dannyman.toldme.com

Dad and Dinners

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/07/05/dad-and-dinners/

So, for dinner Uncle flew out to Popeyes on his bike. To quote him, “If you buy, I’ll fly.” It wasn’t until he explained just how he’d “fly” that I actually understood, but I had no problem whipping out a $10 bill for dinner. Had some nice beer and a Dad’s Root Beer too.

Speaking of Dads drinking Root Beer, Dad was in town the other day. He was just about to head out to the Rainbow Festival, but I got to meet with him. You can tell you’re getting old when you walk over to the nearby bar with your dad to share some beers and a couple games of pool. Luckily he shoots as bad as I do. It’s nice to know that things might run in the family at a
convenient time.

For the Fourth of July we went out to eat at Gullivers, and were visited mid-meal by a scraggly-looking cockroach. Uncle showed this to the waitress and when we were getting ready to settle our bill we found that the meal was on the house. Turns out the restaurant is very concerned with the problem and thought it had had it licked … now, I hadn’t particularly enjoyed my cheeseburger, but seeing how concerned the place was on another front, I was really reassured. Gullivers is this cool restaurant that serves Mexican, Italian and American food – Deep Dish pizza included … anyways the interesting thing with Gullivers is the interior is covered with weird antiques. I hypothesized to myself that the decor only makes pest control all the more tricky … as much as they may have already spent on the “problem” then a free dinner for us was probably a bargain.

I wish them well fighting the almighty cockroach.

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To Work!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/06/10/to-work-2/

Ahhh, so you may have noticed that I haven’t written much here lately eh? Been busy … the biggest pain in the ass at EnterAct has been the whole moving thing, compounded with disorganization over administrative priorities and getting equipment together.

But the moving is done now. Got my own folding table, machine, window view, chair, and phone. Whee! We’ve got our own admin room where we all very much enjoyed ourselves today.

And I’ve got a negotiated salary, and health benefits and all, and my perks all sorted out – given the salary I’m now working at, and the likelihood that it will still go up considerably, there is very much reason to believe I shant be returning to school anytime soon.

I’ll need to order that ISDN line soon.

The Admin team is a cool group – Kevin is something of our fearless leader and a master of FreeBSD, Blake knows telco stuff and has what could most politely be described as an intriguingly strong personality, Eric speaks French, and will be working full-time this summer, and part-time when school starts back up, and just yesterday, we acquired Paul – a friend of Blake who apparently knows FreeBSD well enough, but I don’t know much else about him. He’s taking a vacation in Florida this weekend.

I’ve been working, for lack of anything more being demanded on me, of the interesting puzzle of rewriting some of the tools used by the techs to do user stuff like add users and change user names – the stuff we’re currently running stands a considerable bit of improvement.

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Toly, the labrats, and Westmont Girl

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/04/03/toly-the-labrats-and-westmont-girl/

To the editor:

I have a simple question that I would like anyone who is pro-Chief to answer. Who are we as Blacks, Whites, Latinos, Asians, etc…. to say whether or not the Chief is a racist mascot/symbol in the eyes of Native Americans? Did any of us grow up on their reservation? Did any of us grow up in their culture? Did any of us grow up in their traditions? Did any of us grow up in their footsteps? If you answered no to any of these questions, then I ask again, who are we as black, whites, Latinos, Asians, etc…., to say whether or not the Chief is a racist mascot/symbol in the eyes of Native Americans?

Jules Murray, Jr.
sophomore in LAS
Daily Illini letters,
3 April, 1998

Interestingly enough, it is the anti-Chief folks who use the word racist, so aside from Charlene Teters and all the other Native Americans who take offense at the Chief, Chief protesters might ask themselves the same question. Personally, I’m uncomfortable with the catchily short slogan “racist mascot” and think of the Chief more as being ignorantly offensive … is black face racist, or just dumb? Same thing. The intent of the Chief is arguably quite honorable – Chief isn’t setting out to denigrate Native Americans, it simply does because it’s really just a bad idea.

Fri Apr 3 21:08:14 CST 1998

So this weekend is our family celebrating Easter a week early. Some family members are going to be out of town, and Jessy moving to Texas, so … well, this weekend it is. I hope I don’t have damned head-winds driving back and forth this time. they really mess up my fuel efficiency.

Last night I had insomnia. Linda emailed me around 0300h saying she had pink-eye … we considered driving over to Carle but it seemed impractical .. mainly it was too irritating for her to get to sleep, poor girl, and her voice was getting hoarse. I considered if I couldn’t get to sleep I’d give her a call and we could hang out and watch a movie, maybe fall asleep … conveniently though, I fell asleep by myself. I hope Linda fared well.

At 1700h we had a labsitters meeting. Don explained that there were certain problems rearing their heads, and what he wanted done about them. Me and Toly ate together at Cantina afterwards, a specialty restaurant run through the dorms which is cheaper than Murphy’s where we first considered going. You just have to stand in line a long while, which reminded Toly of Russia. It’s nice to talk to Toly coz we have plenty of things we disagree upon even though we basically agree on everything … it’s kind of like we’re of like mind, only with different semantic conclusions. He tends toward being Libertarian, where I’m just a good, old-fashioned Liberal kinda guy, who sympathizes with Libertarianism, even if I strongly disagree with a lot of it. I love to exchange views with the opposition.

Maureen just dropped by the lab, and I was talking to her for awhile. She just got back from working in a soup kitchen, and she said she was talking to this guy who smelled of beer, and so she wanted to shower. It was nice to talk to her … I think for both of us. This all hints at some larger stuff I’ve been working out in my mind, that doesn’t/won’t quite make it here into the journal.

Thinking too much. I told her I’d be down here working on computer stuff if she wanted to step out later. She said she planned to study – three exams next week!

Still, perhaps I could call her later, maybe invite her out to the Etc. for a little while.

Okay, clearing my thoughts. Time to take a break!

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To work!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/03/23/to-work/

Mon Mar 23 19:39:28 CST 1998

There’s a guy on the radio who is talking about public school reform, and is lamenting that the ideals of Horace Mann have been replaced with those of Adam Smith.

Mon Mar 23 21:28:14 CST 1998

You know, I really can not concentrate in the presence of any noise that might stimulate me in any way. Certain background noises are okay, but speech that might interest me, or music … no.

We’re over next door for a few days. I’m back in Chicago for Spring Break. The guy at Drollinger Auto Repair managed to get the van fixed after I managed to reproduce the problem I had been having with it. I made it back to Chicago alright, and now, like I just wrote, we’re taking refuge next door on account of they’re refinishing the floors. It is no small production to move everything in your apartment over next door for two or three days and then back again. Uncle is having the apartment here done after ours is done. We’re being done over Monday and Tuesday and this apartment will be done over Friday and Saturday. Meanwhile, Uncle is busy painting ceilings and getting other nice things done to this apartment because the guy who’s moving in next door to us, a middle-aged African guy, will be storing stuff in the apartment in the part that wont be finished starting Wednesday. I’m wondering how quick Uncle’s going to get the kitchen here done. I know he’s going to fix up the floor before the guys come to sand and finish it, ripping out the tile to let the wood come out, but to get it to be a nice kitchen like ours, with lots of cabinets and neat things instead of the pantry he ripped out, that’s going to be some work!

Anyways, Wednesday will be busy – we gotta move a lot of our stuff back and wash the walls next door, so that the guy who’s moving in can move his stuff in. It might be worth it though. Mom says that since she’s getting the floors done and the walls washed, it’ll be like a new house – a non-smoking house. She’s going to make another try at kicking the habit – she says that she was pleasantly suprised that the nicotine gum that a friend had offered her on a long trans-Atlantic flight, didn’t upset her teeth and calmed her nerves during the long, smokeless trip. I offered that a gum might also satisfy the oral fixation, which I understand to be an ingredient in cigarette addiction.

I went in to EnterAct today to talk to Tracy about summer work. Ended up sitting on an admin meeting, and discussing oh-so-briefly what I might be able to do with them this summer. Tracy beamed at the idea of having four full-time admins! Charlie bragged to me that they were signing two to three CompleteAct accounts per day – that’s the expensive business stuff that makes them the real money. $20/month dialin accounts are a lot lower revenue. EnterAct seems even more complicated than NCSA’s network … but that’s largely because the admin staff do a lot of things that at NCSA is handled by other departments, partly because they’re dealing with commercial dialin access mostly off of PCs as opposed to networking several hundred people in different buildings to campus, Industrial Partners, vBNS and some other experimental networks … well, actually NCSA seems more complicated, but the stuff we do downstate is a little more static – EnterAct is growing at least as fast as the Internet at large, whereas NCSA has been around since before the modern commercial Internet has been on anyone’s mind, and so doesn’t have to move quite as fast, or something. EnterAct is about three years old see, everything’s being reinvented at once.

Anyways it’s a bit chilly in here, I’m going to lay off typing for awhile and scan in a few pictures before I go to bed. Jessy’s boyfriend, Dion, managed to get the scanner working with mom’s computer, and now we’ve got it talking to stumpy’s Sambda via NetBEUI, not to mention sharing stumpy’s ppp connection. Sweet. WinAmp was able to read in stumpy’s directory of MP3 files and throw them into a random playlist a lot quicker than I was able to write a rather crude perl script on stumpy to do the same thing. Sometimes, Windows-based software does just what ya need it to do … maybe I need to learn me some Unix GUI programming! :)

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“Mister Illiniwek”

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/03/03/mister-illiniwek/

You know, organized Republicans make me jittery?

You know, this past week I’ve been working on a web site for the daily-menu stuff?

You know, I went to a program tonight where pro and anti Chief folks were presenting their opinions to the University student Senate? See, the Republicans were there, all sitting front and center, and except for a token black lady and a blond girl who said “my great great grandmother was a Cherokee princess” they were all white people. Now I have nothing against white people myself – I mean hey my whole blood family is white people – but a whole bunch of them sitting together cheering on the cause of a Native American mascot makes me feel ooky.

The Senate will be voting on a resolution to remove Chief Illiniwek as the school mascot. Even if it passes the Senate though, nothing really happens unless the Board of Trustees, appointed by Jim Edgar, approve it as well.

The Board of Trustees is a bunch of crusty old white people who think they’re right. The arguments of the pro-chief forces were basically “I like the chief, he means a lot to me, and he’s not so bad, we should keep him.” The anti-chief folks kinda stressed how he was inaccurate, offensive, patronizing, and tended to reveal the University’s hypocrisy – the chief is meant to honor, but he offends Native people. Proponents claim he raises awareness of Native culture, but the University doesn’t have a Native American studies program. The University promised a dean for Native American students, and then reneged.

Judging by the statements made by Senate members who were present, there was a strong anti-chief feeling by the end of the meeting. It felt reassuring. I know the whole conflict isn’t at all about to be resolved overnight. If the senate passes it’s resolution to retire Illiniwek though, and the BOT shits on the student action, things might get very interesting indeed. The student body is pretty fucking apathetic especially after that DIA move.

One Senator asked a question as to why if the Chief was okay back in 1927, is it no longer acceptable? I think it was a rhetorical question, but I muttered to myself “Black face was acceptable in 1927.” The guy next to me heard and quipped “and the Klan was an RSO.”

There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

One student, Tammy Stanke, went on a big thing about how our University was a leader, and its students were leaders, and yadda yadda yadda yah … and so it is fitting that our symbol is a Chief, because “the Chief is always listened to.” I thought of how, if my understanding is correct, the Chief in an Indian tribe generally lets others speak and decides amongst the arguments presented, presenting a verdict, more like a judge. A University and a wizened judge sort don’t seem the same type to me … we’re full of babbling youngsters, who produce ideas for society to use and judge. Our supercomputers are not something I could envision a wise old Indian Chief taking a leadership role on. But then who am I to speak for native culture?

While he started out kinda nervous-sounding and stuttery, David Song made a point I found especially agreeable, that the Senate should pass the resolution in part to bring the debate before the BOT, who would just as soon forget about Native American affairs and issues of student democracy entirely, like they were bad dreams. Okay, I’m putting words in his mouth there, but I do agree that the Senate would serve the student body well by being more contentious with the Board. I, for one, am not a Happy Camper.

I went to lunch, and they were serving Cheeseburgers. Now normally these are kinda processed-meat looking things with a little rectangle of cheese over part of them that makes you think you’re in a fast food place. Shake the grease off well and you’ve got a fairly tasty burger by those standards. Today they were cooked poorly though. Dark on the outside, pinkish cold on the inside, and all the lettuce was flat and wilty. I cracked. I got pissed off and really bitchy and went on a little tirade about how I hate everything. As much as we get charged for this food, you think they could do a decent job! We agreed that getting Old Country Buffet in there or some private enterprise that does a good job might be pretty keen. If you can’t tell, I’m not at all keen on dining services.

What else? The guy from the Observer, our local left-wing loony tabloid, argued that we should keep the Chief because there’s this football fanatic who drives to every game from Kentucky or somesuch who would stop coming if the Chief were retired. Tammy also compared incidents of the Chief being burned in effigy by opposing schools to incidents of the American flag being burned in foreign countries – “they’re not burning us” – no, Tammy, they’re not, they’re burning an image of a Native American which we have appropriated for our own use. I’d rather be represented by old glory than the people we raped to build this great country, and if anything is to be burned in effigy, I’d rather not it be an image representing a people we collectively owe a great deal to.

The PRC representative asked rhetorically why the College Republicans were participating in an effort to build a monument to Ronald Reagen in every state when for Native Americans it was sufficient to honor them as a football team mascot. Why not honor Native Americans with a statue, a monument, or something more honorable?

The whole issue makes my stomach churn and my blood boil, but I kinda need that now anyways, keep me motivated!

Someone retorted to all those who argued that Chief Illiniwek honored them that it’s not about you it’s about Native Americans!

Well, enough about me.

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Jimi

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/03/03/jimi/

Tue Mar 3 22:57:21 CST 1998

Manic Depression is touchin’ my soul!

I know what I want but I just don’t know!
(How to go about gettin’ it.)

Feelin’ sweet feelin’
I wish I could caress, and kiss.

Manic Depression’s a frustrating mess!

Today I was depressed. Not for any good reason, mind you, I think it’s kinda like garbage collection. I slept through my morning classes and I’m starting to feel a little better now.

Too much thinking about women, that old Beavis screaming how it’s unfair and we’re never gonna score kinda thing was part of that, and a whole symphony of other things … some of my most important people are feeling kinda down in the dumps too, for respective reasons, and I may have carried off some of that.

All’s fair in love and war, for a good cause.

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Monday

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/01/28/monday/

So, Monday morning I got up at 0630h and rode to work with mom. I dozed off in her office, then grabbed a very inexpensive breakfast of French Toast in the cafeteria. After that we headed off to traffic court for my 1030h hearing.

On the way out, mom introduced me to “the girls” – all her Physical Therapists seem to be in their twenties, which seems weird but cool. Like college, only everyone’s a few years older, and there’s four peers as opposed to 40,000.

Anyways, we waited in traffic court, the proceedings going uninterestingly. From what I could tell, mine was a somewhat special case. Others seemed to feature mainly repeat offenders for speeding and other infractions. I was in there for a moving violation which resulted in an accident with no injuries, property damage, and no problems insurance wise. All the same, when I was called forward to the bench, the witness, Mr. Goldman, whose car I had hit, was not present, and the prosecutor said that the police officer was sick with the flu and asked for a reschedule. As the judge explained that I would have to come back in March, I interrupted, “Your honor, can I just plead guilty?” She seemed a bit surprised, but complied, issuing me a thirty dollar fine, a light penalty considering other fines were running forty to sixty with “supervision”.

My intent was, of course, to avoid the expense of traveling to and fro for such a trivial matter. Thirty dollars is less expensive than the cost of round-trip between Chicago and school, without even counting opportunity cost of missed classes and work.

After paying my fine I saw Mr. Goldman in the lobby. He had been delayed due to car troubles. Irony. He seemed disappointed or frustrated or otherwise unhappy with my guilty plea. “No, you say ‘Not guilty’ because it was just an accident and they let you off!” My understanding ran contrary to this, but I know Mr. Goldman’s testimony and that of the police officer could only have helped. This is this matter of impatience on my part. Some have suggested this gives me a criminal record or somesuch, but I figured if just going and pleading guilty was so bad the judge might have said something, especially as I hadn’t bothered to consult the legal counsel, which would have taken longer.

Ahh, the intricacies of court.

So, after that, I drove back, with mom in the car, which was very nice of her. I didn’t want to miss all the things I had scheduled, like the NASO meeting, dinner with a friend, and work from 1900h.

At the NASO meeting I volunteered to write thank-you letters for Organizations that had contributed to Pow Wow. Bill said he thought that the lack of thank-you letters was offensive, and that furthermore he hadn’t time to finish the rest.

I’m a Rhetoric major.

Of course, this was after one of the more … outspoken members launched an attack on what she felt to be a terrible lack of Native Americans in Native American Student Organization, being reflected in the President and the Treasurer-elect being non-enrolled persons. This sparked a debate that was way tangential about the meaning of enrollment, qualifications for what is a Native American, and stipulations that NASO might attach to it’s executives. She was particularly offensive in her approach, but she seemed to be the only one who felt such a way. The other enrolled Indians seemed perfectly comfortable with us white oppressor types pitching in to help the group. The president is a white guy, which is kinda cool in it’s colorfulness, while still illustrating the problem of Native Americans at the University: there just aint enough.

One of her objections were to fake Indians or folks who claimed some Indian ancestry but weren’t enrolled. I may be 1/16th Cherokee, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m a white guy, and that’s all I’ve ever claimed to be. I thought she was just barking up the wrong tree with me. Lots of passion and justifiable resentment, but it just isn’t targeted very constructively, in my opinion.

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Amtrak

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/01/26/amtrak/

I am so excited. I haven’t rode a train in years. Being in one of the front cars, I swear I can hear the sound of what I believe to be the beautiful putt-putt of the train’s diesel engine.

The leg room is astonishing! Trains, being the wonderfully fuel-efficient devices that they are, have less to gain by packing us in like sardines. To serve more passengers they only have to add another car. For an airplane or a bus to do the same … well they can’t do the same!

And that, of course, is why trains are superior. Nowadays even trucks ride trains, in a sense, for the long-haul. There are modular containers which can be stacked on trains and ships and placed on trailers for local delivery. That’s just cool.

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All Aboard

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1998/01/23/all-aboard/

This section was written Sunday evening on the Pilot.

I was waiting on Green Street for the bus to take me to the train station. A campus bus called the Illini pulled up and I nodded my head “no” to save him the trouble of stopping. He stopped anyway, pulling the door open.

“What bus are you waiting for?”

“Green.”

“That one aint running anymore.”

“I need to get to the train station. Any suggestions?”

Clearly this was a difficult request. He hopped on the radio and asked about another bus.

“You can catch the yellow. It’s up there. Hop on.”

I rode with him a block towards Wright. He stopped in front of the Union to pick up a group of students.

“See that bus up there?”

“Ya.”

“That’s the yellow – he’s waitin’ for you.”

“Thanks!” as I took off running in front of Everett to catch up with the bus resting at the Wright Street shelter. As the doors opened I looked at the driver and tried to explain myself.

“The other guy sent me.”

“That would be Chip.”

“He’s a great guy!”

“Yup.”

Yup

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Live!

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/12/17/live/

Wed Dec 17 23:43:45 CST 1997

Bought a QuickCam the other day from a place called PC Mall. It wasn’t easy, but I got it hooked up and running under FreeBSD. Now, the ultimate in geekness, it’s live on the web!

The first reaction I get from folks is “What about if you want privacy?” to which I reply “I live in a Quad – there is no privacy!”

It’s really not that bad at all, especially since it doesn’t handle low light well. If I’m really cool I’ll get to hack up some of the source over break and see if I can’t convince it to do some auto-correction of contrast and brightness and such.

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Cisco

Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/1997/10/10/cisco/

Last night I went to a company presentation for Cisco Systems – the “Microsoft of the Internet” – an analogy which I am uncomfortable with as Cisco products don’t yet suck. In fact, I’m pretty fond of Cisco and am impressed with its energy. It’s a place I might consider to work at, though I’m a bit wary of living in Silicon Valley, if my understanding of California Suburban Sprawl is true. San Francisco, an hour away, might offer a nice home though.

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Mashed Potatoes

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!

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Rust Spots

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.

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NetDev Party

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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Bee with Butterfly Wings

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.

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