It’s the Kinda a Bummer edition this week, featuring: Driving with GPS, Phill Hartman, Matthew Perry, The Empty Hole int he Heart of Celebrities, the Curse of the High School Hero, a Hockey Fatality, Maine Shooter, Probable Cause, AI and Kenya, Scotty Kilmer, no cell phones in schools and Grandfluencers… all this and so much less on his week’s edition of Right Angle: Backstage!
34 replies on “Right Angle: Backstage 10/31/23”
Scott is absolutely right, if you can’t be happy without it . . . .
Not a Friends fan, but The Whole Nine Yards with Bruce Willis is an absolute classic.
I also remember the phone number I grew up with. It just had 7 digits, and the first 2 were letters. Yeah, I lived before Area and ZIP codes. I used my old phone number as my password on my first home computer – a Bondi Blue iMac.
I still print out maps, though most often I use a key map. I have GPS turned off on my phone, and avoid using the map app.
There was a good article in the WSJ about how AI needs to learn physics to take over warehousing. Hint: you can’t go through walls.
“I’m just a simple caveman, your sophisticated world frightens and confuses me”. Back when SNL was good, and relevant!
Bob Ross was a Senior Enlisted Air Force guy (I hear).
I miss Troy McClure.
I had my near equivalent to pulling the plugs on the car… It was changing mother boards on my computer.
But I labeled everything before I started. Where everything went, jumper configurations, etc.
Ran correctly the first time. Take that you wannabe tech geeks! “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”
And yes, I read the manual too. “When all else fails, read the instructions.”
Ah, I remember those days, when a math coprocessor didn’t come on the CPU, was a major upgrade and not insignificant expense. When there could be anywhere from a half dozen to well over a dozen and even more jumpers that had to be manually set just right or nothing would work. Or worse.
I can’t say as I miss those days at all. Of course we didn’t know any better back then and thought it was all very amazing if tedious. When you got it right seeing the POST screen was a significant reward.
I laugh with deep derision at modern ‘children’ who think if you’re over a certain age you know nothing about tech stuff. Even worse are those who think that because they can watch a YouTube video about an unsanctioned mod to Minecraft and follow all the steps that somehow makes them a world class ‘hacker’.
For anyone faced with the spark plug wire dilemma …
The solution is to change one wire and it’s spark plug at a time. That way you never get anything mixed up. Same for the distributor cap, pull a wire and plug it into its corresponding place on the new cap, don’t yank them all and then try to figure out where each is supposed to go. I know cars don’t use distributors with caps anymore but there are other things that still do.
If you mess up the firing order is usually stamped or cast somewhere on the front of the engine block. If you get to the point you need that you’ve already messed up. Good luck finding cylinder 1 on the distributor cap. Following that firing order there are only 8 possible permutations in a V-8 engine so you’ll get it eventually. Shift all the wires up one space until the engine starts and runs correctly.
I don’t know about other makes but back when cars had points that had to be gapped correctly for the vehicle to run right there was a trick with GM engines taught to me by my grandpa to set that gap. Using a feeler gauge was iffy at at best so … Close the points all the way. Open them three full turns with the allen wrench used for that purpose. Try to start the car. If it doesn’t start, close the points a half turn. Keep doing that until the car starts. Then open the points a quarter turn and the gap will be perfect.
As I’ve said, I grew up on a farm. Farm people don’t take their tractors, trucks, cars etc. to a mechanic if they can avoid doing so. I learned this stuff about engines from my mother’s hip as a small child while she held me and handed grandpa or dad the tools they asked for. When I was old enough to get it right I did the tool handing and mom stayed in the house. When I got old enough to do the work myself, everyone stayed in the house and no one bothered to hand me tools. This is the way things work in that sort of life.
I often forget that what seems obvious and common sense to me is not necessarily so for other people because other people didn’t have the same experiences I did. Not getting spark plug wires mixed up seems like a no-brainer to me. That’s because I was told what happens if you do that before I actually did it.
Examples of your “or worse”….
” Do you smell something burning?” Or
“Uh oh! A spark! That’s not good” or
“Unplug it, quick!” or
“Where is the fire extinguisher?”
Have seen all but the last when someone else did it. And no, in was not there at the beginning to advise any of those times.
Famous last words: “Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing”.
“I don’t need the manual”.
” I wonder what happens if (fill in the blank)”
RTFM!
Read the friendly manual? 😋😉
ACTS referred to me as possibly autistic. Me and my wife think so. I definitely miss some social self cues and give out bad ones. That may be why I had no real friends in that school( I had very few outside of it too) The closest in school was the other band members. Band geeks stick together. But because of limiting class times and band changing to 1/2 of class from 1, I could only do that two years.
As to fitting in otherwise…..
I don’t think being shoved off a moving school bus once and down stairs twice does show I did fit in.(Not badly hurt any time. I reacted badly enough in the school bus incident that they left me alone going forward. The stairs were bad enough that I had no time to react at all.)
Do HIPPA laws stop mental facilities from reporting dangerous individuals??
I’ve spent a lifetime looking forward. I went to my 10th year HS reunion and left in 45 minutes. I had not seen any of the attendees in 10 years and honestly, really didn’t care. It was 10 years in the past. Skipped the 20 and 30 year too. Just too busy “living the freedom” in the present.
Rand McNally Road Atlas!! Bought a new one every year!!
Has Bill done any TSL’s lately? I’m not able to catch any of them live and have to wait for the video later. But I can’t find anything more recent than #374 which was back in July or August. Have they been moved somewhere?
Yes, both TSL and TSS. He’s been spending a LOT of time trying to get the new web site operational and trying to get his Story Mechanic series started that he may not have time to get the Stratosphere stuff posted.
Want a good laugh? Search ‘Sebastian Maniscalco doorbell’. He’s hilarious! Five minutes of fun.
I’ve never been to a class reunion and have zero desire to attend one.
I hated high school. Not because of the curriculum or the other-than-social environment aspects …
I didn’t like the people I went to school with. I didn’t care if I “fit in” or not because I had no desire to conform enough to gain the approval a bunch of what I saw as idiots, posers and puerile simpletons. I got along with the teachers a lot better than I got along with my fellow students. I had “friends” that were more acquaintances and wouldn’t discover until after I joined the Marine Corps what true friends were. That’s because I met a much, much higher caliber of people in the military than I went to school with. Which should tell you much about the kind of people that populated my high school. Even the Marines are not universally sterling personalities.
Unlike most people I’ve met, because we moved a lot when I was young I didn’t grow up around a set group of kids. By the time I arrived on the scene all the little social cliques and pecking orders were well established. I learned early that the first people who showed signs of wanting me in their group were the least desirable as friends. Because they had little or no social capital if I turned out to be a low-life like them they had nothing to lose and everything to gain if I somehow added to their standing. Moving up the social order was more trouble than it was worth and involved compromises I was not willing to make. My best friends were books, rod and reel and hunting firearms.
Surprise, surprise — I got in a lot of fights too. The bulk of the students in my school didn’t like me a lot either. I learned to give as good or better than I got. If people didn’t respect me for who I was then they’d learn to respect the fear of what I would do if they messed with me. I was the ‘new kid’ in the last three years of my high school and it didn’t take long for the bullies and the aggressive to learn that leaving me alone was the least painful course of action. You leave me be, I’ll leave you be too. Failing that, it was time for you to learn a lesson about the advantages of minding your own business.
If I got a beating I made sure the other guy(s) walked around school for a week or two showing the marks of what that beating cost them. Sometimes I left permanent scars as a reminder. One little d-bag named Charlie Shultz went through the rest of his life with a very noticeable crooked nose, unless he paid for plastic surgery sometime after we parted ways.
I don’t know if as Harry Ferguson and I have previously discussed this lack of desire to fit in was maybe because I’m somewhere on the autism spectrum, which I suspect I am but have never been formally diagnosed. Or it’s just a personality quirk and I have more than a few of those too.
Some of it has to do with my Dad, who was a very successful salesman and later became an executive in the ag business. He was neither of those things when I was young but he was the same man as he would become later. He always had the attitude that if you didn’t like him, screw you and move on. I’m sure I picked up a lot of that from him.
In fact, his favorite movie was “Father Goose” with Cary Grant and Leslie Caron. The song in the opening credits is “Pass me By” sung by Digby Wolfe. The chorus to that song was …
Pass Me By-y, Pass Me By-y-y.
If you don’t happen to like it Pass Me By.
I remember as a kid hearing my Dad humming that tune to himself often.
I didn’t feel like I didn’t fit in, I didn’t care if I fit in or not. I have absolutely no desire to ever see any of those people again.
Conversely, I have some very good friends I made in the military and have attended several unit reunions and Marine Corps Balls (double entendre if ever there was one, huh?) so as to catch up with them and their lives when I could. So I don’t think it’s me, I think it’s the dipwads I was stuck with in high school.
I understand what Scott’s saying about “everyone not fitting in” but in my personal case I think that was more fact than perspective.
All of that said, your mileage may differ. If so, feel free to pass me by.
Something tells me that your dad and I would have gotten along just fine. This is also one of my favorites, and I really enjoyed a lot of his movies. This one stands out to me probably because he didn’t look all “Cary Grant”.
I also hum and sing to myself. I think it is my version of purring and just means all dials and gauges are A-OK.
My dad was a real character. I think you would have liked him. I didn’t admire everything he did but I loved and respected him until the day he died.
I hope in my comment above I didn’t give the wrong impression. Unlike a lot of kids I had a very good, stable, wholesome home life. My parents did the best they could with what they had while I and my sister were still living at home. Things kind of fell apart after that, as they do sometimes.
I don’t fit in with the group that blames their parents for things. I am the way I am because I made me that way, they didn’t. They wanted the best for me and did what they could.
It was my dad who taught me to stand up for myself, even if the odds were unfavorable and it hurt. I don’t like pain any more than anyone else does but there are different kinds of pain. Physical pain is not the worst of them. Most kids don’t know that, some never do learn it. In the those cases fear can be a master. For those that know better it’s not. Thanks to my dad that was a problem I was able to deal with appropriately and proportionately as the situation arose.
My mom was like any other good mom. It hurt her to see her little boy hurt. She didn’t cry at my wedding but she did cry the day I left for the Marine Corps. I think my mom experienced a lot of sadness vicariously for me. She didn’t have as good a life as she deserved. I’m in no small part a reason for that. Not the only reason by far, but a significant one even so.
One thing I’m certain of; prayer works. She prayed for me every day I might have been in any sort of peril and I’m here answering your comment largely due to that fact. Her efforts in that regard were not futile but it took its toll on her even so.
I agree with the rule to keep phones out of classrooms. One thing the prohibition will avoid is the students filming battles with their teachers and each other. They will have to wait until after class or after school to be famous for 15 minutes.
Ronette is teaching HS (To Mrs Ron’s and my shock) and as the new teacher this is one that is often debated.
Keep it in the bookbag for lots of reasons, but the one you point out is a good one. As Steve pointed out in Bill’s episode about Body Cams, people behave differently when they are on camera.
On Mathew Perry, he boasted about being “boosted” to the max. From the testing and studies I’ve been following, I believe he had some kind of heart problem or stroke while in his hot tub. It’s sad to the extreme that so very many people of all ages are dying from complications of vaccines.
When I need driving directions, I print out the Mapquest driving directions, put the page on the passenger seat, and after the “lengthy mileage” parts I use a red ink pen to draw a line that this is where to pay attention. My 1999 Saab missed out on GPS, and so far I’m the last person in the world who doesn’t use a cell phone. I think I can make it through life this way.
No GPS for me, and I’ve disabled the location feature on my phone, which I only have because my sister couldn’t bring hers to work due to the security implications and the camera. And even then, it was only after my flip phone finally bricked itself (likely with the help of Verizon). I don’t want to make it easy to track me, And I have an impeccable sense of direction, and like reading maps. And exploring.
The world isn’t safe, laws can make it safer but at the expense of our freedoms nearly every time.
Agree. Laws are a necessary evil. Minimal laws minimalizes that evil.
The problem is that minimizing laws means you have to be able to trust the enforcement and judicial systems to apply wisdom and restraint. As we have moved away from that state, laws have had to become more and more definitive and restricting to counterbalance that lack*. Which has not resulted in an improvement and is as much a failure as lack of wisdom and restraint.
(*Three strike laws are a great example. Because some Judges went soft on certain criminals legislatures felt the need to apply wisdom by legislation as a counterbalance. We would never have heard of, nor would there be any need for, three strike laws if Judges applied wisdom in sentencing dangerous antisocial criminals.)
I tell my kids, who are met by a barrage of new laws to vote for or against at election time, to judge every proposal from the standpoint of “what does this mean to my freedom” and “how much of my tax burden will this add” and vote accordingly.
I have nothing really useful to add to this discussion other than I very much enjoyed it. This is definitely worth the price of admission.
Aside – my wife and I went to her 40th HS reunion recently. My only coherent thought was my wife must have graduated HS at 10 or many of her classmates got held back, a lot.
Don’t you find that high school reunions are somewhat equalizers? Time spares no one. Next year is my 50th reunion and I look forward to it, even though I am twice the size of most of those who will be attending. I will just be glad to see everyone again.
Congratulations on getting Back Stage posted so quickly despite the problems you spoke of last night. Mathew Perry has not yet had the toxicology report issued lots of speculation. Phil Hartman is more appreciated after his passing. Then mix in Bob Ross and Scotty Kilmer together in the same discussion and this is what I love about your discussions.