Month: August 2010
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What’s old is old
So this guy built a scale model of a Cray 1 computer, and not just a bunch of model railroad plastic and some Testor’s spray paint, but a WORKING model. The original Cray took 72 printed circuit boards covered back to back with chips; this guy was able to use a single Field-Programmable Gate Array,…
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Strange Things Are Afoot at the Circle K
I can’t or maybe shouldn’t talk about it yet, but my work situation will be changing considerably in a couple of weeks. Papers are signed and hearts are broken, but I don’t want to jinx things too much. (You know, like having a background check service find out my secondhand connection to the Taliban.) More…
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Hot hot hot
I regret not getting a place with central air. I also regret getting a car with a black interior. It’s been in the 90s and even worse down on the peninsula at work. Yesterday in the time between when I got to work and when I went to lunch, the inside of my car got…
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The other Treasure Island
Yesterday we took a little drive to Treasure Island, which is a strange little man-made island that’s between the two sections of the Bay Bridge. (I say “the other” because I’ve taken a few trips to Treasure Island, Florida, so it was interesting to see the west coast one.) The two sections of the bridge…
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Various observations about the Netherlands
I was so stretched for reading material in the Denver airport on Sunday that I actually paid money for a copy of GQ magazine. In it, I read this giant article about the pot stores in Amsterdam, by some guy who worked there for a week or two and reported his findings. (I am researching…
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A cautionary tale of incompatible formats
In 1998, I got a new credit card in the mail and after thinking about how many photocopies I could make for $1500 or if that was enough to buy like one sixtyfourth of an acre in some deserted forest, enough to build some kind of treehouse-esque unabomber shack, I suddenly realized that I had…
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Goodbye Bradley
So Brad Hawpe got let go this morning. What a bummer. I mean, the guy was not doing well statistically, and the Rockies have a deluge of outfielders that are outperforming him, and they need to clear the roster spot to get some kind of pitching relief. But still, it bothers me. Hawpe’s one of…
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Behind the walls of sleep
This happens to me constantly. It also happens to my Mac. I don’t entirely know what the phenomenon is called, other than “why the hell does my computer keep doing this.” But I wrote about it in a story I was working on, so here’s my best explanation: I opened the laptop, but it wouldn’t…
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Back at sea level
(Actually I think my elevation is something like 13 feet, but I don’t really know how to check.) I made it back from my short trip to Denver yesterday afternoon. We had a great time with no major hassles, other than Denver’s horribly mismanaged airport security line, and a couple of pouty four-pawed felines who…
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Hello from 5280 feet
Hello from Denver, my former home and now a great vacation spot for me to get my baseball fix once a year. We got into town Thursday night, saw the Rockies beat the Brewers last night, and will go tonight and sit right behind home plate for game two of the series. We also took…