Doc has gone home
A friend of mine died on Saturday.

Doctor Raymond L. Kuntz - "Doc" was a friend and teacher of mine in Turtle Creek High School and way beyond.

Doc taught high school chemistry. I remember those labs with timed reactions where liquids would change colors a couple of times. The lab where we made partial thermal degradation of mixed saccharides with protein inclusions (peanut brittle) was a great. Doc showed us what a liquid gas looked like an even froze a banana in just seconds (and broke it with a hammer).

Doc also taught physics. I can remember Avogadro[base ']s number and 'what's a mole of atoms?' I got into a lab where I did some holography. It was cool to use a laser to show a train engine where you couldn't see one before. And it really was 3-D - you could move around and peek around the 3-D projection. It was really cool.

Doc opened up science and made it approachable.

I can remember that first computer science class in my junior year in high school. I was just that average kid in school - just average grades and I was bored out of my skull. Then I stumbled into an introduction to computers class where Doc taught us how to program a Data General Nova 3C in extended basic. We learned all kinds of interesting programming stuff. I'll never forget infinite loops as Doc taught it. He had a bottle of shampoo on the table and started reading the directions. Wash, rinse, repeat, wash, rinse, repeat, wash rinse, repeat. We learned that computers were really literal - if you tell a computer to do something forever (wash, rinse, repeat), it will just merrily go on doing it forever. There is no common sense in computers. They just do what you tell them to do.

Programming the computer was cool stuff and it just made sense to me. After that first class, I got hired by Doc to help out programming. I know they found spelling mistakes of mine for years after I left. Doc had a few magazines like Creative Computing - which had programs in basic in them which I'd try out and they'd just about always work. I played the computer game Adventure this way.

I can remember the books that Doc had called 'The Art of Computer Programming'. These were weird books for me at the time. But we'd been programming for a couple of years. Looking through these books by Donald Knuth we found the names to a lot of the stuff we had been programming. That was really cool.

Doc inspired me to want to go to college for a degree in computer science. I knew that Doc had gone to Penn State University. I had to get into college to work on computers. So, my next year I took all of the college prep classes like calculus and physics. I got A's in everything. I remember the calculus class where I was there to understand instead of just write the answers. On one test there was a problem about throwing a ball in the air and how long did it take to come down or some such thing. I took the theory and came up with the right answer - but my answer was marked wrong. So I spoke up and the teacher marked mine correct and marked everyone else[base ']s grade down (they only wrote down what he wrote on the board, they didn't learn how to get the right answer).

Doc inspired me to apply to Penn State. It's the only school I wanted to go to. I started at the McKeesport campus and continued to work with Doc for a couple of years after I had graduated from high school.

I suspect I'm one of the few students of Doc's that really did pursue a life in computer programming. I owe the foundation of my education in computers all to Doc.

Doc also played a couple of different musical instruments (Oboe and Bassoon). I had played Alto Sax from 5th grade on up through high school. I played in the high school concert and marching bands. The coolest place to play though was the East Suburban Concert band. I played there with Doc. I also got into a Dance band for one year before I went away to college at Penn State's University Park campus. Playing big band music was a blast. There were some great musicians there like Tony Bacho who played Tenor Sax. I've uploaded a few songs we played in 1978 as a band with the following links:

Track 1 | Track 2 | Track 3 | Track 4 | Track 5 | Track 6 | Track 7 | Track 8

I hadn't played my Sax in years and years. It's been a good twenty years - wow time sure does fly. I just had it repaired last month. Guess I have another reason to get it back out and start practicing again.

I haven't talked with Doc in a few years. I'm sorry about that. I've been busy at startup companies for the last few years and there are way too many other excuses. My folks stayed in contact once in a while and I was always glad to hear from them that Doc was doing well.

I still have the picture I got from Doc on my desk at work. It's a picture of the Pittsburgh incline and the point downtown.

I gave Doc a little pinball robot toy that was on his desk ever since I had left to go away to college. I had to upgrade it once to a crystal turtle (for Turtle Creek, of course).

Doc had a great personality. He was just a great man to know and to learn from.

For me, Doc was great friend and teacher. I'll miss Doc.

I look forward, with great anticipation, to seeing and talking with him in heaven one day.

I express my sincere condolences to Doc's family and all his relatives and friends. I wish I could come to Pittsburgh to be supportive.
12:29:58 PM  #       

Day trip to Maine!
Today we went on a day trip to Maine. Maureen, her Mom (Helen) and Nancy went along. We had a nice trip - a little short, but - it was a day trip. We got to Kennebunkport and saw the Beach for a little while. Nice ocean smells there... and then we went to Lord's and had a pile of lobster.

Here's the pictures of the trip...

Maureen, Helen and Nancy were shopping... while they were shopping I was sitting in the shade and taking a few pictures. Here's a bird that was singing from the top of the telephone pole:

Here's the horse and it's carrage and human. Hope it doesn't get too hot tomorrow or the next day:

These are the flowers and the eagle from the middle of Kennebunkport. I like the eagle :-)

See - Lord's - it really does exist, well, at least the sign does:

Here's a couple of pictures of the shoppers themselves:

I liked the flags flying over the little harbor we walked down to see:

Here's Maureen and me:

And the little bird was sitting next to the water. He was a cute little guy:

7:13:17 PM  #       

Today was a great day!
Today was a great day! I went to Church (http://www.newhopechapel.net/) and it was a great service. God was present and we worshiped. Good prayer and a good message too. If you aren't in a good Church - find one.

We went to visit with Maureen's mom (Helen) for a while. Here's a bunch of pictures... people too! I made the pictures pretty big this time... maybe a little too big... but at least I finally got them back to big again. :-)

Here's Caroline, Sam & Eli sitting at the top of the steps:

Here are some pictures of Helen's flowers:

Here's Peter & Ann:

Here's a cute picture of confident Maureen under a pine tree in the back yard:

Here's a picture of me and some flox:

Here's a picture of Helen (Maureen & Peter's Mom):

And a picture of Maureen, Helen & Peter:

5:34:11 PM  #       

We went to Maine today (just Maureen and me). It was a great day - wonderful weather, good food and great company. Here are some pictures:

We went to Perkins Cove and walked down the Marginal Way. We saw a sailboat in the distance:

I was told "TAKE PEOPLE PICTURES!", So here's Maureen overlooking the ocean and a couple of pictures of me:

The coast of Maine has LOTS of rocks. Here's just a few :-) :

While we were walking along, we stumbled into a couple who were from Texas and they were taking pictures of a Monach butterfly. So, I took a few pictures of him (I think it's a him) :

And... well, Mom likes daisies - so, here are the daisies we found:

7:52:45 PM  #       

Time for some more pictures...
I was told that I had to take pictures of people. So, here are a few pictures of people:

Here's what our new plant that was supposed to to on a plant hanger looks like:

And these are Maureen's spiffy expensive flowers:

This is the lightpoll across the street. I kinda like it:

Here's some pictures of the flowers in the front of our house and on the side:

Here's Eli - sitting on top of the couch and Caroline is in the background:

And here are three of our cute Birman cats (Thunder, Rapunzel and Teddy):

8:20:55 PM  #       

Happy Birthday Mom!
29 years young again - that's cool!

Here are some pictures of our flowers out in front of the house:

I'm using Adobe Lightroom to crop/export the pictures from my camera. This time the black background is a little too big... but I don't have a lot of time (gotta get these posted for Mom - quick!)

We've been busy (well, like usual) - getting out of debt slowly but surely. Yesterday we have the first Men's Big Breakfast - the idea is to get Men's Ministry going at New Hope Chapel. We had a great speaker: John Rexford. He's a lawyer and his message was great. We had about 20 men there. Breakfast was really good - Thanks again Ken! And the place was wonderful - this was at the Grafton Community Barn (I'll get some details about it on here soon). We even gave away a circular saw. It was a great beginning!
8:49:54 PM  #       

Memorial Day
Memorial Day - is a day to remember those who have died in our nations service. We all need to remember the past. We're at war. The soldiers in Iraq are fighting every day for our nation. We just gotta remember. The U. S. Memorial Day site has a lot of information.

It's hot outside and we have new windows. This isn't a great combination... well... it hasn't been great. I didn't want to put holes in the new spiffy windows. So, we tried an experiment. Lowes had a DeLonghi portable air conditioner ($499) that seemed like a good experiment - quiet at the store and seemed powerful enough. We got it home and I hooked it up on Saturday (we borrowed back the CRV to move it, and I hooked it up so that we'd be running while we ran around). The thing just didn't work all that well at all. It made vibrating noises and cooled the house down a whole almost no degrees. If you are looking for something that takes up a lot of space, buzzes and vibrates, cools the three feet in front of itself and that's about it - then you need one of these gadgets. We took it back today - even got our money back and everything. The DeLonghi site doesn't mention the model we tried and there were NO reviews of it at all online. We think it was discontinued. Not trying an experiment without looking up reviews anymore!

We ran into someone we knew at Lowes and he said that they just didn't screw in their air conditioner - but it works just fine. I figured we got nothing to loose at this point - so I popped the good old Sears air conditioner into the window, put a couple of pieces of wood at the top to hold the window shut and taped the sucker in. We cleaned her up a little and blamo - working like a champ. It's about 85 degrees outside and we got it down to about 70 degrees inside. Maureen's even started to complain that it was getting too cold. Cool!

I gotta go start up the grill. We're having Cirtrus Swordfish (from Paul Kirk's Championship Barbecue book) and corn on the cob. This recipe is great! Buy the book for other great recipes! I'm going to write to the author to see if the recipe can be posted or not. I think it'd be fair use... but I'm going to ask first (the copyright statement says that I should ask).
6:47:13 PM  #