...and may the oxide stay on your tapes and away from your edge connectors. -- Ian ________________________________________ From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Mark Tapley [mtapley at swri.edu] Sent: Friday, December 25, 2009 8:10 PM To: cctalk at classiccmp.org Subject: Happy Newtonsday! ...in deference to one of our treasured list members. And to others, Merry Christmas; and to all, a Happy New Year; may your capacitors all retain a low ESR and may the "good stuff" appear at the curbside of your path, decked with signs saying "take me"! -- - Mark 210-379-4635 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Large Asteroids headed toward planets inhabited by beings that don't have technology adequate to stop them: Think of it as Evolution in Fast-Forward.

I suspect I half-fit that, in that I celebrated Newtonsday yesterday but I would hardly call myself 'treasured'. FWIW, I hae no objection to people who celebrate Christmas, or any other religious festival. Your beliefs are just that -- yours -- and I am not going to criticise them. What I do have an objection to is the ridiculous over-comercialisation of Christmas that has taken place over here (and I guess elsewhere), along with products advertisd as 'ideal gifts'. The only reason they're ideal givts is that nobody would want them themselves, so the only thing you can do with them is give them to somebody else. There's another annoying thing happening over here at the momnet -- the celebration of the end of a decade. Darn it, ther was no year 0. So the decade ends at the end of 2010, not the end of 2009. I did the traditioaal things on Newtonsday. Traditional for me, that is. Namely repariing classic computers. I spent the moring making a keeper for the permanent magnet field in that burnt-out motor in my 9125A plotter [1] and then took the motor apart. The afternoon was spent stripping the old wire off the armature core and making notes as to how it was wound. [1[ The plotter for the HP9100. I refuse to enter the debate as to whether the HP9100 is a computer or not. It's a classic piece of electronics, it's a programmable data processing device. And it's beautiful. I wish :-) -tony