On Aug 22, 2005, at 5:17 PM, Marcel Duchamp wrote:
>
> It works like this:
> wife: "Turn on the sprinklers!"
> me: "Yup."
>
This is California where it doesn't rain in the summer, so you need
to water everything.  the house came with 36 zones of sprinklers,
controlled by three separate 12-zone controllers (which seems to
be near "as big as they come.")  They don't coordinate.  Their
configuration is baroque (probably limited by the 256bytes of
ram in an 8051) and entirely volatile.  I can fit a schedule
that lists every freaking minute of the year in a $10 flash
card these days, and a used PC or palmtop costs less than the
price of single 12-zone controller at the gardening store (even
neglecting that they seem to multiply like coat hangers around here.)
It's all STUPID.  I can do better than that.  It may take me 10
years of spare time, but I'm sure I can do better :-)

BillW
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