How many people do you think live in a "small town"? Please boost, and if you are able, reply with more details and where you are from.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Shower Thought this morning -- and there are almost certainly people still alive who can answer this question: Why, when sending binary files over FTP to/from a PDP-10, were users told to use TYPE L 8 and not TYPE I transfers? Presumably this has something to do with how octets from the network were packed into a 36-bit word and stored on disk, but I just missed the heyday of 36-bit architectures and never used one (other than over FTP) myself.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Seems like my typo fixes to the descriptions on the old photos also got reverted, grrr.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Not sure why it chose that photo of a photo for the thumbnail, I'm pretty sure that's not what I set as the featured photo for this gallery.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
New (6-month-old) photos of Worcester Union Station, after the opening of the new island platform (but before the reconstruction of track 3): https://photos.bimajority.org/MBTA-stations/Framingham-Worcester-Line/Worcester (go to the second page and scroll down)
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
@dexter This weekend I'm watching (via YT) the final skeleton and bobsled races before the holiday break, which are in Sigulda. Won't say there are a lot of Latvians competing but it sounds like a good crowd at the track. Also top-level Latvians in figure skating, speed skating, and biathlon.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
(I don't know the answer to this, but I probably could have figured it out in college, when the idea of shuffling a music library was not really credible since the biggest CD changer you could buy only held like 6 discs.)
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Combinatorics/probability problem: what's the probability that a uniform random shuffle of a music library will place two songs by the same artist consecutively, as a function of the number of songs by each? At what density is this overwhelmingly likely to happen for the most common artist in the library?
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
It takes me about six months to memorize all the details of a new credit card.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
(Many years later, 508 split from 617, and during the last three decades that I've lived here, 978 split from 508, 781 split from the rump 617, and then all four codes got overlays when it became clear that further geographic splits were impractical.) I think Worcester is still in 508 (or its overlay) after the 978 split, along with southeastern Mass. and the Cape and Islands.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
It looks fairly certain that 413 will be the last of the original N1X area codes (those assigned in states with more than one area code) never to have split or received an overlay. It was an odd duck from the very beginning, covering western Massachusetts (all of eastern and most of central Mass. with more than doubler the population was 617). It would have made more sense to include Worcester in 413, but I guess Ma Bell or the PUC wanted to maintain 7-digit dialing from Worcester to Boston.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Today I used the bitmap(1) utility for the first time in many many years, and that was a trip. I guess that program hasn't been updated since shaped button support was added to Athena widgets ca. 1990.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I think, on reflection, I mostly feel relief. It's been six years or so since she was recognizably herself, and this long lingering decline has been pretty awful for everyone, especially my two aunts who took turns caring for her 24×7.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
It's not exactly surprising, but my last remaining grandparent has died. It's much less of a shock than any of the other three; she had been declining (from dementia) for years, and wasn't the grandma I had known any more, but the end came much faster than the family had anticipated — from somewhat functional to bedridden to no longer with us in the space of a few weeks. I am still not sure what to feel. Waiting to hear about the arrangements.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Still a lot of people out there who don't understand what "paycheck to paycheck" means.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Asked on Bluesky and got no responses, so I'm going to ask here where there are more techies and fewer poasters: is there an actual specification for the RFC 1035 "master file format" representation of TXT records? #DNS
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
It just occurred to me that, in alignment-chart terms, US voters had a choice between lawful neutral and chaotic evil, and chose the latter. Really brings home how "low information" voters see the presidency as an entertaining spectacle, not something that will hurt them and people they love.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
(Definitely hoping this year turns out to be the "farce" and not the "tragedy" of Marx's aphorism.)
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
I think I have figured out: the earliest 18 Brumaire can happen in the Gregorian calendar is 7 November (in those years when the equinox happens during 20 September, Paris Mean Time), but usually it's on 8 November, which is Election Day in the US in years when November begins on a Tuesday. No US election (presidential or midterm) will take place on 8 November until 2044, although I haven't checked the timing of the equinoxes.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
Three days until 18 Brumaire.
=> More informations about this toot | View the thread
=> This profile with reblog | Go to wollman@mastodon.social account This content has been proxied by September (3851b).Proxy Information
text/gemini