Dreams, Dreams, Dreams

Posted on 25/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

There has to be a formula for what a person does to stimulate dreams, like eating a particular food or drinking a specific beverage. In my case, none of that is key. Although I know I dream if I eat late or drink too much. Last night was no exception. I drank the exact wine I always drink, in the same quantity. I ate the same portions for supper, but I had a milkshake with Lovely. If it was the milkshake, then the dreams were somewhat happy. The theater of my mind showed films of times past when I was young and still in college. The scene occurred in a field on the International Harvester Research Farm during a summer internship 1958.

A group of starched white shirt IH executives came to the field to watch a demonstration of a new machine called a hay crusher. The function of the crusher was to split the stem of green hay. Lab experiments proved that doing so would speed the drying process and allow the hay to be baled much sooner and with more nutrients preserved. My part was the least important of the execs and engineers. I drove the Farmall 560 tractor with the crusher attached over a windrow of newly cut hay. I made one pass, and the crowd of white shirts all ran to the crushed hay to pick up a handful for first-hand observation. A consensus was that the machine did a credible job of crushing. Then, one of the higher white shirts asked, “What happens if a farmer runs the machine through a muddy field? Won’t the mud mixed with hay plug the machine and jam things up?” One of the lower white shirts asked me to drive down to the creek with a five-gallon bucket and to fill it with mushy mud.” I did as requested and returned. The highest white shirt himself spread the mushy mud along the top of the windrow of newly mown hay. He wouldn’t be ambushed by some youngster who improperly applied mud. My direct supervisor took me aside and told me to drive to the end of the row and proceed forward upon signal in fifth gear and at max throttle. (At this point, I must explain that the hay crusher was a simple device consisting of two counter-rotating rollers: one was smooth, and the other was a cylinder with a series of ridges welded to it. The hay fed through the rollers was crimped and crushed between the rollers.)

I sat on the Farmall 560 at the end of the row, waiting for the signal to advance. Then, it happened: the top white shirt dropped his hand holding a white handkerchief, and I moved the throttle lever to full speed ahead and hung on for dear life. The tractor built speed and bumped down the windrow, crushing hay. As I hit the muddy section at full speed, the tractor never slowed, but mushy mud hit my back and flew all over. White shirts ran in all directions to get out of the line of fire as the counter-rotating rollers were slinging mud far and wide. I wanted to laugh but feared for my job instead. It was a successful demonstration, and no one got hurt, but they sure got dirty. The dream ended because I woke myself laughing out loud.

Filed under: Biography, family, Gardening, Humor, Manufacturing, Technology | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Some Serious Traveling

Posted on 07/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

While daydreaming this morning, I came across the number for the speed of light. Light travels at 186000 miles per second. The odometer on my car just rolled over to that number. Hmmm, I wondered how many hours have I spent driving that many miles. A quick division by 18 years and the miles per year have been 10,333 per year. Assuming I drove at an average speed of forty miles per hour I spent 4650 hours driving, or 193.75 days.

To put that mileage in perspective, it is equal to 7.44 times around the world. The problem as I see it is I never got further than Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Another way to put it into perspective is it is three-quarters of the way to the moon.

Think, if we could travel at the speed of light Mars is only 4 minutes away. At that rate exploring Mars may be a reasonable thing to do.

Traveling to Neptune, one of the farthermost planets in our solar system would take us about four hours. I can wrap my head around traveling at the speed of light, but I can’t fathom man-made global warming will melt all the ice on Earth. The limit to traveling that fast in a spaceship is the amount of fuel it takes to keep the engines going. I can see us finding a way to propel a ship in space because we are resourceful people. It won’t happen in this century but it could happen in the next.

Rings of Saturn

What an amazing life we would have traversing the Milky Way from planet to planet on our vacations. Or, driving to a Spa in the rings of Saturn, only a seventy-minute drive away from Earth. Or driving two and a half hours to Uranus for Jet Skiing on the Methane seas. If heat is your thing, take a short two-minute and twenty-second jaunt to Venus, or a five-minute ride to Mercury, but be sure to take a bath in sunscreen before leaving.

Uranus

Once we can travel that fast, the genius population on Earth will invent the products we will need to take advantage of the solar system’s recreational opportunities.

Mercury

Filed under: family, Motivation, Technology | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

AUI = Artificial Un-Intelligence

Posted on 05/10/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Finally, I finished reading the book on Artificial Intelligence. Throughout the book, the author kept me enthralled, mostly by how it works, and by predicting the future of mankind’s job prospects. Jobs are in jeopardy for sure. The problem, as I see it, is that only jobs that can be easily automated will be affected. The author, an accomplished AI expert, is overselling the power of this technology, and assuming that the world will be able to automate just as fast and as easily as they will implement AI.

The most obvious places I see AI implemented today are using chatbots to solve problems dealing with banking statements and at McDonald’s, where an order kiosk will reduce the need for an order taker at the front desk. Behind the kiosk, McDonald’s uses humans to flip the burgers and package the fries. this week, I had my experience with AI involving my bank, which froze when I told a friend to send me money using Zelle. I registered with Zelle, to set up an account, then had to do a similar thing with my bank account. My grandson assured me that this process worked for him in a few minutes, and he has used it for several years without incident. He walked me through the setup. It went very quickly, and I was pleased. That is, until I tried to use it. It didn’t work. It was late in the evening, and I was not in the mood to tackle a problem, I put it off until morning.

The next morning, I put off having breakfast to get in line with my bank (BMO). When I often want to ask them something, I phone them and wait for the next operator. In some cases, I waited for forty minutes. I was too impatient this time, and after listening to the bank’s bullshit message to use the website too many times, I decided to try it. Getting connected to the website went easy. I took my time reading through all the services they offered through the many buttons on the web page. I found one that might help. I asked a question. but it was too complicated for the bot to understand. I simplified the question, it happened again. Finally, after several attempts to get an answer or a direction, the bot replied with a phone number to call for help. It was the same number I was on before.
Another line to wait in. Since my plan for the day was to solve this problem, I stayed on the line and waited while listening to music and reading emails on my desktop. The recording kept updating me with messages like If you don’t want to wait, push one, followed by the pound key, and we will call you back when your turn comes up. Good! I pushed one and the pound key. Then I had to give them my phone number. At least now I could do something else like play solitaire while waiting. Two hours later, my cell phone rings. I answered, and nothing. The line is dead. They lied, or else their AI isn’t very intelligent.

I started and called again, waiting for a real live operator to pick up. When it does, I go into mild shock and ask if the voice belongs to a real live person. The answer was yes. To make this long story shorter, it took this patient troubleshooter an hour and nine minutes to find the gremlin that was out of line. I will not yet concede that artificial intelligence is better than real human intelligence, nor will it in my lifetime.

The story didn’t end there. The next problem was verifying that it was me who signed up with the email address, and not some mindless bot.

The world seems to. be rushing into the AI scheme to save us from ourselves, just like they are doing with global warming and converting us to electric cars. The electric car rush is on the wane as our unintelligent humans are finally beginning to realize that if everyone trades in their gas-powered car today for an electric one, there is not enough electricity to go around.

Filed under: Biography, economy, Technology | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »

Technology Is Great, Except When It Is Not!

Posted on 18/04/2023 by Grumpa Joe

This day began with a bedroom filled with sunshine. When it is so bright one cannot sleep any more. The view through the window faked me out, it is still only forty degrees (F). I took my walk and loved the cold fresh air. After breakfast and reading a couple chapters of my book I sat down to my task list determined to focus and complete an important job. I am printing thank you certificates for a fellow Lion who asked for my help. It was ten o’clock and I figured it to be at most a two hour job. At this moment it is 1:15 p.m. and I have not printed a single certificate. Well, I did print one, but the job turned out streaky and missing colors. My focus shifted to cleaning print heads.

The standard HP print head cleaning process hasn’t worked, and I need to do some serious flushing for which I do not have the necessary equipment. Now the recommendation is to change out the cartridges, but I put new ones in a month ago, and don’t have any more. Although the machine is four years old and still functioning, that is, except for the color blue, it may be faster and cheaper to replace the device.

So much for time management and planning. When the supporting technology isn’t cooperating the schedule goes into the trash with the ten failed test pages. I ask myself, what did I do before the advent of computers and printers? I would have written twelve thank you notes and sent them to the individuals by mail. In the long run that might still be the best way to do it, but then the recipient wouldn’t have a nice framed certificate to hang on his office wall.

Filed under: Biography, Technology | Tagged: , , | 4 Comments »

Spring’s Here, No wait It’s Gone

Posted on 16/04/2023 by Grumpa Joe

Throughout the month of April I have been shaking my head in wonderment. Over the year’s I have witnessed snow and beautiful mild temperatures and this year we saw some record high temps. The tee-shirts and shorts came out in droves. Air conditioners were turned on as inside temps headed toward the nineties. “This is not right,” I kept telling myself, and I was right. Today, the temperature is forty degrees cooler than it was yesterday, and it continues to drop. If that isn’t enough Mother Nature decided to water the lawns and gardens. It is perfect hypothermia weather.

The opportunity alarm went off at 6:30 this morning, and I turned it off then rolled over to sleep some more. I finally pulled myself out of bed at 8:15, had breakfast, and made it to 10:30 mass. Since then I have read a book, played in my shop, and watched Youtube videos. At this moment I am waiting for Lovely’s sirloin roast to finish and then we will over eat supper.

I had a weird dream two nights ago, and it continues to play over and over in my mind. Have you ever dreamed a scene so real that you actually thought you were living it? In this dream I was watching the Chicago skyline from the west and about five miles from the center. The skyscrapers were backed by a beautiful blue sky. It was windy, very windy. I swore I could see the buildings sway in the breeze, and the longer I watched the more they swayed. I’m thinking this is not good. It wasn’t. The three tallest buildings continued to sway more and more until finally one of them broke in the middle. I’m thinking I hope this is not the twin towers all over again. The buildings broke off in the center and started to topple into a heap in the center of the city. My mind was already beginning to feel for the people in the buildings and on the ground around them. Then something even stranger happened. The top half of the skyscrapers didn’t crash to the ground. The wind swept them away and they flew westward like hot air balloons leaving their stubs vibrating into rubble. My mind then began to envision the fifty story tops eventually crash landing into the the west side of Chicago causing major death. The day suddenly turned into night and I never saw the end.

Dreams are weird, and I know if my mother was still alive she would interpret it for me, she always did. Some people say that dreams are a way the brain deals with built up junk. It has to clear the clutter to make room for new thoughts and more weird dreams. Maybe it was the result of temperatures that were too high for the season.

Filed under: Technology, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

« Previous Page — Next Page »