crankypants’ Neighborhood

Breakfast of champions

Cinnabon Minibon and crispy bacon.  Last time I was decadent, I just had the Minibon, but I got logey in the mid-morning because I hadn't had any protein.  Problem solved this time.

I'm now fueled to start another day of writing.  25 minutes on, 5 minutes break.

Here's a video of when I first sat down after the boy got home:

And here's a not-very-good video of him. Tried to show off his tummy, but didn't have enough light.

shaved tum

2 comments

This is some very expensive content for

Nablo9

It hasn't quite been a normal day (Edgar and I aren't feeling up to snuff), so no animal post today either. Honest, I will tomorrow.

Neat things about my car:

 - the doors not only lock as you start driving, but they unlock when you remove the key after turning the car off
 - the side mirrors are heated - it comes on with the rear window defroster
 - it corners on a dime
 - great shock absorption

The neatest thing about my car:

 - it's mine!

Nablo1109

• 16:36 Just came across a cyclist down on the road, thankfully he's okay and now on his way home #

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HP joined the microcomputer craze in 1979 with their Series 80s computers.  These were usual and actually more like an followup to their calculators.  They utilized a custom 8-bit processor made by HP.  It had nifty non-standard features. For one thing lots of registers (64 of them) and the system was designed to work with BCD just like a calculator.  It supported natively 12 digits with exponents to 499 (IIRC).  The first release (HP 85) used a built in tape drive.  Again very unusual.  When diskette support was released,  they chose HP-IB (GP-IB or IEEE-488 nowdays) instrument bus.

This example was picked up at an University of Kentuck Surplus auction.  It is an HP 86B with 3 memory cartridges and a ROM expansion cartridge.  Hence its total RAM is 448K.  Not bad for the early 80s.  Too bad it only ran HP series 80s software.  Also it would not run the HP 85 binaries!  The HP series 80s computers were to some extent incompatible with each other.  The series was discontinued in 1984.

EDIT:  I believe the only thing I have used it for was as a calculator.

Hp86B with composite monitor

Monitor was bought at Goodwill

Hp86B top view

Nice keyboard for the early 80s.

Hp86B rear view

4 expansion slots, composite video out and an HP-IB interface, aka GP-IB and IEEE-488

Hp86B memory expansion

Memory expansion was by cartridges like many other systems of the time.

Hp86B rom expansion

ROM expansion used this carrier with places for individual chips.  Very much aimed at the engineer market.

Nablo color

ah, Brazil
a movie whose tagline should have been (but wasn't):   Mistakes? We don't make mistakes

yet we do. we do make mistakes, as in all bureaucracies, and someone will be found to blame.

Brazil poster

Brazil is Terry Gilliam's dystopian vision of a not-too-far-future from a present that took an odd turn around the 1930's. there are many anachronisms and technical hybrids like old typewriters hooked up to tv screens and rotary telephones with amplifiers. the scenery and architecture are similarly affected: the public buildings pay hommage to 1930's German expressionism (think Metropolis), while apartments and other living spaces are oddly futuristic, with large numbers of exposed ducts everywhere.

the story references George Orwell's 1984 and Franz Kafka's The Trial.  the unnamed government bureaucracy has made a mistake by eliminating a Mr. Buttle rather than Mr. Tuttle, who's believed to be a terrorist of some kind. a low-level employee of the Ministry of Information, Sam Lowry, is assigned to investigate.  in this process, Lowry meets a neighbor of the widow Buttle, who is the same woman Lowry has been seeing in dreams.  Lowry meets the renegade Tuttle...

the world of Brazil, while different from ours, is not that different.  consider a day at work in the Ministry of Information

Nablopomo 2009 badge

and I only had to hang up on tech support in India once (a record for me!).

turns out that all i needed was my IP address. i eventually figured out how to hit the modem to see it (gee - just like hitting the router, but you have to be plugged in to the modem).

for future reference, the key to everything is
192.168.1.1

of course, if I can't get into the internet, I'll never be able to find that. So I used my label maker to put all the vital info on the router itself.

I hope I have at least another 2 years before I go through this again.

Fuckity FUCK. I just tried to post and upload a video. I got the following existential error message from Vox:

That sounds very, um, Protestant.

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime\xAE 6.5 or higher is required.

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