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ronasutra4u

ronasutra4u

Use basic computer technology

This unit applies to the use of computers for information processing. It addresses basic information processing operations and the use of basic hardware, software and support resources. This unit is based on unit ICTTC201A in the ICT97 training package. Equivalent UnitsNil

 

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20,000

A little over four years ago I started this blog.  I never expected that I'd get 20,000 comments.

Wow.  I feel like quite the salonnière.  Coffee's over on the table.  Pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable, because this wouldn't be the same place without you.

Sometimes Life laughs at you, sometimes it laughs with you

We took Ivan the Terrier to the old Mill dam today, a true family outing where the kids laughed and splashed in the river and Ivan the Terrier got to play with the other dogs.  It was a family outing that I had given up on having, only a few years ago.  It was summer as you'd wish it: gentle temperatures, shade with a breeze, the river rushing past, nearly drowning out the laughter of your kids.

Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

- Henry James

The Roswell Mill dam is a beautiful location, and many young couples have their photos taken there in the days leading up to their wedding.  There was one couple there who for some reason seemed to distil the hope for the future that the moment demands.

To love another person is to see the face of God.

- Victor Hugo

Couples that are lucky find that hope renewing itself.  This little fellow saw a snake which scared him.  Mom and Dad took him on a downstream adventure to safety.  He liked petting Ivan the Terrier, who liked it as much as he.

For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and - by some sad, strange irony - it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy.

- E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear To Tread

Life is strange in how it changes over time.  That hope for the future gets tested, the candle flickers and sometimes looks to go out.  While we would capture a perfect moment as in amber, time waits for no man.

When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

- John Steinbeck, East Of Eden

I can attest to this truth.  But if you're lucky, that child grows to a Man or Woman who can still look at you with eyes that see you as you would like to be, not as you are.  Today was one of those days for me, one that I had once almost given up hope of seeing again.  A day when you hear the laughter of Life itself, and join in it.

If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane.

- Robert Frost

Motorhead Madness

I found out something yesterday: Classic Car owners get together on the second Saturday of each month to show off their wheels.  I ran across this by accident, and spend a very enjoyable hour talking to the owners about their motorized passions.

The owner of this 1931 Model A told me that there are still something like 100,000 of them still on the road.  And that if you tighten the Distributor down too much, you'll short everything out.  Filed under Things I Did Not Know #[SQL Error: Integer Overflow].

This is very similar to the car that brought me home from the Hospital as a baby.  1956 Chevy Bel Air.  The rest of the car is as sweet.

Cars have always been rolling sculptures, and the 1950s were all about the Jet Age.

Muscle cars were of course well represented.  The 'vettes were out in force, as were a couple of GTOs.  But this one stood out to me:

That's the Business End of a 1970 Dodge Super Bee.  Man, a 440 is something like this would have some get up and go.  I was standing behind it when the owner fired it up and rev'ved the engine a couple times.  Suddenly I was 18 years old again.

As I was leaving, a wood sided Panel Van pulled in.  Sweet. 

Some owners had their sense of humor on display with their car.  And while I wonder how many Republican voters there were in Kennesaw in 1964, this was very well played indeed:

If you like old cars and you're in the area, it's worth a detour.  It's the second Saturday of each month between April and October, here:


View Larger Map

I climbed Kennesaw Mountain yesterday

UPDATE: OK, I went downstairs and added the pix. /UPDATE

Man, I need to exercise more.  The mountain is the site of a battle in the War Between the States, where Gen. Johnston's boys gave a whupping to Billy Sherman's Federals.  Not that it really helped them in the long run.

The hike (up Pidgeon Hill) is quite steep, and you go past the old trenches looking down from the crest of the hill.  No wonder the Boys in Blue got their tails handed to them, trying to charge up that slope against dug in defenders.  The whole attack was stupid.

Copyright Borepatch.  Click to enbiggen

These are the trenches dug by the Confederate Missouri regiment, which extend diagonally up to the right of the photo, as it parallels the crest of the hill.  These positions were attacked by the Union Missouri regiment is a very real example of fratricidal war.  The Missouri defenders gave a proper thrashing to their fellow statesmen, who had to charge up something like this:

Copyright Borepatch.  CLick to embiggen

That's looking down what's approximately a 45° slope over broken ground.  Like I said, the attack was stupid.  It's said that Sherman was angry at his Army for something or other, and intentionally sent them against these positions.  I don't know if this is true or not, but he was one cold hearted SOB and so this is plausible.

Now the alarums of those days are long past, and all you have is a quiet memorial trail, if you think on the dead of that battle.  Theirs is a quiet and beautiful memorial.

While I was hiking along the trail, I passed a your teenage couple - typical All American youth - playing chess.  It was an interesting riff on the expected Young Love theme, although that seemed to be there - I could hear her giggles as he moved his piece on the board.  The whole thing was quite unexpected, and made me smile.

Pictures later - the camera is downstairs, and I had quite enough climbing yesterday, thank you very much. [UPDATE: fixed now]