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You know that dream that all adults have of being stuck back in Grade School again?  I sort of had a variation on that overnight:

I was handled an examination pamphlet I was supposed to have done back in childhood.  Only I had never seen it before and all the responses inside it were blank.  And then I found a note inside it from my teacher that read Stephen Bierce was in trouble and being disciplined that day so he was unavailable for this assignment.

I would later learn that the faculty at my school was morally opposed to the assignment and wrote notes like it in all the books.  Not only did they keep us from doing the work, they hid the whole thing from us so we would never know it existed.

I have no idea what the dream is supposed to mean.

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In the 1976/'77 scholastic year, I was a C student.  Except for my two worst subjects: Handwriting and Art, in which I was a D student.
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...But I am afraid that I'll be the wrong kind of old just as I was the wrong kind of young.

 My Research Addiction brought me to the website of a classic rock radio station that regularly polls listeners and then publishes the results of these polls.  I've just pored over the latest "favorite songs of all time" list, and while I expected that the songs of not only my childhood AND my high school years would be old enough for "classic rock", it turns out that the music of my COLLEGE years qualify now as well!  It shouldn't have surprised me but it did.

The good news is that now I've found a bunch of acts I've probably HEARD but don't so much KNOW about.
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Space. The Final Everything.

This month NASA announced their latest Astronaut candidates (they won't earn their wings till they go to space)...and gave some insight into the qualifications for the position.

Applicants must have a Bachelor's Degree or better in a "hard science", plus three years of experience in their field. (Of course, I don't meet either because I only made it to Associate's...and have zero experience in my own field!)

But let's go to an alternative continuity to another version of Stephen Bierce. His parents were more successful and more affluent (Jane made the Times Best Seller List, for a possibility) so he got to finish secondary education with a Bachelor's in Astrophysics, then went into the military (probably Air Force, tho' perhaps his mother's cousin the commander of a Top Gun Tomcat squadron could have lobbied him for Navy) for two tours. Maybe he'd have seen action in the former Yugoslavia or the Shock-And-Awe phases of Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Then, he'd apply for NASA...

...And even now, still be waiting, as it nominally takes TEN YEARS for an application to go through all the checks and cross checks. And furthermore, the odds of success are a measly 0.2%. One in 500.

Some "Space Age" this is.
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Sagittarius Horoscope for week of May 2, 2013

Search your memory, Sagittarius, and recall a time when you pushed yourself to your limits as you labored over a task you cared about very much. At that time, you worked with extreme focus and intensity. You were rarely bored and never resentful about the enormous effort you had to expend. You loved throwing yourself into this test of willpower, which stretched your resourcefulness and compelled you to grow new capacities. What was that epic breakthrough in your past? Once you know, move on to your next exercise: Imagine a new assignment that fits this description, and make plans to bring it into your life in the near future.


Probably when I was in training to be a pilot. Which ended in 1992. I hardly remember those times and I've been too far away from that place both physically and emotionally for too long.
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Alas, poor Emerson twenty-inch television set with integral DVD player, you shall function no longer. Thus Master Horner, technician of Morris Towne, doth declare, remarking that thine circuitry is irrepairable. And so, Rather Manor's forced transition from analog signal and ray of cathode to digital over air and screen of flat is complete.

The fate of Emerson's carcass is yet undetermined. My first thought is to donate it to the Tech School's electronics program, but I expect they have no lack of such material. Every January Knoxville holds an e-waste drive, so it will probably go there if no better alternative presents itself. I'll find out tomorrow.

If any among you still require a digital converter box, the one we used with the Emerson is still in fully operational condition, and I have re-set it, its cables and its remote, into the packaging in which it had come. Contact me privately if you want it.

FP
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Dad and I went Christmas shopping today. We went to a store in Newport that I liked but he hadn't seen before, and sure enough he fell in love with the place.

But before that, we were driving there and talking about the relatives on Lynn's husband's side of the family...how their kids and their needs were going to play out in the near future. He mentioned that having all three of us, myself and my siblings, in college at mostly the same time almost brought the family to financial ruin. Now, only my brother Dana made it all the way to a four-year degree; Lynn dropped out to work and I had to settle for a two-year Associate's degree.

Dad reassured me, though, that he never regretted the fact that I went to flight school and completed it as much as I could. He'd wanted that for himself all his life, and couldn't because of an eye defect he had. So I wasn't just doing it for my own selfish ends.

I don't know if I'll ever get back in the cockpit again, but I guess I can't be so down on myself that I couldn't work in aviation like I wanted.
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My overnight dream was that a brewery staged a fait accompli act through a school board bureaucracy to enable a Beer Day at a high school, wherein all the students at the school would get a free 12-ounce bottle of beer from the brewery.

I'm still not sure what it means.

Column B

May. 29th, 2012 08:06 pm
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Now I realize what I should have been studying instead of Aviation Maintenance Technology at Tennessee Tech Center of Morristown: CNC Technology. There are all sorts of openings here for qualified CNC workers.

I know I don't have experience. But I wonder how much I need to learn about the discipline and how much of that learning I can do quickly.
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I still dream of my mother just about every night. I guess she still weighs heavily on my subconscious mind.

Earlier this afternoon my internet connectivity refused to work properly so I decided to go to the area flea markets just to browse around. I pulled into the parking lot of one and in the slot next to Moonshine's there was a station wagon--and a helium balloon rested on its interior ceiling. Sure enough, I noticed a kid on his father's shoulder on his way back to the vehicle after their shopping.

Turns out today is Ascension Sunday, which commemorates the return of Jesus to Heaven following his Resurrection. Both it and Pentecost (next Sunday) are often excuses for church congregations to celebrate by releasing balloons and giving balloons to the children; since it usually coincides with the end of the secular school year it's often the end of the Sunday School year for the kids too.

I guess we're getting into a time of year I used to look forward to as a child, the transition from Spring to Summer. As an adult, that has lost a lot of meaning for me. Maybe that's the point of this "random encounter". For me, times need new meanings.
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...I present the condensed PEEPS storyline from Starline X. Hodge's webcomic Candi. The story so far: Candi and a classmate have an assignment to do a performance art skit...



ExpandRead more... )

I claim Fair Use. I'm not making any money off this and I want people to look up the webcomic for themselves!
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Aviation Management. Totally useless in my career. For the first ten years I had zilch experience. Then the next ten, some work experience but none in my field. Now, I'm both underqualified AND obsolete.
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Sagittarius Horoscope for week of January 19, 2012

As he approaches his 70th birthday, retiree and Michigan resident Michael Nicholson is still hard at work adding to his education. He's got 27 college degrees so far, including 12 master's degrees and a doctorate. Although he's not an "A" student, he loves learning for its own sake. I nominate him to be your role model for the coming weeks, Sagittarius. Your opportunities for absorbing new lessons will be at a peak. I hope you take full advantage of all the teachings that will be available.


I wonder if I can. I flunked last time. Where to go? What to study? Where can I get support?

PS: I got a message from StarNow about a reality TV search for addicts of various types. I'd thought about applying as a Research Addict, but then I found to my dismay that StarNow wouldn't let me apply unless I paid up front. That seems very unfair to me.
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One of my "someday" projects was a 1/72nd scale aircraft carrier model based on the Colossus--class paper model from Poland. Well, it turned out that another company also made a carrier model--the nuclear-powered Enterprise, as she looked after her mid-life refitting. So I downloaded that model as well. Of course, I have a titanic task if I try to upscale it to 1/72...800 legal-size pages of printout! (As opposed to a mere 270 for Colossus!)

On Wikipedia's entry for the Enterprise, it said that five other ships in the class were planned before the design was superseded in favor of the Nimitz-class, which was much more efficient. Still, that sparked a "What If?" question in my mind...what would be the names of such ships if they had been built? I did a little research, but really couldn't find a good answer as such. Instead, I looked to my own life for my own naval names. Specifically, I looked at where I went to school and their concepts for mascots.

* USS Thames. My first school was United Scioto in Chilicothe, Ohio. Their mascot is the Sherman Tank (yes, their football team is the Tanks!); naming a ship for General Sherman was possible. But the Shawnee Indian chief Tecumseh was from the area too, and he was defeated at the Battle of the Thames.

* USS Fort LeBeouf. Waterford, Pennsylvania. LeBeouf was the site of a battle in the French & Indian War that was important in the career of George Washington.

* USS Lancer and USS Trojan. Deer Lakes district, Pennsylvania; and Saint Petersburg College, Florida, respectively. Good names for Revolution-era ships, but never actually used by the U.S. Navy.

* USS Bald Eagle. Springstead in Spring Hill, Florida. At the time, the Royal Navy had ships named HMS Eagle, so specifying it as "Bald Eagle" made sense to avoid possible confusion in fleet maneuvers.

http://www.awiatsea.com/Privateers.html
http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/index.html
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She scared me to death at a time when I was super-paranoid (for good reason; the local government was spying on me!). I broke it off as quickly as I could because I couldn't trust her and didn't have any idea what she saw in me that was so attractive.
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As I'm not a student now, every hour is Recess. Wish I could enjoy it more, tho'...and had playmates to share it with.
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"Take Algebra--now. You'll like it more than Practical Math, and you'll be able to get in the cool Science courses."
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I would have my younger self take Algebra in 6th or 7th Grade--if not earlier. That way I probably would have gotten myself on a track to Graduation in High School, at the very least.
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Today I took Dad to Morristown to shop for replacement wheels to fit his mulcher. There is a little place just east of downtown (Tools N More) that we shopped at when I was in school...they were the best source because they handle surplus stock parts. I didn't expect to go there; I did expect to go to Lowe's because sister Lynn gave him a Lowe's card for Father's Day. But he told me he had already checked with them and they didn't have what he needed.

He was unclear about what he wanted to do when we sortied out...but we worked it out eventually.

After downtown we had an adventure finding the Social Security office in Morristown. They instructions he'd received on where it is were also rather unclear and perplexing. It took us three tries to find the place, as there weren't proper signs in the places they need to be, and the building's back is to the main road.

But now he knows where it is, and can take a friend for a required conference soon.

On Facebook today, I clicked on an ad about high school yearbooks...but if I had known it was classmates.com I would have passed it by. I HATE classmates.com; they don't get it that not everybody had a good time in teenage life. But now I'm on the hook again for their stupid junk e-mail and I'm going to have to dredge out that old Dear John e-mail I sent them years ago. Bleh.
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Sagittarius Horoscope for week of January 6, 2011

"The heart is forever inexperienced," said Thoreau. He believed our feeling nature is eternally innocent; that no matter how much we learn about the game of life, sadness or lust or rage or joy hits us as hard the thousandth time as it did in the beginning. But is that really true? Are you as likely to plunge into mind-exploding infatuation with your fourth lover as you were with your first? Are you as susceptible now to having your world turned upside-down by flash floods of emotion as you were at age 15? Over the years, haven't you acquired wisdom about your reactive tendencies, and hasn't that transformed them? I disagree with Thoreau. I say that for the person who wants to cultivate emotional intelligence, the heart sure as hell better be capable of gaining experience. What do you think, Sagittarius? If you're aligned with my view, 2011 will educate and ripen your heart as never before.


In theory I'm still working on Love #1. Yes, there was that girl named Helen back in Grade School--but that was Grade School. Nobody understood anything and a lot of that foolishness was peer pressure and trying to be "cool". When I had to move I gave up on her and didn't even feel bad about it because I was beset by a multitude of new traumas and disasters.

And again I should repeat that my later growing-up years were completely devoid of the romance that pop culture mythos usually lavishes on them. From then on I was living in places where there was nobody I wanted to go out with...and now I'm at the age where most prizes are already taken and I'm no prize myself.

Mum last week told me about two of her married relatives and how much they loved each other and I told her back how much I wish I could "understand". But what right do I have to ask for it now?

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Stephen R Bierce

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