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The Gas Cap

May 16th, 2013 by

Seven years ago, when I was living in Virginia, I was driving home from work and at a stop light with lots of traffic around. I look to my left, and there is a large tan vehicle from the 70s with the gas door open and the gas cap sitting on the trunk. Traffic was stopped at a light and all I had to do was get out real quick and put the gas cap back on and I will have done what was called of me to do. I hesitated, and just long enough so that traffic started moving again and off the vehicle went. Missed opportunity. I was really angry at myself for not doing what I knew I should have done.

A few days ago I am at a gas station. In the stall just ahead of me is a woman gassing up her vehicle. I was still filling mine when she completed her process and put the handle back, got in her car, and was just about to drive away. She left her gas door open and the cap off – just like last time. This time I stepped over the gas hose while my vehicle was still filling up and yelled “Hey!”, pointing to her gas cap. She said “Oh, thank you!”.

Sometimes opportunities are never lost. You just need to be ready next time.

Posted in Experiences, Lessons, Life

The Trinity

Mar 9th, 2013 by

I had a dream last night where I was in a place where my dad was. For some reason he had buck teeth in this dream. My brother was there and my dad put his right arm around my brother and his left arm around me, pulling us close, and said “I love you both very very much, okay? Very very much.”

The scene shifted to the right and was cloudy through the transition. My mom was there and said “I love you” but I didn’t believe her because I had a lot of problems in this life with her. She got a very upset look on her face and waved swiftly to my brother for him to come forward and she put her right arm around him and I thought she would leave me behind but she waved swiftly to me to come forward and I did, and she put her left arm around me, and said “I love you both very very much, okay? Very very much.”

The scene shifted to the right and was cloudy through the transition. I found myself on an airline flight with my back to the window and I saw my nephew just inside the aisle of a three-seat row. He is about 18 months here, older now, but I don’t see him any more. He recognized me and walked towards me and sat next to me and smiled.

Posted in Dreams, Spiritual

Byte Formats

Dec 31st, 2012 by

As a developer I had trouble remembering the byte order in networks. I wrote an email to myself about the subject in December, 2007, that I am just now getting to, as I am cleaning house for 2013 – organizing and simplifying.

At that point I was working on writing a custom client/server to handle data at low-bit rates for a system I was working on. The system had to send data over radios, and so in order to test it we had to throttle down the networking baud rate to simulate real-world conditions. We linked two PCs together using a serial cable and adjusted the settings so that we could test a variety of scenarios. Through testing we uncovered some issues that needed to be addressed. I forget the details at the time but adjusting several parameters in the networking code allowed us to handle sporadic latency.

In little-endian format, a multi-byte value is stored in memory from the lowest byte (the “little end”) to the highest byte. For example, the value 0×12345678 is stored as (0×78 0×56 0×34 0×12) in little-endian format.

In big-endian format, a multi-byte value is stored in memory from the highest byte (the “big end”) to the lowest byte. For example, the value 0×12345678 is stored as (0×12 0×34 0×56 0×78) in big-endian format.

Network order, the order in which (most) networks transmit data through a network is big-endian. Windows is little endian. Mac OS on x86 is little endian. Mac OS on Power PC is big endian.

It appears Wikipedia has a detailed article on the subject of Endianness.

Posted in Networks, Software

Cloud Ring Dream

Nov 10th, 2012 by

A lot of things were happening downstairs but then I knew there was something happening outside in the sky and so I ran upstairs and peered out a window starting from the left side of the window. High in the sky there was a pattern of clouds in the shape of a large ring going around past where I could see from the window with the angle I was looking at it.

The clouds were short lines in a criss-cross pattern forming the ring. Spaced within the ring at some distance from one another were red objects of some sort.

It was daylight outside and sunny.

Posted in Dreams

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