What Did You Do In A Previous Life?

[tycann]

No, just riddled with every form of clinging and addiction known to man. In Buddhist mythology, petas (oft translated as 'hungry ghosts') are reborn with insatiable desires due to negative previous kamma.

[Robski]

3 years with the Dutch space program was a real highpoint in my life.

[Martin]

Hi 'jet'.

The resolution of the graph in post #27 is insufficient to date the peak to anything more precise than "approximately now".

Ever tried looking at the waves running up the sand from ten minutes before the time of high tide, according to the table of time of high tide, till ten minutes after? All you can say after is:"Well, the book wasn't far wrong, if wrong at all".

The comms engineers use terms like 'peak of discernible pulse' and 'signal-to-noise ratio' when grappling with the analagous job!

Why publish the book anyway? Publication only delays perishing, even in academia.

Cheers, Martin.

[Jet Gorgon]

Hi 'jet'.

The resolution of the graph in post #27 is insufficient to date the peak to anything more precise than "approximately now".

Ever tried looking at the waves running up the sand from ten minutes before the time of high tide, according to the table of time of high tide, till ten minutes after? All you can say after is:"Well, the book wasn't far wrong, if wrong at all".

The comms engineers use terms like 'peak of discernible pulse' and 'signal-to-noise ratio' when grappling with the analagous job!

Why publish the book anyway? Publication only delays perishing, even in academia.

Cheers, Martin.

Thank you for the information, Martin. Drinking tea with my gods and dogs at the mo. And then I'm gonna sweep the leaves and the litter from the garden. And then help take my elderly neighbour to the temple. And then I'm gonna drink a bit of lao khao with the bike taxi boys. Then the dogs and me are gonna go to the beach and watch the waves come in. I love to kick sand at the waves, don't you? Ah, to be a fresh, eager, young soul, again.

[Martin]

There's the time of being a fresh, eager, young soul.

And there's the time of happy serenity because they send us our money, without us any longer having to put in long hours to collect it.

"Minimise the length of time of transition between" would seem to be good advice from those in the latter time to those in the former.

(Otherwise, it is as stated in the students' grafiti that I saw when I re-visited my old college: "Life is a shitt sandwich, and to get enough bread you have to digest a lot of shitt.")

[Martin]

Hi, 'jet'

This came in this morning, and reminded me of the above yesterday.

A C-130 was lumbering along when a cocky F-16 flashed by. The jet jockey decided

to show off.

The fighter jock told the C-130 pilot, "watch this!" and promptly went into a barrel roll followed by a steep climb. He then finished with a sonic boom as he broke the sound barrier.

The F-16 pilot asked the C-130 pilot what he thought of that?

The C-130 pilot said, "That was impressive, but watch this!"

The C-130 droned along for about 5 minutes and then the C-130 pilot came back

on and said "What did you think of that?"

Puzzled, the F-1 6 pilot asked, "What the hel_l did you do?"

The C-130 pilot chuckled. "I stood up, stretched my legs, went to the back, took a piss,

then got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon bun."

When you are young and foolish - speed and flashy may be a good thing.

When you get older and smarter - comfort and dull is not such a bad thing!!

[Jet Gorgon]

Thanks, Martin. That's a good'un.

[jumnien]

Previous to Thailand, I sold bras at swap meets, was a kitchen chef in Japanese restaurant, designer of theme park attractions, crack addict, nightman at alcohol and drug treatment center, counselor for drinking driver program, nomad. Used to be poor, now rich; liked poor better! What a long strange trip it's been...

[Jet Gorgon]

Previous to Thailand, I sold bras at swap meets, was a kitchen chef in Japanese restaurant, designer of theme park attractions, crack addict, nightman at alcohol and drug treatment center, counselor for drinking driver program, nomad. Used to be poor, now rich; liked poor better! What a long strange trip it's been...

Wow, you're pretty tough, Mdeland. Must have a strong character. Bet you have good tales to tell.

[qwertz]

My first job at 14 was scrapping out tanks and planes. I had 40 or more jobs before I reached 22 and about 50 before I reached middle age. None of them memorable except the summer I spent running a beach bar in Cap D'Agde France. The whole town is nudist, that was different and no, you don't get bored with looking.

[redrus]

I have a sore head, as I was Tutankhamen.

redrus

[Martin]

Oh, 'gwertz', I would have thought that I wasn't living, but died and gone to heaven, if (at 14) I had had a job scrapping out tanks and planes.

In my teens, one of the phases I went through was the Joy of Deconstruction.

It was only finally assuaged, at 17, by funding a few trips for rock-climbing in the mountains of North Wales by digging away peat and getting propellor blades off an aircraft that had crashed near the top of one of the mountains.

(The crew were in cloud, thought they were further ahead on their flight to Belfast, and so over the Irish Sea, started to let down and found themselves making a belly-landing on a peat bog. They got out unharmed, the RAF sent a team to take out the instruments and other high-value, low-weight valuable bits, and then most of the plane was left to moulder.)

Dragging a prop blade, which was about 30 kg of pure aluminium, down the mountain was an activity that paid well. But scrapping was tough and took time from climbing (like work activities always take hours that would be better spent in a leisure activity!) so the attraction of scrapping waned.

I decided that earning the wherewithal to spend money outdoors was better done indoors and, for three years, the Ministry of Education paid me well to just write a few lecture notes (and regurgitate their contents) at a nearby University College. That even gave me a BSc (which should have stood for Beer, Sportscars and climbing) which deluded various organisations into thinking that I was worth hiring to laze around within their premises.

It was over eleven years before those mountains saw me again, but then my presence was funded by one of the cushiest indoor jobs ever---nuclear reactor controller --- at a power station that was located there. Those early 'Magnox' stations are no more. In fact, it is a wonder that they lasted as long as they did, considering the trials and tribulations they were subjected to as we, who knew little more about it than how to spell 'nuclear', learnt to run them by trial and error.

But, I have no doubt, there will be other ways for irresponsible members of succeeding generations to delude employers into paying them good money for doing ignoramus activities indoors so they can fund their activities outdoors. (In fact, I have been one of a group of a fair few such, from time to time, on Everest.)

[Little Black Duck]

I was an Egg, Now I'm a Hansom Little black Duck,,

Will I ever find a beautiful Swan ???

[qwertz]

Oh, 'gwertz', I would have thought that I wasn't living, but died and gone to heaven, if (at 14) I had had a job scrapping out tanks and planes.

Yeah. Martin, that was one of my better jobs, better than the 8 hours a day I spent production lining plastic kitchenware. I could go on but it's mostly downhill all the way from there apart from what I do now (interpreting).

Edited February 4, 2007 by qwertz

[qwertz]

Oh, 'gwertz', I would have thought that I wasn't living, but died and gone to heaven, if (at 14) I had had a job scrapping out tanks and planes.

Yeah. Martin, that was one of my better jobs, better than the 8 hours a day I spent production lining plastic kitchenware. I could go on but it's mostly downhill all the way from there apart from what I do now (interpreting).