishonest. It’s an imitation of mashed potatoes and it doesn’t taste as good as the real thing. It tastes like fucking grits, and I aint no redneck grits-eatin’ southerner. I like my mashed potatoes like I like my hot breakfast cereal – hot and with a lumpy texture. Oatmeal’s good ’cause it’s got texture, it sticks to your ribs, keeps ya warm, makes ya feel filled, makes ya feel like a man. Now grits … or potato flakes, just don’t give ya the same feeling, all they give me is a feeling that I’m more likely to have soft bowel movements, and that doesn’t make me happy. No sir, mashed potatoes, and oatmeal, any day, a real man’s food, a real American’s food!
God bless America, Land that I love!
Stand beside her, and guide her,
To a plate with real mashed potatahs!
From one restaurant, to another, to the cafe-teria!
God bless Idaho, state where they’re from!
God bless America, my home sweet home!
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/18/exrc/
On yet another note … well;
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ab sh1c <h1 align="center"></h1>
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ab shr <hr>
ab shr50 <hr width="50%">
ab shref <a href=""></a>
ab smailto <a href="mailto:djhoward@uiuc.edu">djhoward@uiuc.edu</a>
ab sbold <b></b>
ab sital <i></i>
ab sstr <strong></strong>
ab sem <em></em>
Still, I’d like to make things even nicer, so I might type;
This word is sitalitalicised[ESC].
And it might be rendered as;
This word is <i>italicised</i>.
We’ll see … vi is cool.
Later that Night …
Well, I hadn’t intended to waste my night on vi … but what the heck … after learning far more about vi than I ever originally intended;
set wm=3
set shiftwidth=3
set sm
map sh1 i<h1></h1>4hi
map shc1 i<h1 align="center"></h1>4hi
map sh3 i<h3></h3>4hi
map shc3 i<h3 align="center"></h3>4hi
ab shr <hr>
ab shr50 <hr width="50%">
map shref i <a href=""></a>5hi
ab smailto <a href="mailto:djhoward@uiuc.edu">djhoward@uiuc.edu</a>
map sb i <b></b>3hi
map si i <i></i>3hi
map sstr i <strong></strong>8hi
map sem i <em></em>4hi
Yes, my children, strong medicine there. Not really strong, but strong enough to warm my cockles for now.
And the agenda for tomorrow? Head on out towards Grandma to aid in her connectivity. I should get some rest now though, I’ll try to be around to write more tomorrow night, maybe morning? I haven’t scratched the surface of what I should say tonight. Sawree, but it is 0230h!
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/08/18/da-chief/
And Chief Illiniwek was the topic of discussion at dinner. I made a remark about the DIA being the same bit of the University that has the offensive mascot, and Brian and Anatoly sprung to his defense.
What, may you ask, is my beef with the chief?
As mascots go, he is in poor taste. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you conquer and pretty much destroy a people. Then you decide to honor that people by taking a symbol of leadership and spirituality, and have one of your own people dress in that manner to dance around at a football game. Honor? That seems disrespectful. I tried to make an argument, what if we were to use Jesus as a mascot? the pope? A rabbi? I implored of ‘toly that if the mascot were Jesus Christ dancing the Macarena and the majority of the 80% Christian population of our country were left a little offended if that might not be grounds for changing our mascot. He conceded that point. My next rhetorical argument was that why then did the same standard not apply when the offended group was an underrepresented racial minority … and he started to sound eerily Libertarian … the sort of attitude that if people can not defend their own, then there is nothing wrong with them getting fucked over.
That is not a positive attitude, might does not make right.
Anyway, I did not dissuade either of them, but I do believe given the food for thought, that our argument may have an effect on them. I was once in their shoes too, thinking that all this Chief-bashing was counterproductive and inspired by over-zealous political-correctness. But as I asked Goth Dan, how he felt about the Chief, he said “I think it’s dumb.” – It’s a mascot, er, a “symbol” in poor taste, that is kept around in large part due to institutional inertia.
And I have a fetish for fighting institutional inertia.
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