On Friday 18 May 2007, Ric Moore wrote: >On Fri, 2007-05-18 at 19:03 +0200, Nigel Henry wrote: >> On Friday 18 May 2007 18:37, Ric Moore wrote: >> > >> > When I got REALLY desperate, I'd powerdown, unplug the card, reboot, let >> > the system deal with no sound card for a bit, making sure >> > that /etc/modprobe.conf was empty of sound card module info (or better >> > yet comment them out) then shutdown and carefully re-insert it, reboot >> > and Voila`! Woot! ...der it is! The hardware dingus would automatically >> > detect and install it brand new. It's a bit *ExTrEmE* but worked for me >> > in a royal pinch when I was at wit's end. Ric >> > -- >> >> Now just where did you find that word "dingus"? The last time I heard that >> was from a Belgian friend, who used it when he couldn't find the correct >> english word for something. > >I think that is a word that Robert Heinlein used. It was always a >"dingus" that enabled a red-haired and freckled 13 year old Lazarus Long >to journey to Mars or the Asteroids, after cobbling together an >improbable craft made from various assorted bits and pieces found >conveniently in an Uncle's barn. Of course the Uncle worked undercover >for the AEC and had some really mysterious yet useful dingus's lying >about, just waiting to be put together by an inquisitive mind. Isn't >that how Linux got started? Same mindset. Every male geek on this list >over 40 has read Heinlein, dreamed of finding the Uncle's barn and >blasting off and away from this festering cheese-ball called Earth to >reach adulthood "out there" instead of back home in some Dog Patch. Yup, and some of us started with Doc Smiths output. >The female brain remains just as mysterious today as it was back when, >in a Heinlein novelette. They were always too smart! Read Starship >Troopers, where the she became high IQ starship pilot and he drug >knuckles as a ground pounding grunt, and was proud of it. Nothing has >changed. He finally solved the problem for his character in his last >works by cloning Lazarus Long's feminine self and marrying "her". That >made me cringe a bit, but it made sense after awhile of digestion. But, >even that "she" was still smarter and meaner. I miss ole Robert. This >may be way off topic, but I'll bet there is a collective "ahhhhh..." of >recollection among the older geek males on this list, and possibly some >of the Ladies as well. Yes, in particular I enjoyed his bit of congressional testimony and reparte in the exchanges that took place as he was testifying in favor of continued funding for NASA at the time. His testimony involved replaying for the senators present the goings on during his recent brain surgery. He was at the time before the surgery slowly dying of an occluded carotid artery, and was getting dumber by the week. So they located an artery in his scalp that had good flow, drilled a hole in his skull and tied that artery into the top of the carotid, and when the flow was released he could tell instantly that he was pretty close to the old Robert we all read and thought we knew. That bit of surgery, using micro-miniature tools NASA had paid to develop, gave him another 5 years of productive life behind the keyboard. But nothing particularly memorable came out of it, just as nothing memorable has come out of A.C. Clarks computer recently. His 'creative' juices were on the wane 20 years ago & now all he does is co-sign some other budding writers work, not much of which is terribly memorable, but which sells reasonably well because it has his imprimature on it. We have some decent writers today, but none of the caliber they were in their heyday. I miss them both although I believe ACC lives yet. ><drags hairy knuckles, toothy grins and eyebrow waggles> Ric Don't you believe that for a second, Ric sent me a pix once, and he is a right good looking man in excellent shape with just a trace of grey. Girls, the line forms over there ----------------> -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) "I hope you will find the courage to keep on living despite the existence of this feature." - Richard Stallman
