The Month of June

This has been a busy month, yet interesting and rewarding. In fact, it’s been demanding, yet satisfying.

We get our medicine, as a veteran, at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio, so that meant a trip of 120 miles each way. I bought my hearing aids through their Audiology Department in the Hospital and took advantage of this trip over there to get them checked out. Turned out they’re probably good for another year and that was welcome news. We’re very fortunate to be able to pick up our medications through their pharmacy every three months. We alternate driving with friends of ours and that saves on gas. Gas got pretty expensive here in Indianapolis during May ($3.39 per gallon) but it’s come down to $2.87 this past week. It seems strange to say that gas at $2.87 is cheap. I can remember in 1940 when gas was 18 cents per gallon. I guess its all relative.

Every Wednesday morning I go to breakfast with my golf buddies. We started out in 1990 with five of us for our weekly breakfasts, the purpose of which was to decide where our golf group would travel to play golf on our twice-monthly schedule. There were sixteen of us in that group originally, but now we don’t travel to different courses any more since the group has drifted apart and several have passed away. In fact our breakfast group is down to three of us. Once in a while anymore, two of us get out playing golf, but usually we just have breakfast and talk about golf, politics, the Indianapolis Colts or the Pacers. Oh, and I can’t forget the discussions about our various ailments. I’m 78 years old and the other two are 84. I’ve included a couple pictures of back when we were getting together regularly for golf. The picture of the single golfer is me and the group picture features four of our original 16. The two on the right in the group picture passed away a few years ago.

This has been an extremely warm month and the grass has really grown. It takes me about three hours to cut our yard and sometimes this month I’ve had to cut it twice each week. Finally last week the grass went dormant from all the heat and I haven’t had to cut it for a week. It finally rained last night and most of this morning. I suppose the grass will recover from its dormancy and I’ll have to start cutting it again. Regardless, the hot weather is still better than snow. Two projects I still am trying to get done are some repairs for the pool (the pump has a seal that’s leaking and the heater has a safety valve that needs replacing) and we have an awning that we’re trying to get someone to give us an estimate on replacing. We also signed up for another River Boat vacation trip in Europe. So you can see we’ve been quite busy.

Saturday, May 27, 2007, was the day of the 500 Festival Parade in Indianapolis. The parade is the culmination of the various celebrations which take place during the month of May prior to the Memorial Day 500 Mile Race. My wife decided that we hadn’t been to the parade since the 1970’s, so we were going to be there. My lack of enthusiasm was based on the fact that during the late 60’s and early 70’s I was deeply involved in the operation of the parade. The Commander of the Indiana National Guard at that time was a member and former President of the 500 Festival Committee and I’m that was why we were so involved. My job at first had top do with the parade security since at that time the parade was at night and the local protestors loved to roam the parade route trying to stir up trouble. Our solution to the problem of the protestors was to line the parade route with “Cherry-Pickers” armed with a Guardsman and a “Walky-Talky “radio which enabled us to quickly alert the police and a platoon of Guardsman for response. Later I manned the Command Post while other Guardsmen controlled the start of the parade and the marshalling and deployment of floats and other units. It was a big job and one I was glad to be rid of eventually. However, I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed being an observer this year. I even enjoyed the city bus ride downtown and the return home by bus. I got to see quite a bit of the city more carefully, avoided the parking headaches and saved gas.

It was raining and misting all morning, and since one had to get there early to avoid the rush, we sat in the rain under our umbrellas for about an hour, but just as the parade started, the rain stopped and the sun came out. The parade has really gotten to be a national, and quite an exciting event. It started out with the Indianapolis Police Motorcycle Drill Team and have received national recognition and deserve it. They were followed by a Color Guard made up of all the services. The parade is basically divided into ten divisions, each made up of one 3-car row of the race car drivers riding on the back of 2007 Corvette convertibles, various celebrities riding on the back of antique convertibles ( I can’t imagine where they get all of those good-looking antique cars), followed by bands, giant parade balloons, floats, hose patrols, and clowns. It is a very professional and efficient operation. All 33 drivers were present. Of particular note was Governor Mitch Daniels on his motorcycle leading his motorcycle club. Also Peyton Manning was the Grand Marshall and he looked as if he was really enjoying his role. I was surprised regarding the floats in that they were quite nice, all of them were made of styrofoam and none of them were made of flowers. Although they’ve had them for several years, the giant balloons were new to me. It was a great experience and I have to admit that once again my wife knew what was best for me.

ON INSTALLING DSL

For some time I have been debating myself regarding installing DSL as my internet server. I’m currently on cable and have been happy with it for seven or eight years, except for the price. The DSL I’ve been looking at would cost about $18.00 less each month which would be considerable per year. Last week I decided to make the move to DSL and took the first step which was to purchase the modem and contact the provider to make the switchover. I was told it was easy to make the switchover and could do the installation myself. I had one complication and that was that I use a router to direct my internet to a laptop as well as my desktop. I was assured that it was not a problem.

The first step was to insert line filters into all my telephone hook-ups in the house which would enable my phones to work at the same time as I use the internet. This was simple to do and they furnished the filters for my phones (all seven of them). The day of the installation, a telephone lineman arrived bright and early to check our lines inside and assure they were OK for DSL. I spent the rest of the day trying to get the modem and associated cables hooked up just as the diagram described. At the end of the day the internet didn’t work. After dinner that evening, I decided to call for help from their support technicians. My call was directed to a lady at their Support Center in Texas. She was diligent in trying to help me and we may have been making progress, however, our conversation was cut off and I lost contact with her. I dialed the support center back and this time I got the Support Center in California and was connected to a man. I had to go through all that had taken place with the woman and then after he had me trying several possible fixes, our phone conversation was again cut off. But by this time I decided to eliminate hooking up the laptop/router portion of my installation in order to simplify things. Then, upon trying to reestablish contact I got the Texas Support Center again, but the woman I talked to previously was tied up with another customer. I insisted on talking to a supervisor and demanded they send someone out to my house to help me. After much more conversation, they agreed.

The next afternoon I got a phone call that said my telephone would be disconnected for an hour or so and then a technician would come to the house. When he got there he explained that our area phone lines had been installed sixty or so years ago and at that time the phone company, by necessity, had installed amplifiers on the lines. This was no longer necessary on current installations and that he had fixed the line. It seems the amplifiers and DSL just didn’t mix. He checked the inside installation of my modem and cables and got it working. He said he didn’t know anything about routers so I was resigned to omitting the laptop from my hookup. After he left, I proceeded to notify my list of addresses of my new E-Mail address and send out a few messages. However I preferred that my E-Mail be on Outlook Express and since the DSL literature said that was possible, I called the Support Center for help.

The technician led me through the switch from Yahoo E-Mail to Outlook Express and now my E-Mail doesn’t work on Outlook Express or Yahoo. Conveniently, at this moment my phone contact was again cutoff and I tried to call back quickly in hopes of getting the same Technician. This time the Support Center was in India. I hung up and dialed the Support Center again. I don’t know where the Support Center was this time but I asked to speak to a supervisor. After again repeating all that had transpired to date the supervisor informed me that this was an Outlook Express problem for Microsoft and that I should contact the Router manufacturer for help in hooking up my laptop. At this point I said “to hell with it, I’m going to see if I can get back on my cable server and return the DSL to where it was purchased”.

To make a long story shorter, I’m back on cable, I’m using Outlook Express, and “lo and behold”, I found out that cable offers internet at a slower speed which is comparable to DSL’s speed and price (but not advertised). Also, I’m so tired of screwing with this whole thing; I’m now paying a local kid to hook up my laptop through the router. Unfortunately, that about covers my attempt to switch to DSL. For the two days I was able to get on DSL, I did find the speed was about the same as cable, although I didn’t get a chance to try downloading anything. The use of my telephones, while using the internet on telephones lines, wasn’t completely clean of feedback on the telephones. Also, I’ve come to the conclusion that when the going gets a little tough for these help experts, hanging up the phone is a pretty simple way of eliminating “help” problems.

I'm tired of Tiger Woods

Considering I’m such an avid golfer (not a good golfer), I’m often asked why I’m not a strong supporter of Tiger Woods. Since this past weekend was “Masters Tournament” weekend, this may be an appropriate time to explain myself.

Tiger Woods is without question the best and most outstanding professional golfer of this era, however, he’s not the only professional golfer. I watch the tournaments in order to observe all the golfers and I have a special affinity for seeing some of the senior golfers that were popular when I was younger and that are still good enough to make the “cut”. As an example, all former winners of the “Masters” are invited to play each year. This year twelve golfers whom I consider seniors were invited to play and of that twelve, seven made the “cut . On Thursday, while watching the play, I only saw one or two of those twelve seniors once, yet I saw Tiger all day long. It seemed that the announcers were following Tiger, and occasionally they would show the leaders as it changed hands. Tiger shot 73 on the first day, but was on the camera all day even though there were several golfers ahead of him. The second day, he teed off early in the morning and was almost done by the time the TV was on, but we did get to see him finish his round even though he was still several strokes off the lead.

The third day seven of the so-called seniors had made the “cut”, but I never got to see hardly any of them on TV. And since Tiger got his game going, he was what we mostly saw, and at the end of the day he was tied for the lead. Sunday, the fourth day, he was in the lead twosome, although he quickly fell out of the tie for the lead position and drifted back in the pack and then the lead changed hands four or five times. Sometimes the TV station runs a “runner” across the bottom of the screen to let you know what the other players shoot, but that never happened Saturday or Sunday. The problem is that Tiger is the “darling” of the TV people. It’s not necessarily his fault but he doesn’t discourage the TV announcers. I thank god he didn’t win or the TV people and the sports announcers and sports writers wouldn’t let up on how Tiger would be going after the “Grand Slam” till the next major tournament. Tiger’s good! No question about it, but some of the other golfers are also good, including Zach Johnson as Tiger found out.

57 years together

My Marilyn and I.

We’ve been happily married for fifty-seven years as of this past February eighteenth. I can honestly say she’s been the one who has been the bedrock of the marriage. When I spent all those nights and weekends pursuing my second career in the National Guard along with my primary career in industry, she was the one who sustained the family by overseeing the raising of our children and maintaining the household operation. We’ve been very fortunate in that we made very practical plans before we were married, and that we were able to stick fairly close to those plans, such as to save our money while we were both working, buy our first house after three years and start our family at that time. She had no living parents and my only living parent, my father, lived a distance away and offered little advice or assistance, which meant we had to rely on ourselves. I’m very grateful to her for those fifty-seven good years.

You might ask how we reward each other on those anniversaries and other occasions such as birthdays and Christmas. After all these years when we want something or need something we just go buy it. After all, if you postpone it until one of those occasions, after fifty-seven years we might not be here. That doesn’t preclude the other asking ‘Why in the world did you buy that?” or “Did you really need that?” So what we do is give each other $100.00, with the caveat that you can spend it for whatever you might want, whenever you want, no questions asked by the other. She loves to shop so her money goes for clothes, whatever, and she usually spends each $ 100.00 three or four times. I ask no questions. I spend my $100.00 on stupid things I think I’d like and she can’t challenge me. Works out pretty good.

Vacation in Florida

Dateline Thursday, 7 February 2007: We’re now in Florida for six weeks, essentially from my standpoint, to get warm. My wife, I think, kind of just goes along with spending six weeks down here every winter. I think it breaks up the long winter and she thinks its an opportunity to do her shopping in a different location. When we go home after the middle of March, spring is beginning to poke its nose around the corner and things are beginning to green up, bulbs are poking their noses out of the cold ground, and the migrating birds are beginning to return to Indiana. And even better, golf season is about to begin.

Unfortunately, when we got down here, winter was giving Florida a sample of northern weather and it was cold down here. Thursday, the day we arrived, it was sunny, but windy. The next day was cloudy, windy and cooler. The following day was rainy and cold – all day, followed by 3 days of cool, cloudy weather. And about that time, my neighbor across the street back home sent me a picture he had taken of our house, covered with snow, just to cheer me up. But today I got even by sending him a picture of an alligator, sunning itself, on the bank of the canal in back of our rental house. The temperature reached 80 degrees today.

We stay in the city of Englewood, which is located about five miles off the west coast, approximately halfway between Venice and Port Charlotte. We’re situated in a suburb called Rotonda West. We’re not beach people, so we don’t mind not being on the coast. The rental has a pool and we can swim if we want. Frankly, we haven’t done much except lay around and go shopping in Port Charlotte a couple of times. Our highlight so far was getting to watch the Super Bowl and see our fantastic Colts outwrestle those Chicago Bears. In all honesty, when the Bears scored that first touchdown in just 14 seconds on a runback from the opening kick-off, I thought all was lost. But the Colts persisted, recovered their poise, and proceeded to mount one of the best comebacks I’ve seen. So much for the so-called worst defense in pro football. Now maybe we can get back to watching golf on week-ends.