Mephitis mephitis September 29, 2007
Posted by physics309 in McKinney, Musings, Old Lyme.add a comment
Mephitis mephitis - the Striped Skunk. We have one in our neighborhood. I see it every now and then while I’m sitting on my porch in the evening. Its a beautiful animal, but smelly. I smell it during the night when it walks by, if I have my windows open. With the weather being so nice, I have my windows open a lot.
I never see more than one, which makes me believe I’m seeing the same animal over and over. This would indicate it’s a male because the males are solidary and the females tend to live in groups. They are good things to have around because they eat all of the thingies we don’t like, like rats and creepy crawly bugs.
I know most people find the smell offensive, but it really doesn’t bother me much. I don’t like it, but I can stand it. That’s very strange because I’m very smell oriented and usually react very strongly to smells. Which raises a question, where is its burrow? If it smells so strongly that I can smell it walking by the house, you would think I’d be able to smell its burrow. I’ve walked every street in this neighborhood many times and I have never detected it. Do they not smell somehow?
If there is a way to kill the smell, that would be worth investigating. Our dog, Snowshoe, had several run-ins with skunks. Most animals only need one encounter to learn their lesson (including me when I was a child and that’s a story for another day), but not Snowshoe. She would keep going back for more. I became very familiar with every deskunking method on the books or in the stores and I found only one that works – time. You just have to let it wear off.
But, researching the question has shown me that their lairs actually do smell – quite a bit, in fact. So, why haven’t I ever detected this skunk’s lair? It must be that I’m not going close enough to it, which leads me to believe this guy is ranging much farther than I had supposed. Since he comes by my house fairly often I thought for sure his lair was nearby and I figured he was within a block or two at the most. But, my walks go farther than that, so he must have a pretty good range.
I’m fine with him in the neighborhood and enjoy keeping my eyes open for him in the evening, waiting to see him quietly scurrying from hiding place to hiding place as he dashes around between the houses.
Tornado Alley September 3, 2007
Posted by physics309 in McKinney, San Angelo, Science.add a comment
My posting of the other day has put me in a stormy mood. I don’t mean it put me in a bad mood, I mean it just made me think about memorable storms. As a result, I’ve decided to spend the next few days discussing some of these storms, beginning with the smallest and moving into the worst of all.
I spoke of the nature of the storms of north Texas in a previous posting. This is the violent weather of Tornado Alley, which stretches from north Texas up into the Dakotas, with the most violent region being smack in the middle of Oklahoma. The central region of the nation is peculiar in the way there are strong air currents coming from the Gulf of Mexico and cool air masses moving down from the north. The southerly air masses are filled with moisture and heat and when they collide with the cool, northerly air masses the moisture will condense and the heat will cause violent thunderstorms. Frequently, tornadoes will also result. More tornadoes occur in Tornado Alley than the rest of the world combined.
If you like storms, and I do, this is the place to be. They are beautiful and awe-inspiring. They are also dangerous and you have to take care. I would think that anyone from the region could tell you not to drive into moving water, no matter how shallow it appears. It only takes a few inches of water to sweep a car away. But, it doesn’t matter how many times they warn the public about this, it seems someone gets killed in every storm because they drove into moving water and got swept away.
Another danger is low lying areas. These storms are so violent and can drop so much rain that low lying areas will flood so quickly you can’t outrun the rushing water. This can even happen far downstream of the storm itself. Anyone camping is warned not to make camp in an arroyo because a storm upstream will result in a mountain of water rushing down. Yet, someone gets killed this way every year.
Even in the towns, low lying areas can get dangerous. I was almost caught by one once. I was driving in a storm and took a turn. By the time I realized the low lying intersection was flooded, it was too late. I crashed into the flood waters and was actually floating. I was trying to think of what I was going to do when I realized I was still going forward as a result of my momentum. Eventually, I could feel my tires make contact with the ground on the other side and I just drove off with no damage done. I took an extra careful look before going around that turn in the future, though.
These storms can come any time of day, but seem to have a preference for the early morning hours. We would frequently wake up during the night to the sound of a big storm. I would lay in bed and listen to the sounds and feel the house shaking to the violence, before it quickly ended and I would go back to sleep. One night, the cat wouldn’t come in at bedtime and I just left it outside. I woke that night to one of these storms and was just about to drift off to sleep in the quiet afterwards when I heard this pathetic, ‘Meeooowww!’ I went to the front door and found this toothpick of a cat. It looked just like something from a Bugs Bunny cartoon with its hair soaked all the way through and looking like it was half its normal size. It was weeks before it would even step outside the house again.
San Angelo had some terrific thunderstorms, some of the most violent I’ve ever seen. Without knowing it, we actually got a taste of things to come on the Memorial Day weekend of 1995.
We went camping at Dinosaur Valley State Park, just outside Glen Rose and about an hour west of Ft. Worth. This is a very cool state park that preserves dinosaur footprints. You can go walking down through the river and see all of these footprints preserved in the stone, set there tens of millions of years ago on an ancient seashore. An interesting note is the big hole where a slab with some of the best footprints was taken out. I finally got to see this slab in the fall of 2005 when I visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
We camped out in the park with our 18-month old baby and had a good time of it playing in the shallow river. That evening we witnessed an amazingly violent thunderstorm out in the distance. We watched the lightning show for a long time before finally going to bed, after feeling comfortable it wasn’t coming towards us (we had learned our lesson at Lake Texoma). We moved to San Angelo almost exactly a year later and people were still talking about that storm and how much damage it had done. Even after a year there were still houses with damaged roofs. So many were damaged during the storm that they hadn’t been able to fix them all even after a year. The roofing business is a good one to get into in Texas.
Just arriving in San Angelo was an adventure. We rented a large truck to move all of our household goods. I was driving the truck and towing one car while my wife drove the other car. I saw a mileage sign for San Angelo and, based on my speed, estimated we would be in San Angelo in an hour. A storm was brewing ahead of us, but I didn’t think much of it. But, it kept getting worse and worse, causing me to continually slow down. I saw another mileage sign after a while and, based on my new speed, estimated it would take an hour to get to San Angelo. We kept going on and the storm kept getting worse, causing us to slow down even more. I saw yet another mileage sign and again estimated it would take us an hour to get to town! This was becoming a Twilight Zone kind of trip! We heard on the radio that tornado warnings were being issued for the area ahead of us, so we were driving into the teeth of a bad storm. This made us pull over and wait for the worst to pass. The roads out there are really empty and we hadn’t seen anywhere to take cover, so we just pulled to the side of the road and hunkered down to wait for the storm to end. This really didn’t take very long. These storms have an enormous amount of energy, but usually don’t last very long. In short order, things had cleared up and we were able to get back on the road.
There wasn’t a lot of damage in San Angelo, but some of the surrounding little towns got hit. And, this was our introduction to the west Texas weather. Storms were few and far between, but they were real barn busters when they came in. I’ve heard meteorologists talk about the weather in west Texas and particularly in the panhandle region of Texas
There’s hardly an area in the country with worse weather than that region. The panhandle is known as the Llano Estacado, the Plain of Stakes. There are actually several stories of where this name came from, but my favorite is that the Spanish explorers found the area so flat and featureless that they were afraid they would get lost and drove stakes in the ground to leave a trail so they could find their way back out again. Looking at the names of the towns in the area tells you what its like: Levelland, Lamesa, Plainview. It’s also about 5000 feet in altitude with a long, slow drop off to about 1000 feet in the rest of northwest Texas. Air masses can move gently from the north and suddenly drop down that incline, or meet another air mass coming up from the south. With few trees to provide shade, the ground heats up and causes convective air currents, resulting in sudden thunderstorms. Dust devils are common sights out there and there are times you can witness many at once. These are mostly gentle areas of convection that will lift up the dust and debris from the ground and make it swirl around in the air (also very common on Mars). We use to chase them around the playground when I was kid. I was so used to this phenomenon that I would talk about them in my classes in South Dakota without realizing that many of the students had no idea what I was talking about. All of these features create havoc for the weather forecasters.
The local ones forecasters love to tell stories about the out-of-staters that show up in the region for the first time and try to make weather forecasts like they would somewhere else, just to be stymied by the unpredictable and violent nature of the weather and caught by surprise by how quickly it will change. You can always tell a longtime west Texas resident by the way they will always be glancing at the sky, checking the weather. They know, just because it was nice five minutes ago doesn’t mean it will be nice five minutes from now.
Camp Storm August 31, 2007
Posted by physics309 in McKinney.1 comment so far
My wife and I went camping at Lake Texoma with our next door neighbors in June, 1989. I know the exact date: Saturday, June 10, 1989. The reason I can remember is that I know it was a Saturday and there was a big party of Iranians a couple of campsites away celebrating the news that Ayatollah Khomeini had just died.
Texoma is a giant reservoir on the Oklahoma-Texas border and has some great campsites and wonderful fishing. It is a very popular destination for watersports. This particular evening, we were looking forward to a quiet night of camping by the lake, and it started that way.
We set up camp and cooked dinner before walking down to the lake to watch the sunset. Before we headed back to the campsite I looked out west and admired the gigantic thunderstorm clouds towering above the horizon, still visible in the fading light. This is not an unusual sight in Texas at that time of year and I really didn’t think much of it. But, that storm was to become something monstrous.
Our neighbors had rented a half-cabin, one that was enclosed on three sides and screened in on the fourth, but we were in a tent. We brought our dog, Snowshoe, along with us, but the tent was large and there was plenty of room for the three of us. We went to bed after it got dark and were pretty comfortable. That is, until the storm hit.
The wind picked up and the tent was flapping around with the rain coming down in buckets and plenty of lightning and thunder. Poor Snowshoe was terrified. I just layed in my bed and listened to the storm. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, so I didn’t really worry. After a bit it died down and I went back to sleep.
Then the second wave hit. We went through all of the same routine with the lightning and thunder, and the rain and wind. I had set the tent up well, though, and it stayed up through this storm, as well. It also died out and we once again fell asleep.
Then, the third wave hit and this was a monster. The wind was ferocious and I thought the tent might rip. But, by this time the ground was soaked and the tent stakes couldn’t stay in the ground. First one, then another, of the stakes began to come out. The water was leaking in by this time and the tent began to flood. The waterproof bottom that was designed to keep water out was now keeping it in and we were soon sitting in several inches of water. I grabbed one of the tent poles as it was coming down to hold the top of the tent up while we got some clothes on and found the car keys. Then, we abandoned ship and ran through the howling, driving rainstorm for the car. We were soaked when we got in and started the engine to get warm. Snowshoe climbed in the back and went to sleep while my wife and I popped open a couple beers and laughed about our experience.
We saw our neighbors bail out of the cabin and get in their car, also. When the storm finally let up, we walked over and knocked on their window to see how they were doing. They were both white in the face. Turned out they were high and dry in the cabin, but were so terrified they ran out in the storm to get in their car. We were the ones that had our tent fall down on us, and they were the ones that were miserable.
I saw the news the next day and they reported on the storm. Turns out the winds exceeded hurricance strength and had blown a police patrol car off the road. They showed the weather radar and it looked like a hurricane had formed, centered right on Lake Texoma. I’ve always thought about those Iranians and wonder how many of them thought it was their fault and they were being punished for their celebration.
Building a Family – The Problems Begin August 26, 2007
Posted by physics309 in McKinney, San Angelo.add a comment
I started the story of how we had problems building a family. But, the birth of our son wasn’t the end of it.
Our new son was a beautiful baby. I’ve heard so many parents say that and then you see the pictures and can’t help but think, ‘That is one ugly baby!’, but he really was a beautiful baby and a happy one, too. He loved to play and was very interactive from a very young age. Of course, our families were very happy for us. But, it didn’t take us long to begin to realize that there was a problem. He suffered from rages. Not just anger, but real, mindless rages.
He started exhibiting them even before he could crawl. He would throw one of these horrible fits and throw a toy as far as he could, then throw another horrible temper tantrum until he got it back, just to explode and throw it again. This would go on for a while, if you let it. The fact that we dealt with them differently was a sign of stress to come. His mother would give him his toy back, then give it to him again, and again, until the rage went away and he became his sweet self again. I wouldn’t get the toy for him at all and, once he got old enough to get it himself, I would take it away from him. I didn’t want to encourage the behavior.
All of this started at such a young age I was convinced from the beginning it was a chemical imbalance. Truth be told, I suffered from rages when I was young; I mean white hot, senseless rages. My guess is that he got it from me. I didn’t have them nearly as often as our son, but they came unpredictably. Eventually, they became less frequent as I got older and I was better able to deal with them as I had the few I still had. It’s been many years since I’ve had one. I felt this would be the case with my son, too. We just had to be patient and help him through them.
But, my wife would listen to these horror stories my sisters would tell her about kids attacking their parent with knives or ending up in institutions. She was really being barraged with worst-case scenarios and didn’t want to hear what I had to say. Everyone was an expert and were constantly glad to tell us what we were doing wrong and what we needed to do. We started getting a bunker mentality and just didn’t want to interact with anyone so that we wouldn’t have to listen to it anymore. Along the way, she began to believe that our son was suffering from serious psychological problems.
By the time we got to San Angelo he was fully mobile and his rages were so bad we had problems with babysitters. He would be ok for a while, then suddenly start throwing things and breaking things around the house. We would actually get phone calls from the babysitter that we had to return. I remember a couple of them being in tears when we arrived home. Things would be broken and there might be holes in the walls or doors.
Going anywhere different became such agony that we frequently made the choice to just not go. By the time we got through the kicking and screaming to get him dressed and in the car we would be so tired and frustrated we didn’t want to go anymore. Normally, one of us would stay home with him while the other went out. Those times when we simply had to take him would result in me just manhandling him, taking him forcefully out to the car and strapping him into his car seat where he would scream and kick until he wore himself out.
All of this paints life as being a complete hell for us, but it wasn’t at all. He was such a sweet, loving child most of the time. He played very well and was so smart that we could play and do things far above his age level. For routine traveling, getting him to go was no problem at all. It was usually just the strange or different or transitions that caused him to have his rages. Having different babysitters all the time would trigger them. The times we were able to get a regular babysitter, he would become familiar with the person and it wouldn’t be a problem. Taking him to school in the morning wasn’t a problem because we did it every day. Taking him to the playground wasn’t a problem because this was something he understood. Taking him to the store was a problem because he didn’t enjoy it and this would trigger a rage. Making him suddenly quit what he was doing would trigger a rage, so we would give him several warnings when we were going to do something. That way he was mentally prepared.
I learned after a while that my wife was taking him to see a psychologist while I was at work. She did this without consulting with me and tried to hide the fact from me. Her method of doing behind my back disturbed me, but I didn’t mind in principle because any help was a good thing. What I was fearful of and wanted to prevent was him getting a label of having a mental problem. One thing that came of it is that we were able to get him into a special pre-kindergarten class in the local school district. It was a very progressive school district and this special school was highly recommended and recognized across the state. It helped him in the short run, but would cost us everything in the long run.
I was in San Angelo for a one-year appointment at Angelo State University. At the end of that year I needed to find a new job. My wife was very firm on the subject, though. Our son was in this special school and we were going to stay. I took odd and end jobs at first, but these didn’t work out very well and required me to be away from home for long periods, something that was having a very bad effect on the family. Eventually, I just had to go unemployed. My wife went back to work, but couldn’t make enough to support us. I collected unemployment and did as much Navy Reserve duty as I could, but we were spiraling downward in debt.
After the first year of this I wanted to leave, but my wife fought with me about it and I ended up caving in and we stayed a second year. I had begun working on a start-up business plan and things were actually going pretty well, although I wasn’t making any money. I was devoting as much of my time and energy as I could to this effort in the hope that it would pay off. It didn’t, but I came very close and that’s another story.
Working from home gave me a lot of flexibility with my son. His school was in the morning, only and I would pick him up every day. We would put him in daycare in the afternoon, but he hated naptime and would disturb the other kids. I dealt with this by keeping him with me until after the daycare naptime was over. This was pretty nice. We would come home after I picked him at school and play on the bed. He called them ‘funny games’ and we always had a good time rough housing. Then, I would fix him lunch and let him watch some TV before going to the daycare for the rest of the day. This was a good bonding time for the two of us.
One of the games I played with him was a thing we called wee-boom. It started with one of his stuffed animals, his Everyones, as he called them. I tossed one of them in the air one time while playing with him and made the sound ‘weeee’, then I went ‘boom’ when it hit the ground. He loved this and wanted me to throw them as high in the air as I could. Eventually, he wanted to do it himself. I don’t mean he wanted to throw the stuffed animals himself, I mean he wanted me to throw him in the air.
We started pretty small. I would toss him lightly and catch him, making the ‘wee-boom’ noises. As we got more confident, I would toss him higher and higher until I was tossing him as high as I could, maybe as high as ten feet and he would just giggle and smile the whole time. I would do this for until my arms were sore and then I would, ‘What we do we say?’ And, he would hold a finger up and go, ‘ONE MORE TIME!’ I would then toss him one last time, catch him and flip him over my arms to land on his feet. He loved this and would come up to me going, ‘Wee-boom, daddy! Wee-boom!’ I loved doing it with him almost as much as he did, even if it was quite a workout.
Well, he was having problems somewhere, I was never able to figure out exactly where. But, he was very upset and started saying he was a ‘bad boy.’ When I asked why he said that I pieced together that someone was telling him that, but I couldn’t figure out whom. I would have really torn into them if I had ever learned. I could tell this was really hurting him and just telling him that it wasn’t true and that he was a good boy wasn’t doing it. So, I started using wee-boom as therapy.
He would ask to play wee-boom and I would go, ‘I don’t know. Wee-boom is only for good boys. Are you a good boy?’ He would nod his head or maybe whisper that he was and I would say, ‘That’s not good enough. You have to say it.’ He would say, ‘I’m a good boy,’ but only in a whisper. That was good enough and we would play wee-boom. This became the ritual. I would always ask him if he was a good boy and he would have to say it. Just nodding his head wouldn’t do. After a while, he didn’t whisper it, he would say it louder and louder, eventually he would shout, ‘I’M A GOOD BOY!’ This is what I was trying to achieve. He was feeling good about himself again and he acted like it. This is the way I thought we should be dealing with the problems. Encouraging positive behavior and thinking and discouraging bad behavior and negative thinking.
We were making progress. It was slow and difficult, but it was really visible. After the second year of his school he was old enough to go to regular kindergarten and I insisted that we were going to leave San Angelo. I started applying for positions and was encouraged when I made the short list at a school right away. After being out of academia for two years I was afraid I wouldn’t be competitive. I didn’t get that particular job, but I eventually got the job at the University of South Dakota and we moved to Vermillion, SD in the summer of 1999.
We almost made it, but things were to fall apart completely within a year.
Special Pets August 24, 2007
Posted by physics309 in Mayport, McKinney, San Angelo, Seabrook, Taipei, Vermillion.1 comment so far
Most of us, at one time or another, have had a special pet or two, the ones that just stand out with special memories. With nine kids in the family, we had a lot of pets over the years. There were even times when we had a lot of pets, like the time we found 10 kittens abandoned alongside the road. We also had a variety of pets: certainly cats and dogs, but also horses, mice, fish (We even had a piranha at one time!), snakes, birds, a legless chicken, frogs and salamanders, spiders, and pretty much anything else one of us could bring home. Out of all of these, there were three pets, all dogs, which really stand out in my memory.
The first was a beagle we had in Seabrook. I hesitate to call it a pet. We were more like a way station for it. It came wondering in one day and took up residence with us. We ended up calling it Hound Dog. Hound Dog was really something. He would hang around with us for months, and then disappear for weeks, before showing up again. He would come back, all skinny and scratched up, and flea-bitten, and badly in need of a bath, but otherwise OK. He was just out running around in the woods and having a good time. Once he got rested up and put some weight back on he would disappear again.
He had some really interesting characteristics that make me laugh even today. One was that he would like to chase cars, which isn’t all that unusual, except he would bite the tires. We would watch as this crazy dog ran after the cars, biting the tires as it drove down the street. One day he must have gotten a good chunk of one because the car just ran right over his head – buh-thump! Hound Dog just got up and came walking back home with this look as if to say, ‘Got that one!’
His bark was something special. He couldn’t just bark, he had to warm up. ‘Huh! Huh! Huh! A-roooooh! Huh! Huh! Huh! A-rooooh!’ This just provided us with endless amounts of amusement. We would sit around imitating him for years afterwards. One night he was in the yard barking at the Moon, or something, and driving Pop crazy. Every time he would start barking, Pop would yell at him to stop. He would quit for a little while, and then start again. Instead of just bringing him inside, Pop would go to the door and yell at him again. Then, he started again and Pop came out and got him in mid-warm-up. ‘Huh! Huh! Huh! Aieeee!’ I always imagined he must have strained something that time.
He loved to follow us kids around when we went out somewhere, looking for some adventure. When he was around, he was always with one of us kids. He really was a great pet. When we moved to Taiwan we found a farm out in the country that was glad to take him.
The next memorable pet was right after that, when we got to Taiwan. Mom decided she wanted this Lhasa Apso puppy and named it Meh Leung (Mandarin for Beautiful Dragon). Meh Leung may be the only animal I’ve ever met with nearly human intelligence. She was not only very intelligent, but very much aware of what was going on around her and could make decisions based on that. It was weird sometimes to see just how intelligent she was. But, she also had a sense of humor, which really made her fun.
A great example of this is this time we were playing ball in the house. This house was very large and had plenty of room for us to play in. It was also made of concrete, so balls seemed like an obvious thing to play with in it. On this particular day the ball got away from us and went bouncing down the steps. Through some miraculous set of bounces it ended up in the toilet in the bathroom at the bottom of the steps. One of my sisters and I chased after it and when we found it in the toilet, we just stood there staring at it. We argued about which of us was going to reach in there and get it when I finally agreed, but only if my sister didn’t tell anyone. Of course, as soon as I reached in there she went running upstairs and told everyone else. Everyone started calling me ‘Toilet Hands’ and I chased them around and touched them with the ball. This started a big game and whoever got touched had to stick their hand in the toilet and be the Toilet Hands.
This was going on for awhile and Meh Leung was watching and playing with us when the ball went bouncing into yet a different toilet. Well, she just jumped right in after it. I don’t remember how it happened, but someone flushed the toilet with Meh Leung standing in it. When it was done, she jumped out and started chasing us while we were yelling ‘Toilet God.’ She just loved it! When she dried off, she would go running back to the toilet and wait for one of us to stick her in and flush it again. I think we played Toilet God for at least an hour that day.
I could tell all sorts of stories about Meh Leung, she was such a great pet. We couldn’t take her with us to Europe when we left, so we gave her to a family friend. But, even after 35 years, all you have to do is mention ‘Toilet God’ to us younger kids and we’ll erupt in laugher.
It took a while after Meh Leung before I had another great pet. But, in 1985, my wife and I stumbled on a stray and adopted her. She was a puppy Labrador, about six months old, according to the vet. She wasn’t one of the big yellow or black labs, but the smaller white ones. My wife and I met at Snowshoe, West Virginia and white rabbits are called snowshoes, so we named the puppy Snowshoe. She ended up being just the best pet I ever had and I really loved her.
It didn’t take Snowshoe long to get into some misadventures. We found her at Thanksgiving and a few weeks later we were having a Christmas party at our house. I put a bowl of Hershey’s Kisses with decorative wrapping out on the table. A little while later my wife asked me about the Kisses. When we looked, the bowl was empty and there was a doggy with a stomach ache. I was finding dog poop in the back yard with decorative aluminum foil in it for weeks after that. We were officially on notice.
One of the things about Snowshoe is that she loved to go for walks, and so did we. One day my wife asked me if I wanted to go for a walk and we realized Snowshoe got all excited when she said it. She understood what we were saying! We had to start using code words for things, and we had to change them because she would figure out what the code words meant. I mean, the dog could have worked breaking codes for the NSA!
She was normally a very gentle and loving dog. All of the kids in the neighborhoods where ever we lived loved her and would come around to play with her. But, she was the terror of any cat that came around. When we lived in McKinney, we lived on the edge of a big open area on the edge of town and there were a lot of wild cats in the area. We tried to intervene between Snowshoe and any cats we came across, but sometimes we weren’t fast enough. One time, Snowshoe went right for this cat. She was blazingly fast and was on this cat before we even knew what was happening. Well, this cat was no wimp and just latched itself on Snowshoe’s face with its claws. Snowshoe was running around with this cat latched onto her face, making a screaming sound while trying to shake the cat off, which caused the cat to dig in with its claws even more while the dog was shaking its head like crazy, which just made the dog shake its head even harder. My wife was yelling and jumping up and down, and I was chasing Snowshoe trying to break up the fight. It was like a scene from a comedy show! Finally, the terrified cat let loose and went running for safety. Snowshoe was just glad to get the thing off her face and let it go. I checked Snowshoe to see if her eyes were injured before turning her over to my wife. It made her feel better to give scarface the baby treatment for a while after that.
Then there was the time when she was chasing a cat and it climbed a fence and jumped over it, into someone’s backyard. Snowshoe ran around to the front of the house looking for the other side of the fence, before turning around and running back. Just as she was coming back, the cat climbed over a different part of the fence and landed right in front of Snowshoe! The two of them were so surprised that all they could do was stare at each other for a couple of seconds before the cat ran off. Snowshoe stood there looking around with an expression on her face that seemed to say, ‘There’s cats falling out of the sky!’
Another time, we were coming back from a walk and ran across a cat sitting on a brick wall. Snowshoe chased it and the cat made a running jump onto a light post. The problem was, this light post was made of galvanized steel! The cat grabbed it with its claws, but couldn’t get a hold of it. We stood there and watched as the cat slid down the pole while its claws made this loud screeeeeech sound on the galvanized steel. It finally jumped off and made a run for it. Snowshoe just looked at it running away, as if to say, ‘Stupid cat!’
Then there was the time when she didn’t kill the kitten she trapped and we ended up with another pet. My wife adopted this little kitten and named it ‘Nano.’ Snowshoe and Nano became best buds. It was like a Bugs Bunny cartoon with the dog and this little kitten. They even slept together and would rough house together.
One day, Nano was teasing Snowshoe by coming down the steps, but only part way. When Snowshoe went chasing her, the cat had a huge head start and would escape. I watched this happen three or four times and decided to intervene. I took Snowshoe around the corner and waited for the cat to come down the stairs. She kept coming down even further when she couldn’t see Snowshoe anywhere. Finally, when she was nearly to the bottom of the stairs, I gave Snowshoe a little shove and she just tore into the cat! I swear, that cat lost a couple of its nine lives when it saw Snowshoe coming around the corner! Snowshoe came running back to me after it was done eating the cat and was just licking me and wagging her tail! She was so happy! The cat wouldn’t play any more after that. Spoiled sport!
I think I could write a whole book about Snowshoe. She was a great pet and friend and a great source of amusement, while driving us crazy at the same time with her misadventures. She was always glad to see me when I came home, even if I had just stepped out to get the mail and that unconditional love was a wonderful thing. She finally died in the spring of 2001 when she was about 16 years old, when we lived in Vermillion. I dug a grave for her in my backyard and we had a little ceremony for her. My ex and my son came over and we buried her with some balls and doggy treats. I think I took her death harder than my marriage breaking up and I haven’t had another pet since then. Maybe someday, but not yet.
Courtesy, please! August 23, 2007
Posted by physics309 in McKinney.add a comment
Being courteous is a good thing. I know I like it when people are courteous to me and I get riled when they are rude, so it’s easy to imagine that other people react the same way. This has come to mind this week as I’m working with a textbook publisher about the companion website that goes with my textbook. It’s not working. Instead of beating up the people I talk to on the help line, I’ve been very courteous and understanding. The result being that I’m getting some very good support from them and I have to think they might have held back if I was mean and rude.
I have any number of good examples of this and have even mentioned one in a previous posting. Another example is a time when I flew to Hampton, VA for a conference and they lost my luggage. I mean they really lost it, as in it couldn’t be found – for several days. I worked with them about it and had finally decided that I had to go buy some clothes. I always carry a change with me on the plane and, prior to new security requirements, always carried my bathroom items with me. Worst case, I could shave, brush my teeth and change my shirt and underwear. This will carry you for only so long, though, and I had reached the limit. I was at the airport talking to them about the status of my missing luggage and was told they still couldn’t find it. I could see the woman physically bracing herself, preparing for the onslaught that was sure to follow. I just laughed about it. I mean, it wasn’t her fault that it was lost and beating her up wasn’t going to get it found any sooner. I asked them to keep me informed and was about to leave when she told me that they had vouchers for people whose luggage was lost for so long so they could buy some clothes. This was good news since that was going to be my next stop. She told me that it was normally for $50, but she gave me one for $100 instead. I don’t know it for a fact, but I’m willing to bet that if I had been rude to her that voucher would have been for $50.
My favorite example of the benefits of being courteous is the time I went to Pasadena, CA for another conference at the Jet Propulsion Lab, in the summer of 1991. I spent the week in Pasadena, then was going to fly back to Dallas overnight Friday, get into DFW airport Saturday morning (it really did take all night to fly from Pasadena to DFW), walk across the terminal, get on another flight to take me back to LA so that I could fly up to Portland and catch a flight for Seoul, South Korea for a my Navy Reserve duty.
This was a little crazy and I went to a ticketing agent while in Pasadena to see if I could get this changed. The whole thing was on the same airline, so I was hoping I could consolidate the two tickets into one and not fly back to Dallas. I was standing next in line for the agent when the lady at the counter in front of me started getting angry with the ticketing agent. She got worse and worse until she was screaming insults at this guy and calling him all sorts of names. It was so bad that I was actually embarrassed to be standing there listening to it.
She finally left and it was my turn. I felt guilty by association and the first thing I did was to apologize to the agent for the way that lady had behaved. He shrugged it off and said that it happens. I told him my story about the tickets and we chatted while he worked on it. Well, it turned out that the trip to Pasadena was a private ticket and the trip to Seoul was a government ticket, so he couldn’t consolidate them. I was going to have to fly back to Dallas. But, my government ticket was really convoluted and had me flying through several airports on the way to Portland. He was able to clean it up so that I flew directly from DFW to Portland. I felt this was well worth the wait and thanked him for his help.
So, that Friday evening, I caught my flight to DFW, went to the adjacent gate when I arrived in DFW and caught my flight to Portland. When I boarded the flight to Seoul I couldn’t find my seat. All of the seat numbers were too big. Then I realized the agent back in Pasadena had bumped me up to first class! Not only on the flight to Seoul, but the flight back to Portland, as well!
Those two flights were the first and, so far, only times I have ever flown first class. It is appropriately named because it was truly first class treatment all the way. The seats were big and comfortable, the food was excellent, and the service was great. This was about a 10-hour flight each way, so I got maximum value out of it. I kept my mouth shut the whole time I was in Korea about my flight because I didn’t want anyone to know about this boondoggle. I was afraid I might lose it if the wrong person heard about it. When I got back to Portland and caught my flight to DFW I had to return to the cattle seats. Man! They have never been as uncomfortable as they were on that flight.
So, be courteous to others. Its good for your own stress level. And, besides, you never know what might come of it.
CD Revolution August 19, 2007
Posted by physics309 in McKinney, Science.add a comment
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has an on-going series of summer schools for graduate students. I got to go to it in August 1991 and it was really great. We spent the whole week getting lectures from leaders in the planetary sciences and opportunities to talk to them and ask them questions. I learned a great deal that week. There was one in particular that really sticks out in my mind.
NASA had a problem at that time with data storage. The missions that were in progress and in the planning stage would cause the amount of data to explode. At the same time, there were mountains of data stored in various university basements (we had a big pile of it at the University of Texas – Dallas where I was going to grad school), but the equipment to read it was no longer around and the people who knew the format were dead or retired. So, there was all this data and no one could read it. NASA needed a solution to the existing data problem and it needed the solution before the new missions buried the agency with data. They needed some kind of innovative solution, a different way of doing things and this was the in the days before the Web and servers, which makes problems like this a lot easier to solve today.
This particular lecture was by a guy working on a just such an innovative solution: putting the data on compact discs. He explained to us how music was stored on CDs in digital format, so it would be possible to store things other than music, as long as it was in the same format. He was very excited about all of this and explained how he went to the CD manufacturers and they didn’t want to have anything to with the idea. They wanted to do music CDs and nothing else. Finally, this guy was able to convince a company to print a bunch of data CDs, but at a premium. He held up some CDs while he was telling us about this and explained that they cost twenty-five cents each. I asked him, ‘You mean to tell us that when we buy a CD for $15, the CD costs only twenty five cents?’ And, he said, ‘Oh no! This CD is much more expensive than the music CDs!’
Today, computers come with the ability to write to CDs and you can buy very inexpensive blank CDs. This has created a whole cottage industry. I’m sure today that music CDs are only a small part of the total number of CDs being manufactured today. The vast majority of them are for things like software and data. And, it all started with that guy with a revolutionary idea.
Not only is it strange to think about how the industry resisted making anything other than music CDs, but NASA doesn’t even store data on CDs. Today the data is stored on servers and is transmitted over the World Wide Web, a development that wasn’t imagined at the time. And music? Of course, the days for music CDs are numbered. If it hadn’t been for this guy at JPL with an innovative idea, the CD industry would be on hard times right now.
Quest For Antarctica August 9, 2007
Posted by physics309 in McKinney, Science, Vermillion.1 comment so far
A destination high on my want-to-go-there list is Antarctica. I have tried several times to go there, but I keep coming up short.
The first try was for Operation Deep Freeze to support the U.S. presence at McMurdo Base. This was a one-year military assignment that included six months of training in New Zealand, followed by six months at McMurdo. You got your choice of duty stations once you completed your tour. I applied for it in the spring of 1981 while still on my first enlistment, but was told they didn’t need anyone in my rating. I ended up reenlisting that same year to change ratings. While going to school for my new rating I saw an advertisement in the Navy Times that said they were looking for people to volunteer for Deep Freeze. My old rating was on the list of people they were looking for and my new one wasn’t.
My next two tries were a few years later, in the fall of 1994. One was to the private company that had the contract to provide services to the U.S. bases. I sent them my resume but never heard back from them.
At the same time, I applied for a post-doctoral job at the University of Wyoming. A post-doc is like an internship for scientists right out of school. I had just received my Ph.D. earlier that same year and was still looking for full-time work when I saw the ad for this post-doc. The job entailed going to Antarctica every spring (August through November) to launch atmospheric balloons to collect data on the ozone hole that forms over Antarctica that time every year. The scientist in charge of the project had been going every year for many years and was looking for someone to run the field work. This was exciting work and a great opportunity and I was thrilled when I got a telephone interview. In the interview, which occurred in early December, they asked when I would be able to report to the campus in Wyoming. I was teaching a semester at a local community college, but told them I could be there within a few days of finishing. They were pleased with this answer because they were going to Scandinavia right after New Year’s to do similar work over the Arctic and this would give them the chance to train me in all of the procedures.
Well, I didn’t hear from them for a couple of weeks and had just about written them off when they called me and said I was number two on their list. The problem was that the number one guy was jerking them around and wouldn’t agree to terms. They told me that they had made their final offer to the guy and, if he didn’t accept, they would fly me up for an on-campus interview. I became very hopeful, but then the guy accepted the terms. Unfortunately for them, things didn’t work out very well. He ended up not showing up in time for the Scandinavian training. In fact, he didn’t show up until July and the scientist in charge had to go to Antarctica again. I felt sorry for him because he wanted to be with his family after so many years in the field. They just picked the wrong guy.
The final near miss occurred in 2005 when I applied for the Ice Cube Observatory. This is a very exciting project and I really wanted to be involved. Ice Cube is a neutrino observatory being built in the Antarctic ice. We have a base there, Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which sits almost right on top of the south pole. The ice there is about two miles (three kilometers) thick. Ice Cube will consist of a series of bores into the ice that will place sensors deep in the ice. These sensors will be able to detect faint flashes of light that occur when a neutrino strikes an atom in one of the ice molecules. This doesn’t happen very often, so the bigger the area searched, the more data will be collected. When completed, Ice Cube will enclose a full cubic kilometer of ice, hence the name. It will be a kilometer on each side and will be located in the middle of the ice with a kilometer of ice above and below it to help shield it from other kinds of radiation. See my earlier post about neutrinos.
The observatory is still in the construction phase and the job I applied for was to help construct it. The positions are for 1 ½ years, which includes six months of training and then a full year at Amundsen-Scott. The people selected would fly to Antarctica in October (shortly after sunrise at the south pole) and fly to Amundsen-Scott when the weather permitted it. Then, you were there until the following year. There is a nice, new structure for the people that winter over and trailers for the summer people. All of the summer people have to leave before March. The south pole has only one sunrise per year, in September, and one sunset, in March. Between the two is six months of night and the weather gets so hostile that it’s hazardous to attempt any flight operations. If you miss the last plane out, you have a long wait for the next one.
I was thrilled with the idea of doing this and submitted a pretty strong application. I didn’t get the job, but I got a phone call, an email, and a letter telling me that they had selected three people and I was the fourth person on their list. They encouraged me to apply the next year (2006) and I had every intention of doing so. But, then things fell apart between my son and his mother and I realized I needed to be available so that he could move in with me, which he did that summer. That was unfortunate, but it was also an easy decision to make. I have my priorities straight in my head and I live by them. He’s number one on the list.
Ice Cube is a long-term project, so maybe I’ll get another chance to apply once my son goes off to college. Or, maybe something else will turn up. I haven’t given up yet.
Building a Family August 6, 2007
Posted by physics309 in McKinney.add a comment
When I started this blog I knew this was a story I was going to have to tell one day. It is a difficult and personal story to tell. There are three versions of this story. The first is in my head and I don’t ever plan on telling anyone. The second is a washed-down version of the first and I will tell that one to my son one day. The third is the one I am sharing with you here and is an even more washed-down version.
The Creature is with his mother for a few weeks and it has made me think about how much I enjoy having him around and made me decide that this was the right time to tell this story.
I’ll warn you, this story is a little rough.
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After being married for a few years we did what most couples do, decided to have a baby. We talked it over and, in 1985, decided this was the right time to do it. But, try as we might, nothing ever happened. I was still on active duty and going on deployments, so we at first thought that was the problem, just a timing thing. Then, I left active duty in 1988 and we didn’t have that excuse anymore. We finally realized there was a problem.
We started going to see doctors and they couldn’t find anything wrong with either of us. As time went on, the examinations became more and more intrusive. We were instructed to have sex at specific times, so the doctor could check out the results. My wife went in for all sorts of check-ups. I made so many sample donations that I was getting sexually aroused when ever I walked through the plastic container section at the supermarket.
Over time, our families pieced together that we were trying and having problems. Boy, that was a mistake. The ribbing from my family was not very subtle. I was sick of hearing how we were just trying too hard and when we relaxed it would happen. Bull shit. The comments from her family were even worse. I remember the time I got a sex-education guide from my mother-in-law about sexual fundamentals. I tossed it to my wife and said, “Well, gee! No wonder we don’t have a baby. We’ve been doing it wrong all this time!” But, we survived. Still, no baby.
Even though the doctor couldn’t find a problem, he decided to put my wife on an oral fertility drug. A sex regiment went along with it. If you want something that will take the romance out of love making, make a schedule in advance. “Oh, honey! We can’t go to the Smith’s Friday evening because the doctor said we have to have sex at 7:30 that evening, then again Saturday morning at 5.” Loads of fun. I’ll sleep on my back so you won’t have to wake me for the morning appointment. Still, nothing.
Then, it happened. Of all things, it happened for the right reason, too. We just got frisky one night. Happened in, of places, Valentine, Nebraska. Our families were very happy with the news and it really came at the right time. This was August 1990 and my father was dying of cancer and we all knew he wouldn’t live long enough to see the baby. He died in October. At least, he knew a baby was on the way and my father really loved babies. The news brought him some comfort those last couple of months.
But, all was not well. Iraq had just invaded Kuwait that same August and we were mobilizing reservists. Several of my friends were doing their annual active duty when the invasion occurred and were told they were not going home until it was all over. Other people I knew in the reserve unit were being called up. So, we waited.
I got the phone call in January, 1991. I was being mobilized and was to report to the USS Blue Ridge in the Persian Gulf. My orders were on the way. Except one thing, they never showed up. So, we sat around waiting for the official orders. And we waited. For eight weeks we waited. The air campaign started while we waited. And we waited some more. The thing was going to be over before too much longer. Then, they finally found them. They had come in after hours back in January and the person on watch had thrown them in the bottom of a safe, where they had sat for eight weeks. So, they put me on active duty and sent me home to wait for my transportation. I was too senior by that time to bother having around the base and I lived locally, so this made it easier for everyone.
Then, on Sunday morning just a few days before I was to leave, my wife complained that she hadn’t felt the baby kicking for a few days. She was very concerned and wanted to see the doctor. I talked to him on the phone and he told me to take her down to the hospital. When we got there, the nurses on call checked out my wife and the baby and then asked us to wait while they had a doctor come and look at her. I knew then what was going to happen. The doctor took us into a room and the nurses left. She got out a sonogram machine and got a sonogram of the baby up on the screen. Then she pointed out the various anatomical features before she said, ‘And this area is the chest. You should be able to see the heartbeat, but there isn’t any. I’m sorry. You’re baby is dead.’
Even though I knew it, it was still like being hit with a board, except it was over my entire body all at once. Over the next couple of days, my wife had to undergo treatment to induce labor, and I had to call all of our family and friends to tell them the news. Every time it was like I relived the experience all over. I could only make a few phone calls before I had to take a break. It took days for me to call everyone.
Finally, the baby was delivered. It was a little girl. She was over seven months along and would have been viable. By the laws of Texas, she was treated as if she had been born alive and died. This meant we had to go through all of the same procedures, including a death certificate and funeral arrangements. We named her Catherine Jennifer after one of my wife’s sisters and one of mine. She was delivered the same day that the President announced the end of the war. While everyone else was celebrating, we spent an hour holding our dead baby and saying goodbye. The counselor at the hospital had us do all the normal things we would have done. We got our picture taken with her, we took her footprints, and we held her until they came and took her away. It was the worst day of my life.
Without going into needless detail, I’ll just say our grief was enormous. I think that my wife and I both went a little nuts that day. People will say that it wasn’t as bad as if she had been born and we had spent time with her. I think that is true, but it doesn’t mean the amount of grief we went through should be minimized. After all the effort we went through, then all of the hopes and dreams, just to have it all taken away like that. I wanted to rage about how unfair it was. But, I knew that life isn’t fair and we just had to push on.
I became very concerned for my wife and thought she was suicidal. Fortunately, they canceled my mobilization on the doctor’s recommendation. I really do think I would have come home a widower if I had gone to the Persian Gulf. She was having so much trouble that I was about to take her to counseling, when she seemed to suddenly turn the corner. But, she was never the same again. What I didn’t realize at first was how much of an impact it had on me. I had some very severe problems for a while. It was a crushing blow and it took me several years to recover. I don’t think I’ve ever the same again, either.
You never really recover from something like that. Things will never be the same, no matter how badly you want it to be. Nothing will ever fill the hole you feel. A mistake many people make in situations like this is to try and put it behind them. You can’t. Some wounds never heal, they just get numb and you learn to live with them. What you have to do is find a way to make it a part of you. All the while realizing that the world is still turning, you are still alive, and you will be happy again.
It took us a while, but we finally decided to try again. This time, we were able to get a highly recommended fertility specialist and he was able to finally figure out what the problem was. Basically, my wife was a walking birth-control pill. When a fertilized egg attaches to the side of the uterus, a woman’s body starts making a hormone so it won’t accept any further eggs. One at a time, please. My wife was making it all the time. So, all fertilized eggs were being rejected. I learned a whole lot more about female anatomy and physiology during this process than I had ever planned on.
Once the doctor knew what the problem was things were cleared for an aggressive fertility regimen. The drugs she was put on are the same ones that result in the multiple births you read about in the newspaper. I had visions of quadruplets, quintuplets, sextuplets! But, this guy really was good and had a great track record for single births.
The drugs weren’t enough. We had to in vitro, too. This meant we had to schedule a time and I had to give a sample. So, they gave me a little cup and directed me to the sample collection room and pointed out the box of ‘aids’ that were available to assist me. I skimmed through them, looking for the Tupperware catalog. Most of them were the garden variety girlie magazines, but one was really different. It was just page after page of the lower half of women’s legs wearing spike high heels! Different strokes for different folks I guess. No pun intended. No, actually pun intended.
Any way, I took my sample back to the nurses and they checked me out. After a while, I thought the nurses were kind of giving me the eye. Once I noticed I started paying more attention and it was true, they were really checking me out. Later, when we were talking to the doctor, he told me I had the highest score on my sample that he had ever seen. Out of six categories, I scored an ‘A’ or ‘A+’ in every category. He asked me if I would be interested in being donor, if they needed one. I said, ‘Sure.’ I felt like whinnying and stamping my foot once for ‘no’ and twice for ‘yes.’ They never did call me, but the nurses always gave me the eye whenever we went in after that.
Well, it didn’t take. We had to do it all again. It didn’t take the second time, either. The drugs are very harsh, so the doctor told us we had only one more chance. So, we went through the drill a third time, all the drugs, the scheduled appointment, the Tupperware (I noticed someone had swiped the leg magazine!) and then we waited. Turns out, the third time really was the charm. Nine months later, November 16, 1993, our son was born.
A couple years later we tried one more time. We did the whole routine three times with no success. This was going to be our one and only. That’s OK, I’ve been very grateful to have the one.
Navy Medical August 6, 2007
Posted by physics309 in McKinney, USS Comte de Grasse (DD-974).add a comment
We did medical evaluations for the entire reserve drill unit over the weekend. Medical is a major component of military life, and usually not a pleasant component, although most of it is routine. Medical problems are the number one thing disqualifying people from being eligible for military service in the first place and one of the leading causes for discharges. I’ve been poked, prodded and looked at so much over the years that I don’t even pay attention anymore. Just let me know when you’re done.
For me, the tone of military medical was pretty much set from the first time I was examined, when I first applied for an enlistment. I was 19 at the time and skinny as a rail. I was standing on the scale and I could see it said I was 118 pounds and six foot. The table said the minimum allowed weight for my height was 130 pounds so I thought they weren’t going to accept me. Not in 1977. I had a pulse and they weren’t going to let me go. The corpsman wrote something in my record and sent me to the next station. While standing in the next line I looked it over and it said I weighed 132 pounds.
The next guy took my blood pressure. Then he took it again. Then he called over a doctor who took it. The doctor looked at the readings and said, ‘I don’t know why you’re alive.’ Not exactly a comforting thing to hear. My blood pressure was so low the doctor said I should have been unconscious. He signed it off and sent me to the next station.
I weighed over 130 by the time I got out of bootcamp and my blood pressure is normal nowadays, so I guess they knew what they were doing.
Once you’re in the military you have to get regular medical examinations to ensure you’re still healthy. The fun part is when you get examined by a doctor of the opposite sex for the first time. My first time was on the destroyer. We were too small to justify a doctor, so they would wait until there was a group of us that needed to be examined and have a doctor come over and check all of us in a row. There were a bunch of us in my group, about 12 or 15, and they just lined all of us up in our underwear. Then the doctor walked in, this very beautiful blond in her whites with a skirt, long gorgeous legs, and spike high heels. I have to think she did it on purpose knowing she was going to have all of these guys lined up in their underwear. Then, she went down the row and checked us all out, one after another. I figured if I was going to have someone stick their hand in my crotch and feel around I would really rather it be a woman, so I was OK with it. But, some of the guys were obviously self conscious about the whole thing. I’ve since been examined by so many women doctors that it doesn’t even register with me. I figure they’ve seen it all before. I’m pretty sure I don’t have anything new. Its just business.
In the mid-1980s they started testing us for HIV every year. In addition, I’ve been tested every time I’ve been mobilized (three times) and demobilized (three more times), as well as when I applied for a commission (twice) and when I got commissioned (once). This leads to the most improbable pick-up line I can think of. ‘Hey, there! You know, I’ve been tested for AIDS more than 30 times!’ Not exactly the kind of line that makes a favorable impression.
It was at medical that I realized we were about to invade Panama in December 1989. Tensions were really building with the government of Manuel Noriega and there was talk about military action. I was at medical for a routine examination and was in the line to receive my vaccinations. I looked toward the front of the line and saw they were inoculating people for typhoid. This wasn’t unusual because we had Southern Command people stationed at the base and they had to have the inoculation in case they went to Central America. The vaccination is perishable and expensive, so once they open a bottle they would then vaccinate everyone that came in after that so it wouldn’t go to waste. But, while I was watching, I saw the corpsman finish the bottle and then open a new one. They were inoculating everyone! I told my friend with me that we were going into Panama. And we did, later that same week.
I don’t enjoy getting medical exams, but I’m thankful for them. My father died young because he hated doctors and would never go see one. If he had, they would’ve found the cancer early enough to treat it. So, I let them poke me and jab me and take blood out and put things in and put their fingers in places I would rather they didn’t put them and I think about my father and about my son. By the way, I passed with flying colors. I’m healthy as a horse, as they say.
