Saying Goodbye to an Old, Trusted Friend...
14 July 2017 • by Bob • Ponderings, History
I was going through some boxes recently, where I discovered the following book...
My parents gave me this book in the early 1970s when I was eight years old, and I carried that book everywhere. Way back then, my life's ambition was to become a paleontologist, and this book had some excellent chapters on dinosaurs which I read over and over again.
However, my copy of this book was definitely showing its 45 years of age; it's binding had worn away to nothing, countless pages were torn... even though I didn't check, I'm pretty sure that some pages were missing. There is no doubt - this was a well-loved volume of knowledge back in its day; but now it was little more than a shadow of its former self, and a sad relic of days gone by.
Still, though, it's amazing the history through which this book persisted in my personal (albeit negligent) care... when I received this book as a gift, Richard Nixon was President of the United States, the average price for a gallon of gasoline was 39 cents, the United States was still embroiled in the waning years of the Vietnam War, Pink Floyd released Dark Side of the Moon, and the biggest single of the year was "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" by Tony Orlando and Dawn.
Nevertheless, this compendium of natural history knowledge had outlived its usefulness several years ago, and it was time to say goodbye. So with a heavy heart I unceremoniously dispatched my once-faithful companion to the recycle bin, where I hope that some part of it might wind up as another book which will spark another child's imagination in decades to come. Or perhaps that's just what I tell myself in order to feel a little less guilty...
Ride Notes for June 24th, 2017
24 June 2017 • by bob • Bicycling, Arizona
During today's 32-mile ride through the deserts on the east side of Tucson, I probably should have called it quits when the temperature hit 120 degrees on my GPS... but then again, I was out in the desert with nowhere to stop, so my choices were: 1) keep riding, or 2) die. Or as Winston Churchill famously remarked, "If you're going through hell, keep going."
Originally this was supposed to be my usual 40-mile Saturday ride, but I decided right before my departure to drop the 8-mile loop through Saguaro National Park. (Which in hindsight was undoubtedly a really good idea.) On a positive note, there appeared to be no other cyclists riding today, so I had the roads all to myself.
(PS - I didn't get a photo for when the temperature hit 133 degrees on my GPS because my cell phone shut down due to the excessive heat. Of course, my lack of cell phone meant that I was also unable to abort the ride and call my wife to come find me.)
Transcribing Unchained by Van Halen
20 June 2017 • by Bob • Guitar, Music
I had a song continuously running through my head, and as I have done before, I decided to transcribe it in order to get it unstuck and move on with life... Tonight's song was "Unchained" by Van Halen, which was a perennial favorite of mine to play live back in the early 1980s. I used Guitar Pro to do the transcription and playback, and while the transcription isn't 100% it's pretty good for an hour's worth of work. Plus, I think I did a pretty decent job of dialing in Eddie's tone when compared to the original.
Note: I didn't transcribe the guitar solo section because the intro, verses, bridges, and choruses were enough to get the song out of my system.
But you never know, I might come back to this later...
UPDATE:
A few years after my original post, I looked over my transcription, and what I called "Bridges" probably should have been called "Pre-Choruses." Oh well... it's a free transcription, so deal with it.
Inheriting C++ Code from Other Programmers
15 June 2017 • by Bob • CPP, Programming
Trying to get someone else's 20-year-old C++ code to compile is like trying to translate hieroglyphics without the use of the Rosetta Stone...
"Safe strings to prevent buffer overruns? Bah! Who needs 'em..."
UPDATE: True story - the original C++ code which was the impetus behind this blog post was written sometime around the release of Visual Studio 5 or 6, so the way that I eventually managed to get this code to compile on an up-to-date version of Visual Studio was to do the following: I set up a virtual machine in Hyper-V running Windows XP, installed Visual Studio 6.0, and compiled the code. Once I had it compiling with no errors, I kept updating the version of Visual Studio and recompiling; e.g. VS.NET, VS2003, VS2005, VS2008, VS2010, VS2012, VS2013, and finally VS2015, (which was good enough for what I needed to accomplish). As I upgraded each version of Visual Studio, I fixed whatever errors were introduced on a version-by-version basis. A few hours later and all the errors were gone, and the original program worked great.
Apple's Self-Driving Car?
13 June 2017 • by bob • Humor, Technology
Wait... Apple is working on a self-driving car? Have they even SEEN Apple Maps?
An Apple car would drive you right off a bridge, and as your car settled to the bottom of a river Siri would cheerfully say, "You've arrived at your destination."
If D-Day had happened in 2017...
06 June 2017 • by bob • History, Humor
Given the increasingly-ridiculous levels of political correctness and unnecessary inclinations towards white guilt, here is a bit of alternative history for today, which examines how the contemporary mainstream media might have handled the D-Day invasion if it had happened in the present:
7:30am, Tuesday, June 6, 1944
From various World News Services:
This just in - American and Allied forces, undoubtedly with imperialist ambitions, are currently attacking hundreds of undermanned and outgunned German soldiers, who are now desperately fighting for their lives amidst an onslaught of unprovoked Anglo-Saxon aggression. Just four years earlier, these same German forces successfully liberated France from centuries of colonial and imperial oppression, and yet they now find their comrades senselessly slaughtered on the beaches of Normandy while trying to defend the innocent people of France from foreign invaders.
Joseph Goebbels, the distinguished spokesman for the widely-popular German National Socialist Party, condemned the heinous atrocities of the invaders by stating, "This is a sad day for Europe. German sovereignty has been deliberately and ruthlessly challenged in a cowardly, pre-dawn surprise attack by those who wish to see Europe returned to the Dark Ages. After we have forced these intruders back into the sea from whence they came, history will remember this as a triumph for humanity, and henceforth remember this day as 'Deutschland-Day!'"
General Eisenhower, the duplicitous 'commander' of the invading forces, could not be reached for comment.
Double Standards and Hypocrites
03 June 2017 • by bob • Rants, Politics
In response to comedienne Kathy Griffin's recent political stupidity, someone close to me (who shall remain nameless) posted the following image to Facebook with the caption that "Double Standards Abound:"
Now I will not attempt - even for a second - to defend any of the Drumpf's ludicrous statements; he is a never-ending stream of verbal diarrhea. However, I want you to imagine if four years ago some comedian had posed with the severed head of Obama... that guilty party would still be serving a jail sentence for a hate crime, and there's your real double-standard. Or what would have happened if the Drumpf had posed with the severed head of Hillary Clinton during the presidential race? Can you imagine the uproar that would have caused?
Make no mistake - the Drumpf is an idiot, but what Kathy Griffin did exceeds the mere assertion that she "went a little too far." If we take the Bette Davis quote from that image at face value and we assume that Ms. Griffin was just "giving her opinion" by her actions, then think about what that really means.
I'm sorry, but espousing the death of a sitting president is unconscionable, even if that president is hypocritical buffoon and you cannot stand him; you cannot defend the indefensible simply because you happen to loathe the target of their hatred.
Why I Fail To Understand Women
24 May 2017 • by bob • Humor, Ponderings, Marriage
No woman in her right mind would want to be called a "Cow," and yet so many women shop at a place called the "Dress Barn."
This makes no sense to me... 
The Windmills of La Mancha
18 May 2017 • by bob • Photography
Here is an HDR shot which I took of the windmills in La Mancha, Spain...
However, this photo does not do justice to the actual spectacle, nor does it capture the rain and hail which were pelting me as I took the photo. With that in mind, I felt a little more in tune with Don Quixote as I was chasing the impossible amidst an onslaught of oppressive circumstances...
Verizon versus T-Mobile
21 April 2017 • by Bob • Reviews
For several years I was a loyal T-Mobile customer. I loved their service. I paid one simple price per month, which included unlimited data, unlimited texting, built-in tethering, and a generous amount of voice calling. In addition to that, their service allowed for travelling overseas with your cell phone at no extra cost; carrying your cell phone out of the country was simply covered by your plan.
There was only one fatal problem that I ran into that made me have to change carriers: I had no cell phone coverage in my home office. This was a deal-breaker for me. I have two-factor authentication (2FA) turned on for work and most of the websites where 2FA is available, so having no coverage in my office meant that I had to login initially for work or a website on my computer, then walk outside and stand in my backyard until I received the call or text message to complete the authentication process. This was obviously unacceptable, so I begrudgingly realized that I would have to change carriers; which was really too bad, since T-Mobile worked great for me when I lived in Seattle.
So my wife and I started shopping around between the different carriers; e.g. Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, etc. Eventually we decided to go with Verizon since their coverage seemed to be the best. However, once the honeymoon period of having cell phone coverage in my office had passed, I realized the shocking revelation of just how expensive Verizon could be.
As I mentioned earlier, T-Mobile was a flat fee that was reasonably-priced and provided lots of great features at a low cost that easily beat the competition.
Verizon, on the other hand, wants to charge you for everything. They have found dozens of ways to exceed the airline industry by nickle-and-diming its customers for everything on their phones. You want Caller ID? You'll have to pay for that. You want to use your phone overseas for a few weeks? Prepare to pay hundreds of dollars. You want to use data services on your phone? Prepare to pay through the nose. You want to use tethering with your laptop/tablet? That'll be another $50 or so for two phones. Pretty much any feature on your phone comes at an additional cost.
In addition to the exorbitant fees, for some reason that I have never been able to ascertain, using Verizon for the same data services that I used on T-Mobile required around four times the amount of data. Before I switched carriers, I saw that I was using about 1GB of data per month for the apps that I use; e.g. email, FB, streaming, etc. So when I switched to Verizon, I went with a 2GB plan just to be safe. But I used that up almost immediately, and I quickly upgraded to a 4GB plan. But that was also used up pretty quickly, and I changed to an 8GB plan. Of course, each data service upgrade increased my costs yet again, so cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching... The next thing I know I'm paying Verizon two or three times what I paid for T-Mobile services, with less features.
Oh, and one more thing: on our first-month bill, my wife and I had a huge data usage the first day. This might seem normal because of downloading apps to a new phone and such, but when I looked at the per-hour breakdown on my bill of data usage, the largest part of the data usage happened before I was actually given the phone. After my wife and I had picked out our phones, the sales guy at the Verizon store said that it was going to take a little while to get things set up, so my wife and I agreed to head out to lunch and run some other errands and return to pick up our phones later that afternoon. What I am presuming happened was the sales rep upgraded our phones with new versions of the operating systems after my wife and I left the store, which seems like a good idea in principle, but I didn't think that I should have to pay for hundreds of megabytes of data usage before I actually owned the phone; Verizon should have covered the cost of upgrading the phones with the latest bits just because that's good customer service. And with that in mind, I tried fighting those charges with Verizon, but - of course - I lost that battle.
I have only had Verizon for one year now, but that has been more than enough time for me to come to the following inescapable conclusion: I HATE VERIZON.
