From: "Jim Hampton" on Thurs 23 Jun 2005 03:45


"John Smith" wrote in message
...
KXHB:

Yes, that is always the trouble with those getting their "15 minutes of
fame"--they NEVER leave gracefully... frown

... time for new ideas and motivated minds with energy to move up
front...

... all walkers, wheelchairs and crutches to the back, next to those
clutching bottles of laxatives, blood pressure medication, heart burn
medication, viagra, etc, etc... if you forget your name--don't worry--a
name tag has been placed on your chest to remind you...

John


Hello, John

My you bounce around a lot

Given my druthers, I'd pick someone who has shown the capability to do a job
other than someone with a gift of gab.

A "job?" :-)

Is amateur radio a "job?"

We had a couple of those back in the
80s. One they caught up with - he was running up long distance phone bills
to the company and was a real gem. The other could turn out twice the pile
of paper of the experienced folks. I left in 1989. I sent an e-mail 2
years later asking if they had figured out why they had lost half of their
purchasing information. LOL! They had the guys in the 3 piece suits from
IBM running around trying to figure out what happened. I knew. They guy
professed to be a genius and he pushed twice the paper of the older guys.
His code was terrible. When he hit end of file on either co-ordinated file,
he closed everything. Which left records in one of the buffers. The
company got exactly what it deserved. I reworked one program. What cost us
$150.00 per run ended up costing $1.45. It just took a little more code
(which is why he pushed out more paper, but it cost them dearly). The cpu
budget was over $700,000 per year in that area. They could have cut their
cost from 60% to 90%, depending upon how tight they wanted to write the
code. This was not my estimate; rather it was the estimates from 3 folks
that reviewed my submissions with highlighter over the sections that were
bad.

Okay, send me your TS card, I'll punch it. [got a new punch]

As far as hams go, I'd choose a guy who could figure out how to load up a
stupid wire fence to re-establish communications with Guam from Saipan. I
know as I was on the other end when Hans did exactly that. I had to go to
work and other guys picked up with no questions asked. Then, Captain
Delaney came to the shack and secure those guys from all further duty and
they passed traffic to ComNavMar directly. No problem. Military folks who
could follow orders and hams than knew what to do (the regular Navy folks
couldn't figure out what to do with a signal that was overloading their
receivers).

Oh, boy! Heah come de "Guam-Saipan" hams-save-the-day story
again! :-)

I'm willing to help someone who wants to measure their antenna "resistance"
with an ohm meter, but if they insist, well, go at it with a DVM )

Heck, I've had my 5 or 10 minutes of fame. Pulled a kid out of a river
years back who was going under. No big deal. I heard Hans (sparkplug1) and
answered him, starting the communications between Saipan and Guam. No big
deal. I showed my former employer how to do 8 hours of tool engineering
work in 15 minutes (yes, I wrote a program to generate the ladders).

Your certificate is in the mail, credited with 45 minutes for
three (3) Warhols. [mailed in a plain, brown envelope]

My question is this: who would you trust? Someone with several instances of
"15 minutes of fame" or someone who talks a good story but has nothing to
show for it?

Everyone MUST have a personal webpage with their homebuilt kluge
displayed on it. [praise endorsements from neighbors optional]

I'm not suggesting shutting out young folks, that would be stupid. I am
suggesting not shutting out older folks simply because they are getting old.
That is also very stupid.

Don't olde-fahrts RULE in here?

The fact that someone can copy cw at 30 or 40 words per minute does *not*
mean they don't know anything else. Trust me on that.

Really? :-)

Admittedly, we slow down a bit as we age. I can't easily do much over 60 or
65 words per minute typing. I used to feel a 100 word per minute teletype
fighting me as I did bursts in excess of 90 words per minute. I could keep
a 60 word per minute machine going continuously so that the other station
assumed I was using a tape.

Been there, done that. Did you want a Certificate for THAT, too?

[Teletype Corporation is DEFUNCT]

Who cares? How many folks can type over 60 words per minute? Cut and paste
does *not* count. I can do that also LOL.

Is there a "typing test" in amateur radio license examinations?

Last I heard, there was just this morse code test for manual
skill demonstrations.

You should write the VEC QPC and insist they include a question
on How To Wire A Fence To Restore Guam-Saipan Communications For
MARS! Maybe Hans could help you with that letter? [a thought]

Oh, by the way, computer source code is NOT the "code" that is
supposed to be talked about in here. Has nothing to do with
ham radio, I'm told. [just passing along an advisory]

Wanna compare ACM membership numbers? :-)