Category Archives: Misc Stuff

anything not specific to other categories

So Who Wrote that Anti-Bellum (Pre Civil War) Love Letter?

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It was U. S. Grant, future leader of the Union Armies during the Civil War and President.

So what kind of man was Grant.

As you might guess, all accounts indicate his family life had an almost storybook quality about it, always being faithful to his wife, Julia, and being a loving father.

Grant was a no-nonsense type man. As a general during the war, he formed strong opinions of the people around him and whenever possible, acted upon these opinions, putting those he trusted in positions of authority, and casting aside those he didn’t trust. He was extremely demanding, and had high expectations of those under him. I believe his success as overall leader of the Union armies was largely due to his ability to find and promote people of great ability to execute his plans.

Though known as a poor president, his politics were those of a radical republican, and his administration was challenged by the extreme difficulty of reconstructing a shattered nation. Though the Confederate soldiers put down their weapons, most of them never changed their political views. His liberal views toward the freedman, and strong will, rubbed many people the wrong way. Though he was extremely popular in his time, once the “lost cause” movement gained a toehold, his generalship and politics were roundly criticized. Recent scholars have been more kind to him.

Remembering Original D&D, TSR and FITS

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D&D Reprint

D&D Reprint

I recently picked a reprint of the original version of TSR’s Dungeon’s and Dragon’s. It’s a reprint of what many people call the white box version of D&D. Actually the first few printings of D&D came in wood grain cardboard boxes. After a few printings they changed to a white box.

D&D 3rd printing

D&D 3rd printing


This image is a third printing that I sold for $1600 a few years ago. My first copy was a first printing that I bought from Brian Blume. This was right after spending a Sunday afternoon in Gary Gygax’s basement exploring Greyhawk, his fantasy land. At that time, they sold the game by inviting people to play it. I believe that Brian told us at the time that they spent several thousand dollars printing that first 1000 copies. I think I learned later that Brian’s father financed the early TSR projects. I don’t know what happened to that 1st printing copy of D&D. I’m sure it was pretty well worn out, as we played the game quite a bit, back in the day. The 3rd printing copy I sold for so much, was a replacement for a worn out first printing that I picked up directly from Gary Gygax who often manned the TSR booth at GENCON.

Batwing - D&D circa 1975 & 2014

Batwing – D&D circa 1975 & 2014


My kids and their friends have recently enjoyed a few trips down into my old dungeon, which is called “Batwing”. Amazing that this old game still can capture the imagination of young people. Maybe more amazing that I held onto that binder for all these years.

FITS Box Cover

FITS Box Cover


Now if I could only convince them to give “Fight in the Skies” a try. “Fight in the Skies” is a World War 1 air combat game that has an element of role playing. FITS is said to be the one game has been played every single year at GENCON. Back in the day, I know I played FITS more than once at GENCON with Mike Carr, the author of the game.

Speaking of FITS, GENCON, Brian Blume and Mike Carr, I’ll never forget the first GENCON South in Jacksonville, Florida in 1978. At this time I was friends with a number of the TSR staff, but living far away in South Florida. Mike Carr and Brian Blume made the trip to Jacksonville to represent TSR. Some friends and I drove up to Jacksonville from South Florida. We ended up going out to diner with Mike and Brian. At one point, I told them that computer gaming wasn’t likely to take off, as the interactive social element wasn’t as strong in computer games as other forms of gaming. Most computer games in 1978 pitted you against the computer, or required multiple players to take turns at the controls. Boy, was my vision wrong. I hope I didn’t affect their business plans too much with my bad advice.

FITS Rules Book and Pilot Cards

FITS Rules Book and Pilot Cards


Speaking of FITS. I still have my pilot cards. My two best pilots are a German Albatros DIII pilot with 21 missions/1 kill and a Brittish Sopwith Camel pilot with 14 missions and 3 kills. By the way, during one of the reprints TSR or Wizard’s of the Coast renamed the game, “Dawn Patrol”. There appears to be an active group of people still playing it.

Which Civil War General Wrote this Letter to his Sweetheart.

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I had to share this – I have changed some of the names to make it harder to figure out the answer..

Corpus Christi Texas
Jan. 12th 1846

My Dear Nancy,

I have just been delighted by the receiving a long and interesting letter from the one I love so much and from the tone of her letter I am left with the hope that for the remainder of the time that we two are not one, she will be punctual in answering my letters. You do not know the pleasure it gives me to receive letters from you my Dear Nancy or you would write oftener. I write to you very often besides answering all your letters. You beg of me not to resign: it shall be as you say Nancy for to confess the truth it was on your account that I thought of doing so, although all the letters I get from my father are filled with persuasion for me to resign. For my own part I am contented with an army life, all that I now want, to be happy is for Nancy to become mine, and how much I would sacrifice if her parents would give now their willing consent. By Spring at farthest I hope to see the 4th Infy (You know that I have transferred from the 7th to the 4th) settled and that too on the Mississippi river, unless something should take place to give us active employment. Has Mr. Reeves ever delivered you the letters sent by him. It is astonishing Nancy what a place Corpus Christi has become. Already there are two Theaters and a printing office every night there is a performance play at one or the other. It seems strange to hear you talking of sleigh riding, for here we have although it is January weather warm enough for light clothing. Such a thing as a sprinkle of snow is rarely seen at Corpus Christi.

From my last letter you will see that I have been on a long trip through Texas and that I think the country beautiful and promising. If it should turn out after all that my Regiment should be retained here (it is not the opinion of any one that it will be kept) I could have but little to complain of. Your letter. and indeed all your letters, show your willingness to accompany me to any permanent Military post. It is very pleasant to hear such confessions from the one we love and in return I have to say that I would make any sacrifice for my Nancy’s happiness. But what an uninteresting letter I am writing you it seems to me that the more I write the worse I get.—I have not heard from Fred, since I have been in Texas. I have written to him once and I think twice since he wrote to me last. Tell him he must write soon. Fred is now about 3d for promotion. There has been two resignations at Corpus Christi that he has not heard of.—Mr. Ridgely and Mr. Sykes have gone to St. Louis on a sick leave; if I had known sooner that they were going I would have sent a letter by them.

I have written you several letters that remain unanswered so I shall look for another letter in every Mail. Give my love to all at White Haven. Soon I hope to see you again my dear dear Nancy and let us hope that it will be to never separate again for so long a time or by so great a distance.

Your Devoted
Ronald

A Clue…
Mary Lincoln supposedly once said of this man
“He is a butcher and is not fit to be at the head of an army. Yes, he generally manages to claim a victory, but such a victory! He loses two men to the enemy’s one. He has no management, no regard for life.”

In case you can’t figure out who the author of the letter was, I’ll add another post in a day or two with the answer.

Vintage Humor

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I found this in Volume 1 – Issue IV of the SCELBI Computer Digest, which can be found online at scelbi.com.

THE NAVAL ADMIRAL HAD JUST PURCHASED A MINICOMPUTER TO HELP HIM RUN HIS MIGHTY FLEET. HE QUICKLY UNPACKED HIS UNIT, SET IT UP IN HIS STATE ROOM, PLUGGED IT IN, AND WITHOUT WASTING ANY TIME.. PROCEEDED TO ASK HIS NEW COUPUTER AN INPORTANT QUESTION.

“WILL THE WEATHER BE SUITABLE FOR LAUNCHING PLANES FROM MY AIRCRAFT CARRIER TOMORROW – OR WILL IT RAIN?”
“YES.” ANSWERED HIS NEW LITTLE BRAIN.
“YES WHAT?” SHOUTED THE EXASPERATED ADMIRAL.
“YES SIR!!” PIPED UP HIS LITTLE MINI.

skinned knuckles

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Last night, a little after midnight, I finished replacing a power window regulator in my wive’s mini-van. I’ve done motors before, but not the regulator. I expected the job to come with a few obstacles to overcome and I wasn’t disappointed. I’d like to know how they connect the lock rods and lock actuator in manufacturing – what a pain. It also took some time and effort to get the window properly seated in the regulator guides, but I think that might have been an issue with the aftermarket regulator that I bought.

The reason why I do this is cost – my cost was $70. The last time I had one repaired by a shop, it was over $400.

Proposed PS/2 Keyboard Adapter Stretched Strobe Change

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As I mentioned in a previous post, my PS/2 keyboard adapter requires some strobe stretching in order to work with some kinds of early microcomputers, such as some OSI models.

I think I have come up with a convent way to accomplish this, with only a small firmware change.

Here is what I have in mind.

As before, when the CR jumper is inserted, it disables recognition of the CNTRL-RST and CNTRL-CLR keyboard/RS232 sequences, which assert the reset or clear screen outputs, as appropriate. With my new design, in addition to disabling the aformentioned reset and clear sequences, inserting the jumper will change the clear screen output to an input. Now here is the key part of the change; whenever a character is typed and strobe is asserted (high true), if the CR jumper is inserted, strobe will remain asserted until:

  • minimum of 125 useconds have elapsed AND
  • the input to the clear I/O port is asserted (also high true)

    • To maintain current behavior (a 125uSec long pulse), you just need to tie the strobe output directly to the clear input.

    In order to stretch strobe out a bit, you have a few options:

  • Tie strobe output to clear input through an RC timing network in order to slow down the response to the clear input. For example – connect strobe and clear together with a 10K resistor. Then connect the clear input side of the resistor to a 1 uF capacitor and connect ground to the other side of the capacitor. Doing a basic RC timing equation shows that this should yield a delay of approximately 10 milliseconds. Change the values to attain a strobe length that meets your requirements. You do have to be careful to limit current through the resistor, so you don’t blow the strobe transmitter, though.
  • Use external logic of your choice to assert the clear signal to the PS/2 adapter

    • Behavior with the CR jumper disconnected is exactly the same as with the previous version of firmware.

    The main assumption behind this change is that the clear output, is only required for the Apple 1. I have found little to no need to disable CNTRL-RST and CNTRL-CLR on the Apple 1 (or Apple II) and those features are probably of little value to other platforms. In any case, the PS/2 keyboard sequence of CNTRL-ALT-DEL will still assert reset no matter whether the CR jumper is in place or not. In fact, using the CNTRL-ALT-DEL combination from a PS/2 keyboard will be the only way to assert reset if a system needs both reset AND a stretched strobe output. Said another way, you will not be able to assert reset from a device connected with the RS232 port, if your system also needs a stretched strobe.

    I’ll do some trials over the weekend and assuming that it works ok and I get no better input or ideas, I’ll have a new version of the firmware available very soon, possibly as soon as next week.

    Old Barndoor Telescope Sky Tracker

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    Barndoor Tracker Movie (click on this link to see movie)

    I recently pulled this old 2006 project out of mothballs and it still works. You mount a small camera or telescope on it. You point the axis at the celestial north. Turn it on and it follows the rotation of the earth, so you can take long exposure pictures of the night sky. I only took one roll of film using it and before I was able to take a good look at the results, the negatives disappeared, so I don’t really know how good it worked.

    It features speed, direction controls and a clock for timing the exposure.

    People in History with Narcissistic Behavior that Acheived Great Things

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    I finally read Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs and got to thinking about his narcissistic behavior. Though living around this sort of person is extremely difficult, he achieved great things. The question I have, was his narcissistic behavior part of what made him so successful or was this behavior something he had to overcome to achieve success?

    Here are some other examples of narcissistic people that achieved great things.

    Greek King Alexander the Great
    Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus
    French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte
    United States General Stonewall Jackson
    United States Entrepreneur Henry Ford
    United States General George Patton
    United States Entrepreneur Steve Jobs

    I’m omitting people that had narcissistic behavior that caused great harm to society, that will be another list.

    Can you think of others?

    willegal.net – interesting facts

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    www.willegal.net was created in March of 1999.

    During the entire first year, the www.willegal.net server counted about 5000 “page views”. I can plainly remember how happy I was when the count reached 10,000 after over 2 years of existence.

    During the first 9 months of 2013, the www.willegal.net server counted between 53000 and 150000 “pages” downloaded per month for a total of 802,000 “pages” downloaded. Over the last 12 months almost a million “page” downloads have occurred.

    Believe it or not, my page on breeding Jack Dempsey tropical fish is my most popular page. I believe the reason for this, is that this fish is readily available in most retailers here in the US, even though it is a terrible choice for most fish keepers.

    It seems like the hit count on my retro computer pages, specifically the Apple 1 registry, are closing in and could knock the Jack Dempsey off the top spot in the next year or two.