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| Computer! Start my blog! |
| 06.17.05 (10:02 am) [edit] |
I'm watching Star Trek and if you are familiar with the show, they control things by speaking to their computer."Computer, turn the lights on", "Computer, how warm is it?". They dictate their journals and the computer records the information. They could then ask for a written copy of the report (not that they use that much paper mind you). Although this is shown on a science fiction program, it really is science FACT. Star Trek became a popular show because it was partially based on fact. Gene Roddenbury was well respected because he was able to present his fiction in a fact-based way that scientists were more than willing to supply facts and conjecture to make the program more realistic. Unless you are knew the facts, you woudl watch the early series and say "Oh, yeah, they have a TV set and came up with a few sets, a bedroom, etc". Yet there were complete plans drawn of the whole ship. Much thought went into the design of the ship, parts you never knew existed. Here they had a TV show with a spaceship. The spaceship had blueprints of each level, including where the exercise rooms and transporters were located. Knowing crew members would be on long trips, the design included exercise rooms, hydrophonic gardens, electrical conduits, maintenance areas, crew quarters and guest quarters; all laid out as if the ship would be built any day now. Just by looking at the blueprints you could tell that this was a well thought out series. Imagine the TV show Friends. Now imagine that there were blueprints of every apartment in the building, names assigned to families in each apartment, accurate diagrams of the neighborhood, charts of times of trash pickup, etc. So anyway, back to the computer. YOU can control the lights in your house by voice. It might cost you a hundred to two hundred dollars, but it is possible. A system called X-10 allows you to remotely control electronic equipment. You can turn up the heat, turn down the lights, close the drapes, all with a few pieces of equipment and some money. There also is a company who makes a voice recognition software interface so you really CAN say "Computer, close the curtains" and it happens! As I remember, it also has an interface that allows you to say "Computer, get IBM stock price" and it reads it back to you. Speaking to your computer can be fun. I dictated some text into a microphone and software can convert your speech into a Word Document. After training, it can work quite well. Other software allows you to type a sentence on your computer and receive a verbal representation of the text. You type "How are you today" and the computer speaks your words back to you. Here is a demo you can try now... http://www.research.att.com/p... Years ago I wrote a Publishers Page for my computer users group newsletter. It described the early attempts at converting text to speech. I joked that soon you would have two computers speaking to each other across the room , telling knock-knock jokes. That is now possible! Another neat computer trick is available on your scanner. I've used it for years but many other people have no idea it exists. You can convert a scan of a page of text into a Word or text document. Scanners generally work by taking a picture of a document and presenting it as a photo. Howevere, many scanners now come with OCR programs to perform Optical Character Recognition. The software looks at the photo and say "Oh, there is the letter "O" and creates a text "O" rather than a circular line. I used this capability to scan a list of zip codes from the phone book and make an editable text document out ot if. Granted, sometimes the conversion is not great, but oftentimes getting massive amounts of text into a document and then editing it can be less work then typing the whole thing in by hand. So, if you were following the ideas here and put them together, TODAY it is possible for me to take the sentence "Turn the computer off" from a piece of paper, scan it, convert it to text, take that text and have the computer speak it outload, then have another computer hear those words and turn the power off to my computer! With that I leave you with the famous exit words of George Burns... "Say Goodnight Gracie"! |
| Another World - Hidden Treasures |
| 06.17.05 (9:11 am) [edit] |
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First, I noted on todays news a guy who found a cache of gold in an old cave. I only caught the end of the report but it sounded like it was in the desert on the mainland. I used to prospect some and am still a member of the Lost Dutchmans Mining Association and the Gold Prospectors Association of America. I used to watch the shows on C-Band satellite and joined. C-Band is those big dishes usually seen on top of sports bars. Nowadays homes have switched to the pizza-pan sized units from companies such as Dish-TV. There are some differences between the dishes. The big ones give you free programs and you can pick and choose from suppliers to get from 1 program to many programs or packages. Although you can get a package of shows at a discount, you also can order just say SciFi channel and Showtime Movie Channel without having to buy 20 other channels you don't watch (unlike cable and the small dishes). There are a ton of channels available on the big dishes ranging from the old standards to shows such as the "Uncut Gems" channel where you could buy a gem and perhaps cut it yourself? There is a channel where they auction off cattle and then there are the live news feeds which have not yet been edited. You can gather a wealth of information about how news organizations take raw footage and make a story about it, perhaps slanting the story as they go. This whole other world is unknown to most people, yet easily accessable. There were also many audio channels available; however those are now becoming popular on the internet. For example, if you download the free version of the PC audio program called WinAmp (WinAmp.Com), you will find that buried in the program is an Internet Radio tab. Sort by genre and you could be listening to Polka music in seconds. If Polka is not your cup of tea, try one of the hundreds of other channels. On another front (or is it hiding in the back?) are places where you can give your opinion or just chat. Places like KonaWeb at KonaWeb.com or the discussion areas at Clark Howard at ClarkHoward.Com are obvious choice and well publicized. Years before the internet bacame popular, there was a thing called FidoNet where individual computers in people homes would pass mail and messages between them. You would log onto a local BBS and read messages from all over the world. It was quite popular and I think is still running mail and messages. Many mail programs can access NewsGroups. Newsgroups have been arouns almost since the internet began and are quite popular. Sometimes during a search online you will see a message or two from a newsgroup. With these groups, you access the topic and read threaded messages about the topic. Topics include items like cultivating flowers, specific models of cars, movie stars, coffee roasting and so on. There are many thousands (or tens of thousands) of news groups. To see what I mean, go to deja.com or groups.google.com and enter in a keyword of your choice. If you want to get involved in newsgroups, read them online or investigate reading them in your browser (like Netscape or Firefox) or even mail readers like OutlookExpress and so on may let you access the news. Then there are the chat programs which allow you to talk with people with slight delays, message by message. These are like the ICQ program and Yahoo Messenger. You type a message and wait on a reply message. Some proigrams allow you to chat with from 1 to many people in a "room". Then there are other hidden programs such as Internet Relay Chat (you can access it with a program such as Pirch at pirch.com). Here people create chat rooms and almost any topic is covered. Depending upon the server you choose, there may be thousands of current rooms available and the topics cover every imaginable topic. Oftentimes during an international disaster or event, people will open a room just to pass news and comments back and forth. I just checked one server and found 10,000 rooms open! Most of the rooms have a few people in them, but some of the bootleg discussions and game rooms host hundreds of people. The draw of these rooms is that anyone can create a room and become a moderator or channel god and make their own rules! So as you see, there are many hidden treasures on the internet and in the sky and they can be fun to explore. Some may become your favorite new daily habit and others may explain why they are not as popular and unknown. Its your call. |
| Temperature's Rising |
| 06.15.05 (5:44 am) [edit] |
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I bought a wireless thermometer today. It took longer than I expected and the whole time I kept my cool (so to speak). Ace Hardware had a wireless thermometer on sale and I had been looking for a new one. The price was right and I took it to the checkout counter. I got carried away with the new screens they had on the register. It looks to be a nice computer system. As I clicked OK on the electronic signature pad it dawned on me that the price was NOT the sale price! If I had been paying with cash I would have noticed the problem. The cashier went and verified the sale price and came back to the register. It seems the system are so new that there are still "cheat sheets" with step by step instructions on how to perform tasks. Unfortunately, the steps for cancelling a transaction were incorrect. After 2 phone calls and 20 minutes, the cashier was able to finally get the charge reversed and re-entered. I kept my cool because 1) I was not in a hury and 2) What good would it be for me to be in a hurry because me being in a hurry wouldn't have sped up the fix anyway... So I got my thermometer home and proceeded to play with it. I verified that the remote sensor and the local sensor read the same value when placed next to each other. Then I looked for something to measure. Living so far away from Kona (where I usually can find excellent bargains of certain frozen foods), I used to have problems getting them home before defrosting took place. I tried the ice chests with those frozen gel things and paper bags and so on. Finally I found a solution. I bought a relatively inexpensive electric cooler (called a HandyKool) made by Igloo. It will hold perhaps 15 frozen dinners or maybe 48 cans of soda. The cost was about $87 at K-Mart. The unit is a Thermoelectric unit and used what I think is a Peltier Junction. Years ago someone discovered that certain transistors could cool things by transferring heat from one side of a junction to another. One company describes them here http://www.tetech.com/techinf... So this unit has a junction and only 1 moving part (a very small fan) to move the air around. The unit is very light and when empty, I can pick it up with 1 finger! The plus for this unit is that besides running directly off a car battery, there is a power supply with it that lets me run it in the house also; thus I can plug it in and let it cool down, then put it into the car for the trip to get frozen foods. One must be somewhat careful because it does draw some current from the car battery and you would not want to leave it plugged in for more than a few hours with the engine turned off. Still, it is quite handy in the truck and fits behind the passengers seat. I have "suicide doors" on the truck and position the door of the "fridge" so I can put things in easily when standing outside the truck. The unit does not freeze things but it will cool them down considerably. The specs say that you should plug it in for about 3 hours before using it and that the inside temperature will be about 40 degrees cooler than outside. In fact, their example shows 80 degrees outside and 41 degrees inside. I decided that with my new wireless thermometer I would check it out and see how fast it cools down and how long it would stay cool. The instruction booklet says give it time to cool down and also that it works best when food put into it is already cold. That makes sense. I tried to make this as accurate as possible, realizing that the ambient temperature in the house was dropping somewhat as the sun was already down; thus I captured the room temperature and the temperature inside the cooler. This was easy since the unit is plastic and thermometer is wireless (using a radio signal to send data). My testing started at exactly 7pm and I took readings every 5 minutes. Since the room temperature only changed about 2.5 degrees, I'll assume that that did not effect the readings much at all. What I found was the unit took a reading or two to actually change temperature, but then I saw quite a bit of consistancy. As expected the temperature started getting cooler and as time went by the rate of change got less and less. It became a game of me guessing what the next reading would be, and I was right most of the time. At the beginning the temperature dropped about a degree and a half every 5 mintes. The unit went from 79.2 degrees to about 44.4 degrees at 11pm when I unplugged it. It was still slowly getting colder but I tired waiting and the change was .1 to .2 degrees every 5 minutes. If there is sufficient interest, I could graph the thing and post the results... but here is the simple data: 7pm 79 8pm 62 9pm 51.6 10pm 46.6 11pm 44.4 So after 3 hours it really was pretty much as cool as it was going to get. At 11pm when I unplugged the unit I started to note the temperature as it warmed back up. That rate was NOT the curved slope the cooling down acquired but rather looked to be a straight line change and I fell asleep it was so constant! :) The rate of warming back up appears to be just slowly leaking cold air out or the transfer of heat back into the unit throught the plastic case. The warming happened alot faster then the cooling. The rate of warmth looked to be about 1 degree every 5 minutes; thus after unplugging the unit at 44.4 degrees, it was up to 52.3 degrees after only 40 minutes. This time would be extended quite a bit if the cooler was full of food I expect. In any event, I like the cooler and it does what it was supposed to do. The company's specs seem to be correct and science wins in the end! Remember that there is always more than one way to look at things. You don't add cold to things, you are actually removing heat. This juncture transfers heat from one side to the other thus moving the heat from inside the unit to the outside. That makes is unit really "Cool"! :) |
| "Sick Em" |
| 06.12.05 (7:54 am) [edit] |
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The expression "sick em" refers to old movies where the person holding a dog instructs the dog to attack. Since I could not get back to sleep, I read the news. In an LA Times article, it states [b]"The mother of the boy fatally mauled in his Sunset District home said Saturday that she shut her son in the basement to protect him from the family's pit bulls before the attack. "[/b] The woman locked her 12 year old son in the basement while she did errands, because the male dog was getting agressive. The boy came out of the basement, was attacked and died. I did a quick search for "dog attacks by breed" and came up with a couple hits I read. The first was from someone who obviously is defending pit bulls and rottweilers. Interesting enough there is book they will sell you which supports their contentions. The second site I went to involves a CDC stury. They do mention some reasons to take the numbers with a grain of salt, for example, sometimes it is impossible to determine the exact breed or cross breed of a dog. In any event, look at the numbers in this PDF file: http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/duip... Their conclusions: [b]"Despite these limitations and concerns, the data indicate that Rottweilers and pit bull-type dogs accounted for 67% of human DBRF in the United States between 1997 and 1998. It is extremely unlikely that they accounted for anywhere near 60% of dogs in the United States during that same period and, thus, there appears to be a breed-specific problem with fatalities."[/b] So now I know what kind of dog to sick on the telemarketers :D |
| What a Ding-A-Ling! |
| 06.12.05 (7:30 am) [edit] |
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It is 6am on Sunday morning. and I can't get back to sleep. It seems that someone decided to take a "survey" and call me at 5:15am. I have reported them to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) via their online complaint form. I can do this because I have signed all of my telephones up in the "Do Not Call Registry", and have had them there for years. Violaters of the list can be fined $11,000 per call. HOWEVER, there are some gotchas. The biggest one is that YOU do not get the money. People used to sue the companies and have won amounts like $500. Courts may defer now to the Federal law and database signup. Secondly, there are certain people who are still allowed to call you, people taking a survey, charitable organizations, companies you have a ongoing relationship with (like your bank). The fourth group of people whom Congress allows to call and harass you, is Congress itself! Yes, political organizations can call you even if you aks them not to. So those "Donate to us", "We are having a town meeting" and "get out to vote" messages will still come through. So as you see from the above, going to "DoNotCall dot Gov" https://www.donotcall.gov may help, it won't eliminate all sales calls. So how do I get to complain since supposed "survey" calls are allowed? Well, the Telemarketing Act restricts when people can call call you. (Calls cannot be initiated before 8 AM or after 9 PM in the recipient's timezone. ) No matter what criteria they are covered under, 5:15am is NOT in the allowed timeframe! Telemarketers claim that it is their right to call people, their "freedom of speach", but you know, we have the freedom NOT TO LISTEN! |
| We have your number |
| 06.10.05 (1:47 pm) [edit] |
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Lately there have been a number of stories in the news about computer data being taken. That data has contained personal information about people, including but not limited to Social Security numbers and other identifying information which could be used for identity theft. You should be aware of a few things. 1st, although this has been widely reported recently, I think these thefts have been going on for quite a while. Lately the companies who have lost data will report thefts and kinda hide between the other reports; hoping that people won't notice. Secondly, the theft of your Social Security number should NOT be such a big deal. The SS number is only *supposed* to be used for, well, Social Security purposes, not as a National ID number. However, the credit reporting agencies use it as a record locator to destinguish one person from another (a process that does not work as well as it should). Third, the 3 big credit reporting agencies don't really care what happens to your data. Oh, you can complain it is all wrong and so on, but YOU are not their customer. You are data to be sold. Credit card companies, stores, mortgage companies, THOSE are their customers. If it wasn't fo a federal law years ago, you would not be able to even change incorrect information about you. Ever wonder how you get all those "pre approved" credit card applications? The credit reporting agencies SELL your information to these companies. The company will contact them asking for a list of "Everyone in the 12345 zip code area with income above $15,000 and a credit score above 500". So no matter what you do, the credit reporting agencies have your number... |
| Believe it or not |
| 06.09.05 (7:39 pm) [edit] |
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Believe it or not... I used to have a Post Office box when I lived in a suburb of Washington DC. I drove my car there to mail a package, pulled into a spot in front of the building amd went inside. As many of us stood in line. there was a loud "THUMP" outside. Obviously someone had hit a car in the lot. I didn't think anything else about it until a minute later someone walked in and said, "You will NOT believe it! A DOG just drove a truck into a car!" It was one of those statements, which was so silly you didn't believe it. Still, there was that thump... Then the guy said, "Who owns a blue Camaro..." My heart sank. I was about to find out what was going on. As I went outside I saw that a truck had crashed into my car door. The truck owner explained that he was having battery problems and could not turn off the truck for fear it would not restart. He had left the engine running and the manual (in the column) stick shift in park. He had also left his dog in the truck. It appears that his dog jumped into the drivers seat and his paw hit the shifter and pulled it into gear, thus causing the truck to move forward. I did NOT report this to my insurance company. I just don't think they would believe it. I CAN tell you that every time I went back into the post office, the counter people would laugh... Believe it or not... Many years before the dog learned to drive, my parents had sent me to private school, many states away from where we lived. As was the custom, I would sometimes call home to see how my parents were and to ask for the delivery of a few dollars. So this one time I called and I get the dreaded message "I'm sorry, the number you have dialed, has been changed to an UNLISTED NUMBER"! I tried again and got the same message. I called the Operator and asked her to call the number, what was up? She reported that indeed, the number was now unlisted. I told her that I was their son, away at school and would she put me through. The answer was "NO"! She would not call and tell them to call me. When I asked to speak to the Operator in my Parents town, the local Operator said I needed to wait while she determined the charges... err CHARGES? To talk to the phone company? I finally had the Operator place a call, Person to Person for my Mom and the call was placed to my Grandmothers House. Naturally my Grandmother said that my Mom was not there, but I asked the Operator to ask if my Grandmother knew where she might be reached. I finally got the number! WHEW! Believe it or not... I am NOT a guy who fights; in fact, it could be said that I avoid that type of conflict. So, years after the telephone incident I was home from school. A neighborhood bully came by the house with his "posse", (errrr friends) to beat my... well, to prove to me who was the big guy in the neighborhood. I though this "calling someone out to fight" thing only happened on TV shows. So anyway, things escalated and I finally had to fight or be labeled a coward. Although I was willing to be labeled a coward, I finally relented. This guy was picking a fight, yet kept telling me to hit him. His friends kept egging him on but still he did not want to take the first swing. I was absolutely scared and figured that this guy who obviously had many muscles and much weight on me would pummel me. I could have been called a weakling :-) I told him that if he wanted to be the "King of the Neighborhood" that was OK with me, since I was never there. THAT seemed to only make him madder... So anyway, finally he pushed me down on the ground and started coming towards me. Well I seem to have automatically reacted with a move taught to me at school which involved me placing one foot between his, turning my foot sideways and placing my other foot on his leg and pushing. This causes him to fall on his back. As he fell, it appears I jumped up and pinned him on the ground, all the while his friends were saying this was a lucky move on my part. The fight progressed for a few brief minutes and I was able to push him down on the ground again. As his friends started home, I helped him up. He looked at me for a minute and I said, "I'm sorry, I really didn't want to fight. I got lucky. Tell people you beat the heck out of me. I won't deny it... Believe it or not... That event reminds me of one last story. I was standing with a friend in a line at Dave and Busters, an entertainment place outside Atlanta a few years ago. It was a really crowded and we were to play pool. All of a sudden a guy comes running down the hallway and headed towards the exit. A loud voice called out "STOP THAT GUY"! I saw which way the guy was running and he obviously was not familiar with this lobby as the direction he was going was a dead end. He would have to make a right turn then a left out the door near me. In the split second while he neared the door, I jumped over the rope and headed out the door just a couple of steps behind him. As he ran towards the back of the parking lot I was close on his heels. As the voice had called out, I was in the process of string to stop him. As the thoughts went through my head I began to think, what had he done? Had he robbed the place? Did he have a gun? Why was I doing this? Was I crazy? At that moment, he turned around and faced me. OH NO! As I ground to a halt and tried to think what to do, a security guard passed me and grabbed the guy. It turns out that he had started a fight, but the story he told made no sense to us. As the guard took him back towards the building, I followed and soon was back in line waiting on a pool table. My friend looked at me like I was crazy. Perhaps I was. To this day I am still amazed that in a split second I forgot all about my safety and myself and ran to do something like this. After this event I think I finally answered the nagging question that had followed me all my life. After seeing news items about people jumping on a race track to rescue someone, after seeing people run to an accident scene to helps someone before a car bursts into flames, after all the wondering what "I" would do in a situation like that, I think I finally had a answer. I would probably risk my own safety for someone else. So as I sat there smugly thinking I was cool, the other thought came into my head. That thought still hounds me. The fact that the rest of you should take from this last story is this: There is a very fine line between being a hero and being a fool! Imagine how foolish I would have felt if that guy had turned around, and killed me with a sot in the head. Then, WHO would be the fool? :D |
| What Goes Around... |
| 06.08.05 (3:10 pm) [edit] |
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There is a saying "What goes around, comes around". A while ago there was a cell phone service (and I use the term "service" with a grain of salt). The service was advertised in the UK as a joke service. You take your cell phone and text JOKE to 85050 and you get a joke. It appears based upon a Television Advertising Complaints Report out of the UK, viewers of the commercial did not realize that they were actually signing up for a 99 cent a day service. It appears the commercial did not tell people how to unsubscribe and for that information they needed to go to the company website. If a cell users did not have web access, they would be hard pressed to stop the messages and would not know of the charges for quite some time! The company was told not to continue using that same advertisement. Today I saw this particular advertisement on TV here in the U.S. I can't tell you if there is info about how to stop them, but I did notice the 99 cent charge and something about 7 messages a week. Imagine that someone does not relaize that there is approximately a $30 a month charge just for the jokes and add to that text message charges that your cell provider adds to that. I also understand that the people in the UK said that the jokes were very poor. Is this the same company here in the U.S.? I don't know, but I would be VERY CAREFUL before getting any kind of text messages on your cell phone without knowing all of the details. UPDATE: As I was ready to actually post this, the commercial came up. They tell you to text JOKE STOP to stop the thing, and they also give a website to go to for more information. My warning about being careful still pertains :) Update: Here is the company advertising on TV in the US, http://www.text2.tv/us.html and here is part of their termination instructions: [b]17. CANCELLATION. The Provider allows the user the possibility to interrupt the flow of information received via SMS (Short Message Service). We offer you this facility on the Internet pages that belong to the Service. Generally, information received via SMS can be interrupted by sending an SMS message starting with the keyword, i.e. your entry code, followed by a space and then the word STOP. You can send this message to the abbreviated number you used for entry. For example you can send the message JOKE STOP to the number 85050. See for more details the landing page of the US market of the website www.text2.tv. In addition, an email can be send to info@text2.tv or our toll free number 800 – 303 1162 can be called.[/b] |
| The Long and Winding Road |
| 06.07.05 (5:30 pm) [edit] |
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Recently I discussed my radio days. One thing I didn't mention or glossed over is that the station was 2,000 feet above sea level and 1,000 feet above average terrain. After having driven up to the top of Mauna Kea (14,000), I realized that Pine Mountain was not that high afterall! The drive to and from the station involved zooming around sharp turns and my coworkers and I used to identify with the song "The Long and Winding Road" and that song always brings back a specific memory of that trip. Although my drive home here in Hawaii entails twists and turns, I don't think it is as bad as the Kentucky drive I remember. My driveway is straight and rocky, kinda of a rocky road, and that leads me to the next topic, ice cream! I just went to the post office and grocery store. I considered a steak for the barbeque but opted for ground beef for some spaghetti with meat sauce. I also bought some rosemary/olive bread. It is interesting that just olive bread was almost twice the price for a very similar product! Speaking of roads, my road in particular, my driveway... I think I mentioned a wile back that the driveway is 1400 feet long (give or take). To note certain locations I gave them easy to remember names. Where the trees cross in an arch, I named it "McDonalds". Where the old truck was is "car park". It may sound silly, but hey, what else can I do? :) Soon the driveway will probably be moved to the south side of the property. Along with that relocation and eventual clearing of the farm, I have started flagging which trees need to stay and which need to go. On the land currently is an old white pvc water pipe with spigots. That pipe will soon be cut up and removed. I may not throw it away, rather I'd like to reuse it perhaps to hold the wires for my sprinkler system. I will soon know what shape it is in and how much trouble that would be. In the meantime, I need to hit the road... |
| What an Adventure! |
| 06.06.05 (11:22 pm) [edit] |
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Now-a-days kids play games that seem almost real. Some games allow them to create whole new worlds and control them. yet more than 30 years ago, the games controlled us! As early as 1972 a game was introduced that drove computer geeks crazy; that game was called Colossal Cave and was a very difficult and frustrating text game. The game started out with the following text: [b]Welcome to Adventure!! Would you like instructions? y Somewhere nearby is Colossal Cave, where others have found fortunes in treasure and gold, though it is rumored that some who enter are never seen again. Magic is said to work in the cave. I will be your eyes and hands. Direct me with commands of 1 or 2 words. I should warn you that I look at only the first five letters of each word, so you'll have to enter "northeast" as "ne" to distinguish it from "north". (Should you get stuck, type "help" for some general hints. For information on how to end your adventure, etc., type "info".) You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.[/b] Then you were presented with a blinking cursor. If you typed nothing, the game just sat there, and sat there, blinking, blinking. You would then try typing "NE" and "help" and so on. You had to actually THINK what you were doing. What a concept! :-) If you want to try it, download it here http://homepages.enterprise.n... Be forewarned, you cannot finish the game in one sitting. It will frustrate you. I have read all of the source code, made changes (I had the FORTRAN version) and even started writing my own game; determining how to parse directions, how to change rooms and how to leave an item at a location. It was quite a leariing experience. Sometime when you tire of audio and video games, give a text (and thinking) game a try! |
| Recycling Aloha |
| 06.06.05 (8:39 am) [edit] |
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Recycling has been in the news lately, but not in the way you would expect. Oh we try to recycle used item but with less that spectacular results. We now pay a recycle fee on cans and plastic bottles and get most of that back when we recycle them. On the Big Island, the places to recycle and receive money are few and far between. There was a "to do" with one recycler and its past tax problems and just a whole lot of startup problems. Unlike other states, we have to get rid of most garbage unlike the mainland. Remember that this place is mostly rock and difficult to dig through. We can't throw the stuff in a truck and dump it in New Jersey; however, we have been known to put it on a barge and ship it elsewhere to be processed. Like many communities we are told to recycle, yet have problems actually doing it. On another related topic, a recent blog told why we don't give visitors an automatic lei. Unless one makes a lei, they cost anywhere from a few dollars to (I don't know) $30 or $50 for a really nice fresh flower lei. They are all made by hand and lots of love put in them. Well, imagine this time of year how many leis the graduating senior classes receive. Each senior might receive at least one or perhaps a few. That is a lot of leis. The leis would be worn that night and perhaps part of the next day; then be draped in the room to experience the aroma and soon would dry out; perhaps some flowers to be pressed in a diary. This morning I heard a news item I had to pass along. Senios on the Garden Isle called Kauai took their graduation ceremonies a bit further recently. Rather than waste the leis, they refrigerated them overnight and then distributed them to other Seniors, those in the Senior Citizens Centers and hospitals on the island. Still having leis left over, they went to the Lihue Airport and surprised some arriving passengers as they spread Aloha a second time. So yes, it IS possible to receive a lei when you arrive, but it is not automatic. Still, it is a welcome gesture. |
| Still Here! |
| 06.05.05 (11:23 am) [edit] |
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For those wondering, yes, I'm still here! :D Sometimes my blogs are few and far between. Years ago I was a disk jockey at a station ion the Kentucky/Virginia state line. Actually, I was more of an "Air Personality" than a disk jockey. The destinction may be narrow to some, but my show was more about banter than music. However, over the years I found it was difficult being "on" (creative) every day, on command. When I first started out, I had the evening shift. I would leave college and head "over the mountain", then UP the mountain t othe trailer where the station resided. It was a mobile home atop a mountain peak with a giant self supported orange tower towering over us. Can you say "lightning rod"? Years later they moved the studios down to town and fixed up the builing to have apartments upstairs. I lived in an apartment and only had to walk down the stairs to go to work! What a life! Our station was a "daytimer" meaning that we signed on at sunrise and off at sunset. I took the morning shift and would get up very early (the actual time changed each month). Then I'd go down and trigger the transmitter to start warming up. This was done via control pulses over a telephone line to the transmitter which still sat up on the mountain above us. My show centered around me, well you would Expect it to, wouldn't you? :) I would play music, extertain and inform. I'd tell of my adventures (alot like this blog), I'd tell of my slant on things and play some music. Our station did not have a strict policy on music, our shows and music just kept the commercials from bumping into each other! Based upon listeners requests, the music ranged from easy listening to rock to country, all mixed together. Waylon Jennings, the Beatles and Mantovani, all intermixed! At one point we moved the music apart and I played mostly rock, another DJ played the country, etc. Oftentimes as I remember, the shifts were about 4 hours apiece, like 6-10am, 10 to 2pm and 2 to 6pm. When we finished our shift we would often go back into the production area and cut commercials or station promotions. I like to think that mine were the best and oftentimes a store would specifically ask for me to do their commercials. I was from "up North" and had no specific accent, while some of the other DJ's had local accents and in the case of the owners son, a speech impediment :roll: Our sales manager did his best to cram 60 seconds worth of text into a 30 second commercial. We would talk as fast as we could, delete a word or two and still find a way to record all of the information into that 30 sec spot! I had a member of the Drifters and a member of a few other famous groups drop records off. Once a few years before the plane crash, I was able to be the announcer for a concert at our college. This is going to date me, but it was Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band. I got in interview Rick after the concert and place a phone call to his wife for him. A side fact was that his Father and mine both attended Rutgers at almost the same time and both had orchestras! One of my fellow DJs from the station ended up living about 3 miles from my Mom in Florida and we chat every so often. He works for the Post Office. Another DJ I tried in vain to find for 30 years; then recently found him through the internet. He has authored a few books and articles and now lives near Pikeville, Kentucky. Many people hear a song on the radio and remember where they were or what they were doing when they geard it. For DJ's and ex-DJ's it is a different story. I remember many of the songs, many of the lyrics and can tell you the name of a song by the first few notes. Howevever, much of the rest is a blur :D As I write this, I looked up and saw what looked like a Cardinal land on the lanai. The red feathers on the head are a give-away. Anyway, the station I worked at was owned by "Cardinal Broadcasting"... One thing that I always remember is the "Swap Shop" show we would do. In small communities the radio stations will offer a free on-the-air classified ad service, all live and usually with no time delay. The DJ would take a call, make notes and ask questions and then review the item with the caller. If the number of calls slows, you fill inby reviewing the items. The show was usually sponsored by some local establishment so you had to fill time. A typical few minutes might go like this with me answering the phone... Imagine me with no accent and a female caller with a southern/country accent.. ME: Swap Shop, you are on the air! CALLER: Yes, is this the Swap Shop? ME: Yes it is and you are on the air, what is your item please? CALLER: Well, I have this hen I'd like sell on your swap shop or trade it for toaster over... ME: (trying to understand) You have a hen that you would like to sell, or you would be willing to trade it for a toaster over? CALLER: Yes, shes a good layer and might make a nice pet, but we need a toaster over really bad. I can let the hen go for $30 ME: Alright, how can someone reach you? CALLER: You want my phone or what? ME: Yes, what is your phone number CALLER: My phone number is 775-1234 in Virgie Kentucky, ask for Maybel ME: (hanging up with Maybel) Thank you Maybel, well folks, Maybel has a hen she is willing to sell for $30 or is willing to trade for a toaster over. Call her at 775-1234 in Virgie, over on the Kentucky side of the mountain. NOTE: At this time I would be ready to make the following statement, but usually my better judgement would kick in... ME: You know, if Maybel had a toaster oven AND the hen, I'm thinking dinner! Oh wait, she DID say it would make a nice pet.... nevermind! :) ME: The Swap Shop is brought to you by the Jenkins Country Club where they ask that you stop by tonight and enjoy their Friday night buffet; tonight featuring fried chicken..... Local radio, you gotta love it! My blog is just my attempt to relive those days of yesteryear when people hung on every word hoping I'd utter a profanity or off color joke, just to see how fast they could boot my a** off the air and out of town :-) Swap Shop, you're on the air.... |