Doug's Sounding Board

1) As I watched them set up the difference engine I pictured a more practiced person setting it up in maybe half the time. Operators being a skilled profession in a world where the machines were completed and used in Babbage’s time. Cities would have computational centers that people send their work to. 2) The […]

Saturday we went to the Computer History Museum to see the opening of Babbage’s Difference Engine exhibit. It’s the second one that’s been built and it’s impressive in person. After wandering through the rest of the museum we arrived at the difference engine in time to see them setting it up for calculation of an […]

I didn’t think about the connection before, but Monday morning when I came in to work the power strip in my cube was dead and one of the bricks plugged into it didn’t survive either. I’m thinking whatever was the fix took out my power strip in the process. Unrelated to that but still odd […]

We went on Sunday and after finding parking and then waiting in line for tickets finally made it to the the stuff. The main hall had the stuff from previous issues of Make and Craft magazines. Having kits for sale for the more popular items was a good idea. The stage was little crowded so […]

The bathrooms where I work are shared among a several offices. The 30-foot journey to relief brings with it a large charge differential so that when you touch the bathroom door handle you get a large shock. Going out the rear entrance has similar issues. Strangely, the reverse trips don’t have the same issue. Over […]

27 Dresses – A fun comedy. I hope Katherine Heigl makes continues with the transition from tv to the movies. She was great to watch and her reactions felt very real even as the situations weren’t very likely. 1408 – I wasn’t expecting much from this and I got a good bit more. John Cusack […]

The Forbidden Kingdom – Jet Li & Jackie Chan, fun story, cool fu! If you haven’t seen this yet, what’s your problem? DCI 2008 Countdown – Since I’m a band geek I tend to go for these drum & bugle corps shows. This was a theater event showing the best shows of recent years and […]

This past Saturday was the second match for the Santa Cruz Roller Girls and it was clear that they practiced a lot on their weak spots after the first match. For the first half Candie Hooligan and Heather Headlocklear were the jammers most of the time which makes sense since they ended up being the […]

Yesterday a different contest popped into my head, one between Brocolli Obama and Celery Clinton. I was surprised to find no reference to it on the internets.

I tried Trader Joe’s but they had nothing but drinking chocolate. Then I remembered Staff of Life and decided to try there so we went there this morning. On the bottom shelf of the baking section are cans of cocoa. Those are sweetened or natural cocoa. Looking over to the right one shelf (still on […]