Through the Looking Glass with Squirrel Garbage and Nachos

 

At first glance, this looks like some archeological artifact from an ancient culture, but it's just something a squirrel left behind. It's about 7/8" long.

It's always time for nachos...

Who is it? 

Football Playoff Special Edition - Go Sports Team!

 

Dad didn't talk much about his service, but I remember his saying he'd finished first in his class in Engineer School in Eta Jima, Japan. 

NFL Prognostication

Going into today’s game, the L.A. Rams are 13-5. If they beat the Tampa Bay Bucs, they’ll be in the conference final. Matthew Stafford is finally getting the season he’s waited for. On the other hand, never bet against Tom Brady, no matter how old he gets. My prediction: The Rams' Aaron Donald  sacks Tom Brady with a clean hit, Brady is injured, and Matthew Stafford is traded to the Bucs at halftime, leading them to a win and an eventual Super Bowl title, while Aaron Donald and the rest of the Rams wonder what the heck just happened.

Fun Stuff

Atlas Obscura has a fun website that celebrates unique and unusual locations all over the globe. Here’s their list of such sites in Michigan. Time for a road trip! 

My dad had a Smothers Brothers album with this song on it, which I thought was hilarious. The lead-up to the song is brilliant. Interestingly, it looks to me like Shel Silverstein wrote it, but it's hard to tell for sure.

Porch Sittin'

1976, on the porch at S. Grinnell St.

At the time this picture was taken, it’s unlikely my brother had ever played soccer (no kids in Jackson really did back then), and I had not seen the 1976 Dino De Laurentis remake of “King Kong”. I still haven’t seen it. I think it was about a large ape who sets out from his homeland, seeking adventure with his tiny human wife while he pursues a career in New York City real estate.

This picture was created by taking a photo of a negative and using Photoshop to, er, un-negative the image into what's above. There was some damage to the negative which is visible on my forehead. My very crude setup for taking pictures of negatives was OK for a few frames, but it was slow. If I were to want to scan a lot of negatives, I'd buy a device like this instead of doing it with a camera.

After taking the photo of the negative (resting on a piece of glass with a desk lamp behind it), and cropping it. 

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Somebody Get This Guy A Shirt

 

Me at a PET computer, about age 10

In the picture above, I am posing at the computer, and not doing anything useful. This is the Commodore PET computer that lived on a desk in our dining room, then later on a desk in the basement. It had a cassette drive for storage, and later models accepted floppy disks. 

Dad wrote some programs on the PET in BASIC, and computer magazines back in that time had long code listings that you could type into your own computer at home, which he also did. I learned a little BASIC on the PET using a book Dad wrote, but didn't get very good at it until I took a programming class in high school. 

Dad had at least one more later version of the PET, one that had a larger keyboard and a cassette drive that was plugged into the back. This led to more computers in the house, such as a Tandy 1000, an IBM PC clone first sold in 1984. That computer followed me to college and I used it until about 1992. My printer in college was a Gorilla Banana dot-matrix model. 

What's on the Screen?

Dad had a little sign up on the wall above the computer, a shorter version of which I believe is showing on the screen in the picture above. It was a pseudo-German warning to those who might fiddle with the computer instead of taking it seriously. This whimsical prose was easy to find online - it has been enshrined on the "Blinkenlights" Wikipedia page. 

ACHTUNG!

ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENSPEEPERS!

DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKEN.

IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.

ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.