Musings from Brian J. Noggle – Page 274 – To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."

The Great Software Purge of 2012

June 5, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Over the course of a decade and a half, I’ve acquired a number of pieces of software from a variety of sources. In a lot of cases, I’ve bought games because I wanted to like video games. When I was in college and had abundant free time amid working 50 hours a week, going to school for 18 hours a week (and 10 hours, roughly, in travel time to college per week), extracurricular activities, and a social life (note that sleep does not appear much on this list), I bought a number of games and played them through to completion, including the SSI Gold Box D&D games and Mean Streets, the first Tex Murphy game.

So I bought a number of games in my twenties and thirties because I wanted to recapture a little of that. I’ve played the Civilization series (up until IV; when V came out and challenged my then-PC, I shelved it and haven’t installed it in the year I’ve had a more powerful PC). I installed a number of them, watched the demos, maybe noodled in it for a couple hours, but none of them captured my attention long enough to finish them.

I also tried to recapture my youth a bit by buying a pile of flight simulators. In 1986 or thereabouts, I got a copy of Microprose’s Gunship and played that for hours. Again, with that expendable time of youth. So I bought a bunch of games, installed them and forgot about them.

It became unseemly, really, that I carried this on even after I had children. I did stop from buying them for $20 or $30 at computer stores or Best Buy, but I did occasionally drop $9.99 on them. Mostly, though, I got them from book fairs and garage sales, and in a whole lot of cases, I put them on the shelf for a time in which I had more free time.

All right, that’s not happening, and already some of them are incompatible with the machines I have running. So out they go. Below is a picture and some notes about the games in my fashion. If you’re interested in a title, let me know and we can work something out. Continue reading “The Great Software Purge of 2012” →

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A Picture Holds 1000 Memories

June 5, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

(Another old essay, but not as old as some in the pile.)

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I came across an old Polaroid in a box of photos and had to pause. I was scanning the pictures so that I could store the obviously comprehensible images in a format that only a machine can interpret. That’s just what one does with photographs in the twenty-first century, but it does give the more sepia-minded amongst us an opportunity to go through our old boxes of snapshots. Although each box holds hundreds of memories, a similar nature—here’s my brother and I here, here’s the front of the house there—makes the photos blur together. After all, my brother and I went everywhere together as kids, and I saw the house the same way thousands of times I drove up to it when we lived there. Once in a while, though, a single picture can trigger a cascade of unrelated memories. Continue reading “A Picture Holds 1000 Memories” →

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The Great Magazine Purge of 2012

June 4, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

I have mentioned recently that I’m doing a bit of depackratting.

One of the things I am getting rid of to free some (small) amount of space in my office (and other environs) is old magazines. I’ve held onto some magazines for a long time for various reasons, and to be honest some of the reasons are a bit unclear. So I’ve decided to bundle them off to donate to a local church garage sale. I’m deNogglesteading the following magazines: Continue reading “The Great Magazine Purge of 2012” →

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Book Report: I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore by Clarissa Start (1990)

June 4, 2012February 6, 2019 Brian J. Noggle

This is the book you wished your grandmother had written.

Part memoir, part musing, Clarissa Start talks about her youth and living on the South Side of St. Louis, and sometimes Florida, as her parents eked out an existence in the 1920s. Those years and her attendance at University of Missouri during the depression were made adventurous by a father with a predilection for the ponies. Then, Clarissa deals with her husband’s getting called up for World War II after they buy their first house (just down the road a piece from where I lived in Webster Groves; I went looking for it since there was a picture in the book). She details a bit about her job search and finally her placement with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The book then muses on aging a bit; her first husband dies, she moves out to the country (she lived in High Ridge while I was in House Springs, so we were almost neighbors). It has a wise, even tone to it.

Even retrospectively, Start doesn’t apply contemporary standards to history. She mentions internment in WW2 and explains it seemed like a good idea at the time. So that was noteable.

I liked the book enough that I bought another copy to send to my mother-in-law, another UMC graduate. On purpose. So, you know, I liked it.

Books mentioned in this review:

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City of Springfield, MODoT Team Up For Campaign Advertising

June 1, 2012June 13, 2019 Brian J. Noggle

The city of Springfield wants voters to re-authorize a 1/8th cent sales tax for the city of Springfield for transportation projects, and it’s not afraid to spend transportation dollars to influence voters to do so.

Signs like this one have cropped up around town to promise voters what they’ll do if they’re elected:

Bridge at James River widening sign

That is, with the monies this tax would bring in, they’ll widen the bridge on Republic Road (although officially, I guess, it’s Republic Street). Anyone who travels Republic Road knows it bottlenecks from four lanes to two at the bridges over the James River Freeway. So this is a project worth doing.

And:

Republic Street improvements sign

The other place it bottlenecks is between Golden and Scenic. Now that this area is more firmly Springfield proper as it annexes its way to the sweet, sweet sales tax at the new Walmart Neighborhood Market, Springfield officials want to make sure people can get there. Again, probably a good road project.

Like so many other projects Springfield and MODoT are planning.

But.

Springfield and MODoT are spending money in a political campaign when they create signs promising things to voters if they vote one way, such as they are with these signs and others of the like. Assuming the tax passes (on the August ballot, not on the November ballot, which would see a lot of people coming out to vote against Obama and, probably, against any taxes on the ballot at the time).

There’s a mighty thin line between informing voters and citizens and seeking to influence citizens, and I think these signs fall into the unseemly latter. The government entities are using tax money not to build roads, but to seek more tax money. We ought to recognize and deplore the effort.

Also, let’s not let the city of Springfield and MODoT off the hook for the nearly $4,000,000 they could have spent on roadway improvements that they spent instead on Public Service Announcement delivery systems. When voters approve taxes, it allows government entities to skew their priorities to silly projects.

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A Concept I Can’t Wrap My Mind Around

May 31, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

In an article about football helmets in the NFL, the journalist terms the death of Junior Seau an “unsolved suicide.”

An unsolved suicide?

I read too many murder mysteries to make sense of that turn of phrase, and the writer doesn’t really explain what he means.

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Some See The Geiger Counter As Half Empty

May 30, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

News: Radioactive bluefin tuna crossed the Pacific to U.S..

Optimist says: Finally, scientists have created seafood with three drumsticks.

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Jumping on the Bandwagon

May 29, 2012May 28, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

As many of you have seen on Facebook, the current trend is to put words onto an image and think it’s clever. I guess it’s all over the Internet and might even stem from Fark’s caption contests. Undoubtedly, many future anthropologists will study the origin, although anthropologists spare themselves the question of “For the love of God, why?”

Regardless, I have jumped onto the bandwagon and have created my own, depicted below.

Continue reading “Jumping on the Bandwagon” →

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Book Report: A Century of Enterprise: St. Louis 1894-1994 by Rockwell Gray (1994)

May 29, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

This book represents another picture book I inherited from my aunt, and if the used price on Amazon is any guide, it might have been her biggest eBay score. But she lacked a certain follow through on the whole online auction thing. So I’ve got it now, and I thumbed through it, looking at the historical photos of business in St. Louis and reading the flattering paragraphs accompanying the photos. The book was, as a matter of fact, underwritten by one of the enterprises whose start is depicted in the book. Of course that company and all others in St. Louis are praised. Lavishly.

So the book provides interesting photographs, and some trivia and insights, including:

The smile was invented in 1948.
It’s a wonder turn of the century families were so large considering how ugly the women were.
The years since 1994 have been harsh for St. Louis business, since most of the grand corporations lauded in the book–Edison Brothers, May Company, McDonnell Douglas, Pet, Inc., Sherwood Medical, and so on have been bought out or have otherwise left the area.
Those who have the juice now in the city of St. Louis have always had the juice in St. Louis.

Still, an enjoyable experience, once again a short one since it was mostly photos, and something I’ll share with the more historical members of my family. And, dear readers, if you offer me what they’re asking for it on Amazon, I’ll share it with you, too.

Book mentioned in this report:

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Cracked Laments Lack of Tourism To Monks Mound, Helps Curtail Tourism to Monks Mound

May 28, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Cracked.com has a piece entitled 6 Ridiculous Lies You Believe About the Founding of America, wherein #5 talks about the complexity of native civilization and talks about Monks Mound in Cahokia, Illinois.

The author laments:

So why does Egypt get millions of dollars of tourism and Time Life documentaries dedicated to their boring old sand pyramids, while you didn’t even know about the giant blue, red, white, black, gray, brown and orange testament to engineering and human willpower just outside of St. Louis? Well, because the Egyptians know how to treat one of the Eight Wonders of the World. America, on the other hand, appears to be trying to figure out how to turn it into a parking lot.

However, the author had previously described the location of the settlement as:

One of the best examples of how we got Native Americans all wrong is Cahokia, a massive Native American city located in modern day East St. Louis.

This just in: Although Cahokia lies in Illinois east of St. Louis, it is not in East St. Louis. East St. Louis is a city just across the river from St. Louis, and its name is a punchline in films almost to the level of Detroit. It’s rough, downtrodden, and crime-ridden. In East St. Louis, they have a problem with car radios being stolen from police cars, okay?

Cahokia is a town some miles away and it’s safe to visit. If it were in East St. Louis, East St. Louisians would have stolen the dirt in Monks Mound, okay?

I’ve been on a couple of occasions. If you want a real mind-bender, some people posit that the mound builders of Cahokia might have traveled southwest and became, hundreds of years later, Toltecs. Although I forget where I read that.

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When Brian J. Met Yakov

May 28, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

So, as I mentioned in the book report on Yakov Smirnoff’s America on Six Rubles a Day, I might just bump into Yakov Smirnoff one day. Over the weekend, I happened to be in Branson, at the foot of the stage of the Yakov Smirnoff Theater, and there he was.

So I’d bought a bagged set of a book and a DVD for the low, low price of $20 (when in Branson, do as the temporary Bransonians do, which is spend money like it were nothing at all). I was disappointed that the book included was AMoSRaD (he wrote, introducing the acronym that Yakovites everywhere will put into play on the Internet starting now) instead of Smirnoff for the Soul, a later volume.

Still, I decided to get it autographed and to pass on the existing autographed copy I own since the latter was not autographed for me.

And I got a picture, of course.

“I’m going to give you the presidential bow,” I said.
Continue reading “When Brian J. Met Yakov” →

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Juveniles A Little Unclear On The Concept

May 25, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Protesters arrested in downtown St. Louis:

At least 10 people were arrested Thursday night after protesters spray-painted graffiti on a downtown bank and skirmished with officers, police said.

A St. Louis police bicycle officer suffered a minor injury to his hand when confronted by protesters, police said. A property manager at the Fifth Third Bank at 10th and Olive streets also was assaulted after approaching the people about the graffiti.

Protesters were demonstrating against police violence, specifically the actions of police in Chicago at the NATO summit, one of the protesters said.

One graffiti message on the bank’s glass windows read “Solidarity with all who resist.” More graffiti on Peoples National Bank at 826 Olive read “Burn the banks.”

All righty, then. We have two assaults, vandalism, and a call to arson to protest violence.

Kudos to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for its even-handed treatment of the subject. Undoubtedly, its professional journalists could find some supporters to defend a puppy’s piddling on the carpet, too.

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The Novel As Security Training

May 24, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

In an article entitled “22 Things A Burglar Would Never Tell You” which looks like it was ripped off right from Readers Digest, we get the following nugget:

6. If decorative glass is part of your front entrance, don’t let your alarm company install the control pad where I can see if it’s set. That makes it too easy.

That, or a corollary, you would learn if you’d buy and read John Donnelly’s Gold.

I mean, it’s no Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse, but it’s chock full of interesting things o’ that nature, and it puts a couple grubzits in my pocket.

(Link seen on Ace of Spades HQ.)

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Brian J. Is Only 82% Guyism Guy

May 22, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

I have only seen 10 of the 11 films on the Guyism.com 11 movies every guy needs to see.

I am missing two. The Wild Bunch and The Bridge on the River Kwai, which is very, very strange considering that I listen to the River Kwai march several times a week (that’s a story for another day).

I think I have it DVRed, though, so I should fix that up sometime soon and will become 100% masculine according to some twee Internet posting, which frankly is the highest standard I can reach some days.

(Link seen on Ace of Spades HQ.)

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Part of Brian J.’s Internal Monologue at the Gym

May 19, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Not that you asked, but I often find myself adding plates to various weight machines at the gym to the sound of the Taco Bell chihuahua saying “Hurt me.”

Some people have coaches who quietly encourage, some people have coaches who shout, and I have the interior voice of a fifteen-year-old commercial mascot.

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Trivia from the Archives

May 18, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

While writing this post for QA Hates You, I remembered something from the olden days, way back in 2004.

What Science Fiction/Fantasy series is still banned in some Internet Terms of Service by name?

Answer.

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Location Apparently Not A Competitive Advantage

May 18, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Rent-seeking local auto and marine dealers have found friends in the Republican-dominated Missouri state legislature:

Gov. Jay Nixon says voters should have the final say on a bill placing local sales taxes on all motor vehicles purchased out of state.

In a statement released this morning, Nixon said the bill passed by the Legislature in the wee hours of this morning would “improperly impose a tax increase.

“My administration remains committed to working with the Legislature and others to resolve these issues, but the people of Missouri must have the opportunity to make their voices heard,” the governor said.

At issue is a bill that was rushed through yesterday in response to a ruling handed down by the Missouri Supreme Court in January.

…

Auto dealers say the court ruling puts them at a competitive disadvantage and is already driving sales to neighboring states.

While this might be a problem in border areas, not every citizen has the ability nor the wherewithal to buy a vehicle or boat in Maryland, no matter how convenient the Internet might make it. The economics term is place utility. That is, the place of the product matters. Local car dealerships have a competitive advantage over out-of-state dealers already because local car dealers are local.

The logic of a Republican legislator is truly dizzying:

Sen. Mike Kehoe, a former car dealer from Jefferson City, said today that the issue needs to be resolved quickly.

…

At the same time, Kehoe said the Legislature is considering offering some middle ground on the issue. At least one pending bill has been amended to give cities and counties the option to ask local voters if they want to continue the sales tax on out-of-state purchases.

“Maybe it could be a two-step process,” with the Legislature imposing the tax and voters deciding whether to keep it, Kehoe said.

Some counties already have a use tax in place; however, this Republican, theoretically representing a smaller government party, would prefer that the higher level of government impose its new tax upon the population and give county governments the ability to opt-out of the extra revenue whose taxation decision was taken out of their hands and their accountability.

Perhaps the proper way, and the way in more accordance with small government tradition, would be the other way around. You know, like it is currently.

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Todd Akin Has Washington Experience and Washington Weakness

May 17, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Another story tries to connect dots between Todd Akin’s votes and his campaign contributions:

People for whom U.S. Rep. Todd Akin helped secure $31 million in earmarks have paid him back handsomely: The Missouri Republican has raked in nearly $80,000 in campaign cash from people tied to those firms.

…

“The fact that Rep. Akin got campaign contributions from people working at companies that he got earmarks for serves as a vivid reminder of why we have the earmark moratorium and how it’s important,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of the independent advocacy group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

“In three short years, these companies got $31 million worth of earmarks while handing over $78,000 in campaign contributions. Not a bad return on investment,” Ellis said.

We at Missouri Insight recognize that statistical correllation does not equal causation. The fact that some people sent money to a Republican candidate does not necessarily mean that they were seeking influence, nor does the fact that the representative votes in that direction indicate that he’s doing it because of the campaign contributions.

However, we at Missouri Insight also believe that once a politician goes to Washington, he (or she) becomes of Washington. Particularly when the politician in question has trouble with his voting address and remembering where he lives. So we support Sarah Steelman for the Senate.

But we continue to like to shout “Crimson!” when we see a red herring about candidates whom we do not prefer.

In a McCaskill-Akin race, both candidates will have the smell of Washington about them, making Akin vulnerable to these sorts of stories and insinuations.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

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Personal Relics: My Grandfather’s Jacket

May 16, 2012 Brian J. Noggle

Over the weekend, my children attended a birthday party and got temporary tattoos with a nautical theme as befit a pair of pirates. So Daddy talked a little ~~extraneously~~ extemporaneously about tattoos, and how members of the military often got them, including their Uncle Kevin and their great-grandfather Raymond. Ray, my grandfather, had a blue Marine bulldog on his arm, marred by the scar where he’d been shot while helping take Okinawa.

Suddenly, I thought to go to the coat closet and bring out a bit of history for them: My grandfather’s jacket^*. Continue reading “Personal Relics: My Grandfather’s Jacket” →

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