Neanderpundit

to those and that you love, and head off into the unknown, is a huge and painful thing, that most just can’t do.

It takes a specific type to be a road warrior, and I have done so now for so long that I do not remember any other life. I know I’ll be back, as do the ones I love. Wild horses could not keep me from returning to those other pieces of my heart.

Still, sunday night as I loaded my bag in the truck and pulled out of the driveway I thought of those other road warriors who never made it home. Secure in the knowledge that their own beds were just a couple hours of annoying airline flight away, their worlds were destroyed as they looked on in horror.

Human life is not precious except to it’s lovers and posessors. To those who don’t care, life is worthless and precarious.

So as I drove in the gathering dark, I prayed for all those road warriors who never made it home. I prayed that the stupidity that caused their deaths would be obliterated from the world.

I know better than that, of course. Stupidity is far more abundant in the universe than Hydrogen. Nothing will stop it, it may even be an intrinsic component of entropy.

None of that knowledge makes me want for it not to stop, though. A guy has to have dreams. And a lone road warrior, on deserted country backroads in the middle of Indiana, well, sometimes dreams are enough.

I usually have four or five books on the go. My bedside book for the last several days has been Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”.

Coppola did the story a disservice, I think. The original as was would have been a good way to do it, and it would have probably made more sense, but then he wouldn’t have been able to send his all important messages about Vietnam.

if you’ve never read the original, if the only version of it you know is “Apocalypse now” I reccomend you read the original- it’s free for kindle. And it’s well worth the time to read it.

is something I’m always afraid of, when I go out to some of these training courses. I am, after all, an old dog, and these are some mighty new tricks.

Thankfully, I adapt pretty well, and the tech I’m learning today is pretty damned cool. I’m sitting next to thatguy, though, so I have to hurry and learn the stuff, and then back off so I can help teach thatguy. The teacher is an indian lady who is patient and articulate, and knows the subject matter.

Classes like these cost a wad of cash, and they are directed at the least common. So the whole class has to move at the speed of the dumbest pupil. THe teacher, on the other hand, hasd given me, from around her very neck, a memory stick that has a simulation of the software on it so i can run it here, on my notebook, in the room.

Damn.

This is inspection software, and the idea is that it drives a piece of equipment to do flexible part inspection. I programmed these machines (CMM’s) years ago, but the language used was complex and cumbersome. Now, the systems fair program themselves, and they do so by manipulating virtual models in virtual space. It helps to understand N dimensional geometry, which any good robot guy does (all six of us) and it helps to understand what you’re trying to do.

One way or the nother, this is as good as it’s gotten for me for a long time. I can’t let on I enjoy this so much or they’ll question why theyre paying me.