On Thursday 26 October 2017 21:21:37 Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote: > On 27/10/17 13:02, Gene Heskett wrote: > > On Thursday 26 October 2017 15:22:35 Nicholas Geovanis wrote: > >> " And there's also systemd, that is slowly phagocytosing the UNIX > >> part of Linux...." > > > > I'm old enough to have taken phonics in grade school, but that > > obviously invented word could probably be replaced by a 4 letter > > adjective... > > Invented, yes, but over 130 years ago. The term phagocyte was coined > in about 1883 by Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Claus to describe the cells > discovered by Ilya Mechnikov, winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize in > Medicine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Wilhelm_Claus > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Élie_Metchnikoff > https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1908/ > https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1908/mechni >kov-bio.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phagocyte > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phagocytosis > > And you would need a verb in the present tense, not an adjective, so > probably more than four letters. > I agree. And obviously you have more educational credits hanging on the wall than I. My interest in the physical world did not include such early medicinal work, I had more interest in such things as capacitors and resistors, and am quite comfortable making vacuum tubes, or smart sand, do usefull work.
But my formal was terminated at my freshman year in high school by a health problem, which when the cause, then several years into my working life, an allergy to milk! So stopping that was a huge help. But by then it was a bit late to attempt going back to high school, so I kept on covering the service benches for electronics related stuff. Eventually migrated to broadcasting, and put in about 25 years occupying the Chief Engineers office, last 18 of that as the CE at WDTV here in West Virginia, USA. I have been accused of walking on water electronically so these days, when I am purchaseing parts to make whatever and they want a business name, I am WOWElectronics. Along the way to 83 yo, I did collect other papers to hang on the wall, like a 1st Phone (never cracked a book, walked in cold) and a C.E.T. (ditto). Then my new wife, back in '89, has a Bachelors in Music, so she had me go take the GED. Didn't hear for 3 weeks, I ran into the test administrator at the P.O. one morning & asked about it. His reply was "why do you care? You were just doing it for the exercise, weren't you?" But I got it in the mail a couple days later. And I have a Diploma from the University of Hard Knocks, an honorary from the wife's alma mater. Its been quite a ride, all these years. Some sad parts of course, but impressing the frogs, carving pricy wood or making a machine run by linuxcnc, and now caring for that wife in the last year that COPD might yet give her, all combines to keep me out of the bars. You do what you have to do... > Kind regards, To you too, Ben Caradoc-Davies. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
