O-Dark-Thirty

I have a story, but I'll save it... Thursday is Thanksgiving Day here in the USA. Happy Thanksgiving to all my family and friends, to everyone celebrating the holiday, and to everyone in the world. I'm thankful for all the good people I know, the good times I've shared with others and the quiet times with my God. Oh, and for Turkey dinner. Sorry, Turkey. Friday is Native American Heritage Day. That's a mouthful, but here are some pictures from the early 1900s of Native Americans . All of them were taken by Edward S. Curtis. Some Native Americans say Thanksgiving reminds them of the genocide of the Native Americans . Actually, it was one of the first recorded times when the Native Americans and settlers worked together for mutual benefit. What ravaged the entire Native American culture, even before the colonizing of the country, was disease. The fantastic book 1491 by Charles C. Mann delves into the Americas before the coming of the Europeans and how the...

We all know that JFK was assassinated fifty years ago (I won't even put a link - stories abound). It makes me feel old. Anyone alive can tell you where they were when they heard of the assassination, much like 9-11. I was a barely six and the lady who took care of me after kindergarten cried while she watched television. "The President died. Someone shot him." That's all we watched for days on our tiny television, in black and white. "A second plane crashed into the Twin Towers." My company set a TV up in the lobby. We all watched, in color. Some incidents shape our world. Hug the ones you love. PS4 or Xbox One? That's the current game console debate. I was wrong in my Wednesday post when I said they were both available. They are now, though. Bottom line? Wait a while if you can; prices will eventually go down for the consoles and the number of good games will go up. If you can't wait then you probably already have a preference. Wire...

Dad, Mom and me in 1958. On 12/12/12 I wrote a post about the number twelve . Suddenly the number twelve has another meaning. I think of my Mom often, but there are two dates that I think of her especially and miss her. As I said in a post a few years ago, some pains never really go away . You just get used to them. A little bit. Maybe. One date I think fondly of Mom is her birthday, January 17 . The other date is today, November 21. Twelve years is a long time to miss you, Mom, but it went pretty fast. Twelve years ago today I was laughing and talking with my Darling and my two youngest children. The phone rang. My brother Barry was on the line. "Vince, you need to sit down," he said. I didn't hear the tremor in his voice. "Okay," I replied, moving toward a chair in the dining area. "I'm sitting. What's up?" "Mom died." I really should have been sitting. I dropped into the chair. "You...

Zarya Well, the last fifteen years have been a wild ride in orbit around the Earth. Fifteen years ago NASA successfully out the Zarya module to the International Space Station into permanent orbit. NASA completed the ISS a few years ago and it now houses six astronauts full-time. Congratulations to everyone involved! Go have some cake! NASA has a new spacecraft, MAVEN, heading to Mars , too. It launched on November 18. CNN has a nice video for the MAVEN mission. NASA also transmitted an image of the Mona Lisa to a satellite orbiting the moon using a laser . The transmission rate was only 300 bits per second, but I remember using that speed when I was starting graduate classes a few decades ago. You have to start somewhere. President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address a hundred and fifty years ago. His original manuscript is still preserved, using modern technologies to keep it from degrading. Darling's new phone is Android. After years of using an iPho...

Computer Virus Discussion, Computer Bits and Pieces I used to teach Advanced DOS classes at a local community college. For you young folks, that's "Disk Operating System" not "Denial of Service." One of the main topics I always had to cover was viruses (there is no plural for the Latin word virus). Computer viruses are just as bad now. The computing power of all the machines on the planet is astounding, so it doesn't surprise me that there are internet viruses infecting machines and installing zombies. Zombies are small programs that allow the virus master to use his bevy of machines to do simple tasks, like send messages to a particular web site to crash it (that's a Denial of Service attack). The really bad part is that many of the viruses can be installed as a drive-by. What that means is that you can visit a web site that will install the virus without any input from the user at all. A better explanation is in this article , where th...

My children roll their eyes when they see I put up my weekly post. Yes, they are all links that I found interesting during the week. I either want to comment on the article or I don't want to lose the link. So I share. This one is a bit long, so here's a short list of contents: Rumble about health care We left AT&T for T-Mobile. See our savings. Other potential cost cuts Fourier transforms Liz Taylor (and more) What makes men happy I left Mac and I'm back to the PC More on DNA testing Entertainment! Doctor Who, Thor and World of Warcraft Three twenty year old programmers built a health care web site in three days . It probably doesn't do everything that people need for the actual Affordable Care Act web site, but neither does the official one yet. The Affordable Health Care Act is complicated law so it's not surprising that the official web site is difficult. This is the time of year at my (Fortune 500) company when we all have to sign...

In May of 2010, Martha Beck of the Oprah Magazine wrote a great article, titled " 10 life lessons you should unlearn." You should be able to find the original at this CNN Link . That was the inspiration for this post, along with the realization that some people I know and love need to know these lessons, because a learned lesson is an earned lesson. We all seek joy in life, though sometimes we don't realize that's what we're doing. We think a pain-free, conflict-free existence will lift us up in our minds and relieve us from the daily toils that plague us. I hate to point this out, but you will not reach that nirvana while you're alive. (A discussion of whether you reach this state after death is an entirely different topic.) It might be possible if people were perfect. One of my favorite movies is based on James Hilton's book Lost Horizon . The movie is called Lost Horizon and was made twice in the US (according to IMDB). The first was directe...

CNN listed five things we learned from yesterday's elections. I'm glad we're learning something. I wish the politicians would. I'm going to paraphrase the five points, though. 1. Elections are bought. The more money, the more votes. Like we didn't know that. 2. The Affordable Health Care Act is hated more every week, regardless of political party. Change is hard. 3. Chris Christie is probably aiming for the White House. And he's the best the GOP has to offer right now. That's what they're saying, not what I'm saying. 4. New York wants change. We all want change - that's me saying that. Half of the USA voted for change. The problem is we want positive changes for everyone. Shangri-La, anyone? 5. The Tea Party lost in Alabama. I suspect it won't be the last time, and I like some of what they say. I try to always find something nice… There, now you only need to read the article to see how snarky I was about the five points. ...