by me, Kerry Burgess, 12/22/2025 4:47 PM
On the local antenna broadcast live-tv news channel I view, one of their photographers has a section they title Back to the Archives
Tonight's installment was entertaining because of the ending of the segment
It was overall about X-mas toys from year 1994.
At then ending, a boy (about 9 years old perhaps) is shown climbing aboard a toy rocking horse
The original commentator says it has "a high-tech twist" and I think that's hilarious
This ridiculously labeled "high-tech" toy for $23 in year 1994 (equivalent to about $50 in year 2025 according to CPI Inflation calculator) simply makes a horse sound as the kid rocks back and forth.
Hilarious
I am thinking that was actually Sam Altman on the toy horse (was not but that's just how idiotic are those A.I. Kiddies today)
Previously, here, developed by me, Kerry Burgess, excerpt:
From 4/22/1985 ( ) To 4/24/2006 ( from The Seattle Times newspaper: Microsoft is farming in Quincy? ) is 7672 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 11/4/1986 ( as me, Kerry Burgess, my official enlisted US Navy documents includes: Date Completed - US Navy Fire Control Technician Class "A", Service School Command, Naval Training Center, Great Lakes, Illinois, - leading to permanent assignment until 1990 to CF-division, Missile Plot - guided-missiles Fire Control Computers Complex (UNIVAC digital-computers Mk152 Terrier System for, primarily, SM2-ER {Extended Range} Standard Missiles ordnance), USS Wainwright CG-28, US Navy, while enlisted paygrade E-5, designated Fire Controlman Petty Officer Second Class (FC2) ) is 7672 days
Sam Altman
From Wikipedia
Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and chief executive officer of OpenAI since 2019 (he was briefly dismissed but reinstated in November 2023). He is considered one of the leading figures of the AI boom.
Red Storm Rising (1986) - Tom Clancy, author
(from internet transcript)
excerpt, Chapter 20 – The Dance of the Vampires
Aboard Nimitz, Toland could feel the carrier heeling into a radical turn, her engines advanced to flank speed, driving the massive warship at over thirty-five knots. Her nuclear-powered escorts, Virginia and California, were also tracking the Kingfish, their own missiles trained out on their launchers.
The Kingfish were at eight thousand feet, one hundred miles out, covering a mile every four seconds. Each had now selected a target, choosing the largest within their fields of view. Nimitz was the nearest large ship, with her missile-ship escorts to her north.
Tico launched her first quartet of missiles as the targets reached a range of ninety-nine miles. The rockets exploded into the air, leaving a trail of pale gray smoke. They had barely cleared the launch rails when the mounts went vertical and swiveled to receive their reloads. The load-and-fire time was under eight seconds. The cruiser would average one missile fired every two seconds. Just over three minutes later, her missile magazines were empty. The cruiser emerged from the base of an enormous gray arch of smoke. Her only remaining defenses were her gun systems.
The SAMs raced in at their targets with a closing speed of over two thousand miles per hour, directed in by the reflected waves of the ship's own fire-control radars. At a range of a hundred fifty yards from their targets, the warheads detonated. The Aegis system did quite well. Just over 60 percent of the targets were destroyed. There were now eighty-two incoming missiles targeted on a total of eight ships.
Other missile-equipped ships joined the fray. In several cases two or three missiles were sent for the same target, usually killing it. The number of incoming "vampires" dropped to seventy, then sixty, but the number was not dropping quickly enough. The identity of the targets was now known to everyone. Powerful active jamming equipment came on. Ships began a radical series of maneuvers like some stylized dance, with scant attention paid to station-keeping. Collision at sea was now the least of anyone's worries. When the Kingfish got to within twenty miles, every ship in the formation began to fire off chaff rockets, which filled the air with millions of aluminized Mylar fragments that fluttered on the air, creating dozens of new targets for the missiles to select from. Some of the Kingfish lost lock with their targets and started chasing Mylar ghosts. Two of them got lost, and selected new targets on the far side of the formation.
The radar picture on Nimitz suddenly was obscured. What had been discrete pips designating the positions of ships in the formation became shapeless clouds. Only the missiles stayed constant: inverted V-shapes, with line vectors to designate direction and speed. The last wave of SAMs killed three more. The vampire count was down to forty-one. Toland counted five heading for Nimitz Topside, the final defensive weapons were now tracking the targets. These were the CIWS, 20mm Gatling guns, radar-equipped to explode incoming missiles at a range of under two thousand yards. Designed to operate in a fully automatic mode, the two after gun mounts on the carrier angled up and began to track the first pair of incoming Kingfish. The portside mount fired first, the six-barrel cannon making a sound like that of an enormous zipper. Its radar system tracked the target, and tracked the outgoing slugs, adjusting fire to make the two meet.
The leading Kingfish exploded eight hundred yards from Nimitz's port quarter. The thousand kilograms of high explosive rocked the ship. Toland felt it, wondering if the ship had been hit. Around him, the CIC crewmen were concentrating frantically on their jobs. One target track vanished from the screen. Four left.
The next Kingfish approached the carrier's bow and was blasted out of the sky by the forward CIWS, too close aboard. Fragments ripped across the carrier's deck, killing a dozen exposed crewmen.
Number three was decoyed by a chaff cloud and ran straight into the sea half a mile behind the carrier. The warhead caused the carrier to vibrate and raised a column of water a thousand feet into the air.
The fourth and fifth missiles came in from aft, not a hundred yards apart. The after gun mount tracked on both, but couldn't decide which to engage first. It went into Reset mode and petulantly didn't engage any.
The Seattle Times
Monday, April 24, 2006
Brier Dudley
Microsoft is farming in Quincy?
By Brier Dudley
Seattle Times staff columnist
Brier Dudley's blog
It's finally clear why Microsoft is building huge, windowless buildings in farm country east of the Cascades.
They have a lot to do with Google, and that growing pile of CDs, videotapes and snapshots taking over your closet. They're also a monument to Microsoft's 10-year odyssey to become a leading Internet company. It's been a game of catch-up, but the company seems energized by new executives, a new online strategy and big investments such as the mysterious buildings in Quincy, not far from the Columbia River in Grant County.
A few weeks ago, Microsoft paid $1.08 million for 75 acres, where it's building three structures totaling 1.4 million square feet. That's about the size of 10 Costcos.
Inside they'll hold thousands of data-serving computers. The industry calls them server farms, and Microsoft's will be huge, taking advantage of cheap hydroelectricity and fiber-optic connections to an Internet arterial crossing the state.
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 5:03 PM Pacific-timezone USA Monday 12/22/2025
