Revolutionary War Monument Ground Breaking

Hopkinsville, KY... TSGS President Don Counts and Vice-President John G. West attended the ground breaking ceremony yesterday evening (17 May 2012) in the Kentucky Veterans Cemetery West (one of four state veteran's cemeteries). [Click on photos to get a larger image]

[photo at entrance to cemetery]

The monument is being erected in honor of the Revolutionary War Soldiers and Patriots that lived or were buried in Christian County, KY.

[East side of monument]

The 9-foot tall monument will be officially dedicated on 04 July 2012 featuring 71 men recognized for providing us an independent nation.  It is being erected by the John Manire SAR Chapter of the National Society Sons of the American Revolution (NSSAR).

[List of the 71 men to be recognized]

Counts and West are active members of the Ohio Valley SAR Chapter of the Indiana Society of NSSAR, having each served as Chapter Presidents and both are currently serving as State Officers of the Indiana Society of NSSAR.  For John West this was an exceptionally special occasion as his ancestor Thomas West, Jr. is one of the 71 men being honored. 

[NSSAR President General David Sympson presented the  Keynote Speech]

The Keynote Speech was delivered by NSSAR President General David Sympson.  A few of the other distinguished guests included John Manire SAR Chapter President Robert L. Fears (Master of Ceremonies) and one of my cousins genealogist Tommy Henderson of the same chapter.

[Charles A. Henderson]

The 3-member committee for the Memorial & Ground Breaking were Charles A. Henderson (Civilian Aide to the U.S. Secretary of the Army), William Turner (Historian, Publisher) and Judge James G. Adams.

[William Turner]

[Judge James G. Adams]

- Photos taken by JGWest and article compiled by JGWest

Tombstone Thursday - Newlin

Frederick L. Newlin, Jr.

1928-1999

Martha A. Braun

(married 1952)

1930-2010

- Photo taken between Dec 2010 & Feb 2011 by JGWest

[Tombstone Thursday is dedicated in memory of Donald G. West 1952-2000]

"Tex Justus"

Tex Justus

Evansville & Boonville, local Television & Radio celebrity, is featured (with his band) in the Evansville Courier in Pat Sides' photo History Lesson below.

Please click on image to get a larger view to read the article.  

Olus "Tex" Justus married Rebecca Long in Owensboro, KY in 1939.

Rebecca Long and my mother, Bernadine Long, were first cousins - JGWest

- Image sent to me by Don Counts

ENGINEER'S REPORT –Tech Info

'


Don Counts sent me an article "This supercomputer is rethinking the future of software"
By Nick Heath at TechRepublic published on April 18, 2012 with some really cool stuff in it.



      Supercomputers will soon be one thousand times more powerful than
      they are today, and the UK has enlisted an IBM Blue Gene/Q to help develop
      software for the machines.

      Five years from now supercomputers will be able to carry out more than one 

billion billion calculations per second and such blistering speed will require an

overhaul of how we write software.

WOW, right?


This article uses the term "Flops."  So, what is a flop?  
Flops stands for floating point operations per second, and, is a measure of a computer's performance, especially in fields of scientific calculations that make heavy use of floating-point calculations.  And a flop count is a count of these operations per second... just some everyday basic stuff.  There are the same common prefixes that we have grown so fond of (and pretend that we comprehend the values), such as Kilo, Mega, Giga & Tera that we put with the suffix "bytes" as in Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes & Terabytes... pretty much "old hat!"   It is so "yesterday!"  But, now, we can soon be speaking in terms of Kiloflops (1,000 flops), Megaflops (one million flops), Gigaflops (one billion flops) & Teraflops (one trillion flops).  Truthfully, I do not care what you are talking about "one trillion" is a lot!  But, we do not stop at such small numbers, let us add these: Petaflops (one quadrillion flops), Exaflops (one quintillion flops), Zettaflops (one sextillion flops) & finally, Yottaflops (one septillion flops).  Folks a "septillion" looks like this ~ 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that is a "1" with 24 zeros behind it!!!).  That string of numbers might as well be a zillion or more to me.  I suddenly realized that I do not know how much is a "zillion?"  Well, I found out that there is no such number except it is used to express very large unknown numbers, such as:  "There must have been a zillion ants on the counter!"  Ok, then, are there any numbers larger than "septillion?"  Of course there are several larger groups: Octillion, Nonillion, & Decillion!


Just remember that for most of you this will be the first you will hear of these supercomputers of the very near future that can do more than a billion billion calculations per second!  You will be the first in your family to know what a Petaflop or Yottaflop means!  Here is the link to Nick Heath's blog: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/european-technology/this-supercomputer-is-rethinking-the-future-of-software/489?tag=content;siu-container to read his article.


- Compiled by JGWest