Friday, September 17, 2010

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”.

Thursday, September 09, 2010

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!

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

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.