Monochromatic Outlook

Been hear­ing all about the Year 2000 bug these days. In a lit­tle over a year civ­i­liza­tion as we know it will col­lapse into utter chaos. Or, depend­ing on who you ask, noth­ing at all will hap­pen and nobody needs to wor­ry about a thing because it’s all tak­en care of. Or any­way, it will be all tak­en care of by the time it mat­ters. It’s the sec­ond group that scares me.

But what is going to hap­pen? I mean, … Read the rest

Last night I ran a POV-Ray bench­mark avail­able at Have­land-Robin­son Asso­ciates’ site think­ing I was all hot stuff after get­ting this 300mHz K‑6 machine. My time was 2 min­utes 58 sec­onds. I went to look at the com­par­i­son to oth­er peo­ples’ results and was imme­di­ate­ly hum­bled by the best time report­ed: 3 sec­onds. Actu­al­ly, I think I can feel pret­ty good about the fact that my machine is only 60 times slow­er than a Cray T3E-… Read the rest

Yes, yes, yes… Smok­ing is a ter­ri­ble, dis­gust­ing, stinky habit. I know. As a for­mer pack-a-day Camel smok­er, I’m the last one you need to tell. Yet some­how, I end­ed up in the fol­low­ing picture:

How did this happen?

Well, I don’t rec­om­mend this to oth­er nico­tine addicts, as it is cer­tain­ly «slip­pery ground». I have been known, since quit­ting smok­ing three
years ago to par­take in the occa­sion­al cig­ar dur­ing spe­cial events. In the time since I quit, I’ve
smoked sev­en … Read the rest