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Alex[_10_]

Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/13/2017 6:06 AM, Poco Loco wrote:
On Fri, 13 Jan 2017 05:10:10 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 1/12/2017 8:28 PM, wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jan 2017 18:54:57 -0500, Keyser Soze
wrote:

On 1/12/17 5:12 PM, wrote:
On Thu, 12 Jan 2017 16:19:14 -0500 (EST), justan
wrote:

on Harry's queer way of spelling Navy.

It is just his way to disrespect the people who serve their country.
He managed to dodge the draft and he thinks anyone who served is a
fool
What the **** did he care? He is a borderline communist and he
already
speaks russian..

Hey, it's not my fault you were too lazy to find a way to pay for
college back then, when it was relatively inexpensive. And, as I have
told you any number of times, I went to college to further my formal
education. "Dodging" the draft never crossed my mind. Oh, and I speak
and read Russian because I studied it. I like the language and
there is
a lot of great literature written in it.

I had a way to pay for college, the GI bill, I just saw it as a 4 year
impediment to my career. Once I was working, IBM offered 100% tuition
reimbursement but again, there was no advantage in going. I already
had the job I wanted and education was included in that job package. I
was learning state of the art computer systems and software at a very
rapid pace, not sitting in a boring class listening to some out of
touch guy who was never actually in the field telling me how important
Boolean Algebra was. I also had no interest in hearing about the
archaic system he worked on in college. Students at Montgomery College
were coming to me because their instructors had no clue about how the
operating system on the 360 in their lab worked in spite of teaching
it.
I said this before and the bet still stands, I bet I have far more
hours of classroom instruction than you do and the amount of "distance
learning" (computer aided classes) and self taught courses will triple
that. In the 60s and early 70s I was averaging 700-800 hours of actual
class time a year, not hanging around the student union or working at
some bull**** part time job. When my daughter was in college, her BA
worked out to about 800 hours of actual class over the whole 4 years.
I started doing as much as I could remotely but I was still 300 to 500
a year in class after that (over 30 years) I was also an instructor
for a while.

Your post caused me to reflect on something that I've come to
realize as
I get older.

Accomplishments in life are important along with the reputation you
earn
as you pursue them ... at least they were to me. But in the end
none of
them really matter for the vast majority of us. When your day comes
and
you kick the bucket, people will have a brief, focused review of who
you
were, what you did and what kind of a person you were but your
legacy of
accomplishments will quickly fade and be all but forgotten in a
relatively short time. We are all replaceable.

That's why you should give each of your grandkids a pocket knife.
Then you'll be remembered. Until
they lose it.

My grandfather immigrated from Sweden. In his final years he sat down
and wrote an autobiography. He described being raised on a farm in
Sweden, attending school and his later life in the USA which included
that of an infantryman in WW1. He was a maritime engineer and the
bulk of the autobiography focused on the many ships and projects he
worked on. He'd describe in great detail the electrical power
distribution on a Navy ship and, in the middle of the detailed
technical writing, insert a sentence ... "Helen (his wife) gave birth
to my second son on Dec 6th". That's it. Then back to the USS
Detroit's electrical issues. It is hilarious in many respects with the
miss-spellings of words that causes memories of his Swedish accent to
arise and sobering in others. I have the original, handwritten
document. I scanned it all (which took a while) and distributed
digital copies to the rest of the family who knew him.

I have his penknife that he brought with him from Sweden along with an
old fashioned pocket watch made in 1912.

Very nice!

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