"That's all I have to say about this place!"
• MAIN PAGE
• LUNCHES
Lunch Index
Food Reviews
• NEWS
• SEARCH
• MAIL
Current Mail
The Mail Archive
Join Mailing List
Send Us Mail!
• BOOKS
• REFERENCES
• DISCUSSIONS
Relativity
Cydonia
Gas Temp
Gravity
Black Holes
Stephenson
Dreamcast
Lunch With George!
April 4, 2002 - Tony Roma's
<<< Previous Lunch |
Next Lunch >>>
|
Agenda
- J/24
- Irock
- Into Thin Air
- JavaScript Problem
- New Mexico
- Tuva or Bust!
- Alzheimer's
- www.lunchwithgeorge.com
- Movies
J/24
Last week, we had no lunch since both George and I traveled to New Mexico (see below), and the week before, my daughter was ill and I stayed home with her. George did not waste his lunch hour, however-- instead, he went to look at the object of his new (renewed?) passion: A J/24 sailboat for sale at Lake Pleasant!
The J/24 has been the boat of George's dreams for many years. First produced in 1977, J Boats continues to offer this classic racing boat. 24 feet in length, it sports a fixed keel, a relatively flat deck, and four sleeping berths below deck. There are some great pictures of the J/24 at j24class.org. George even managed to find 10-year old J/24 sales brochures somewhere at home.
George is fully immersed in his new hobby-- he is already taking a sailing class at the Sailboat Shop in Scottsdale and on lake Pleasant, and he's actually has made reservations for a sailing lesson aboard a J/24 in San Francisco! He has located a few J/24s for sale around the western US, and will no doubt track down the perfect deal soon.
He could be biting off quite a bit! During sailing school, the instructor told them "...if you like to do wood working, buy a wood boat. If you like to sail, buy a fiberglass boat." Needless to say, the J/24 is wood!
George found a couple of great books: The Complete Sailor, by David Seidman, which provides all sorts of great information for a person new to the sport (delightful illustrations, too), and Inspecting the Aging Sailboat. The second book may prove quite valuable in George's search for the perfect boat.
irOck!
Fred bought a new iPod-- the new MP3 player from Apple Computer which features a 5GB hard drive and is smaller than a deck of cards (first discussed at our October 25th lunch last year). It's very cool!
What I wanted to tell George about was the little gadget that Fred bought to go with his iPod-- an irOck! 300W wireless MP3 player adapter. For 29.95, you get a battery-powered adapter which plugs into the iPod headphone jack and transmits the audio on an FM frequency. Plug it in, turn them and your radio on, and you can listen to your tunes through your car stereo!
Fred said that when he tried it at home, there was an irritating amount of static. But when he used it in his car, it sounded fine! Fred thinks that either the car radio is more sensitive, or that the ambient noise level in the car renders any static moot.
I also read a review of the irOck! which seemed to be consistent with Fred's experience. Although the reviewer did say that he found the best reception by holding the unit in one hand while driving with the other...
Into Thin Air is Jon Krakauer's first-hand account of the most deadly month on the world's tallest mountain. In May of 1996, TBD climbers from four different expeditions (including the leaders of the two commercial expeditions, Scott Fischer and Rob Hall) lost their lives on Mount Everest. Krakauer was a client on one of the commercial expeditions, sent by Outside Magazine to collect data for an article on the growing commercialization of Everest.
Krakauer, an accomplished climber for most his life, jumped at the chance to join Rob Hall's New Zealand expedition. Hall's company, Adventure Consultants, had already successfully led several groups of client climbers to the summits of the tallest peaks on all seven continents. Hall was the most highly regarded guide in the Himalaya, and had no trouble filling his client list for Everest in spite of the $65,000 fee.
In his book, he speaks honestly about the many factors he believes contributed to the disaster, including some of his own actions. Two other survivors took issue with his criticisms of them, and wrote lengthy letters to Outside Magazine to defend their positions and reputations. One of them, Anatoli Boukreev, wrote a book
Into Thin Air got me so interested in Everest and the events of May 1996 that I have tracked down many other resources-- web sites, documentaries, and books by other climbers who were on Everest that fateful May.
I was struck by an interesting coincidence upon my return to Phoenix. I had not yet spoken to Bradley (Teri's son) about the Everest book-on-tape when Teri unpacked his backpack to see what assignments he had brought home from school.
Into Thin Air
Faced with the prospect of the long drive back to Arizona last week, I must have looked pretty resigned to many hours of tedium. Fortunately for me, two of my Mom's friends (Deborah and Troy) lent me a book on tape to pass the time.
Krakauer himself reads the book aloud, so it is as though he is telling you the story. I won't say a lot more here, since I hope everyone will have an opportunity to read or listen to this book themselves (see the new Lunch With George Puzzle for a chance to win a copy!).
containing his version of the events entitled The Climb. Boukreev died in an avalanche on the slopes of Annapurna, another Himalayan peak, only a year after the Everest disaster. Sherpa Lopsang Jangbu, another surviving guide from Scott Fischer's team and a colleague of Boukreev, also died the next year while assisting a Japanese expedition on Everest.
Web Sites
Books
Films
|
At least two employees from Honeywell have reached the summit of Everest in recent history: Mike Otis and Dave Schooley. I heard it told that Mike Otis has a tradition of doing a hand-stand on every summit he reaches, and did so on Everest. I couldn't find a photo of any handstand, but I did find a photograph of Mike at the summit.
George found a Javascript solution which had been implemented on a similar page, so he modified it for his own use. The JS function is tied to the button, and when invoked it disables the button and posts the request to the server. Totally cool! Now the button could ONLY be pushed once, and then it would be rendered insensitive.
Unfortunately, the error count in the server logs nearly doubled. It seems that some browsers (i.e., Netscape 4.7x) automatically post the form AND invoke the Javascript... so every selection of the button causes TWO submittals of the form! Not quite what George had hoped. Now I know why Andrew D. would never let us use any Javascript-- its behavior is too inconsistent from browser to browser.
Jemez Springs is not a big place-- but it is home to a Zen center, a hot springs Bath House, A Catholic convent, several churches, many art galleries, restaurants, lodges, a country store, and a bar. They even have a public library!
Not only is Jemez Springs a nice place to visit-- I'd love to live there!
It's a fun story, but I've decided that Leighton is a little kooky (in fact, he reminds me of me!). He seems prone to obsessive behavior-- during his quest for Tuva, he managed to change his car's license plate to "TOUVA", with a plate frame claiming the car was purchased at "Mongol Motors, KYZYL." He founded the Friends of Tuva (a group which has since taken on a life of its own), and master-minded the visit of a Soviet Archaeological Exhibit to a Californian museum as an excuse to get himself and Feynman invited to Tuva as members of the museum staff.
Feynman and Leighton were also intrigued by an art form practiced by the Tuvans-- throat singing. The performers can generate two tones at once, so that a single singer han harmonize with themself. A friend they made in the Soviet Union sent them a recording, and samples can be played using RealPlayer. Click here to download two samples of throat singing!
I'm not yet finished reading, but the subtitle is "Richard Feynman's Last Journey", and more than one review used the phrase "bitter-sweet" to describe the book. I'm not sure it's all fun, and I'm a little afraid to read the rest.
Javascript Problem
George has been trying to solve an HTML form problem for quite a while, and has believed that Javascript might be the answer. On a particular web page, there is a button which should only be pressed once, since it initiates a financial transaction that the user would not want to do more than once. For years, this has been handled by placing a text message in red which says "Please click button only once" right next to the button. Unfortunately, users still manage to hit it multiple times, and the log files on the servers show numerous errors being logged when a second (or third, or fourth...) click is received.
New Mexico
My daughters and I were visiting my Mom in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. Jemez Springs is a tiny village part-way up the Jemez Canyon, about 90 minutes Northwest of Albuquerque on State highway 4. My Mom owns and operates the Laughing Lizard Inn and Cafe-- the best restaurant in town, plus four uniquely decorated rooms.
Tuva or Bust!
I've really been enjoying this book by Ralph Leighton (who co-wrote Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! with Richard Feynman). Leighton had been teaching high school Geography, and one night at dinner Feynman challenged him, saying he could name a country that Leighton could not locate on a map. The country was Tannu Tuva, whose capital city is Kyzyl. It seems Richard had collected stamps from there as a boy. Leighton was stumped, but he was also intrigued. They decided that they just had to visit a place with a name as interesting as Kyzyl! The book is about their quest to make their way to this small republic which had "voluntarily" joined the Soviet Union (the story takes place during the cold war).
One of the entertaining stories is how Feynman came to have the nickname "The Chief". Leighton and Feynman often drummed together for fun, and even landed the occasional gratis drumming job. They were booked to perform as part of the musical South Pacific on CalTech's campus, acting as tribal drummers during a hula dance scene. Feynman always believed in doing a job right, so he contacted a friend who spoke polynesian languages, and learned to say the phrase "Bring in the drummers!" in Tahitian. He was dressed in an elaborate costume which included an amazing headdress... their performance brought the house down. From that moment on, Leighton (and almost everyone else) referred to him as "The Chief."
Alzheimer's
Now I can't remember what this was about... tune in next week! :-)
www.lunchwithgeorge.com
In case you didn't notice, Lunch With George! now has it's own domain! You can reach us now from memory at www.lunchwithgeorge.com.
Movies
George saw and critiqued several movies over the last few weeks, but I don't have the time nor energy to summarize them this week. check back next week!
Copyright © 2002, Paul Wren. All rights reserved.
Last modified 04/22/2002.
Webmaster