http://jim.medding.net/blog Gifted the ability to know higher truth Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:00:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Andrew Tanenbaum is reported to have said: Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. http://jim.medding.net/blog/2008/07/02/the-octane-net/ I had a coworker who had had a very bad day; kind of like my day a few years ago. I pointed her to my blog posting thinking it might cheer her up, but when I received "How horrible" as comment back from her, I realized that that it hadn't. ... http://jim.medding.net/blog/2008/06/28/a-slight-delay/ I regularly glance though a lot of RSS feed headlines looking for subject matter of interest but rarely do I find an article that overlaps my interest quite like Jack Ganssle’s article on his visit to Bletchley Park. . In addition to having lots of photos, the article includes a ... http://jim.medding.net/blog/2008/06/24/blechley-park/ Here's a tongue-in-cheek quote from Raymond Chen: Bloggers are just idiots with a web site. http://jim.medding.net/blog/2008/06/20/raymond-speaks/ As a child, I believed there was no better food than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I could not imagine life without at least one sandwich every day. I remember this because, much to my shock, I discovered my best friend, Earl, could not eat them. He was allergic ... http://jim.medding.net/blog/2008/06/16/pbj/ So far, I’ve read two books which were truly disturbing – Sheriff David Reichert’s Chasing the Devil and James Bradley’s Flyboys. I mention this to provide context for the following quote from Bradley’s book: Few people reflect now that samurai swords killed more people during WWII than atomic bombs. WWII veteran ... http://jim.medding.net/blog/2008/06/04/why-history-is-important/ A few years ago, I had, shall we say, an unusual event occur. On a Saturday I was shuttling my sons and a couple of their friends to and from a local event in between doing my usual weekend projects. After dropping one of their friends at his home, I ... http://jim.medding.net/blog/2008/04/30/saturdays-are-busy-times/ Senator Joe MacCarthy is reported to have said, about George Marshall, “If Marshall was merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve America’s interest.” I bring this quote up, not because I agree with the statement, but because I find it an ... http://jim.medding.net/blog/2008/04/26/incompetent-or-destructive/ While my grandfather, Walter L. Medding, was stationed in Japan in the early 1950’s he apparently made a couple of trips over to Korea. This news came as surprise to my father because when I asked Dad about it, he said “Grandpa was never in Korea.” The reason why I ... http://jim.medding.net/blog/2008/04/22/photos-from-panmunjom/ In Henry Petroski's The Evolution of Useful Things, he defines, I think quite eloquently, the process of product evolution: The evolution of form begins with the perception of failure, but is propagated through the language of comparatives. 'Lighter," "thinner," "cheaper" are comparative assertions of improvement, and the possibility of attaching such ... http://jim.medding.net/blog/2008/04/18/the-evolution-of-useful-things/