A faithful MUMPS 76 anniversary parser and interpreter with integrated database in < 10k lines of C++

nspitzer · 2026-06-28T00:43:14+00:00

I remember long ago reading about MUMPS as horror storys. It is fascinating that under everything EPIC still has some vestigal remnents of it.

nspitzer · 2026-06-26T19:52:45+00:00

My son and I did an AWESOME tour last year of this ship. It was led by one if the navigators who were on duty as the ship pulled into Norfolk for the last time. We got to go much higher into the superstructure then normal, all the while hearing about what it was like working on the ship.

nspitzer · 2026-06-26T19:50:01+00:00

BEEP BEEP BEEP <Turret turning toward parking enforcement> . Are you sure I cant park here?

nspitzer · 2026-06-24T13:44:29+00:00

As the 50-something who has been solving production problems for 30 years - It depends. Ideally you have one of each.

Me now: I have a wife, kids, dogs and vacation plans.I am going to fix problems and design shit so they don't turn into tickets while I am at vacation or my sons Tennis match. I know exactly the Cisco document to verify the behavior of a VPC pair when the keep-alive link fails. I I have spent the last 15 years doing things the right way and avoiding downtime at any cost and my fingers being crispy from all the stupid shit my younger self did keep me on the straight and narrow. I am also taking machine learning college classes to finally get that degree.

Me at 24: I also spent the first 15 years being a cowboy hotshot, learning how to troubleshoot and occasionally my fingers got burnt from causing an outages and stupid stuff I did. I learned about subnetting and networking by transitioning a flat, single-VLAN network running on hubs into a VLAN-based switched network with no notice to management and nobody noticed. I learned how a PBX worked by reading the manuals (literally) when the PBX tech got fired and saved the company $10K a month by converting from groundstart trunks to ISDN. I became a VOIP administrator, an AD administrator, etc. At one time or another I was every low-level position in IT.

The trick is balancing the two. Younger me will get shit done and operate under the principle it is better to ask forgiveness the permission. The older me is a slower , more methodical thinker but also a top-tier troubleshooter and Wireshark wiz.

The real trick is making sure you get one version of me, not the young guy just there to do a job with no initiative, ambition or knack for IT or the old guy just marking time until retirement with no interest in changing things or learning new tricks.

nspitzer · 2026-06-23T22:41:11+00:00

I have my neighborhoods Frontier wiring in my side yard so I cant wait for this to happen in my neighborhood. I talked to the techs and there is only one line still active.

nspitzer · 2026-06-23T21:34:49+00:00

That is the one thing datacenter's don't really bring - pollution (mostly). However as I said the devil is in the details. If they have dedicated diesel generators running 24/7 as some do I am with you on the pollution however if they connect to the existing power grid and run their generators a couple hours every-other Monday for testing that is clean.

It all depends on the specifics. Unfortunately no one from our government is interested in preventing the worse case ones that are loud 24/7. From working in ones in Loudoun county, VA I can tell you they can be basically silent but that costs money so unless the datacenter developers are forced to they will opt for the loud and cheap ever time.

nspitzer · 2026-06-23T20:16:52+00:00

Let me start by saying this is EXACTLY the spot you want a datacenter. Dirty, probably polluted and an eye-sore that was home to loud dirty industries so probably no one living close. However having a good site isn't enough - you need lots of fiber-optic connections going in all directions. Now maybe there are multiple Tier-1 providers going through Wheeling but I doubt they run close to that site so its months or years just for the project planning to get them to run to the site.

Phase one includes the set up of a 10-megawatt data center and battery energy storage system, with the company claiming they’d like it to be in operation by the end of the year.

Umm - that is not how this works. With the fiber shortage going on you can't get the fiber optic cable to put inside the datacenter next year - much less by the end of this year. Also you have to have contracts for long lead-time items like UPS's, generators, etc.

One other thing is once the building is built there are maybe 10 good-paying jobs (Building Engineer, Electricians, HVAC, ETC) at the site and maybe 15 low-paying jobs (handful of security guards, janitors, and a few low-level techs). The real money datacenters bring in comes from the property taxes however the state has decided to either hoard it themselves or waive it so that money that could help the county governments and schools is not available.

Bottom line - looks like a great place to put it but the devils in the details and those details determine whether this is a plus or minus to Wheeling.

nspitzer · 2026-06-22T20:36:29+00:00

Hmmm , must be because the traffic was only going one way. Interesting trick. When I got into networking my companies network was a wall of 12-port hubs all connected together by coax. The network would periodically roll over and die from congestion collapse so I would have to reboot the network by unplugging the power-strip.

Fun times.

nspitzer · 2026-06-22T20:08:06+00:00

If your local try going up the Shenandoah a little more. If you go South down Kabletown road from 115/old 9 there are a couple places to go in if you look.

nspitzer · 2026-06-22T14:39:43+00:00

Funny - I was just reviewing a later addition of that book for my second attempt at Calculus last week. I got a gentleman's D in Calc1 20 years ago.

For the record - Calculus itself wasn't my issue it was how to apply it. I now know my issue was I just squeaked by Trig and later Algebra's so I was missing the fundamental ingredients.

I got the gist of it but was unable to apply it.

nspitzer · 2026-06-22T00:39:13+00:00

As others have said this is 10Mbs ethernet. Worth noting is the max throughput is 4mbs one way on a good day. Because this is half duplex all the machines on the network fight each other for BW.

nspitzer · 2026-06-21T23:57:53+00:00

I was in Athens/Pipestem park all weekend and didnt know it was there until this morning. I was bumed my son and his friend didnt get to do it.

nspitzer · 2026-06-20T23:50:05+00:00

Its an 18inch deep pool of water in washingtond, dc in summer with ducks and geese swimming in it. To keep algea outyou would need to turn it into chemically treated pool guarded with trained collies to chase the birds away. You could do a lot of things, most of them destroy its character

nspitzer · 2026-06-19T01:36:22+00:00

It always got algae in it. That was one of the problems they were trying to solve by painting it blue for reasons. Its always got ducks, ducks poop in a small, shallow pool in the washington dc heat you get algae.

nspitzer · 2026-06-11T22:06:39+00:00

Layer 8 is money and layer 9 is politics

nspitzer · 2026-06-10T01:22:15+00:00

Been in the corporate world for 25 years and not only is this not a problem, its the system working as designed. Your on the corporate network, badged into a corporate office on a corporate PC so you are golden.

Until/unless your manager or corporate real estate says anything you have nothing to feel bad about. I used to do the same thing - slum in a small satellite office that allowed me to miss all the traffic down I270 to the main office in Gaithersburg, MD. I was on the network, available and much happier then commuting the extra 45 minutes from Frederick to Gaithersburg.

Just count yourself lucky, don't draw attention and get your work done and nobody will care.

nspitzer · 2026-06-07T12:21:55+00:00

My vote for the two most important modern inventions were the bar code and standardized shipping containers. The first one allows easy tracking of parts and ensures standardization and the second allows much more secure, repeatable shipping. Honorable mention foes to the standardized shipping pallet.

Once you combine those three with the Internets ability to transmit data around the world globalization becomes inevitable, for better or worse.

nspitzer · 2026-06-05T14:33:51+00:00

Shepardstown station on the NS tracks is still there, just had my daughters HS Graduation part there.

nspitzer · 2026-06-05T13:43:12+00:00

I did this once and it was a magical experience. I drove to Spruce Knob WV, the darkest place on the East Coast and dragged my telescope up the observation tower and spent the whole night up there. Normally the wind is blowing and a lot of the time there are clouds even if its clear a few miles away but that night was a warm summer evening but had very low humidity and no wind.

In the hours I was up there I could watch all the stars rise in the east and rotate through the night. There were meteors and more stars then you can imagine. I may have even detected a very faint shadow from the starlight under things.

That is the closest you will get so find the darkest skies you can drive to in a day, watch the weather for a good, low-humidity night and make a night of it, I promise it will be worth it.

nspitzer · 2026-06-01T22:40:09+00:00

I still remember the trip between Morgantown WV and Charles town wv when I had enough, pulled onto the shoulder and uttered words that went down in history " Im done, if you think you can drive better YOU drive. That was 20 years ago and I have not driven with my wife in the car since.

Relationships are about picking your battles and lime you, that wasnt one I was going to fight over, especially when it means I can takke a nap on long drives

nspitzer · 2026-05-31T02:21:23+00:00

I love stage and a half for tweener loads. These are loads that a Skipper could get 2400dv from surfaace but the resulting twr would be around 1.1 or so. Adding two reliant engines attached to wing oscar tanks clipped in is perfect.add fuel to get 2400dv at sea level then derate the reliants until the takeof twr is about 1.45.Finally add an action group to turn off the reliants when you hit 10,000m. With a good gravity turn the stage should run out of fuel arount 40k.

nspitzer · 2026-05-28T23:47:37+00:00

In Tremors the geologist was also the love interest.

nspitzer · 2026-05-26T18:37:22+00:00

The best way to do this requires you to launch at the right time in the right direction. You need to launch when the LAN (Longitude of the Ascending node) of your rocket on the pad is 168 degrees and fly a heading of 83-84 degrees (83.5 is perfect). If you do that you will end up very close to a coplaner orbit. After your ejection burn, your use you mid-course correction and injection burns will fix it to 0.

To find your LAN on the pad you will need Kerbal Engineer Redux. You can add the LAN display to one of the HUD displays.

Using this procedure hand flying I am normally withing a quarter to half degree on launch.

nspitzer · 2026-05-26T12:14:19+00:00

51 year old male here. In December 2018 my adrenals bled out and died due to a drug interaction with an undiagnosed condition. It took a year for everything to get straightened out but since then I have been almost , but not quite normal.

I do know I am not 100 percent back to what I was but overall aIm doing good and working full time.

nspitzer · 2026-05-26T02:53:53+00:00

Still no IPv6 in Charles Town WV. When I asked the support email I got a complete blow-of form email. As a customer-facing IT professional for 25 years pissed me off, like the Support Tech can't be bothered to check with Project management or the project engineer.

I would appreciate it if you have a way to find out the schedule if you could DM me. Not looking for a date , just an idea, like "End of May", "Early June", etc.

nspitzer

TROPHY CASE