Pulled up my computer screen and saw the headline “Selma Blair arrested for allegedly trying to open airplane door and biting flight attendant.”

My first thought was to look more closely at the article. Then I thought better of it. First plane I rode was a 727 out of L.A. There were no inspections. I walked straight back to the gate, presented my ticket and received a boarding pass. A while later, I got on the plane. A few hours later, I got off. That was it.

I have had reason to fly from time to time since and each time it was worse. The planes improved, but the security was successively worse. Or, should I say tighter. Yet people like this get on the plane. Biting attendants? Do I ever want to get on a plane where passengers are apt to try to take a bite from anyone? Certainly I would not want to risk sitting next to one. He or she might succeed.

They still say traveling by air is safer than car. Maybe so. But I am beginning to wonder. Perhaps the next step is to muzzle all passengers.

Of course such things, they say are rare. The hitch is that they are getting less rare.

The prompt on search engine optimization and the kind explanation of the meaning of the mnemonic triggered some old memories of when I worked on computers. It was back in the 1970s though 80s. Some of the machines I worked on weighed tons, literally. The processor cabinets alone were 1500 pounds and there were three of them. To work on them, we had the aid of microfilm, about eight or nine pounds of them.

Mostly it was lists of signal and the paths they took. I will save you the details but they used mnemonics for signal names. For instance, atbe001, which stood for A register to B register enable for bit one. We got used to them quickly, first in our work. We knew exactly what each signal was for from its mnemonic or its name.

It is training I used quite a bit and became practiced at it, a lot.

Now, it is a little odd. Those tons of computers are now scrap. The knowledge, required then is mostly useless now.

Even so, occasionally I see a license plate and I say to myself, “Yeah that’s the signal that….” Recently, not so much. Even these memories are fading.

Occasionally, I do learn new mnemonics. However, retired and almost eighty, the just aren’t so important as they were.

I keep getting these requests for surveys, oddly most frequently near election time. If you happen to be one of them, don’t. I don’t do surveys. First, I find they are likely not much more than tools of persuasion. If they really want to know what I believe they have access to my blog year round, not just election times. Moreover, they wouldn’t use questions that are worded for persuasion.

On the other hand, you might want to save yourself some time and read the following. Most of those who read my points will tell tell you I am a little right of Rush Limbaugh in my political views. However, I would have preferred that his behavior would have been more in line with Christianity.

Now if I could get all those surveyors to read my blog. I suspect it would save us both some time. More importantly, it would serve the proper purpose of surveys; to find out my beliefs. Then again, as I have said, that’s not the real reason of the surveys anyway, right?

When I was in the Marines, I had a supervisor that told me I tried to do multiple things at once. It was the first time I thought about it but I realized he was right. Before I finish one thing I start another to this day.

I guess it comes from a fear that there is never enough time. It was a subconscious thing I guess. It’s something I fight daily.

On the other hand that supervisor was a obsessive detail oriented person. I don’t mean a little bit either. The first day he arrived, I swear that he touched everything on the desk and reposition it, if but a fraction of an inch.

I suppose we were pretty much opposites. However, we got along well. Some might be surprised by that but, our methods seemed to complement each other. On the other hand, if I had been the supervisor, I wonder how well things would have worked.

I don’t mean to say anything by it. I just find the thought interesting. Is it something that is significant?