Old Friend Wes by James Pate Williams, Jr., BA, BS, MSwE, PhD

I saw my old friend Wesley (Wes)  Cochran, a world class art collector of African American works on paper, at his Gallery on East La Fayette Square. As usual he was chewing on an unlit cigar. I was circling the inner ring of La Fayette Fountain and Statue Park. I yelled at Wes, “What are you doing old man?”, I could not hear his response. I deeply miss hearing one of my favorite people in this universe yelling at me at “What are you doing in my nurse’s station?” when I was naughty last year, 2019. Here is Wes’ website with pictures of a lot of his and his wife Missy’s art collection.

http://thecochrancollection.com/

I cannot talk Wes into spending more money for an unnecessary SSL certificate, so that the website would be a secure HTTPS web application. Also, I am not data mining IP addresses of the people that log onto his web application. I do not approve of collecting IP addresses without warning the customer or client of a website that his/her privacy is about to be violated.

Single Females in My Geographic Area by James Pate Williams, Jr., BA, BS, MSwE, PhD

Where do you find eligible (unmarried, ethically okay to date me) females in the Fortress LaGrange, Georgia area?  My criteria are rigorous:

  1. Beautiful by anybody’s aesthetic values.
  2. 32 to 52 years old
  3. A female who is reasonably intelligent by any standards preferably smarter than me.
  4. A female who is possibly a Christian but is tolerant of other belief systems.
  5. A female who is not hedonistic and narcissistic.
  6. A female who is not on her smartphone all the time.
  7. A female who loves jogging, running, and or walking and likes to work out at a gym.
  8. Preferably a scientist or at least someone who practices scientific principles.
  9. Etc. along similar lines of logic.

I know I am asking a lot at my ancient mariner age of 66 years old, but after putting up with the diametric opposite of 1 to 6 from 2010 to May 8, 2019, I feel somewhat entitled to set down the preceding conditions. Ask for what you want desire and want or forever hold your piece (peace?).

I thought I had found a brilliant, genius, female scientist in about 2006. However, she was ethically and morally bound to her place of work and husband. I think she had a fellow genius male scientist to go home to everyday.

Then in 2019 – 2020 I find myself in a self-similar situation with a female biological genius scientist. However, last I heard in October 2019 she was still divorced thus only bound by ridiculously rigid medical ethics not to date me.

No Kylie Minogue contrary to your song, it is not “Better the Devil You Know”!

Guitars and Me – A Love to Hate Relationship by James Pate Williams, Jr., BA. BS, MSwE, PhD

I received my first guitar as a graduation from high school gift from my father and mother. My dad purchased a 7-year-old 1964 Gibson SG Standard and a Fender Bandmaster amplifier head and dual speaker cabinet for $500 from George G. Daniel. George had paid $300 for the guitar alone in 1964, I guess. My dad paid to have two new Jensen 12-inch speakers installed in the cabinet.

I tried teaching myself about the guitar, but I needed some bootstrapping help in the beginning. A friend of mine showed me the A, A minor, B, C, D,  E, F, and G chords and some bar chords. He also showed some major scales.

Since I was ripped off in Atlanta, Georgia while trying to buy a pound of pot for $400, I knew the dope man would be angry and I would have to pay him back the $400. I promptly took my Fender Bandmaster amp and cabinet to a pawn shop in Columbus, Georgia to recoup some of the money I owed an angry illegal drug dealer. The year was 1972, I seem to recall. Anyway, I tried to get my dad to pay off the pawn ticket on the amp, but he refused. The night of my dad’s refusal I went totally stark raving angry and I was so mad I broke the neck of my beautiful first guitar. I remember there were two police cars each a block from my parents’ and my house at 601 Hill Street, LaGrange, Georgia during my tirade.

My dad much later paid for the Gibson SG to be repaired by a competent luthier in Atlanta, but I wanted the guitar sent back to Gibson for better repair job. I played that guitar sans an amplifier until about 1980 then I put down the guitar for twenty years. In 2000 my mother supplied me the funds to buy an inexpensive Martin D-1 acoustic guitar for roughly $800. Then in 2001 she paid for me to obtain a Fender America Deluxe Stratocaster electric guitar for around $1,020 and a Fender Deluxe Reverb amplifier. I practiced guitar most days from 2000 until 2010.

More information about my guitars to come in later text to be added to this blog entry.

Local Indigenous Plants and Fungi by James Pate Williams Jr., BA, BA, MSwE, PhD

Back in the 1970s I attempted follow in intellectual footsteps of the now largely discredited sociological cultural anthropologist, Carlos Castaneda. I tested on myself several extracts from indigenous plants and mushrooms. These naturally occurring drugs discovered by shamans were as follows:

  1. Jimsonweed (Datura stramonium) which I may remember contains the tropane alkaloid: atropine. Atropine has been used in medicine to dilate the pupils of human eyes for study by an ophthalmologist. It is also a hallucinogenic alkaloid. The antagonist of atropine is scopolamine.
  2. Amanita muscaria (the fly agaric also known as a mushroom) contains a few hallucinogenic alkaloids including an insecticide that kills flies that feed on the mushroom.
  3. Stropharia cubensis a mushroom that contains the hallucinogenic alkaloids psilocybin and psilocin.

In the halcyon days of my youth 17 – 21, I planned on becoming a pharmacognosist that is a scientist that hunts for useful alkaloids to be found in nature.  To follow in footsteps Castaneda and Manske (“The Alkaloids” an encyclopedia of useful drugs from the natural world in 70+ volumes), I would need to be well trained in botany, ecology, pharmacology, plant physiology, etc. Good thing I did not go down that path since I might have accidentally overdosed on a new alkaloid.

I have an anecdote I like to retell about obtaining samples of the mushrooms 3 above. There was a farmer on Whitesville Road next to the old Troup County High School who had cows in a large pasture. I knew that in August there would be psilocybin yielding mushrooms growing out of cow manure. A male partner in crime of mine and I just casually went up to farmhouse door and politely lied to the farmer about being students of mycology from Auburn University and we would like to gather some mushroom samples from his pasture. He said “Sure, just do not disturb my cows”.

“How could you leave me alone again” Lyric by Box, Byron, and Hensley and Blog Entry Title by James Pate Williams, Jr., BA, MSwE, PhD

The title lyric is from the song “Salisbury” off Uriah Heep’s second album released in the United States in the year I graduated from high school 1971. I probably was unaware of the album until late 1971 or early 1972. The album “Salisbury” along with its title track was my sexual encounter anthem back in the day. The album has other very meaningful tracks, but I will review the album later in this blog entry.

The blog title lyric is applicable to at least four significant females that entered my life then left me high and dry. I do not understand why I was abandoned and sentenced to live in misery and regret. The decades of their meaningfulness to me were the 1970s, 2000, 2010s, and now. I will not blurt out their names and where they worked. Being sentenced to solitary confinement and a singleton life is the very theme and bane of my existence. So much for my depressing facts of life.

Now back to the United States version of Salisbury. It has the following tracks in the order as written:

  1. “High Priestess” by Ken Hensley
  2. “The Park” by  Ken Hensley
  3. “Time to Live” by Mick Box, David Byron, and Ken Hensley (lead guitar, lead vocals, and keyboards, respectively)
  4. “Lady in Black” by Ken Hensley
  5. “Simon the Bullet Freak” by Ken Hensley
  6. “Salisbury” by Mick Box, David Byron, and Ken Hensley

Tracks 1 – 4 comprise side 1 and 5 – 6 are on side 2. Tracks 1, 3,  and 6 are perhaps best considered love songs with track 3 being especially poignant about love lost and never regained. Tracks 2 and 4 are anti-war anthems. It is interesting that there was a lot of protesting about our Vietnam War in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United Kingdom. Track 5 is an anti-opiate use song.

The lead guitarist Mick Box uses the wah-wah pedal a lot on track 1, 3, and 6. His use of that audio effect is as good as Jimi Hendrix with same effect or perhaps even superior to Jimi on tracks 3 and 6.

“High Priestess” is about eternal love. In track 2 the “speaker” of the song is lamenting the lost of his brother at “hand of needless war”. The setting of “The Park” is a children’s entertainment park. Track 3 is about a prisoner who is doing 20 years for killing a man who was abusing a woman. The prisoner is about to be released and wants the female heroine of the song to smile at him upon his freedom from prison. “Lady in Black” is a Goddess of War and Peace and the singer is asking for implements to kill his enemies and the Lady does not comply with warlike wishes. Track 5 is about a heroin addict who rips people off with a weapon and sometimes kills for money to get high. The album title track is a beautiful full classical orchestral and rock work of high artistry. It is about love gained then utterly lost thus the title of this blog line. Mick Box has at least three guitar solo passages utilizing his wah-wah pedal.

Path Genetic Algorithm to Solve the Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP) by James Pate Williams, Jr., BA, BS, MSwE, PhD

A genetic algorithm is a computer recipe for solving an function optimization problem using natural selection, gene crossover, and random mutations and thus mimics biological genetics.

The Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP) is a Nondeterministic Polynomial Time Problem and thus is hard to solve in real time on a computer. The TSP starts out with a number of cities to optimally tour once in a complete circuit.

Below are runs for the 29 city Western Sahara TSP which has an optimal solution of 27,603. I get 27,601.

http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/world/witour.html

Western Sahara 29 City Tour
Western Sahara 29 City Optimal Tour

The Djibouti 38 Cities TSP 6656:

http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/world/djtour.html

Djibouti TSP Minimum of 6659
Optimal Djibouti TSP Tour

My Guitar Chord and Scale Computer Software – Java (2003) and C# (2009) by James Pate Williams, Jr., BA, BS, MSwE, PhD

Java Guitar Chord and Scale Computer – A Major Scale
Java Guitar Chord and Scale Computer – A Minor Scale
C# Guitar Chord and Scale Computer – A Minor Scale and A Major Scale

I have a neat hardware “Snarling Dogs Chord and Scale Computer”, but it is a touch device which has a tendency to wear out.

Fortress Lagrange, Georgia by James Pate Williams, Jr., BA, MSwE, PhD

I am alive today at 66 years old due to the empathy, patience, and protection of my beloved hometown: LaGrange, Georgia. I should have been dead or totally lost in 1970s and 1980s. I am deeply indebted to my country, the United States of North America, for granting me the fundamental rights that are given to each citizen namely the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution of United States of North America. I know I complain a l lot about various governments mistreating me, but those entities have been quite tolerant of me despite all my shenanigans.

After almost decade and a half of many online applications, I finally was granted and honored to have three live interviews for federal jobs at my second most favorite federal entity, name redacted, in the year of 2018 and 2019. Previously, I was elated when I got as far as a telephone interview in either 2010 or 2011 and I  was happy, happy, happy until I received the rejection email. I also took online and in person tests for the name redacted entity in interval 2015 to 2017.

Multiple other paragraphs redacted.

Initial Comments on the Online Dating Website ZOOSK by James Pate Williams, Jr., BA, BS, MSwE, PhD

I joined the dating website ZOOSK on May 8, 2020. I am a paying member and spent $29.95 on the basic one-month plan and $9.99 for a feature of the website I felt would be beneficial. ZOOSK monetizes all its features. I have not gotten into many conversations with the females on the website. Here is one of my opening lines:

I like your pictures and I would like to chat with you. I am James Pate Williams, Jr, which is my whole legal name and I have been open and honest on the Internet since December 1995. I think you deserve a chance to look me up online before making any return comments.

Probably a lot of people believe I should not use the preceding disclaimer initially, but I vehemently disagree. I believe that potential dates need to be well informed before making the slightest commitment.