I watched a young employee at a tackle and bait shop use a calculator to multiply
10 x .25
That was sad and disheartening
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I watched a young employee at a tackle and bait shop use a calculator to multiply
10 x .25
That was sad and disheartening
Yea, the younger generation may stumble around doing math but ask them anything about computing and it is a different story. Ask an oldie like myself about computing and you likely will get a glazed look back. Times have changed.
Bob
5 days until my second jab. It will be on MY Saturday and I took MY Monday off work just encase. Hoping i wont need the time for the sickness but figured it would be better to have the option.
Today, headed to my local Pharmacy expecting a massive line-up for people that had booked appointments for the Astra Vaccine, I was the only person there....
Got my vaccine, another guy around my age was waiting, said the same thing, where is everybody?
Well, got mine today, no problem, they automatically booked my next appointment for the booster.
My wife is a nurse, chaos currently in the hospitals, there having to use some Dr's as ICU "nurses", wife is deployed again to a more serious medical ward (from Day Treatment a year ago).
Gotta say, feel relieved to have received the vaccine.
I'm 69... a retired GNUnix sysadmin. I, too, love computers, but am "lukewarm" wrt math. I was a terrible math student in high school... failed 2nd year algebra... geometry, too. Developed an interest in math while in the US Army, stationed at Fort Benning (USAIS, Weapons Dep't.) -- there was a need for an instructor to learn artillery survey, and it fell on me. Neat... it got me back on-track.
Related Joke:
Q: If having one wife is monogamy, and having two wives is bigamy, what's having three wives called?
A:
I have 2 years on you and I am using a computer and have a cell phone. Rest assured that my skill level in no way approaches that of the younger generations. I am not saying that boomers and older generations are computer illiterate but that their skill levels are on the whole not as good. When you get to the few remaining centenarians, like my 102 year old mother inlaw, chances are the computer illiteracy rate is pretty high. Times have changed as they always do because the is nothing more constant than change itself. The big difference is in how rapidly change occurs now.
Bob
Ha, I remeber those, I'm 59. My first one was a Vic20 with a little tape deck to load very very basic games etc, it took ages sounded like a crazy fax machine and invariably failed just before it finished loading.
It also ran on basic, I remember writing a 3 line loop that made my name repeat over and over. I was so proud of myself.
Yes, the tape. My first was an Amstrad CPC 464. Put the tape in and wait what, 5 min to load a game?
Yes, those early computers had very limited uses and one of the reasons I chose ignored to them. I had no use for dial up connections either. IIRC my first PC was a Win 95 or 98 when dial up was no longer an issue where I live. It was also about the time I got interested in digital photography so that had a lot to do with getting one.
It killed my interest in books and monthly magazines when I could look stuff up on the internet. About that time the pulp and paper industry I worked in started it's downward spiral too. It was also the start of the downward spiral of companies like Kodak who made film. Things like film and records are now a niche market like straight razors.
I also saw more and more computer automation of the production line. Problem was the programming was not written by someone who actually operated the equipment. It also lead to skill sets being lost over time that were invaluable in operating the equipment manually should the automation fail.
Lots of pluses and minuses in the computer age. Computer controlled automation is a fine thing when it is programmed and implement properly. It can also be a can of worms such as in the case of the Boeing 737 Max as an example.
Sometimes going OT can be interesting.
Bob
My first internet experience was dial up and in the UK we had no such thing as free local calls like here, we paid by the minute for being on the internet and the phone was engaged as long as we were on.
My first real PC was windows 3.1 and you had to be OK with DOS if any settings needed to be changed.
After the Vic20 my next one was an Amiga, it actually had a tiny hardrive. I helped a local dry cleaner by printing out a list of all the outstanding Dry Cleaning invoices from the local hotels.
I remember one day I had spent about 3 hours on this list with no saves and was about to print it on my noisy dot matrix printer when the whole thing went dark, about 2 seconds later the vacuum cleaner started, I nearly cried.
I have an Mac now.
Isn't it fascinating how this thread evolved from Covid to vaccinations, to the math abilities of the younger generations to early computers. It's almost like that game when we were kids, Chinese whispers.
I'm 73 and my first forays into computerville was at work when we got machines with win95 and basically I taught myself. I wound up computer troubleshooter for the office.
In those days Windows was simple and you could go into it and fix problems. These days if you have problems you just reinstall if the utilities don't fix the problem.
Yea that was before the Internet. Everything was dial up and then along came Compuserve and Prodigy and a few others.
The good old days.
Yes, am surprised at the fact that I felt a relief off my shoulders that I had no idea was there. Will still wear mask etc., but damn, just nice to know I have some level of protection - hearing stories from Nurse Wifey, no desire to die on a ventilator drowning while conscious alone in some room...yea, no ferkin thanks!! :-)
When looking at the numbers etc. it seems that we are figuring out how to fight this.
Here we have been getting another "surge" of cases but the death rate has gone down per hospitalization.
Maybe another way to look at it is that the average age of death has gone down. Does that mean all the older susceptible people have died?
The numbers from long term care facilities has gone down.
Just some of my observations.
We are experiencing a significant surge in Ontario, seemingly a result of lack of stringent enough lock down adherence and availability of vaccines. The variants seem to be beating the vaccination process.
Worst case projection announced today is possibly 30,000 cases a day in the province by the end of the month. Best case is 5,000. Both projections are frightening.
The premier has announced much more stringent lock down regulations to try to flatten the curve.
Scary stuff and we still have anti-vaxers and lock down protesters claiming it’s all fake. I have two nurses in my family who see 2-3 deaths a day from COVID. Recently, this has included young folks 20-45 years of age with no pre-existing conditions.
Our ICU’s are slammed and even though many more ICU beds have been made available, there isn’t the nursing staff to staff them. Perhaps the protesters ought to choose to volunteer.
This trend in Ontario was seen coming 3 weeks ago to anyone watching the data coming in. The Ford government, imo, acted too late in implementing a lock down that is in many aspects watered down. Too little too late. Then again what would you expect from a Premier who had as part of his election campaign bringing back a buck a beer.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toron...Horwath%20says
The electorate gets what they deserve from a Premier who obviously knows how to set priorities.
Does Ford really think that the other Provinces and Territories at this point in a pandemic can spare medical staff to send to Ontario? It's obvious that they have problems of their own with regards to having enough medical personnel for their own needs. In what universe does he live in?
If you think we are in a world of hurt, just wait a few weeks.
Bob
Just putting my 2 cents in on computers. I refused to learn. Finally my first was window xp. I held out a long time. Sorry. Back on topic now.
I think I should have said that the Ford government is a day late and a buck a beer short instead of too little too late.
Bob
I can’t imagine any of the other parties handling the current crisis better, based on the lack of constructive solutions being lobbied about daily after every decision, then the PC party in Ontario is doing currently.
IMO, to shut down sooner would have caused increases in protests against lock downs possibly. Not to mention three less weeks of income for small business, in a year where weeks of being open matter. The Gov’ment have no control over variants, or when vaccines are arriving, only how quickly they can get them into arms of Ontarians..
Total doses administered in Ontario as of today is; 3,644,038
Total doses administered in Canada as of today is ; 7,290,869.
So basically 50% of all vaccinations in Canada have occured in our province, and we are so populated we are still only 22% protected as a province.
Fords doing an ok job with something no one has had to deal with before and as I said up top, none of the other 3 ontario ‘party leaders’ have provided counter solutions, only critique and outrage about what Ford isn’t doing.
I prefer to note what he IS doing..
The stats above rarely get acknowledged in fair discourse. Certainly not on CTV news anymore.
All I hear is shut down more, offer unlimited paid sick days, universal basic income etc.. who’s going to be paying for all that again??
Again, just my opinions gents.
:chapeau
We have an anti-lockdown/anti-mask/anti-vax protest scheduled in Niagara this weekend to follow up on one from a week or two ago. Participants included a local mayor and councilman who were ticketed.
I assume the police will be on hand if it actually goes ahead.
It blows my mind that there are folks who think we are being manipulated within some kind of conspiracy and that the whole COVID-19 situation isn’t real. Ask the ICU nurses, the doctors and the paramedics if it’s real.
Reported on the radio
Men who survive Corona have a 600% increase in erectile dysfunction.
I wonder how many anti-vaxxers know that?
If they go ahead with those protests I hope the police hand them all $750 fines.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canad...?ocid=msedgntp
Bob
You know, when a government has a majority, they can do whatever they want regardless of what the opposition says. In that case, the responsibility for what goes on rests squarely on the Premier's shoulders. At the beginning of this pandemic I was giving credit to the Premier for his handling of a difficult situation considering the limited resources that were available then.
That changed over time as the Provincial Government appeared to be slow in reacting to and following the advice given by Ontario's COVID-19 science advisory table. That particular failing has lead the Province directly to the situation we face today. That is exacerbated by a part of the population that is unwilling to follow the rules during this pandemic. The government has failed to enforce the rules on that group.
Bob
I read this morning that Ontario has extended police powers to randomly stop pedestrians and motorist to demand to know where they're going and where they live.
I can see that being abused and a pound to a pinch of pooh that power will never ever be rescinded.
Some police such as Toronto and Ottawa have refused to follow that new rule but only a few, operative word FEW!
This seems to be a typical knee jerk response in which the government is trying to implement a simple solution to a complex problem. They are trying to control what appears to be a superficial and apparently easy to understand factor rather than direct resources at the more complicated and challenging roots of the problem.
I wonder if the issues identified and recommendations for action provided by the public health and scientific experts are simply too complicated for our politicians to act on. Simple, short term solutions seem to be the bread and butter way for politicians to deal with long term issues. It’s as if they don’t want to be held accountable for any action that might last longer than their term of office and thus impact their chances for reelection.
That was not the image I had of our premier during the intial phase of the pandemic in Ontario, but it certainly seems to be the case now.
Some Ontario police forces seem to disagree with our premier’s approach.
Attachment 331512
The public outcry and too many police forces saying they weren't going to do it might have done it. BTW did anyone get their buck a beer yet? :angel:
Bob
When y’all get that buck a beer let me know I may be changing to a Canadien
OK, so you're 89, spend 10 weeks in the hospital recovering from COVID and the ambulance takes you home after you recover, right? Well kind of--
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-56794652