Getting Back on the Bicycle
November 5th, 2007 by WaltIt looks like I’m going to have to buy a new laptop: the warranty doesn’t cover the current problem. Hopefully I’ll be able to do that soon, and then a more-normal posting schedule will resume.
It looks like I’m going to have to buy a new laptop: the warranty doesn’t cover the current problem. Hopefully I’ll be able to do that soon, and then a more-normal posting schedule will resume.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:22 am
Dear Walt,
Sorry if I was grouchy the last time your laptop issue was raised.
Since I’ve been addicted to computer usage since I started programming in 1966 (41 years ago) I do empathize with the withdrawal symptoms.
“Helpful” friends and relatives love to stuff us into vacation retreats without computational capability. I always smuggle a pocket calculator in with me…
Speaking of bicycles, Ted Nelson, father of hypertext and hypermedia, claims to have originated the phrase: “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
November 8th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Hmm… do you believe him? Does he have specific remembrances of when and where and under what circumstances he invented this phrase? How would he account for or react to this?
On an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Richard Lewis claims to have invented “the (blank) from hell” — the ‘blank’ being anything you like (mother-in-law, etc.). In the absence of further details, I’d grant Nelson’s claim the same amount of credibility.