W-Stool

Hard to believe that at one time Williams was one of the dominant teams in F1. The first F1 car I ever saw at full-song was Alan Jones in the Williams FW07 @ Montreal. I simply could not believe what I was seeing (and hearing).

Only after they got caught.

When I was running a micro-ISV way back in the day I thought I had really made it when I could afford to advertise in Dr. Dobb's journal. The magazine was a really big deal many years ago, and I still miss those days.

I'm sure just about everyone has seen "Blade Runner" by now - double points if you've seen the later version without Harrison Ford's narration. But you really need to see "12 Monkeys" if you haven't yet. Amazing, and these days somewhat timely.

Thanks for writing a great summary of year #6 for your business. Question: where do your advertising dollars go and how do you measure their success?

Good luck in year #7!

I used to work at the University of Nevada, Reno - the institution cited here. The current president of the institution is a former Republican governor without a Ph.D (something nearly all university presidents have). The current VP of Finance is a former Reno city manager who left his job due to a series of sexual harrassment and hostile workplace scandals. After leaving his Reno city job he went to work for the Republican govenor who is now the UNR president.

I think you get the idea of what kind of institution UNR is morphing into.

Where did you find the Pi5 for purchase? I can't find one of these in the USA for purchase anywhere.

Lordstown Assembly was never "torn down", and it would certainly take longer than a holiday weekend to do so. From the wiki:

"Conversion van production at Lordstown ended when production of the Chevrolet van's successor, the Chevrolet Express, moved to the Wentzville Assembly in 1994, leaving Lordstown to focus exclusively on compact cars."

The assembly plant is still there, although GM shut down all production as of March 6, 2019. The plant was sold to Lordstown Motors on November 7, 2019. Still intact, definitely not torn down.

I would also add the "Warehouse Sound" catalog from San Luis Obispo to the list - to this day I've never read such good ad copy. These guys could literally sell stereo systems to the deaf - the ad copy describing these systems back in the 70's was just that good.

"Boiler Room" is really an excellent film, and not widely seen. A great lesson on how some (but certainly not all) stock brokerages work.

As I head into my mid-60s I can look back on a pretty good life. Regardless of whatever else I did, for me my all-time greatest achievement was getting on Car Talk and posing my question - a real-life problem I was having that they solved almost immediately.

Purchasing and using a 132 column dot matrix printer just isn't feasible these days, hence my question.

"Grosse Pointe Blank" is one of my favorites because of Alan Arkin.

If they do the 16c I will be first in line. A programmer's calculator indeed.

Before there were personal computers if you were a geek you likely studied to get a ham radio license and built Heathkit amateur radios. This was me in the early 70s as a kid and it really helped propel me into a IT career later on when the technology became affordable/available. Heathkit was really something back in the day!

For people doing embedded development using MSDOS (which plenty of people did back in the day) Borland C/C++ version 3.1 was the gold standard of IDE and compiler tools. Turbo Debugger using two displays (one was a monochrome display - remember those?) was incredible. I still have a copy archived for safe keeping.

An amazing collection of gear from way back. All that stuff was current when I was starting my IT career.

Question: the guy is into ham radio as well - a lot of us were into that before home computing was really possible. On top of the amplifier and underneath the atenna match box looks like a transceiver but I can't make out what it is. Does anyone know what equipment this is?

I used this constantly back in the day - it was the Gold Standard.

The real question is - whatever happened to Ralf Brown?

By "Open Core" are they referring to "Open Source"?

People that have not been exposed to legacy industries (banking, insurance, etc) would simply not believe how many of these large/huge companies run the majority of their business on an IBM mainframe running COBOL code. I've seen it firsthand and I didn't believe it. For them, it just works.

Sears Craftsman, obviously.

I've had some business in Los Angeles over the years - not much, but I got there off and on. Depending on the airport you're flying into, depending on the landing approach your plane takes, and depending on what side of the plane you're seated on, the sign can come into view and it is quite large in the distance. I don't think I ever got over the thrill of seeing it - it is just so iconic - I really don't have the words to describe it.

Good to know, thank you.

There's a huge error in an otherwise good article about traveling by Amtrak on a long distance train:

"Also, economy does not include meals in the dining car and gets you no access to the observation car."

This is not true. Anyone on the train can sit in the observation car. Downstairs from the observation car is the snack bar, which was the only source of food for coach travelers when Covid otherwise closed the diner to non-sleeper passengers.

Source: I've ridden the Zephyr many times, the Southwest Chief is the same.

This reminds me of why the US medical system will never be reformed in meaningful ways: there's too much money to be made with the status quo.

George Smiley knew it well.

You can suffer from both - arrogance and ignorance - and I think Musk truly does.

I'm not sure Elon was not a massive d-bag back in 2018 - he just didn't have the platform (Twitter) to show those traits off back then.

First concert I ever attended at the ripe old age of 17 was Jeff Beck and Jan Hammer opening for someone I no longer recall. The albums "Blow By Blow" and "Wired" have truly stood the test of time and are recommended. RIP one of the true guitar greats.

I've driven through the Devil's Slide area in a car, and that is one the most frightening stretches of two lane road I've ever traveled. Prior to the Tom Lantos tunnel, the drive to/from Pacifica on that stretch of road was just completely insane.