Retired engineer, former sailor, living off grid in Puerto Rico. Volunteer for climate change mitigation efforts.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • I worked for an engineering company that had “secret” projects. So when you were assigned to a secret project, you’d move all your desk stuff into that project area where everyone coming and going had to enter a security code to get through the door. But the size of projects would vary over the weeks. I remember one Friday I finished my work on a secret project along with several other people in the desks and drafting tables near me. The next Monday, we found that our desks were in the same place, but they’d moved the wall; so we were outside the project area - or actually we had been absorbed into a different project area with a different door code. So in those big buildings, there may be small offices, but they are easily reconfigured.

    I wonder if squatting in high-rise office space might give rise to sort of communal life - something more social than single-family units of today. It will be an interesting social experiment




  • tying knots. All you need is a couple of pieces of string to get started. The right knot, well tied, is like a good friend - you can count on it. Shipyard workers sometimes make fun of how inexperienced mariners tie up their boats to a dock with “if you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot!?” (full disclosure, I am a sailor).

    someone else mentioned sign language - that is also extremely useful sometimes! My wife and I learned it when we learned to SCUBA. We do not have any deaf friends, but sometimes you meet a person who is reliant on sign, and if you can at least spell out some words, ‘they are so grateful’.


  • The guy living across the hall from me at Georgia Tech in about '80 had bought an Apple II with a 50hz power supply. He was an electrical engineer and rigged up a new power supply for US grid. All he had was the motherboard and a keyboard, the screen was an old TV. The memory was a regular audio cassette player. He had a game called “Orbital Mechanic” and we played with it quite a bit. It turns out that the paths of objects thrown from one orbit to another are not so intuitive - so it was a real challenge to toss a wrench from Astronaut A in orbit 1, to Astronaut B in orbit 2. That game used WASD for aiming the throw, and when I later began playing PC games, I wondered if that old game might have been the originator of the concept or if it goes even further back.


  • I (tediously) deleted my posts and comments - wow that was a book! I am not deleting my account however - there is no useful data in the account existence, imho.

    But speaking of trust, and such meta-issues. I wonder where I will INVEST such effort again. Kbin and Lemmy and fediverse in general have a lot of potential, but it is VERY DIFFICULT to assess engagement. I know they want people to not chase “likes”, but on the other hand, a person wants to put their effort in a place where it seems to provide the most social value. Reddit upvotes gave that in some degree - though a brilliant reply that was misplaced could still be downvoted. I don’t see how the fediverse can prosper and be a repository of accumulated wisdom, if there is no way for the community to call out wisdom when they encounter it.


  • I was putting some old donated computers into a school in the Dominican Republic and they had old Windows versions and I could not update without spending some cash. So I installed Ubuntu Linux on them. It was GREAT! So pretty soon I upgraded my own PC and now I have been using Linux for a decade. The range of games is reduced - some Windows games just won’t work. But I am not a “coder” and not really a hardcore gamer either - I do some engineering and some technical writing, surf internet, and watch videos. I have no idea why anyone still uses Windows except for the fact that it came on their PC when they bought it (and it cost them $200 for the privilege!).