Wheaties & cream
March 29, 2008
A month or so ago I was cruising the long cereal aisle at the supermarket, trying to make an important economic decision, when I spied the familiar Wheaties box. Man, did that bring back memories of gorging on a big bowl of sugared Wheaties, lathered with cream from the top of the milk bottle. My mouth watered.
Yesterday I indulged once again. Same Wheaties, but with Half & Half. Ambrosia! Skim milk just doesn’t cut it. I got to wondering how long Wheaties has been around, so I asked Mr. Wikipedia, and this is what I found.
It all started in 1922, in Minnesota, when a clinician accidentally spilled a wheat bran mixture onto a hot stove. By 1925 they had figured out how to box it for the market, and the name Wheaties won over Nutties and Gold Medal Wheat Flakes. It became the Breakfast of Champions in 1933.
Some Wheaties trivia:
- 1926 - First ever singing commercial. “Have you tried Wheaties” (to the tune of Jazz Baby).
- 1934 - First athlete on a Wheaties box: Lou Gehrig.
- 1988 - Michael Jordan holds the record for most times on a Wheaties box, 18 times, followed by Tiger Woods in 1998 at 14 times.
It looks like my heyday roughly coincides with Wheaties’ heyday, but Wheaties is still forging ahead while I’m slowing down. I think Wheaties will win the race.
Dave, which he just boosted his cholesterol count a tad.
The keyboard gene
March 24, 2008
Where does chronic keyboard addiction (CKA) come from in the Ayers clan? I don’t know whether genes can properly be said to come from anywhere or anyone, but several of the family seem to suffer varying degrees of this pernicious CKA malady.
So here is the data. Make of it what you will.
Since dear Marilyn has a pathological hatred of any keyboard, (I think maybe a Royal portable typewriter fell on her head some time in her past), I shall start by assuming that I am the prime propagator of the KB gene in our family. We have four children, and one of those decided to skip a generation, but the other three have shown signs of suffering from CKA. The most seriously afflicted is our firstborn, Larry, followed closely by his sister, Linda, and arguably her matronly younger sister, Leslie. Only equally matronly Laura seems immune.
As an aside, I remember when my brothers and I accompanied mom and dad on a motor trip from Mt. Lebanon, PA, to Niagara Falls in 1947. It was billed as sort of a second honeymoon for the folks, and it got off to a rough start. Somewhere before Buffalo, NY, Dad ribbed Mom a bit about being a matron, now that she had turned forty. Three pairs of big ears in the back seat picked up on it and started calling her “matron mom.” Big mistake. I thought for a while that dad would throw us out of the car and make us walk the rest of the way. And then there was the incident in the hotel room at the Falls when they left us alone while they went out and held hands or something. But I digress.
Larry’s oldest, Tyler, seems to have received a dollop of the KG, and it’s a little too early to tell about great-granddaughter Franziska. And I’m not sure about Tyler’s sis Adrian, although we do get e-mails from her, mis-punctuation and all.
The next logical step in this scientific inquiry is to look back in my past to see where I might have picked up the KG. I think first of mom’s brother, Uncle Bus. I remember his wonderfully descriptive letters written from Okinawa, but he didn’t type. The only other possibility that I know of on mom’s side was her sister, Auntie Lois. She was a Navy Wave in the big war, and she typed a blue streak.
As far as I can remember, and that isn’t very far, no one on dad’s side of the family used a keyboard at all. There apparently were no bloggers then to get them started. I have to smile when I try to picture grandpa Ayers typing away from his combine, or grandma Ayers turning from her laptop to wring the head off a chicken for dinner.
This is getting ridiculous. I’m sorry. (Sort of.)
Dave, clicking away with abandon.
Hale-Bopp revisited
March 7, 2008
Credit & Copyright: A. Dimai, (Col Druscie Obs.), AAC
The Great Comet of 1997 was photographed from the Dolomite mountains near Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy., The image was chosen as the AstronomyPicture of the Day on March 2, 2008. (Click image to enlarge)
On Sunday night, April 6, 1997, I was over the North Atlantic, flying to Brussels on the way to Israel and a 12 day study tour of the Holy Land. All through that short night, Hale-Bobb hung over the left wing tip as I gazed out of my window and thought about God’s cosmos. My puny earth-bound mind struggled to conceive of God as creator of not only Earth, but of ‘heavens’ of which man still knows only a smidgen, orbiting telescopes notwithstanding.
Such scientific knowledge of God’s cosmos is not essential to my salvation, but it sure is an important lesson in humility.
Part of my morning on-line routine is studying a bit of Scripture and gazing at the Astronomy Picture of the Day. The NETBible and APOD have permanent tabs on my Firefox browser for my daily lesson in humility.
Dave, tiny speck.
Half century in space
February 1, 2008
Fifty years ago on January 31, 1958, Explorer 1 was launched into earth orbit by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, thus kicking off the era of space exploration for the U.S.
This was brought to my attention by the Astronomy Picture of the Day that pops up on my desktop automagically every morning.
One of the experiments performed by the thirty pound satellite was measuring the density of electrons and ions in space. The designer of this experiment was James A. Van Allen from nearby Iowa University. These measurements by Explorer 1 led to the discovery of the Van Allen Radiation Belt that encircles the earth.
Time marches on. The little Explorer remained in silent orbit until 1970, and Dr. Van Allen died in 2006 at the age of 91.
In 1958 I launched my engineering/business career by signing on with Arthur Collins at Collins Radio Company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Although I worked with earth-bound radio systems, Collins Radio was a pioneer in space communications. My memories of those Collins years are a hazy, pleasant collage of engineering laboratories that were a young engineer’s heaven, travel to exotic (for me) places, pulling on a rising pheasant in the cornfields of eastern Iowa, and catching (and eating) crappies by the dozen.
Dave, not sure how much to make of this coincidence.
— -. . — .- -. .—-. … -… .. -.. - — … .- …- . — — .-. … . -.-. — -.. . -
October 8, 2007
There aren’t many of us still around who can read the title of this article. In fact, I don’t blame you if you are bored stiff by dots and dashes. When I received my first amateur radio license in 1947 (I think), I had to pass a code test at a speed of 15 words-per-minute. From the Wall Street Journal I learn that there is one Chuck Adams who is busy translating novels into Morse code. Aren’t you impressed?
— -. . — .- -. .—-. … -… .. -.. - — … .- …- . — — .-. … . -.-. — -.. . - WSJ.com
Nostalgic for simpler days, retired astrophysicist Chuck Adams is translating classics of boys’ lit into a language he fears is going the way of kit radios and marbles: Morse code.
Holed up in his high-desert home crammed with computers, radio receivers and a very patient wife, Mr. Adams uses homemade software to download online books with expired copyrights, convert the typed words into Morse code tones and record them on compact discs he sells on the Internet.
Several years ago, as I walked along on my daily save-my-heart stroll, I wondered if there were any remnants of Morse code still lodged in my memory bank. I started dah-ditting street signs along my route. It was slow going at first, but after a while it came back to me. At first I had to stop to recall the Morse code for certain infrequently used letters, but after a while I had my translation speed up to, maybe, 5 wpm.
Many of those who still know Morse code test their skills with a German computer game called Rufz, the standard for determining world transcription-speed rankings. Players listen to coded, five-character call signs, combinations of letters, symbols and numbers that identify individual license holders. The faster and more correctly they type them, the more points they score. (Transcribing regular text is much slower.)
Last month in Belgrade, Goran Hajosevic broke 200 words per minute — an extraordinary pace. Mr. Adams is tied for eighth in the world, at more than 140 words per minute.
I ham radio’d away using CW (continuous wave, read Morse code) for several years, but I never reached real proficiency, topping out at perhaps 30 wpm.
Dave who has a tendency to lie about some things.
Killer bass!
May 18, 2007
Some of you may remember the possibly apocryphal story about former President Jimmy Carter’s canoe paddle battle with a killer rabbit. I recently endured a similar attack from a very upset Largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides). No national press coverage, please.
Last Sunday morning, about 8 o’clock, I was standing on the deck of my Ranger bass boat casting a chugging topwater lure toward the end of a boat dock near our Lake of the Ozarks condo. Suspended under the dock floats was a school of excited bass, mostly one- or two-pounders with an occasional larger one. It was one of those very rare mornings where there was a splash and a hook-up on almost every cast. In fact, a pair of bass fought over my lure on one cast and both of them got hooked - one on the front treble hook and the other on the rear hook. Now that was fun!
The fun ended when I reached down to lip one of the larger bass. Lipping a bass with a mouthful of treble hooks isn’t a very smart thing to do. In a flash and with a quick twist, that killer bass stapled my right thumb and forefinger together with a treble hook, a barb buried deep in each digit. How awkward.
The bass was fairly cooperative as I moved back to the end of the boat to get a pliers out of the tackle box. I clumsily unhooked the bass and clipped the line at the lure. That helped a bit. I swear that that bass had a smirk on his face as I returned him to the deep.
I idled the boat left-handed back to the slip and wrestled it onto the lift, the lure still dangling from my right hand, I made my self-conscious way up to the condo, hopped in the car and drove six miles to the Emergency Room of Lake Regional Hospital, where it turned out they were well prepared for such casualties of the piscatorial wars. They quickly freed me from those nasty barbs, patted me on the back, and sent me on my way. On the way out I noticed a large wall display with dozens of lures mounted on it, mute testimony to the carelessness of my fellow fisher-folk.
Moral: Don’t go fishing when you should be in church.
Dave, which he repented and caught a fat five-pounder on Monday.
Silicon skyscrapers
May 5, 2007
To one who grew up in the age of vacuum tubes, microelectronics still seems like science fiction. But then, I’m the guy whose education finally ground to a halt in the super-abstract world of quantum physics. I guess everyone has a mental boundary beyond which one can’t travel. So articles like this fill me with a lot of wonder but little comprehension.
Microelectronics | Growing up | Economist.com
That is the thinking behind making transistors out of nanowires. The wires in question—strands of silicon—are but a few tens of nanometres thick. Though they make up for that in height (they are 2,000 nanometres tall). Their slight diameters mean that zillions of them could be crowded on to a single chip.
Nanowires forsooth! I challenge you to try to visualize nano-anything. A nano-inch is .000000001″ (or somethng like that - my math hasn’t survived the decades very well, either.) Maybe this is a religious thing. Lacking (and not missing) an electron microscope, I must take the existence of a nanowire on faith.
And there is another thing that makes these transistors radically different from others. Microelectronic components are produced by etching. A silicon chip is coated with layers of the chemicals needed to make the components in question. Those components are then carved out of these layers by chemical solvents that remove unwanted areas and leave the components as islands on the surface of the chip. Dr Riess’s nanowires, by contrast, are grown from scratch by exposing the chip to a silicon-rich gas. The desired pattern of nanowires has previously been picked out on the chip’s surface with spots of a catalyst that cause silicon from the gas to be deposited. The wires thus sprout only where the catalyst fertilises them.
I confess no comprehension at all of the foregoing. It’s a strange and marvelous world we live in.
Dave, still adding to his list of things he doesn’t understand.
My Blessing era ends
January 22, 2007
I don’t much enjoy annual meetings as a rule, but today’s was an exception. For the last time in 24 years I represented a Blessing entity at the Annual Meeting of Members of Blessing Corporate Services, Inc. Presiding were Michael Foster as Chairman of the BCS Board of Directors, and Brad Billings, BCS President and CEO. The Blessing auditorium was packed wall-to-wall with representatives of a myriad of Blessing member organizations, as well as key staff.
The luncheon was very enjoyable, with good food and good company, and with all of the Blessing Family around me. I sat at table with Mike Klingner, Ted Niemann, Maureen Kahn, Peter Leffman, and Hal Oakley and had a chance to greet many other good friends from my years at Blessing. Another era of my life is ending on a glad note. Brad and Maureen have teamed to bring the Blessing Behemoth in good shape through another tough year, and I honor them for it.
Above is a brick from St. Mary’s Hospital, 1866-1993 with a photo of the entrance to the Maternity Building, built in 1929.
I think back to my first year as a trustee of the hospital, in 1983, unsure of myself and a little bit awed at being on the “board of presidents.” Those good people took me under their wing, and before I knew it I found myself in a leadership role during the acquisition of St. Mary’s Hospital, in 1993, and later as we tried to forge a closer relationship with the Quincy Medical group. At various times during my service to the hospital and Blessing Corporate Services, I was privileged to serve a few terms as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Blessing Hospital, ditto with the Blessing-Riemann College of Nursing and Blessing Foundation. Without a doubt, I received much more than I gave.
Dave, humbled (but it won’t last.)
Those northern lights
December 9, 2006
We lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at about 42 degrees north latitude, for a time in the 60s. At the peak of the eleven-year sunspot cycle we occasionally were treated to aurora displays in the northern skies. At spaceweather.com you can learn all about it and see what the “northern lights” look like.
Looking for a Christmas present for that scientific-minded geek on your list?
Spaceweather PHONE is an astronomy alert service from the creators of Spaceweather.com. Sign up for our service –for yourself or as a gift for someone else– and we’ll phone you when things are happening in the sky.
When auroras appear over your hometown, your phone will ring. When the space station is about to fly over your back yard, your phone will ring. When planets align … you get the idea. The voice you hear will be Dr. Tony Phillips telling you what to look for and when.
Each phone call comes with a simultaneous email message, so if you miss part of your call or can’t remember the details–just check your email for the full story!
If you lived in Finland, here’s what you would have seen last night:
This is but one of the many spectacular photos in the gallery at SpaceWeather.com. Much better than the Fourth of July, yes?
Dave, thinking that he would much rather view aurora from the tropics via Internet.
Yesteryear’s pheasant
November 17, 2006
This paragraph in one of today’s WSJ articles triggered a bunch of memories.
The pheasant has long been the iconic game bird of the Midwest, featured on collector plates and tavern signs. In the postwar years, pheasants were everywhere, and returning GIs hunted the tasty bird in record numbers. A male, or cock, pheasant weighs about three pounds and can fly at speeds exceeding 45 miles an hour, making it a challenge to shoot. Hunting them often turned into a social occasion, drawing in friends and family from far away.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s we lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and I fell in with a group of fellow Collins Radio guys who hunted pheasant in central Iowa cornfields about 30 miles west of town. Before I got involved they had befriended several farmers who let them hunt their corn fields. They would pay a visit before pheasant season started, which was usually during the period the farmers were cutting corn, and find out where they had flushed birds while harvesting.
This all sounded like fun, so I bought a 12 gauge pump shotgun and shot up some clay pigeons. It was fun, and I looked forward to joining the gang on the first day of pheasant season in October.
I’ll never forget that first trip. We drove west early to be in position before the sunup shooting hour. As we stood waiting and shivering along the road, ready to string out and walk through the cornfield when it was legal to shoot, we noticed that every fence and treelimb was black with pheasants. We thought they were letting the dew dry off their wings in the first rays of the rising sun, but that’s just speculation. We also thought we would have some easy shooting as we waited for starting time.
As the magic hour approached, the birds started flying off, scattering to all parts of the cornfield and disappearing from sight. That didn’t bother us too much, because we were sure we would flush them right and left as we walked the cut corn between two swaths of standing corn.
Finally we strung out and started walking slowly across the field. I should say stumbling across, and if you have ever walked across a field of cut corn, you will know what I mean. The stalk-stumps create natural tripper-uppers that makes walking a real chore. Even before we flushed our first cock pheasant (hens were everywhere, and somehow they knew they were protected) the shotgun felt heavier and heavier, and my legs were aching. In those days I got little exercise except for working my slide-rule.
Finally, a bird shot into the air right in front of me. I shakily pointed my 12-gauge in his direction, closed my eyes and pulled the trigger. Somehow the dumb bird got in the path of one of my scattered bird-shot and he went into a death glide. The instant he hit the ground about 30 yards ahead he disappeared. We finally found him another 30 yards from the point of impact, and I learned quickly why hunting behind dogs is a very good idea. We had no dogs.
Next came a lesson in field-dressing a pheasant. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it is really quite easy. For me, not the pheasant.
We continued on, and by sunset I was one tired engineer. The gun weighed a ton, and I could barely keep on raising my boot-shod feet over the laydown cornstalks. Pooped was the word.
We dropped a dozen or so pheasants that day, but I only got that one first bird. When we got back home, one of the more successful hunters gave me a second bird to go with mine, so I took two birds home to Marilyn so she could satisfy her great yearning to cook pheasant. You can ask her how excited she was some other time.
On another hunt, we were walking slowly across a field, guns at the ready and with itching trigger fingers, when we suddenly saw another string of hunters walking toward us in the opposite direction. Somehow no one got peppered with birdshot, and we explained that we had permission to hunt and they didn’t. Fortunately they decided not to argue with us. Another reason to hunt with a dog.
A few years later, son Larry went with me, reluctantly, to do some hunting just north of town. You can ask him how impressed he was when I downed a bird and brought it home to be duly stuffed and baked for dinner.
I hunted off and on until we moved to Quincy and I discovered that the hunting here is for quail and not pheasant. I tried it once or twice, but I discovered that my sluggish pheasant reflexes just didn’t work for quail exploding and scattering from underfoot.
It wasn’t long before I got rid of my guns and consigned my short hunting career to the past and turned to fishing for my outdoor fun.
Dave, giving his face a slap and returning to the present.
