Excellent day yesterday:
– I produced a first deliverable of the next version of “XYZ Corpâ€â€™s iOS app
– Wonderful lunch with old friends, and a new one, at OK Cafe
– Great drinks and dinner with friends at Victory Sandwich Shop in Inman Park
Today I am headed to Masquerade to snap up some BOGO tickets for shows there this Fall, before knuckling down to get more work done prior to the long weekend.
I am so tickled y’all had such a great lunch yesterday! 🙂 I’m intrigued about this “trivia” bit though. There was trivia? Can it be asked here for the folks who couldn’t make it? (I do love me some trivia!) And Lurker I did see your comment later about teaching and I was all: oh! wait, he *teaches*?! how does he do that? and then you clarified it was online. I was seriously wondering about that. 🙂 Shoot, I don’t suffer from anxiety or anything but just the thought of teaching in person gives me the heebeejeebees.
Ventured down to East Point last night as a friend was having some new neighbors over for a little porch party; he had just moved in a few weeks ago. It’s stupid easy getting to East Point from work (hello side roads). I always forget that it. It seems further away than it actually is. It was the Jefferson Park neighborhood if anyone’s familiar with EP.
Not a very big weekend on tap. May hang out at DragonCon a bit tonight and watch the parade tomorrow. But thinking of maybe heading over to the Decatur Book Festival after that. Do I need more books? Nope. Do I want them? Oh yes. 🙂
Whatch y’all up to?
Way back in my Sherwin Williams days, I had to “teach” Sears employees how to sell paint & accessories – it was an all day event. It was very interactive, so it wasn’t super bad, and they trained us for a week on how to present. I’m glad I did it – but presenting is not my favorite thing.
(hadn’t thought about those days in a long time)
Amazingly enough, I did some student teaching while in college (high school English). But by doing that I realized it really wasn’t my cup o’ tea. I can help someone out one-on-one, but in front of a group? Oh heck no.
That’s interesting, Barb. How does one properly sell paint anyway? That and I don’t think I ever realized you worked at SW. 🙂
its a whole day seminar…….. but asking questions to be sure they buy the right kind of paint – indoor, outdoor, the right finish, etc, etc. The biggest part was selling all the accessories (that’s where you make profit) and explaining why all the extras will make your painting experience a better one.
It was my 1st job in GA – 90-96.
AND- SIDE NOTE – not knowing how I did it, but how I invested that 401k money has made me very very happy happy these days. I try to tell the younger ones today, invest now, because in 20 years you will be so shocked at how it grows.
Stacy, how do you think she got the hash name Primer? 🙂
I honestly never thought about that before! 😀
“oh! wait, he *teaches*?! how does he do that?”
I crossed a dividing line in my life about 4 years ago. Prior to that, I was in a space where I wasn’t feeling my feelings. “What is this ‘feelings’ thing you speak of?” So prior to that point, and for a couple of years afterwards, I taught by talking like an auctioneer. It’s amazing that I kept getting asked back. I teach online to professionals that need continuing education credit. It’s been a Herculean task to get myself to slow down while teaching, but I’ve managed.
After the event that triggered the dividing line, and much inner work, I’m now able to feel my feelings, but it’s all still a bit intense, like coming out of a dark movie theater and being thrust into the sunlight.
I could teach in person before, but I *never* made eye contact with anyone. Before the dividing line I used to volunteer for in-person gigs at conferences to “force” myself to get better, but I realized that was futile. Teaching online is my space. It’s also very clean. I’ve never had “clean” work before. I enjoy consulting work, but there’s so many ways things can go sideways or take unexpected turns. When I teach, I show up at my teaching desk at the appointed time (barefoot, of course), run my mouth, and then move on. It’s beautiful. It’s expanded to the point that it’s how I make much of my income.
So, that may be way more than you wanted to know, but that’s a bit of backstory.
I’m taking my kids to the DragonCon parade tomorrow on bikes, we’ll watch from a parking deck. I plan on getting some time on my bike on my own in this weekend, I definitely need it. Oh, and one, maybe two swimming pools are on the horizon.
Trivia Questions:
How many centimeters in an inch? (Steve)
Who was the greatest left-handed baseball pitcher of all time? (Lurker)
How far away is the sun? (Barb)
What is the circumference of I-285? (Me)
We are heading to Seneca, SC (Lake Keowee) for the weekend – a bunch of Parrotheads gathering at a friends lake house. Allan has to work Sunday, so we begged an early arrival invite to go tonight, instead of tomorrow. He has to come home Saturday night, but I’ll most likely stay & hitch a ride home with someone else.
Looking forward to some DragonCon pictures – the custumes always crack me up.
That sounds lovely! I daresay your plans are 1000x better than mine. 🙂 Enjoy!
“Wonderful lunch with old friends, and a new one, at OK Cafe”
Thank you, Paulie. It was indeed a wonderful lunch, and I’m happy that my circle of friends expanded yesterday.
and David –
we can always have meet-ups more often than quarterly at the OK Café. Just sayin……….
There are other places to eat (I don’t know if John knows that, but there are)
Most definitely, Barb. 🙂 I like OK Cafe just fine, but a little goes a long way for me. 😉 I know, that’s heresy to John. Hopefully he won’t be reading this space today. 😉 😉 😉
“(I don’t know if John knows that, but there are)”
I’m dead. 😀
Looks like good days were had all around yesterday.
Lurker, I’m glad you stepped out of the shadows. This is a really good group of people. Crazy as hell but a great group.
We rambled way up in Alpharetta off of Windward parkway last night. Got kicked out of TWO office complexes by security! I mean come on, don’t build cool jumps on your property if you don’t want old men on mountain bikes riding them 🙂
Busy weekend at the Knoll house. Dinner with neighborhood friends tonight, tennis match in the morning followed by a party at another friends house. Long ride Sunday, not sure where but I need a good long ride. Pool party in the hood Monday and fireworks at the high school behind the house Monday night. Gotta keep moving!
Thanks, Bob, I agree, most definitely a great group of folks. Which I already knew from this space. 🙂
Also – we are dragging the road bikes to SC – our friend Eddie has a 30 mile route mapped – I’m gonna die if its very hilly. I warned him I haven’t ridden hardly at all this year, he said that’s ok – he’s fine with slow. He’s gonna regret it.
Roof work here at the office today – we are in a 1 story building, SO MUCH NOISE, SO ANNOYING!!!
Going to catch up later, now I am on a wild goose chase trying to find the Masquerade box office.
Found it. Now have 20 minutes to kill so I will try to catch up.
“Hi! My name’s Barb and I’m here to teach you how to sell paint…and paint products.” <– Channel Hank Hill when you read that.
🙂
Regarding OK Cafe, yeah it's my go-to place, for sure.
I seem to always have a good time there.
So it's not just the food.
(However, as a matter fact, I think we are waving off of tonight's standard Friday OK Cafe run. I just wasn't feeling it. Besides, as David said, a little OK Cafe goes a long way, and I need to eat a little less.)
I'm not too sure what's going on for us this weekend.
– I'm thinking I'm going to make an appearance at the gun show at Gwinnett Infinite Energy Center (where *all* gun purchases require a background check, despite that pesky "gun show loop-hole thing.)
– Maybe the "big, big" Decatur Book Festival
I note also this weekend is DragonCon and the Black Gay Pride Festival. Been there, done that and have the photos on both of those. Tech's first football game is Saturday (not too sure who they're playing).
There is a hot air balloon festival down at Callaway Gardens, that has some possibilities.
Lastly, Jeep Fest is Thursday through Sunday (I do not own a Jeep), out where Noah lost his shoe, somewhere up I-575.
By popular demand, we're going to close out this week's show with another episode of "HamWithCam Trivia".
The rules are simple:
– I dream up some random question base don bit of trivia I think I remember.
– You make your guess in the form of a comment (below). One guess per player per day, please.
– Oh, no use of The Gargler is allowed. (Or Bing, or Alta Vista, etc.)
– I'll try and remember to give the answer late afternoon, or failing that, in the next edition of the Blog.
– Oh, and the winner gets a "custom-made" 3D chotchke, of my choice. (Second prize is TWO 3D chotchkes…) 🙂
OK? Is everybody ready to play "HamWithCam Trivia"?
Today's Trivia Question:
Q: "What was the name of the very first Lotus Development Corporation software product?"
I hope everybody has a fun weekend.
73 de JG/HamWithCam
I’ll guess – “Lotus 123â€
(Nope…)
If you say “Notes†I’m calling BS. 😛
Alta Vista!! How about Jeeves?
WordPerfect? (was that even a Lotus product?)
If you go to the book fair, please say hello to an old friend speaking at the up and coming authors session- Craig Henderson.
that’s way too hard – I’m out
But – setting up things to paint for the day was actually not bad – a few pieces of drywall, a pallet & other wooden things – to show people the importance of….. wait for it……. PRIMER!
All these years, and I thought your name was an homage for priming young men for hashing… 😉
whatever story you want to tell………
Allan may join us Tuesday for a Red Eyed Mule burger.
he isn’t working.
ðŸ‘ðŸ»
I’m gonna venture VisiCalc, even though I’m 99% sure it was created by a different company.
I’ll add a bonus trivia question: Which company owned Lotus 1-2-3 before someone finally mercifully pulled the plug on it?
Looked it up since I posted my answer already. I wouldn’t have ever gotten that one. Comical product name. But my answer was tangentially close. 🙂
“Which company owned Lotus 1-2-3 before someone finally mercifully pulled the plug on it?”
(I know that one, but will allow others to guess.)
And to David’s guess, Mitch (Kapor) was head of DEV at VisiCorp, prior to founding Lotus (with Jonathan Sachs) in like 1981 or ’82.
Disclaimer: I served on the Lotus Corporate Council for “years” and even have a leather-bound copy of Lotus 1-2-3.
“Slash File Retrieve…”
I’ve been doing this a long time guys. I had an IBM-PC in…1980, that had a single 160kb drive and no display, it used a TV, similar to early video games. And my first Macintosh (1983) had a 5 1/4 “Twiggy drive”. Good times.
Trivia hint: The software in question ran on an Apple II.
I have the (5 1/4″) diskette and will supply a photo, which possibly Paulie can post.
73 de JG/HamWithCam
I’ll never forget my first encounter with Lotus 1-2-3. I worked in the mailroom at AIG back in the day. Pulled it up on a DOS computer, circa 1987ish, and didn’t know about the slash key to display the menu. Moved the grid around with the arrow keys, and exclaimed “This is a stupid program, you can’t do anything with it!” I think I unplugged the computer off to get it off the screen. Those were the days. 🙂
If only you’d brought up Lotus yesterday, Ham, I could have regaled you in person. 🙂
All you PC guys… my first computer was a mainframe. IBM 370/158 running MVS and JES2. We upgraded to a 3033 and Randall Rollins toured the computer room and called out the data center director when he saw the sign on the console said “IBM System 370” (which it was). “I thought we bought a 3033??” And IBM made a sign that said “IBM System 3033”. They took a picture of it and put it in the worldwide IBM magazine showing just how far they would go to make the customer happy.
Ha! Cool Steve!
I hear you.
When a certain local soft drink company ordered their N+1 IBM mainframe, it came (via North American Van lines, natch) with standard IBM Blue panels.
It was unceremoniously sent back and when it arrived again it had…red panels (#fe001a in CMYK color model, AKA “Coke Red”). True story.
BTW: I worked full-time as an IBM mainframe (IBM 370/158) systems programmer to put myself through Tech. MVS/JES2, etc.
Funny story:
My college programming assignments were all required to be written in…Algol, which ran on the Tech CDC mainframe for student courses and research.
However, I wrote my homework programs in IBM Fortran and used a quick and dirty translator to convert to Algol.
Anyway, I went into work early one Saturday morning to punch out my homework card deck so could turn it in at school. But much to my chagrin, the mainframe was down. Our IBM SE has the computer torn apart in a hundred pieces doing some sort of an upgrade. I had things to do, so I didn’t wait around. The SE told me he’d leave the machine up for when I returned later.
Alas, when I return the mainframe was powered off. I did an IPL (Initial Program Load, AKA “boot”, cold start), sat down at a terminal, logged into ATS and submitted the simplest IEBGener job to copy my program file to the card punch. Easy.
As soon as I hit Enter, instantly the card punch began to run! Oh no! I thought it might be some production job and I’d be stuck there all day feeding the punch blank cards. I ran to the Master Console to see what was up, but the only job that had run since IPL was my IEBGener.
So, when I pressed Enter on the terminal, my job was submitted, an Initiator scheduled, JCL parsed, my file retrieved, IEBGener executed and my file copied to the card punch instantly. As if the Enter key was the power button for the card punch!
Instantly!
All running on a computer with orders of magnitude less processing power and memory than an Apple Watch.
Mind blown.
I’ll see if I can broaden the appeal for the next Blog’s “HamWithCam Trivia” question. 🙂
73 de JG/HamWithCam
I clearly do not fit into this space today LOL. Thanks HWC for the bottle opener! Cool!
I’m with Bonnie on the above discussion
“Hashing hashing, hash, hash…hashity, hash, hash, hash…..”
Now you know how I often feel.
🙂
73 de JG/HamWithCam
PS – Glad you like the bottler opener Bonnie. There’s a lot more cheap plastic stuff where that came from! 🙂
It was a good day all around yesterday.. got in a little bike ride last night and felt better than the previous 2… perhaps that fitness level is coming up a bit.
No big plans that I know of- finish a project or 2, Wash my filthy car- one of several disadvantages of living on a dirt road. Release the kittens into the man-cave and see what happens. Hopefully they quickly learn how to evade the dogs. Been to the pool once this summer and it likely closes next week, so maybe a bit of that.
Have a great long weekend- Paulie, will you celebrate Labor Day with a blog?
-FP
Tickets purchased, now getting my exercise by walking back to my car at the Inman Park Marta station.
Stopped at Revolution Doughnuts and for some reason talk myself out of a doughnut. Drinking coffee on the walk back to the car now.
Will power. 🤜ðŸ»ðŸ¤›ðŸ» Making up for last night ðŸ˜.
You say you want a revolution!! (ear worm courtesy of the Beatles)
Or I was saving up to 🷠out on leftovers from Wednesday night. 🙄ðŸ˜
It’s time for the answer to today’s “HamWithCam” Trivia question.
Q: “What was the name of the very first Lotus Development Corporation software product?”
A: “Lotus’s first product was presentation software for the Apple II known as Lotus Executive Briefing System.”
The prize pool rolls over and we’ll try it again on Monday…. 🙂
73 de JG/HamWithCam