River: End-of-Year Summary, maybe, 2025

[mdlbear]

Well, here it is, the last week of 2025. One of my goals for the year was to write an infodump post that I could point to, quote from, or email to people who I've been out of touch with. I never got around to it, and it's late, but maybe this will do.

If you're tuning in late, I need to mention that I moved with part of my chosen family to Den Haag, in the Netherlands, in October of 2024. Specifically myself, N, N's husband G, older kid m, and our four cats. N's younger kid, j, was already here, starting university in Leiden.

We're here taking advantage of the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty, which lets Americans emigrate to the Netherlands (or vice versa) and get permanent residency or citizenship provided they start a business here (or bring one with them). We're sort of doing both, with our little indie publishing company HyperSpace Express.

Our plan for the business had been for N to get into sewing and fabric arts, and me to (at long last) record a new CD. The best-laid plans, etc. What's actually happened is that I got very discouraged about my musical ability, and N decided to turn to writing. She's already published her first book, The World As it Ought To Be -- Stories from a Protopian Future. Please buy a copy!

Back in the US, my son R turned FORTY last July. On his birthday I started trying to write a "state of the Bear" post, got nowhere, and abandoned it three days later, a few days before the fourth anniversary of Colleen's death. I have written very little since then. But here I am. The last week has been kind of bleak, and a week from tomorrow will be our fiftieth wedding anniversary. It will be the fifth that I haven't had her with me to celebrate.

Fortunately, Bronx never fails to get a laugh out of me when he jumps up onto the dresser when I'm getting the food bowls ready. And this evening I was mentioning to G how the IBM 1620 has to load its addition and multiplication tables when it boots up, and he said "Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?" I haven't laughed that hard in ... I don't know how long.

Um... not really enough, but I want to post this today (see music), and it's almost bedtime. And I have cats to feed.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Back in my MIT days, one of the members of our cafeteria group said that if you loaded a certain computer's memory entirely with 2's (don't remember if it was the 1620), then because of a coincidence of opcodes and addition tables, it would forever go "2 - 2 = 2, 2 - 2 = 2 ..." until it reached the end of memory.

[mdlbear]

Very likely the 1620, unless there was another BCD machine with addition tables.

[solarbird]

...thanks to Usagi Electric and his very long Bendix G-15 restoration series, I finally recognise that panel! Holy shit!

Of course I may've asked about it at some point and forgot BUT STILL

I'm like

HEY - I KNOW THAT THING! Now!

lol

[mdlbear]

Usagi Electric is marvelous. Love their logo!

[solarbird]

I've been surprised by getting into his whole TI-processor homebrew project. The absolute TI 99/4(a) architectural clusterfuck is a real "are you fucking kidding me?" story and the idea of building something that lets the processor show off what it can actually do is neat and I like it.

[gatheringrivers]

I didn't know about the dutch-american friendship treaty thing! That's neat! Thank you! :)

[solarbird]

kinda feeling like I should revive LOW ORBIT PUBLICATIONS, ngl

that ran for years and we published a lot, it was pretty fuckin' real

For those wondering about snakes...

[technoshaman]

Ya gotta have log tables to get the adders to multiply.