Strange days

That is really cool. Even as a geezer, I'd ride that.
Sadly, that could never be done in the US.. just watch Law Firm commercials.

 

Unexpectedly.....
Unexpectedly is now a sort of a dog whistle for Command and Control Narrative Fail
Kind'a like 'Oh, Snap!' for the elite and informed press.
I, of course, am shocked.

 

Weird, Amazing, Improbable Stories

For entertainment purposes.
post links and comments on really weird stories.
To start.. we all know when a pilot bails out of his fighter at 13,000 feet the next stop for the plane is the smelter, right?

Not always. Here's an F-106 that not only landed itself but went back into service for years
"Gary, you better get back in it!"
If you ever are around Dayton,it's on display at the AF Museum

 

Re: Weird, Amazing, Improbable Stories

Damn

 

Re: Weird, Amazing, Improbable Stories

Good tale and thanks for sharing.

Query, if you were the subsequent pilot of the F-106, would you be relieved by the knowledge that, when all else fails, the plane can take care of itself or would you be constantly frightened?

 

Re: Weird, Amazing, Improbable Stories

Wahat!!!1 No one else run across any news of the weird?

Well, I'm gonna digress a little becuase I just watched part of History Channel's Modern Marvels which implied that Apple's Woz and Jobs were responsible for cheap personal computing.
So... not for the first time on here.. I have to correct the record for those who werent actually there at the time.
BULLSHIT!
I dont take anything away from Woz, or even Jobs. The SECOND computer I ever bought was an Apple II and I still have it. But it was a curiosity and mostly a doorstop then as well as now. The THIRD computer I bought was a PC clone running MS-DOS and a spreadsheet. It was the first I owned that paid back anything on the purchase price. Because I built a spread sheet to do Payroll for my wife's business.

Here's a short version of the real timeline 'begats':
Apple II > Apple II + Visicalc > IBM PC > Microsoft IBM PC DOS>IBM PC > MS DOS (IBM failed to read fine print)>Dell and imitators (IBM PC Clone)

My Cred?
1st Computer I bought:
Mostek, later Rockwell, Kim 1
As a hardware geek at major company, I received an early Macintosh for evaluation. Loved it. Got a departmental gag plaque as Senior Mac Freak of the company. But my analysis paper stated that due to Apple target marketing and subsequent applications for the Mac, no near-term presence in our market which was Law Firm and related businesses. And I was right.
In the seventies, I made a living servicing clones of IBM 3270 terminals. And Minicomputers (DEC PDP-8, PDP-11 clones) doing what IBM couldn't. Even turned down job at IBM in 60's preferring NCR.
Anyone who wants to know the truth about ubiquitous computing can research it easily... but neither the Mac nor the Open Source freaks made personal computing cheap. It was the wily Bill Gates and the designer of Visicalc plus following spreadsheet designer geeks that made computing cheap for everyone. Even Readers Digest and AOL helped.

Because, if not for Bill Gates, all you Open Source / LINUX/Xenix/Unix clone freaks would still be waiting for a platform to build on. Jobs would NEVER have let you. So DONT EVEN start on me, especially if you don't know Novell's role in why most of us still buy Microsoft.. I was certified Unix SVR4 and I'll blow yer ass away.

so there!

 

Re: Weird, Amazing, Improbable Stories

Im pretty sure i understood next to nothing in Fog's post. But I think I understand it saying that Apple isn't necessarily the bizness all the hipsters want us to believe it is? If so. thanks.

 

Re: Weird, Amazing, Improbable Stories

Lol! I got a son that's all 'apple geek and shit' Never mind he's also anti-big biz, anti-DRM. Uses most convoluted logic you can think of considering he is in entertainment biz.

Dont remember dropping him on his head...

Got two other sons who are pro Windoze & Android {bad as that is, NOT APPLE!}
Full disclosure, love my 3 yo iPod Touch. Hate iTunes.

 

Re: Weird, Amazing, Improbable Stories

Yep, I hear ya.
_______________________________
I have a Win7 HTPC MediaCenter. DRM bites ass sometimes BUT you gotta deal with it. Biggest headache: inability to integrate Amazon Prime streaming into Media Center.
I never used file-share apps. or P2P once I realized how intrusive and dangerous it was.
____________________________
I reject MS Office for cost purposes since I dont have someone to pay for it. Dunno about LibreOffice but I DID try the OpenOffice suite and ended up removing it. Open Source often means open bugs and deficiencies. Tried -And removed -three times on three different machines
But I got an everlasting reminder ... A photo import and manager I cannot get rid of.
- Get it? OpenOffice SUX!

I DO need ability to deal with DOC and XLS /csv files and I am HIGHLY impressed with this free product you probably never heard of:
http://www.freeoffice.com/en/
I need a familiar look and feel {I AM seventy, ya know} plus ability to SEE latest Excel formats. The Word Processor works great too. Built in secure PDF creator.
I totally concur with this review.
PC Mag: SoftMaker v LibreOffice
Yes, I want what the Reviewer wants.. flexibility, NOT POWER.
And it works fine and still fast on XP PRo system without sucking all the Ram/CPU to do it.
- Note: That's easy for a stick-loadable app. Someday there will be a 'New Improved Breakthrough' in tech. All good apps will avoid the freaking registry.

Another Upside.. if you want the full feature apps. and support, it's still way cheap for US users. Once you register the Free version you will get occasional offers to upgrade for under twenty bucks, for I guess North American promotional purposes.

via email... not in the App!!!!

 

Re: Weird, Amazing, Improbable Stories

Beauty of Softmaker is it's a commercial product as opposed to committee output.

I should explain what is to Heather, me and a few others, obvious; but can cause headbanging for more casual users.

It is important is to be able to open and do some editing on the dreaded 'X-Files' which began to be propagated in Office 2007

DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX can be opened by some free suites but formatting may be lost to more or less extent.
Here's what Softmaker has to say about it in 2011

I figure if someone wants me to open a DOCx file edit and save it in DOCx, they can buy me Office. Otherwise I'll open DOCx, edit it and send it back in Office 2003 DOC file.
To date that hasn't come up but I've found editing in Softmaker FreeOffice rtf then converting to Adobe PDF gives me exactly what I saw in the original edits. Of course I keep it simple as far as page and frame layouts.

 

I just posted on my FB how disappointed I was in Willie Robertson 'twerking' on the CMA's last night. Things are 'relative', not absolute, imagewise.. therefore Gene Simmons is NOW -again- my favorite reality Husband and father.

Really? Check this..She's not quite 70 yet but close... not about sex, but rather sexy... nothing miley cyrus or any of the pop divas does matches this now grandma, which dance and sometimes dress was common on dance floors of cover band bars of the sixties. and on tv show Shindig! {But girls had to wear bras on shindig}:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlTKhPkZSJo[/youtube]

And yeah.. if you asked this girl to dance and she did dance more than once with you, and let you buy her a beer.. and left the bar with you, you were gonna get lucky. And they're ALL grandmas and near seventies now. Wonder if Don will say his 'mileage varied'.
LOL!!!
{I was single then.}
What's different now? Not sure but I DO know kids didnt do it in front of parents and parents in front of kids. Lotsa stuff went on but wasn't discussed. Rites of Passage

 

Google is just freakin scary.
So, we're watching old repeats of Pawn Stars.. and this guy brings in an autograph quilt.. his story: "This was made by a lady in central ohio and she sent scraps to famous people.."
So I quick type in:
autograph quiltfrom central ohio
That's a straight copy paste from my search box.
Not only does google fix the typo..
here's the result of the search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=autograph quiltfrom central ohio

And here's one money site!
Lostquilt

So in FIVE seconds I knew more about the end of the scene than people got from the episode.

Trust me.. just a few months ago I would have got a bunch of garbage results. And when I did my first online boolean search in 1979, it would have taken many minutes to find it if it was actually in the database. Would have had to be in a court document of course.