Tag Archives: technology

Sunday Morning Coming Up, Down and Sideways

Posted on February 26, 2012 by | 12 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for stopping by for a read this morning.

Those of you who haven’t been getting enough magnetism in your areas will be glad to know we’ll be having a nice little geomagnetic storm today. 

CME TARGETS EARTH, MARS: A coronal mass ejection (CME) launched from the sun on Feb. 24th appears set to hit both Earth and Mars. According to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the cloud should reach Earth today, Feb. 26th around 1330 UT, followed by Mars two days later.

The CME was hurled into space by a filament of magnetism, which rose up from the sun’s northestern limb and erupted on Feb. 24th: SDO movie. Although much of the cloud headed north, out of the plane of the planets, the cloud’s lower edge will dip down low enough to intersect Earth, Curiosity, and Mars.

http://spaceweather.com/

It couldn’t have come at a better time here.  The ranchers have been complaining something awful about the magnetic drought.

Meanwhile, it’s mostly business as usual here.  When I went out onto the porch to say my hellos to the felines it was all present and accounted for except the invader cat.  It was out there last night, but I figure it’s commuting to whatever place it has real people somewhere, keeping them on edge, then hurrying back here where things are really happening.  But that leaves it open to the possibility of missing something both places.

I’m thinking it will carry on this game as long as it thinks it can get by with it at both ends.

Those of you who believe radio waves are messing with your heads will be gratified to know there’s a place in the US where you can get away from it.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/15/west-virginias-quiet-zone-becomes-refuge-for-those-on-the-run/

West Virginia’s ‘Quiet Zone’ becomes refuge for those on the run from wireless technology

By posted Sep 15th 2011 3:12PM
 
 There’s a 13,000-square-mile section of West Virginia known as the Quiet Zone where there’s no WiFi, no cell service, and strict regulations placed on any device that could pollute the airwaves. Those unique conditions are enforced (and aided by the surrounding mountains) to protect the radio telescopes in the area from interference, and it’s hardly anything new — as The Huffington Post notes, Wired did an extensive profile of the zone back in 2004 (the area itself was established in 1958). But as the BBC recently reported, the Quiet Zone is also now serving as something of a refuge for people who believe that wireless technology makes them sick — a condition sometimes called Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (or EHS). Those claims are, of course, in dispute by most medical professionals, but that apparently hasn’t stopped folks from calling the local real estate agent “every other week or so” to inquire about a place in the zone.
 
For those who don’t want to migrate to West Virginia, however, experts suggest a person might  just hit the switch at the power pole and see whether it results in any improvement. 
 
One body of opinion leans to the thought that radio waves have a lot more influence on the human mind when they’re allowed to enter an antenna, swoop down through some receiver to an amplifier, then out to a speaker.  Then back through the air where they encounter a human ear.
 
Making sure those radio waves don’t get passage through and convert themselves to something the human mind can interpret into pictures and words, those experts say, interrupts the damage they can do, or at least reduces it.
 
My personal opinion is that I don’t know.
 
Old Jules
 
Today on Ask Old Jules:  Life in the 1960′s?

Old Jules, what was your life like in the ’60s?

 

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Astronomy, Country Life, Current Issues, Science, Senior Citizens

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Something fun from the Recovering fine and Micron Gold Group Newsletter

Posted on February 24, 2012 by | 1 comment

Messages In This Digest (2 Messages)

1a.

Got some ore soaking in warm NH3Cl and NH3NO3

Posted by: “james” james122964@yahoo.com   james122964

Thu Feb 23, 2012 5:04 pm (PST)

Got the old “new” leach thing working on some ore, this is real ore to test its ability to handle mixed compounds in in the leach.

I am running it at 145 degrees temp controlled for long slow soak as this solution is not going to be a aggressive type of leach.

Jim

1b.

Re: Got some ore soaking in warm NH3Cl and NH3NO3

Posted by: “scottt” Scotttygett@juno.com   scotttygett

Thu Feb 23, 2012 6:51 pm (PST)

Almost no one here is qualified to tell you how not to blow yourself up, but one of our favorite members and one of the Group’s founders, Art Corbitt, would rail about ammonia in lraches being explosive. Keyword fulminate.

Cyanide tailings are the wirst offenders, so one really has to process that out before extraction.

Geology degrees I am told could have morr chemistry and mechanical engineering, so this may be normal for the industry.

1 Comment

Posted in Adventure, America, Country Life, Current Issues, Education, Human Behavior, Nature, Outdoors

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Taking Off Downwind

Posted on February 18, 2012 by | 21 comments

If it hadn’t been for an old friend who was a pilot telling me I could fly an airplane as cheaply as I could spend an hour on the range practicing with a large-bore pistol every week, I’d probably never have thought of doing it.  But something about the idea grabbed me.

I went out to the Killeen, Texas airport and took a few lessons to find out whether flying was one of the adventures I wanted to give myself this lifetime.  Turned out there was no question in the question.

But being a man of ideas, not much time passed before I decided I could buy an old aircraft and save a lot of the cost of renting one while I learned.  A 1947 Cessna was sitting on the strip with a for sale sign on it, that one at the top of the post, so I bought it.

But finding an instructor to teach me to fly a taildragger cut down a lot of my options.  I ended up with a guy named John Rynertson, who introduced himself by saying he was one of the best pilots around.  He owned a Cessna 120, and John taught me enough to get me started.

But we had a falling out, him not soloing me in a timely manner, me thinking he wasn’t doing so because he wanted to maximize the trainer fees.  One day we landed, me thinking this was the day of the solo, and he sneered I wasn’t ready yet.  We were standing by the airplane, so I climbed inside, started the engine and taxied down to the end of the runway, gave myself my first solo flight, illegal.

John and I didn’t have much truck with one another after that.  I flew that old Cessna without having a ticket allowing me to do it, while he flew his C120 up one day and pulled the wings off it in a snap-roll, killing himself exactly the way a man ought to do if he’s going to pull the wings off a Cessna.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I’d taken off downwind for the first time.  I couldn’t find another instructor, and I was relocating to another town at the time, where nobody knew me.  So for several years I flew that Cessna, 500+ hours flying time, as though I was entirely legal.  Flew out to New Mexico, over to Savanna, Georgia, sleeping under the wing along the way, with no license to pilot an aircraft.

But eventually word got around the Georgetown Municipal Airport and someone cautioned me the FBO was going to rat me out to the FAA.  I decided it was time to complete my training.  Found an old outlaw pilot to sign me off and made an appointment with the FAA examiner in Austin.

When he looked at my log and saw I had 500 hours he shook his head a longish time.  “I’ve been checking out pilots for thirty years.  Before you the one with the most flying hours I’d ever seen was a guy with 100 hours, and he almost killed me during the check ride.  Couldn’t fly an airplane.”

I grinned at him.  “You care to watch me take it around the patch a few times before we do the check ride?  I’ll get the numbers every time around and turn off by the first taxi way.”

We did the check ride and I flew back to Georgetown legal, for the first time.

Almost felt as though I’d lost something.

Old Jules

Today on Ask Old Jules:  Mistakes and Regret? 

Old Jules, what mistakes have you made and regretted?

Previous post about the flying phase: Misplaced Worries

 

21 Comments

Posted in Adventure, Flying, Transportation

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Learning How to Not Be So Stupid

Posted on February 16, 2012 by | 12 comments

Morning to you readers.  I’m obliged you came by for a read.

If I’m going to get anywhere in this life I think I’m going to have to learn how to not be so stupid. 

Yesterday I made that post about the F350 wiring, which I’d been fretting and gnashing my teeth about for months.  Ben offered to try to find me a wiring diagram, and tffnguy recommended a Ford Truck Enthusiasts Forum.  I felt fairly uppidy and hopeful, but not sky-high enthusiastic because I’ve learned the hard way to suppress my melodrama.

But I went to the Forum site and immediately remembered I’d been there before, several months ago.  The reason I remembered was the popup advertisement for Phoenix University that blocked the entire screen and came back as soon as I clicked the X, every time.  The site took forever to load on a dialup, too.  So I blew it off and spent the next few months twiddling my thumbs trying to find ways to fix the immediate problem.

But yesterday, because of tffnguy’s recommendation I fought my way through the esoterica, waited while things loaded, killed popups as though I could dress them out and have them for supper.  Registered, posted a question about the wiring, along with pics, and asked for any help anyone could offer.

In a matter of hours I had a reply and a wiring diagram.  Now I’m back where I could have been several months ago if I’d had the patience and determination to wait for that site to load and posted an identical request back then.

Gale’s fond of saying that during the 40-odd years we’ve been friends every mutual acquaintance, if asked to list my traits would have had, “If there’s an easy way and a hard way, he’ll pick the hard way and stay to the end.”

Maybe I’m beginning to understand what they were talking about.  If I can get that grapefruit out of my mouth I might try to sort it out and change it.

Old Jules

 

Today on Ask Old Jules:   World Ending in 2012?

Old Jules, is it true that the world’s gonna end in 2012?

 

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, Senior Citizens, Survival, Transportation, Trucks

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Another Bug on the Windshield of Life – The Tow Bar

Posted on February 14, 2012 by | 18 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read.

Nobody much uses a tow bar anymore.  The only thing available to rent in town was something called a ‘car dolly’, and I didn’t like the idea of renting one, even a little bit.   But Gale’s reluctance to pull the New Truck into town with a chain was expressing itself full volume without him having to say anything outright.

I’d put notices on Kerrville Freecycle, Kerrville Marketplace, done everything I could think of without success.  But a week or so ago Gale mentioned he’d seen one for $100 at a thrift store in Kerrville.  At least he thought it was a tow bar.  He said it had been sitting there a goodly while.

Those of you who read here probably know the idea of paying price-tag prices for something isn’t in my makeup.  And $i00 for a tow bar, while probably a reasonable price, just wasn’t something I was about to do.  I’d rent a car dolly first.

I borrowed Little Red and made a special trip to town in the hope it was a tow bar, and in the further hope they’d be ready enough to see it gone to be willing to do some horse trading.  When I arrived unsuspecting began a bargaining session lasted maybe two hours.  Tough, tough, tough, those people have become.

The only time in my life I ever recall having to dicker that hard for anything was in Mexico when I was 17 years old bargaining for a pair of needle-toed, fancy-stitched turquoise-dyed-stovepipe topped boots.  I’d only tried one of them on and the fit was perfect.  Got that guy down to $17 for the pair.  But when I got back to Portales and put them on, turned out they were two different sizes.  Killed my feet, wearing them.

But I’ve digressed.

As you can see from the pic, the tow bar’s now here, same size for both feet.  And now it’s only going to be a matter of prying Gale away from whatever else he thinks he ought to be doing to get the New Truck to a Real Mechanic.

Old Jules

 

18 Comments

Posted in Texas, Trucks

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Sorry, Wrong Number.

Posted on February 12, 2012 by | 24 comments

I don’t get many phone calls here, so a few days ago when the phone rang and a male voice with an accent said something I didn’t understand about ‘technical support’ and ‘your computer’ I kept listening a moment.  But other than those two phrases I couldn’t cypher out a word he was saying.

“Excuse me.  I can’t understand what you’re saying.  What do you want?”

Another long string of words including the two phrases, unintelligible.  My hearing isn’t all that it might be.  I can’t understand what store clerks or waiters are saying half the time when I’m in town, so I nod yes, or no, as the mood strikes me and take my chances.

But this guy had something to say that might be important, and he called to say it.  Seemed prudent to me to focus my iron will and patience on the job of knowing what it was.  I tried several possibilities.

After I’d interrupted him three or four times asking him to speak more clearly, more slowly, though, he said, “Never mind.”  Spang broke the connection.

I’m reasonably certain the man was in India.  I shot a couple of phrase of Gujarati at him I remembered from Peace Corps training and he shot some back at me I couldn’t understand any better than I understood his English.

Remembering it, I recalled a story I read a while back online:

A PACKED commuter train sped hundreds of kilometres across India in the wrong direction before passengers finally realised it was pulling into an unfamiliar station.

The train left the southern town of Tirupati on Wednesday for the eastern city of Bhubaneswar, where it was due to swing north to its eventual destination of Varanasi, a city in northeastern India, The Times of India reported today.

But bewildered passengers noticed something was amiss yesterday when it chugged into Warangal – a central Indian city on an entirely different route some 980km west of its intended stop at Bhubaneswar.

The express train had managed to cross three of India’s railway divisions and travel hundreds of miles without anyone noticing it had lost its way, The Times reported.

The mistake was believed to have arisen because it was given an incorrect destination code, compounded by the fact it was a special service and many of the staff were unfamiliar with the route.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/train-travels-980kms-in-wrong-direction/story-e6frf7jx-1226132739080

By hindsight, I don’t know whether the guy thought he was talking to someone in the US, Australia, or the UK.  I can’t for the life of me form an opinion about whether he knew something about my computer it was important I know, or wanted to tell some train pilot in New Zealand he was going backwards and another one was coming at him 90 miles an hour the other way.

This brave new world’s getting a bit complex for a 20th Century man.

Old Jules

 

Today on Ask Old Jules:   Old Jules, what scripture do you use most in helping you fight your demons?

24 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Communication, Current Issues, Trains, Transportation

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Clarifying the clarification

Posted on February 9, 2012 by | 9 comments

Let no fate willfully misunderstand me and snatch me away, not to return. Robert Frost

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Evidently some readers were left with the impression yesterday post was a farewell notice. It wasn’t. I’ll be posting here, but not so often, is all, until I’m where I can’t. I just won’t be spending so much time online.

Keith: I got your email, but I can’t do Facebook because of the slow connection. Check your Yahoo mailbox, amigo. I know you have computer issues, but I think that’s the only way available from this end. J

The invader cat has raised the ante here. It’s evidently a female and in heat. Walks around mewing all the time, to the disgust of the four resident felines. But I’ve begun feeding it because I’m not going to have it starving while I figure out who it belongs to.

My friend, Rich sent me a RAM upgrade for my offline computer and it arrived yesterday. Jumped me from 4 gb of RAM to 12 gb with Readyboost, and it allowed me to follow some computations I’d never been able to do before. Uplifting, satisfying day.

Gale’s fairly under the weather, but he brought down the RAM chips and we conversed a while. Seems he might have come across a tow bar for sale without recognizing it for what it is. Got me fairly excited, because the towing issues are the reason the New Truck isn’t in town being worked on, or isn’t finished, licensed, inspection stickered, lock stock and banana peel. I’m borrowing Little Red to go into town today and try to chase it down.

Maybe I shouldn’t have made the post yesterday, though I wasn’t smart enough was the reason I did. It seemed an explanation of why I’d be making fewer posts.

For those who read it rapidly I suppose it seemed I was about to take off all my clothes and run naked into the sunset.

It’s too cold still for that.

Old Jules

 

Previous posts about the transportation issue saga:

 Got me a new truck! Scouting the Escape Route Wobblehead Extensions, Crowfoots and Mayan Ruins in Georgia   The New Truck Resurrection Post-Y2K Cross-Cultural Trials, Trucks and Unwelcome Wisdom The Communist Toyota 4-Runner  

 

9 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Senior Citizens, Solitude

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Penis Enlargement Software from Norton Symantic

Posted on January 24, 2012 by | 11 comments

Got an email I haven’t opened, presumably from Norton Symantic noting I haven’t plugged the modem into the E Dell Machine to test the 79 mb downloaded driver.

At least I assume it’s from Norton Symantic, though the whatchallit ‘from’ says it’s from Best-Penis and the subject line says, Max-Gentleman Enlargement Pills.  But I’m not fooled.  Norton Symantic was popping screens up on me all manner of ways yesterday creeping in with things intended to interrupt my focus and goals for eventually getting this E Dell Machine online.

Norton most likely suspects a degree of trepidation on my part and is poking sharp sticks in my eye suggesting I need to grow a set of whatchallits and go ahead and test it.  After which they’ll sell me some penis enlargement software to make it work, which they figure at the moment it ain’t going to do.

Bastards.

Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in Communication, Senior Citizens, Solitude, The Lone Psychiatrist

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Computer Saga Proposed Denouement

Posted on January 24, 2012 by | 14 comments

Good morning readers and thanks for coming by for a read.

Hopefully by the time you read this I’ll be strutting like a peacock, wearing my Texas Hatters Manny Gammidge High Roller tilted at a jaunty angle, certain I’m a smarty-pants extraordinaire.  At least that’s how I’m planning the final chapter of this monumental butt show.

But it’s 7:56 pm Monday evening, and I’m 43 % done on a 79 mb download of a modem driver.  Six hours 29 minutes from now the box says, I’ll know whether this is going to work.  Except I’ll be in bed six hours and 29 minutes from now, unless I pick that as one of the times I get up to pee.

But here’s the rundown on the plot thus far. 

Ed’s comment reminded me I had a weirdly shaped and sized hard drive I’d yanked out of an old Vista E Machine I bought new at WalMart a few years ago and it died after about six months and $150 spent in repair shops.

So I pulled open the Dell and voil’aismimo!  The drive looked more-or-less the same as the one from the E Machine, aside from some extra parts.  I worked an hour-or-so getting the extra parts off the Dell drive and onto the E Machine one, installed it, reassembled everything, clenched my teeth really hard and squeezed my eyes shut and I turned that commie pig on.

She booted spang up, showed me a screen I hadn’t seen since the E Machine died.  But, the fly in the ointment was that the modem still didn’t get recognized.  I ran through a flurry of downloading alleged drivers from sites all over the web, putting them on a CD, loading in the E Dell Machine and having them snubbed like clerks in camera stores used to snub a person brought in a Brownie Hawkeye for a roll of film.

Meanwhile Norton Symantic was slipping me mickeys behind the scenes, popping screens up at me threatening to keep me company if I kept downloading from non-regular free driver places.

Which I’ll keep short by saying, led me to Dell and my current act of genius downloading 79 mb on a dialup with 12/2 Romax wrapped in electrical tape between me and the power pole. 

So, tomorrow morning when you read this you’ll be seeing words of a man with a modem working on an E Dell Machine running Vista, is the way I want to end this chapter.  Wearing a 1972 vintage Manny Gammidge Texas Hatters High Roller.  A man commanding respect, admiration and quite possibly veneration.  A man you want to be like.  Same as before all this crap happened.

That’s the proposal for the chapter.  Assuming the editors don’t think that 79 mb download wasn’t a high enough price for our guy to pay to get a damned modem working.

I’m going to schedule this tonight before I go to bed to post at 6:00 am.   Just to make sure it goes to work before the editors finish breakfast.

Old Jules

6:46 am edit:  Seems prudent to get other things done before I unplug the modem here and plug it into the other machine to test the driver.  The world needs coffee before it begins the kind of foolishness this day might be destined to bring.  It isn’t that I’m reluctant to step boldly into the future.  It’s just a minor fit of hesitation on my part to contemplate the Odyssey Homer never had to deal with.  Putting a computer on my shoulder and walking inland until someone asks me what it is might be the next step, dragging the Toyota 4-Runner along behind until someone asks me what that is, too, seems a lousy day to anticipate.

12:23 pm edit:

Done Deal

14 Comments

Posted in Adventure, Communication, Country Life, Current Issues, Education, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Thrift Stores, White Trash Repairs

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Priorities Floating in a Syrup of Reality

Posted on January 23, 2012 by | 20 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming for a read.

Sometimes I surprise myself with how stupid I am.  Every time I get thinking I’ve plumbed the depths of human folly something comes along to prove there’s another layer down there for me to probe.  One of the ways it all manifests itself in my life has to do with sorting out priorities and shifting things around to accommodate critical paths.  When enough pressure builds behind a particular critical path stricture my focus is drawn there and I begin some new stupidity energy release intended to allow the dammed up whateverness to pass through.

At the moment the focus is computers.  The one I’m typing on is an old XP machine I bought at a garage sale a year-or-so ago for a strictly online machine for browsing and downloading data.  But gradually for the sake of speed and convenience I sneaked around and allowed myself to do other things with it project-wise.  Stupid stupid stupid stupid.

Now this machine is trying to take a hike into oblivion.  It wants to join the other two computer carcasses stacked over on the futon that once did what it does.  I bought an old XP in a thrift store for $50 to replace this one when I knew this one was going to retire, but a lot of files and settings in the one in front of me now need to be transferred to the next one.  One of those is the modem driver that allows that machine to use the external modem this one uses to go online.  It won’t recognize the modem, absolutely refuses to acknowledge there’s a modem connected to it.

Everyone tells me there’s nothing to transferring this stuff.  I’ve got a cable especially made with a CD to allow this comp to talk to that one and transfer what’s needed.  Both machines are reluctantly willing to admit they’re capable of doing it, each proclaims it’s ready and more than willing to do it.  But then, each points the finger of blame at the other, claiming the other one has something faulty causing it to drag its heels.  Neither will acknowledge a connection is live between them, thought the light on the cable says there is.

So I have a dying machine here I can’t get any of the downloaded or installed programs off of into the other machine, which is bad enough, but worse is the fact the replacement machine doesn’t even have the brainpower to recognize the phoneline modem.  So it’s not figuring on having to go online.

Meanwhile, the offline machine I use for actual heavy-lifting is off the table and residing over with the two carcasses because the power cord, the keyboard, the mouse and screen it uses are being used by the XP intended for the next online one.

A lot of the day yesterday was spent trying to get these two XPs to shake hands and talk to one another.  But today, I think this ‘new’ XP is going into the pile of carcasses where the heavy lifter is now, and the heavy lifter’s going back to work doing what it needs to be doing.

Wasted a lot of time getting there, and more time telling about it.

Stupid stupid stupid stupid.

Old Jules

20 Comments

Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Communication, Human Behavior, Internet

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