Episode: 3008
Title: HPR3008: 2019-2020 New Year Show Episode 5
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3008/hpr3008.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 15:07:45

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,084 Wednesday 12 February 2020.
Today's show is entitled, Hacker Public Radio 2019 20 New Year Show Episode 5.
It is hosted by Kevin Wischer and is about 117 minutes long
and carries an explicit flag. The summary is
8th annual New Year Show, War Stories and War Stories.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
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We're coming up on another midnight somewhere in a few minutes.
Have you got the list of saying who to say Happy New Year, too?
It says Western New Year.
Western US, some regions of Canada and too more.
Oh yeah, California and Washington and Oregon and places like that.
We were up in Victoria BC just recently.
Well I hear that's nice country up there.
That was beautiful. We had never been on the island before.
We had been to Vancouver but not to Victoria.
So we visited Victoria this time.
I can tell you a quick war story.
You mentioned with your brother a short time story?
Yes.
I told you I did in Vietnam did a guard duty on an ammo dump about every 11 days.
And this ammo dump one time I walked that into to see what we were guarding.
And the nearest thing to us was like lots of pallets of large like I think they were 122 millimeter high explosive rounds.
And many way they were big exploding bullets and pallets and pallets and pallets of it.
And so that's what we were guarding.
And so we had the bonkers and they would put us out there in the evening before dark and we'd stay all night.
And normally you settle down, you get your you know you set up your machine gun and your grenade launcher and you know you put everybody in the right position and stuff.
And he kind of settled down and it's kind of routine and never in a year that I was there.
Never a problem.
The very last time I'm on guard duty.
I'm going home in like three days and not home but I'm leaving Vietnam in like three days I'm leaving there.
And in their briefing beforehand they say that the night before they had seen someone leaving the the ammo dump going out through the minefield through the wire and getting away.
And going through my head is okay this is a guy who was just coming in to see what what we had and what they could blow up and making a plan so that now that was last night.
So tonight they're coming back and they're going to blow this whole damn thing up.
And I'm going to be here man my eyes are wide open all night long.
That was the least relaxed guard duty I had in the 12 months that I was there.
Of course nothing happened.
And no coffee required night.
Absolutely you know nothing was required to keep me awake that night.
That was you know some nights you have a little trouble staying awake.
And we were actually allowed to have one person asleep one hour there were three people on a bunker and one person could be a sleep up up until midnight.
And then after that everybody's awake but that's okay I'm up you guys take turns.
Yeah that was something I didn't want anything to mess up my trip on the airplane in a couple of days.
The army went through some interesting restructuring after Vietnam.
I probably wasn't a bad idea.
Well for one thing for the next 20 years or there are bounce pretty close to pre desert storm they had a serious drug problem.
Also they had the army is now restructured in such a way that the active service cannot be deployed without elements of the reserves.
In Vietnam the active duty soldiers and the draftees could be drawn out of the population while everybody's cousin in the reserves.
And the plumber down the street and the guy at the grocery store and whatnot went through his reserved stuff without risk of being deployed.
Well that was so that George W. Bush wouldn't get in danger.
That's right and in all the other guys who didn't do a military deferment I mean you know defense work deferment or college deferment or kick a cock or spaniel deferment.
Also my brother was he was volunteer but he noticed that the the army was retooling basic training because the basic training that they used on draftees was far more restrictive and harsh than the one that they used on volunteers.
However and you got a taste of both because four days into the service on Labor Day or thereabouts he landed badly on an ankle and shattered it.
He was a year getting to permanent duty.
So while he was part of the debt detachment of patients there was he was used to wheel patients around.
After his service he went into a tech intelligence unit basically they would take apart Russian trucks to see what they would make them take and how they're liable to break and stuff like that.
Well somebody didn't read defined front on his records and they said well serving in the detachment of patients he was in the psych ward at his basic training base for Leonard Wood or whatever.
Yes he was in the psych ward he was acting as an orderly he was not a patient he was an orthopedic patient and they said private so and so we are paying you we're going to have you do work because you can't sit on your ass waiting to heal up.
However somebody didn't read defined friend and they pulled his security clearance for a bit. Yes being in the psych ward doesn't mean you are a psych patient.
Well you just have to be close and they don't read things real carefully sometimes.
Oh yeah also because we live south of Boston and my brother even when he was home and he had his own place lived here he would go to a base that was north and west of Boston for his reserve duty.
Well they moved that unit out to Fort Devons from south of Boston to Fort Devons is a heck of a haul for a couple of days of whatever and then back home.
So his contract was his reserve contract was was coming up short so they basically said well yeah we move the unit out of your home district.
You don't have to haul your ass up here your short will just keep you on strength until your contract runs out.
So I thought that was a little interesting but before he left the reserve Army reserves he was promoted to Buck Sergeant from corporal which was kind of nice.
Yeah I think they try to work with them in the reserves.
Guy knew that at my job was a he was a Vietnam era Navy veteran that got out and then after a few years went back into the into the reserves and so it was more like 30 years probably instead of 20 years after.
He got out that he was approaching his retirement age but he was still in the reserves and he was having to go from Houston to New Orleans for where his ship was and that was kind of a Boston to Fort Devons is nothing compared to Houston to New Orleans.
But so he thought he would try to get out of that for a bit so he applied to take a correspondence class that where he could spend six months just studying books and taking some tests and mailing in the results and stuff instead of having to drive down to New Orleans every month for training.
So while he was detached from his unit in New Orleans one of the I think that was about 2001 2002 when his ship had to go the Middle East to get in a war and so he missed the war because he was he was assigned to an aircraft carrier and it was oh darn.
I missed it.
Yes. Well a guy used to do some carpentry for us was in the CB's reserves.
The interesting bit was he would do his you know two weeks and he did his two weeks in Florida during spring break.
He did his two weeks around New Orleans during Monte Gras and you know there are some reserve evolutions which are harder than others.
And being down in Florida when it's flooded with co-eds and being in Monte Gras when it's just flooded with well people who are of a mood to bust loose shall we say.
Sounds like hard duty.
Seriously hard duty.
This guy's job was to he was the I'm not sure what you would call him but he was a guy with a clipboard on the flight deck that whenever a plane took off and came back in he's the one that said okay that the check off how many missions it had and how many hours on the engine and how much fuel and what had to be done to it before they could send it out again.
So the pretty busy job when when you're bombing Baghdad every you know every 12 minutes for you know several days in a row day and night and he was perfectly happy to miss that little deployment at about 50 years old.
And you know he felt bad he felt that he felt kind of bad about not going but not real bad.
Yeah well there's a fellow that I met on the bus here who was in naval reserves and he was in supply.
And every so often they'd whistle him up and they'd send him off to you know the sandbox somewhere and it arranged Navy supply stuff.
Well he had much much more cirrhosis not bad but it was part of his diagnosis as part of his jacket.
Well the work comes down that anyone with MS or any other similar illness is considered non-deployable and if they're non-deployable they basically have to leave the reserves on a medical you know or good of the service discharge whatever.
He was a little upset about it because prior to this new regulation he'd been doing his job pretty well.
But as things got nastier he was quite happy that he was no longer you know whistled up to the Middle East every time he turned around.
Yeah I think that the military has always been a little silly about that everybody that sits behind a computer or typewriter something has to be physically able to grab a rifle and hunt through the jungle or over the sand dunes or jump out of an airplane or something.
And when they their job and it's not going to be their job so to me it seems kind of kind of counterproductive to let people go who could do a perfectly good job for longer years or you know just people who wouldn't other way you know they won't even hire now.
Or who they would discharge at any time.
Well also even if he wasn't far and deployable he was reasonably healthy certainly there would be positions in the states where he could relieve someone with a better fitness record.
Maybe younger whatever to be deployed on the sharp end.
They used to I assume they still do like if a guy loses his like a leg in battle and they'll give him a desk job back out of the out of the war zone and let him finish out his enlistment.
I don't know they'll let him go ahead and do 20 more but they don't they'll let him take a medical if they want it but they don't make him do it as far as I know.
So it doesn't seem like they ought to do for something like like the sound like this guy had well you know things are just getting getting crazier.
Also you know it's now there are no reserves.
The army has or the services do not have reserves.
Because all of the reserves are in the same rotation meet grinder as active duty personnel.
Yeah well that's that's about true they're they're hammering the national guard that's for sure.
Well I you don't hear a lot about national guard deployment but but there used to be you know join the reserves and you'd stay home in your two two weeks or whatever.
No you can't hardly have a regular job because you don't know you know employers hard to find employers that are going to be understanding to keep your job open if you're bouncing out you know if you're going to be out of the country six months out of every year or two.
Well that's true if you're talking about a place it's got twelve employees where it really hurts them if somebody's gone but if you're talking about a company that's got a thousand or ten thousand employees and they have government contracts and things like that.
Those people are perfectly happy to hire reservists and let them go and if while they're the company I worked for.
Since we were basically a hundred percent of our income came from government contracts when reservists were out on deployment whatever their salary was that they weren't getting they would whatever they got from the military they would the company would make up the difference.
And would keep their job for them and they would come back and everybody would say hey you have fun and everything was fine but yeah a little company can't do that.
One of the things that I found horrific and as far as I know it is still somewhat government policy is during Vietnam McNamara sent to front lines a lot of troops that
were mentally not up to snuff and as I understand it even these days with the all volunteer force when they need warm bodies they will adjust the standards until they get enough bodies to fill the draft.
Well I can tell you that I took my draft physical in 1968 and it was on the second floor of a building in Dallas, Texas and I tell you that anybody that managed to walk up those stairs to the second floor was did not flunk the physical.
My brother my younger brother took the physical at the same place two years later and they flunk he said they flunk 50 percent of the people people would come in with a cold out of okay we are not going to need you and if there was anything they had a wheeze you know they didn't listen to our chat long enough to know if we had a defective heart or anything.
If we were standing on that second floor we passed that physical in 1968 in 1970 they they were winding down and they were flunking out half the people.
Yeah well they're also saying even even in the Middle East they were talking about people who were a little simpler slower what not one guy was known as far as Gump and he was you know he was put in a front line unit.
Well I think that recruiters probably padded their roles when they could back then more than they would get away with doing today that wouldn't surprise me but I don't know if that's it I don't know the facts about that I know that almost everybody I met the army said the recruiter lied to him my didn't but most everybody I met said that theirs did.
They were what I gotta go Vietnam they said if I got this unit I wouldn't have to go.
Well the recruiter meant that if I get you into this unit I don't have to go.
Oh they just misunderstood I think you might be right.
Also I was watching listening to an analysis of Vietnam besides not having by having a gradualist approach instead of we're gonna get over there we're gonna win this thing and we're gonna get out.
They also said that by rotating individual soldiers your units are handfuls of soldiers your units were always half green so by the time somebody learned enough to be useful you was gonna be shipped home.
Well it's not like that the person was by time he got useful is that there was never a coordinated team they never got to work well together because it was always a few older guys and some people who have been replaced all through the whole time spectrum and everybody said a year whatever day you came a year later you left.
I understand that completely because you got people coming going the way they do it now is they bring a whole team in to replace a team that had been there and that apparently works a lot better.
It makes sense that it works better.
Yeah but I was really shocked that that McNamara had this plan of getting you know marginal individuals and shipping them off to Vietnam to just to be warm bodies.
Well that might have happened.
I can tell you that if I had known anything about the war I might have been considered not going when those people from Canada offered me a trip to Canada but I will say that I was enthusiastic but I believe that we were probably doing the right thing by being there and protecting the world from communism which had nothing to do with what we were doing.
We were protecting the world, we were ensuring that colonialism continued in the Southeast Asia.
We took over for the French when they couldn't hold their colony.
So we took over to help out and it's like why? We should have never fought on everything I understand now.
Eisenhower should have just when France said we can't keep the Indochinese in check.
So Eisenhower should have said well okay just stay in France then.
Well also the rules of engagement where you know where you don't know where the border is but you're supposed to keep from crossing it.
That's okay we crossed it plenty of times.
Oh yeah well one of one of fellow that I that I knew casually on one another one of my interests has the scars of being dealt with by the VC somewhere along the line.
The force recon ranger you know one of the guys who went places that didn't exist and did things that didn't happen.
Yeah I know you're talking about those some tough guys that's not a kind of job that I was looking for when I went over there.
Also the rules of engagement like for aircraft you have a cloudy situation well you can't turn back from the target until you're right over it.
And you can't bomb anti aircraft defenses until they're to a certain stage of completion.
However by flying over the same target all the time you might as well have handed the North Vietnamese a map saying this is a this is our our flight path through to this target.
Here's where you put your your rockets and guns yeah I read one or two books by Lisa got to think a couple of books back so probably around late 70s or early 80s or something written by pilots from that year of the bomber fighter bomber pilots from from that era.
And how frustrated they were that they were that basically the president of the United States was telling them how high that you know you've got to come in from the south at a thousand feet or whatever it was you know they had where they were getting very explicit instructions and it wasn't coming from their commander on the ground in Vietnam.
They were getting from Washington and that they would do the same exact thing every day so that it made it really really easy for them to you know pre aim their weapons to shoot them out of the sky.
So that was something that the the pilots had to deal with and that was certainly didn't make any sense at all to me.
Also there were forward air controllers these are people who fly over the same territory for weeks months at a time.
So they can spot new trails new camps whatever anything changes they know this like the back of their hand.
However they would get into trouble if they were supposed to manage the air strikes would say I know that stretch of woods there's been no change on that there's no sign of enemy activity but because of an order from Washington we would have to dump tons of ordinance into into jungle.
Just because Washington got a hair across its ass up I didn't know about that stuff I thought we usually just tried to bomb where we actually thought there was somebody there well the whole idea is that because Washington could send out these detailed equipped this airplane with these with these bombs and have it bomb this target in these coordinates.
Which usually was a bunch of jungle that looked just about like the next you know 10 square miles of jungle.
It was it was based on some intelligence though or half ass guess largely half ass guess and the people they had going out there that were supposed to be observers.
And supposed to know every wrinkle in in the jungle were overridden by somebody in Washington well I was always glad I didn't have to that kind of kind of work it sounded entirely too dangerous for me.
Yeah well there's a lot of crazy stuff going on including the Air Force trying to get rid of the a tent.
Yeah well I was over there it was I mean there was always mortars every few days rockets rarely and any time you got out on the road and in a truck somebody shot at you but I always figured none of that was personal you know but if you if you if they made you take a rifle and actually go out into the jungle looking for trouble that was personal and I was I was always glad to not have to
do that. Yeah well one of the one of the songs that I like from story of Vietnam is the 8th of November where where a company size unit gets attacked by a North Vietnamese battalion.
And because the North Vietnamese are going to stay in the territory the intelligence that they fed our people who came in there came and went like the wind was misleading because the guy in the village knew that if he didn't tell what the VC wanted.
When the Americans went away he'd be his head would be on a chopping block in this guy.
The 8th of November tells about this airborne guy who goes in and gets dropped off in this piece of jungle and then all hell breaks loose.
And then he gets invalid it out but a lot of his buddies just didn't make it because false intelligence.
In fact is there's a there's a YouTube documentary on it about how he goes back to that same area talking to villagers from where he was attacked and they said sorry Charlie but you know we saw you got hurt but you know we saw you got hurt.
But when you know one of the VC who got a knife to your throat you you say what they want you to say.
Well that makes sense and we would have known that so it's all part of it I guess.
I don't think that they really got the lesson of Denvin Pugh internalized also after special forces became a headline creating outfit you know with the green berets and everything.
A lot of officers and whatnot people got into that because they wanted to punch their tickets.
And they weren't necessarily the kind of people that that would set up the right kind of relationships with the natives and stuff like that.
So you ended up with half of the guys doing it because they thought it was a calling and the other half was doing it because they thought that it was their way to feel great.
Well I guess everybody has a reason for doing what they do but yeah it doesn't always not always working towards the mission.
Now I myself agree with the Air Force that they should get rid of the A-10.
What are they going to replace it with?
Well I said the Air Force should get rid of it. I believe that the Army could use an organic ground attack wing, ground attack arm.
Have to zoomies, have everything over Mach 1 and the Army be able to have attack craft under Mach 1.
Now back to the World War II Army Air Corps huh?
Well more like the Marines actually.
Why do you think that's important because they would be all under the same command at some level rather than just having to cooperate with somebody in a blue uniform instead of a green one?
Well I think the Air Force is all for the high speed fighter attack.
The ground attack mission they considered like taking out the trash.
You're thinking of the A-10 then more like a helicopter, something that moves slow enough that is effective at trucks and tanks and people on the ground and with guns as opposed to bombs and stuff.
Well that's what the A-10 was built for.
Yeah I know and you're saying okay that's part of the Army's deal and the Army runs the helicopters as far as I know.
I suppose the others have helicopters too but the fighting helicopters are at least when I was in the Army were run by all the drivers were in the Army.
Well the reason the the reason the the attack helicopter exists is to provide organic air support to ground elements.
The good old A1 Sky Raider was a great ground attack aircraft until they wore a mount.
I didn't think I could wear a mount. I mean they're still flying B-52s and C-130s and stuff. They're you know 80 years old or 90 years old or 100 years old.
Well the 50-52s are also the Air Force has been dragging its seals for about full 20-30 years about re-engineing the B-52s.
They put modern engines on them. They could probably add 20-30% to their range. They'd be a heck of a lot easier to get spares for and they wouldn't smoke so much.
I don't think they could do that. I don't think there's room between their wings and the ground to to put those modern engines in. The modern engines are a lot bigger.
Well I'm pretty they're actually thinking about it and they've actually committed on paper to it. They've just been dragging their feet about it.
I guess they can make some that are as good and even if they're bigger they wouldn't have to be huge. They don't have to be 747 big I suppose.
Yeah well one of the things that I follow on YouTube is this whole thing. Also one of the greatest technicians the Air Force had was a major Boeing something like that.
And he was a thorn in the Air Force's side for one thing using bootleg computer time. He helped design the F-16 a lightweight maneuverable fighter to replace you know the F-4 which was basically a bomb truck or a missile truck and not a very good one.
But also he did a lot of the planning on the original Gulf War. And he talked about getting inside the enemy's decision loop so you were making choices faster than he could follow.
Also when he did an address to the Air Force Academy he said that there are two paths in Air Force office or can take one is the path to be.
Which is to say you're going to be a lieutenant you're going to be a captain you're going to be a light bird you're going to do what you need to do to get your general stars.
And he said the other path is to do which is to do what the Air Force needs even if it isn't necessarily what the brass wants done you if you do what needs to be done you may not be promoted as high but you will make a bigger contribution to actually carrying off the mission.
Now this Air Force officers papers are now in the hands of the US Marines which loved his ideas of tactics and staying inside the enemies you know fast response and staying inside the enemy's decision loop.
While the Air Force has a hall named after him at the Academy they really didn't like the fact that he was he tended to not bow to the careerists it's amazing stuff.
I'm not much of a scholar on that I do I would do like my war stories but and occasionally you hear something and you had your force to learn a little history I'm not familiar with that with that story at all.
Now the whole thing is from the background remember I got PTSD at home and with my Ashburgers focus on intense interests and data gathering and stuff like that.
This is just an area that I have studied when most people are studying baseball.
Well or I was like science fiction or electronics or stuff that I like to do.
You mentioned I guess you list a couple of podcasts because like you may point out that I list an HBR I'm retired I list a lot of podcasts do you have time to listen to a few?
I used to listen to more back and back before I got on to Linux and I've tended to be more into like YouTube videos and stuff.
Also on a lot of the YouTube videos I comment regular about various things but yeah I don't listen to as many podcasts as I used to.
And when I looked at the new Jupiter broadcasting and couldn't recognize either of the hosts I don't know whether I would want to chase that down but seems like you got a bunch of nice fellows out here that I should be listening to at least part of the time.
Yeah I don't listen to Jupiter broadcasting anymore they kind of the fast talking and stuff bothered me for some reason but I gave up on it at some point.
But I like late that Linux and the Ubuntu podcast and destination Linux are my favorite computer things for military stuff.
I've recently started listening to Jaco podcast and Jaco is a retired Navy seal that and his thing is a three to four hour interview with some other elite soldier of some sort.
I listened to one a couple days ago well it took a couple days to listen to it because it was four hours long of a guy from a Canadian who had joined the French foreign Legion and that was pretty interesting.
He wrote a book, Jaco read the book, had him on the show and he's had Vietnam era seals, rangers, other people you know in people who he fought with in desert storm and that theater of war.
And it's really interesting he's good with he's a good interviewer he's a good listener and he gets some really interesting people if you're interested in that kind of stuff you might take a look at that.
You just kind of scroll through it's been going a long time for several years anyway and you can scroll through and look at the titles and pick out the ones you like but they're kind of long but they're really fascinating.
Really some really good stuff. I've been enjoying that lately. I tend to get burned out after a while on podcast so I'll listen to I've got my favorites I'll listen to for you know for quite a few years but others I get tired of after a while and I'll switch them out and add some more because I don't do too much stuff on the screen.
I like to be able to walk around and do things while I'm listening. Well I think I may have to take that kind of a model into more also because that's the only way that I'm going to keep this back loose instead of sitting around as much as I have been.
I'll listen to podcast while I'm mowing the lawn. Well actually most of my lawn got scalped when they were putting in the new water line but I'm perfectly happy with that because I have to get this with the narrowing of my property and stuff because of the way it's been fenced.
I mowing my lawn with a string trimmer. Well that's not bad. I use an electric lawn mower. Nice eco-friendly. Well mine's an electric string trimmer but I've looked at some of the electric lawn mowers that are available here and the quality seems to be missing.
I'm happy with mine. It's not ideal but it's a plug-in. It's not a battery kind so you don't have to worry about it not having enough power to mow the grass.
It's just a 19-inch cut instead of a 21 that you get with a gasoline mower but when I fired my yard crew several years ago because they got unreliable and then I couldn't find another one that I liked after several tries.
I borrowed my next door neighbor's mower because he had one. It was pretty much what I was going to get. I wanted to see what it was like to run it. I hadn't done a mowed lawn for about five years and I'm getting kind of old so I wanted to see how hard it would be to mow the lawn with this thing.
It pulls us out fine but it's got a six horsepower motor that weighs about a ton and you go 55 feet and then you got to turn around in my yard.
The thing will pull us out of the straight line just fine but turning it around is on you so I found I was exhausted by the time I mowed my lawn with his mower.
That electric mower is very light and it doesn't pull itself at all but I find I can push it and it turned the corners and everything.
It takes me a little longer than it did with his mower but I'm not as exhausted at the end of doing it and it doesn't make as much noise and doesn't smell.
I don't have to keep gasoline in the garage. I don't have to change all. To me it just turned out to be a good thing and because it's not as loud I use the little earbuds that fit up underneath my hearing protectors.
I've got the muff top hearing protectors and I don't have to turn up my volume at all from my normal listening volume and I can listen to my podcast while I mow long.
Well I probably should look into something like that. One of the things I have a very narrow lot, the street frontage is under 20 feet.
I find that I can with a weed wacker or in a string trim or I can do a fair bit right in front of the house and right around where I really care about.
I've had them lay down a rather large asphalt patch that used up some surplus asphalt and also covers up some areas that I was having trouble reaching with my weed wacker because of the long cord.
It's time to say happy new year again although it may just be out in the ocean now or another part of Alaska.
Yeah we're on Alaska, French Polynesia, Fairbanks and whatnot.
That sounds about right happy new year.
Then we got another half hour one I think.
Yeah what's up with that?
Well that's just the way some regions are.
One other guy that I follow on YouTube is he does Tom Scott, he does what he calls computer file as in computer lover.
And he talks about time zones and he says the best way to do time zones is get a well-dubbed library and use it.
Don't think about trying to create your own.
Anybody who's ever written a program knows it's better to steal one than the right one.
He also was stressing that there are all kinds of time zones where the difference can be half an hour, can be 15 minutes, it can be whatever.
It's not just like the US where you have each zone is one hour.
Yeah I knew there were half hour and I was kind of thinking I'd seen it one time some 15 minute ones but I wasn't sure.
I think North Korea is one of the 15 minute or something.
Well I don't know anybody there so that's okay.
Wait a minute, do they have a different time zones in South Korea?
I think so.
Part of their differentiation from the evil west.
Okay that's cool.
A lot of these fractional time zones are because somebody felt it was a good idea.
Oh you mean daylight savings time?
Yeah well back in the day it was a way of giving more daylight during the working day especially during World War II and stuff.
And there was even a movie about Britain and during the war they went to what they called double daylight savings time.
And these two naval officers, one a male and one a female, come out of a bunker after being in there for God only knows how long.
And as they're coming out they make a remark.
Oh it's daylight.
Well a couple of sailors who are hanging around or just guarding the place or what have you say?
Well damn I think even officers should know whether it's day or night.
And listen Miner I'm still going to keep making fun of Martha.
Yeah I don't know if you can, if you don't want to, I think if you want to adjust for time, adjust for time.
But changing the time and saying everybody's got to change their watch just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Because you know in the winter time the days get shorter in the summertime they get longer all over the world.
So I think that moving your clock is just silly.
Well the one expansion that I see in the US is keeping daylight saving past Halloween.
I mean I'm old fashioned, I remember when you were trick-or-treating was on foot house to house.
Still isn't my neighborhood well mostly except for the busloads of kids.
Well the thing that I'm talking about is that the one change that was relatively minor was moving the change of daylight savings time past Halloween so that the kids have one last lighted afternoon to cover the Halloween when they're going to be running around.
You know doing their thing.
And it's important that they get to go out at six to the five why?
Well because up here when you're after the clock changes it's like four o'clock.
So if you're going out during daylight you see the variations daylight savings variation really is a high latitude thing.
Well yeah I mean there's no point doing it at the equator because it doesn't change and the farther you are from it the more it matters.
That's why the ones with a double or the ones up north way north.
But I don't know to me it's I've always I've heard the arguments since I was a kid and it's never made a lot of sense to me about changing a clock.
Although you know I was happy to have more daylight I'm sure you know getting out of school or something but it's or not having to go school in the dark.
Well the deal is that it's more you spent a lot of your time down Texas way.
The variant between summer and winter is a lot less down there than it is up here in New England.
Well yeah understand it.
And for a lot of reasons because of population and stuff the northern cities have been able to keep things going to their benefit or what they think is their benefit.
More than folks like you which don't you know where it's just more of an annoyance.
Yeah it doesn't bother me a whole lot actually I get more annoyed when Congress can't leave it leave it alone.
You know it's it's enough that they've set it now they want to change it and they want to change it from oh let's don't do it when they do it in Europe and other places.
Let's or Canada let's let's change it to let's move it three weeks for no reason at all.
Not only that there's a lot of stuff which has the daylight savings time data in wrong.
So there's a lot of clocks that would otherwise automatically adjust them which can't leave an Linux site.
Part of your updating process is keeping a current.
TZ file.
Yeah I don't actually know how Linux does it I guess I at one time on you have windows did it.
Well it's the same thing it just keeps the current rules and the current the current map more or less of different time zones.
Oh of course it does if they change the rules they just during one of the patch Tuesdays if it's windows and during the practically everyday updates that Linux gets they send an update that says oh by the way they've changed.
When daylight savings time starts this year and make it happen that way of course what would I think in.
Well I don't it may also have the the various wandering holidays and stuff.
Yeah it probably does although I'm not sure why I computer would care when there's a holiday except to show it on a calendar for your your your email or something.
Well that's that's a lot of what all this stuff is is the framework for a lot of for a lot of stuff.
I remember what a pain the but 2000 was the Y2K scare we weren't too scared of it where I work but we sure did have to have to do a lot of work to get ready for it.
Yeah for a time Coball was was a was a growing language around the turn of the century because they were converting two digit dates to four digit dates.
Yeah we did that and where that will they couldn't do that they went in and wrote routines that said if the date is less than a certain thing assume that it's 2000 and 00 not 19 00 because all the assumptions were that it was everything was 19.
And so they they if they couldn't actually change it to a four digit thing because the database they they didn't want to restructure didn't want to or couldn't restructure the database but they could redo the the software.
Then they would go ahead and use the the two digit digit in the database and just make a rule that says if it's if it's greater than a certain amount it's 19 if it's less than a certain amount it's it's 20.
Yeah actually I've dealt with that problem way back in the day when I was taught assembly language on a PD on is my PDP8 micro computer.
I use I use the PD8 and what what else an 11 and maybe a 13.
And 11 makes sense 13 is not so much unless you were doing some kind of process control.
Yeah I think we had I was kind of thinking we had a 13 I didn't use it I worked on an 8 at school and 11 on a job one time.
And it probably wasn't a 13 it may have been a 15 and it could have been it's been a long long time.
The interesting thing I find about the 15 was toward the end of its life they hooked it up to a PDP 11 so that the PDP 11 could control the more modern peripherals for the 15.
How also used to work on a Vax VMS system.
Yeah I'm quite familiar with them.
I even so well it's even possible to set up a virtual Vax cluster.
I'm using using a bunch of emulator.
Really we had an actual cluster where you when we set it up originally the we just had one Vax one big Vax.
And we had one another one on order and we told the other one I didn't the my supervisor did it but he reconfigured it to say you are now part of a cluster.
So it would when you turn it back on it comes up and says oh I'm a cluster now oh where's my buddy.
Oh well I guess I'll just have to handle it and then when the new and came in we just set it right next to it and we plugged them together and they go oh there you are.
And it was running it was like nothing changed it was very very smooth.
Well the Vax had clustering the PDP 1110 had a clustering capability that was a huge monster 36 bit words.
I didn't know that.
Yeah well this is the kind of stuff that I that I've been drinking up when most people are learning their ball scores or what have.
I did no Vell until Windows pushed him aside and then I didn't that Windows after that up until I retired in 2012.
Yeah well a lot of the impetus for Samba was from products that would make your Vax talk to your Windows machines.
Well we always had back ends that were I mean there was never a time that I didn't connect when I was doing PC that we weren't connecting to either an IBM mainframe or a Linux mainframe or an amdol or something else I mean we had big computers for our databases.
But the I didn't work on those I did interfaces and I work with the DBAs and stuff like that but I didn't I didn't personally do Vax any Unix or IBM stuff myself.
Well the the interesting thing is that the your Vax architecture 32 bits 32 bit virtual address space that kind of thing it was that architecture that inspired Linux.
Because when the 386 came out it was 32 bit you could put a you know megs of memory on it you know 32 whatever and you if you squinted a bit it looked a bit like the Vax in you know in some of the fundamentals.
Well if you look at the Windows registry what you're looking at is pretty much the same thing is if you look at a Vax also though when I had had when I took my first class in Windows server administration and they sent me you know I had to learn about the registry I go I look at it wait a minute that's that looks like the Vax.
Well yeah I heard that a lot of the Windows stuff was had a Vax influence well a lot of even your commands in in DOS and whatever came came from the deck world.
Yeah they were very similar but I never thought about the back in looking the way they you know looking so much alike that I was pretty much shocked that the having been you know through learning the Vax stuff and I was really amazed at how elegant they did that where everything is in memory and changeable.
While you got your IBM stuff it was all hard-coded and was impossible to make little changes without just a major ordeal and with a Vax because of the way it was struck you just go in and you you change a parameter and you know you've some very basic in the operating system can be changed very easily.
And then took a class for the Windows registry and it's like wait a minute it's the same thing.
Well the thing and that's one of the things about system D they say it's well it's a binary registry or binary settings or whatnot.
The problem with the Windows registry was that not that it was binary but all of the tools for access were reversed engineered side engineered or if you were not under a Microsoft NDA you didn't know what those bits meant.
Well that's true in some cases yeah there were certainly many thousands of parameters that weren't either they were not documented or were damn difficult to find the finding documentation for what they did and each time a new version of Windows came out it was always fun to read the articles about
you know things that the people who poked around found that this is not in the documentation look you can do this and make it do that.
Yeah well the whole thing about Windows from Windows 2000 on up is that the difference between your desktop and your server and your different grades of server
was largely registry hacks.
Yeah that's pretty much all it was I mean I was a server administrator that's that's what I did I built servers and put applications on servers and gave people access to servers and connected servers to databases and stuff like that.
I used all the versions the server versions of Windows from NT to 2016 the oh I guess no 2012 I didn't I was I was unemployed after that 2016 I've only seen as a free download from Microsoft for an evaluation copy.
But each version I'll give them this each version has been better than the one before has crashed less had more features less work around more stable is still in many ways of paying the butt and but it was all those other things.
I never had the honor to be a UNIX system administrator and my dealing with Linux is because I like messing with computers and the software is free and it's something I can do I used to get free software for Windows because I can work in the business and I could
literally get any kind of software I wanted to play with and now I can't get the Windows software but I can get Linux software and so that's what I do now for fun.
Yeah well that's largely why I jumped also when Microsoft might still have my at least a couple of my machines if they hadn't gone to the so heavy handed and sneaky and everything about
if they would let me keep my windows seven windows seven I would I might well be running it up to today.
Well my desktop still runs Windows 10 and my laptop which I'm using right now is dual boot but I never I don't really use the Windows right now I was I was up until a month ago I was using the Windows side for if I had to do firmware updates because HP doesn't do that in Linux
and also Netflix didn't work in Ubuntu 16.04 at least on my computer even though they said it would but I never got it to work but it works great on 18.04 so I'm pretty much don't have to boot in the windows any more on this box unless I've got update something in the firmware.
Well yeah I'm just saying that when they got heavy handed I just alright this is my stop.
Yeah you can you can do that and I'm considering whether to do it on my I've been enjoying the 18.04 so much that I'm considering doing it to my desktop as well.
The Windows 10 professional that I'm running right now was originally a Windows 7 and it was updated to Windows 8 and then 8.1 and then 10.
It's been on I'm sure two hard drives and two SSDs it's been transferred to and moved from to two it's been on two different motherboards and in two different cases that same version being updated and never reloaded.
So that's showing how you never could have done that to an early version of Windows you couldn't get away with that many upgrades and you dance your couldn't get away with moving them from one motherboard to another motherboard with different processors and the associated other chips and things that
instead you just plug it in it goes oh it's got new hardware and it just I got loads and drivers reboot reboot reboot okay I'm better now so I don't fuss about windows near as much as some other people do.
The privacy thing is kind of urgent to me and I've got mine locked where I lock all those things out the ones I was able to mostly with a host file hack that just keeps it from sending stuff to to Microsoft.
Well I don't know the host that much to keep things locked down and the application you had to fill out just to install Windows 10 or to freshen it get your Microsoft account because the only way you could get an account on your machine is by having an account on a Microsoft server.
That sort of turned me off even on my most recent machine.
Well actually you don't have to they they've made it so it's difficult to and when I reloaded this laptop of the other day it was very irritating it took me I almost it took me an hour to figure out how to get around maybe not an hour but it took a while to get around not giving them a
not logging into the internet with with this computer. I've found how to do it on the internet somewhere how to how to skip it.
It used to be not obvious but easy and now it's not only not obvious but a bit convoluted to to get around it but you can still do it.
I did it on this one this this one only has its Windows 10 the home version and it doesn't it only has a local ID two local IDs a supervisor and non supervisor.
Well when I found that that's what this machine was doing I decided to bail just because the optimist graphics it was I was getting some finicky results but when I got to Linux Lite I could at least get the initial
stop up to to install the Nvidia Xorg and everything's been purring it right along.
Is that the distro you use called is it Linux Lite? Yes it's Linux Lite. I'm not familiar with that what's that based on? It's a Ubuntu this is the XFCE version.
Yeah I've been kind of hooked on GNOME for years and so that's kind of what I've used. I first started using Linux on a regular basis on a netbook. I don't know about I want to say eight years ago seven years ago something like that and I was running Zorin.
And which is a new Ubuntu a derivative as well and and it worked very nicely and it looked like Windows 7 it has several different options you can make it look kind of like a Mac you can make it look like Windows 7 I'm not sure what the other options were but but oh look you make it look like Windows 7 I'm cool.
And it made it easy to get used to it and sort of kind of learned my Linux from that I had originally the first time I used Linux was a red hat disc remember in the old days where you would you would go and you'd you'd buy a CD for like five dollars that would have an operating system and maybe a bunch of programs on it and most of it wouldn't work.
Yeah I remember a lot of that and hell I've even had box sets of red hat back in the day.
By the way we have greetings to the Marques Islands and French to Chia I don't know how to pronounce that we are it's this is the 4.30 am Eastern happy New Year folks.
Happy New Year yeah I used to it would frequent these hobby shops where I'd buy parts for breadboarding up computer junk and they always had these CDs and I would buy the CDs and I would love whatever kind of computer I had at home I would
change out the hard take at my hard drive out putting a different hard drive so I could can stall safely install rest a red hat and invariably you would run install everything would work fine and then it would reboot and it come up and either it didn't recognize the keyboard or didn't recognize the monitor or it didn't recognize anything you know after
when you tried to actually boot and then I would wait a couple years and I would do it again I get a different version and something else and it took I never really worked very hard it trying to I've heard other people say how hard it was and how they had to do different things to get those early versions to work on hardware and I was never that patient.
Even it worked or it didn't and when it didn't I just waited for a couple years to get another version.
Oh I was going to mention you're we're getting close to 2004 so all the Ubuntu's will be you know springing forward.
Well I just got on 1804 about a month ago so I'm not real interested in that because they because I was on GNOME before I wanted it to be I wanted to work you know at least as well as the 1604 and when I first loaded 18
1804 dot nothing it broke a lot of stuff that I was using the of the extensions and stuff and some of the software didn't work and so I waited until 18.1 came out of 1804.1 it didn't work out very well I just kind of waited for a couple more months and finally 1804.3 came out and it's now stable and nice and pretty.
And all the things I need work and that's when I decide to install it so we'll see how long it takes me to install 2004 it won't be 204.1 like it's supposed to be.
The software will offer but that doesn't mean I have to take it.
My NAS server is is 1804 also and I don't imagine I'll even I'll even think about messing with it for several years.
Yeah I'm gonna I have some older hardware here that I might put a NAS or a server distro on there's one called Zintal that I'm looking at.
It's 1804 based but it's got a nice web interface as well as giving you a GUI for local access.
Yeah I don't have a GUI on mine because it's headless it doesn't matter but I use the web admin to look at it.
Look at it and see how it's running and everything I do I do permissions and stuff like that usually manually.
From the terminal but it's just a server version.
Yeah I understand that and I know about web admin and I guess there's several others as PHP, Myadmin and whatnot.
Yeah I understand that there's more than this one but this one is probably the first one I heard about and I tried it no.
Okay that looks like it works you know and since it that's what it actually runs on the client I guess you could I could try another one just as easily.
Well.
Oh wait no it runs on the server doesn't it.
Right it gives you give your web browser access your GUI.
Yeah it's a web server I forgot duh I wasn't thinking.
Now Zinto has a whole bunch of functions some of a lot of them are supposed to be plug-in play.
You can plug in an email system you can plug in file serving of various kinds.
And it's umbo to base so I like that and I like it.
One possible location is a back porch for the server.
And I like the idea of being able to walk up to the server and have the option of using the GUI interface just as if I was at a at a.
Any other desktop?
Yeah I did consider that but then I couldn't think really why I would want to do that so with with mine because mine is right next to two other computers and I don't I don't ever need another computer.
I've got four computers right now I'm seeing my desk and I've got three towers in my laptop.
Yeah well I have two towers and a laptop that could probably weapon both with one hand tied behind its back.
Well I'm not claiming they're super super duper I've got a let's see I've got a second generation Intel that is my lab server.
That right now I think it's got one hard drive in it but it's got six or seven versions of Linux on it in multi boot mode.
And the other box is my is a third generation is it third generation or 404th generation Intel that's is my main desktop and then the.
The NAS is a box that I built about a year and a half ago year year and a half ago that is an AMD I went to a micro center and told them I want to try to build a computer for a hundred bucks and I already had the memory so it had to use had to use the older memory.
I couldn't have the the the new faster memory so I had had to be an old processor and motherboard and so I've got an FX 3820 maybe because that's all they had and they had one motherboard you know that was open box that would work that it would work on and it cost me $110.
For a case motherboard and processor and I had the memory and then I got the hard drive later well I had two of the hard drives already and I got two more later and I used an SSD for the the boot drive that it was also used drive so I've got about 600 bucks in the box but that's mostly hard drives.
It turned out to be a more powerful machine than I had planned I really intended to get a something pretty low end for it.
My main reason for going with the Ubuntu was because I had tried free BSD and it kind of drove me nuts and I was wanting to use ZFS and so Ubuntu I'm getting pretty good with Ubuntu and it can it does just fine with the ZFS.
And so that's that's where I set it up so I've got four drives in a mirror situation with ZFS give me a nice a nice little box.
It's got a 128 gigabyte SSD for the boot drive.
Yeah I've got a 128 NVMe SSD sitting around and I just have to figure out which machine to put it in.
Well I have to to go down to micro center and get a carrier card for it but that's nothing.
Yeah that's what I put in my laptop here a few weeks ago. I had a pretty slow SSD a SATA drive and I was going to get a just a little bigger faster replacement for it.
And I was reading I was looking on the internet actually just to see how hard is it going to be for me to take this laptop apart to replace it.
And I found where somebody said he had replaced his with an NVMe I said I didn't know you could do that.
So I opened it up and looked to see if the connector would accept the NVMe drive and it will.
So I said okay that's cool. And I finally found it online where the user manual for either this computer or for a different computer.
The same model but a different year said you could that it would use either drive. So I felt pretty confident it would work so that's what I bought and it does work and it's faster.
So what's not to like about that.
Really what I've got is I have a lot of storage in various forms a couple of external drives again because these are windows machines for Linux they're largely overbuilt for local storage.
I'm going to have to figure out a way of consolidating this or something to make it more reasonable.
Every time I work on a computer one of my tower computers I sit down and well not every time but usually I'll end up sitting down and drawing out okay here's all all my boxes.
Here's all my hard drives different sizes. Here's the ones that are in boxes and the ones I've got that are spares right now and I do a reconfiguration to try to figure out the best way to handle them.
So with luck I can retire if you want one or two of the older drives and add if a necessary add of a more modern bigger faster drive if with luck's faster.
Well I'm not there's only little old me here but what I've been looking at is again trying to rationalize my input to based updates.
So that when I update one machine since I'm staying at the 1804 level or at the 2204 level or whatever it's going to be for a core why should I have to download Firefox you know five times or whatever it is.
Now that makes sense so I typically don't have I don't only have one version running at a time normally the same thing except on a test box and it may be at a little slightly different level so I don't worry about that.
But I'd vastly what you mean if you got multiple machines you download it once and then let it feed the others.
Right and again if I do this right I've got a couple of USB 3 or USB 2 and USB 3 external drives.
And just to logically separate things I could just have a Raspberry Pi with the appropriate apt food replied and have it as the as the local cashing server.
And then anyone who needs an update just first goes to the cashing server and it can't get it there then it goes on you know then then it does an update through the cash.
Yeah that makes sense. Hey would you hang out I'm gonna I gotta I need to take a break I'll be back in a minute.
So it's almost midnight somewhere again. Hey guys can you hear me? Yes sir. Well two minutes to happy new year in Hawaii.
We'll give you some live audio here in a minute it's about to be crazy.
Thank you for the compliments sir.
Silent friend 5150 is one of the luckier chances of my life.
Yeah I miss them every time I'm in IRC but that's for sure.
Here you go happy new year Hawaii. Can you guys hear that? What it can hear it happy new year.
Do you have real you have real fireworks or are you banging on a garbage can.
No no that's outside my house. There's even people hollering like it's a football game.
Well I am toasting the new year with the I just decided to get a beer while I was downstairs.
Yeah I've got my champagne some strawberries and some Japanese mochi. What's that?
It's a kind of rice dessert. You fry it and it gets kind of puffy and you mix it with you put some dusted sweeping powder and sugar on it.
Kind of like a Buenuelo.
So actually if I was liking it you described it really well and you compared something else I've never heard of.
Well I figured you're in Texas so you know what a Buenuelo is.
Well I thought it sounded Spanish but no I don't know what it is.
Well if you go to any fair and they have like the fried thing looks like a to start out but it's dusted sugar kind of pastry fried thing.
Ah yes I've had those.
It's like a Japanese version of that except it's not crispy it's not firm it's kind of like soft and squishy in the middle with the kind of crunchy outside.
Sounds lovely. Where are you in Hawaii?
In Kona on the Big Island.
I've only been to Hawaii once and it was wonderful and I stopped there for gas for my airplane watching.
That was pretty damn nice too just because it was just so pretty sitting there in the airport.
Yeah the waves were nice today.
They crashed pretty good in the wintertime.
My brother had a chance when he was in the service to visit Hawaii briefly.
And Air Force Colonel was retiring there and he was ferrying I think he said it was a F4 Phantom that was going to be converted to a QF4 target drone.
So my brother gets in the back seat and flies over to Hawaii in this jet fighter.
And on the way this being the Cold War the fighter which had a couple of sidewonders on it buzzes a Russian quote fishing trawler.
Also my brother said that the Colonel locked up the trawler with their missile system so just to keep him honest.
So he flies over to Hawaii and gets out of the plane and then he flies home on a C-130.
That's that rough duty C-130 from Hawaii that's a long long flight.
Yeah well while he was down in Texas I guess there was a dust up when they didn't know where they were going to display his hockey unit.
And he said that he got it he was on a C-5 and he said that was an enormous plane.
I've seen one on the ground from just you know a few feet away and yeah they're unbelievably large.
Are they all jump seats like in the movies or do you actually have an actual somewhat cushion somewhere?
As I understand it it was...
Or sit on the cargo.
It was a canvas seat of some kind folding out from the walls of the cargo bay with a crew chief that was not going to put up with any buddy messing up his airplane.
So my brother not only had to fly home by a slow boat but he also had to be on his best behavior for all of that long flight because evidently the crew chief was not wanting to take nonsense especially from a guy in a green.
I guess that would explain why my buddy didn't visit me while he was in the Air Force.
The only way he could have gotten here would be if he hopped on one of those kind of flights.
Flying like that can be rough. I flew one time I was in Thailand and I wanted a free ride to Japan so I did a little research to find out how to do it.
I took a marine, the tanker version of the C-130 from Udorn, Thailand to Fubai Vietnam and from there a C-130 down to...
I forgot where. Somewhere north of Saigon I don't remember exactly where. From there I was able to get a...
I think it was a KC-135, another tanker to Okinawa and from there I got a strategic air command flight up to Japan.
That's a couple of hops. Yeah I took about 24 hours and I came back the exact same way but you know you don't have a lot of money and the tickets were free.
Yeah, when I was younger I picked up a book on the C-130. Talk about a plane that's been in continuous development from like the 50s on through even today.
In fact I heard the Air Force either last year or this year got a couple of brand new C-130 latest models which they didn't ask for but they're the Congress people in Lockheed's district were quite persuasive.
That's why you should own Lockheed's stock.
And they said the Air Force was retiring some C-130s ahead of their time or passing them on to the reserve or guard or what have you because they were being showered with C-130s when they said,
well we'd rather you know they couldn't say no thank you to a well-connected Congress Critter.
Well it's a very adaptable airplane they've used it for a platform for lots and lots of stuff that's for sure.
Yeah I like the AC-130 variants.
What's that one?
Well it has 40 anywhere between it has 20 millimeter gatling guns 40 millimeter cannon.
I think they've even equipped some of them with the 105.
Now you say that you like that like they would let you shoot it.
Well now I've just seen some videos of those planes on operations.
And they're impressive.
And as far as I know the 105 is the largest how it's a gun that has been mounted on aircraft although they first started doing that in World War 2.
But in that time they were put on medium bombers not cargo air.
Well the C-130s probably as big as what a B-29.
Well certainly as big as the 70.
Yeah the bombers weren't you know the bombers weren't as big back then.
All right anyone got the reason?
Of course.
Good morning folks.
Good morning NetMiner.
Good morning Jurello.
How have you probably been doing something silly like sleeping?
Yeah yeah I've been up for a couple of hours and been out and done some chores.
And I've got a chat with my mate Moss from one of my podcasts.
We're just going to be discussing our next recording next week.
But that's not until midday my time 7 a.m. your time.
Or 7 a.m. Eastern time.
So what's the English breakfast today?
I don't eat breakfast.
I do what we call 16 8 fasting so I don't have my first food until nearly midday.
That sounds like a show.
It possibly is actually.
It's a lot better than the caveman diet.
Oh yeah no I don't go in for that.
No I had a stroke a couple of years ago.
I actually did a show about it.
Oh you remember it?
Oh yeah yeah and when I was losing the weight to get myself back into a healthy condition
because I was pretty diabetic.
One of the things I discovered was that if I kind of restrict the time window,
that I eat and it kind of helps control the blood sugar and insulin response.
Yeah I'm cutting back on what I'm eating and I've been losing some weight.
I don't have a scale so I don't know but it's something that I've needed to do over for a long time.
Yeah these weights are telling you you've lost weight without actually using the scale.
Your pants will tell you.
Yeah they certainly will.
Anyway for those who I'm already said it to, happy new year.
Happy new year.
Happy new year from Texas.
From Texas?
Oh right.
Oh Joe from and I think Leo as well, they're both from Texas, the on-bink cast.
I know Joe is anyway.
Yeah I think you're right.
Joe's in Dallas.
Yeah.
What time is it you're at your end at the moment about four o'clock in the morning?
Me and Hawaii it's 1216.
Oh right so you've just celebrated new year.
Oh yeah.
The cannons are still going off.
It's like lightning and cannons all together once.
All right okay.
That's what I like about our Boston Pops.
We're one of the few orchestras that doesn't, you know, we don't stop with the brasses or the big drums.
For the 1812 Overture they lay on a couple of 105 cannons.
That's getting serious.
Yeah I think you know they have the wins, they have the brasses, they have the percussion session.
And then down there with the guys with the green suits.
I think of them as the concussion session.
Concussion session.
I remember hearing that concert at an outdoor amphitheater one time and I had a date and we were had a blanket in the bottle of wine and
something else to relax us and we were just kind of, I was just, I was listening to music and just before the cannons, you know, the music kind of gets
kind of low.
They kind of low you into it and I was just about to drift off.
I came unglued.
And won the kettle drum.
Well so what's going to be interesting is I'm going to try to keep on till the last gun is fired here, seven o'clock my time.
But I have a feeling that when I lay down I'm going to sleep hard if not well.
Well I didn't, I didn't end up doing a light out until nearly two o'clock this morning and woke up about half seven quarter to eight.
So not as much sleep that six hours sleep if that no five and a half hours sleep.
Well one of the things that I'm kind of proud of is that back in the battle days I would say up like this with caffeine.
Now the only thing that I've used to stay up is walking back in my old days.
I'd have been still partying at four five six o'clock in the morning.
Well with the medication I'm supposed to be taking and in my family history.
My dad I think drank enough for several generations.
Oh I drank enough for several generations.
I just packed it up very quick, barely early on in life.
Well it's those that can pack it in that I, that I take my head off to.
I had a lot of help.
It was there.
But yeah I did, I did enough drinking in my teens in 20s so asked me to the rest of my life.
Yeah well I was back along when the drinking age was 18 so I found my drinking was sort of one of those big wave things.
And then the ripples sort of died out.
You have different age limits in different states don't you in America?
Well it used to be 18.
They lowered the drinking age to the voting age and then they decided that was a bad idea so now they've raised it back up to 21.
All right I thought there was some states that still allowed you to drink at 18.
I don't believe so.
All done.
Unfortunately the drinking underage is still pretty bad especially since with no tradition of drinking or no official tradition of drinking.
There's no teaching the younger folks what the how to let the alcohol take effect.
Yeah I'm not sure of them.
I'm a fan of encouraging young people even under the age of 18 to even I think your government are right making it 21.
Because young people's brains are still developing way past the age of 21 and alcohol as an effect on that.
Well the problem is that these kids are raised on Coca-Cola and energy drinks and whatnot.
They're not used to the the fact that alcohol takes a certain amount of time to get to impact itself on your system.
I mean I've seen around here kids who think that a six pack is one drink.
Yeah I know what you mean but there again I've been there done that got the C-shirt.
But then again I was in college I was somewhat lucky to be exposed to the German club where the practice of maintaining your buzz was passed around.
Although at college we had a pub which because didn't serve beer but served yellow wine.
I think I split a liter and a half with with a buddy of mine.
And the next day when I saw him in in this club you know basically a lounge he asked me how he got home.
Yeah he drove himself but he had no recollection of doing it.
One thing not only did they have cheap and rather ghastly wine the pub closed at five o'clock in the afternoon.
Which means that everybody cleared out having their extra double shots of whatever right at the peak of rush hour.
Not exactly traffic friendly time.
Now I was taking public transportation home but before I went home but let's say I was sick as I've ever been from any consumption that I can recall.
Yeah it's not good when that happens. I think most people do it at least once hopefully that puts them off for the rest of their life but not always.
Well my memory was never that good.
Now I always said never again and then a few days later it was happening again.
Well that was the last time that me and Jello had a temporary and very temporary engagement.
Also at the time this was late 70s early 80s.
The halls and stairwells smelled very nice and I'm sure if I inhaled enough that I could have improved my mood.
He's still wearing it right now.
Yeah I'm still here.
You're just suddenly caught off.
Well I think I'm being a little fuzzy.
Yeah tired.
Maybe it's time to call it a night or a morning.
Well it's you know I got like 90 minutes before official shutdown so yeah.
You know why you got this far you might as well try for the end.
Why get off the bus to stop early.
Yeah was Ken on earlier.
I haven't I have only jumped on just now this morning but yesterday he was kicking around but he was doing some stuff in the house.
So he wasn't on for very long each time he kept bobbing in and saying hi.
I think he's got the stream open so he may be listening in.
Yeah he seems to have the stream open because the office is now in that.
So he's probably got his ears on but doing other things.
I didn't get the heck on about his soldering this year.
Well you could always go on the community show on Saturday and give him a heck of when about something.
Is that regularly?
That's monthly.
It's the they record the community show that goes out the first Monday of the month.
They record it Saturday before so this Saturday coming is the community show that we record.
It's usually Dave, Ken, sometimes Yamit joins in and couple of others.
You always listen to the community update when they do go through the shows.
Yeah well they record it on the Saturday before we put it out.
But anyone's welcome to join.
Are you on the mailing list?
No I don't think so.
Because if you go on the mailing list, they always send a reminder, Ken and Dave always send a reminder out choosing Ken.
I think that community shows coming off to the salespeople that they can come and drop in if they want to.
And it's it's this channel.
So that's where this is where they record it.
It's easy enough to get into.
Yeah, it's in the HPR thing here.
Yeah, I'm going to suggest that we change our website from LinuxLuckS.com to LinuxLuckS.org.
Comments is for commercial enterprises.
And I don't think we're making much of a profit.
Did you guys see that thing from the EFF about something happening with the.org?
Yeah, we were told to somebody else.
We were talking about that on Mintcast, the couple of episodes ago.
At the moment, it doesn't, it doesn't seem like it'll affect many people.
But it there's nothing to stop the.
It's a private equity firm that have taken over the.org.
And donate.
The name dot.
And they could hike up the prices for the domains.
Once people start renewing that's clear.
Anyway, we're in the same boat because Mintcast has got that as our.
Domain.org.
Yeah, I've got a couple of dot orgs.
I'll probably dump them if it goes much more.
You can imagine they jack it up too much.
I mean, the weird ones are going for too much money.
But again, it's not going to be enough money to make a difference.
I would think it just depends how much to jack it up.
But if you jack it up way way above what people want to pay,
they're just going to jump ship and go somewhere else.
The only problem with that is.
A lot of people with dot org domains have got a lot of time.
And energy invested in that particular domain.
People blow it and things like that.
So yeah, and if they're really non profit,
they're probably not going to change just because the price was up 10 bucks.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's if they hike it up to 100 bucks for every couple of years.
That it starts getting a bit.
Oh, especially, especially.
What's the highest price.
Top level domain right now.
I wouldn't know.
I've not really investigated that.
But I suppose some of the commercial ones probably go for big money.
But then the likes of you McDonald's and people like that.
They're prepared to pay for it, aren't they?
I'm just talking about the dot, whatever like that space or dot,
whatever the new dot, whatever is.
Yeah, I don't know.
They're more than 30 bucks for the.
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
But if you if you jump ship over to one of them to get a reasonably priced one again,
then obviously that's when you get into problems with people's muscle memory and.
Knowing where you are.
Because it because not only is our website.
A dot org website.
I think our email is linked into it as well.
Yeah, email is definitely the worst thing.
When moving servers or domain names.
That's just always terrible.
Also your.
Your website, your stationary.
All sorts of stuff has got to be.
Done over.
Yeah, it can get if you've got a lot of had enough paper and you know all that.
It can get quite expensive.
It's not just the cost of the domain name.
It's the problem, isn't it?
We don't have that problem with ink cast, but because we don't have any letter.
The paper or anything, but.
Yeah, it's still a hassle.
Not that it's happened yet.
I'm just talking.
I just wanna, why don't we, uh,
think about it.
A pizza for later on.
At the moment, hopefully.
Hopefully they don't charge more than the current few books it costs for a couple of years to register it.
Next time when we pay the bill again.
Well, I haven't heard any more about those EU.
Regulations.
That they're.
They're trying to make everybody license all their content.
So you consent in what way, you mean the copyright kind of license?
Well, evidently, the EU people want everybody who posts on the internet to
have to approve anybody who links to their side or what have you.
So you have to get approval that
all materials is considered copyrighted.
There's no fair use under the EU's view of the internet.
There is, if you use CC copy, right? Surely.
If you like, since everything is created commons, that's a legal entity.
They can't take that away. Yes, they can.
Also, they had an exception where if your agency was didn't make
a certain amount of money and was less than, I think, three years old, five years old,
something like that, then you were exempt from the licensing requirements.
But if you should make more than what they considered suitable chicken feed,
or if your organization or whatever website lasted more than the minimum that they decreed
as reasonable, you were going to have to have a licensing division.
I'd have to check that out, because I'm certain that you should about that.
Well, it's one of those big news about a few months ago,
and then the EU has written all these regulations.
Now they're waiting for the nations to be good little Indians and write the laws.
Also, anyone posting copyright content without prior authorization
would be subject to significant fines.
By the way, if I mentioned something copyrighted here,
that would be subject to fine, because I didn't have a license to say what I said.
The EU doesn't believe in open copyright, and they don't believe in open speech, because
you've got to have every statement previously licensed before you announce it.
I've just pulled up a wired page with stuff on it, so I thought I read it up.
Well, now I'm sure that the EU will also be inventing their own license
survey or license verification system for a small fee,
and also their...
Just reading this, and it says, this is for if your website allows other people to upload
onto your site, so it doesn't affect the likes of, say, the Mintcast, where we just host our own
content, so it wouldn't affect us. Well, it would affect if someone else was uploading our work
onto their site, so if they were uploading a link to the Mintcast episode onto their own site,
and posting that, they would have to check that it was three creative commons
works before they could do that. Actually, the version, how recent is that wired article?
This was produced. Oh, this was the 19th December 18th.
Well, the version that I heard earlier this year was considerably tighter,
because it was also would make things like search engines virtually impossible because of cross-linking
and stuff like that. I know what you mean, because basically what the saying is to access someone
else's material, you've got to know that you're entitled to do that. They're saying that there's
no fair use, but it's whether in law you could actually enforce that. Well, there's a risk there,
you know, the EU regulations, you've got to remember the EU believes that they are the government.
The EU regulations says you have to write laws that follow their
their dictates. No, only within the European community area, they can't force other jurisdictions
to do anything. It's only within the jurisdiction of the EU.
They can if the other governments agree to do that. Yeah, that's what I'm saying,
but if the other government say, so do you, we're just carrying on the way we are, they can't force
another government to change their laws. They can say if you're operating within a jurisdiction,
we wouldn't have to worry about GDPR, but we do. Yes, because we agreed. Because the companies
have to worry about GDPR, are operating within the jurisdiction of the EU. They've got customers
who are based in those countries. I use Google, so Google has to, and I'm in the UK, so Google has to
abide by the privacy and the confidentiality regulations, I've laid out by the European
Union because I'm based in the UK, and I use Google UK, so they do have to apply it because
they're operating within that jurisdiction. If they want to continue to operate in that jurisdiction,
they've got to abide by that jurisdiction's legislation. So Amazon, when they've got
warehouses based in the UK, they have to abide by UK's minimum wages, not Americans minimum wages.
They can't go to the, they can't base themselves in the state that's got the cheapest minimum wage
and pay that to UK employees. They have to abide by UK minimum wage.
Well, the regulations as presented were, didn't seem to have,
now that the regulations or the UK regulations were, didn't seem to exempt anything in either time
or space. Well, yeah, what I'm saying though is that basically the EU have made a law that applies
to their member states and anyone who operates within their member states, but the internet doesn't
work like that. That's the problem and that's where the problem is because the internet is cross-border
isn't it? So you can go on Google in America and type in BBC News and you can get a feed from the
BBC News website in America and that's where the problem is. It depends on
EU has not been very um
clear about allowing linkage
for outside the EU. Yeah, like I say, the internet is a massive problem because it's cross-border,
it's global and that's where the difficulty arrives when one jurisdiction creates a law that
doesn't apply elsewhere to something that's based on the internet. Well, I'm saying but that would
mean let any content from the EU, if you link link to something on the EU or you're working
within the EU domain. Well, if you're linking to articles on your website based in America
to an article based in the that's issued by a company that's based in the EU, then you should apply,
you should abide by the EU legislation and check whether that article is copyrighted,
particularly if you're reproducing content from that article. I'm not sure about links,
but definitely if you're actually showing that article on your own site, that's a you know,
because you're actually taking that content and putting it on your site. If you're just providing
a link, I think that's where the gray area is, because all you're all you're doing is providing
the ability for someone to find that information on the original site, which is owned by the content
provider. Well, in a little while, Britain may not have to worry about this situation.
Well, just depends how long it takes us to untangle the EU legislation from British legislation,
and that's a right rabbit hole. So did the vote to leave the EU recently passed?
Is that going forward? Well, since we had the general election in the UK,
the new government have now got a significant majority in the House of Commons to be able to pass
the legislation whenever they want, and we will be leaving officially leaving the EU on the 31st
of January, 2020, with a 12, well, I think it's a 11 month transition period where current
current EU regulations will still apply until the end of this year, and then according to
our current Prime Minister, Mr Johnson, we will completely leave the union.
It doesn't mean to say that we will completely get rid of every single bit of legislation
that applies in the UK that was inactive because of EU legislation. It just means we will no longer be
in the future force to follow EU legislation. We may choose to, if we want to continue to trade
with the rest of the EU, there may be certain laws that we will continue to follow that match EU
legislation so that we can continue to trade. So you would be officially out, but if you
individually decided to follow each regulation or law that does the same thing,
EU does, they would just continue as is unless somebody changes that particular thing.
Yes, unless the government decided to put an act of parliament together to change specific laws,
then current legislation will stand until it's changed. Because every piece of legislation that
the UK adopts that originates from the EU has been passed in the House of Commons and the House
well, in parliament, basically, and it's been inactive into UK law. Things like
the European Human Rights Act that came through the European Union to make it legally in every
country within the European Union, but it still had to go through the British Parliament to accept
it into UK law. But the act just accepted the legislation that followed the legislation that was
in the EU. It gets very complicated very quickly. So you also have a department somewhere that
just focuses on what is changing that you today and do we implement this or not?
Yeah, they'll still have to keep looking at legislation that comes out of Europe that affects
the rest of Europe because it may affect us. So say we want to export beef to the European Union,
and there's a law that you can, and this is not the law. I'm just, this is a hypothetical case,
but say the European Union says the only imported beef we will now accept has got to be all organic
and grass fed. We may put it into law that all beef has to be organic and grass fed because
that would mean it make it easy to export beef into the EU. That particular, that was just an
example that isn't any law at the moment, as far as I know. But you know, it's that kind of thing,
you know, if the EU made some legislation regarding to food quality and health and standards,
and we wanted to continue to export that particular type of food into the EU, we would have to make
legislation that may meant that we weren't diverting from those standards. Currently at the
moment, all our food standards across the whole of the EU are the same. So in some countries,
they're actually better than the average, but the minimum standard is the same across the whole
of the EU. And we have things like protected title status. So like if you buy parmesan cheese anywhere
in the EU, the only place that can be made, if it's called parmesan cheese, the only place that
can be made is in parma in Italy. And it has to comply with the standards for that particular
manufacturing process for parmesan cheese for hundreds of years. Now I got to go look at my
cheese label. Yeah, in America, you're not constrained by that. So you could call something parmesan,
and it actually made somewhere totally different. Well, somebody's liby to get champagne set. So
I know champagne, you cannot call champagne unless it actually is from that region of France.
Yeah. Yeah. In anywhere in the EU, champagne is a title of protected status. So champagne,
if it's sold in the EU, champagne has to come from the champagne region of France.
But also, no, there's a lot of like TV shows and just popular culture things that
say Prosecco instead of champagne now, which is kind of weird.
Yeah, well, actually, Prosecco has become a very fashionable drink. So a lot of people drink it
instead of champagne anyway. And some of the quality of the Prosecco actually meets this,
you know, comes up to the quality of good champagne. According to those who drink it,
I'm no, I'm no wine expert. No, don't drink. So it doesn't bother me anyway.
But yeah, it's those kind of things that once we come out of the EU, theoretically, we could decide
we're not going to follow some of those regulations. But then we'd be shooting ourselves in the
foot because we've got certain foods items in this country that have got that protection.
You know, stilton cheese is one thing that has to be, if you want to call it stilton,
it has to be produced in that area of the country in the UK. Unfortunately, our most famous
cheese, cheddar, escaped, escaped into the world before, before all this came out. So
these loads of cheddar's out there around the world. I have seen cheddar cheese at the store
in the special cheese area that is actually from cheddar, which is kind of interesting.
From the cheddar gorge, yeah, in Somerset. But apparently over 100 years ago, someone in America
came over and saw the way that they were producing cheese in Somerset in the cheddar gorge and
decided it was a really good quality cheese and it was a good, it was a good manufacturing
process that could be scaled up and he took it over to America and scaled it up to massive
manufacturing proportions and it became very popular very quickly.
Happy New Year, American Somoa, Midway. Hey, Happy New Year. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year. Thank you. Thank you, Pangol. And good night.
Oh, there's a name on there that I recognize Midway, which is a Pacific island, isn't it?
Like famous during the, or infamous during the Second World War?
Yeah, there's quite a few video games referencing that island. So if you've got no protection in the US,
food legislation that protects kind of the name and brands of different products.
I don't really know. We're trying to think of a regional thing that we would have to
export that would require a protection. I'd hope potatoes, main potatoes, that sort of thing.
Yeah. Yeah, if they they tend to be certain varieties, don't they? But some people would,
it's like in in the UK region, we've got the channel islands and they grow a particular
variety of potatoes called Jersey Royals. And again, they've got protective status and the only
place in the in the EU that they can be grown in sold as Jersey Royal, New Potatoes is the island of
Jersey. So it would be things like that that I would be thinking about. So because things like
soil conditions and the environment around do affect the flavour of food. So you can grow tomatoes
in one place and if you grow them 100 miles away, they might taste slightly different. And that's
of course why you get the different wine varieties because grapes are not only the variety of
grape, but you can grow the same grape in you know 50 miles apart and the actual wine it produces
will taste different. I can take a one kona coffee. It has to be grown here but it's called kona.
It is part of my industry. Are you in the coffee business? Well tangentially, we work for a company
that sells coffee online. Oh right. Okay. Yeah, those kind of things. And there's a there's a thing where
there's a 100% kona coffee label and if it doesn't say 100% kona coffee label coffee,
it's probably 10% or less. Wow. And so if you you have to look at the bag if it doesn't
specifically say 100% kona, it's going to be some percentage way off of that.
Right. What region of the states is that grown in then? Where is Kona? It's on the big island of Hawaii.
Oh right. Okay. And only on one side of the island. It's kind of like blue Jamaican. It's only one
spot on earth. Yeah. So it's some mountain side that produces this very unique bean. Yeah, we have
a couple of, well, Hawaii, there's Hawaii County which covers the whole island. But we have
different districts and there's a North Kona district and a South Kona district. And typically
the coffee isn't a South Kona district. Right. And when they grow coffee on Maui, there's a Maui coffee.
There's a coffee on the other side of the island called kauu coffee which is near the town kauu.
Okay. So it's region specific and it does taste different. You can go
three, four hundred feet different elevation. It'll taste very different. Yeah. Yeah,
because the soil conditions change. The environmental conditions change. Right. I'm going to have
to go on the parade because I'm going to go and make yourself something to eat and then I'm going
to join my friend Moss for a pre-pog cash chat because he's got to work this morning.
So we've only got a short window to go and have a chat. So as I said, happy new year to everyone.
And without here you want HPR or whatever, maybe I'll catch up with you again this time next year.
All right. Happy New Year. Good talking to you. All right. Cheers. Bye. Well, it's suddenly quiet.
I haven't heard a cannon go off in three minutes. If there isn't the John Wick video game,
there should really be one. Well, it's been a pretty good year overall. 2020 should be even better.
Really have enjoyed listening to all the programs. HPR puts out,
continuing to make shows and hopefully I will make a show this year and
add to the group podcast. Happy New Year and have a great, great year.
Okay, friends. We're coming up on the finish line.
We're in that minor. When does the stream end? Well, fellas, we're getting down to the
short road. At what time? 7 o'clock is the last
official official
Happy New Year for Baker Island, Holland Island.
So it's just a few minutes.
Yes. Not quite six, my time.
Yeah, well, I've been here since
God awful yesterday and
eventually I'm going to be going to sleep, but I'd like to ride this one out all the way.
I'm glad you've been here. Well, I can't wait to hear the recording later.
A lot of insightful information about what was AT&T here.
It's like I just lost the connection there. Moved out to my car so I wouldn't disturb life.
Well, Happy New Year and best wishes to you and your lady and your family, if any.
Thank you. I won't be seeing my daughter until the weekend, but yeah, I do have family.
And the tuxedo cat too. You too? Yeah, he's about seven.
Yeah, this cat is indeterminate and age. We can't, I can't remember when we didn't have it,
but we had it for my kid. Yeah, I'm wondering it was about one, I think one years old.
Now, this is a female spade female. The male and he's male alarm clock.
And this one tends to wander over my short ribs and below.
Whenever she feels she comes by to get padded,
hard to park herself snuggling in,
all sorts of strange catish thing. And the old girl snores.
Snores with the eyes wide open, which is the weirdest little thing.
I guess that only happens when the cat is really sleeping instead of just sleeping.
Man, where did you work again? I used to do security. I used to do store clerking.
I've done even a bit of computer interface design and construction.
I was dealing with a touch tone interface for a,
basically a voice response unit.
We used a mini computer to respond to touch tone commands and,
and on the other end, it would look like a printer or whatever, weird terminal or whatever
your computer system liked.
Interesting. You know, work at AT&T also, hearing you talk about a little bit about that.
Now, I, I worked at an outfit called Perception Technology.
One of the guys I worked with was from AT&T.
And he made a FTP software, which was an early MS-DOS networking product that
had some nice traction until Windows 958. It's lunch.
Yes, TU-52 tape cartridges.
Driven over a 38.4 K-BOD serial link. The controller was a very tiny 8080 based single board.
That basically took 128 bytes per packet.
And it was a black replaceable data cartridge.
It was an alternative to floppy.
Second, slowest storage device that I've ever used. The first was teletype paper tape.
All I heard about that, I have to go back in, it's getting cold.
I was able to talk anymore because I'm outside in the car and it's about 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Well friends, happy new year to Baker Island, how, howland island and to a small region of the
United States that may be associated with you. Happy new year again.
Thank you, Archer, for helping me see the end of the video.
You can risk frostbite when you have a foreign company in the house.
Best wishes to you and your daughter and your wife of course. Anky best wishes to you too.
I saw your icon light up but no sound. And best wishes and happy new year to
all of the Acre Public Radio family and audience.
I will see you next year with, with any luck. Thank you folks.
I'll see you Friday, Anky. I gotta lay down before I fall over.
Alrighty, sir.
By the looks but no one can hear me at the moment.
Well, now I can hear you but before you were your icon would light up but there'd be no audience.
Yeah, I accidentally muted this mic. All right, I think I'm going to stop my recording.
I hope you know you're everyone. Thank you for everyone who participated.
Thank you for everybody who listens to this. And I'll give a shout out to Kay Wischer for the
stream. Obviously, Ken Phon and the other members of HPR for helping out with the recording and
with setting up everything on the site and for the mumble server that we use.
Happy new year and I'll see you next year. Thank you.
You've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio dot org.
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