Posts by CrazyOldCatMan 6355 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Oct 2015
Pascal was a horrible language for real work, at least in the 80s
When I was at Polytechnic (85-87\0 we had to, as part of the programming module, write a simple stock-control system in Pascal. I was using a Pascal ROM on my BBC model B and one of the (many) features that it was missing was random file access...
So I just wrote a convincing demo instead. The CS lecturer was so amused that he gave me full marks.
is this your cat ?
No - I don;t have any red cats. (Or Red Hats).
(I do have one full ginger, one ginger-'n-white, one calico and one tortie though. And two blacknesses and a lone brown-tabby-and-white. I keep telling t'missus that we are missing a few colour combinations and we need to get more cats but she just keeps telling me that we have enough cats. As if that's a thing!)
Trying to get a wife to put on a jumper?
Or (as in my case) wife trying to get me to put on (another) jumper.. The fact that doing so (for me) doesn't actually warm anything but my torso seems to have escaped her..
tame cats...
Easy. Just offer them instant and uncomplaining obedience to their every whim and they *might* condescend to obey..
(5 of our 7 are pretty tame. The two ex-feral farm cats somewhat less so. They are fine as long as you don't try to retrain them or pick them up..)
IPv6
Away Devil! Heaven avaunt thee thou spawn of the evil one!
(Yes - I still haven't got IPv6 working at home. Internal boxen can see the firewall, firewall external can see the router and internet. No internal device can see the IPv6 internet.. despite FW rules explicitly allowing it.)
assuring that the leopard stayed in the basement
Leopards can climb *really* well. Don't ever climb up a tree to escape one..
(House cats can climb really well too[1] - it helps to have built-in climbing spikes. Their main problem is that they don't have the joints needed to climb down forwards which is why they get stuck up trees[2]).
[1] As we discovered with our first set of cats - 3-month old kittens. We'd left our bedroom window open a little bit to get some fresh air in while we were out. Came home to discover no cats in the house. They had got out of the window and climbed down the brickwork to frolic in the back garden.
[2] Oldest brother no longer takes calls to get cats out of trees after one decided to sink its teeth into his hand (through his tree-climbing gloves). He's a cat-lover like me but said cat quickly discovered that it did in fact have the ability to free-fall from about 20m up.
gram about the most useful phone I've ever had once
One place I worked, we gave them out to all our sales types. We had about a 30% replacement rate every 3 months (despite our efforts to teach them how not to destroy them..).
Killing methods included:
- Forcing them shut even when there was something trapped between the clamshell halves (favourite one - sales guy put it in his pocket with his car keys - which proceeded to wedge themselves between the clamshells. Noticing that his pocket had an unsightly bulge, he pushes hard to shut the device. One loud crunch later he has no display..)
- The old standby of dropping them into the toilet.
- Dropping them then driving over them..
We eventually put in place a system where they had one free replacement every year. Any more than that, they had to pay a proportion of the replacement cost (sliding scale from 25% at first paid replacement to 100% after 4). That helped to stem the tide.
(For comparison - I've *never* broken a mobile phone physically. I've bricked a few though trying to root/custom ROM them..)
Aren't efforts to maintain 32 bit capability hampering efforts to get Windows into the 21st century? Apple dropped 32-bit support in iOS a couple years ago and last years MacOS update (Catalina) dropped 32-bit support from the desktop
Yeah (and the Catalina move generated all sorts of "Eeeevil Apple" headlines despite the fact that it had been telegraphed for at least two years - during which all the software companies had ample time to upgrade their applications. The place where it did fall down was if you used old, no longer maintained applications and utilities).
The issue is that MacOS doesn't have the variety and amount of old software - whereas Windows does. And killing Win32 applications will pretty much remove the reasons why a lot of corporates use Windows - running legacy applications.
"Meggido" being an alternate name for the ancient city of "Armageddon"
As with most things theological, it's a little more complex:
Meggido was a real place - an important trade city for the Caananites and, after them, the Israelites. Armaggedon is only used in the Book of Revelation (which should sound a warning since the vast majority of that book is symbolic). So, while it could relate directly to Meggido, it's more likely a symbolic representation of the final battle where the world powers are defeated by a returned Christ.
The swans paddled around the retention pond for a few days, and the geese went to menace elsewhere
That's because swans are even more evil thugs than geese.. Fortunately, swans don't come in flocks..
(Family groups maybe - but the parents will always drive away their adult cygnets when it comes round to breeding time so that the new cygnets won't face competition..)
parking lot and sidewalks were once again poo free
My young dog quite enjoys the vegetarian delights of fresh goose poo. But then, being one of our pets, he is a trifle... odd.
We do have a normal[1] pet. Who is steadily getting less normal.
[1] She's a young cat and so - in context, attacking anything that moves is perfectly normal.
collies, whilst able to quell a flock of sheep with a look, are in mortal fear of his geese
In our local park we have a family of swans and a bunch of Canada geese (as well as misc. ducks/grebes/water rails etc etc).
The geese are petrified of the swans. The other, smaller waterfowl are petrified of the geese but get on OK with the swans.
The geese and swans are not at all worried by dogs (except, maybe, big German Shepherds). The cob swan has been known to attack dogs that come *anywhere* near his cygnets..
Unusually, the FCC seems to be doing its job here, lowering the barriers to tech rollout
No - the FCC is being its usualy regulatory-captured self and imposing rules on others when they don't have the right to, purely in order to allow the telcos to make more money. Remember - Agit Pai was (and will be again) a fully-paid up member of Verizon staff and, it could be argued, still works vigourously on their behalf rather than working to prevent them abusing US citizens.
The whole thing stinks worse than a haddock left out in the midday sun for weeks.
get weapons that are too valuable to risk
Which is exactly what happened in the Dreadnaught era - which is why there was only one (inconclusive) naval battle during WW1 since the ships were simply too expensive to risk.
And people wonder why repeat our mistakes - because those in power refuse to learn from history.
named after a Dungeons & Dragons character
Our first two cats were named after features of Dartmoor.. Our first dog was named after one of my wifes' D&D characters..
Our latest cat is *almost* named after an LOTR character with just enough changed (Anwen rather than Arwen) - Anwen happens to be a Welsh name (my mum was half-Welsh).
Wendy (invented for the Wizard of Oz) had no origins at all
Au contraire - J.M. Barry (writer of Peter Pan) made that one up after the noises made by a little girl with a speech impediment and used it for his female lead character in Peter Pan.
never been another royal child called John
And Prince Charles is proposing to take a different regnal names if/when he becomes king since the first two King Charles didn't exactly have a good time..
(One had his head chopped off and the other died childless. Not brilliant role models to follow)
decency not to hyphenate their surnames
We briefly considered this when we got married until we realised that this would further complicate signing our names since my surname is already pretty long and didn't fit into most signature boxes and hyphenating our names would only make it worse..
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