This Meeting in my Brain will discuss my plans for fixing the fizzling lamp down the street.
As I said, I spotted it while driving by just after dark, a street lamp sputtering, flickering, spewing out AM radio static.
The lamp was located about midway in the block, on the south side of the street.
But the block in question is an exceptionally long block, about as long as three or four normal blocks, and the houses are very non-descript, so if I went looking for that lamp in the daylight I'd never be able to single it out from all the other lamps.
I will need to drive by again after dark and try to get some identifying landmarks so I can find it in the daytime to copy down the pole number.
Or, I could park there at night with a powerful flashlight, but it's hard to write down a number and hold a flashlight, so I might need to bring someone from out of town to accompany me.
No one I know in town would find it convenient to show up for just 2-minutes of work, and I would not want them to stick around once we had the number.
As you can see this is not a small undertaking, but as with all of my projects it is definitely one of them.
We will hold additional brain meetings leading up to an actual result.
Carl, My Brain says you should figure
out the location after dark. Then get some
landmarks and bearings, and
come back in the daytime to get
the pole number. STOP EXIT PRGRAM
(My brain uses a mixture of old FORTRAN,
PLC, and other odds and ends. 1K static
memory, 8K RAM...
What was that again?)
Bruce, DOGRADIO
Meet my sea going friend Commodore Basic, the actual computer language I used in pre-school.
The panel accepts the plan proposed by Bruce's Brain.
POKE
PEEK
AND OR
END IF
Bill Cosby sold me on this one made by Texas Instruments. I still have it!
CALL CLEAR
CALL CHAR
CALL VCHAR
CALL COLOR
CALL SOUND
IF THEN
INPUT
My Timex Sinclair bit the dust...
There should be a command at the very bottom called
THE DUST
The goofiness of old computers.
I had a friend with a Commodore Pet.
It was 1K. He made it into a clock.
Bruce, DOGRADIO
I found a TI-994A emulator program. Now, I can run my TI on my PC! Even a lot of the games were included.
We now have PCs with over 100 million transistors. What are they used for?
Internet browser
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube
Email
Mp3 player
Clock
In spiete of all the super giga horsepower, not much else has changed.
"In spiete of all the super giga horsepower, not much else has changed." because the software they write always requires just a bit more "horsepower" than they give you.
In 1986 my word processor on a Z80 machine did everything I needed and was as fast or faster than todays version. No hard drive, it ran on two 180 kb floppy drives.
Looks like we need a new thread here...
Tonight I planned my return trip so I could make a mental picture of where a sputtering street light is located, so I can report it for causing major RF interference on the Xband.
Never mind the "you must accept interference rule." I'm phoning it in.
A major street up that way is very bright, and turning the corner onto my street the very first street lamp is 100% off. The 2nd street light is the one that's sputtering with a flicker-glow and generating noise.
Curiously there's another light a few feet further on that looks like a designer light which is a dull orange, giving that section of the street a low-level lighting.
Maybe some porch sitting beer drinkers shot out the brighter lights so they could party in semi-privacy. It needs to be shot one more time.
Contact the power company first.