Random thoughts from John

One from Avery, one from Jack:

(look carefully at the one on the right from Jack – it says \”Jack to John\” but it\’s in red, on red. Kind of hard to read 😉 )

HEMA is a Dutch company with 150 or so stores across Benelux and Germany. They have a \”diversions\” page that is a complete blast! (It\’s not their home page, and you can\’t order anything, but it\’s a lot of fun!)

Check it out

I just got this email (to my ham radio account, which isn\’t used for anything personal or financial…). It wasn\’t even addressed to me specifically, contains a misspelled word or two, and the punctuation is terrible. Oh, I\’m sure this must have really come from PayPal – as if I\’ve never seen one of their emails (sent to the only account I have associated with PayPal). Wow. This guy must be really stupid. I tried to do a reverse-lookup of his number, but he\’s at least smart enough to keep his information unlisted. I did forward this email to his phone provider, though. I bet they know who he is. Maybe they can have a little talk with him.

PayPal Security Notice

 The credit/debit card you have on file with us is suspended.

To update your billing information please call the security departament at : 509-591-4214

Case ID : 97456688
Account ID :83320775885

If you choose to ignore our request your account will be suspended .

It\’s my little sister\’s birthday today. Happy Birthday, Honey.

(November 2007) The Springfield Massachusetts Museum of Fine Art is currently hosting an exhibition of Josh Simpson\’s glass work. Peg and I, along with our friend Tina Marie (no, not Teena Marie) went to see it on Sunday. Here is a sample image, though we didn\’t see this particular item:

Photo (C) Josh Simpson Contemporary Glass (thanks 🙂 )

There is a DVD documentary playing on the second floor that shows the effort that went into the making of the first \”megaplanet\”. What you can\’t possibly capture from a photograph of one of these masterpieces is the depth of the work. These megaplanets are over a foot in diameter, and start with a small, apple-sized ball of glass that is shaped with water-soaked wooden bowls and paddles. Colored bits of glass, including millefiori canes, as well as metal foils and other materials, are attached to this base piece, then the piece is dipped in the pool of molten glass again. This process is repeated six or seven times, each time building up another layer, adding depth that can only be seen in person to appreciate.

Now, Peg and I know something (well, a little bit) about glassblowing. Peg took a course in it, and one day I went along just to watch, and the instructor insisted that I make something just for fun. So I made a paperweight about the size of an egg. Inside the furnace was a crucible containing probably a couple hundred pounds of molten glass at approximately 2200F. Yup, it was close to red-hot, that nice orangey color when you know something is really hot. That day pretty much redefined hot for me. I had worked with plastics at 450F, nylon at 550F, and some other stuff, like metal work, that ran into the close-to-red-hot region, but this stuff was hot!

But my paperweight was about two or three ounces of glass, consisting of a starting glob about the size of a small walnut, with some yellow glass stuck in, and one more dip in the molten glass (and a lot of nerve-and-heat-related sweating!). Josh\’s Megaplanets are, oh, like 100 pounds of glass. While the artistry involved is unquestionably wonderful and beautiful, the engineering work and the sheer scale of the megaplanets are just mind-boggling to me.

Very very impressive stuff, and I heartily recommend seeing the exhibit, open November 20, 2007 through February 3, 2008. Admission is only $10, free to Springfield residents.

Saturday November 24 found Peg and me in Warren, Massachusetts for my 35th high school reunion. Here\’s a picture of the fourteen of us (out of 89 – how sad – a mere 15.7%) that actually came out for the event. It was fun to see those who came, but I wish there had been a better turnout. There are a lot of other folks I wish I could have seen.

(back) Chip, Henry, Mark, Mike, John (me), and Eldon.
(front) Cecelia, Rebecca, Nancy, Donna, Sue, Debbie, Judy, and Jeanne.

(N.B. if you do a save-link-as instead of save-image, the full image will download – jg)

Well, not really. Bears, sure. But no lions or tigers. Just cows. A number of years ago Peg and I went to London (we were supposed to go on 9/12/2001. Guess how that went?) for a holiday. I think it was 2003, but, well, my memory… But when we got there CowParade London was going on. Fiberglas cows, well over 100 of them, were to be found all over the city, painted in frightfully imaginative color schemes. Sort of like the Berlin Bears (link above). But anyway, after the Antwerp trip, we headed back to Amsterdam and checked into the Hilton at Schiphol Airport, and two more cows were outside the Hilton. And there were others inside the airport as well, next to a cheese shop. It makes perfect sense! The Netherlands is a well-known cheese-making country in its own right. Here\’s a picture of a third cow, along with me:

Man, I had hoped to just fill this page up with juicy stories and lots of photos, but the truth of the matter is that we didn\’t get into Amsterdam proper like we had \”planned\”. A coworker and I traveled through Amsterdam to visit a customer site near Antwerp, and had \”planned\” on getting out of the customer site early on Friday, take the train to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, ditch our bags, and head into town. Antwerp had different ideas. We didn\’t leave the office until 16:45, and there were no taxis to be had at all in the city of Antwerp. The receptionist tried in vain to contact three different taxi companies, all to no avail. She finally got a company to commit to a taxi \”in an hour\”, though that cab never came. Around 18:30 we started to panic a bit – it was cold and raining, and the train station was like 5km away – much too far to walk. The buses didn\’t seem to have a scheduled run until the following Monday (wrong stop, I guess), and we were out of options. We called one of our customer engineers and begged for a ride to Berchem station, getting there in time for the 19:26 train to Schiphol, which pulled in at about 21:30. Cold, exhausted and hungry, we checked in and immediately met for dinner. We made plans for breakfast at 08:15 the following morning and said goodnight.

07:30 I arise and start getting ready for breakfast. The phone rings. Apostolos has a sore throat (no doubt from standing in the cold rain waiting for that taxi), so begs out of the trip to Amsterdam Central. I feel like crap anyway, so I pass on the trip as well, opting to check out the shops at the airport. My sister had requested a label pin rather than Belgian chocolates. I found one as we were leaving, but not on the initial reconnaissance trip. I went back to the hotel and stayed comfortable until checking out at noon.

I have promised myself that if I ever own a hotel (or B&B which is a more likely scenario – even as unlikely a possibility as that might be), there will be free access to the internet, either wired or wireless. The Hilton pissed me off. Here I was paying €135 for the room (a very nice room, by the way, with one glaring exception[1]), and they wanted another €6.95/hour (or €20.00/day) to plug my computer into the rest of the world. Sheesh. Buy a few routers, buy a few wireless access points, and since you\’re hooked up anyway for the reservations systems and such, give away internet access. Just give it away. Happier customers. Isn\’t that what they\’re supposed to be striving for? I know most of their customers don\’t care about another $8 or so, but some of us live in the real world, and only very occasionally get to stay at the Hilton (my last time was 1972, returning home from the Navy in Denver for Christmas).

[1] The only fault I could find with the room is that the shower couldn\’t maintain the proper, set temperature. I lived, but I certainly prefer the shower at a €135 Hilton hotel room to be at least as clever as the shower I have at home. I don\’t think that\’s unreasonable, do you?