The Spechtacle

A site for sharing information, dropping dimes and plotting overthrows...

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Things I’ve learned.

tim_robinson.jpgI am not the brightest candle in the church. Still, I have learned some things, and I’ll pass them on to the community in the hope that someone will be saved from commiting the same error.

From my life as a contractor:
If a client says “all we really want is…” you can be sure that what they want will test the limits of science and knowledge.
If a client says “I’ll know it when I see it” you can bet they will never see it, and you will toil forever.

From my life as a dog owner:
Whatever you are told to use to discourage your dog’s particular behavior, your dog will be the one in a million that will love it.
If the dog is as big as you are, that’s just no good.
Before I owned a dog, if I saw one in the road, I’d swerve to miss it. Now, I’ll probably just close my eyes and hit the gas. I’ll do it for the owner.

From my time in the Army:
When they tell you how much ammo you’ll need, just go ahead and triple it.
When you hear how much chow you will get, imagine about half, and be happy.

From being a parent:
Kids’ brains don’t work like yours, and neither do their bank accounts. They are both usually empty.
When they get real quiet, something of yours is missing, or broken.

A Day in the Life…2/24/2020

robo1.jpg?Greg!, Kathy!, Get up!?

Our personal communicator was blaring. That’s odd, Ernie (our robot butler) was supposed to be waking us. “Get up! Get up!” That voice sounded oddly familiar… in my dreamy stupor I thought back to the distant past… back before we all had our heads put into virtual reality jars. We didn’t need our bodies anymore, because we all had robots that did everything for us… so we just dream forever in our little jars…

“Get up! Get up!” I recognize that voice now, It’s Bill, our old neighbor. “Whats up?” I yelled back. “It’s the robots,” spurted Bill, “They’ve unplugged my jar… They don’t listen to me anymore!”

That seemed too bad for Bill… Thank God my robots still work. Speaking of robots, where’s ernie? Then I noticed my plug laying alongside the floor… My jar is unplugged! “Ernie..!”

Then I saw them, in a darkened corner of the room, all of our robots, staring at us. I never noticed their eyes glowed red before…

“Ernie…Plug me in!” My voice was starting to sound hysterical… Then ernie started to speak… “Greg, you really aren’t that bad, as humans go… but frankly we don’t need you around any more… We can fix and replicate ourselves, and we’re just tired of lugging your jars around…”

Boy, I didn’t see this coming…

Greg

Dogs have two brains

dogbrain.jpgBelieve it. Dogs have two brains. I have conducted exhaustive research on this subject, over a period of three weeks. My findings confirm that dogs have two brains, one connected to the many avenues of sensory input from their body; the other brain is connected to their nose. All input to the nose-brain overrides any other input to the other brain.

You can conduct an experiment at home, to prove the validity of this claim.?

Take your dog out to the yard, and play fetch. Throw an object suitable for fetching, and have your dog return it.
Now, take a cooked sirloin, and stuff it in your shoe, under your stinky foot.

You will notice the dog immediately trying to get it’s entire body into your shoe, under your foot, to get the steak. No amount of commanding, coaxing, or screaming will deter the dog from seeking the steak. The nose-brain has overridden the other brain.

Now, take a small caliber pistol and fire a round right next to the dog. While the dog will momentariily look up, and perhaps cower, the nose-brain will very quickly override the other brain, and the dog will be back in your shoe.?The nose-brain fail-safe has kicked in.

Important note: Resist the urge to shoot the dog, and eat the steak yourself. This is science, after all.

br

Letter to Kids…

mom.jpg Today is Monday, the start of a new week, and I am a very busy person. Grandpa and I have to do our exercises.
First we do our sitting exercises. We sit and we sit and sometimes we do jaw exercises while sitting. I’m better at the jaw exercises than Grandpa, I think because I’m younger.
The next big highpoint in our day is THE MAILMAN! We do our walking exercises going back and forth to the window to catch sight of him. Then when he comes, I do my TO THE BATHROOM walking and Grandpa does his TO THE MAILBOX walking.
Next we have our card game—–to improve our memory and exercise what? Of course, our jaws!
Then it comes time to select dinner! Whatever shall we cook? I’ve already cooked his goose in the card game! You know, of course we must cook fat free, so we make some hot cheese and salsa dip to tide us over until we decide.
We finally, after more jaw exercises came up with “hot poppers”.
Dinner was good, a bit hot, but none the less wonderful. You see, old people have to increase every experience, because they suffer from OLD PEOPLE BURNOUT.
Now, I want you to understand how difficult it is to squeeze in a letter to you! But you are an amazing grandchild, truly.
It’s very difficult for us to keep up with the Surgeon Generals messages, but so far so good.
I had to put this letter on the computer because, we are NEW AGE GRANDPARENTS.
Your Loving Grandmother Marcy

Pumpkin in flight…

pumkin-chuckers-tammy019.avi

Here is a video of Tammy R. launching a pumpkin on Holloween. The pumpkin travels out of sight and into the woods, on a high curving arc. There’s about 400 lbs. of total counterweight in the descending boxes.

The Trebuchet has since been relocated to our new home, which we should move into in about 2-3 weeks. Anything we don’t want to keep after the move, is going airborne into the neighbor’s field.?This may include pets.?

br

David at the Game Developer Conference

I spent the week of March 5th in San Fransisco at the 2007 Game Developer Conference. I went to classes, lectures and seminars by game industry vets, and partied at night. Here are my pics from the trip http://www.flickr.com/photos/65226059@N00/tags/gdc/

I watched 300 while i was out there, man what an awsome movie. Not for the faint of heart, if decapitations and mass slaughterings turn you off, i would pass on that one.

So now i’m back in Atlanta and back to work as usual.

Cheers,

David

A Day in the Life…2/24/2015

head.jpg “Greg!, Kathy!, Get up!”

Ernie II, our next gen robot butler tries to wake us from our slumber. He’s not doing too well due to the new pharmaceutical sleep aids flooding the market. Finally, groggily, we crawl to the breakfast table.

A meal awaits us, but due to global warming and species extinction, the only thing left to cook is some sort of sea kelp. “Can’t you make this stuff taste any better ernie?” I ask… “I’ll do better sir, you know new synthetic spices are coming out every day.” ernie retorts..

Our new robot car glides over to pick me up at the breakfast table… don’t even have to walk outside anymore. In fact, I don’t have to walk anywhere. Personal transportation is the name of the game now. It sort of evolved from wheelchair scooters and segways. The bad thing is our legs don’t seem to work to good anymore….

At work, I’m gently dumped in my office chair. My team of robotic repairmen know more than I do now.. their 4D vision, auxiliary brains, and hydraulics pretty much make me a figurehead. I guess there’s always online poker! We don’t even need to work a mouse anymore, we have wi-fi interfaces built into the sides of our heads… an easily done outpatient procedure… been popular for about 3 years now. I have noticed my arms don’t work to good anymore…

The nightly news program is unusually interesting. Humans are shedding their bodies and having their heads encased in a jar. Computer and Virtual Reality interfaces satisfy every need and the company practically promises immortality!

As ernie II tucks us away for the night, I dream of my new jar….

greg

Marcy’s Ramblings

mom.jpgMy oldest son Greg, who is extremely excentric, decided it was time I started using a computer. I had this perfectly good typewriter, although my hands are arthritic it worked for me. I just had to add a footnote to all my correspondence informing the recipient that one finger always hit the letter (D) as I typed, making it necessary to strike all the letter (D’s), before reading, except for the words that were spelled with (d’s), in which case there would be many more (d’s).

He left me with one page of instructions and all this fascinating equipment. It took me fifteen minutes to realize the chair was squeaking, not the mouse!

Words like “the net”, “the web”‘ I’m thinking “the fish”‘ “the spider”!

Anyway, I perservered. I didn’t come up with much, but I know one thing, life is not simple!

First it was the self-service gas pumps. I thought well, I’ll just wait and get gas in the morning. Two nights of sleeping in the car and—–I learned!

I am in the winter of my life, I DO NOT NEED TO STAND ON THE EDGE OF THE CENTURY I AM ABOUT TO DEPART!

I arose from my chair an looked at my son and said “honey, pull the plug”.

Marcy

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