If you are...

If you are ... a PCA (Programmer of a Certain Age), then you'll no doubt remember – and fondly – the HP-16C “Computer Scientist” calculator.  That's a photo of it at right (not mine, sadly).  I bought one of these shortly after they were announced in 1982, and I put lots of hours on it.  It was useful not only for programming, but also for digital hardware design (and especially for debugging).  Sometime in the early '90s, when it was on my lab table and I was soldering, I killed it by dropping the hot soldering iron on the keyboard.  Those keys work very poorly when melted to the case :)

I was seriously bummed when I discovered that HP no longer made them, and I couldn't get a replacement.

But I was all smiles when I found out that a guy in Switzerland had started a company (Swiss Micros) to make emulations of all the old HP calculators – including the HP-16C!  His version of it is called the DM-16, and it's quite a faithful copy of the original – but with a more modern (and powerful) computer inside it, and a much smaller form factor.  Oh, and also a titanium case! Naturally, I ordered one immediately – and today I received it.  That's a photo of mine on the right.  Within a few keystrokes, I remembered how to operate most of it.  That sure brought back some memories!

Burglary in Paradise...

Burglary in Paradise...  Well, there's much more news about the two burglars recently caught after invading a home in Paradise.  Aren't they cute in their purple suits?

For starters, the police have searched their home – and found evidence linking them to seven other burglaries.  Then there's the fact that their (rental) home is in Smithfield Canyon – just a few doors down from the B&B where Debbie and I stayed almost two years ago when looking for a home here.  There were two teenagers (their children?) found on the property, along with numerous animals.  All of these are now being cared for elsewhere.  The out-of-state owner of the property returned and reported a vehicle was missing; that's now listed as stolen.

Now these two are being held without bail.  That's probably actually good for them, as the folks of this community are not likely to be shy about administering a little homespun justice if they were found out and about...

Rosetta is still studying Comet 67P...

Rosetta is still studying Comet 67P...  Among its science results are a stream of beautiful comet photos, like the one at right.  More Rosetta news here...

Curiosity is approaching the black sand dunes of Mars...

Curiosity is approaching the black sand dunes of Mars...  These are the Bagnold Dunes on the northwest slopes of Mt. Sharp.  Much more here...

Pluto is the pits!

Pluto is the pits!  Well, Pluto has the pits – a lot of them!  The photo at right was taken by the New Horizons spacecraft during its July flyby of Pluto.  The pits are in a lake of frozen nitrogen, are up to a kilometer in diameter, tens of meters deep, and are not impact craters.  The current best guess is that they're areas where the nitrogen ice sublimated away for some (unknown) reason.  Just one of the many surprises uncovered by New Horizons!  Via APOD, of course...

Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Google created the photo at right, taking the photo I posted yesterday and “stylizing” it.  I didn't ask them to do this (though I don't mind).  I wonder what their objective is?  I really don't have a clue!  There's no link offering to sell me printed copies, or anything else that might generate some revenue from the photo.  They're just doing it, to several photos a week.  Weird.

Somehow I managed to get everything done yesterday that I had planned to do.  It doesn't usually work that way :)  All my winter-sensitive gear is now in the nice, heated shed – and the snowplow is mounted to the tractor.  The only thing that was challenging about that entire effort was removing the backhoe.  There are two large pins (about 2" diameter and 8" long) that hold the backhoe onto the back of the tractor.  Everything has to be perfectly aligned in three dimensions, plus all the load taken off the pins, before the pins can be removed.  The first pin was easy – took me all of 30 seconds or so.  The second pin took a half hour.

One of the things on my list yesterday was to remove two large apple logs from the back of my pickup.  They've been there for a few days; I was waiting for some decent weather before hauling them off.  There's a story behind those logs... 

Several months ago, I went to Zollinger's Fruit and Tree Farm, where I bought quite a few plants.  Somewhere in that process, I got to talking with Ron Zollinger, and he mentioned that toward the end of October he was planning to cut down an old orchard on the farm.  The trees were over 40 years old, not producing well, and many were not healthy.  I told him I'd love to have a couple of the trunks from those trees – I could slice them up and turn them into bowls on my lathe. 

Well, he didn't get around to cutting down those trees until two weeks ago.  Just before they started cutting them down, Jake (his son) called me and told me I could come up and mark the trunks that I wanted.  Then a few days later, Jake called and said I could come pick up the logs.  So this past Friday, I drove up and they loaded them into the back of my truck with their forklift.  I'm guessing that the bigger of the two was close to 300 pounds, and the smaller about 2/3 of that.  Two beautiful big logs!  They wouldn't accept anything for them; just sent me on my way with a big smile.

I love living here!

Now I'm the proud owner of two gigantic apple logs.  These will need to dry out before I can turn them – probably a couple of years.  To keep them from cracking, I need to coat the ends with something airtight.  Paraffin wax used to be the standard way to do that, but recently I read that latex paint works just as well – and that's a heck of a lot easier than wax!  So today I'm going to paint all the cut ends.  I'll keep them in the heated part of the shed until spring, then I'll take them up to the second floor (except in winter, that's the warmest part of the shed).  I'll check them in about a year and see if they've dried out.  If not, I'll wait another year.  Cutting and turning something that big (the biggest of the two is 20" in diameter) will be fun!

Today I have to go get blood drawn – third time in the past few months.  My blood levels of cobalamin (B12) have been a little low, and I've been adjusting the dose of the injections I give myself.  Hopefully we zero in on a new dosage before I run out of blood to give the vampire ladies :)

We're also taking my truck in for a once-over by the good folks at Hyrum Tire.  This is in preparation for the longest trip my old (2007) truck has ever made: to Virginia and back, and we'll be pulling a trailer on the way back.

Look what our weather is supposed to be like for the next couple of days (click to embiggen)!  That looks downright wintry!  There's a cold front moving through as I write this, and the next week looks like colder-than-normal weather.

I'm leaving next Wednesday for Virginia, and I was slightly worried about whether I'd run into snow on the way there.  Looks like I'll miss that.  I'm taking a southerly route, so there shouldn't be any cold weather other than the first day of the trip.  I'm doing the same thing on the return trip, so our only risky day there is the last day, on the way home.  Fingers crossed that we don't get a mid-December storm!