Re:Abandoned mines cover the West
by triyambakam on Monday September 30, 2024 @10:30PM
(#41704132)
Thanks for sharing that. He sounds like a good father.
Re:Abandoned mines cover the West
by AStonesThrow on Monday September 30, 2024 @10:45PM
(#41704193)
He really is!! He taught me so much science, chemistry, radio, technology, just sort of whispering facts in my ear. It was the gentlest way to learn really amazing stuff when I was extremely too young and shouldn't have understood any of it. I was into space flight and computers by 3rd grade (1980).
What's amazing is how badly I fared in my systematic science classes beginning in high school. I started taking them over summertime, figuring I could handle a relaxed, accelerated schedule, but was far too social and flirting with girls to pay any attention. I didn't really expect to use hard natural sciences in an IT career anyway. I don't even use Calculus!
The scope was there had you wanted to pursue that path; in 1980 I started working on very large scale mapping software, building custom real time OS's and instruments, and ended up in exploration geophysics which included just a little calculus (upward and downward continuations of magnetic fields, a thousand and one Kalman filter applications, FFT's and wavelets, all manner of fancy math).
He remains fascinated with them, and we'd often travel to mining towns (one in particular) to check out the neighborhood and scenery. When I was in high school, our big "California Vacation" was to the Mother Lode Country, all up and down the center of California, from SD to Yreka (I considered it absurd that there was "Eureka"--also the state motto--and the comparatively obscure "Yreka" even further north).
We stopped in places like Virginia City, Lodi, Sacramento, and more. We saw Sutter's Fort. I saw punk rockers in a small town just hanging out. All my sister wanted was a pool at our motel. We fought and bickered constantly. It was a huge disaster, but very scenic and generated plenty of memorable family photos.