One of the things that I still struggle with is the dependence, here, upon an exact and incredibly flawed method of accounting for dates. They insist that dates must be written in an mm/dd/yy fashion.

This is, for an old-school computer geek, somewhat challenging. Let’s say that we need to account for the third of February, 2004 (yes, past; follow along).

According to that standard, it would be written as

2/3/4

Why? Because if the mask was MM/DD/YY, then it would be

02/03/04

In the military, we had a slightly different written date style:

DDMonYY

Where that same day referenced above would be written as

03FEB04

God help you if you’re accustomed to a Day, Month, Year order. In any case, there would need to be a customary or even tribal knowledge of how dates are used and referred to.

When I wrote code and scripts for automation, I always ordered in Year-Month-Day because it was easier to quickly sort and scan through the lists.

Thank The Maker that the 2000’s — or, the naughties — are far into our pasts.

Yesterday afternoon, I turned my 21 year old Chevy (Isuzu) 6.6 Liter Duramax Diesel into a plug-in hybrid.

Behold:

Okay, not really.

I just became annoyed with the process of plugging in the block-heater during the sub-zero temperatures: kneel down in front of it, use both hands to carefully pull of the dust cap, plug in the extension cord. Then when I want to leave, use both hands to unplug the extension cord, then both hands again to put the dust cap back on the pigtail.

Too much effort.

The fix was to add a weather-resistant bulkhead power inlet. I can now — more easily, and single-handedly — just plug in the extension cord.

Future addition is to add a Battery Tender so it keeps the batteries in a peak state of charge.

Unsure why Amazon thinks we might want this — we don’t have outdoor cats.

You’ve heard this, and you’ve probably repeated it to yourself. “It’s too late” or “I’m too old to go back to school.”

This is just a reminder:

Many years ago I’d heard, which was likely mis-quoted and not attributed, something similar to

Simple minds discuss people
Mediocre minds discuss events
Great minds discuss ideas

Which this reminded me of:

I always consider the downfall of others as a warning and an invaluable learning experience.