Diamond Dave’s Blog

Jack Kilby died recently. Not a name most people know of. He is credited for inventing the integrated circuit. Yes, not as popular as the people at Bell Labs who invented the transistor in 1947, but Kilby, working at Texas Instruments, invented the IC in the summer of 1958. Before that, everything was discrete components. This way many things can be put on a single piece of silicon. Hence later and greater things, like Intel’s invention of the CPU in 1971 could occcur. Kilby’s name will be soon forgotten, but his legacy will live on for many years to come.

By the way, this is the first day of summer - and its all downhill from here until December. The days are getting shorter.. shorter.. shorter….

Weekends are never long enough! Finally got caught up on the telnet BBS listings. Weeded out the dead ones, added a whole bunch more. Still need to post the pictures from my trip to the Pacific Northwest - especially those from the Museum of Communications!

Spent the better part last week at Sensors Expo conference in Chicago. By the time I made reservations (about 2 months before the event), all the decent hotels were booked. I managed to get a room at a Days Inn several miles away. This place was a dump. Not as bad as a hotel that Diana and I stayed in last year on Long Island, NY - but real close! Needless to say I gave them a bad review on Travelocity!

I know its a few days late, but I saw Star Wars 3 over the weekend with Steve. Its a good movie (better than episodes 1-2, but not as good as 4-6). Thank God that Jar-Jar didn’t say anything in this movie! If you have followed the story up to now, its obvious what will happen, but not exactly how. The “how” part was shown, but not very well explained. They spent 1 1/2 hours leading up to the last 40 minutes where you find out how Anakin goes to the “dark side” of the Force. So the last 40 minutes was a rush job because “oh no, the movie is almost done, we need to have him go over to the dark side.” Such as life - a bunch of fluff to begin, and wind up with a hurry-up job in the end.

On other news - we’ll soon see what fate Wacko Jacko has in store. At least he’ll be convicted of boozing up minors, which carries a year jail term. But you know that he’ll never see the inside of a jail. Wishful thinking though.