Ramblings
Here’s a view of a kitchen cabinet in my home. After a few servings or so we cut the cereal boxes in half and voila, less box jamming. Simply cut the box in half, pinch the bottom section in a bit, then place top over bottom and slide down as needed. Your don’t have to be perfect either. Check out the photo, you can see the bottom portions just showing a tiny bit – your mileage may vary. The cereal box to the right has not yet reached the stage to cut in half. Good luck.
The world did not end during the Y2K epoch, but as of 2018, it is 18 years closer to doing so. Other than that, things are fine.
It’s amazing how many things I have lost, bought a replacement, and subsequently found the original. I’m talking mostly tools maybe even whole computers. Take this solder sucker that I recently bought for example – I could not find my tried and true heavy duty one. 
Now that I have received this new plastic one, my old one should show up any minute. But even so, what I want to know is how the kids managed to hide my stuff for so long in the first place, and then how they knew when I’ve bought replacements. To be honest, there were some things I cared more about than others and sometimes stuff like computers were in pieces – I believe they were too young to realize I still wanted them. I mean, that I wanted the computers. Wait. I also wanted the kids, but that could be another story.
A staggerwing painted red. And that would be a Mark Knoffler and Emmylou Harris duet kicking around my head. Actually it’s coming from my PC speakers. I’m thinking I so need to get myself a staggerwing version of this spark plug – a gift from my wife’s brother Danny about 15 years ago. He welded any metal, any size, any how, any way, even when no one else would or could. Rest in Peace Danny, April 8 1964 – September 24, 2010.
The first computer that I recall seeing in person was an Olivetti P603 at my Dad’s office. I was about 12, early senventies. 
Seen here is a stock photo from Olivetti. My dad’s version didn’t have the drawer storage cabinet seen on the left that I recall. An electric typewriter console occupied the central operator position. On the right was a calculator type console which also served as the programming unit. On this same programming unit was a calculator size paper printer and also a magnetic strip reader/writer. Not seen in this stock photo, but below the desk level and to the right of the operator was a tape cabinet unit. One would place a tape cartridge into the unit positioning it onto the keyed motor spindle and then operate a hand lever to engage the tape into the electronics of the tape unit. Each tape contained it’s own read/write head. The tape itself was a single length endless loop configuration as pictured here. The tape cartridge dimensions were about 7″ by 6″ by 2″. 
The usable tape is visible in through the smoke gray plastic with the exception of a length that ran from this oval area to the read/write head seen at the top through the “dimpled” portion. The tape ran through a few capstans and a tensioner around the perimeter. The tape itself had 4 tracks. I have since forgotten the density of the tape, but I don’t believe each track was more than 4k roughly, for a total of approximately 16k. For a bit of fun, one could take the cartridge by itself, hand-rotate the keyed receptor on the back, and watch the tape “slowly” move through its path. As a 12 year old, I thought it was magic that the tape didn’t end up in knots. So what could you do with this whole thing? Well, it could be used as a typewriter. You could also use it for it’s calculator though I never saw it used that way myself. Then with the magnetic cards (about 2.5″ by 8 or so inches, double sided) and/or with the tape unit, one could read/write/run programs. The programs could output onto the typewriter. There was no screen. And before I forget, it weighed a “ton”. In 1979 he still had this boat anchor running parts of his office. And that year, being a computer science major and believing I could do anything with a computer, I wrote a structural heat-loss program for him on this unit. It was worse than coding in APL. Well, not really. Just to wrap up the nostalgia a bit, in summary, if one used enough of the calculator paper, one could wind it back up tightly and then pull it from its center, making a real neat paper sword for that child still in oneself – fun and no worries.
On April 7th 2018, Bath Iron Works, BIW, was hosting family day at the Bath Maine facility. Not that I expected anything special, after all it was my Birthday – yeah, thanks BIW and US Navy folks! Well, the real event included the opportunity to tour two new ships that were pier side – the USS Thomas Hudner DDG-116 and the USS Michael Monsoor DDG-1001. Here my wife Lisa and I are aboard the USS Thomas Hudner on the left, and the USS Michael Monsoor on the right taking a photo op near the end of each ship’s tour.
It is such a privileged to be able to tour these ships and to see what remarkable products that BIW has built for the US Navy. Obviously some areas of each ship was off limits, but the tour through the ship was simply amazing none-the-less. It is reassuring to see that our Navy has some of the best damned equipment, and knowing that they will have these assets when called upon to use them.
The PDP-8 was a mini-computer manufactured by Digital Equipment Corporation eons ago and introduced in its earliest configuration on March 22, 1965. I was about to turn 5, and I likely had no clue what a computer was.
I was introduced to the PDP-8 in 1974 as a junior high student and wrote a few programs for a class that year. This is also about the time I noticed girls more. I wanted one, a computer, the girlfriends would have to wait another year.
Move forward 6 years to my 3rd year of college and somehow that old PDP-8 from 1974 had made its way to the local university I was attending. It was a chance encounter on my part as I took a different route through one of the campus buildings to kill some time. In some isolated room, miles from the campus computer center, it continued to hum it’s merry way. I never did find out what they were using it for, or when they got it. I still wanted one.
After college, I did not expect to see a PDP-8 machine at all. I went to work for a local software company, and, well, as luck would have it, I did have a chance to install our fuel oil billing software on a PDP-8 at an oil delivery company in 1985. I would have still wanted one – all those lights flashing and panel switches.
Move forward about 30+ years and one can procure a PDP-8 emulator and mini-replica based on the Raspberry Pi for example. I’m wondering what I will do!!
Recently I had been testing a few discrete DS18B20 temperature sensors on a breadboard. I eventually recalled that I had bought some temperature modules with the DS18B20, resistor, and LED already built in. That’s what I wanted to use instead of discrete components for a quick script check. I located the modules after a short search and it was apparent I had never looked at them closely as they were still in the sealed packaging. Figures. Well upon opening, I found the placement of the TO-92 on the PCB to be incorrect. I took a closer look and realized that the module would not work as is and would have to be modified to work. The small module had three locations for a TO-92, giving options on how the leads fed to the 3-pin connector. The PCB traces were easy to see, so I snipped the TO-92 from the middle position, rotated it 180 degrees, moved it to the top position, and soldered it in place. The untrimmed snipped off parts of the leads can still be seen here.
I’ll trim them down some more later.
Operationally, that was a lot better. Hooked them up to a NodeMCU ESP8266 running a LUA script and all was good, with the LED blinking during data line read/write cycles. I’m off to see what other things await.
Update: Added picture of item as it originally came from vendor.