Practical joke

Earlier this week, I was reminded of a practical joke that was played on me when I was a freshman in college. Since this is April Fool's Day, I thought this was an appropriate time to write about it. But don't do this to someone who may get mad at you!

I had come into the cafeteria late one evening just before closing time and sat down at a table with people I didn't know. I remember thinking that there were a lot of people sitting at the table who had finished their meals but weren't leaving. And they weren't talking either. They were just sitting there. Then, as I ate, I noticed people at surrounding tables who had also finished their meals and weren't leaving. They didn't seem to be talking, either. They all seemed to be waiting for something.

After a while, someone at my table asked if they could have the sugar. As I reached for the sugar dispenser (similar to the one pictured here), it didn't register with me to question why someone who was finished with their meal would need the sugar. I just reached for it (on one side of me) and passed it to them (on the other side of me). I immediately noticed three things:

1. The dispenser got lighter very quickly.
2. The metal top of the dispenser fell off.
3. A sort of cheer went up at the table where I was sitting and at a number of tables around me.

I looked back at where the metal top landed and saw the contents of the sugar dispenser spread out over the table. I went to turn to the fellow who had asked for the sugar to apologize but he was already getting up to leave with a big grin on his face. The memory is a little hazy after all these years but I seem to remember about half the people in the cafeteria getting up to leave at this time. I think it may have been as many as 20 - 30 people. Apparently, word had spread of the imminent practical joke about to be sprung and those folks had been waiting around for it. It wasn't personally aimed at me - it was set for whoever sat down at the table after it has been set up. Someone had screwed off the top of the dispenser, put something over the top (something thin like a piece of cardboard), flipped it over onto the table and slid the cardboard out so that the table was now holding the sugar in. They then placed the metal cover on the "top" of the dispenser to complete the illusion. This type of dispenser makes it easier because it looks the same when it's upside down.

I had to admit, it was a pretty good joke and the large number of people cheering and the suddenness had startled me enough that I didn't get angry. I was more upset by the fact that I felt obligated to clean the mess up. Oh, that and the waste of the sugar.

Not a trend setter

I was reading an article today about a phrase that someone had heard in their office and how everyone was latching onto it (like "moving forward" (meaning "we should have done this before and promise to do it in the future"), or "we're being proactive about that" (meaning "we're afraid that someone might sue us over this so we're going to have to do it"). While I've never liked those phrases and wish people would just say what they mean, I've always thought it would be fun to coin a new phrase.

I have always liked Woody Allen's movie Sleeper. The main character, played by Woody, has been put in a state of suspended animation in the hopes that some time in the future they will find a cure for his illness. When he is finally brought back to consciousness, 200 years later, the country is a totalitarian state and he is being asked by the rebels to infiltrate the government. They find out that the dictator has actually been killed and all that remains of him is his nose. After Woody is captured and escapes, he is mistaken for a doctor and asked to use the nose to clone another copy of the dictator. The scene that follows, with Woody and Diane Keeton playing for time as they try to get away, is hilarious. Of course, they have no idea what they are doing and they put on more of a song and dance routine than actually doing anything medical. Throughout the procedure they keep saying they are cloning the nose.They never do.

Their little skit reminded me of some people I knew who, when they were trying to explain what they were doing or trying to get the higher-ups to accept their project, obviously had no clue about what they were doing. I started classifying this as "Cloning the Nose". I thought it was hilarious and and I used it all the time. I still chuckle when I think about it becuase it reminds me of that funny scene in the movie. But I could never get it to catch on. Oh well, moving forward...

Small Basic

I've been looking for a way to teach my children a programming language for a few years now. I keep changing my mind from teaching them a simple, easy-to-use language to using something that will be useful even if they decide to do it for a living. This has gone of for a few years and now that our son Evan is 13, it seems like it is time to stop messing around and pick one to get started.

I've decided to start with something simple and fun. It will teach the fundamentals and will be easy to get started with. One of my criteria for the language (and the tools you use to create programs with it) was that it could be used to make simple games. Just writing programs to sort numbers or edit text is not going to engage a young person. They want something they can use right away and that will be fun. I also wanted something that will help them along as they go. So, I decided to start them with Small Basic from Microsoft. It is indeed small with few commands to learn before you start in with programming. It comes with a nice way to write the programs and test them and the help system is not too bad. As you type commands, it attempts to figure out what you're looking for and offers information on the command you are typing. There is also a way to share your ideas with other people. And it's free!

This is going to be another of my irregular post series. I'll be posting any interesting things we find as we learn this new language. I'll try to add a few examples to make it easier to understand certain concepts in software engineering. But mostly, we're just going to have some fun.

Sad day for a mug

My parents bought me a mug like this back in the 70's. I don't remember if they got it for me while I was in college or when I got a job and moved away. But it was at least 30 years old. I liked it because it was small and I couldn't drink too much coffee or tea during the day. It was also a conversation piece.

There had been a commercial for Nescafe on television back in the late 60's or early 70's that showed a much larger, rounder globe that was really impractical for drinking because the hole in the top was too small and hard to get to your lips. But Nescafe must have had a lot of requests so they made this more practical version.

Well, today I was heating up my cup of tea in the microwave and wasn't watching what I was doing and I dropped it. It shattered into a million pieces - well beyond hope of gluing it back together. I didn't have much chance to think about it and lament because people were coming in for coffee break and I needed to clean the mess up. It wasn't until I got back to my desk (tea-less) that I started to feel sad about it. But now I have the opportunity to bring in one of the mugs my family has bought me over the years to use here. I hope I can be careful and make it last another 30 years.

Some old pictures worth showing

There used to be an Air National Guard airbase near us. The squadron was moved about a year ago but when they were here, there was an air show at the base every year and sometimes the famous US Air Force Thunderbirds would be there. I never got to the air show itself but, with them flying at nearly the speed of sound,  it was hard to keep that kind of action in a small area. We would see them practicing or flying over us as they turned to make another pass over the grandstands at the show. So, one clear and sunny day, we saw them practicing for the upcoming show. I snapped these pictures as they flew near our office. These pictures are from August, 2007.

The top picture shows them at my camera's maximum zoom level as they made a turn over the parking lot. The next picture (to the left, also zoomed way in) shows them flying straight down toward the ground. Of course, with me cropping the pictures to fit in this space, it's hard to tell if I didn't just turn the picture 90 degrees to make it look like this. I guess you just have to trust me! I wouldn't do that. I can't imagine going that fast and seeing the ground coming up on you quickly. They weren't that far off the ground at this point. Too bad I didn't get this picture with the ground included so you could see how close it was. Believe me, I tried but they were moving so fast it was tough to just get the pictures I did.

The next picture does show how close they flew over the trees. Besides being so close together, they also had to worry about their altitude. I couldn't even do this as a passenger. I've seen various news stories where the reporters fly along with the Thunderbirds or the Blue Angels (the Navy and Marine Corps' precision flying squadron). So, they did it while holding a camera, too. Amazing!


There were actually five planes flying that day. I don't know where the fifth guy hung out. He would come and go and I never saw just one plane flying by itself. We'd just see five planes and then we'd see four. It was like magic. The next picture shows a five plane formation in the form of a cross. In this picture, they flew right over my head but this is, again, zoomed way in so they weren't right over my head :-) I think the noise would have deafened me.

The final picture at the bottom was a lucky break. I happened to get another picture of the cross formation as they passed over our flag. I had to zoom out to fit the Thunderbirds in with the flag but it's still obvious they are in the cross formation. The planes are in the upper left and if you click on the picture, you'll see it larger.

Yet another missed opportunity

I continue to walk in the woods behind our office at lunch time but the opportunity for pictures of wildlife certainly diminishes in late fall and doesn't increase until spring. So, it is with regret that I have to tell you about another missed opportunity. I wrote about missing a good picture of a squirrel here and of forgetting to take a video of large snow flakes falling slowly and vertically here. Well, I have to admit to another great shot that I missed; all because I didn't question why something was happening.

You can see from the picture here that there were a lot of crows flying around when I was out on my walk that day (Friday, March 12). If you click on the picture, you can see at least seven crows with some of them perched in the tree. They were agitated, making a lot of noise and not staying in one place for long. So, I tried to get close enough to them to get some pictures of the individual crows. But they were too fussy. I should have thought about why. I've seen this behavior two or three times before and should have realized that a hawk was probably in the area. The crows will get together to chase a hawk out of their area.

As I crept up on the crows, I noticed some fluttering of leaves at the top of a tree but ignored it. Too bad. It turned out that the "fluttering leaves" was a huge, beautiful hawk at the top of the tree and it took off before I could get my camera pointed and focused for the shot. It was gone in a few seconds with the crows chasing and calling after it. Maybe one of these days I'll put all my missed opportunities in an album :-)

Why I went to college

When I worked for the US Geological Survey, I went to sea many times as we collected data about the ocean floor. We would go out for a month or so at a time and trace large grids as we mapped what the bottom and the layers of rock underneath looked like. Back and forth. Up and down. In good weather and bad. It all sounded so exciting at first but ended up being pretty boring most of the time. We'd put some equipment over the back of the boat and tow it around and bring the equipment back in again. Rain or shine. Ship time was expensive and you didn't want to waste a minute of it. One of the ships we used was the R/V Gyre run by Texas A & M University. It's pictured at the right.

One day as I was helping out on the deck in the rain, I thought, "What we need is some background music. Wouldn't it be more fun to work out here if we had a pleasant song playing?" So I decided to try it on my own. I always brought a tape player with me and when it was my turn to work in the lab, I'd play some music. I taped the song Singin' in the Rain (the version from the movie with Gene Kelly singing) and thought I'd play it the next time I saw people working out in the rain on the deck.

Finally, one day, when I was on watch in the lab which looked out over the back deck, it started to rain gently while people were on deck working on some of the equipment. It was time to make their work more enjoyable. I started up the tape player and held it up to the intercom and held down the Talk button. Unfortunately, when you were talking into the intercom, the speaker was turned off (so you didn't just hear yourself echoing in the unit) and I couldn't tell if the music was loud enough. So, I turned the volume up a little but I still couldn't hear anything coming from intercoms in other places. So, I held the tape player a little closer and turned the volume up a little louder. Finally, I could hear the lovely, soft sound of the song coming from an intercom down a passageway. What I failed to realize that the loud noises of fans and blowers in the lab and the fact that the doors were closed to the lab made it very hard for sound to penetrate to where I was.


I looked out the porthole to see how the guys on the deck were enjoying the music. But before I could see anything, the Captain of the ship came bursting into the lab and started yelling and swearing at me to "stop that noise". I had never seen him so mad (and never saw him that mad again). I was horrified. What had I done to make him so angry? I found out later that my "lovely, soft" music was actually incredibly loud. Apparently, the Captain was sitting in the galley (I think they called the area food was prepared and where we sat to eat it by the same name) to eat. They said my first attempt to get the music on the intercom was extremely loud and my later attempts to increase the volume only made it worse. My friends pointed out that the Captain's seat was right by the intercom and he jumped a foot when the music first blasted out of the intercom. Then he started running around trying to find out who was making the noise. As he went in and out of the galley as he looked different places, the noise increased in volume and the Captain got redder in the face.

He decided to punish the whole scientific party for my mistake by not showing a movie that evening which made me feel even worse. Now, my stupid act was affecting everyone. I went to the bridge that evening during the Captain's watch to apologize. He had finally calmed down and he accepted my apology. After a little more talking he relented and reinstated the movies for the next night. He still couldn't understand why I would do such a thing, though. He ended with, "You went to college didn't you?" The incongruity of this struck me and I was lucky to keep from laughing and enraging him again. I just had to get out of there before I broke.