Neanderpundit

Except robots.

I just got a service call from a customer who had a programming question about an old robot. A REALLY old robot. it was almost ten years old when I installed it, used, over twenty years ago.

The robot still runs a 24 hour day, and has now been doing so for over thirty years. And aside from (Minimal) normal maintenance it is just ignored. And the new ones are built ten times as well, cost less, carry more, and still have a published reliability of 65,000 to 76,000 hours mean time between failure, and most dramatically exceed that.

Wish they made knees.

Saw this on the way home.

One thirtysomething guy driving a Volvo, towing a stripped down bike on a harbor freight trailer. His suit was on the backseat along with a couple of toolboxes. The helmet, some of the decals scuffed off, was on the passenger seat.

The bike has been down, it looks like, the other side which I couldn’t get a picture of was rashier. The tank dent, I think was a comfort dent.

I had gofast dreams but not gofast coordination. Thankfully I learned that before I could put my hands on a really fast bike.

Did make me think, though. And my well wishes went with him, imagining the music the bike plays in your ass while the tires read the road like heads on a tape deck, the track an endless loop of sweet music.

to go the last thirty miles home.

Construction brought three lanes to two, but under ordinary circumstances this is not an issue of any kind. Last night, of course, because the roads were predominantly populated by illinoisians, all of whom drove, predictably, right up to the merge, instead of merging two miles back when they were warned to do so. And then of course they got in accidents. In the hour and a half we saw a dozen non Illinois plates- the other several thousand were the problem; all these morons coming home from their Michigan cottages. Hoosiers ought to put a bounty on them.

Back to work today. I will be in a miserable mood for about three weeks, and the the Oglet gets packed off to university. That will CERTAINLY help things.