Beachy Day

A gang of us from Vi at Lakeside Village took our bus out to a famous (deservedly) restaurant on the beach for breakfast yesterday. After eating too much, we were free to go frolic on the beach. Who am I kidding? The last time I tried to frolic in the surf, it took my wife and two surfers to get me back on dry land! No, Sally and I stayed dry and went out on the fishing pier. There weren’t many fisher-people, probably due to a snappy wind. It was determined to blow hats and anything else under twenty pounds into the surf. Hurricane Igor is a ways off Florida stirring things up right now. Makes for a beautiful day, high winds, hazardous surf, and a glad to be alive mood. Anyone with left-over vacation ought to “come on down”.

If my Penn State is in “Happy Valley”, we are now living in “Happy Sea Coast”.

Attention! Hand! Salute!

Quite a while ago I read that the rules had been changed and Veterans were now allowed to use a standard hand salute when in civies instead of the old hand over the heart business. I'm a bashful sort of fellow and didn't want to be the first to do that.  Finally, tonight during the National Anthem belore the Saints-Vikings game they showed a quick shot of two Vikings and one coach standing at full attention in their game clothing and giving perfect hand salutes. I gave me goose bumps and chills up my spine. Now I can't wait to show my respect in that fashion. I hope to soon see all veterans: Army, Navy, Marines. Wasps, Waves, etc., start identifying themselves in this way.

That ought to scare the begeebers out of those ragtag terrorists that think the USA is getting soft!

Viva! Scotch Tape!

I usually wear my wristwatch almost 24/7.  I don’t believe that it is waterproof so it comes off for showers, shaving, swimming, etc. This morning I showered and then flopped on my comfy chair in the living room.  I fell asleep while reading the paper and woke up with no idea what time it was - no watch. So I promptly had the million dollar idea.  Why doesn’t Samsung put a little clock on their TV remotes. I would pay an extra dollar or two for that feature.  The idea is about as clever as putting a clock on a church steeple so I doubt there would be any patent problems.

Reminds me. Yesterday’s Newsweek had a highlighted sentence within an article about Apple. It said approximately the following; Apple today may be the most incredibly inventive lab in the recent history of Silicon Valley. That must automatically be translatable to: in the country, because I can’t think of a true invention from American industry outside of Silicon Valley since I retired 30 years ago. (Not that I claim there is a connection.) Being of a simple minded sort, I still credit 3M as displaying the most group creativity of any lab I ever knew of. The basic invention that got them started involved putting a sticky surface on one side of a strip of cellophane in such a way that it wouldn’t stick to the other side. Thereby the tape could be rolled up and when unrolled, one side only had stickum on it. From there, a relatively small group of people created a myriad of innovations, modifications, line extensions and cleverness. They were a bee hive where the question, “What’s new?”  always got an answer.

All that on the basis of a one day visit  to the lab, probably forty years ago.

PS I still haven’t got my quotation marks to behave consistently. You may have noticed. Sorry.