Mikeypedia – Page 11 – Stories from Behind the Keyboard

On this date (Dec 14)…

On this date (Dec 14) in the year 1503, Michel de Nostredame was born in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in the southern part of France. Their family name had originally been Gassonet, but his grandfather converted from Judaism to Catholicism and changed his name some 50 years earlier.

After spending quite a few years as an apothecary and wannabe doctor fighting the plague from France to Italy, he started to move away from medicine in favor of his more esoteric pursuits. He wrote an almanac for the year 1550 – and it was at this time that he Latinized his name to Nostradamus. His almanac was a success, so he decided to write more.

While he was alive, Nostradamus was financially successful – but he had no idea just how popular his stuff would be across time and space…even to today.

Wait-a-minute! He was Nostradamus – of course he knew how popular his stuff would be… he knew that PT Barnum would one day discuss the birth rate of suckers!

He knew that there would be people who would attempt to ground their theology, philosophy, and sanity on the stuff he made up. He knew that there would be wacko rocket scientists out there who would use his fun fantasies to explain away WWII, encourage the stockpiling of bottled water and duct tape the night before Y2K, and predict the end of the world.

What I want to know is why he didn’t warn us about any of the important stuff. He could have tipped us off about Jar Jar Binks, or Cliff Lee going to the Phillies, or that whole Pop Rocks & Coke thing, or that last episode of Seinfeld, or emo music… or maybe he could have given me a clue before that night when I was 16 and I took all the money I had and took this girl to a movie and to dinner and opened the doors for her and gave her my jacket and was all full of charm and wit and warmth and humor and bought her a flower and listened to her stories about her ex-boyfriend and did everything right and was a perfect gentleman and didn’t get any kind of positive response at all no matter what I said or did and I finally walked her to her door and watched her go inside without even a look back and I drove home all confused and wondered what in the world had gone wrong because I thought she had liked me which is why I asked her out in the first place and then I got home and realized that MY ZIPPER HAD BEEN DOWN THE ENTIRE NIGHT AND NOBODY TOLD ME!!!!!!!

Ya know, Mr. NostraFreakingDamus, a little heads up would’ve been nice!

On this date (Dec 10)…

Luther in Wittenberg — Remember, kids, it's Martin Luther... not Lex Luthor!

On this date (Dec 10) in 1520, Martin Luther burned his copy of the Exsurge Domine outside the Elster Gate in Wittenberg – a monumental moment in the Protestant Reformation.

Before you say “Huh?”, the Exsurge Domine was a papal bull – a letter of decree or declaration or charter from the pope. It was issued by Pope Leo X on June 15, 1520, as an official Vatican response to Luther’s 95 Theses and other views and writings that pointed out big problems with the papacy.

In this decree, the pope demanded that Luther retract 41 “errors” in his writings, teachings, and sayings. The time he was given to make these retractions expired on December 10, which was the day that he burned his copy of the bull, plus some other volumes of Canon law.

Since Luther didn’t go along to get along, the pope issued another bull, Decet Romanum Pontificem, on January 3, 1521, which excommunicated Martin Luther.

Borrowing the words of another rebel from ‘long ago’, Luther is rumored to have said “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.”

Of course, I’m the one who started this rumor, so it’s probably not true… but hey, now it’s on the Internet, and you know what they say!

On this date Special Edition!

On this date (Dec 9) in 1944, my dad – Jack L Cunningham Jr – was born in Phoenix, AZ.

Son of a western hottie and a sailor-turned-pipeliner, my dad was one of those guys who moved all over the place when he was growing up. I think he went to something like 64,319 different schools before he was in the 8th grade (I never exaggerate!)… and then he ended up in a little town in southeastern New Mexico called Jal.

One afternoon, while cruisin’ with his buddies, he met a pretty young thing named Twilla. As soon as he could, he married her and took her away from that one-horse town to the bright lights of Albuquerque. It was in that fabulous hippie metropolis that they had me… one of the best things to come out of his college experience (if I do say so myself!)…

He’s an outstanding man – excelling at just about everything he puts his hand to (he still talks about a successful ceiling fan installation from more than a decade ago!) – he taught me most of the good stuff I know… and some of the not-so-good stuff too!

If you’ve had the chance to meet him, congratulations! If you haven’t yet, I think it might benefit you to put that on your bucket list!

Happy Birthday, Dad! I love you!

On this date (Dec 8)…

On this date ( Dec 8 ) 1993, the US Secretary of Defense made the Global Positioning System (hereafter known as GPS) available to civilian use.

Back in ’57, the night after the Soviets launched Sputnik (the first man-made satellite, for those of you who don’t remember anything before the second season of Lost), geeks at MIT were able to track Sputnik’s orbit by its radio signal. Some rocket scientist there realized that if you can track satellites from Earth, you can probably do the opposite.

So the geniuses in the US Navy started working on it. By the mid-60s, they had come up with a way to help out their submarines, figuring the Doppler Effect on radio signals to get positional data.

The Navstar Global Positioning System launched its first official GPS satellite in 1978. They’d originally planned for 18 satellites, but as they realized that wouldn’t be enough, they eventually sent up 24 – which included 3 back-up satellites.

Then, on Dec 8, 1993, Secretary of Defense Aspin told Secretary of Transportation Pena that the system was operational, so GPS was opened to the Transportation Department, whose job it was to make it available for civilian use.

By April of 1995, the US Air Force Space Command declared that GPS was in “full operational capability”. Does anyone besides me think it’s just too cool that we have a Air Force Space Command???

At that time, the civilian GPS was accurate up to 100 meters – the military one was accurate to within 22 meters… pretty good.

By now, at the end of 2010, signal augmentation and improved monitoring capabilities have gotten to the point where GPS is now accurate up to 4 inches. Four inches!!

What started out as a way to more scientifically moan about how the Soviets were ahead of us in the Space Race has turned into a ubiquitous tool. Now we use it to find the nearest gas station, track taxis and buses, locate the garage apartment to deliver our rush packages, track the migratory patterns of whooping cranes, play strange geocaching games with other bored geeks, oh, and track our submarines.

Most importantly, in my opinion, GPS is the ultimate in face-saving technology. We tapped the brightest scientific and analytical minds in our nation, turned them lose with powerful computing equipment, and tasked them with a single, vital, essential goal: find a way to keep men from having to ask directions.

Mission accomplished!

Rosetta Stone Spanish

I wish I would have started this earlier, but better late than never!!

Mikey & I ordered Rosetta Stone Spanish levels 1-5 last month. We have a PO Box. I went EVERY day until it came — it didn’t take long at all! But any time was too long for me! I’d longed for this program for years! It was so expensive I didn’t think I could justify it… but now I wish I would have done it back when my dad first mentioned it. I think he told me about it 10 years ago or so… surely that’s wrong! Man, have I really put myself off that long?! For those wondering, I bought level 1-5 for $600. I got it on sale with free shipping. Then I paid $150 for the 2nd online id, so ~$750 total. Yeah, makes you gasp. Hope it’s worth it!!

We’ve studied Spanish before — I’ve taken 1-3 in college courses & Mikey took Span 2 with me a couple of years ago (he studied French in high school). We’ve been frustrated with how little Spanish we actually KNOW — knowing a list of vocabulary words doesn’t really help you speak to your Spanish-speaking friends!

Oh, I guess I should really give you my language background. Languages have always fascinated me. I wanted to be an interpreter… and here I am forever later still trying to learn my 2nd language — assuming you count me fluent in English. 🙂

I took Italian in high school. Then Spanish 1 when I was 19. I took French 1 with Spanish 2… and totally got confused. 🙂 Then I took a LONG break and tried to learn on my own with books & tapes. (Including Spanish & French.) Then back to Spanish 1 & 2 and ESL. Then 6 months in Guatemala as an English teacher. (NOT the way to learn Spanish — everyone wanted to practice English with me!) Then Spanish 3… and another break with language tapes. Then Spanish 2 with Mikey. Then more tapes….

And now, Rosetta Stone!!!

With great excitement, Mikey & I installed the language disks on our PC and off we went! We bought online service for both myself & Mikey — it’s worth it! They have games & stories & of course studio sessions with native speakers — awesome!! And for only $10 per person per month! (I bought 15 months, so there was a discount. Mikey’s time came with the language purchase.)

We zoomed through Level 1, Unit 1, Lesson 1. It was exciting to see the progress map that we would take: I could see the 5 language levels with 4 units each… and each unit with 4 lessons. Having been something of a gamer, I can’t wait to ding!!!

There was a button over on the side for “Studio”. I knew what this was — the online classes with native speakers!! I wanted to experience one!! I had no idea how it worked… and the only class open was a lesson 2 class. There was only 1 slot open, so I sent Mikey! I snuggled up next to him & listened in.

It was awesome!!! Of course it was too advanced for us — we didn’t know what concepts they were trying to explain or what all the vocabulary was, but I was hooked!! I couldn’t wait to get in there!!