I'm so old I wrote that! That's assuming it's the Windows version, which is the one I worked on. The Win9x game, art, and original code, were done by Maxis/Cinematronics. I ported it to Windows NT, converted the x86 asm to C, made it work on RISC, and so on. Success has many fathers, and all credit should really go to the original designers... I'm just the fun uncle that brought it to the masses.

I’m going to ruin slot machines for you. And then, right at the end, I’m going to partially un-ruin them by showing you the one rare situation where a slot machine can actually become a better-than-even-money bet. Not luck. Not “because it's due.” Because math. Want to know how they really work inside? Watch this:

I prefer the originals...

My mom's in hospice, and gave me the compact that my grandfather gave to my grandmother as an engagement gift shortly after he enlisted in WW2 in 1940 (Canada). He landed in Normandy and fought his way through Europe in a series of Sherman tanks. My mother would not meet him until she was 3 when he returned. I spent some time restoring it, and gave it to my daughter for graduation today. Here are a few pics! The first one is "before". I've never heard of Stratton, but it's pretty!

I've always wondered to what extent autism is impacted by latent Neanderthal genes. They reportedly lived in much smaller familial groups of 6-8, so they would have no need for the complex social dances that humans do to work in groups of 100 or more.

25 years later, guess which one does Jiu Jitsu today :-)

Someone would have to explain to me what one thing has to do with another, given how the economy works, and that the "wealth" in question is really just shares in his own ventures - ie: others voting for him with their cash. If I thought the people with more than me were holding me back, I'd get out the pitchfork, too. I just don't think it works that way.

Newsflash - a millionaire funded by billionaires is upset with a trillionaire. And no one called ME for advice!

More uptime than Wikipedia, and less bias. Or at least different bias, more likely. Most encyclopedia articles are written by "guest experts". I bought these on eBay from a library and then spent 3 days removing stickers, but it was worth it!

This may be the best Far Side of all time. Prove me wrong.

It's called replacing your anode rod every 2 years. You'd be surprised that those old boomer appliances do require some maintenance. It also varies by water locale. In a hard water region you might last only 4 years, other places, 30.

Where's Waldo? 1982 Computer Lab!

A little screenshot of my VAX running htop. It runs at 111MHz, has the max 512MB of RAM, and, of course, a single CPU core. But it still gets a lot done :-)

I just realized I have two Samsung 990 Pros in a drawer. I was planning to use them, but now it looks like a smart investment :-). Better than the SpaceX IPO!

I literally own both of these: a 1963 Imperial Crown and a 2025 Model S Plaid. All I know for sure is that I can open the Imperial glovebox without a menu. In an accident, though, they'd just hose you off the Chrysler dash and sell it to the next guy!

Whether Elon or Larry has a $500B or $1T does not impact my life in the slightest. If they were taking it from me, I'd be outraged, but economics is not a pie, and I'm busy baking my own. Good for them, I guess. At least we know the system works as intended: it's the American Dream we profess to care about, after all.

Yay or Nay? Should I add the horns to this Lincoln? It's from Texas!

How much faster are modern computers? Here's a fair example: compiling the same code on old and new. I have a VAX4000-705A, which is about 50 MIPS, or 50x as fast as my PDP_11. I wrote a bunch of code for it today, but I'm cross-compiling it on a Mac. But I _can_ compile it on the VAX if I choose, and here are the results: Mac Pro M2: 0.178 seconds VAX4000: 1 min 7.59 seconds That makes the Mac about 380X as fast as the fastest VAX ever made!

Spent a few days in Regina, SK, visiting family!

Some months back, I took a stab at writing a basic forum/bbs for the PDP-11 in C using curses.  I got it basically working, but it was no fun to work on (not a great dev env), and chasing curses stuff all day was annoying! I figured “my VAX is almost as old and 50X more powerful”.  But I don’t want to code on the VAX. So I took the toolchain they have, I think intended for Linux, and got it working on MacOS.  Couldn’t have done that part without AI, or at least not quickly; it took a number of header mods, etc.  But it all works now, and I can do a fast multiproc compile on the Mac for the VAX. Then I set up NFS on the Mac and VAX so they share a folder over Ethernet.  So I can build in VSCode on the Mac, and the binary drops into the VAX’s world.  Then I have a “start.sh” batch file that kills any existing servers and relaunches everything.  I’m using the built-in bozohttpd server, and then my app is an API that the UI talks to, much like I did NDSCPP’s UI (aka “the only way I know how!”).