I retired over14 years ago, though I've continued to work on and off since then. Mostly I'm just cruising, making the most of what time I have remaining.
Although my time is nearly up, I still care deeply about the kind of world I'll be leaving to those who follow me and, to that end, I am devoted to seeing the forces of repression and authoritarianism are at least held at bay, if not crushed out of existence.
I write about things that interest me and, as an eclectic soul, my interests run the gamut from science to spirituality, governance to economics, art and engineering. I'm hopeful one day my children will read what I've left behind.
My father took up golf late in life and he wanted me to golf with him. I was 15 years old, which means he had to be about 38. He wanted me to golf right-handed, but I was a dominant southpaw and I refused to do it. Reluctantly, he got me a left-handed beginner’s set of clubs. I even took lessons—if memory serves, I took one lesson from Cary “Doc” Middlecoff at what was then called The Joe Kirkwood Jr. Golf Center . It was on Whitsett Ave., just North of Ventura Blvd. It’s now called Weddington Golf & Tennis. Read the second paragraph at their website’s home page for a little history on the site.
Cary “Doc” Middlecoff, somewhere near his heyday
My golfing did not last long. At 15 I had started to surf, which seemed so much more challenging at the time. Besides, golf was for old men and surfing was a young person’s sport. I gave up golf, though I hung on to the left-handed beginner’s set of clubs the old man had purchased for me. I even used them once-in-a-while to hit a bucket o’ balls.
Fast forward 31 years. I had been working at Rocketdyne for maybe three years. My first year I was a “job shopper”—a temp—working on the FMEA/CIL* document for the Space Shuttle Main Engine program, in anticipation of a return to flight after the Challenger disaster. I then was hired in as a full-time employee, working in the Fight Ops team. I was fortunate enough to be in the Rocketdyne Operational Support Center (ROSC) when Discovery lifted off from Kennedy’s Launch Complex 39 on September 29, 1988.
I had helped design the layout and overall configuration of the ROSC, and being there for that launch was my reward. I didn’t know enough about the operational parameters of our engines at that time to understand exactly what I was looking at that morning, but the room was filled with displays showing engine performance as Discovery lifted off and ascended on its approximately 525 second flight to LEO.
Flight Patch for STS-26 | Return to Flight after Challenger | Space Shuttle Orbiter “Discovery” | OV-103
That evening a bunch of us went to celebrate the successful launch and our nation’s return to space flight. We were elated . . . to say the least. We went across Victory Blvd. to a restaurant called Yankee Doodles. Somehow, I got into a conversation with the person who turned out to be the Manager of the SSME’s Program Office and, once he found out what my role had been (and that I had a Juris Doctorate; a Law degree) he offered me a job. After some discussion with my current management, I decided to take it.
It wasn’t long before the team I was now on decided to have a golf tournament, and they of course wanted me to play. Not because they knew anything about my golf game (how could they?) but because they needed warm bodies to show up on the course, as well as pay for the round, prizes, and food. I was reluctant; after all it had been over 30 years since I’d actually played and, in fact, I don’t believe I had ever played on a full-size course.
I decided to give it a try. I don’t remember what I did for clubs because, by then, I had rid myself of that old beginner’s set. I remember going to Simi Hills Golf Course and hitting some balls. Honestly, I can’t quite remember where that first tournament was played, but I know I got hooked . . . bad. I had my uncle’s friend make me a set of golf clubs and I began practicing with a vengeance. I cobbled together a newsletter for the course, filling it with ridiculous and comedic stories. I showed it to the General Manager and told him I could do that for them every month.
The 18th Green at Simi Hills Golf Course
He told me to go ahead and, shortly after, I was hitting as many balls as I wanted on the range and, a bit later, going out on the course with the GM and the Head Pro – getting tips and playing lessons for free. I eventually was able to play for free as well, as long as I didn’t try to abuse the privilege by playing during peak hours. Within a fairly short time I had my index (similar to handicap) down to 12. I was well on my way to becoming a single-digit handicapper, but it was not to be.
I started having back and hip pain and, even with going to a Chiropractor and seeing my doctor about it, nothing was helping. Little did I know what was coming. Just before New Year’s Eve, December 31, 1999, I had an attack of sciatica that had my wife calling 911 to have me transported to the nearest hospital. I was on crutches for a month, and a cane for two months after that. I still experience numbness/tenderness in my left foot and don’t expect it will ever entirely heal.
Fortunately, I eventually found Robin McKenzie’s wonderful book, “Treat Your Own Back” and, after religiously doing the stretching he recommends, for weeks, I was back on the course and healing rather nicely.
Now, I don’t remember if it was before or after my back problems, but I became good friends with one of the professional golfers at Simi Hills, and he was involved with a company called Golden Tee. They had opened up a practice facility at Moorpark College and were planning on building a new golf course in the hills just below the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library here in Simi Valley.
Me and good ol’ Paul What’s-his-name practicing our putting
As you may surmise from the graphic I’m including in this post, I had a really sweet deal with Golden Tee. Unfortunately, the guy on the left of this picture (his first name was Paul; I don’t remember his last name, and I think he’s moved on to that 19th hole in the sky. Suffice it to say, things got real ugly. I found the record of a court case where Golden Tee sued the Ventura County Community College Board . . . and lost. Actually, I think it was right around this time I experienced my bout of sciatica and, shortly thereafter, decided (along with my wife, of course) to adopt our first child . . . but that’s another story.
* Failure Mode and Effects Analysis/Critical Items List
The time has come for me to simplify . . . to apply some feng shui to my collection of old (ancient?) paperwork, some of which is more than several decades old. Paper is the one thing I seem to be a bit of a hoarder with; that and old clothing, I guess.
I am coming across papers, letters, and notes I’ve written over the years, many of them from my over two decades of service at Rocketdyne, where I was privileged to work on the Space Shuttle Main Engine program. In that time I worked for (without changing desks) Rockwell International, The Boeing Company, and the Pratt & Whitney Division of United Technologies. After I accepted an early retirement package in 2010, I returned as a contractor to work for Aerojet Rocketdyne in 2015, where I worked for a bit over two years.
Recently, I purchased a small, portable Brother scanner and I am slowly scanning old papers I’m finding. Inasmuch as I’m now publishing far more frequently to this blog, I’ve decided to save some of these things so I can throw the paper away and still have a record. It’s been over nine years since I retired and I find I’m forgetting what working in a large organization was like. Reading some of the documents I created helps me to remember what I did, as well as to feel reasonably confident I wasn’t just spinning my wheels.
What follows should be somewhat self-evident. It’s a letter I wrote to my manager in 1994, now over 25 years ago. I think I sound pretty reasonable, and I’m gratified to know I was pushing—pretty hard, I think—for positive change back then. I’m not an IT person; never went to undergrad and, besides, the earliest PCs didn’t come into existence until I was nearing my thirties. However, I did recognize the value such tools brought to managing and operating a business and I have always been a big promoter of technology in the office. At any rate, this is more for me than my readers, but some may find it “amusing.”
PS – I scanned the original “memo” in .jpg format and the accompanying Lotus presentation materials in .pdf, which you’ll have to click on if you’re interested in what Lotus was doing 25 years ago, before its acquisition by IBM.
I don’t make it a habit to post much from Twitter or Facebook here, but I couldn’t resist sharing this one. Our dog, Angel, paws her tennis balls while holding a rope or another ball in her mouth, but she’s nowhere near as animated as this bad boy.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I spent a few years in the business of helping others, shall we say, adjust their perspective. In the late seventies and early eighties I lived in Playa del Rey, California, a small town with an inordinate number of bars squeezed into a couple of blocks less than a quarter mile from the beach.
I frequented one of them more than the others, as it was almost literally across the street from my front door and, in the business I was in, I only needed to be able to get home quickly once in a while. The bar is still there and, if you watch TV, you may have seen it in a few shows. It’s called “The Prince O’ Whales.” I practically owned a stool there and had asked them to carry The Glenlivet when I first started frequenting the place. They were kind enough to oblige me and I have no idea how many cases I personally went through in the few years I spent much of time there.
However, this post has precious little to do with where I lived, how I survived, and how much Scotch I drank in my thirties. It’s actually about an article that was printed in the November 12, 1981 edition of Rolling Stone. It was written by P.J. O’Rourke. If you were an adult around that time, and you’ve not encountered this before, you may really enjoy it; it’s quite funny . . . and mostly (reasonably close to) the truth.
I have searched high and low for a reprint or a .pdf or URL where I could find the article in its entirety, but it doesn’t seem to exist online. Fortunately, I had made a copy of the pages and recently I took the time to re-type the entire article. I thought it was excerpted from his book “Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People,” but it appears the first edition of that book was in the late eighties. Regardless, I have always found O’Rourke’s sense of humor—at least on this subject—pretty damn entertaining. Enjoy!
MODERN MANNERS
Beyond cocktail coquetry.
Cocaine and etiquette are inseparable; they go together like
cocaine and, well, more cocaine. But why should courtesy be so important when “Sinus
highballs” are passed around? Why shouldn’t we behave the way we behave with
other drugs—burrow
stupidly in the refrigerator as though we’d smoked marijuana or run naked
through the streets killing policemen as though we’d taken PCP? There’s no firm
answer: In fact, cocaine would make killing a policeman easier, since he’d be
much less likely to turn into a 9-eyed moon demon while we’re trying to wrest
the gun from his holster. Yet such behavior could not be less appropriate to
the ingestion of “Alkaloid Chitchat Flakes.
Cocaine demands gentility from its partakers, perhaps
because it’s such a sociable drug. MDA is a sociable drug, but it makes people
so sociable they’ll screw a coffee-table leg. That’s not good manners if the
table has an expensive lacquered finish. Or it may be the price of “Talk
Talcum” that inclines us to courtliness, though heroin, too, is costly, and
repeated use of that turns people into Negroes (Reagan administration
statistics clearly show.) Most likely it’s the special magic cocaine performs upon
us all that ignites our civility and refinement. Cocaine makes us so
intelligent, so quick, witty, charming, alert, well-dressed, good-looking and
sexually attractive that it would be unthinkable to be rude under its
influence. True, there are exceptions. Cocaine doesn’t always do that to you.
But it always does it to me. And that’s plenty of reason for people to behave.
THE FUNDAMENTAL NEED
FOR SELF-SACRIFICE . . . AND HOW TO DEAL WITH IMPORTANT PEOPLE
The most important thing to understand about cocaine is, no
matter how wonderful it makes us feel or how interesting it makes us act, it is
bad for our bodies. This is the basis for all etiquette surrounding cocaine
use. And this is why it’s never bad manners to go off alone and fire some “Nose
Nikes” and not share them. To risk your own health while protecting the
well-being of others is the only honorable thing to do. For the same reason,
when offered someone else’s cocaine, you should Electro-Lux as much as possible
for their sake. If there isn’t any left to take, they will be less inclined to
destroy their mucous membranes, become psychotic, suffer heart palpitations or
die from an overdose.
However, for reasons unknown to medical science, there are
people cocaine does not harm. Important people who might be able to help
someone’s career are never injured by cocaine, no matter how much they’re
given. Neither are famous writers or actors or other personalities with whom
many people would like to be friends. Also unaffected are extraordinarily
good-looking, sexy people. In other words, the type of person reading this
article seems to be immune to cocaine’s deadly consequences.
The detrimental effect of a “Cerebellum Blizzard” on others,
though, cannot be overstated. There was a washed-up musician who hung around a
well-known New York nightspot mooching drugs. He turned into a dangerous
psychopath and tried to bore several people to death. My own younger brother
took too much of my cocaine, and the result was a painful bloody nose. Another
unfortunate case involved a vendor of the item itself. He had, no doubt,
sampled too much of his own wares and began to threaten people with violence
just because they owned him small sums of money . . . well, relatively small. A
mysterious informant—who, honest, felt really bad about it—was
compelled to turn him in to the police. (Jail is a famously discourteous
place.)
THIRTEEN COMMON
PROBLEMS OF ETIQUETTE EXAMINED
1 – How to Serve
Nothing is more awkward than taking out a vial of
“Granulated Money” in a bar or restaurant and having everyone you know expect
to get some. If you try to pass the “Powdered Trapeze Act” to some people and
not to others, you may get hit over the head with a bottle. And that’s bad
manners. Instead, excuse yourself inconspicuously, saying something like,
“Well, I sure have to go to the bathroom, and so do Robert and Susan and Alice,
but Jim and Fred and Bob don’t have to go.”
Parties present the same problem. In the past, such secluded
spots as coat closets and dark corners of the butler’s pantry were used for
spontaneous lovemaking. Nowadays, these nooks and crannies are crowded with
people taking drugs. But there is still charm in an old-fashioned excuse. If
you would like to give a “Peruvian Speed Bump” to Eileen, an attractive woman
who’s a power in the entertainment industry, but not to her unemployed
boyfriend, Mark, you can always say: “Excuse me, Mark, I thought Eileen might
like to blow me in the laundry room.”
2 – When to Serve
One of the delights of an “Adenoid Snack” is that it’s appropriate
at any time of night or day, often for several days and nights in a row, though
perhaps everyone’s favorite moment to take cocaine is right after a great deal
of it has been taken already.
An increasingly popular time to make your snout play “Selsun
Blue” with the “Dandruff of the Gods” is before an elaborate dinner. This
brightens table talk, lets guests enjoy staring at the food and arranging
little lumps of it in patterns on their plates, and gives the hostess many
valuable leftovers. (An oyster souffle, for instance, can be reheated and fed
to the pets.)
Another favorite moment for an “Inca Pep Rally” is the
second the dealer arrives with the gram. However, some people find it difficult
to figure out when that will be. This is because cocaine dealers operate on
Dope Dealer Savings Time, which is similar to Daylight Savings Time. Just as
Daylight Savings Time is one hour later than Standard Time, Dope Dealer Savings
Time is one hour later than you could possibly imagine anyone being.
3 – What Implements Should Be Used?
There are any number of devices on the market for taking
cocaine. Some are amusing or even useful in carefully measuring portions to
make sure everyone gets too much. But most sophisticated drug users still
prefer the rolled-up $100 bill. Better yet is a $100 bill folded over and
placed inside a wallet. If you have a great, great many of these, people will
find a way to get cocaine up your nose.
4 – What Else Should Be Served?4 –
Most people enjoy a couple of thousand cigarettes with their
“Face Drano.” Other mix “Indoor Aspen Lift Lines” with multiple sedatives to
achieve that marvelous feeling so similar to not having taken drugs at all. But
everyone, whether he wants to or not, should drink plenty of whiskey or gin. If
you smell strongly of alcohol, people may think you are dunk instead of stupid.
(Whatever you serve, overflowing ashtrays, wads of bloody Kleenex and empty
Valium bottles can be arranged to make an attractive centerpiece.)
5 – Who Pays?
There’s considerable debate about this. Some say the guest
should pay for cocaine as a way of saying thank you to the host. Others say the
host should pay for cocaine as part of the entertainment. Most people, however,
believe society should pay for cocaine by having to watch maniacally
self-indulgent movies, fragmented TV sitcom plots and fractured and pathetic
live performances by brain-broiled comedians and pop musicians wound up tighter
than a Hong Kong wristwatch.
6 – Topics of Conversation
. . . one of the things you’re really getting into is cable
TV which is going to be like the rock & roll of the Eighties because everybody’s
going to be hard-wired into 240 channels and there’s this huge market for
software already which is why you’ve got this programming development deal
together that right right now is a class at the New School but is almost sold
to Home Box and is going to be an hour a day that’s part news but like part
entertainment too like this New Wave group that you’ve already done three
minutes on with mini-cam on quarter-inch but you might turn that into a
documentary plus maybe a docudrama for PBS because it’s this sound that’s sort
of Western Swing but punk but ska which is all in the interview you got with
the bass player that you’re going to publish in this magazine you’re starting
which will be all the complete cable listings for all of New Jersey with public
access stuff that isn’t listed anywhere plus like interviews too and . . .
Just because your mouth is moving much faster than your
brain is no reason not to carry on an engaging conversation.
7 – Romance
If you have taken too much cocaine and are unable to become
aroused, try talking into your partner’s genitals. This gives a fair imitation
of oral sex. However, if you have taken even more cocaine, try not to rape
anyone you know.
8 – An Important Question
If a man gives cocaine to a woman, is she then obligated to go to bed with him?
Yes.
9 – Another Important Question
If a woman gives cocaine to a man, is he then obligated to
go to bed with her?
Jeeze, I didn’t realize it was this late! I’ve gotta run—gotta
get up and go to work in the morning. Plus I feel like I’m coming down with
something. Mind if I do another line before I go?
10 – How is a Dealer Introduced?
It can be a problem knowing how to introduce your dealer. Is
he a friend? Is he an employee? Or is he a dead pumpkin if he sells you another
load of Dexamyl cut with Portland cement? In fact, there’s no proper way to
introduce your dealer socially, because no one ever deals cocaine. They just have a little extra. You see, a very
special friend of theirs—who was in Peru on different business entirely—brought
back, as a personal favor, some incredible rocks, which are also pure flake and
happen to be crystals, too (unless this gram-ette of alleged narcotics is so
hopelessly filled with muck that it’s indistinguishable from Nepalese temple
hash—in
which case it will be given an exotic name like “Mudlark of the Andes” and a
spurious history having to do with Spanish conquistadors and Indian
headhunters). So no one ever deals cocaine, but they’ll give you this little
extra they’ve got, for you know, what they paid for it, which is unfortunately
$150 a gram, but really, man, this is special stuff, like the Indians used to
get by rubbing a coca bush between two Spanish conquistadors’ heads.
11 – Is It Polite to Refuse?
It’s probably not bad manners to refuse cocaine. It might
even be very gallant to turn down a spoonful of “Platinum Maxwell House,” but
it’s hard to be sure, because, so far, it’s never been done.
12 – What to Wear
Many people believe it doesn’t matter what they wear while
taking a dose of “Brain Tabasco.” Some people even take it in the nude (not
counting a gold Rolex). But, as in every other social situation, clothes do
matter. Richard Pryor is an example of inappropriate cocaine dress. If he had
been wearing a nice, conservative Brooks Brothers suit and an oxford-cloth
shirt, he would have escaped most injuries. Unfortunately—as
is so often the case in today’s increasingly informal world—Mr.
Pryor was wearing a polyester sport shirt decorated with Jamaican bongo
drummers and dyed in colors visible only to bees. This went up like a torch.
Wool, long-staple cotton and other natural fibers have superior flame-retardant
qualities.
I’ve always loved dogs (and cats), but I hadn’t had a dog in my life for something like 40 years after I had to put my beloved Heinse down when he developed an inoperable lesion on his spine, which paralyzed him. I suppose I could have developed some kind of wheelchair for him, but I didn’t have much money and I’ve never been terribly handy.
During the interim, I’ve had lots of cats; they’re easier to take care of and deal with, IMO. However, about two and a half years ago, Linda (my wife) came across this little sweetheart and she entered our lives. I’m very pleased.
I learned something interesting in the last few weeks. I was going through a bit of “empty nest” syndrome issues following my oldest daughter’s final dance recital in High School. The reality of her growing up and leaving really caught up with me, but the part that hit me the hardest was my sudden fear I’d screwed up; I hadn’t done the right things or I’d done some of the wrong things and I would never be able to make up for it! It was debilitating for a while. I’m better now, thank you very much.
Before this all happened, though, I was lamenting the reality that I could no longer hug and kiss my little girl, as she was a teenager (and had been for some time) and wanted nothing to do with that sort of thing, though she will let me kiss her goodbye . . . sometimes. What I realized was that I was able to get some of the closeness and the satisfaction of showering affection on Angel, our dog. Harder to do with a cat, but dogs can be super affectionate. This has got to explain why we have so many pets in this country. We can shower affection on our fur babies for their entire lives. They never lock themselves in their bedroom for days, ignoring those who labored mightily that they may have a good life.
This past Saturday morning my friend and former colleague, Steve, picked me up and we headed North for our little US Open adventure. We went up Interstate 5, here in California, to Santa Nella and the second of the two Pea Soup Andersen’s restaurants (the other being in Buellton, though some incorrectly think it’s in Solvang).
We chose to stay at the Best Western hotel associated with the restaurant as it wasn’t too far from Pebble Beach and because it was reasonably priced. We couldn’t say that for many of the rooms available much closer to the venue. We checked into the hotel, rested for about a half hour, then had dinner at the restaurant. We both had a bowl of split pea soup (how could we not?) and a salad. The salad was excellent and came with some pretty tasty onion rolls and butter.
After that we had found a brewery in nearby Los Banos, which we wanted to try out and taste some of their craft brews. As it turned out, Saturday night was their monthly comedy night and we got to enjoy five comics, all of whom were quite entertaining. It was interesting being in a fairly small town, far away from any large urban area, and spend time in one of their establishments with all the locals. If it does nothing else, it reminds one of the ubiquity of our culture. Not entirely, but the overlaps, when viewed alongside the dissimilarities, are faskinatin’.
After a decent night’s sleep—my Fitbit tracker told me I slept 5.5 hours, and my goal is usually 6 hours per night—we headed out, our destination being the campus of Cal State University-Monterey Bay. From there we boarded a bus for the final leg of the journey. During the day I walked 18,189 steps, equivalent to 7.88 miles, and climbed the equivalent of 41 flights of stairs. Needless to say, that’s a fair amount more exercise than I’m accustomed to doing. I’m glad I did it, it was a fun day, and I’m paying for it today – as it was pretty hard getting out of bed this morning.
I took a few pictures with my iPhone Xr and I’d like to share a few of them, with a little explanation of each:
Phil Mickelson envisioning his approach from the second fairway. Bryson DeChambeau tees off at the sixth.Patrick Reed prepares for his birdie putt on the seventh.Tiger, whose approach spun off the green, putts for his birdie from just off the tenth hole.
Not quite certain what I was fumbling with at the beginning of this video, but I’m leaving it for now. This is Jason Day hitting his third at the tenth after his approach landed in the thick rough surrounding the green.
This isn’t a WordPress theme designed for showing lots of photos, but I’m going to share a few from the drive.
Finally! I think I ordered the tickets for tomorrow’s final round of the U.S. Open, at Pebble Beach, at least eight or nine months ago. The day has arrived and we left Simi around 12:30 today, after a quick lunch at Mod Pizza. We drove up in Steve’s brand new Ford Edge, taking the 5 North to Santa Nella, which is somewhat East of Gilroy, which everyone knows is the garlic capitol of the world.
As we drove North I was pleased to see there are still some carpets of wildflowers dotting the hillsides, and I managed to snap this photo of some poiple flowers somewhere between Mt. Pinos and Tejon Pass.
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve traveled this route and, even though descending from the Grapevine into the San Joaquin Valley portends a fairly boring drive for the next few hours, I’ve always enjoyed this part of it.
As a young man, I must have hitchhiked up and back from the Bay Area dozens of times; many of them were up the 99, before the 5 was completed. The first few years after completion, the 5 was faster, but depressingly boring. Here’s where those two roads diverged in a yellow field.
We passed this raceway, which we at first thought was the Buttonwillow Raceway, but it turned out to be the Kern County Raceway Park. It seems, from the highway, like it’s in the middle of nowhere, but the map shows it’s actually not far from Bakersfield. In case you didn’t know it, Merle Haggard was born in Oildale, a small town just North of Bakersfield. Back in the late sixties, I spent a week in Oildale one day, but that’s another story involving a school bus and an anti-war demonstration in San Francisco.
The two cups of coffee I had for breakfast, and the beer I had at lunch, finally caught up to me and we had to make a pit stop in Kettleman City.
According to Wikipedia, “The San Joaquin Valley has been called ‘The food basket of the world’, for the diversity of its produce. Walnuts, oranges, peaches, garlic, tangerines, tomatoes, kiwis, hay, alfalfa and numerous other crops have been harvested with great success.”
Steve and I had no trouble identifying grapes, corn, and cauliflower, but I originally thought these trees were almond trees. However, after a reverse image search, we’re pretty sure these are pistachio trees.
We arrived and have checked in. We’re watching the end of the 3rd round. As soon as it’s over, we’re walking across the parking lot to have dinner at Pea Soup Andersen’s. After that, we’re heading to the Paraiso Brewery in Los Banos. Tonight is comedy night.
I’m hopeful I can capture some of the beauty of the course at Pebble tomorrow. We’ll see.
My first foray into blogging was at Blogger, where I posted as The Cranky Curmudgeon (https://crankycur.blogspot.com/). My very first post was on Thursday, February 23, 2006, and you can read it here. I posted reasonably frequently for a while, but I’ve always been somewhat sporadic in my writing, mostly because I get deeply involved in my work and just haven’t been comfortable spending time coming up with subjects, then researching and writing about them. Now that I’m semi-retired and, more importantly, my girls are growing up (my oldest just graduated High School last week) I have more free time. I also would like to see if I can make a little money writing and posting to my blog is great practice. I’m contemplating a book about the Peace & Justice movement in Los Angeles during the late sixties and early seventies, when I was extremely active. That’s another story.
My last post to The Cranky Curmudgeon was on February 1, 2014, which seems a bit weird as it was long after I started Systems Savvy (where you are now) and over two years since my previous post at the end of 2011. I suppose I could do a little archaeology and figure out what I did back then, but I’ll leave that for some other time. What’s important now is I just want to share this video. I believe it was created to run during Super Bowl XLVIII. Unfortunately, it didn’t (as far as I know) and it really should have, IMO. It makes a very important point, which I don’t think has been satisfactorily settled yet. So I’m offering it here, where a few people may view it and it will remain until the Sun goes red giant and swells to engulf our planet. Which means it will be viewable for at least another billion or so years. Hope you enjoy it!
Tomorrow, Steve (my former colleague, great friend, and gym partner) and I are heading up North for the final day of the 119th U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, California. We’re going to head out a little after noon and hightail it up to either Santa Nella or Gustine, CA, both of which are East and a wee tad North of the Monterey Peninsula.
I have been to Pebble Beach once before, about 18 years ago. We went to the AT&T and stayed in Carmel-by-the-Sea, where I purchased a boar bristle shaving brush that is as lush and comfortable to use today as it was when I first purchased it. Wasn’t cheap, but I have no doubt it will last another twenty years, which is probably longer than I’m going to last, as I’ll be 92 by then!
I’ve seen a few nice courses in my life; even played a few of them, but I’ve never played Pebble. It is, however, surely one of the most beautiful places on Earth. One of my enduring—and moderately painful—memories of that tournament has to do with the pictures we took. Upon returning, we took our photos to Costco for processing. Back then photos were all just left in their envelopes in a big box on the counter and people were free to rummage through the box and find their own photos. Unfortunately for us, someone found, and took, our photos. They never returned them. I’m hopeful I can get a few pics this time around, though there are plenty of wonderful pictures available, so it’s no longer terribly important to me to have photos . . . unless it’s a selfie with Tiger or Phil in the background.
Systems Savvy 