Sir Sidney Fudd's Open Salon Blog

Arrrrgh! My fortune is lost!

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 22:10:58 -0400

ARRRGH! Here is the story. Back in the 6th grade, this guy borrowed a quarter from me. A quarter is a lot of money when you are 11 years old, and it's 1967. I rarely had a quarter. In fact, at the time, that quarter was pretty much all the money I had. So I didn't want to loan it. But he was a cool kid, he was paying attention to me, and he really wanted it. He begged and pleaded and I said "no". Finally he won me over with a promise. He promised that he would pay me back the next day. He promised that every day that passed after the next one without repayment, he would double the amount he owed me. It was a solemn promise, the kind kids make when they really really mean it. There may have been hand spitting or ritual swearing involved. It was a real, binding promise.

He never paid me back. By now, he owes me all the money in the universe and then some. I've been carrying this story around with me for decades. I tell it to someone every now and again. I kind of hoped that I'd be put back in touch with him someday, somehow. I'm realistic. Irealize that it is impossible to pay back more money than exists in the universe. But I always had this little fantasy, that it would turn out that this guy was the president a Citibank or something. That when confronted, he would recall the debt and feel obligated to settle it somehow. I'd take a few mill to clear his conscience.

So now, I find out that there is a Facebook page for my old elementary school. What an opporutunity! The chances that someone will remember him and know where he is have multiplied! And wouldn't you know it, for the first time ever, I can't remember his name.

The real 53%

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:10:03 -0400

Little tuning forks in a box

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 03:04:18 -0400

I don't know exactly why I thought about this today, but I realized that it was kind of a charming memory. It also provides an astounding contrast between the technology of today and that of my childhood. I also realized that if I related it, it would be inescapably an "in my day!" story. OK, so I'm old. I'll have to live with that.

When I was a kid, my parents got a TV with a remote control. We'd never had a TV with a remote control before. If you wanted to turn the volume up or down you had to get up, walk over to the TV and turn the knob. If you wanted to change what you were watching to one of the other 6 channels that were available on the VHF dial, you had to get up and turn the knob. That's right, 7 channels, not counting UHF, which didn't really come in anyway. We got CBS on channel 2, NBC on channel 4. Channel 5 was a local channel. 7 was ABC, 9, 11, and 13 local.

But I digress. Sometime around my 10th year, my parents aquired a TV that had a remote control! I don't even remember if they got it new. It might have been a hand-me-down from a relative. But it had a remote control! It was about the size of a pack of cigarettes, just a little longer than it was wide. It was a little thicker than that pack of cigarettes. It had a good heft to the hand. Our TV remote had exactly 4 buttons no it. One to turn the volume up and one to turn it down. It had a button that turned the TV on or off, and one that made the channel change on up. It had a stylish look to it. Kind of art-deco.

The 'push' of these buttons was not at all like that of a modern remote. Instead, it took a fair amount of force to depress the button as if pushing it was pulling against a spring. As it turns out, it was doing exactly that. the 'throw' of the button was long, maybe a quarter of an inch. When you had pushed the button almost all the way down, there would suddenly be a snap, like that spring you were pushing against was suddenly released. And when it was released, there would be this pleasing little "plink" sound. Each button had it's own distinct little plink. When it plinked, the TV would respond with the appropriate change.

When one used the remote, one would generally point it at the TV and plink it. The end that you pointed at the TV was covered by a thick screen. Whatever signal escaped from the remote came through that screen, but the screen also obscured the view of the inside. So it was a little mysterious. I thought it was the plink sound itself that was the signal, but my Dad, probably pulling my leg, insisted that there was a laser inside. I was skeptical. Lasers certainly had been invented, but they were still kind of science fiction. Scientists in big mysterious laboratories had them. They were not yet available in consumer products. Plus, the remote didn't need a battery. It didn't even have a place to put a battery. My Dad claimed it was a special kind of percussive laser; that the energy came from a little hammer inside striking an object. Kind of like a spark coming from a flint, except instead of a spark, there was a little flash of laser. Yeah, right. I didn't really believe it, but at the same time, the remote didn't really work unless you pointed it at the TV, so it seemed to be some kind of line-of-sight system.

I spend a considerable amount of time, trying to peer past the screen on the front with a flashlight. All I could see was four little circles in the shadows of the interior of the box. I wanted to take it apart and see what was inside. My Dad remembered what happened the time I had a similar curiosity about how his self-winding watch worked, so that idea was strongly nixed. Years later, I finally got my wish. The TV was dead, and the remote was worthless, and I got to take it apart! The four circles were the ends of four little metal rods, each of a different length. Each button was connected through a spring to a little hammer that would rear back when you pushed the button, until it was released. When the hammer struck the metal rod: 'plink!'. No spark, no burst of laser energy, just the sound of the plink.

I never got to take apart the TV - too dangerous, I was warned. But I imagine that there must have been 4 little corresponding tuning forks inside the TV that would somehow transfer the sound energy emitted by the remote into a response of the TV. I wonder how that worked?

I sit here now and look at my smart phone. It's maybe a third of the volume of that remote control and it does so much. It's amazing to see how far things have come. But that little tuning fork remote was a pretty cute and clever piece of work!

I'm just venting frustration of stupid bureaucracy crap!

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 02:03:16 -0400

Day in the life of a scientist: So the 'ole lab has always bought and received the big green tanks of 95% Oxygen/5% Carbon Dioxide (carbogen) that we use so much of. For over 20 years they have come whenever we ordered them. So yesterday, they deliver a red tank of carbogen. It's not that it's red that gets our scientist dander up, it's the fact that the tanks have a different fitting that doesn't fit our regulators. So we say to the gas man. We'd rather have the green tanks like usual!   "No can do!" says the gas man. "You'll have to clear it with my supervisor".

"You can get new regulators!" suggests the supervisor. "The gas in the red tank is exactly the same as the gas in the green tanks".   But we don't want that because our old regulators have specialized outlet fittings that mate onto the rather complicated carbogen delivery tubing system in the lab, and the new regulators will not have that. We just want the same old green tanks we've been receiving for over 20 years.

Well, it TURNS OUT (!) that you need a PRESCRIPTION for the green tanks. The green tanks are MEDICAL carbogen, while the red tanks are SCIENTIFIC carbogen. Medical and scientific carbogen are exactly the same (except for the color of the tanks and the fitting).   But you don't need a prescription for scientific carbogen. So OK, I know lots of medical doctors. I'll get a prescription that they can keep on file, right? Wrong. I'd need a freaking prescription every time I order the stuff.   Of course, the Fire Marshall won't let us keep more than 4 tanks in stock, so we have to order it every couple of weeks!

I know I'm defeated. But I least want to know what happened. Why between my last order a couple weeks ago and now, do I now need a prescription? Is it part of dastardly Obama-care perhaps?   No, the gas supervisor assures me. "You've needed a prescription for medical carbogen since the year 2000." So why then, suddenly, 11 years later, are you just now refusing to deliver without this prescription? No answer yet. Except that I'm told I'd better order those new regulators before the last of the last green tank runs out.

Science marches on.

Is love worth financial suicide?

Wed, 12 May 2010 00:05:21 -0400

Fellow OpenSaloners,

I need some advice:

I have been in a relationship with a woman for almost two years now. We've been living together for about a year. We are from different parts of the country. She lived on the East Coast, and I on the West. She moved in with me a year ago, leaving her house in "mothballs". She has her own business which has been in bad shape on account of the economy. In fact, she has had no work for 2 years. I've been supporting her for the past year, in hopes that her business would pick up, but it hasn't.

I have a steady job, a job I've had for over 20 years. I'm in no danger of losing it. But I don't make enough money to cover both of our expenses. A year ago, I had $50,000 in savings. It's all gone now. Not all on her, I admit. I've spend some of it on myself, or on activities for us. But I'm paying her mortgage, the maintenance on her house, her credit card bills, her utilities. She had $90,000 in credit card debt, now she had $70,000. I paid off the difference. Our combined expenses exceed my income by $4000 a month. That's 'bare-bones' expenses, before entertainment, vacations, or anything else. That's just housing, food, credit card payments, taxes, child support, house maintenance, utilities - that sort of thing.

The fact is: if I didn't have her, I could live the life-style to which i'm accustomed on the salary that I make. The fact is also that if I abandoned her at this point, she is, as she puts it, under the bridge. She would lose her house, her belongings, everyting. But the fact is also that I just had to take a $25000 loan from my retirement to cover my own credit card debt. Now, I'm running that debt up again keeping up with both of our expenses. I could realistically cover both of us for another year by raiding my retirement. But I'm 53 years old. My retirement is all I have saved. If I deplete that, I've got nothing. She's had a year to find work or to make her business work. Maybe things will pick up and she'll have business again, but maybe not. The fact is, in a year, I could have nothing, and we could still be in this same predicament.

Now she has decided that she does not want to live with me in California anymore. She wants to move back to the East Coast, to her house, and have me commute from the east coast to my job in California. I would get a cheap place to live here, and would come to stay with her on weekends. This idea was all predicated on her getting a job with an airline, so I could fly for free. But that didn't happen, though she did apply. As I write this down, it becomes abundandly clear to me that this is crazy. We can't afford one place to live, let alone two. We can't afford the airfares on top of all our other expenses. If I pay for my own place to live here in order to keep my job, and continue to pay for her to keep her house in the East, I myself am going to go bankrupt in a year. In addition my retirement will be gone.

I love her, and she loves me. It seems shameful to me that a love should be lost because of money. She has been really good for me emotionally and as a companion. But it is beginning to seem like that situation we've all heard about where someone tries to save a drowning person and they both end up drowning. I don't want her to drown, but I don't want to drown either.