Monday Meanderings - 7.30.2011

Well, the Olympics are underway. I'm not sure I can handle 5,000 plus hours of coverage, not even with the DVR going full blast and streaming video. But I do love me some Olympics.
 
I saw a news item that said geneticists had been able to evolve Fruit Flys with the ability to count. Dear hearts, the questions that raises are endless. Do they count by stamping their tiny feet? What exactly do they count? Why do this in the first place? The article didn't say, but I'm sure there are some tax dollars involved in this somewhere.
 
Saw a pickup with a sign painted on the side that said, "If it's not commercial, we don't need your stinkin' business." Okay. Count me as a non-customer.
 
I mentioned last week the sack of stale pecans that we put out. Evidently the squirrel got his fill (or they did him in) because he is no longer scurrying about. Now it seems to be the raccoons turn. Every night they bring a load of pecans to the patio, dunk them in the bird bath and leave the water stained dark brown, than leave the shells scattered on the patio for me to step on. Are raccoons good to eat? Just asking.
 
Something blew out my wireless router settings last week. Took an afternoon and a call to LinkSys to get it going again. Then all the devices that link to it had to be reset. With family visiting, we are up to 21 devices and counting!
 
Austin regularly gets #1 rankings for this, that or the other. So it was somewhat of a surprise that Forbes Magazine listed America’s coolest city as … Houston? Really? In fact, we're 19th on the list - even Fort Worth (13th) beat us! But there is a silver lining; one measurement criterion is, "The number of people who moved to each of the ranked cities." So if everyone is moving to Houston and the other 18 cities, that's good news as far as I am concerned.
 
I sat last evening by the side of a creek; one that actually had water flowing in it. While frogs croaked, fireflys blinked, and grandchildren laughed in the swimming pool, I counted my blessings. God is good.
 
Thanks for reading.

Serve Out

Rob tipped me to a collection of photos that are great of examples of the adage "timing is everything." See if you don't agree. And thanks, Rob.

Find your lost phone. Or not.

I read an article the other day about using the "Find My Phone" App to locate a missing phone. It seems that someone walked off with another person's iPhone and the owner, using "Find My Phone" established the address where the phone was located and wanted police to retrieve it. But there was a problem. The more the police looked at the app, the less sure they were about where the phone actually was. It seemed to be moving back and forth between several houses. Which address should they use for the search warrant?

I'm familiar with this phenomenon. Consider, for example this screen shot from the "Find My Phone" App on my iPad, used to locate my iPhone (yes, I drank the Koolaid), which was sitting right next to me. According to this photo, the phone is next door in my neighbor's house. We don't have a boat - that's definitely the neighbors.

Now here's another screen shot, taken just a couple of minutes later.

 Now the phone is in my front yard. Or maybe in the tree. Not until several refreshes did I get the phone actually inside our house, but even then it seems to be in one of the bedrooms, or perhaps the bathroom, not right beside the recliner in the living room.

I actually used the "Find My Phone" App to watch my phone's progress from hospital #2 back to hospital #1 where I was. I knew where the phone was - secure in a lock box at hospital #2, along with all other metal objects (watch, eyeglasses, etc.). I was in a hurry to leave #2 (here's why) and forgot to collect my items. The friendly EMTs called #2 and requested that the items be handed to the next ambulance headed to hospital #1.

Back at #1, I picked up my iPad and pulled up the "Find My Phone" App just in time to see the phone move from #2 to the street out front, then onto the freeway headed my direction. Then it veered into a residential area. Then back to the freeway, then near a bunch of apartment buildings, then to a commercial area which had one or two night clubs identified on the map.

Was the ambulance really wandering around town, and did the EMTs stop off for a beer? No, the phone icon quickly moved back to the freeway, and then after a few more side trips ended up at hospital #1, and in a bit the nurse walked in with my possessions.

So be warned. If you are looking for your phone with this application, don't be surprised if it stopped off for a drink. Or if the neighbor has it.

Monday Meanderings - 7.23.2012

I have mentioned before that the majority of the books we read at Learning Ally - formerly Reading for the Blind - are text books. Dull, dry, boring textbooks. But we may have reached a new low last week; my director went to sleep on me! The director's role, in addition to following along in the text to make sure I don't misread something, or leave something out, is also to mark the passage of each page on the computer program used to capture and log the reading.
 
I reached the end of a page, paused a second for the director to click on the "Mark" icon, and nothing happened. I looked through the window and my teen-age director had a glassy look on his face. It wasn't until I called out to him several times that he snapped out of it. Did I mention that the books are often boring?
 
Had a little nostalgia trip this weekend. Digging through stuff in the bank safe deposit box, I came across a document with our address in Dallas the summer we married; a two-bedroom apartment on Mt Ranier St., in the southwest part of the city - just bordering the edge of Oak Cliff, a ritzy part of town back then. Perhaps it still is, but a quick Google Street view suggests that our old apartment complex, like us, has aged. That was a fun summer.
 
We disposed of a sack of two-year-old pecans - aging in the garage for want of a working nut-cracker - by dumping them out by the bird feeders. Thus far, only 1 squirrel has discovered this mother lode, and I fear that it will be the death of him. Or her. The squirrel is frantically gathering up each pecan, one at a time and scurrying out into the yard to bury it. A quick cover up and he dashes back for another. I expect to look out in the morning and see the frazzled remains of the rodent, overcome by the sheer size of the task.
 
While watching the normally very skittish hummingbirds at the feeder, one veered over close to me. So close, in fact, I wondered if I was under attack. I could hear the buzz and feel the breeze of his wings on my face! He paused, checking me out, flew completely around my head in a 360° reconnaissance, paused near my face again, then went back to the feeder. I felt like I had just experienced a close encounter of the third kind.
 
And speaking of hummingbirds and other flying creatures, here's a lovely video that's best viewed on the larger screen of a PC or Mac.
 

 

On the Dean's List - stories for my Grandchildren

It is my good fortune to attend the same church as does Paul Faulkner, long time Bible Professor and Family Counselor. In fact, Paul taught our Bible class this past week - a lesson that touched on the choices we make.

When I attended ACU, I took a Freshman Bible class from Paul. I recall that on the final we were asked to name the 12 Apostles; someone began humming the little song that starts "Jesus named them one by one..." and others joined in the humming. Finally Paul just stopped the class and led us all in singing the verses aloud.

Paul was also the Dean of Men at that time, and if you ran afoul of the school's policies, he was the Man To See. Chapel attendance was compulsory at that time (perhaps it still is) and it was - pun intended - religiously checked for attendance.

My Freshman year I worked until midnight at the radio station, and after shutting down the station and driving across town, it was usually about 1 AM when I got to bed. On those mornings that I did not have an early class, well... I often made the choice to sleep in.

About mid-way through the semester, it should come as no surprise that I received word that the Dean wanted to see me. I showed up at the appointed time, along with several others, and eventually was invited into the Dean's office for a little chat. Paul had a large ledger on his desk, and he turned to the appropriate page and began scanning down the page for my name.

I saw my entry long before he did, and I was looking at the book upside down. It wasn't hard to find, because the entries looked something like this:

Joe Adams X,X,X
Bill Agee. X,X
Bob Anderson X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X,X

Paul ran his finger down the list, and then slid it across the page, saying, "My, my. My, my my!"

I did the only thing I could think of. I said, "I think we ought to pray about this. Don't you?"

Boy Seven

The news today from my high school mailing list is that another of my classmates passed away after a lengthy illness. I see messages like that with increasing frequency.

This particular classmate was one of the “core” gang – the group that palled around together throughout the entire high school experience. Find one of us hanging out and you usually found us all. Band, ball games, classes, annual staff...and drama.

We all talked about becoming famous movie stars. He was, to my knowledge, the only one of us who actually tried. I don't know the details – I didn't even know about his acting career until recently; someone on the mailing list mentioned seeing the Twilight Zone episode that he was in. I looked it up, and sure enough, there he is – listed in the credits as “Boy Seven.” He even has a speaking line: “Rice, Sir, Third Form, Class of 1917...You taught me about courage.” As far as I can tell, this is the total body of his work. I found his name listed in the Internet Movie Database, but there is only one credit: Twilight Zone, 1962; Boy Seven.

Out of that core group, he was the one who adamantly swore he would not stay. We all went our separate ways, and we all ended up living in towns and cities other than our home town. He is the only one that came back, and for the last many years he was a lawyer in Breckenridge – a town he said he would never live in after High School. I guess that out of everyone's allotted fifteen minutes of fame, he got maybe five minutes.

But I am reminded of when Ray Kinsela, in “Field of Dreams,” told Doc Graham that his five-minute professional baseball career would be considered a tragedy by many. Graham replied, “Son, if I'd only got to be a doctor for five minutes, now that would be a tragedy.”

Perhaps that's how Jimmy felt.

Monday Meanderings - 7.16.2012

Whenever possible, I greet the morning with a cup of coffee on the patio. It's a quiet, peaceful time for me; birds will be singing, occasional hummingbirds come to the feeder, all is well with the world, and every so often the little frog that lives in the crack will scare the bejeebers out of me!
 
It has to be a tiny frog - the crack between the patio and the foundation is less than an inch across, and there's a spacer board taking up most of that gap - but my, my he ( or she) has a big voice! One BARUMMP! and there's coffee on my shirt again.
 
Discussing my Pancreatitis with a doctor, and he recalled that when he was pulling ER duty in medical school, on weekends the folks would come rolling in like clockwork, all doubled over in pain after a night of heavy drinking. He said that when he checked their history, often this was the 5th or 6th trip to the ER. He felt like they weren't applying the lessons they were receiving.
 
Someone needs to come up with a mini-washer just for silverware. That's what we run out of most often. And yes, we did obtain some more silverware; somehow that just adds to the problem.
 
What with the All-Star break and the dearth of any sports of any kind on TV, it's once again time for our annual Lord of the Rings marathon. Six nights of Hobbits, Elfs, Wizards and Orcs, half a movie a night (remember, each film is more than 4 1/2 hours long).
 
It's a complicated process getting the TV, DVD player and surround sound system all going, and requires 3 different remote controls. I wrote up a set of detailed instructions so Barb could navigate the intricacies of setting up and watching a movie, and to her credit, she was able to get it all going, but we dont call her Mizz Net for nothing. For the sake of the marriage, I think I'll just handle that duty as needed.
 
Who says Friday the 13th brings bad luck? On Friday we 1) found a parking space within steps of Walmart's door, 2) got a good cart, and 3) later managed to get in and out of Costco with no hassles even though we shopped there at peak traffic time. Sweet!
 
Leaving for church yesterday morning we saw what appeared to be a large, ugly dog in the neighbor's front yard. When we got closer we saw that it was a large ugly pig! Not one of these little pot-bellied pigs; this was a full- size porker. No time for pictures or further investigation, but I'm going to be alert for the wafting smell of bacon in the pan.

Truckin, like the Doo Dah man

I already knew from Barb's most excellent adventure to the ER that an ambulance trip lacks a great deal in the smooth and comfortable ride category. It is, after all, a ride in the back of a truck - a truck with no springs and no shock absorbers. At least it had a top and was air conditioned. When we were in El Salvador, we noticed that the ambulances there all seemed to be Toyota pickups, with a cot bolted in the back. We didn't even get to go really, really fast with lights flashing and such. Instead, it was a bumpy, lumpy ride with a lot of stops and starts, and every jolt was a kick in the gut. Literally.

But ride we did, to another hospital with a bigger MRI machine (for the rationale behind this, go here). We disembarked (more bumps and jolts) and sailed right past the ER department in the new hospital, much to the concern of the admissions personnel, and found our way to another MRI cave and another MRI technician, a tiny woman of Asian descent. I mean no disrespect, but this woman was almost impossible to understand; it was all the bad oriental language stereotypes come to life.

The tech and I had a lengthy conversation about "any meadows" and I finally figured out that it was metal she was asking about. Then I told her that I had been promised some good pharmaceuticals before being totally sealed in a tiny space no bigger than a Pringles can and she vehemently indicated that would not happen because I had to remain alert, only when she said it, it sounded as if I needed to stay "a-wert."

The next thing I know, I'm on the rail-bed with a pillow strapped to my stomach, my hands loosely strapped above my head, ear-plugs stuffed in my ears, a pair of headphones clamped over that (Wait! Aren't these metal?) and I'm sliding into a space that was too small for human occupancy, by far! Did you know that if you squeeze your eyes tightly shut, you can pretend there is not a sarcophagus surrounding you, mere inches away?

MRI machines are noisy. That's why they put plugs in your ears. But if your ears are plugged up, then you cannot clearly hear the instructions in the headphones. And if you cannot clearly hear instructions that you couldn't understand if you could clearly hear, then there is a great deal of confusion, and shouting back and forth. Well, mostly I was the one doing all the shouting, and mostly I shouted, "I can't hear you!" The technician evidently couldn't hear me at all, so all my shouting was to no avail.

Finally, we worked out a basic communication set; when the technician said, "Mmmrph aw blurgle blevis." I would take a deep breath and hold it until she said, "Blaath et reeble." Only most of the time I couldn't hold my breath that long because it really hurt to take a deep breath. This went on for about 45 minutes, and then she rolled me out far enough to reach my arms, injected me with some type of contrast dye and stuffed me back in my sausage casing for another 15 minutes of  "Mmmrph aw blurgle blevis."

I spent an hour in that tin can, trying to hold my breath while the machine clanked and hammered and knocked. My back hurt, my stomach hurt, my arms were cramped, and when we were done, I got to ride back across town in the back of a truck. And do you know what? The doctor didn't find out anything. But I did. I learned that there are now two things that I will do only if someone holds a gun to my head: a sleep study, and an MRI! And you can put that in my medical record!

I helped make Dell the company it is - and I can prove it.

Dell Computer Corporation is a mega-corporation by any measurement. Recent quarterly sales exceeded 15 billion (with a b) dollars; offices and manufacturing world-wide; more than 100,000 employees; leading or in the big three manufacturers annually, Fortune 500 company. If computers are involved, Michael Dell is in it, or on it, or owns it. And I helped him get started.

The story of Michael selling computers out of his UT dorm room beginning in 1984 is legend, and it's true. And when he came out with his own line of computers, named PCs Limited, by the way, he had a little storefront on Anderson Lane, near the current Red Lobster. Demand prompted him to move to a significantly larger building near Rutherford and Highway 183, and that's where I come in.

Michael asked me to come set straight some programming problems he had. Well, in a sense that's what happened. He asked a vice-president, who asked a department head, who asked a manager, who asked a lead programmer, who asked me to come advise them all. And here's the proof:

It's a little faded, and you may have to click on it to see the details, but the key features are the date (1986) and the amount ($2,540).

Yep, just 2 years into Mr. Dell's venture, he paid me big bucks to help him out. He even expressed his appreciation to me one evening; I was working late (since I was gainfully employed elsewhere, late was the only time I had for my efforts at Dell) and Michael popped up in the next cubicle, some component in his hand. He said, and I'll never forget the gratitude in his voice, "Who are you?" When I explained that I was working on his sales tracking system, he was obviously relieved, and right then and there he entrusted me with a key responsibility. He said, "Be sure that door is locked when you leave."

I had lunch with Michael several years later. It's really unfortunate that the restaurant messed up and seated me at a table far removed from Mr. Dell and his entourage. I'm certain that he wanted to thank me for my part in getting his company on the road to success.

It was nothing, Michael. It was nothing.

Monday Meanderings - 7.9.2012

Thanks to the heat and the drought, here's the pecan crop for the year:

 
I noticed in the news that July marks the 75th anniversary of Spam. No, the meat-like product that comes in cans and is a registered trademark of the Hormel Foods Corp (in Austin, Minnesota, by the way).
 

"Hormel first introduced the canned, processed lunch meat in 1937; the name “Spam” came from combining the words “spiced” and “ham.” Shortly thereafter, it became a staple of army diets during World War II, when an estimated 100 million pounds of Spam were shipped overseas to feed Allied troops. Many returned home without much enthusiasm for the stuff – real meat was hard to come by during the war, and low-cost Spam found its way into nearly every meal for the troops, who called it “ham that didn’t pass its physical.” Today, an estimated 3.8 cans of Spam are eaten every second in the United States – even if we don't always like to admit it."

I dare say that unless you are of an older generation, or went on Trek in the Colorado mountains, you have probably never tasted Spam. I can assure you that Spam fried in a skillet, consumed at about 11,000 feet in elevation tastes a lot better than Spam in any other circumstance. While on Trek, we had one guy so excited about Spam he said, "I can't wait to get home and tell my Momma about this." We were pretty sure that his Momma, who lived through the Great Depression, knew all about Spam, thank you very much.
 
I had my iPhone and iPad with me at the hospital. One of the nurses saw them on the stand and said. "I see you drank the Kool-Aid." I told her that it was okay, I had four Windows computers at home to make up for it.
 
Tried to stay up late for the conclusion of the Rangers/Twins game last night. Rain delay and extra innings put it way past my bedtime. Somebody let me know how it came out.
 
 

Your Great-Grandfather was a Preacher - Stories for my grandchildren

Pardon me while I tell my grandchildren about someone they need to know more about.

Your grandmother Babi's father, Walter Allen Brown - "Allie" to his friends - was a preacher. His congregations were in small-town churches, primarily in South Texas. The custom in those days was for preachers to move often, and from his records, we can find twelve for sure, possibly fourteen different congregations where he was a paid minister, over a career that started in Alice, TX in November, 1943, to his final full-time pulpit in Three Rivers, TX, ending in January, 1986. Forty-one years, two months. I have no idea how many gospel meetings, lectures, camp sessions, vacation Bible schools, guest pulpits, and speaking engagements there also were in that time frame. A lot.

Son of a Missouri-Pacific railroad engineer and a one-generation-removed German immigrant mother, Allen was preaching by the time he was 15. He graduated from Corpus Christi High School, where he played on the 1938 State Championship football team (a team that thrashed my Breckenridge Buckaroos, by the way), married his sweetheart Alice (secretly) while still in high school, briefly attended Abilene Christian College, began a full-time preaching career with an interruption while he served in the Navy during WWII, spending the duration at the Naval Air Station in Norman, Oklahoma, where he apparently also attended the University of Oklahoma and served as a volunteer (and possibly with a stint as a paid) assistant minister with high school and college students at the church in Norman. His first preaching job paid $50 a week, and the records suggest that he never made more than $175 a week in his entire career.

The family ventured out of South Texas twice; once to Silver City New Mexico, and once to Crosbyton, Texas. Allen had held meetings in both places and he went to Silver City to try to put a divided church back together, one that had split into two congregations in a town of only 8,000 people. He was successful in bringing the two factions back into a single church, but the patient died, and he resigned, citing as his reason III John 9 - "I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not welcome us."

On the way back from New Mexico, he stopped off in Crosbyton, on the South Plains of Texas, for three years, then returned to his roots in South Texas. Twice during his career he took non-preaching positions, but never stopped preaching; there was a period when he worked for a family friend in Laredo, filling the pulpit for a tiny church that could not support a paid minister and had no plans to do so, and later in Corpus Christi as the administrator for a retirement home the Ayers Street Church was trying to get started. During that period he drove to the community of Ingleside on Sundays and preached without pay. Neither of these two churches are listed in his journals, but they are part of the record, nevertheless.

I began dating your grandmother during the time Allen preached at Lindale in Houston, from 1959 to 1961, and I married Barb while he was preaching at Port Lavaca from 1961 to 1967. Port Lavaca sent him to a mission church in Columbus for just over a year, and then he spent eleven years in Bay City from June 1968 to June 1979 - the longest stay at any one place. Ask your Mom, Jericho and Jacob, and your Dad, Luke and Grace, about the trips from Bay City to Matagorda Bay and playing on the beach there.

There were three more congregations: two years at El Campo, five years at Three Rivers and part-time at Randolph in San Antonio after retirement, but his health was beginning to fail. His brothers Tom and Ed were already gone - Tom at age 46 and Eddy at age 35. In only seven more years he joined them, at 72 years of age. Alice died seven and one-half years later.

Jericho, Jacob, Luke and Grace - you never met him, but I'm confident he prayed for you. Every morning, without fail, he prayed, by name, for every one of his children and their spouses, and by name, every one of his grand children, and I'm pretty sure that from time-to-time he probably prayed for his yet-to-be born great-grandchildren. Because that was just the sort of man he was.

Here am I, lying in my tin can...

So, while I was in the hospital, the Doctor ordered an MRI to see if that would give him a clue as to the cause of my problem. Never mind that I had already had a CAT scan, an X-ray, and a very thorough ultra sound procedure.

I had never had an MRI before, but I knew that if you are a wee bit claustrophobic some pharmaceutical assistance might be in order. The doc agreed; they pumped a couple of vials of Benedryl into my IV, promised more help when we got there, and wheeled me off downstairs to the MRI cave. The tech who lives in the cave checked me over carefully for anything metal, took a look at my IV and said, "Uh uh. I can't use that." It seems that at some point the IV had come out of the vein and the arm was now "infiltrated." That's medical talk for "your arm is now about twice its normal size and all that Benedryl isn't doing doodley."

But, before the tech sent me back upstairs, he said that he needed to check "the fit." I would have felt better about that if he wasn't sizing up my belly all the while. Now folks, I admit that I am not svelte. I'll even admit to being stout. Okay, I'm fat, and my stomach is where most of my fat resides. But I had a medical condition that had me very bloated and extended, okay? Can I get a break here?

So he plops me up on this skinny little rail-bed, velcros a big pad of some kind over my abdomen, and rolls me into a Pringles can!  

Me: Wait! I was promised drugs! Excuse me? I need to go home now! Ooof! The pad is pressing on my very tender abdomen! "THAT HURTS!! STOP!"
Voice on an intercom: "Okay. That's what I thought. You don't fit. Let's just get you out of there."
Me: "Wait! The pad is jammed! It's bunching up! STOP!"
Voice on an intercom: "Okay. Wait right there. I'll get it out."
Me: What do you mean wait right here? I'm stuck in a tin can! I can't get out! MOMMY!

With assistance, I was extricated from the MRI, given a failing report, and sent back to my room in disgrace, fat arm and all. You might think that would be the end of it, but never underestimate the power of the medical establishment.

In a bit the nurse came in and said, "I need to measure you. We're going to send you across town to another hospital that has a larger MRI machine, but they want to know just how big you are, first." So she whips out a tailor's measure and wraps it around the largest part of my body - which we have already clearly established is my belly - gets the number and goes off.  In a few minutes she is back. "I need you to lie on your back in the bed." Measure, measure, off she goes. Next, she comes back with an assistant and the two of them try different approaches and different angles, but it's still all about the belly. This goes on for a good thirty minutes or so; the nurses measure and then go off to talk on the telephone. Finally, the tech from the MRI cave shows up and he does all the measurements again!

After a couple of hours they all seem to agree: while I am flat on my back, it is the dimension from the bed to the farthermost extent of my stomach that counts, and this measurement is... are you ready for this? Thirteen inches. I'm beginning to think I'm the circus fat person being fitted for a tent and the total distance from my back to my front is only thirteen inches! Just a scooch over one measly foot! This number seems to satisfy everyone, and the next thing I know I'm in an ambulance on my way across town.

I did indeed fit in the new MRI, but that's another story.

Monday Meandering - 7.2.12

The big news this week-end was the announcement of the arrival of an In-N-Out in town. Or near to town. The rumored location is on IH-35 in Round Rock, near Ikea. Don't think we'll be driving out there much, since there are excellent burgers much closer. The current buzz in town is over the Hopdaddy Burger Bar. It appears to be a local enterprise, promoting organic Angus beef (or goat, buffalo, turkey or other game) and "crafted" burgers. Barb met some friends there the other day; the burger got her highest rating: "It's a hamburger."

Did the week-end just seem to drag on endlessly? That's because they tinkered with the time Saturday and added an extra second. I could sure tell the difference, I tell you! It was to compensate for a creeping divergence from solar time, meaning the period required for Earth to complete a day.

Normally, the planet takes just over 86,400 seconds for a 360-degree revolution, but it wobbles on its axis and is affected by the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon and the ocean tides, all of which brake the rotation by a tiny sliver of a second. This was the 25th intervention to add a "leap second" to UTC, dating from 1972, when the world went off astronomical time and started relying on an atomic Timex. So, how did you spend your extra second?

I told you about my archival project. I continue to find interesting (at least to me) bits of trivia in the file drawers. Like this item on an old Mastercard bill:

That first charge is for tickets to see Brazil and Netherlands play a quarter-final World Cup match at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas in 1995. The tickets cost $120.00. It could have cost more. Much more. The way the tickets worked for the USA World Cup was by lottery; you sent your lottery ticket and credit card info in and that made you eligible for the drawings. If you won, you were assigned - and charged - for tickets to whatever game was being drawn for; it could have been group play, one of the knock-out rounds, or even the very expensive championship in Los Angeles. I asked Barb what we would do if we won tickets to the Final; she said, "We would get on a plane and go see it, silly."

Last year Texas was on fire; sadly this year it seems to be Colorado's turn. The news from the Colorado Springs area is really disturbing. Many years ago I attended a conference held at Glen Eyrie, the Navigator's beautiful facility located in Waldo Canyon, next door to the Garden of the Gods. At this writing, Glen Eyrie is not harmed, but many near-by houses and buildings have been destroyed, and of course everyone was evacuated. While at that conference, we went a short distance down the road to the Flying W Ranch, for a chuck wagon meal and a fun evening of entertainment. Sadly, the Flying W was destroyed last week.

You may remember that back in February, I warned you that all our medical devices are eves-dropping on us, and reporting our activity to Big Brother. My closing statement in that blog was, "Just to be on the safe side, right now I'm examining my toothbrush very carefully. It did come from the Dentist's office, you know."  Well, my fellow Americans, take a look at this:

Bits meet bite: Check out the connected toothbrush

Want to really embrace the quantitative self? Forget tracking your sleep and start tracking your dental hygiene. Beam Technologies, a year-old startup, is set to introduce a Bluetooth-enabled toothbrush and app that will launch next month. The toothbrush contains a sensor and Bluetooth radio that will send your brushing information to a smartphone app. Later versions will also track how long you spent in certain areas of the mouth and might add some kind of gamification layer to help encourage better brushing.

Remember, you heard it here first! Now where did I put that aluminum foil hat?