The Unhappy Me thread

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by xilman

Tomorrow is the centenary of Alan Turing's birth.

A measure of how much I've achieved in my life is that by the time Turing was my age he'd been dead for 14 years.

Thanks for the reminder.
Your choice of thread for this posting is significant too. A measure of how undervalued Turing was until at least 40 years after his premature death is the fact that I grew up in England in the 1970s and 1980s with a mathematical education, and yet I only even heard of the existence of this outstanding mathematician and founder of computer science to whom I possibly even owe my freedom thanks to his wartime code breaking work when I innocently picked up a copy of Andrew Hodges' biography of Turing in my local library in around 1988. The cloak of silence around Alan Turing's life and work can be partly explained by the classified nature of his work in the war, but that's by no means the whole shameful story.

@David Yes, Bletchley Park is a favourite and repeated stopping-off point on the occasions when I visit England nowadays.

[davieddy]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

Thanks for the reminder.
Your choice of thread for this posting is significant too. A measure of how undervalued Turing was until at least 40 years after his premature death is the fact that I grew up in England in the 1970s and 1980s with a mathematical education, and yet I only even heard of the existence of this outstanding mathematician and founder of computer science to whom I possibly even owe my freedom thanks to his wartime code breaking work when I innocently picked up a copy of Andrew Hodges' biography of Turing in my local library in around 1988. The cloak of silence around Alan Turing's life and work can be partly explained by the classified nature of his work in the war, but that's by no means the whole shameful story.

@David Yes, Bletchley Park is a favourite and repeated stopping-off point on the occasions when I visit England nowadays.

He came pretty high in the "Great Britons" poll shown a year or two ago on the BBC.
Couldn't beat Winston though!

D

PS Paul Seymour introduced me to Godel, Turing et al circa 1968.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by davieddy

He came pretty high in the "Great Britons" poll shown a year or two ago on the BBC.
Couldn't beat Winston though!

D

PS Paul Seymour introduced me to Godel, Turing et al circa 1968.

That's all good to know.

[davieddy]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

That's all good to know.

Not personally of course, but Paul has been at Princeton for many years.

D
x

[petrw1]

Originally Posted by petrw1

In the last 4 or so months a certain individual has completed 36 DC tests in the 24M and 25M ranges.

It's now 50...

[davieddy]

Originally Posted by petrw1

In the last 4 or so months a certain individual has completed 36 DC tests in the 24M and 25M ranges.

Originally Posted by petrw1

It's now 50...

Why are some folk obsessed with leaving the slowcoaches (self-included) nothing to do?
D

[xilman]

There are now two chucks here hammering on the kitchen door and demanding cat food.

The cats have fled the house. At least, none of them are to be seen.

[schickel]

We just found out at work that one of our coworkers has been stealing from the company for some time (maybe as long as a year...)

Very disturbing that there we were, all busting our butts and someone was taking advantage of us that way.

[Batalov]

There's a media circus a few blocks away from our house.
Apparently, the parents of the "Colorado Shooting Suspect" live there.
I can only guess for how many months now the street will be blocked with paparazzi.

[jasong]

I don't know if it's Sony's fault or Google's, poosibly both, but the Google-based Youtube app I use is about as stable as a house of cards during an earthquake. If the tablet shuts down or I move through the video too much, the only way I can get video to play again is to use the back button to return to the video choosing screen. And the same thing happens if the connection temporarily goes out, it's wifi so the connection will go out for a second or so every few hours or so.

I thought Linux was supposed to be stable. I guess it depends on who gets their hands on it. I've heard it said that Android might turn out to be security crap like Windows and Apple with all the changes being made to it.

[only_human]

I took Wookie, my largest cat, to the vet today. He weighed in at exactly 23 pounds. So, almost 2 stone (if I am using that unit correctly); strange that that unit is not pluralized. He is the largest housecat I have ever personally seen, except for (maybe) his father.

Someone there speculated that he might have a Maine Coon cat antecedent. Linda and I thought that might be what his father was. Anyway, Wookie is about 14 years old and has never left the house, excepting visits to the vet.

I once posted a picture online of Linda holding him while she was standing in front of a flag. The picture was blurry (cheap webcam). I wish I still had that image. One person said it looked like a bear in front of a flag.

He cries so much when he is outside of the house. A doctor offered to give up some of her lunch time to work on his teeth today. I gratefully accepted.