Microsoft 50? When I started there in 1980 anything was possible and most of everything happening was fun. When I retired in 2002 the IBM-ifcation was in full swing. You could not throw a bouncy ball without hitting an MBA. It was inevitable but sad none the less.

Bygone Microsoft dissonance.

Apparently many now believe that the ends justify any means, that the invisible hand of the market defines virtue instead of greed, and that enlightened self-interest absolves all. I see this as the lowest ethical point in our nation’s history. We face not a political nadir but a moral one.

Last night's cookie: "Be the labor great or small...Do it well or not at all" -an oldy

In the ongoing mystery of why my Windows 11 freezes I can now make the desktop use over 30% of the GPU by asking edge to display the weather map. Its a RTX 4060 so the GPU fans kick in. Meanwhile the old XEON running MInt is always silent.

I would hope that in all of LA there was at least one house designed to withstand a fire of this nature. It would be nice to see a picture of that.

I will give this to the grandkids so they will know what a telephone was. Alas no ringer and modern IP phone setup does not recognize pulse.

Are power lines that trees can knock down what we should expect from power companies in 2025? State of the art?

First Christmas totally alone. No kids and no wife gives new appreciation of being a widower.

Part 2: I guess truth does not figure high in AI priorities. Lastly I asked one AI if "are any news stories lies" and it said yes, suggesting "check multiple sources". So "it" knows there are lies out there but can't identify any of them. Sad!

Is the internet mostly lies? How would you measure it? I asked a couple of AIs about the last 24 hours of news lies and both were NOT helpful. I decided the "drones over NJ" was the big story and asked an AI about that but it was unable to answer about lies.

That's a PL/I programming book. I wrote a useful interactive editor in PL/C so I could write programs without punching cards. An IBM 360/40 under DOS with two honking Tektronix 4010 terminals blew IBM's mind. Late 60s

Just got word, its a boy! My 4th grandchild. Will there even be programming when he grows up?