Darth Fluffy

To be fair, they did a good job porting BASIC to micros, and deserve some legitimate credit for that. Their extensions for graphics and such were phenomenally useful. Had the Microsofties given credit where credit was due, I wouldn't have a complaint. Their reasoning was probably, "If we admit they had something to do with our product we may end up owing them money."

Mine used to ear bugs. And lick icing off of cake. That was 40 years ago. Great cat, but we had to give it away. When we were in school, it was fine, but when we graduated and both started working, the cat went nuts from the isolation. (Imagine that. isolation driving you nuts ...)

It is a complicated game. You can be alone in the midst of a crowd, or be well connected even though isolated. Having a lot of kids does not make you a winner, it makes your genome a winner. You genome is just using you, quite literally. It does not give a rats ass about any of your issues, whether you have pleasure or success, except in as far as i advances its agenda. Winners and losers, huh? John G. Kemény and Thomas E. Kurtz designed Dartmouth BASIC back in the early sixties. It offered interactive programming on the universities timeshare system. They are not entirely unknown, but they are by no means major celebs. I'm not even sure if they are still alive. As was the custom, the source was available to peruse. It was appropriated some years later and translated for 8 bit micros. You may know the people that did this, Paul Allen and William Gates III, they formed a company to distribute the software, and gave no credit to the actual authors. They and their company are widely know, and Bill Gates is held up as a paragon of generosity, in spite of being somewhat of an @$$#013 about the concept of ownership and propriety. Is he a winner? Are Kurtz and Kemény, playing the scientist role here, losers? Like the recently deceased Kenny Rogers should have said, every card's a winner, and every card's a loser.

As well she should be.

Ooh fancy cat! Corelle Ware water bowl, with extra helping of protein!

Mus reed my buk.

To be fair, they are having the same level of social contact I am during this social distancing.

Interesting. So two loners learn to cooperate for mutual benefit. We have something similar here in NC; we have coyotes, but they are not solitary. Actually, nor are they pure coyotes. They can have red wolf, and they usually have dog mixed in. They pack hunt. The dog gives them a lack of natural fear, so they are dangerous. I've seen coyotes in NM that were about the size of a beagle. I saw one in California, outside Griffith Observatory that was much larger, German shepherd or wolf sized. Coyotes that size are a good reason to carry a firearm in the wild.

Wolves vs coyotes. Wolves do better if there is sufficient resources to sustain the cooperative population. Coyotes do better where resources are sparse, and they do not have to share. Hence coyotes are associated with desert environments. Wolves also do better in areas such as the arctic where prey is large, even though it has desert like characteristics. You don't find coyotes in the arctic; the solitary hunters are either huge and can take down a moose on their own, or smaller and can survive on tiny prey. Also lions vs tigers. Most cats are solitary hunters. Lions do well in Africa with much prey at their disposal. We are based on the cooperative hunting wolf model and extended family agricultural model. Even as specialists, we expect to be able to trade and mutually thrive. socially, we need interaction with others to stay mentally healthy, Off the grid self sufficient hermits live a lonely, austere life.

Bought an eggplant aka aubergine. Cooking this is new ground. 1. Chunked and fried bottom 3rd. Absorbed a lot of oil. Taste was not great, online warned about this; added seasoning helped. 2. Per suggestion peeled middle 2 inches (5 cm) and diced, also fried, combined with asparagus tips and rice. Much better; added to other flavors. Not convinced peeling was necessary. 3. sliced and fried 3/8 inch (1 cm) slice, fried one sun dried tomato chicken sausage, sliced lengthwise, made a sandwich with pumpernicklel and a slice of halvarti. Very good. Oh, yeah, I coated the top with sesame oil while frying; it added good flavor. I also figured out that I can quickly steam broccoli and garlic by cooking them in bowl in the microwave with about a quarter inch of water. (a little less than a cm)

Not really. I'm currently playing the text version.

I attended a University, Penn State main campus, with as many students as there were people in the town. This is in a fairly isolated area in central Pennsylvania. There was much competition for jobs. The number of students played hell with local elections.

You are reminding me that my dad was interested in and intimidated by personal computers. We were on our nth one, and he used to quiz us about it, so one time, mid 80s as well, the TI home system was being dumped cheap, we bought him one for Christmas, thinking it would satisfy his curiosity. It sat in his closet for a decade, then he re-gifted it to our kids, who wouldn't touch it, because by then it was lame. But it did curtail his interest. My mom had been a secretary in the days of manual typewriters; she had no interest in electric typewriters, let alone a computer. But one day, seeing her grand kids enthusiastically playing on one, she got interested, and asked them to explain. They did, then sat her down to play. "Click the mouse here, Grandma." She picked up the mouse, and tapped the base against the glass CRT. "It didn't do anything." Yes, my mom was one of those people, the "my cup holder broke off" folks. They were not stupid people, my dad spoke a couple of languages, had started at Lehigh in electrical engineering before WW II broke out and he had joined the Army Air Corp, was a sales engineer afterward, an taught a lighting segment at professional engineers training. Mom was a native Spanish speaker, moved to the US in her 20s, was a successful secretary in her non native language for years, and had a larger vocabulary in English than anyone else I've ever met. They used to do the NY Times crossword every week, and played fierce Scrabble. Something about this was a generational gap, they just didn't get it. I see some of that in myself. I am comfortable using a workstation, but a quirky interface makes me cringe inside. I can get to be more focused on, "What kind of idiot designed this?" than on getting my task done. And I am aware of security and privacy issues, because of which, I am reluctant to do some things other might take for granted. I don't like Cortana, I will never own an Alexa, I am reluctant to use Facebook, even though most of my family is on daily. I find data mining efforts that want to offer me 'tailored products' to be intrusive, shallow, and way off the mark. I am more likely to stop dealing with a company that uses them than I am to by their product. Case in point, I wanted one of Amazon's free Kindle books the other day. In the process of getting this, Amazon offered some browser insert. It appears that this had nothing to do with Kindle, nor delivery, but let them track what I browsed. Within a couple of hours, a window popped open that I had not opened. I ripped that $#!% right out. And that is a common theme, isn't it; that lack of candor about what the offered software is intended to do? Bullshit has a distinct odor, and no matter how much you try to pretty it up, it's still bullshit. But the fact that it bothers me appears to be generational. I don't get if thiose around me are resigned to their digital environment, or if they see some benefit that I don't.

In my experience, yes. I was a janitor in my early 20s, also pumped gas while at university (dating myself, 'pumped gas' is no longer a thing); my ex did retail sales. '... am a college student' doesn't count for much here prior to graduation, unless you have a formal internship, and even then you are considered to be an under-skilled temp and given lighter duties. For kids on work study (a form of financial aid, the school provides a job, usually as part of a package including an outright grant, work study, and a loan) a typical job is cafeteria service. This may be due the image that students attend college to party, not to learn; this is true enough to case a pall on the more serious students (dare I say majority?)

Also, it varies by state. Here in NC, a minor cannot serve alcohol. If the restaurant serves alcohol, a minor cannot be a waiter/waitress.

Made one third of a pulled chicken barbecue kit It wasn't bad. The kit was a huge lump of more or less shredded chicken and three packets of sauce, nicely dividing into thirds. Had some yesterday, liked it, today I added a pack of sweet and sour sauce to it because it seemed like a good match; I wasn't wrong. Those packets come with Dollar Tree egg rolls, and I have an accumulation; the egg rolls are good without them. The sad thing is, I did not intend to get the kit; I thought I was grabbing sliced lunch meat, it was in that section, and I didn't read the label in detail.

I've never had a Dyson. Don't the turbines spin much faster than a normal vac? I would think to a cat it would be even more annoying, but since I'm not a cat, my opinion doesn't carry much weight.

One of the earlier available home computers was based on the PDP-11. They made an LSI-11 chip set, and Heathkit sold a microcomputer based based on it. I believe it was possible to order it assembled, don't recall. It is noteworthy that this predated many of the more popular 8 bit micros. Not cheap, but not astronomical. Actual DEC hardware was an order of magnitude more expensive, and even that was cheap by IBM standards.

I don't get it. Why is she displaying such trust for the evil vacuum cleaner?

Poleaxed Steers would be a good band name.

The dialogue between Grace and Sam might lead one to think that Grace has more of a crush on Sarah than Sam does.

... or of Elliot; she has expressed some interest in Tedd.

She'd be exploder the cat.

You should see evidence of termites from the outside, if you have them. I'd trust the exterminator. He's motivated to find them.

That was mentioned and a cat could hear or maybe smell them, depending on how well the house is sealed; he's up north so probably sealed well; and then maybe which side of a vapor barrier they're on. Termites are more subtle, but they do make noise, and have an odor as well. Things that hunt them tune in on these; not cats, but it might drive a cat nuts. Or, as a friend of mine once said, "That's not a drive, that's a putt."