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March, 2004

Well, looks like the old mind is going. Had a letter started and can't find it anywhere on this machine. Oh, well. With the spate of worms and viruses it's been through I'm lucky it still works at all. The computer, I mean. Guess I'm lucky the mind still works, too.

February started out cold as the dickens and then at the end, in a period of about three days, warmed up to 40 or so, wind started blowing and it rained, after which the snow was just a memory. March still spat out a flurry on occasion but it was gone by nightfall. The low temperatures lately look like the highs did a month ago.

Not much going on. February was a quiet month in Lake Woebegon and also here.

Pretty much finished up the firewood. Cut up the lilac bush that the tree man knocked over with the bucket truck, also cleaned up a lot of other junk left over from that operation, much of which is fine for burning.

Biggest excitement was probably going to Norfolk, VA, to a symposium (fancy name for a meeting) with other computer teachers. Along the way we got to see son Jonathan and some old friends at Liberty University. Could be scary to realize that the "kids" I had in class have "grown up" to be responsible citizens, like our own son and Darrell Hyatt. Seems I have former students all over the country. On the way back we stayed with Karen and Van Campbell in Grove City, PA. Karen is also a former student of mine, I won't say how many years ago, but their kids are in college now. She was reminiscing how we got started with computing at Bryan College. I didn't recall that she was in that class, but....

In those days, we arranged with the Oster plant (Osterizer blenders, remember, kids? Back before you were born?) to allow my class to come down twice a week and punch their Fortran programs onto cards. The following day, Betty Giesemann, chemistry teacher, would take them home and the next day her husband would take them to Chattanooga State Tech to be run. He would bring them home along with the printouts, and Betty would bring them to school the following morning. Then it was back to the Oster plant to fix the missing commas or whatever. 72 hours minimum to turn a job around, and we thought we were high tech. That was a far cry from having your own computer on your desk. And now we gripe about the gigabit-speed network if anything takes more than two seconds and even the historians and seminary faculty all have computers and PDAs.

Back then I was young and foolish, silly enough to think that the students might actually learn something with that primitive equipment. As I recall, The Administration was not enamored with computers except if they could have something to brag about at zero cost. Power point? We were still in Dave Barry's Mezzanine Era! That was about the same time that I paid $100.00 for a four-function (no memory, no square root) calculator that plugged into the wall (no battery) and after a few months somebody actually broke into my office and stole it -- valuable now as a museum piece I'm sure.

It's terrible when you talk about retirement plans with former students....

And while at Liberty, we reminisced a bit with the Mattheses. We have known Jake and Sandy since just before we went to Bryan in 1971. Jake remembers those "good old" days also, may they never return. We recalled how Becky, age about 4 at the time, plunked a key on our piano (in Idaho, before the move) and said, "Daddy, this piano is out of tune." Thirty-odd years later it's still out of tune but it still gets played on occasion. Sometimes I feel sorry for people with perfect pitch. Also visited for a while with Monty Kester and Evangelos Skoumbourdis. Kathy had a good visit with I don't know who all.

Back to the future, I mean, present. The whole symposium was a-twitter with gossip about Virginia Tech's new supercomputer (10+ teraFLOPS? something like that). "Have you heard...?" and I would answer, "Yes, I read about it in the alumni magazine." Oh my, oh my, you graduated from there? Yup. As though their current project imparts some aura of wisdom to me. I got to see Dr. Fox, my thesis advisor and erstwhile tormentor, and Dr. Lee, who gave me the B+ on the compiler for the Christmas Tree we always talk about. (Seriously, my documentation was not up to par and the syntax checker was lacking in some respects. Compiler worked fine. Still does after reincarnation in a C++/Linux version.) At lunch one day, I happened to sit next to a fellow named Anton who looked familiar. Being rather poor at names and faces, I told him he looked familiar and we hemmed and hawed, he being a professor in Norfolk and I in Indiana. After we went through the buffet line, it hit me: "Virginia Tech!" and then he replied, "Sure! Rich Barnhart!" We were in classes together and I think maybe in adjacent offices during my research phase in about 1989. I think there were some other Hokies there also. Oh, yes, Dr. Schaffer for one. Dr. Fox is up to his usual, dreaming up projects for grants.

Met some new friends, one of whom may be working with me on some research to prove something that common sense should tell you but common sense isn't very common and we're all the time having to prove stuff like Mom Was Right. He's in Columbia, MO and we both have a great interest in teaching about computer hardware.

Meanwhile, Kathy went shopping, put 300 extra miles on the car, 200 of them lost, but always seemed to find her way to pick me up in the evening. (Two evenings had workshops until 10:00.) She also took her sewing machine and finished up some quilt blocks. Also took her electric bass and headphones with this gadget she bought at Radio Shack so she can practice without the amplifier. She found me a new winter coat about 75% off of what they were wanting around here for something much shorter and not nearly as good-looking. It's probably good to 30 below zero. We picked up some assorted odds and ends for gifts, at The Pottery in Williamsburg on the way out. Wanted to see Cousin Sharyn and new baby, but between the busy schedule and getting lost, we didn't make it. "Getting lost" included traffic jams at the tunnel. You have to go through a tunnel to get anywhere important around there.

All in all, we figured out that I'm a lousy copilot/navigator and Kathy doesn't like city driving. It's not male chauvinism when you see me driving and Kathy with the map, it's survival for both of us. And she figured out that plain old roadmaps are actually better than the computer-generated driving directions, especially when there is a train sitting on the crossing and you have to backtrack to make a dinner date 615 miles away in 12 hours and 5 minutes. (We made it with 10 minutes to spare, 620 miles in 12 hours 11 minutes without breaking any speed laws.) Would have been more enjoyable without a time limit.

We got a Tracfone (pre-paid cell phone) for the trip. Worked fine all the way to Norfolk. Jon kept calling to determine our progress and we called him, no problem. Phone refused to work at all after that, until we got back into our home county. Some days I just hate technology! We got lost in Grove City, PA (small town) and couldn't call Karen and Van for directions. Because of the kindness of some strangers, we finally found them, though.

Got back and jumped into work with all four feet. I now have a working edition of a CD that boots to DOS (yuk!) and has four languages, all of which are free, which is the right price most days. We're looking at free software to use in some courses, not just because it's free but because it's so much easier for beginning students to use. One of the items is Turbo C++ that came out in 1990, first C compiler I ever used. Borland has now put it on the Web as a free download under "antique software". Nice thing about a CD is that it can't get infected with viruses. Next step will be to get it to log onto the Web. And on the other end of the spectrum, I'm studying up on Microsoft's latest ".NET" ("dot net") software. Hope to go to a workshop on it soon. Keeps me agile.

And Kathy has lost her marbles again, at least some of them. The college is putting on the musical Oklahoma! and she thought the costumes needed fixing. She fixed some hems, sewed up split seams, Oxy-cleaned the stains, and ironed all of the long dresses. Also had to teach the girls how to care for something that has to be ironed. (Sure, these kids are "smarter" than their elders! And really "dumb" about a lot of stuff also.) As I write this, she's up there helping with opening night solving problems from "female" problems to ripped jeans, always needing a supply of Band-Aids. They operate on a shoestring to begin with, and the director, Mike Yocum, can use all the help he can get. Bet it's that way at your favorite school or community theater. In the immortal words of Ogden Nash, "Boop boop a-doop, little group!" Or "Break a leg!" Whatever. But the singing is terrific; I can hear the rehearsals from my office just like they were standing outside my door. Between fixing seams and minor cuts and bruises, Kathy uses her headphone gadget to practice her bass.

On top of all that, she's reupholstering the loveseat in my office, just to keep things stirred up a bit. Now where to I pile my papers? And how am I supposed to take a nap? Walk all the way home? A whole block?

Daughter Kriss called the other night; came back from the Galapagos (la de dah!) with a fiance. Looks like there will be two Jonathans in the family, only her Jon spells it a bit different I think. I've been saying "Son Jon" but now that won't distinguish between them, so there will be Jon and "Dr. Jon". He's a physician for the homeless in Boston. And we think we operate on a shoestring -- hah!

Cats are fine. The Little Squirt, (t)Inky, the kitten, is nearly grown and a constant pest. Well, OK, not "pest." How about "helper?" Whenever we don't see her for half an hour, she's usually locked in a room or the garage where one of us went to retrieve something. Old cat is still fat and lazy, gets some exercise when the kitten chases her.

Started in on next winter's wood. There is a nature walk behind the Science Building, very nice, but they had a lot of downed timber that they were cleaning up. Probably two winters' wood in there on the ground. They dragged some of it (about a rick) up the hill, so I cut it up for them and brought it home. It's not very good, some of it quite dead, but I'm taking the lot. Borrowed a college pickup, the oldest, rustiest one they have, one headlight (maintainance men go home before dark, how would they know?). Built a rack for my firewood in the garage, probably 3 cords big, backed the pickup in with a load and set off the smoke alarm. Pickup probably needs a ring job -- but they won't fix something that's ready to fall apart anyhow. Correction - is falling apart. Little pieces of rust fall out of the fenders as I load it. And neither they nor I worry about the wood scratching the paint. I only ever get it into 2nd gear, hardly ever on a public street. Maybe gears 4 & 5 don't even work; I would never know. Also hauled a couple of other things to the other side of campus. They bought a couple of new pickups for the guys that use them every day.

Well, I'm going to shoot this off to y'all and then install some income tax software. It's about that time again....

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