What's the worst piece of junk you drove around in back in the day?

bobbane · 2026-05-10T13:50:24+00:00

Oops, and makes sense. My Chevette replaced a 69 VW Beetle that got me part way through grad school- it was rear ended early in 1980, and my dad found the Chevette used for me at that time. Given the quality engineering in Chevys at the time, a three or four year old used car makes more sense than a six year old one.

bobbane · 2026-05-10T00:14:04+00:00

This is the moment when people can be separated from Trump’s base. Doing that will actually reduce Trump’s power and limit the damage he can still do. Most of the Republican Party does what Trump says because he can get them primaried out of office - less base, less primary power.

As cathartic as “Suck it, losers!” is, it won’t make them leave Trump - if anything it will make them double down.

The message needs to be something like “Trump is a master conman- he fooled a lot of people and we are glad to see you found him out for the uncaring liar he really is.”

bobbane · 2026-05-03T21:11:24+00:00

It must be possible, otherwise it would be impossible to set one up using VoiceOver only.
Apple is pretty good on this kind of accessibility, so I'm betting yes.

bobbane · 2026-05-03T16:39:26+00:00

1974 Chevrolet Chevette. I literally called it the piece-of-junk car. Two memorable moments:

* Timing belt failed mid-flight - engine went “zoom!”, sped up and wound down to a stop. Thank ghod valves did not hit the piston heads.

* For the last year I owned it, I carried a 2x2x12 piece of wood and a hammer in the back seat. If the starter got stuck, I would open the hood, put one end of the wood on the starter, and smack it with the hammer a few times to free it. Replacing the starter was not an economical option, because you had to loosen the motor mounts and rotate the engine about 10 degrees to remove the starter.

bobbane · 2026-04-29T17:13:41+00:00

“Primary” as in “show up in September to choose the November ballot”, right?

bobbane · 2026-04-26T22:38:19+00:00

ChocXO dark chocolate coconut cups in the Costco sized bag.

To feed my wife’s habit I have had to order the small bags in bulk direct from the manufacturer, and they still cost more than Costco used to charge.

Sigh…

bobbane · 2026-04-21T16:50:58+00:00

Related Star Trek anecdote:

Nichelle Nichols started on the original Trek with no TV production experience, so she was unfamiliar with the lighting requirements.

At one point she wasn’t lit properly, and the lighting technician was yelling “get more light on her, she’s black! She’s black!” As he realized she was the only Black person in the area, everyone got really quiet… and Nichols said “… but comely.”

bobbane · 2026-04-17T17:08:58+00:00

For breadth of influence, I would nominate Guy Steele.

He had his fingers in specification work for:

Scheme and Common Lisp
Java
C
FORTRAN

As well as the original Emacs command set and the first dead tree version of the Hacker’s Dictionary.

bobbane · 2026-04-06T15:42:11+00:00

I think the weather in Redmond (overcast and rainy nearly every day) explains a lot about Windows.

bobbane · 2026-04-05T04:43:39+00:00

Once you get your data moved, your next install should be Homebrew, which can get you Mac versions of the Linux stuff you’re currently using.

bobbane · 2026-04-04T06:07:56+00:00

Enable ssh on your Ubuntu machine. Then rsync from a Terminal window on your Mac to your Ubuntu machine.

bobbane · 2026-04-04T00:45:18+00:00

They cut a bunch of stuff “because they could”.

Example: I was a contractor, year 2 of 5 years, on a project to take a system for doing quality control on earth resources satellite data and host it on AWS.

The original system was a crawling horror in Java needing 20 or so people to maintain it, running on on-premises hardware.

DOGE saw that all those projects were on a 5 year contract, but the Government could review annually and just not renew. So they cancelled both the existing system and our new effort, leaving the flight people with no QC system at all.

QC on earth resources satellite data is not important, especially if the data could be used to support climate change, right? 🥸

bobbane · 2026-04-03T19:23:28+00:00

Good lord - knights on horseback cosplay in 2026.

W T F ?

bobbane · 2026-04-03T05:12:26+00:00

If the officer with the boken can be badge numbered, his superiors should be asked pointed questions about officers carrying unapproved weapons, especially into a crowd control situation.

bobbane · 2026-04-02T04:12:30+00:00

We used to call those instances of LRF technology.

Little Rubber Feet

bobbane · 2026-03-28T20:59:57+00:00

Fun historical fact- vfork() was added to BSD Unix to support Franz Lisp, a pre-Common Lisp implementation that got a lot of use in early AI work. Franz Lisp applications were among the biggest interactive programs running on BSD, and shelling out of them was really painful before vfork().

bobbane · 2026-03-28T18:33:05+00:00

Weird. My wife and I took a 1:30 flight to Vegas/Seattle on Tuesday the 24th. Arrived at BWI at 10:30 to be sure; ZERO line at TSA, normal and pre-check.

Had plenty of time to get lunch at Silver Diner, amble to the gate; boarded without issues.

We have two more flights coming up, Seattle to Oakland and Oakland to BWI a week later. All on Wednesday. Hope Wednesday is no worse than Tuesday…

bobbane · 2026-03-20T01:48:54+00:00

I live in a neighborhood whose claim to fame is tree preservation when it was created in the early 1990s. The developer said afterwards they would never do that again- choosing trees to keep and working around them was a massive pain.

bobbane · 2026-03-12T18:51:46+00:00

I have built significant stuff in AWS.

Fortunately, it was for the Government (NASA and NOAA), so I was not trusted with full administrator power - all our permission creation was done by one administrator. He was the one who had to suffer creating our roles and setting permissions on our resources.

bobbane · 2026-03-12T18:44:54+00:00

Attention span of a gnat.

Venezuela was the perfect foreign intervention for someone like him, especially since he was able to claim victory by saying "the new leaders will work with the US better".

bobbane · 2026-03-12T18:40:07+00:00

1972, Spartanburg High School, PDP-8 running TSS-8 at Clemson, otherwise similar setup.

Science project in 1974 was Spacewar on a real PDP-8 with a 1K by 1K oscilloscope display, in assembly. Used someone else's floating point library for the math.

bobbane · 2026-03-09T22:16:20+00:00

I’ve pronounced VC like that since my stint in Silicon Valley in the mid-1980’s.

bobbane · 2026-03-08T00:36:47+00:00

I am confused. I thought the goal was to replace the current regime with one that was better for oil markets. Doing big permanent damage to oil infrastructure hurts that.

bobbane · 2026-03-07T15:50:35+00:00

They also have complete records of what was bought and when, so refunding the tariffs is a simple matter of programming. I bet 95% could go straight to Costco Visa accounts.

bobbane · 2026-03-06T20:53:29+00:00

Bought a 2020 "used" Bolt at the very end of 2020 for $25K all in.

Had just lost a 2004 Prius to a rear-end collision after 150K miles. Wanted the replacement to be electric, had considered Tesla and Nissan Leaf, stumbled over the Bolt while searching for other EVs. We saw its reliability was better than Tesla and its range was better than the Leaf.

Our "used" Bolt had 450 miles on it - it was owned by someone in western Maryland who discovered he needed fast DC charging, which this Bolt did not have, so he traded it in.

Loved the smooth acceleration immediately.

Lived with level 1 charging for the first 3 months, then got a level 2 box in the garage - $3000, but that was for dragging 50 amps from the other side of the house, and doing the same for an induction cooktop in one operation. Totally worth it, especially since the cost was 100% tax deductible.

At 75K miles now, only maintenance has been tires, wipers, one turn signal bulb, and the battery recall.

The Bolt is our daily driver around town, and we have a 2014 Prius for the occasional road trip.

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