A renaissance man for the twenty-first century!
This is the city of Zaragoza, in the region of Spain called Aragon. This is the famous Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar church, visited by Popes and pilgrims worldwide. It was here that many people think Hemingway drew inspiration for his short story, Hills Like White Elephants.
Or at least it could be, if you make the mistake of saying Hola instead of Kiaxo as you enter. For this market is nestled deep within the tough, unforgiving village of Zarautz, deep within the tough, unforgiving Gipuzkoa region of the country of Basque.
The tough, unforgiving people here speak Basque. The Basque language has no known connection with any other European language, and many scholars believe it is descended from what the Neanderthal humans spoke long ago. Filled with hard, explosive sounds such “k” and “x”, it is more appropriate to a people with massive jaws used for crushing nuts. Some words (such as love, or kxxittkxakkatxtaxkta) are used so seldomly they are difficult even for the locals to pronounce; other words (such as softness, compassion, generosity) have no local equivalents.
But I not only survived my visit but also thrived: I bought a wonderful, fresh-smoked sausage from the local market, which unfortunately then required hours to extract the fat from between my teeth. My jaw was never designed for crushing nuts.
Continuing the series, arguably the world’s oldest and best-known pillar of moss and slime, located in Aix en Provence, shows that my own name for these objects, pillars of moss and slime, is not half bad: this one is officially known as Fontaine Mossue. Interestingly, it is a natural hot water spring that dates back to the Roman times.
A guest blog, by Chuck Ritley
If you’ve been to California you’ve seen one of the Fry’s Super Stores. They’re fun to shop, with a huge selection of electronics. Or maybe you bought from their web site?
Here’s a little story. When I moved my family to The Valley, there was a Fry’s Supermarket less than a mile away – walking distance. Smaller than Safeway or Alpha Beta, with good prices and open 24 hours a day, so groceries were close to home.
Fry’s, a family-owned company, had about 10 of these stores in The Valley, and several brothers and sisters ran it. Back in the 70’s, one of the siblings was also a computer fan, and decided to test out a new section in one Fry’s market, down on the Lawrence Expressway. And this section was to be stocked with stuff for true computer aficionados, in between the grocery aisles. It soon became a favorite destination for all computer nerds.
I heard about this, had to see it, and one Sunday, since we needed stuff for dinner anyway, I loaded the family into the Jeep and headed for the Lawrence Expressway.
Arriving at the “new” Fry’s was pure heaven for a computer nerd. Oh, it was still a true supermarket, but there were aisles full of “stuff”. (Bear in mind there were no ready-made PCs. Whatever you needed, you made.) And Fry’s had bread boards, wiring, chips, power supplies, connectors, memory, resistors, CPUs, and tools. Anything you needed to build your vision. (I never ran into Steve Wozniak, but I have no doubts that he was a frequent visitor.)
The family went separate ways. My wife had a grocery list, my youngest son found the aisle with comic books, while my oldest son started perusing the electronic stuff. (This should have given me a clue that he would soon be drawn to computers.) I marveled at a Zilog Z80 – although I wasn’t quite sure how or what I would do with one. But I did find a memory chip that I needed, and put it in the cart.
We left for the day with enough stuff for an evening barbecue: ground sirloin, buns, salad stuff, gallon of milk, 2 comic books, and a 2 mb memory chip. And then went back to search for my oldest son, still perusing the logic section.
So it was a fun stop. But also a go-to late-evening stop for Valley denizens who were inventing the next generation of electronics. Because it was open 24 hours, at 2 to 3am it was haunted by garage inventors who needed a power supply, bread board, or a handful of connectors. Why wait until the next day? And to fuel these up-all-night pioneers, Fry’s had the junk foods needed to keep them going. Stuff like high-caffeine sodas and Slim Jims. Remember Jolt Cola?
Many years later, I walked into a spanking new Fry’s store near my home. Boring! Just another big PC store. And a boring crowd debating which mouse was better and asking for the free Windows T-shirt.
Much time has passed, and Fry’s has 2 kinds of stores now: food markets and computer bazaars. But I often wonder. What ideas were born in that one old Fry’s on the Lawrence Expressway? The Altair, the Adam, or the PET computers? Did Steve W. come by for solder and a Jolt Cola? Did some guy tired of floppies come up with the Quantum, Maxtor, or WD hard drive? Or the Hayes or 3Com modems? Did Adam Osborne stop by during a long night of development? But like the apricot orchards, it’s long gone.
This guest blog was submitted by Chuck Ritley, an adjunct professor of computer science with several major universities in the San Antonio area.
Here are the links to the other blogs in this series:
Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 1: “The Way It Was”
Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 2: “First Wave of Characters”
Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 3: “Evolution of the Geek”
Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 4: “When Giant Frys.com Sold Pork Chops”
Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 5: “Mr. Yee and the Albrae Street – Taiwan Connection”
Bürkliplatz in the summer.
Bürkliplatz in the winter.
Continuing the series, this pillar of moss and slime is located in Montreux, on the eastern shore of Lake Geneva. As you can see, as far as biotopes go, this one is just getting started. I’ll have to drop by next year and see how it’s changed.
But, there are still plenty of other pillars of moss and slime that I’d like to share as time permits.
Dear Mr. Tradecraft, At restaurants, bars and coffee shops I know I should always sit facing the door or window, but what happens when this isn’t possible? Is this rule so important that I should look for a different place to eat or drink? – Beginning Operator Needs Discussion
Dear BOND. I get this question a lot – it might be my most asked question! The short answer is: eat or drink where you like, because where you sit really doesn’t matter.
You have to remember, BOND, we live in a world of CCTV, drones, cell phones, and GPS. So the tradecraft we use today is a lot different than what George Smiley or his contemporaries practiced during their jaunts through East Berlin. There’s what we call the Golden Assumptions of Tradecraft, or GAT-Rules. GAT Rule 1: assume you are under observation, everywhere, all the time. GAT Rule 2: assume that if they want you dead, you’re dead.
Now, BOND, the only thing you’ll likely accomplish by looking for a special seat is to send off those oh-so-subtle body language signals that might be picked up by innocent non-combatants such as waitresses or passers-by. That can only complicate the successful completion of your mission. No, BOND, your best course of action is to assume you are being watched, and rely on your heightened senses and quick reflexes to deal with any eventuality that may come along.
So, BOND, just relax and find a good spot to enjoy your meal. Because in our business, you never know if it will be your last.
Note from Ken: After many decades, Mr. Tradecraft remains a much-sought-after operator for the most demanding contracts with governments, corporations, and private parties alike. He has over 30 years of international field experience that span the whole spectrum of clandestine services, from cut-outs, snatch-and-grabs, bag jobs, surveillance, to wet work — much of it spent in red zones. His retirement increasingly near, Ask Mr. Tradecraft is the pro bono way he gives back to the community. If you’d like to ask him a question, please submit it to Ken – but due to obvious reasons there may be a wait of many months before he can respond to your question.
A guest blog, by Chuck Ritley
We think we know what “geek” means. Wrong! We believe anyone who downloads “apps” to a pad or tab is a geek. Or kids who download free “hacks” (posted by genuine hackers) are hackers. Wrong again.
Geek-dom is an evolution. When I traveled and wrote about The Valley – and when I moved there with my family – I met the real thing: folks who invented geek-dom. Here are some of them. (Yes, I have changed names and identities.)
The Ice Cream Man: I noticed this at a software development facility – every day at 2 o’clock, an ice cream truck rolled into the parking lot and a mob of programmers met it like a “Star Wars” opening. Curious after he left, I strolled through the coding department – and discovered the engine that drove operating system development. Windows were open and the air was fogged and pungent. In a minute, I was pretty high myself. “Okay”, I thought, “now I know why I have trouble reading code.” Argue if you will, but the OS always worked just fine. When I visited similar spots, guess what — an Ice Cream Man.
Today, we have a DEA. Because of that, I think OS’s don’t work as well (Microsoft sends hundreds of patches a week). That’s because the Ice Cream men are gone.
Beatrice the Micro-coder: not many of us micro-code. Yes, we write programs, high or low level, forgetting that control chips are also programmed. Chips and controllers have tiny programs supplying logic. Compact stuff, this is written in languages close to pure binary. Even X-86 hotshots are stumped.
Beatrice was the star. She thought in binary. I can’t verify this, but it must be so because she rarely conversed with her fellow beings, except for one-word answers. But all of her controllers worked.
Being a star, she could be odd. She never wore shoes – summer or winter, only seemed to have one outfit and – this is a guess – only bathed in months without an “R” in them. (A good reason for limiting conversations.) She also brought pets to work – sometimes cats or strange creatures.
Gregory the CPU Genius: multi-degreed from Cal Tech, he was a true logic genius. He designed internal CPU logic and, like Beatrice, seemed to think in binary. I say “seemed” because he rarely, if ever, spoke. (There being no verbal equivalent for “XOR”.) In engineering meetings he scribbled notes, and silently passed them to the engineering director. If he scribbled a lot when you spoke, you were probably wrong.
His daily dress was in Hong-Kong casual style, with black smock and cloth slippers. I never saw the slippers wet, so he didn’t go out on rainy days. He might have lived in his office.
That said, here’s how to recognize a genuine geek:
This guest blog was submitted by Chuck Ritley, an adjunct professor of computer science with several major universities in the San Antonio area.
Here are the links to the other blogs in this series:
Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 1: “The Way It Was”
Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 2: “First Wave of Characters”
Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 3: “Evolution of the Geek”
Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 4: “When Giant Frys.com Sold Pork Chops”
Reflections of a Valley Guy – Part 5: “Mr. Yee and the Albrae Street – Taiwan Connection”
The Zibilemärit is held on the fourth Monday of every November. It is a huge, world-class, one-day-only street market in the UNESCO city of Bern, Switzerland. What is so unusual about the market: it opens at 3:00 AM, by 4:00 AM the market is already full of many thousands of visitors, transported here from all over Switzerland by special trains that the Swiss Federal Railways schedule.
And aside from beer and wine, the only product that is sold at the dozens and dozens of stands and vendors: onions and garlic. The best part is all the hot food you can eat: garlic soup, onion soup, garlic bread, onion cookies, you-name-it-with-garlic-and-onion!
The history of the market dates back over 650 years: after a fire destroyed much of Bern, the villagers in the neighboring village of Freibourg volunteered to help rebuild the city. In exchange for this kindness, the Fribourgers were allowed to sell their goods in Bern, free of taxes.
No – the “x” does not mark the golden dome of the famous Dome of the Rock.
Surprisingly, the most interesting feature of the Church of Dominus Flevit on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem is not very well known: the nave does not point east, but rather it is perfectly situated so that the cross in the window points exactly at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.