I don’t even remember what I was watching but I heard a word I hadn’t heard in ages, nixie tubes. When I was in junior high and high school, it was a common term to me. Now, a person would have to search high and low to find a person who knows the word, let alone what it is.

Of course, I knew the word and I actually know, conceptually, how they work. However, they were all but well on the way to being replaced by the LED by 1980. Yet, had we not had Nixie tubes in the 50s and 60s, it would have made the computer revolution much more difficult.

I’m not going to tell you about it. It is useless information today. Yet, here I am, carrying this useless info around in my memory for no reason whatsoever. It isn’t lingering there by itself. You might find this odd, but I can build circuits using vacuum tubes, though it will do me no good. Easier, faster, cheaper and better circuits can be purchased.

So, here I am, wondering around with all this wonderful useless information in my mind taking up precious space.

It makes me wonder, would I be better off if I could rid my mind of the useless information and push more current more useful info into it. Guess that’s not up to me. Here I am, carrying around all this useless info. Then, when I want to use a very useful word, I search my mind without success, and I stand there at the counter, looking like an idiot, trying to order mashed potatoes.

Worse, when I want a tuna sandwich, I say turkey, and visa-versa. I will say one person’s name when I mean the other and know it immediately.

If you see the wrong word now and then in one of my posts, it’s likely not because I don’t know better. Sometimes, it just is my mind gets cross wired. If you think I’m bad when I write, it is far worse when I speak.