A to XYZ

Have you ever watched a child learning and reciting their ABC's?  They start out a bit slow and hesitant. In the middle, they gain confidence and hit a certain cadence. Then at the end, they rush the XYZ all together as they laugh and clap that they managed to finish.

That perfectly describes me in this year's A-Z Challenge.

And, I am going to rush the XYZ ending all in one breath, er, post, and laugh and clap that I finished it. Albeit, by cheating and ending early.

I actually had some ideas for X and for Y and for Z, but they weren't great and I didn't want to bore you. Or at least, I didn't want to bore you any more than I have with the other 23 letter posts thus far.

What were my XYZ ideas?

X could have stood for eXchange.  Like in the Toastmasters SEX Teams.  One club sends a Speaker and an Evaluator to another club as an eXchange.  Fun acronym guaranteed to have people read an article in a newsletter if you use it in the title.

Y could have stood for Yesterday. One of my profound observations has been that "Today becomes Yesterday Tomorrow".

Z could have stood for Zonk. As in, D.C. is Zonked Out!  Bet you are too. So enjoy your long weekend without hunting for my posts.

Many thanks to those who followed my A-Z Challenge odyssey and  left comments or clicked Like on the Facebook blurbs. This two-legged jackass appreciates it.  (See J is for Jackass)

W is for Why?

It only has three letters, but "why" carries a lot of weight.

Is there anyone who hasn't at one time or other looked up in the sky and uttered, "Why me, Lord?"

Only to hear a booming voice say, "Why not you?"

Going back in time to when my kids were toddlers, I often lamented ever teaching them to say "why".

You know the drill...

"Why can't I go outside to play?"

"Because it is raining, dear."

"Why is it raining?"

"Because there are dark clouds outside."

"Why are there dark clouds outside?"

"Because there is a storm."

"Why is there a storm?"

"A cold front is coming through."

"Why can't I go outside?"

"BECAUSE I SAID NO!"

Why do I suspect that I'm not the only one to get tied up in "why knots" with youngsters?

V is for Valentine's Gifts

What do you give as a Valentine's gift when you are poor?

My birthday is in mid November.  I just counted months backwards from that.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9

Gosh, now I know what my dad gave my mom for Valentine's Day in 1939!

ME!

U is for Uninhibited

I guess one way to describe my over zealous sense of humor is as "uninhibited."

I try to not hurt anyone's feelings with it. Honest, I try. But I love to make other people laugh. If I were a betting man, I'd bet that the picture above brought at least a smile to your face.

In yesterday's blog on Toastmasters, I mentioned I learned many things. While I am quick with a quip, I had a hard time putting planned humor into my presentations. It took a lot of practice. Two things in particular helped:

*Know your audience. I made it a point to mingle and chat with my audience before my speech. What will work with some, will not work with others. Personally, I found interacting with a mostly female audience difficult. They have a different funny bone from me. After mingling and after an welcoming speech by another male, I completely scrapped my keynote to an all-female audience and ad libbed my keynote. The previous male speaker had told two blue jokes and the temperature in the room had dropped 20 degrees. I would have been crucified if I had stuck to my planned speech. Instead, I let them know I felt their pain and managed to work in some remarks from their president in their program.

*When in doubt, throw it out. If you personally don't feel comfortable with the humor, don't use it. My boss once put a humor slide into my bar code presentation. The males in the audience laughed; the females torched me in their critiques. It was only used in one presentation.

I am a little boy at heart. Thus, I still like junior high bathroom jokes. I probably type "pee" in more Facebook comments than anyone else.

I delight in texting on my cell phone to family and close friends. The best response I can possibly get is "LOL" or "ROFLOL" or "LMAO". Bingo! DC has struck again.

I've tried to keep this year's A-Z Challenge blogs a bit more serious. But, only a "bit."  Serious isn't really in DC's nature. So go ahead and look at that picture above again and let the smile become a chuckle and then progress into hearty laughter.  Get uninhibited! I dare you!

T is for Toastmasters

Are you nervous and afraid to make a presentation at school, work, church or some organization you belong to? Do you just wing it and hope that you get your message across and will live to tell the tale?  You're not alone.

Public speaking is one of the most frequent fears.

There is an organization with a local club that will welcome you and help you. It is called Toastmasters.

Best of all it is inexpensive and fun!

I was a Toastmaster for a number of years. I would still be a member today if not for my hearing getting so bad that I can't participate.

Toastmasters is a communication and leadership organization. Everyone joins to improve their communication skills and then find out that their leadership skills also benefit.

The clubs offer you a chance to speak and be evaluated by your peers in a non-threatening environment. You will quickly learn to discard those annoying filler ah's, um's, you know's and dude's when you speak. (Most charge you a nickle every time you utter one in a meeting — luckily for me, my club had a quarter maximum fine.)

I joined, got my info packet and soon gave my first speech at the club. Not very much later, I was recruited as an officer.  I volunteered to write a weekly newsletter. I progressed.

In due course, I completed enough speeches and leadership positions to earn my Distinguished Toastmaster award. The DTM is the highest award available.  I won several state level newsletter competitions and won two International newsletter awards. In 1985, I was named Toastmaster of the Year for District 47, out of the 3,000+ Toastmasters in Florida and the Bahamas.

Toastmasters gave me the confidence to give presentations at technical conferences across the U.S., give keynote speeches to statewide conventions, speak on the rubber-chicken circuit in my community and give seminars for my company's HR department.  All this, despite the fact that I am an introvert supreme.

At one time, I got my boss involved with Toastmasters. One day, he gave a speech on our company's promotion procedure. The example he showed on the overhead projector was my promotion package. What a pleasant surprise. My work with HR and my speaking gigs at conferences was heavily noted in the packinge. In 50 years of working that is the only title promotion I ever received.

I have seen so many success stories among my Toastmaster buddies. I hope you will investigate Toastmasters and will share your success story with me. Peruse their website and find a club near you.

S is for Space and Satellites

Most of my blog readers know that I spent a 45 year career in the computer business. Many do not know that I had five years as an electronic technician before my entry into computers.

After high school I graduated from an electronics technical school. They somehow awarded an AA degree despite it being only 18 months long. In reality, it was a glorified radio and TV repair school, although I did get a good basics in vacuum tube circuit design. I studied on my own and passed the FCC First Class Radiophone license before I graduated.

In 1960, I joined Electro-Mechanical Research (EMR) in Sarasota, Florida. One of the first projects that I worked on was the solid state data transmission system for Explorer 12 — the S-3 Energetic Particles Satellite. EMR was noted for their mechanical commutators and this was their first semiconductor version.

We also did the integration of the complete satellite with a lot of testing at Goddard Space Center in the Washington, D.C. area. Yes, that picture above is the satellite. Things were a lot less strict in those days. I actually carried the flight solar panels around in my 1960 English Ford Anglia some times. After launch from KSC in 1961, I went back to D.C. and helped set up a satellite integration lab for the company.

When I returned to Sarasota, I worked on the Data Transmission System for the Gemini manned spacecraft.  That included environmental testing at Bell Aerospace in Buffalo, NY. One of the tests was a salt water immersion test. We joked that because the box would be under the astronaut's seat, it had to pass the test in case they peed on it.

In the late 1970s, I worked for two years in the Space Shuttle Firing Rooms at Kennedy Space Center. Although I left KSC before the first launch, it was a tough job. I was a Senior Software Engineer in a group that mainly poured over memory dumps finding problems, then getting the appropriate subcontractors to fix them. We supported not only of the systems in the firing rooms, but also the computers onboard the Shuttle and Mobile Launcher. I still have my white hard hat with the Shuttle decal on the front from the times that I had to go inside the Mobile Launching Platform.

One of the fun things we were able to do at KSC was to go up on the roof of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). It is that super tall, 35-story building that you see from far away at KSC. The view from up there is amazing. To get there, we took the elevator to the top floor. Walked up some stairs and then across a wire-caged walkway across the high bay to the final stairs. Lots of people panicked on the walkway as it swayed and you had 35 stories of empty space beneath you.

Finally, in the early 1990s, I worked on a spy satellite program at Harris in Melbourne. We had to put "sunglasses" on the satellite. The Russians were using our spy satellites for target practice with their lasers. The bright light would cause the electronics to burp and blinded the satellites for a while. Hence, sunglasses so it could still function while being a target of the laser beams.

Lots of people think that I am a bit spacey. Now you know why.

R is for Races

"Off to the races," has been my frequent response over the years.

In the early 1960s, I lived and worked in the Sarasota/Bradenton area.  I was a co-owner of a late model stock car for one season. We raced at local tracks in Bradenton, St. Petersburg and Tampa. Lots of fun, but, oh, what a money sink that was! You can do nothing but cry when a car that is being lapped crashes your car into the wall 50 feet from the finish line. (Yes, we were leading at the time.)

I also went to the Sarasota greyhound dog track almost every night for a year. My budget for gambling was a paltry $20 per week.  Since I came to know all of the dogs running, I actually made a little money over the course of the season.

As a kid, I loved to watch harness racing at the county fairs. In the mid 1960s, I was based in West Palm Beach for a year and a lot of my coworkers were pilots. I often went along for the rides. I remember watching the harness races in Pompano Beach at night from 3,000 feet while flying with a buddy.

We also flew over to the the 24 hour Sebring race in a Cessna 182. Took our boss along and scared him to death. We arrived and got into the pattern with lear jets and twins. I must admit that I don't like seeing lots of aircraft around me either. Especially when they are bigger than me!

I have owned and shown horses, but I don't really like horse races. They just take too much time between races for me.  Couple that with the fact that I never seem to win. I know horses well, but I cannot pick a horse race to save my life.

I can't let this discussion of races go without telling about another kind of race.

In the early 1970s, I lived in a redneck trailer park in Manassas, Virginia while working for Univac in Washington, D.C.  It was the only park we could find that allowed us to keep our collie dog. I used to invite a coworker out to our mobile home frequently. I would always be out front to greet him when he arrived. Why? I enjoyed the hell out of seeing my redneck neighbors peeking out from behind their curtains with their mouths open at a black man getting out of his automobile in that trailer park.

Q is for Quotes

The letter "Q" (along with "X" and "Z") are tough ones to peg a thought to.  Until I thought of "quotes", that is.

I love some of the more thoughtful quotes, as well as, some of the more pithy ones. So here is a smorgasbord for you.

“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.” 
― Dr. Seuss

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” 
― Oscar Wilde

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.” 
― Robert Frost

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.” 
― Mark Twain

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.” 
― Oscar Wilde

Can I be conceited and add one of my own?

"Your sense of humor, it is true. Depends on whether, the joke's on you."
― DC Stultz

P is for Parrots

My wife loves birds and has been a real bird lady for years.  We started out with a couple pairs of cockatiels and then she went for macaws.

Rocky, her current scarlet macaw is her baby. He loves her. She loves him. He HATES me. I hate him.

He's a one-person bird. The wife can hold and cuddle him and groom his feathers. He will even lay upside down in the palm of her hand and play dead. Beautiful bird. But dangerous to anyone besides her.

He attacks me any chance he gets. The picture above is not Rocky, but it is his twin.  You'll notice that large beak with a point on the end. That point will completely puncture  my leather cowboy boots and dig into the skin!  On the rare occasions that the wife was not around and I had to put him into his cage, I have to put on my boots, let me bite me on the foot and hold onto the boot while I lift him into the cage with my foot.

He is about 30 years old and they live to be 60 or more. Which means he will outlive us. When the wife has to get rid of him, she will cry. Me? I will do backflips of joy.

Rocky isn't the only parrot around the place.  We have flocks of quaker parrots (aka, moot parakeets) and nanday conures that frequent our outside bird feeders.  They are not native to Florida, but there have been long established flocks in the area.

Parrots, by nature, waste a lot of food. They nibble and toss. They are the mainstay for the critters on the floor of the rain forests that cannot climb or fly into the trees.  Rocky not only throws half of his food on the floor, he dunks his food in his water dish so it is always icky.

The parrots outside also toss half (or more) of the food out of the bird feeders onto the ground. Some pigeons follow them around to the various bird feeders on their daily rounds and pick up the dropped seeds.

Amazingly enough, the wife has potty trained Rocky. She will tell him to poop and he knows if he does, she'll pick him up and take him from our bird room to the living room.  Of course, she has to remember to take him back out in about a half hour or else she'll be changing clothes.

O is for Opossum

Well, we could have put this post in the A-Z Challenge in either O for Opossum or P for Possum.

I live in Clearwater, Florida. Which is in Pinellas County — that peninsula on the west coast of Florida that juts down and separates Tampa Bay from the Gulf of Mexico. It is the most urban and built-out county in the state and is home to approximately one million people.

We're chock-a-block crammed with housing developments and apartment complexes. But some wild critters have found that they can coexist with us all.

The possum seems to thrive.  I have had to evict three of the darn things out of my garage in the past year. In each case, I ended up boxing them up and taking them a couple of blocks away to a ball field and park with a small body of water. (I spend a lot of time in the garage. That's where I use my chromebook while I smoke my pipe. Thus, the garage doors are open of an evening when they roam.)

They are not aggressive unless cornered. Then they will snarl and bare their sharp teeth.  I can always tell when they have visited our yard. They dig a distinctively round hole in the yard when they hunt for grubs and worms.

Amazingly enough, Pinellas County also has a fair number of coyotes. There are enough golf courses and county parks around that they can call home.  I have seen a couple. People are finally wising up and keeping their cats inside. Coyotes love to snack on them.

I just read where a river otter killed a small dog down in St Petersburg. I didn't know we had them in the county.

Of course, this being Florida, alligators are in nearly every lake and pond in the county. A few years ago, a coworker found one in his fenced in back yard. It seems nearly every week we'll see pictures of a gator that has decided to take a swim in someone's swimming pool.

Florida, land of hurricanes and critters.

N is for Night Lights

There is no need to carry a lantern around our house to navigate after dark. No night lights plugged into electrical sockets either.

We, instead, have many red, blue, and green lights visible in all of our rooms. Chargers and devices with lights are everywhere.

In the home office, we have a cordless vacuum cleaner than sits there and charges and blinks a big blue light to either say it is charging or that it is already charged. That room also will have a Kindle or Kindle Fire plugged in with either a red, yellow or green light.  And, the cable modem, phone modem and wifi router light up with multicolored blinking lights like a christmas tree. Add my captioning telephone which always has its display lit.

In the kitchen we have green clocks on the stove and microwave. A month ago, we bought a new Oster coffee maker. That damn thing has blue backlighted buttons and a huge blue back lighted timer display. It is so bright, we routinely cover it with a kitchen towel at night.

In a couple of rooms, we have cable set top boxes that glow. Add in three cordless phones in their chargers with red lights. Not to mention a couple of cell phones and computers telling us that they are charging.

No wonder my electric bill is so high.

M is for Mirrors

I don't know about you, but I absolutely hate mirrors.

I am now 78 years old and the person I see in the mirror just doesn't look like me. The mirror image is that of an ugly old man with liver spots and a bald head.

I still see myself as a dashing young whippersnapper. Hell, I even once had a cowlick like Andy in the Our Gang Comedies. When I asked God to get rid of it, I didn't mean for Him to make me bald!

I admit that no one has ever called me handsome. They stop somewhere after reciting: sweet, kind, sexy, loveable. They never have gotten to the handsome part. Or saying "rich" either.

With all of the technology available today, why can't I have a bathroom mirror that I can talk to? "Mirror, mirror on the wall. Show me what I look like to myself, please."   And, poof! I see Cary Grant.

L is for Ladders

For the past thirty years, my wife has insisted that we put up Christmas lights around the outside of the house. Every year, I bitch and moan, but do it.

The biggest problem is that all three of the houses we have lived in during that time has had a peak in the roof over the double garage doors. It is too high to put up lights from a six foot step ladder.

In Melbourne, I would go next door and borrow the neighbor's extension ladder. He'd always gladly lend it to me and would say, "Keep it in your garage until after Christmas."  So I did.

After five years, I was talking to his wife and she remarked that they never put up Christmas lights because her husband always said, "I can't. D.C. has my ladder."  The next Christmas I returned the ladder after I put up my lights and he had to put up his lights too. He laughed about it, but I think he hated me!

In Largo, I borrowed an eight foot stepladder to do the job from an old-timer across the street.

When we moved to Clearwater eight years ago, I was able to borrow another eight foot stepladder from another old-timer across the street. Then last year, he moved. Damn!  After 30 years, I had to go out and buy a big stepladder. That gets used twice a year. To put up and take down Christmas lights.

I think the term for that is: "Bah, humbug!"

K is for Kitchen

Back when I was a kid, the kitchen was strictly a woman's domain. Men only ventured into the kitchen to eat at the kitchen table.

I true division of labor defined by gender.

I remember the family dinners at my grandmother's house. She oversaw the cooking with a little help from my mom and aunt. After we ate, all of the women would return to the kitchen for clean up duty and gossip. Oh, how they gossiped! No one was immune – not even the preacher and his wife.

The men would gather either on the front porch or in the living room (depending on weather). They'd discuss politics, hog prices and whether the weather would hold so they could cut hay and bale it the next week.

Depending on our gender, the kids would join the appropriate group or would head outside to see what kind of trouble we could get into.

With that upbringing, I never learned to cook at home. When I struck out on my own, I had to make do with either peanut butter sandwiches or eat out.

Times have changed.  Mostly at my wife's insistence.

It all started innocently enough. "Dear, please unload and load the dishwasher."  Followed by, "Please take out the trash every day — it stinks if you don't."

Then came, "Come here. Let me show you the proper way to cook eggs."

Other instructions followed. Thus, when she was laid up with surgery on her hand and later a broken arm from ice skating, it was easy for me to assume the cooking duties.

The only problem was she enjoyed  her time out of the kitchen. Damn it.

I don't really do fancy stuff. Just meat and toss steam-in-the-bag veggies in the microwave. But it is edible. Despite a huge spice rack in the kitchen, I only use salt, pepper and garlic powder. And, I use that combo on everything!

I do have one signature item in my culinary skill set. Everyone loves my homemade vinaigrette. I mix it and pour it into an empty red wine vinegar bottle.  My recipe:

* Half cup of red wine vinegar
* Half cup of vegetable oil
* Lots of salt, pepper and garlic powder
* Teaspoon of Dijon mustard

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

J is for Jackass

A former coworker, who now lives in frozen Minnesota, posted this meme on this Facebook page a couple days ago. I loved it, so I stole it!

In my experience, there are two kinds of jackasses:

* the four-legged kind

* the two-legged kind

Both can be stubborn.

The four-legged kind can be lovable. Not so, the two-legged kind.

Don't be a two-legged jackass.

I is for Irregardless

If my memory is correct, I made A's in high school English class. I found it mostly boring.

Yet, when I got out of high school (back in 1957), I found myself doing a lot of writing. Thus, the basics that got beat into my head came in handy. But some of the items in the graphics above I couldn't define if you paid me.

Can you grab one of the sentences in this post and diagram it?  Me neither. Can you identify what each and every word or phrase is in the sentence? Me neither.

I learned that "irregardless" is not a word. I just checked Webster's online dictionary and they say it is; it's just an irregular form that is mostly used in spoken speech, not writing. They then declare: "Use regardless."

I write "conversational" prose. I try to communicate like I'm talking to you. I don't try to impress you with obscure references to Greek gods – I'll leave that to the New Yorker magazine writers. Nor do I use what I call "dollar three ninety eight" words. Shorter, simpler words are better. I may know the longer, fancier and more exotic words, but I don't use them in everyday conversation, so I don't use them when writing.

I did learn a lot about semicolons and colons and I tend to use them. Others seldom do. Did you notice that I slipped both into this post? Did I use them correctly? Let me know if I didn't.

I also often use parentheses and en and em dashes. (It has been a long time since I hand coded HTML and I just spent five minutes figuring out how to do an en dash in a paragraph above versus the old typewriter style of --. Now I wonder if I should have used an em dash instead. Oh, the headaches technology creates.)

I have several pet peeves about grammar on the net. Too many people confuse "your" and "you're". And, "there", "their" and "they're" set my teeth on edge. (Did I just use another cliche? The only real way for my teeth to be on edge is when I drop them in a glass at night.)

Remember that even little girls in their dancing tutus can use English properly. She said, "I can count to two too."

H is for Huh?

It seems like a lot of things today make me go "Huh??"  As in, "what the bloody hell?"

Yesterday was one of those days.  My 1995 Dodge Custom van is getting a long in the tooth. Milage is about 160K. Motor is solid. Rear end is noisy. Air conditioning is kaput. Lots of rust on roof and along the roof's gutters. Thus, I have been occasionally looking on the internet for a replacement, despite the fact that I am only two years away from being able to put a cheap antique tag on it.

It has to be cheap. My days of buying a new car every year or so ended back in the 1970s. In the past 20+ years, I've only bought three new vehicles. And can't afford today's prices for new. Not sure I can even afford old used cars either.

As I drove past a Clearwater Chevy dealer yesterday, I spotted a bright yellow SSR in their used car area. I knew I couldn't afford it, but I decided to see the details about it on their web site anyway.

As I started looking for it in their inventory, I spotted a used Chevy Cruze for $7,999.  I had recently seen an article on the net that said that was a good car, so I clicked on their details icon for it.

The specs were okay. But I noticed a "*" by the price and dropped down to read the fine print for that.  Oh, boy!  It was HUH? time.

The fine print said that was the discount price. $1,000 had been deducted as an incentive to use their financial partners' financing. In other words, if you were to pay cash, the price would be $1,000 more. Huh?

Then they went on to say they had deducted another $1,000 for you trade-in. And it had to be later than 1999 and have less than 100,000 miles on it. Since my van is a 1995, the price now went up another $1,000.  Huh?

Then they said to add $999 for dealer fees.  Huh?

They went on to add $399 for a private tag agency fee. What the hell is that? Huh?

They weren't done.  Now, add $1,253 in reconditioning costs on that particular car. I checked a couple of other used cars on their site and it was always exactly $1,253 for that car. Huh?

Of course, they added the standard bit about me paying the sales tax and license fees.

Therefore, if I wanted to pay their "no haggle" price for the $7,999 car, it would cost me $12,650 before sales tax and license.  Huh?  You gotta be kidding me! (Truth be told, I did not exclaim "You gotta be kidding me" out loud when I added it up. I said "You gotta be sh*ting me.")

The dealer's name is Dimmit. Methinks they think their potential customers are Dimwits.

G is for Google (of course!)

How in the world did I survive the first 55 years of my life without Google, spellcheckers and my own personal computers?  It was difficult, but somehow I did it!  But I don't want to go back to the old ways.

I feel like a dinosaur. In high school, I was the nerd with the big K&E slide rule on his hip. When I started working, I typed using a manual typewriter and to make copies one had to either use carbon paper or type on vellum paper and run it through the Ozalid machine.

I enjoyed writing and I had to have a Webster's Dictionary (in, gasp!, book form) at my elbow. Some of the pages were dog-eared so I could easily and quickly find the words that I frequently screwed up.  Some words, like occasion I cannot to this day remember how to spell. Is it two C's or two S's? Darn if I can remember. Thankfully, just about everywhere that I type on a computer will give me a heads up with a red underline that I should do a right click on the word and fix it.

And, yes, I frequently lamented, "How the hell can I find the word in the dictionary, if I don't know how to spell it!"

Research back then meant looking in the encyclopedias. Yes, the book version. Not nearly as broad as Wikipedia and often out-of-date. Although, the door-to-door salesmen would always pitch the sale of their yearly updates.

But the arrival of the web and search engines changed things forever. My first search engine love was DogPile.  They went out and grabbed info from multiple early search engines and displayed them for you. (I just went to that site for the first time in 15 years and it still exists. In fact, I tried their image search and that's how I found the Ozalid machine picture above.)

Google, however, came out and it soon surpassed every other search engine. And, I use it every day multiple times. Type in your symptoms and it will suggest sites you can peruse to diagnose and doctor yourself. Want to read the latest political indictment? Within a couple of hours of it being put on the web, they'll point you to it. Want to see how many Darhl Caylor's there are in the world, just ask. See this to understand who Darhl Caylor is.

Man, we sure have come a long way, Baby!

Postscript: When I was typing this blog post, I fouled up the spelling of dinosaur so badly that both the spellchecker and Google gave up on me.  After all, T-Rex and his cousins weren't popular with I was a kid. I need for Google to add a FWIM -- Find What I Mean -- button to their web page.

F is for France

I absolutely, positively love France!

I will admit that I had a typical American scepticism of France when I was asked to spend a year there working for CDC bcak in 1967. But the per diem doubled my salary and I got a free furnished 3 bedroom apartment, so I agreed.

After a French friend from the bowling alley (only one there that spoke English) in Toulouse introduced me to his former girl friend and skating partner in Holiday on Ice, my perspective changed.

Thanks to Claudine, I was introduced to France as a native would see the country. Her grandparents lived in an old 4th floor walkup in Paris; her parents lived in the same tiny apartment where Claudine grew up; the matriarch of the family was the first woman Senator in France and was a leader in the WWII Resistance and lived in a high-end apartment in Paris.

The French are super polite -- which Americans have a hard time accepting given a few rude waiters at tourist spots.  Just a couple of easily learned customs and you'll be accepted and welcomed.

First off, when you enter a shop always say, "Bonjour, Madam"  as a hello. It is a custom. And, when you leave say a thank you of "Merci, Madam".  Believe me, you earn points immediately for doing that.

Handshakes when meeting and leaving someone is expected. Air kisses are reserved for the opposite sex and for someone you know well.  I actually had a hard time with this when I started working at Sud Aviation.  I couldn't remember if I had shaken hands already with someone that I then met a hour after arriving. Offer to shake hands a second time and they look at you questioningly; not to offer if you hadn't met them yet was an insult. Considering there were about twenty French around the computer room, you can imagine my problem. After two or three weeks, I started getting air kisses from some (but not all) of the female coworkers. Yet another memory problem for me.

While there, I learned to drive like a mad Frenchman. And I actually still love to drive in Paris. I know the city well and can speed along with the best of the French. Yes, even around the Etolle -- the large circle around the Arc de Triumph. Twelve streets empty into it and it is about twelve lanes wide with no lane markings. FUN!

When I left France in 1968, I went to London for three weeks to install a new computer there. My car, me and Claudine hopped across the English Channel in an airplane like the one pictured above.

I brought Claudine back to the states with me and we got married. We celebrated 49 years of marriage back in February.  She became a US citizen in 2000.

I bet you know what to do if you see RSVP.  But do you know what it is an acronym for? RSVP stands for Repondez S'il Vous Plait or please respond in French.

My wife does advertise our French connections on her car. Her vanity plate translates to "French Iceskater" and you see her "I Love Paris" sticker and my cowboy hat behind it.

E is for Email

Do you remember the first time you used email?  I do.

My first email experience was back when interoffice mail was still the only way to communicate with coworkers and U.S. mail was the way to communicate outside.

I always followed the computer industry by reading trade publications to keep current with the state-of-art.  One day, I read an article and the author invited readers to express their comments and he posted an email address.

Coincidentally, I had just seen a memo at work where the company's IBM PROFS Notes system now allowed sending email outside the company. I never used the IBM mainframe, but I did have an account on it due to a prior project that mated with it.  On a lark, I typed up a PROFS blurb expressing my thoughts on the article and sent it off. (Back then you had to insert the email address in the top of the body of the message. Weird.)

An hour later, I had a answer from the magazine author.  WOW! Instant communications! I was hooked.

I started looking for email addresses that I could send messages to.

I also started sending a "Morning Message" of quotes, humor and puns to a few coworkers and Toastmaster buddies.  After I got my personal email address, that morphed into a daily email of clean humor. I published that daily for over five years.  I received so many off-colored jokes back from my subscribers that I started the "Castaways" as a daily email for those.  Some of my subscribers for that one were professional wrestlers -- which I guess figures.

I have had my current personal email address for over 20 years. That means my daily in basket tally is around 70 emails. Mostly ads and spam that gets deleted unread.

What's your email experience?

D is for Darhl

I go by DC because I dislike my first two names.  The D stands for Darhl and the C stands for Caylor. If you do a Google search for "Darhl Caylor", you'll only find me.

Amazingly enough, Google did turn up a few Darhl's. It is even an acronym for Durango Adult Recreational Hockey League. I'm not sure how the other poor sods with the name ended up with the moniker, but I know how I got stuck with it.

A friend of my mother had a cute little boy about 6 months before I was born. She liked the name he was given, so she stole it. Only problem is that the silent H in his name is at the end and my mom stuck my silent H in front of the last L.

I saw that "cute little boy" at my grandfather's funeral. He was dressed in bib overalls and weighed at least 300 pounds.

One of my problems with Darhl is that no one can spell it or pronounce it.  It rhymes with Carl. Most people confuse it with the more popular Daryl -- which rhymes with Carol.

As far as the name Caylor goes, it was the name of an uncle that died a few months before I was born. He, in turn, got it from the last name of the doctor that delivered the uncle and my dad in Washington, D.C. Which has always struck me as being weird. Did my grandmother have an affair that no one in the family knew about?

My parents were aware of my dislike of the name because for years and years I signed off all letters with "Silent H".

Now, I must admit that I have been called worse than Darhl on quite a few occasions. I won't list them here since this is a family-friendly blog.

Around the computer industry, many people called me Tex because I favor western wear. Even all of my wife's French relatives still call me Tex.

If you forget my name, no problem.  I also answer to "HEY YOU!"

C is for Computers

I made my living working with computers for 45 years. I joined RCA in Palm Beach Gardens in 1965 and worked on the bring-up floor for their Model 301 computer. As a technician, I tested them and fixed them when they emerged from manufacturing. Memory was 4K of magnetic core donuts. It had no arithmetic capability in hardware; it used table lookup -- if you wanted it to add 2 and 3, it went to location 23 in memory and pulled up a 5. Primitive, indeed.

A year later on June 6, 1966 (i.e., 6/6/66), I joined Control Data in Minneapolis as a hardware Customer Engineer. They offered me $550/month. I was hired to go to a site on Kodiak, Alaska to babysit a small system. They had a change in requirements and I had done well in training, so they offered me to stay in Minneapolis and train on their supercomputer, the CDC 6600. (Pictured above). After training, I went to a site in Albuquerque and a mere four months later I received a phone call, "How would you like to go to France for a year?" After a flight to Minneapolis for a physical, a stop in Chicago for a passport, return to Albuquerque, a drive to Tampa (where I traded my Chevy for a VW Fastback for delivery in Paris) and a flight to Paris, I arrived in my dress western suit, cowboy hat, boots and a bullwhip in one of my two suitcases for work in France. I was assigned to Sud Aviation in Toulouse, which is 400 miles south of Paris. It was a very educational experience.

When I returned to the states, I worked as a Diagnostic Programmer designing and programming the diagnostics for a black box that allowed two of the supercomputers to talk to each other. It was a super computer in its day. Of course, your cell phone today has many times the capability of that big machine pictured above.

Digital Equipment made me an offer I couldn't refuse to go back into hardware as a Regional Customer Engineer. I found I didn't like being back in hardware, so I jumped ship after only nine months and became a software instructor for Univac in the Washington, DC area.

I had an opportunity to return to Florida and worked for GE's nuclear plant in Largo, then at Kennedy Space Center in the Shuttle Firing Rooms. I then spent 15 years with Harris Corp. in Melbourne, Florida and worked on several interesting projects including a nuke blast detector system at Patrick AFB, working on programming spy satellites to put "sunglasses" on them so Russian lasers wouldn't harm them and various bar code systems for manufacturing.

I joined Raytheon in 1995 in St Petersburg, Florida and worked on various manufacturing software systems. THe last ten years at Raytheon, I designed and programmed web applications using Perl for their intranet. I retired in 2010 and many of those web apps are still running!

So... I have seen it all. Magnetic core, paper tape, teletypes, time share systems, monster supercomputers, PCs, the web.

B is for Books

I am a reader. I love books. As far back as I can remember, I have had a book or a magazine -- something to read -- in my hands.

In particular, I love mysteries. And, that love probably started with John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. Oh, how I loved them. Paperbacks cost a quarter or maybe 35 cents, which was a lot of money to me back then. But somehow I manage to save and buy every one.

I have spent a fortune on books over the years. Now, I buy some off of Amazon, some off the bargain table at Barnes & Noble and some at our new St Petersburg, Florida used book shop called 321 Books. The name comes from the prices on the books: $3 for hardback, $2 for paperbacks and $1 for kids books.

I know I am shorting authors money that I like by buying used books or remainders, but I justify it by giving the books away and those castoffs often get the receiver's attention and they then follow and buy that author's books.

I own a Kindle and a Kindle Fire and have read a good number of books on them. But, I am old fashioned and do love to hold the actual book in my hand. And, I have a $10 price point cap on buying e-books.

My recent reads? At the first of the year, I bought Tim Dorsey's latest Serge Storms book. I love them. Set in Florida with tidbits of arcane Florida history and with a protagonist being a serial killer "who only kills those that need killing", the yearly romps of the series are laugh-out-loud funny

Since I am a political junkie -- especially after the last election -- I bought and read Fire and Fury. That was a great read. I am currently slogging through Russian Roulette, which is good, but a difficult read due to all of the Russian names in the darn thing. I need Rachel Maddow to create a huge graphic of all of the players in the book for me!

Hmmm, that book is sitting beside me at the moment. I think I'll quit typing this and go slog some more in that book.

On average, I read 50 or more books a year. How about you?

A is for Alcoholism

Our first day as part of the A to Z Challenge

Alcoholics come in all shapes, sizes, and ethnic backgrounds and are not just the people under the bridge or drunk on a bench, like Kermit in the picture above.

They come from all walks in life. I've personally known lawyers, doctors, the head of a large chamber of commerce, firemen, fishermen, pilots (both commercial and military), submariners, engineers, nurses, roofers, clergy (including Father Martin), and more who are recovering alcoholics.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, they consider sober alcoholics as recovering versus recovered since once an alcoholic always an alcoholic -- and we are always just one drink away from a drunk.

Yes, I said, "we". I'm an alcoholic -- a recovering one with over 35 years of sobriety.

I am a very lucky alcoholic. While at the end of my drinking I was drinking a quart of 100 proof vodka a day -- plus a beer or two and probably some wine and cognac to boot -- I never had a DUI, I never got fired from my job, I didn't get divorced. I used to say that I never had an accident, but I now remember hitting the curb a couple of times and blowing out a tire.

I was also fortunte enough at the time I got sober to work for a company whose insurance paid for my 28 day stay in a rehab center and who paid me my normal wages for those four weeks.

During rehab, we were taken to local AA meetings every day. And, were welcomed there. After rehab, I transitioned to going to AA. The slogans on the wall made a lot more sense then than they did when I played at going to AA prior to rehab.

The sobriety journey has been a wonder.

* I found out that I could dance sober. (Who knew? Gosh, and I didn't fall down either.)

* I had a number of relatives and friends die and I didn't find it necessary to take a drink.

* I got the ax and involuntarily retired after 15 years with the company twice while sober and I didn't pick up a drink.

* I got involved with AA service work and working with alcoholics in my community.

I'm sure you know someone (maybe even you?) that abuses alcohol. Suggest they go to AA. It is a lifesave.

An aside: One of my favorite jokes while drinking was asking what the difference was between a drunk and an alcoholic. The punchline was "an alcoholic has to go to all of those meetings." It is a bit ironic that those meetings saved my life.