Broken Dishes

The dishwasher died yesterday. It’s a Kitchenaid that’s only six years old. The Bosch that preceded it lasted eight years, and so did the Bosch before it. According to Consumer Reports, Bosch is the most reliable brand. My definition of reliability is fifteen years, which happens to be age of the Maytag washer and dryer pair I bought for $700 on a no sales tax weekend in 2008.

Samsung is supposed to be one of the less reliable brands, but that’s what I bought today for $399 at Lowes. CA says it cleans and dries very well, and I like the handle. I’m less enamored of the door’s pulley mechanism as seen in the photo. Here comes the fourth dishwasher since starting this weblog!

Samsung DW80CG4021SR

Sine-us Wave Thoughts

AKG K240 Studio headphones, made in Austria
Some days, like yesterday, there is some ringing in my ears, and it’s best that I not aggravate it by wearing headphones. On certain other days, like today, there is only the usual sort of “head noise” that I suppose everybody has. I take advantage of that for listening to music, along with noticing the sonic characteristics of recordings and whatever gear I’m using. (If I haven’t mentioned it before, after turning 60 I had my hearing tested in an anechoic chamber by a PhD audiologist. I was able to correctly identify sounds that were just above the threshold of audibility.*)

My retirement activities are being determined in part by what my sinuses are doing to my ears on any given day. For all the countless hours I spent on airplanes traveling for work over many years, and then in the loud data centers at my destinations, I’m amazed I don’t have a much worse chronic case of tinnitus.

Adjusting to aging is something that those of us who last this long must do. I sit here rubbing my weak ankle that is also determining my retirement activities. It would otherwise be fine, if not for an elderly Russian man slamming into the back of my stopped car 22 years ago.

While sitting, rubbing and listening, I am worrying about someone near and dear to me who will undergo open heart surgery. We’re counting on world-class Boston heart surgeons to be as successful as a world-class Boston retina surgeon was in restoring the sight in my left eye.

* You are of course wondering what headphones were used in the test. The Beyerdynamic DT-150, that has been a standard at Abbey Road Studios for many years.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/beyerdynamic-dt150-review-closed-back-headphone.31257/

Now How the Hell Do You Know That?

I don’t know how it’s possible that the second semester of my freshman year of college was 50 years ago, but it was. What a crazy time! Having broken up with my girlfriend at home to pursue Felicia at school, only to let go of her under very sad circumstances, I stuck to my studies. Then I met Karen.

In all sincerity, every one of my girlfriends was amazing. I’ll never know how amazing staying with Felicia would have been, but I was with Karen for a long time and she was extra amazing. While I was working at a restaurant for my summer job, Karen was at Digital Equipment Corporation, where her father worked.

DEC was beyond huge in Massachusetts, being the primary economic engine behind the so-called Massachusetts Miracle that was the basis of Mike Dukakis’ run for president in 1988. If Dukakis, who I met several times when I was a radio reporter, had won the White House, the end of his first term would have been at the start of DEC’s rapid decline and demise.

Before PC’s took over corporate desktops there were text-based terminals, most notably the DEC VT100 series. They were attached at low speeds, typically 9600 bps, to terminal servers that were installed along 10 megabit/sec Ethernet backbones. And I do mean backbone. Those cables were thick!

My first installation with DEC terminal servers was a challenge. Many, but not all, of the minicomputer networks I installed were dedicated to our system. We had our own terminal server operating system that needed to be downloaded from our host systems.

I was at a hospital somewhere, and when powering up our DECServers it was a toss-up whether one of the VAX systems running our operating system, or a VAX running DEC VMS, would be the first to catch the request for a download. Like a chirping baby bird wanting to be fed.

Fortunately, a DEC field engineer was there. We looked at everything together, and once I had a good handle on the problem I called the office to update Brad, who had written the code that was downloaded onto the DECservers. Brad also happened to have been one of my college roommates.

The request for a download was an Ethernet broadcast. It was seen by all nodes on the backbone, and it came from the DECserver firmware. Brad reminded me of what I already knew, that there was nothing he could do to change that. We agreed the best idea was to find out if there was a way to create an exclusion list of hardware addresses, called a MAC address, within DECnet.

The FE was an affable guy who was easy to work with, and I told him that short of installing a completely separate backbone, a fix would have to come from DEC. He said he had no idea, “above my pay grade,” and that “DECnet isn’t even in Tier 1 support. I’ll have to call the escalation center in Colorado.”

He called, and when he had someone on the line he got a gleam in his eye, and a big smile to go with it. “We’re in luck! It’s Karen!” I looked at him intently and asked, “Karen… [name withheld]?”

His jaw dropped, he stared at me and asked, “Now how the Hell do you know that?” I didn’t. All I knew was that “my” Karen had worked at DEC in college, and not in Colorado. But when I saw his smile, and the way he said, “It’s Karen,” I knew it had to be her. Karen has a very sweet voice.

I gestured for him to hand the phone to me. It was the first time in over ten years that we had spoken. “Karen? It’s Doug. Brad’s on the other line.” Silence. Then a big disbelieving laugh. “HOW ARE YOU????”

We updated each other very quickly, then I explained the details of the problem. Karen said there was an easy fix. “I’ll need a list of the MAC addresses on your DECservers, then I’ll dial in and create an exclusion list in DECnet to ignore broadcasts from those addresses.”

I almost said, “Karen I love you!” but limited myself to, “You’re the best!” Brad was very amused hearing that Karen was fixing our problem. The shared backbone was soon working perfectly, carrying two co-existing, non-conflicting protocols. Ten years later, when DEC was being broken up for sale, Karen took a generous buyout. She continues to live in Colorado.

Merch on the Moon!

Artist — or AI? — depiction of the Odysseus lander on the Moon.

Playtex fabricated the space suits for the Apollo Moon missions. The Playtex logo wasn’t placed on the lunar landers, but the Columbia Sportswear logo is on the Odysseus lander. Columbia’s contribution to the mission was the development of a thermal fabric, based on NASA’s original space blanket from the 60’s.

https://www.columbia.com/omni-heat-infinity/moon-mission/

Designated Driver

My multi-function Canon printer is seventeen years old. Finding OEM ink cartridges for it is difficult and, when successful, extremely expensive. The scanner is excellent, as seen in the post from a couple of days ago, so it’s a keeper. I’m trying to decide on a brand of after-market refill cartridges to try.

I needed to print a tax document, and the Pixma MP600 said no can do, because one of the colors of ink has run out. ARGH! It was time to punt and pull out the even older, long idle Samsung ML-1710 laser printer.

I crossed my fingers that I could find a generic driver in Windows 11 that would work with a legacy printer. *Whew!* Success!