Misc – Mike's home page

The perfect clock

2019-08-272019-08-27 by mike

I’ve had a life long hobby quest to find the perfect clock. I’ve always wanted a clock that you didn’t have to set. One that survives a power outage. One that automatically springs forward and falls back. One that remains accurate. Years ago in my early adulthood I discovered the so called “atomic clocks”. The […]

Use a common bash command history for all bash sessions

2018-04-022018-04-02 by mike

Bash command history has a problematic default configuration. Basically there is a single ~/.bash_history file that each bash shell reads at startup. If you start multiple bash’s then they’ll have identical history to begin with. So far so good. The first problem is that bash does not write new commands to ~/.bash_history until the process […]

Why I’ll never use Postman

2018-03-222018-03-22 by mike

I’m talking about this Postman https://www.getpostman.com/ So, the essence of this “Why I’ll never use Postman” would be that, because I’m well versed, fluent in the command line environment I simply don’t need something like Postman. Postman is a single special purpose utility. Where as the command line environment is a whole very powerful interface […]

Blockchain to save the world

2018-01-212018-01-21 by mike

Very interesting article https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/magazine/beyond-the-bitcoin-bubble.html

Does Sears.com stand a chance in hell of competing with Amazon?

2017-06-242017-06-24 by mike

So last night I surf over to Amazon to buy a couple of hex keys (aka allen wrenches). I couldn’t readily find the single items I needed (as opposed to complete sets) at Amazon so I googled around and found ’em at sears.com. Merchandise total $2.84, shipping $34.19. I went back to Amazon and found […]

Email address validation rant

2015-10-212015-10-21 by mike

This is my canned pre-written gripe to send to website’s who don’t allow all valid email addresses to be entered into their registration forms…. Dear web developer, Your website does not accept all valid email addresses in one or more forms where you allow a user to enter their email address. Importantly it does not […]

Garage Cabinet build

2011-12-152011-12-15 by mike

I’ve been getting my workshop area going in the garage. Getting organized etc. I considered just putting up some shelves over the workbench, but decided on cabinets. I felt like doing some woodwork. What I wanted to store was a lot boxes of fasteners and small items, parts etc., etc. So I decided on shallow […]

The skinny on java performance

2011-05-252011-05-25 by mike

I always knew from simple observation that java apps were slower than native binaries. But I never saw anything written which admitted it. I haven’t looked in a long time till now. Here it is; From the motherland of Java; As a platform-independent environment, the Java platform can be a bit slower than native code. […]

ZZ Top is like a fine plate of BBQ, he bear down on the meat and ease off the sauce

2011-04-082011-04-08 by mike

This is a sticker that came with one of the albums in the 70s. I don’t remember which album, maybe Tres Hombres. I tossed all my old vinyl back in the 80s but I still have this sticker.

I thought that you may enjoy this little fable.

2011-03-112011-03-11 by mike

Once upon a time, in a place overrun with monkeys, a man appeared and announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10 each. The villagers, seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10 and as supply started to […]