There are 380 posts filed in Geezer (this is page 36 of 38).
I’ll always associate this song with the Revolutions of the late 1980s.
Right Here, Right Now [YouTube]
Jesus Jones
A woman on the radio talked about revolution
when it’s already passed her by
Bob Dylan didn’t have this to sing about you
you know it feels good to be alive
I was alive and I waited, waited
I was alive and I waited for this
Right here, right now
there is no other place I want to be
Right here, right now
watching the world wake up from history
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The Fall of the Berlin Wall
It was twenty years ago today that cracks first appeared in the Iron Curtain when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.
I was in the navy at the time and saw it all on CNN (as well as on the intelligence wires). With the Wall falling and the Goddess of Democracy appearing in Tiananmen Square it was a wonderful time to be alive and a proud time to be in the military.
This month I will have gone without wearing a watch for one whole year. While that may sound like some sort of personal goal it was really an act of laziness.
It began when my watch band broke while biking to work. I managed to scoop up all the parts but have not gotten around to getting a new pin put in my watch band. In the ensuing time I found that I really didn’t need a watch.
I suppose I’ll take it in sometime this week, if only to have some nice jewelry to wear every now and then.
Today is the anniversary of the deadliest, bloodiest, most devastating military invasion that never happened. It is the day during World War II that Allied forces were to invade Kyushu in the start of a full-scale invasion of Japan – an invasion that would have cost untold millions of lives on both sides.
Fortunately, it never took place.
It was on this day in 1969 that the first message was sent between computers on the ARPANET. ARPANET was the precursor to today’s Internet. Who back then could’ve imagined all the junk that would one day clog it?
Check out Cathy Davidson’s piece in Cosmos Magazine to put the impact of this truly amazing resource in perspective.
(hat tip Paul Jones)
Friday afternoon I did my latest talk about GPS to Mrs. Jarrett’s 5th-grade module at Conn Elementary. It rocked! The kids were so engaged I talked long after the end-of-class bell had sounded. I think it was my best talk yet!
This time I spoke with not just Mrs. Jarrett’s class but another one, too! It was so much fun to see the wheels turning in the kids’ heads as I would pose a question and wait for them to figure it out. Half the kids’ hands would shoot up every time I did that. This time around there were several kids who obviously knew their stuff which made it easier for me to make my points.
What a thrill it is to get kids engaged in learning. Makes me think that I may have made a good teacher if I only I had the patience to be a good student first!
As a kid I remember my dad taking us to his office at IBM on an occasional weekend. While he’d fetch something from his office we’d all look around at the technology around us. The darkened offices were full of mysterious, silent computer displays and massive copiers. In those days before the IBM PC these strange, exciting boxes always fascinated me.
I recently stumbled again upon IBM’s Computer Exhibits Archives, where IBM’s earlier computers still live on, if only as webpages. It was fun checking out the hardware I remember as a kid.
Yesterday we drove home from T’s soccer game to see signs for an auction at a neighborhood house. We stopped by to see what was going on and found the auction was at a home near ours that belonged to the late Rebecca Weatherford, who used to own the property our house was built on. The house’s items were being auctioned.
I was looking through the home when I recognized Dan Blue, who is handling the estate affairs. He told me some history of the place: that it used to be a dairy farm from the 1920s to the 1960s that encompassed about 70 acres. There was a plantation-style home that dated from the late 1800s but burned down long ago. My neighbor once told me he used to play on the majestic porch of the now long-gone home. I was fascinated to learn that such an old home was once nearby, and saddened that it no longer exists.
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U2 plays Carter-Finley Stadium tomorrow night, so I asked Kelly if she’s ever seen them. She said she had, so I jokingly asked her how much her ticket cost. That sent her marching into the attic to fetch a handful of ticket stubs. Proof!
Tickets for tomorrow night’s show start at $100. Kelly saw them play at Maryland’s Capital Centre in 1985 for a whopping $13.50! That’s less than the Ticketmaster fees tacked on to tomorrow night’s show. Even tomorrow’s $20 parking fee is more expensive!
For the old Oculan folks out there, you may be pleased to watch this promotional video [40 MB MPEG1] I dug out of the attic last night. It ran on a certain broadcast network’s prime time news back in August 2003. Look closely and you can see the back of my balding head at 2:24 – 2:26.
Ah, Purple Box. We hardly knew ye.
