Tag: Massachusetts

Toys Will Be Toys

Friday must have been the second anniversary of Helaine and Steffie getting their phones. I know that, because Friday is listed on the Cingular website as their day for new phones.

You’ll notice I didn’t say it was my day for a new phone. That came over a month ago. My new phone allowance went to Steffie, whose phone had been beaten within an inch of its life over the last few years.

I’d looked around and considered lots of phones. Maybe I’d get a PDA type, like the Treo or BlackBerry?

I get email all the time from my friend Farrell’s phone. Each message is tagged:

A BlackBerry Wireless Handheld Message.

Then I thought about the size of those phones. That was the stopper. Too big.

Believe me, the thought of 24/7 connectivity is very appealing. I know a lot of people feel otherwise. Simply, they’re wrong.

I didn’t succumb. Size does matter.

I ended up with a Motorola RAZR V3. It is probably the slickest looking phone you can buy today. It’s very slim, though the form factor is actually larger in length and width than the LG I’m retiring.

When I told my boss I was getting the Motorola he looked at me slyly and asked if I knew there was a community of RAZR hackers? Yikes! No!

I started to read. Most of what they’ve accomplished is wasted on me. Remove the Cingular logo – big deal. Same thing with taking away the clock. I want the clock.

It would be nice if someone’s written utilities to better read signal strength or tell me which tower I’m on.

They have done one thing that’s very enticing. They’ve taken the camera on the phone and enabled it to take video! I have no idea how that’s even possible.

The video is small and very poor quality, but it’s video.

Unfortunately, in order to enable this, you have to hack into the programs that make the phone work. I’ll probably do it, but I’ll think long and hard before I do.

The integrated camera is way below state of the art. It is only 640×480 pixels with a really tiny lens. I intend on using the camera a lot on the blog. The pictures I mount here are even smaller!

On the left a sample, featuring the night crew at the Greek Olive in New Haven.

When Steffie got her phone, I went on eBay and found a cable and software to manipulate photos, video and sound. The cable came a few days after she left. Right now, it’s being used on my phone.

First to be changed was the stock wallpaper. I found a nice shot of Helaine, Steffie and me and pushed it across the cable to the phone.

Then I replaced the ring sound. Most of the time my phone vibrates when a call comes in. A ringing phone in the studio isn’t appreciated. But, for those times when sound is called for, I found the old “ABC Contemporary Network” radio news sounder.

I am still on the prowl for the recently retired CBS Radio News on the Hour sounder. Write if you have it.

I’m still playing with putting video on the computer. I’ve made a few attempts but the audio and video are way out of sync.

Helaine has already accused me of buying a toy. Is she looking? Sure it is. I love my toys.

Still on order, a Bluetooth headset&#185, which was mailed from Taunton, MA on Friday and a Bluetooth USB adapter for this computer which ships directly from Hong Kong.

When I look at the phone, it’s tough to believe how far the technology has come in such a short period of time. Imagine where we’ll be ten years from now!

&#185 – Bluetooth is a very strange name for a short range wireless technology.

Bob Comes To Visit

I’m writing this early Sunday morning. I want to make sure something’s posted for Sunday and I don’t expect to be home for much of the day.

My friend Bob Lacey came by tonight. Bob has lived in Charlotte, NC for the last 30+ years. First he worked for WBT-AM, then WBTV, and now the FM, “The Link,” where with Sheri Lynch he hosts a nationally syndicated morning show.

I met Bob my first day in commercial radio.

I broke in at WSAR in Fall River, MA by doing an hour of Bob’s show. Bob supervised. It was my first real on-air job. We’ve been friends ever since.

We’ve both been through a lot of living since that day in early fall 1969. I can’t go into all of it here, but there’s not much that’s remained constant, except our friendship.

Bob jokingly calls me his “Gold Friend.” It’s tough to think of anything anyone’s ever said of me that is quite that flattering.

In 1975 out of work and with my life falling apart in Phoenix, Bob flew out and together, we drove the Western United States and a small part of Mexico. That was an amazing trip.

When I think back of what we did, hitting Puerto Penasco, Mexico, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Barstow, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, it still boggles the mind.

This was before cellphones and the Internet. We had a little cash and of the two of us, I had the lone credit card – an Esso card!

There were girls we tried to pick up… who blew us off, and two guys in San Diego who tried to pick us up! We cleaned our clothes by the dawn’s early light at a dusty laundromat alongside the railroad tracks in Barstow, CA. I spent all day playing $2 blackjack at Caesar’s.

We got along famously. Bob was my guiding light on that trip. By the time we returned to Phoenix, a new job had mysteriously appeared and I was off to Philadelphia.

Later today we plan on returning to the ‘scene of the crime,’ WSAR at the foot of Home Street in Somerset, MA. Then we head north to Boston and the Red Sox – White Sox game.

We don’t have tickets… but I’ve stuffed some cash in my wallet and we’ll hope for the best with scalpers. This will make three major league games in a month or so, after 15 years with none!

If everything works out as planned (and who knows) I’ll be on Amtrak before dark and in New Haven before midnight.

Photos and the actual trip report to follow.

On To The Weekend

First things first. My tooth pain has greatly subsided. There’s still swelling on the gum, but I’m hoping that’s from the injections. The tooth is in my drawer, where it now belongs.

Let me add, though I took a sick day from work Thursday, Friday was already scheduled as a vacation day. Bad timing on my part.

We once had an employee at the station who tried to explain to my boss that since she was sick on her vacation day, it should count as a sick day. That’s chutzpah.

I was well enough to head to the shoreline for a planned family celebration. I’ve been told to keep my mouth shut on what was being celebrated, but we went to Lenny’s in Branford.

I was petrified to go! I’d run into Lenny’s daughter while having my hair cut and she told me how the place had been remodeled. Didn’t she understand? The charm of Lenny’s was that it looked like it was built out of whatever was stored in someone’s garage.

I’m glad to say the main dining room has been remodeled… the particle board removed from the walls… but it’s lost none of its charm. That’s a tall order. It looks nice – really, not just compared to its older self.

We weren’t going to Lenny’s for the ambiance. We were going for fried shrimp for the girls and the shore dinner for me.

Even with only one half of my mouth operating, it was great! The lobster, the mussels, the corn – excellent. Why you only get two clams is beyond me, but that ‘s what the dinner calls for. My only ‘customization’ was getting a bowl of Rhode Island clam chowder&#185 instead of a cup.

Through dinner and the rest of the evening I was a little woozy. It wasn’t enough to stop me, but I certainly was in no condition to operate heavy equipment. Helaine drove and I was grateful to be her passenger.

When we got home, I napped. I couldn’t sleep all night because there was a test to be taken for my Oceanography class.

I took the test around 3:00 AM. This should be an interesting grade because I wasn’t really able to concentrate on reading the text necessary to answer the questions. I had the attention span of a toy poodle.

Back to bed at 4:00.

By the time I woke up this morning, I had gotten over 16 hours of sleep in the last 24. On the other hand, I was feeling better, which was good because I had long standing plans for a friend to visit.

I’ve known Bob since my first professional day in radio, early fall 1969. Bob was a disk jockey at WSAR in Fall River, MA, where I started.

When I first me him he was Skippy Ross, then Skip Tyler, now (for over thirty years) Bob Lacey. With his partner Sheri Lynch, Bob presides over a very successful, syndicated morning radio show. It’s a show considered ‘woman friendly.’

Bob had left Charlotte, NC Thursday afternoon and had been hanging around New England since Thursday evening. Though I’d tried getting him on his cell phone a few times, he was unreachable.

By early this morning there was a discussion whether Bob was actually going to show or not. It was starting to look like ‘not’ had won when the phone rang.

He showed up an hour later and we hopped in the convertible on what had turned into a spectacular spring day. The sky was blue, temperature warm, humidity about right. We were heading toward the shoreline.

Bob had actually grown up around New Haven and knows those parts of the area that haven’t changed over the last 40 years – which is most of it!

First stop was lunch. We went to a place call “The Place” in Guilford. “The Place” is one of a kind.

You sit outside (in the open or under a tent-like cover) on old tree stumps. The food (lobster, clams, chicken and the like) are cooked out of door on a long wood fired grill. When your order is ready, the grill it cooked on is brought to your table.

The owner, Vaughn, kvetched about the weather. I would think to a place like this good weather means good business and a May like we had means… well, it wasn’t a good sign.

Bob had a lobster and I had clams. I’m sorry to be positive about everything, but it was great.

Next up we drove down the Turnpike into Old Lyme and then headed randomly into an area called “Miami Beach.” We drove down Hartford Avenue and I was astounded – 21 years in Connecticut and I’d never been to this cool, vest pocket, beach community.

A friendly cop showed us where we could park and we were off. This is a really nice beach. As Connecticut’s Long Island Sound beaches go, it is broad and white. There are plenty of stones which makes barefoot walking a little tougher.

Of course Bob and I were dressed totally wrong for a day at the beach – both wearing long pants.

We moved off the beach itself and into an open air beachfront bar. Bob had a beer and I a Diet Coke ($5+$2 tip). Reggae music was wafting in and it was perfect on this idyllic day.

Like “The Place,” I have to wonder how open air establishments like this make it in the ratified air of a short season Connecticut summer, and with total dependence on good weather. Every season has got to be make or break. I thought about that as I sipped my Coke.

We didn’t have long. Bob had dinner plans with some friends he’s known longer than me. We continued east to Mohegan Sun, the closer of the two Connecticut mega casinos.

Bob was stunned. It is a very impressive place. And, the shopping area with its upscale shops connecting the old and new casinos is elegantly glitzy.

Bob wanted to play craps, though he hadn’t played in years. I pulled $60 out of my pocket and quickly turned it into $15 – good going. Bob had similar luck, but on a lesser scale.

We headed for the car and headed back home.

Bob will be back in Connecticut in the middle of August. We’re hoping to see the Red Sox and visit WSAR’s studio. Truth is, hanging with a friend is the important part. The rest is just icing on the cake.

&#185 – I had never heard of Rhode Island clam chowder until I moved to Connecticut. Manhattan is red, New England is creamy and Rhode Island is a clear broth. When properly spiced, it’s great and nowhere as heavy as New England. As for Manhattan clam chowder – please! Who’s eating that?

Bad News For Groton And The Submarine Base

Word came out this morning that the submarine base at Groton will be closed as part of a nationwide military base realignment. That this is a firmly ‘blue’ state probably didn’t help Connecticut, as those boats are moving to Virginia – a red state.

My first remembrance of Groton is back when I was a college student. I worked part time at WSAR in Fall River, MA, so I would often drive I-95 past the base. There were signs along some of the bridges admonishing drivers not to stop.

That was the height of the cold war. I’m guessing there were few warm and fuzzy warnings, especially to a ‘long hair’ like I was.

I became more conscious of the base when I moved to Connecticut. As the economy of Eastern Connecticut slacked critically (in the pre-casino days), it was the one constant. Submariners were often out to sea for extended periods, but their families were in Connecticut, spending money.

I’ve taken two submarine ‘rides’ from Groton. One was on the USS Providence. I can’t remember the name of the other, except to say it was a Los Angeles class fast attack submarine.

Though I’m not sure of the significance of the words “fast attack,” they sure do sound impressive when used together.

My first trip left the dock on a very foggy morning. Rather than bring the sub down the river in bad conditions, the passengers for this ‘fam trip’ piled onto a tug and were ferried to the ship.

As both slowly moved in sync (to maintain steerage), a gangway was set between the ships. I crossed onto the deck of the sub only to be greeted by a frogman with a sheathed knife on his leg. He was there to rescue anyone who might fall off. Going below was accomplished by climbing into a hatch and down a ladder.

I said this then and I’m sure it’s still true now. The submarine itself didn’t impress me. Well, maybe that’s an oversimplification. It didn’t impress me as much as I thought it would. It wasn’t anywhere near as high tech as I had imagined. That is probably because the procurement procedures at the Defense Department take forever!

I remember looking at a PC being used for some task and thinking, “Wow, I’ve got a much more powerful one at home.”

On the other hand, I was blown away by the officers and crew. The real secret weapon of the US submarine fleet are these people. They were bright and disciplined and well trained to do their job and others as well.

The crew was just as much a positive surprise as the equipment was a disappointment.

It was interesting to talk with the men on board and watch them do what they did. Like every job, I’m sure it gets a little stale after a while. Still, they could tell what they were doing was impressive to others and they seemed to bask in that.

Part of the trip was submerging and sailing through Long Island Sound. People ask if I was scared. I was not. These trips were as gentle as could be.

On the way back to port I got to climb another ladder to the top of the sail. This is not a passage designed for the claustrophobic. It was well worth it. It might very well be the most macho place any human can stand.

Given half a chance, I’d hop on a sub again tomorrow.

Having a major base, like Groton, adds importance to a place. It’s a reason for being. I’m a so scared this closing will be a major disruption to all of our lives here in Connecticut. The economy, especially in Eastern Connecticut, doesn’t deserve to take this hit.

Yes, I’m selfish about this. My opinion has been formed irrespective of the big picture. I hope they can find a way to keep the base open.

Powerless

The strangest thing happened at work this afternoon. The power went out.

Actually, that’s an oversimplification. Though most of our lights stayed on, all our computer screens went dark (as did the computers driving them). In the days of film or videotape that might not have been as awful. Today, everything is on a computer. Everything – even stuff you wouldn’t expect, like video.

Our engineers started scrambling. They knew part of the station was powerless, but they didn’t know why or where the problem was.

Throughout the building there was the incessant chirping of Nextel as engineer called engineer, hoping for some insight or a sign that would lead to a fix.

Where Nextels weren’t chirping, UPS (uninterruptable power supplies) were. Their batteries were quickly draining and they were signaling their own death.

I started to think, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone, what would we do? How would we, or could we, do the news with only limited electricity?

There have been stations in hurricane and tornado areas that broadcast from their parking lot using a ‘live truck’ as a mobile control room. Is that even possible anymore when all the video is on a hard drive somewhere?

Someone asked me if I had any magnetic Suns! I’ve been doing the weather for over 20 years. That era totally predates me.

I watched a production person move through the studio holding a gigantic electrical strip… like an extension cord on steroids.

Our master control operators managed to reroute our feed around the television station, going from Springfield, MA to Mad Mare Mountain in Hamden. We were back. Somehow, with part of our electricity on, another engineer figured out a way to get a camera on live for a news brief. There would be no video from stories, but at least we’d have a live on-air presence.

Soon all the computers returned. I’m not sure what the problem was, but it was fixed.

Back in the weather area I had a dozen or so PCs to bring back to life. Some of them needed to be fired in sequence to bring up the networks that interconnected them.

One by one they came back to life. Little by little the entire building picked up where it had left off. By the time we got on the air at 5:00 PM, it was impossible to know we had been dead in the water less than an hour earlier.

If this was some sort of test – we passed. I just don’t want to have to go through it again… though I’d like to play around with magnetic Suns and Magic Markers.

My Trashy Story

Every week, on Friday, our trash goes to the curb. Every other week it’s supposed to be accompanied by recycling. It doesn’t work that way in our household.

Whether it’s our distance from the curb or the amount of recycled newspapers we have (we subscribe to both the New Haven Register or New York Times) or maybe all the boxes we get because of online shopping, going to the curb bi-weekly doesn’t work. So all of this recyclable material piles up in the garage. A few times a year we stuff it into the SUV and I drive it to the transfer station.

Transfer station, what a lovely phrase. It’s so much more genteel than town dump.

I drove up to the transfer station this morning only to find the new policy – no newspapers. I had an SUV full of recyclables, and of course, the supermarket bags of newspapers were on top!

I unloaded the 20 or so bags of newspapers to get to the cardboard and other material underneath. At this point the transfer station folks took pity on me and found a place… a transfer station loophole if you will… that allowed me to drop the papers off. From now on it’s newspapers to the street, I suppose.

I want to be a good citizen, but it is increasingly difficult to follow the rules. In fact, it would be much easier to hide the newspapers and cardboard and bottles with our weekly trash. I’m sure a lot of people do just that. It also always strikes me as a little ironic that the two most talked about recycled products are made from sand (glass) or grow on trees (paper).

I know this is supposed to be good for the environment, and I’m for that. But, is it really? Is this just a feel good exercise with no payoff… or negative payoff?

From “Recycling Is Garbage” – New York Times Magazine, June 30, 1996:

Every time a sanitation department crew picks up a load of bottles and cans from the curb, New York City loses money. The recycling program consumes resources. It requires extra administrators and a continual public relations campaign explaining what to do with dozens of different products — recycle milk jugs but not milk cartons, index cards but not construction paper. (Most New Yorkers still don’t know the rules.) It requires enforcement agents to inspect garbage and issue tickets. Most of all, it requires extra collection crews and trucks. Collecting a ton of recyclable items is three times more expensive than collecting a ton of garbage because the crews pick up less material at each stop. For every ton of glass, plastic and metal that the truck delivers to a private recycler, the city currently spends $200 more than it would spend to bury the material in a landfill.

I don’t know what to think. I want to do what’s right, but I am really not sure. Until I know otherwise, I will follow the rules.

In the meantime, part of our recycling life at home will have to change. Newspapers to the curb. I can hardly wait for the first really big rain on a Thursday night.

Continue reading “My Trashy Story”

My Friend Bob

Bob Lacey has been my friend for a long time… a really long time. I met him my first day as a paid broadcaster – a part time, minimum wage position at WSAR in Fall River, MA. “Ahoy there matey, it’s 14-80.”

WSAR was a great place to start. It was a small station in a small market. The studio and transmitter were located in a residential neighborhood at the foot of Home Street in Somerset, MA.

We were top-40 back when stations still actually played forty records. We even had PAMS jingles. If you weren’t in radio back then, this might not makes sense, but PAMS of Dallas was the gold standard of radio station jingles.

WSAR promoted itself as serving the Tri Cities: Fall River, New Bedford and Newport. Yes, they were physically close, but Fall River and New Bedford might as well have been on another planet as far as Newport was concerned!

I met Bob (he was Skippy Ross back then) that first day and we’ve been friends ever since. After Fall River, we also worked together in Charlotte, NC, where Bob has been for over 35 years. How is that even possible?

We don’t see each other as often as we should and we had trouble hooking up on the phone because his hours and mine are as opposite as can be. Bob is the guy half of Bob and Sheri, the nationally syndicated morning radio show.

Obviously I’m biased, but this is a phenomenal morning show. In the parlance of radio, it is female friendly. It’s funny… sometimes even sexual humor… but never smutty or sophomoric.

Bob is a technophobe. There are no two ways about it. If it’s electronic or technical, count him out. I always expected his first laptop computer would be steam powered. That’s why it’s so nice to have him finally sending email. OK – he’s a decade late, but he’s here.

I can’t begin to tell you how good it was to get a message from him, and then a reply to my reply, and another email later. It’s been a while since a good friend has come into the modern era. Email can be a wonderful thing.

There are so many people who feel our constantly connected world is driving people away from human contact. I disagree. A few sentences from a friend is the real power of the Internet, not its weakness.

Why Do They Do It This Way?

Last weekend, shooting stills at the UCONN/Army game was a lot of fun. I would have shot more, but I ran out of memory.

As cameras have ramped up the pixel count, the memory storage requirements have gone up too. I have three compact flash cards that together hold about 1 gigabyte.

Today, that’s not an incredibly large amount of memory, but I remember when it was – and not that long ago.

I didn’t want to get caught short again, so I looked into buying another, larger card. Within the last month, compact flash prices have dropped through the floor. Prices are half what they had been recently and a quarter of where they were last year!

To me, that was a buy signal (though at this rate, I could have waited a little longer until they paid me to take them).

I searched around and found what I wanted on eCost.com. This is an interesting site because there is free shipping – but you pay a handling charge. Exactly what is the difference? And, how can a business, built on handling your order, charge for handling?

The card cost me $84 plus $4.95 for handling. Subtract a $30 rebate&#185 for a net of $58.95. That’s an excellent price – today. Next week it might look like I was ripped off.

Of course I wanted the card yesterday, but that was not to be. Somehow, UPS put this thing on the scenic tour of Eastern America. It’s not that it took so long – it’s just the package made more stops than a presidential campaign!

Oct 1, 2004

12:04 P.M.

NORTH HAVEN, CT, US

DELIVERY

6:27 A.M.

NORTH HAVEN, CT, US

OUT FOR DELIVERY

3:45 A.M.

NORTH HAVEN, CT, US

ARRIVAL SCAN

1:28 A.M.

SHREWSBURY, MA, US

DEPARTURE SCAN

Sep 30, 2004

12:06 P.M.

SHREWSBURY, MA, US

ARRIVAL SCAN

7:32 A.M.

SECAUCUS, NJ, US

DEPARTURE SCAN

6:07 A.M.

SECAUCUS, NJ, US

ARRIVAL SCAN

1:37 A.M.

LAUREL, MD, US

DEPARTURE SCAN

Sep 29, 2004

11:50 P.M.

LAUREL, MD, US

ARRIVAL SCAN

6:30 P.M.

FISHERSVILLE, VA, US

DEPARTURE SCAN

6:16 P.M.

FISHERSVILLE, VA, US

ARRIVAL SCAN

3:45 P.M.

ROANOKE, VA, US

DEPARTURE SCAN

3:12 P.M.

ROANOKE, VA, US

ARRIVAL SCAN

10:46 A.M.

KNOXVILLE, TN, US

DEPARTURE SCAN

10:20 A.M.

KNOXVILLE, TN, US

ARRIVAL SCAN

5:39 A.M.

NASHVILLE, TN, US

DEPARTURE SCAN

1:51 A.M.

NASHVILLE, TN, US

ARRIVAL SCAN

Sep 28, 2004

10:18 P.M.

MEMPHIS, TN, US

DEPARTURE SCAN

8:57 P.M.

US

BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

8:12 P.M.

MEMPHIS, TN, US

ORIGIN SCAN

Only UPS understands why it saw three Tennessee cities and drove past my house on the way to Massachusetts… where it turned around and headed back.

The UPS driver walked the package from the curb to my front door. The box was light but substantial at 12″x10″x4.5″. Why? The hard plastic wrapped packaging was only 5″x6″ and without the wrap, the card is only 1.5″x1.625″ .

Not only could this have been packed in a smaller box, it could have been packed in an envelope! It’s difficult to believe the box is protecting the flash card much more than its impenetrable plastic packaging.

Bottom line is, it’s here. Tomorrow Steffie plays field hockey and I’ll attempt to fill it up.

&#185 – Rebates are seriously the work of the devil. I am very careful in how I fill them out, reading every word of the instructions. I still feel I get a very low return. These companies have every possible incentive to not pay me.

Off to Newport

Since she was a little girl, Steffie has played team sports. We have always gone to see her play when we could, whether it was basketball, lacrosse, or field hockey. Yesterday was field hockey in Newport, RI – 2 1/2 hours away. The day was beautiful, so we decided to go.

Oh, did I mention Steffie said it would be OK for me to bring my camera?

We have recently found that I-95 is awful on Saturday’s. The traffic is bad until you approach the split between I-95 and I-395 where it gets worse. I’m hoping this is summer oriented traffic and will abate when the warm weather crowd decides to stay home.

Newport is off the beaten path as far as the Interstate Highway System is concerned. We took I-95 to Rhode Island exit 3 and then got on a two lane road – seemingly forever.

Actually, the fact that it was a two lane road through a rural area wasn’t the problem. It was the speed limit that got me. Most of the way the limit was posted at 40 mph or less.

C’mon, I do 40 mph in my driveway!

Being on an island, the last part of the trip took us over two spectacular bridges (note to Rhode Island – EZ-Pass would be nice) with views of sailboat – filled bays.

I have been to Newport a few times, and was never impressed. What was wrong with me? This is a great destination. It is beautiful in so many ways, from the seaside views to the mansions to the walkable streets with shops and restaurants. More on that later.

Helaine had printed out directions from Steffie’s school’s website. It, unfortunately, referenced businesses that might have changed names or gone out of business. Basically, we went on a wild goose chase through Newport in search of St. George’s School.

Finally, in desperation, I called the school. The person who answered, quickly offered up that she was from Massachusetts. Luckily, after another few minutes of driving around I found a landmark she knew! It didn’t take long to get to the school.

It’s tough to believe there’s another school like St. George’s. On 200 acres in Newport, it has sweeping ocean views. The land alone must be worth hundreds of millions of dollars! The campus is dominated by a large Gothic chapel. There are numerous, well kept fields for field hockey, soccer and football.

Steffie’s team was there for pre-season field hockey scrimmages. Over the course of the afternoon, her team played three games – winning none. Still, it was just practice and Steffie played really well.

She had been a defensive player, but has now moved into an offensive position, basically covering the entire field. I have no idea how she and the others played three games. This is a physical game. Don’t think, because these are girls playing, that it’s any less aggressive.

I brought my Canon Digital Rebel and both lenses with me. It was an opportunity to try out a feature this camera has – continuous focus for sports – and the 70-300 mm zoom lens.

I am happy with how the camera and lenses worked in nearly every way. My long zoom lens is as ‘powerful’ as the lenses the pros use, but it is not as ‘fast.’ It needs much more light to produce similar pictures, and that forces me to either shoot with a slower shutter, wider aperture, faster film equivalent speed, or not take the picture at all.

There was so much bright light in Newport, it didn’t make a difference.

Looking back, most of the pictures were sharp and clear. The sports mode gave me shutter settings that were very fast, mostly taking shots faster than 1/1000 of a second. That meant stopping the action without blur.

I have read reports of this Sigma 70-300 mm lens not being particularly sharp. Maybe for the most critical of applications that’s true. It looks pretty sharp to me.

One of the cool parts of taking pictures at St. George’s are the amazing views. Many of the shots show the beach in the background. If you didn’t know any better you might think this was Malibu, not Rhode Island.

After the third game we decided to head into downtown Newport for dinner. I found a place to park ($10 – “You can park it yourself, I don’t take my test for another two weeks.”) and we began to walk around.

I was hungry, and no one objected, so we ducked into Christie’s, located on the docks. The wait was 15 minutes, so Helaine and Steffie went to a store, while I went out on the dock to take some shots.

It wasn’t long before we were seated, outside on the deck. We didn’t know it when we picked Christie’s, but our view was to the west and we were about to see a remarkable sunset.

Helaine and Steffie shared lobster bisque and I had chowder. Very good. My dinner was fried clams. Helaine had scallops. Steffie didn’t like the stuffing of her stuffed shrimp, but everything else was fine.

As the Sun went down I picked up my camera to take some pictures. I could see, in front of me, some people with a point and shoot camera trying to get a portrait taken. It wasn’t going to work – so I offered to take the shot and email it to them. That opened the flood gates.

By the time I was done, I had four email addresses in my pocket and had taken pictures of, and with, a bunch of people. It was around this time that our waiter recognized me and offered up that he was originally from Old Saybrook… instantly forcing me to up his tip another 5 %.

We passed on dessert at Christie’s and headed to Ben and Jerry near where we were parked. The day had gone on a very long time. I was getting tired.

We headed back toward Connecticut, following directions Helaine had downloaded from the net. I got us to I-95 where she took over and finished the trip.

I think we were all surprised at how much we like Newport. We will definitely be back.

Blogger’s note: There is a photo gallery with more pictures from our day in Newport here. Each picture on this page is also clickable for a larger view.

They’re Back

Helaine and Steffie returned early from Massachusetts. I was surprised, even midday Saturday, they suffered through 20 miles of stop and go traffic for no apparent reason. Once they EZ-Pass’ed into Connecticut things opened up and they were soon home.

The first thing Steffie wanted to do was look at the photos. I think this camera has a slower USB port than the Fuji. It took a really long time for the 150, or so, photos to move to my hard drive.

There is a noticeable difference between this and the Fuji. The photos seems clearer and sharper. They’re also shot at a different ratio of vertical to horizontal.

Unfortunately, what I didn’t want to see was there – noise. It’s really not all that noticeable until you zoom in to 100%, looking at each pixel individually. It won’t show unless the picture is really enlarged before it’s printed.

My friend Lou had recommended a tool, a plug-in to Photoshop, which would make the noise more manageable. He was right. The difference is amazing. But there are trade offs. Some of the sharpness in objects is missing. Even so, the tool is worthwhile. The after is better than the before.

While Helaine sat and watched, I took one of the pictures at random, ran it through the noise filter, adjusted the levels, removed lens distortion and re-sharpened it. I don’t think anyone would have looked at the finished version and gasped at its artistry. But next to each other, the improvement that just a few seconds in Photoshop provided was easily seen and made quite a difference.

Men on the Moon – 35 Years Ago

Yesterday was the anniversary of the first men landing on the moon. Thirty five years ago today, Neil Armstrong took that first giant leap for mankind.

I remember those two days. I was excited to be working at WSAR in Fall River, Ma. It was my first professional broadcasting job.

I was on my way to work as the astronauts landed. I had stopped in my green Volkswagen Beetle at a rest area somewhere between Boston and Fall River. People were standing around listening to their radios. It was a sultry summer evening.

It is still astounding to me that we were able to achieve this amazing journey. Even today, with technology so far advanced, our space program is far from worry free. This was really uncharted terriotory in every sense of the word.

Over the years, some parts of the experience have been lost, others aodpted as if they had happened, when in reality they hadn’t.

For instance, we’ve all seen the film of Apollo 11’s landing, with the voices of the astronauts and Houston controllers calling out flight details. That film was not developed until the astronauts returned! Sure, we heard the voices live. We never saw the pictures.

Maybe there’s confusion because we did see (with some of the poorest video ever watched) Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface. That was transmitted live from a camera mounted somewhere on the exterior of the lander.

One of my favorite trivia questions concerns the first words from the moon&#185. It wasn’t “One small step…” or “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

The first words from the moon were, “contact light.”

“Contact light…OK Engine stop…ATA outta detent…Mode control: both Auto…descent engine command override off…Engine arm off… 413 is in.”

Not very sexy. And, as my personal space expert, and former Inside Space producer, Dave Brody reminds me, that was said by Buzz Aldrin, not Neil Armstrong.

It is possible the greatest human achievment of my lifetime was achieved 35 years ago. That we haven’t exceeded this over that time period is a shame.

&#185 – My favorite trivia question is: “What is Lady Bird Johnson’s first name?” It is neither Lady or Bird.

Flag Day in Hudson, NY

All the photos on this page, and lots of parade pictures, can be seen in my photo gallery.

Back in 1969, when I got my first paid on-air radio job in Fall River, Massachusetts at WSAR (Ahoy there matey, it’s 14-80) I met Skippy Ross – a fellow disk jockey. He was older, wiser, married, and the station’s music director. We became friends.

Later, in 1971, I went to WBT in Charlotte, NC. Skippy was already there… he just wasn’t Skippy anymore. In Worcester, MA he had become Skip Tyler and now he was Bob Lacey.

For nearly 35 years he has been Bob Lacey, working at the radio and television stations at 1 Julian Price Place, and becoming a Charlotte institution. He and his partner, Sheri Lynch run a woman friendly&#185 morning drive radio show, syndicated across the country.

Bob and I have remained friends through all this time. When my life was falling apart in the mid-70s, Bob took time off and drove with me through the Western United States. We have shared good times and bad longer than most married couples – and with a better relationship.

On-the-air Bob refers to me as his ‘gold best friend.’ It’s an honor I treasure.

We are two very different people. I think the difference can be best explained in a little story. The year was 1973 and I was leaving Charlotte, moving to Cleveland (based, as it turns out, on bad information from someone who wanted me to leave). It was my last day there and I was getting a new tire put on my car. Bob joined me at the tire store on Independence Boulevard, a busy Charlotte business district back then.

We went to the Coke machine. Bob went first. His soda plopped from the slot, he put the bottle into the opened, pushed down and was ready to drink. I got my bottle, went to the opener, pushed down and… soda all over me. It was as if a midget was in the machine, waiting for me to shake the bottle.

To me, Bob has always seems suave and in control. I have always seemed like an unmade bed – scattered and kinetic.

We are both lucky, because in spite of setbacks in our lives, we’ve done well – both with our careers and families. And, for two old guys (and he is much older and very, very short… make that very, very, very short) we’ve aged well.

I was on the phone with Bob late last week. It was the usual chit chat. I asked him what he was doing over the weekend and he told me he and Sheri (his radio partner) were flying to Hudson, NY for Flag Day. There’s a parade, which they ride in, the emcee from the reviewing stand.

Hudson is a few hours from here – a nice drive if it’s a nice day. There’s some highway to take you away from the urban areas and then it’s small, sparsely traveled 2-lane roads through rolling hills. The trip goes up through Northwest Connecticut, cuts through the Southwest corner of Massachusetts and then west into New York and the Hudson River.

I decided to go.

Since I knew neither Helaine nor Stefanie would want to take this road trip, I prepared a geek’s journey. My camera was ready with two sets of batteries and two flash memory cards (I could have taken 350 high resolution photos, but only took 273). I put my old Dell laptop on the passenger’s seat, plugged an inverter into the cigarette lighter and threw a GPS antenna onto the armrest between the seats. This trip would be well documented.

The trip up was uneventful. The weather superb – truly perfect. Though I had printed directions before leaving the house, the GPS receiver was really helpful, showing me my turns before I got to them.

With the top down, on a sunny day, there are lots of sensations. The warmth of the sun (I was worried about the warmth of the sun on my laptop, which I removed from the seat and put on the floor while still in Connecticut), the breeze, the aroma.

Springtime has good aromas. There weren’t many restaurants to pass at this time of day on this route. I did smell freshly cut grass (a watermelon-like smell), freshly cut lumber (as I passed a mill) and a dairy farm. They were all distinct, but the dairy farm was certainly the most pungent.

I have a radar detector mounted in the convertible. When I first bought the car, I had electricity brought from an interior light directly to the unit. It only went off once on the trip, and then because a police car was going the opposite direction and must have had his transmitter on.

By the time I got to Hudson, the streets downtown were closed off for the parade. This was a bigger deal than I thought – and as I’d later find out the longest parade I’d ever seen.

The main street of Hudson, Warren Street, was lined with happy people. For some reason I expected this to be a lily white town. That was not the case. There was just about every shade of person imaginable, and they were all out on the street together ready for the parade.

It seems like Hudson is a town that was, and possibly still is, down on its luck. I walked on cracked sidewalks with tall weeds growing through them. There were small houses with chipped paint. On Warren Street itself the homes were old but freshly painted. It had the aura of gentrification – a two edged sword which rebuilds and displaces.

I moved toward the river, where the reviewing stand had been erected, and waited for Bob and Sheri. They arrived, first in the parade, sitting in a convertible. It is only now, looking at the photo, that I realize it is a used car, for sale, with the price tag nicely affixed to the windshield. Still, it looked great rolling down Warren Street, and Bob and Sheri were enjoying every second of it.

We chatted for a few seconds and then they made their way to the microphone and the parade began. It was a bad day to have a fire in the Hudson Valley, because I believe every piece of fire equipment for a hundred miles was rolling down Warren Street – even a blue fire truck from Philmont, NY! Along with the fire equipment there were policemen and soldiers and and organizations, plus kid from schools and sports leagues.

This was the longest parade I had ever seen. As we approached the 3 hour mark, I turned to a policeman standing near me and asked, “Are they going around for a second time?”

There was a sad moment. A float in memory of a local soldier who had been killed in Iraq. The base of the float was full of American flags – one for each death in this war. In a glass case, the soldier’s uniform was displayed. Very, very sad.

The parade ended and Bob, Sheri and I hopped onto a golf cart to head down to the riverside where the festivities would continue. The scene was very much like those beeping carts that careen through the terminals at airports, taking people with more pull than us to the next gate.

It was getting late. I had a drive ahead of me. They had autographs and then a plane ride back to Charlotte. We’d all get home around the same time.

I wish I could have spent more time with Bob, and with Sheri who I like a lot. Bob and I are already trying to figure out a time for next summer. But maybe there will be time sooner.

The good thing about gold friends is, their friendship will wait.

&#185 – When I say woman friendly, I mean a show which is not based on sex, bodily functions and stretching the vocabulary envelope. Stern, Imus and Bubba the Love Sponge don’t qualify for this genre.

All the photos on this page, and lots of parade pictures, can be seen in my photo gallery.

It’s An Addiction – I’m Not Alone

Katie Haffner had an interesting story about blogging in this moring’s New York Times. I always thought (and Helaine will confirm) I’d gone off the deep end with blogging, but this article makes it seem like I’m not so bad. There are others who have been bitten far worse.

Thanks God for small favors.

Continue reading “It’s An Addiction – I’m Not Alone”

Intern Jayne Moves On

The last time I wrote about Intern Jayne Smith was during the summer when she helped out with Emmy award judging. Jayne had been a college intern in meteorology at the TV station and spent a few semesters in the Weather Center.

She’s a very nice girl. We were very happy that she was always available to be Ivy’s companion when we went out of town. She is shy and quiet… maybe too shy and quiet.

It has been very tough for her, a degreed meteorologist, to find her first job. First, you need a tape – which she made at Channel 8. But, without experience her taped work was always a little on the edge (As it should be for a beginner. If it were too easy everyone would do it).

She’ll be great, but she needs to work regularly, under deadline, on camera, show-after-show.

After some very disappointing and drawn out turndowns, and over a year of looking, she has finally been offered a job and will move, sight unseen, to Bismarck, ND. It sounds very scary.

Luckily for Jayne, Bismarck is the perfect place to go. She’ll be working with some stable, nice people, used to working with beginners. There won’t be the same pressure in Bismarck that there might be in a larger market. She’ll have the opportunity to forecast nearly every kind of weather from heat waves to tornadoes to blizzards.

My first job was at WSAR 1480 in Fall River. MA. I remember it like it was yesterday… even though it’s about 35 years ago. It’s likely Jayne will remember this job forever too.

She’ll be great.

My 1992 Camry – Goodbye Old Friend

It was a sad day today as my beautiful 1992 Toyota Camry was ratcheted onto a flatbed and driven away. In all, it was a rather ignominious ending for a wonderful car – maybe the best I’ve ever owned.

The Camry had 135,000 miles on it. The engine was sweet and still more powerful than you’d expect from four little cylinders. A cheap, fresh, black paint job, less than a year old, clung to it like some sort of auto toupee.

It pulled to one side, but that seemed to be tire related as opposed to car related. When the problem first showed up, I had Steve at the Exxon station rotate the tires and the problem just moved from one side of the road to the other.

I know it could go over 105 mph, because one Saturday on the very quiet portion of I-84, just south of the Massachusetts line, I had opened it up. I was feeling good having just captured two Emmys and was rushing back to Connecticut to help out at the Hamden High School ‘after prom’ and then a Good Morning America/Sunday live shot.

Inside, some radio buttons (specifically the one set aside for WCBS-880) were starting to show my digital favoritism. The tiny pop-out knobs for the bass and treble had long since popped out. The floor mats curled along the edges as I inadvertently pushed them slightly to the side every day.

Once, the Camry seemingly healed itself. During its first year, while riding down I-91, I hit something on the road. Bang. It was loud, and I could feel it in my feet.

Whatever it was hit squarely on the bottom of the car. After an unrelated incident with my muffler, the service manager at Faulkner Toyota, outside Philadelphia, told me whatever had hit the car did significant damage to the oil pan and some other parts. I needed to replace them to the tune of $1,000+ or face the consequences further down the road.

I never fixed the oil pan and it never complained, though that happened at least 115,000 miles ago. Thanks Faulkner.

With my “toy car” in the garage during any kind of wet weather, the Toyota still managed 8-9,000 miles a year. It sipped regular and still exceeded 22 mph – even with my lead foot. It never burned oil.

It was the first car I ever owned with a vanity license plate. It started as FORCST. I was asked on more than one occasion, “What’s does ‘for cyst’ mean?” When Connecticut changed the protocol for marker plates, it became FOR&#149CST.

Over the years, the windshield became pitted from my 85 mph dashes going to and from work on I-91. That made it tough to see clearly when the Sun was low in the afternoon sky. The adhesive from the Velcro strip I used to hold the radar detector in place oozed a little on the dashboard.

A few years ago, when the freon had leaked from the air conditioner, Steve switched me over to some atmosphere friendly coolant. From that time forward you could hang meat in the car.

When Helaine suggested we get another four wheel drive vehicle, now that Steffie was driving to and from school, the handwriting was on the wall for the Camry. I wanted to keep it, but it just didn’t make sense for the three of us to have four cars, each with an insurance and tax bill, and each needing a place to park.

At the dealership, buying the RAV4 which would replace the Camry, Howie, the salesman apologized and then offered me $500 for it. As I would later learn from friends, that’s all he could expect to get for it at auction. On the other hand, if I went to sell it privately, the car was worth well over $2,000. But, who wants to sell a car from home?

My friend Harold had spearheaded a program at Connecticut Public Television where they would take your car, and since it was a donation, I could claim the fair market value (which I established online from the “Bluebook”).

So, this evening the flatbed arrived and the Camry went away.

If you’re in the market for a used car and this little cream puff shows up, believe me when I say, she’s a gem. Without a doubt, the best car I ever had and the first car I was ever sorry to see go.