Quick survey

[gipsy]

Be honest

[papaof2]

Exactly one - in a decent shade of green.

[feralferret]

Exactly one, in a nice medium blue, many years ago.

[gipsy]

I had a Green one

[techsar]

A nice light blue...

[feralferret]

Well, we now know who the four yes votes were, and what color their leisure suits were.

[papaof2]

No, we know the ones who we think were honest because they said yes. What if one or more of them is in on the prank and is/are just encouraging more people to answer?

There was a TV show about that: "Who Do You Trust?"

[feralferret]

Remember the computer game "Leisure Suit Larry In the Land Of the Lounge Lizards"? It was a text adventure back in the early personal computer days. I had it for the Commodore 64.

[papaof2]

I knew it existed but never played it.

The original text "Adventure", called "Colossal Cave" in the Fortran version for the DEC PDP-11/23 with dual 8 inch floppy disks, was probably my favorite of those games. Still have multiple sheets of 11 x 17 graph paper with a map of a different level of the cave on each sheet. I now have a laptop that could probably run that game for multiple players if it had a PDP-11/23 emulator and some 8 inch floppy drives. Those big floppies were something I held on to as "a piece of history" ;-) I probably have a digital copy of the source code somewhere... But you can still find info online: rickadams.org/adventure/

There are also all the magic words and secret passages, either on the map pages or on an attached sheet of notes.

You did have to pay attention to the descriptions:
"A maze of twisty little passages, all alike."
"A maze of little twisty passages, all alike."
were two different areas. Getting it wrong might get you killed.

The winning strategy was paying attention to details and remembering little things - plus the magic words, such a "Plugh" and "Plover" and where you could and could not use specific words. And when the only way to get a treasure out of the cave was with a magic word because the treasure either wouldn't fit or had a spell that wouldn't allow it to enter the next area of the cave. And in some versions, knowing when "Score" was a request for status and when it was a command of a different type - not in the "Colossal Cave" version for the PDP but there were other versions running on 300 baud dial-up BBS's...

[feralferret]

8" floppies and 300 baud. Glad those days are long gone.

[papaof2]

But there were such highs when you got 1200 baud! Then the line to work was cleared (nothing that could affect the frequency response) and it was 2400 baud with a Micom statistical multiplexer on each end so the one line could support a video terminal and a printer - three lines of text to the terminal, one line to the printer.

Then someone figured how to compensate for the quality of almost any phone line and we got 9600 baud, 14.4K baud, 28K baud, then 32/33K baud, then 56K baud on dialup and we were flying ;-) And we had all those heroic sounds of the modem negotiating the speed with the modem at the other end.

Of course, my last 3 cell phones have been faster than that ;-)

Thinking of modems reminded me of a problem I was handed for communications between two operator sites in Atlanta (long in the distant past, when there actually were operators to assist you with a call). There was one pair of wires available in the cable between those two sites - but they needed to be able to send several signals to light different status lights at the remote operator site. Using the wonderful block of signals provided by a full RS-232 connection, I sketched the circuit out on a sheet of greenbar computer paper and a few days later they had everything working as they had asked - and for under $1000 in parts (the price of the Bell 202 modems used). Much cheaper than digging up miles of land and burying more cable.

[feralferret]

I remember when ISDN was brand new. I also have a couple of stories about dedicate copper pairs and their issues. I hate idiots with trenchers.

[papaof2]

Idiots with digging machines still damage things - we were without water for a number of hours when a guy who'd been hired to repair the sewer line at a house down the road missed that pipe by more than a foot and got the water line - on the road side of the meter.

It was late in the day when I heard odd sounds from the laundry room and when I found no obvious leaks, I decided that sound was the gurgling of pipes being emptied. Not knowing what caused it, I turned off the main valve on the pipe from the water meter and just waited until morning. We've always had some amount of water available, if just the cold water pitcher in the fridge (back then) and the filter pitcher for making hot beverages (coffee, tea, hot chocolate). When there was daylight, I walked down to the curve in the road and could see multiple County Water vehicles near a hole in the ground. I walked over and asked what had happened and that's when I learned about the idiot with the backhoe.

We were without water when they replaced the then 40-year-old water mains - but they had sent out two paper notices about that so we filled pitchers and other containers in advance were OK to be without water for the better part of the day. With three bathrooms in the house, "If it's yellow, let it mellow..." worked fine for that period of time but I could have brought in rainwater from the 250 gallon tank out back if it had taken multiple days.

[bluefox2]

Never had a leisure suit but I did own a Nehru jacket at one time in the early 70s. That was shortly changed out for a fringed suede jacket and high top moccasins

[gipsy]

Does a Fringed Buckskin Coat(real Buckskin) Times two count. Also a suede Sport coat, And more then 6 Motorcycle(leather) jackets (black and brown), and two black leather shirts. I do like leather.

[papaof2]

Just the one leather coat - a more dressy, hip length black coat that the seamstress who does a lot of motorcycle jacket repairs comented on "What a nice coat!" when she replaced the zipper asn the coat approached age 10. She said she thought the leather might be lamb. I just know that it's probably the softest leather garment I've ever touched.

It started the December I retired - my wife had a friend who worked in the employee medicak office at Rich's (the high end department store in Atlanta at the time) and had given my wife a nice "% off" coupon (don't remember the numebr). The coat had been on sale for $400, the day's clearance price plus the coupon got it down to half that and it became my retirement gift from my wife. 20+ years later, it's still my go-to coat for the cold and rainy or cold and windy days because there's enough room for a heavy sweater under the coat, it's insulated and it's a great wind-blocker. It does weigh enough to be carrying a small child on my back ;-)

[gipsy]

They don't make "lightweight" leather, that's for sure.

[papaof2]

That's why we need to invent a "gravity shield".

We shield against energy of all types: electric energy, magnetic energy, nuclear energy, sound energy. So why not a shield against "gravitational energy"?

Then getting a craft into space would require little more than a box of CO2 cartridges because the craft only needs a small continuous push to get it out far enough to be free of Earth's gravitational pull and some steering jets to keep it upright. There is no need for speed, just a little bit of lift.

Think how valuable that shield would be when building a road over a swamp or a peat bog - no need to drive pilings down into bedrock, just provide continuous power for the shield and some very reliable backup power.

You would have to caution people about mass in motion. My 35lb toolbox would need almost no effort to lift it but running with it in your hand could cause broken bones or damaged muscles/tendons if you're holding it tightly and turn a corner while running.

If you can shield against gravity, you should also be able to amplify it. If the cops need to stop a speeding vehicle, just aim the gravity amplifier under that vehicle and it could be pulled down toward the roadway at perhaps 30 G's which would flatten not just the tires but also the rims and when it bottomed out the suspension and perhaps dragged suspension parts on the road, the vehicle would stop.

Using a gravity amplifier as a security system should also work. If the beam can be aimed and its size and shape controlled, you could stop bullets headed toward you and a strong enough force could stop artillery shells by forcing them to the ground just in front of the weapon firing them. Instant counter-measures ;-) A 30G fence would stop just about everything that tried to pass through. You might need to have unshielded areas, such as the mailbox so the mail carrier could place items into the box and get his/her hand back out of the box.

Line that leather jacket with low power gravity shield material and the jacket would weigh almost nothing ;-) Put some flexible solar panels on the shoulders of the jacket and you could have a self-powered, zero gravity jacket.

Don'tcha wanna buy some stock in my new company? It's GRAMP on the Beijing stock exchange for GRavity AMPlifier. You know that Banggood and AliExpress will advertise anything and try to sell it so it's a good product for both of them ;-)

[feralferret]

Good one, Papa!

[canoeguy]

My mother insisted that I own one because I was a jeans and t-shirt guy back in the day. She went out and got me one. ugliest thing I never wore.

[CountryGuy]

thankfully I was a child of the 70's and not forced to have one but I remember them well. Remember my 2 youngest uncles who are 5 years older than me and them having them. Recall my Dad's youngest brother who would have been in probably Jr High at the time having a particularly ugly brown polyester one with this cream yellow shirt... The images that stick in your mind... lol Wonder if my cousins( his kids) along with their kids have ever saw those pics of him... LOL I might have to go on a hunt for some old pics.

[papaof2]

I'm sure there are pics of me in the albums from the days of paper photos, but most of those are in a bookcase in the basement and none of the grands were ever curious enough to ask about them. If we survive to have great-grands, they might not know that anything other than digital photo albums exist ;-)

[gipsy]

My daughter sends both hardcopy and digital photos of the grands.

[papaof2]

Paper photos work better for framing and hanging on the wall ;-)

[feralferret]

One of our granddaughters got married a few months ago. She had a photo album printed from the digital pictures of the wedding and sent it to my wife. My wife hates computers and the monitors cause her vision issues, so that was a wonderfully thoughtful thing for her to do.

I've lost count of just how many grandchildren and great grandchildren at this point. Two of the granddaughters were unknown until just a few years ago. It seems the third oldest son spread his wild oats when he was young a bit further around than he knew.