There are 380 posts filed in Geezer (this is page 32 of 38).
I took our dog to the emergency vet in Leesburg yesterday (the topic of another post). The vet’s office just happened to be near the building where I once signed up for the Navy. In the fall of 1987, I walked into the Navy Recruiting office that was upstairs in this building at 26 Plaza Street. It looks like the Marine Corps still has an office there, but no sign of the Navy anymore. Now it’s the home of a tattoo parlor called Insane Ink.
It made me smile to see the building again.
Tonight the kids and I watched an Imax movie called Dolphins, which follows scientists studying dolphin behavior. It was quite an entertaining movie, but it was not as entertaining as my story to the kids of the dolphin show I used to watch as a kid called Flipper.
The kids got a kick out of my description of the show’s typical plot, where these two boys could magically communicate with Flipper. The dolphin would pop up from the water, make dolphin gibberish sounds, and convey the most sophisticated messages.
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I’ve had plenty of reflections on Veteran’s Day but yet another revelation came to me on yesterday’s Veteran’s Day.
I work in a sales job, as a sales engineer. Success in that job (and other sales jobs) requires one to be very good at making friends and relating to all types of people. As I went about my work with a potential customer yesterday, I realized that a lot of my skill at relating to different people can be traced back to those four years I spent in the Navy.
When your home for three years is a ship only 563 feet long, you have to learn how to get along with folks. Thank you, Navy, for enriching my life in yet another, previously-unseen way.
Sports Illustrated’s latest issue brings news that head injuries don’t have to rise to the concussive level to cause brain damage. Purdue researchers have shown that the smaller, more frequent hits can actually do more damage than a concussion.
The mounting evidence suggests that some people—perhaps a lot—simply cannot play these games without being damaged, concussion or no concussion. “You can break something by hitting it hard once,” says Katie Morigaki, a Purdue graduate assistant athletic trainer who worked on the study, “or you can break it by hitting it softer many times.”
If the test scores were accurate, the researchers had inadvertently documented, in real time, a new classification of high school athlete: a player who was never concussed, was not verbally impaired and was asymptomatic even as far as his parents could tell, but whose visual memory was more impaired than his amnesic, headachy, light-sensitive, concussed teammates.
After reading this last night I woke up worried about how doomed I am with all the hits my head has taken, not from football but from falling out of bed as a kid, banging my head against the wall (also as a kid), and other misadventures. I’m not letting my kids play football, that’s for sure. The fewer brain-damaged members of the family, the better!
Wikipedia tells me that it was five years ago this month that I became a Wikipedian. I’ve focused my Wikipedia work with a few of my interests. I began by editing the entry for the USS Elliot (DD-967) as I had found a press release about its sinking. Then I went on to add bits to many of the Raleigh-area entries. I’ve also taken many photographs of Raleigh-area landmarks and added these to the appropriate pages (including the page for Raleigh itself).
Though I’ve slowed down lately with my Wikipedia contributions I still greatly value this amazing, free resource.
Here is an official list of my Wikipedia contributions, formatted in especially-hard-to-read geek format. Here’s a list of the photographs I’ve taken and donated to the public domain through Wikimedia Commons.
Defense secretary Robert Gates spoke at Duke University recently, urging the “best and brightest” to “step out of your comfort zone” and join the military. I thought that sounded fine until Gates bwhegan dragging his feet when a judge (temporarily) struck down the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy.
Allowing gays to serve openly “is an action that requires careful preparation and a lot of training,” Gates said. “It has enormous consequences for our troops.”
Bullshit, plain and simple. Gays have served in the military as long as there have been troops. Many have them have proven their valor and loyalty. Some have paid the ultimate price for their country, yet these soldiers and sailors must be dishonest to their fellow servicemembers about who they are. This is simply wrong.
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Wake Forest Road in 1965
Looking at this shot you can see many residential-type buildings along the road. At the bottom is the Beltline, still being constructed and at the top of the photo you can see the eastern half of St. Albans Drive branching off. This area roughly corresponds to this modern-day view shown on Google Maps.
Now my Navy military-intelligence training did not make me a satellite imagery expert, but looking at this photo and comparing it to the roof of the tavern as shown in the Flickr images it’s pretty easy to rule out many of the buildings shown. Second-story homes cast longer shadows and the tavern is decidedly single-story. There are also homes with much fancier rooflines than the tavern, so those are easily ruled out. What does that leave? I’ve (crudely) highlighted two buildings that seem like good candidates.
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Courtesy North Carolina State Archives
This post over at New Raleigh got me wondering again about the long-lost Raleigh landmark, Isaac Hunter’s Tavern. In its day the tavern was known far and wide. It drew our early state representatives together long enough for them to decide to create a new state capital, and thus decreed that this capital would be located within ten miles of the tavern. Yet, in spite of its historical significance to our city and state, no trace of the tavern still exists. Sad, isn’t it?
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I called someone at the city today and my call got sent to what sounded like an ancient voicemail system. I was subjected to a lengthy computerized lesson on how to leave a message and it struck me as so totally irrelevant here in the year 2010.
Answering machines have been around a long time. A man named Vlademar Poulsen invented the first one in 1898. Dubbed the telegraphone, it was a manually-operated means of recording a telephone conversation. It wasn’t until 1935 that a machine that could answer itself was invented by Willy Muller. It was later still (1960) before answering machines were first sold in the U.S.
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I co-conducted a four-hour training session this morning at work, so afterwards I was ready to move around some. I’d been looking for someone to go biking with me during lunchtimes so Kelly volunteered to join me. She’s training for her upcoming triathlon so she was motivated.
We got in 45 minutes of intense riding on the Crabtree Creek Greenway, riding ten miles total. It was a pace I’m not used to riding as we usually have the kids along. And, uh, truth be told we were going faster than the greenway “speed limit” so don’t tell anybody!
Now it’s close to 10 PM and I’m feeling a little achy. It sucks getting old!
