First Snow

So what do I see when I leave work this evening?

Ernie Harwell, RIP

It may not mean a lot to the rest of you, but this man was a major part of my youth.
Ernie Harwell, Detroit Tigers broadcaster, dies at 92

Farewell Old Friend

CARRINGTON - Wilbur "Bill" A. Carrington, age 84, of Grand Rapids, died peacefully at home on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2009.

Born March 2, 1925 in Detroit, MI, Bill was preceded in death by his parents, Vera C. Hunter and Foster Carrington; stepfather, Archie Hunter; and wife of 52 years, Joan (Burnham) Carrington.

Bill's lifelong fascination for radios, electronics, and all things scientific was sparked early by his interest in his father's short-lived Carrington Radio Company and other electronic repair ventures. Graduating from Detroit's Eastern High School in 1942, Bill attended the then Wayne University for a year before being drafted into WWII. He served in the Army Signal Corps on the Japanese island of Okinawa as a High Speed Radio Operator until the war's end.

Back on U.S. soil, he immediately put his advanced radio and Morse code skills to work and became licensed in 1946 as an amateur radio operator. He proudly displayed his call sign, W8YCI, each year on his automobile license plate and remained an active "ham" throughout his life. He operated his mostly self-built gear while attending the University of Michigan, graduating in 1950 with both a BSE degree in Electrical Engineering and a fianceé, soon-to-be wife, Joan.

Married in 1950, Bill moved to Grand Rapids with his new wife and began his long electrical engineering career in aerospace product design and development at Lear Inc., later Lear-Siegler and, at the time of his retirement in 1987, Smiths Industries. He served in various positions and his contributions included work on aeronautics and missile navigational instruments including accelerometers, gyroscopes, and fiber optic applications. He is named on two U.S. patents.

Bill was a 60-year member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), proudly becoming a Life Senior Member in 2001. He was also a member of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), and a 20-year member of the Navy-Marine Corps Military Affiliate Radio Station (MARS) program, facilitating communications between members of the Armed Forces and authorized U.S. government civilian personnel stationed in Antarctica and their families and loved ones back in the States. In later years, he spent most of his time on the Internet and tinkering with his Macintosh desktop computer. Photography was a secondary hobby, along with a steady diet of reading everything possible in all fields of science and history. A stickler for accuracy and proper punctuation, grammar, and syntax, he was a frequent contributor to the Grand Rapids Press editorial page. As a selective sports fan, he restricted his following to the Detroit Tigers, U-M football, and surprisingly in his later years, Tiger Woods's golf tournaments. He enjoyed classical music, jazz, and old cowboy songs-songs that were sung in the car on many a family vacation.

Bill was a devoted brother, husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.

Surviving are daughters, Beverly (Daniel) Wesche of Big Rapids, MI, Janis (Gary Michel) Carrington of Olympia, WA, and Linda (Gregory Krupp) Carrington of Grand Rapids, MI; granddaughters, Amber (Christopher) Jenson and Erin Wesche; great-grandson, Derek Jenson; sister, Shirley (Robert) Miller; brother, Ian (Carol) Hunter; and nieces and nephews. He fostered in his family and others around him a keen sense of curiosity about the world, pride in knowledge, achievement and higher education, resourcefulness and creative problem solving, and a spirited sense of humor that carried him through to the very end. He felt satisfied and content with his life, grateful for the gifts and passions he was able to use in his work, and proud of his daughters and their families.

A Memorial Service will be held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, January 16, 2010 at the Raybrook Manor Chapel, 2121 Raybrook SE in Grand Rapids, with reception following in Raybrook's Friendship Room. Private inurnment at Graceland Memorial Park & Mausoleum, 4341 Cascade Rd. SE, Grand Rapids Township. A special thank you to the patient and caring staff at Holland Home's Raybrook Manor whose quality care enabled us to have an unexpected bonus year with Bill. Memorial contributions may be made to Special Olympics Michigan, WGVU Public Broadcasting, or to the charitable organization of one's choice.

"This is Bill Carrington, W8YCI, signing clear for the last time after a very enjoyable 84-year eyeball QSO with all my friends and loved ones. 73 es 88 de W8YCI SK".

The Pederson Funeral Home Rockford www.pedersonfuneralhome.com

Published in Grand Rapids Press on January 3 and January 10, 2010

To my recollection, Bill not only handled communications with the Station at Antarctica via MARS, but also wintered over there once (either shortly before or right after he retired).

Ha-Low ... Is This The Soady Deer Camp?

Its that time of year again. Yesterday, to mark the opening of deer season, we watched the classic big buck story, Escanaba in da Moonlight. This is the tale of how The Buckless Yooper got his buck. Yooper as in a person from Michigan's Upper Peninsula (U.P.).

The principals in this story are the Soady family along with their friend Jimmer Negamanee from Menominee, and a lost Department of Natural Resources (DNR) officer recently exiled from Detroit to Escanaba. The actors include Jeff Daniels, Harve Presnell, Joey Albright, Wayne David Parker, Randall Godwin, and Kimberly Guerrero.

We have both the regular DVD which is available from Amazon as well as the "making of" DVD, A Picture from Home: The Journey Through 'Escanaba in da Moonlight' which is available from Jeff Daniel's Purple Rose Films web site.

While watching this, my wife asked how old is Harve Presnell? So I looked him up on iMDB and found that he died this last summer at the age of 75 from pancreatic cancer.

This movie came out in the Spring of 2001 and played mostly in the Mid-West. It was released on VHS and DVD on 15 October 2002, at which time I ordered copies shipped to family all over the United States.

Looking back though my email archives, I note that Jimmer Negamanee looks quite a bit like one of the members of my Grandfather's survey crew from back when they laid out so many of the highways across the U.P. back in the late teens, early twenties.

Project Valour-IT Current Standings

Update: 13 Nov 2009 - Veteran's Day Finish Line

Project Valour-IT

This is part of the annual fund raising for Project Valour-IT.

My gift to them is to Team Navy, in honor of my father who served in the Navy SeaBees at the tail end of WWII and during Korea. As you can see above I helped to break the $100K barrier. The challenge to the Teams was to break the $140K barrier with each team raising $35K. A couple years ago, Team Navy raised the most. This year it looks like the Marines will take honors.

The name Valour-IT originally stood for Voice Activated Laptops for OUR Injured Troops. Seeing as many of our young service people use the technology of cell phones and the internet to communicate with family at home. This project was a way for injured troops to continue to communicate even though they were at Walter Reed and their hands were bandaged.

The back story can be found here, CPT (now MAJ) Chuck Z's blog can be found here, and Fuzzy Bear Lioness' (FbL) blog can be found here.

FbL's Selected Valour-IT Posts:

• Just Read This
• This is What It's Like
• More than Just a Laptop
• Three Kings and Valour-IT
• Bryan Anderson and Valour-IT
• CPT Ziegenfuss and Valour-IT
• Buzz Robertson and Valour-IT
• Travelogue II: The VA Hospital

Twenty Five Years Ago

Sagacitas and The Thomas
25 years ago


This picture was found while browsing through our old pictures.

Two Brothers

The Thomas (L) and CCPhysist (R)

They Did It

Today is the Day

Sagacitas-Rodney
Sagacitas and Rodney will be united in matrimony September 26. The bride-to-be is a graduate of Grandville High School and Michigan State University. She and her parents are of Grandville. The future groom is a graduate of Coopersville High School, Grand Valley State University and Western Michigan University. He and his parents are of Coopersville.

ArtPrize Grand Rapids

The full description of ArtPrize can be found at their Official Site.

This is an international competition backed with $450,000 in prize money. The top prize is $250,000, 2nd prize is $100,000, 3rd prize is $50,000, 4th through 10th prizes split the remaining money.

The public votes on the competition using an up-down mechanism similar to Digg.

The first week's voting determines the top 10 pieces of art.

The second week's voting determines the finish placement within the top 10.

Local coverage of ArtPrize can be found in the Grand Rapids Press on MLive.

Pictures of the art can be found in the Flickr: The ArtPrize Grand Rapids Pool.

I find the logo to be too cute. If you turn the logo on its side, you see "The Calder", La Grande Vitesse, which has become part of the official logo of the City of Grand Rapids:



Update:

The winner was Open Water no. 24



But personally, I liked the Moose welded out of many, many nails.

So where were we now?

Ah yes, several months ago I mentioned this.

Anyway, we are now about a month before the wedding and last weekend the groomsmen, Dads and such were measured for their tuxes.

We will be wearing something along the lines of the following:

My hair is not that dark.

Officially Summer

Last night I was greeted by my little friends as I worked on opening the pool.

I have fireflys, so everything is right with the world.

No Great Surprise Here

Your results: You are Mr. Scott

Mr. Scott 75% Worf 75% Mr. Sulu 70% Geordi LaForge 65% Will Riker 65% Chekov 60% Uhura 60% Deanna Troi 60% James T. Kirk (Captain) 55% Jean-Luc Picard 55% Leonard McCoy (Bones) 50% Beverly Crusher 50% An Expendable Character (Redshirt) 45% Spock 30% Data 30%

You are a fun-loving foreigner with an amazing ability to get any job done on time. Often described as a "Miracle Worker".

Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz
Must just be my purty face and rude engineering skilz.

Guess What?

A week ago Saturday, I received the following picture on my cell phone from my eldest (Sagacitas) with the note "Guess What?".

Looks like we are going to have an interesting Fall.

I think this is true in real life also

Found at xkcd

Winter Comes in Two Days

Don't Worry, It's Here!

The last few days, they've been predicting that today's snow storm would drop from 6 to 12 inches of snow between when it started at midnight and when it finished by mid-afternoon. By last night they had reduced the range to 7 to 9 inches of snow.

This morning I removed no more than 3 inches of snow off the drive and sidewalks before work. When I left for work, it was still blowing and snowing at a rate of around an inch an hour. The streets had not been plowed and it was interesting making turns at the intersections. (When the roads aren't plowed, the intersections build up hedgerows that have to be broken through. People have been known to bottom-out on these hedgerows so their car gets stuck and they lose traction.)

The snow in the parking lot at work was 6 inches deep when I went in and 8 inches deep when I left at lunch time. By lunch, only the very major roads appeared to be plowed, trucks were getting stuck on the side road leading up to my place of work, and I had difficulty getting out of the gas station after filling up my car.

The snow quit around 1:30, by 5 pm the major roads were plowed clean and side street were more-or-less passable. Overnight my driveway has gone from having a couple of piles of snow to being enclosed by 2 foot high walls of snow.

According to the NWS we have received 10.2 inches of snow at the airport. This sets a new record, besting the 4.5 inch snow fall from 1975. It would not surprise me if we got more snow on our side of the city than at the airport.

And more snow is coming over Saturday night, Sunday night, and Monday. We are certainly going to have a White Christmas.

(This entry will be updated tomorrow morning when the NWS publishes the snowfall map for today.)

Yes, that was some snow.

So, We've Had Some More Snow

Here's the snow from the end of this week:

12/06	12/04	12/03

The main roads are clear. The side street and country roads are packed snow and snow covered.

West Michigan Snow Maps (again)

Here's the snow so far:

11/30	11/24	11/20	11/17

Oh, the joys of "Lake Effect" Snow.

We are currently under a Hazardous Weather Outlook, its raining, and they expect 2 inches of snow over night.

First Snow (Sleet)

Sunday we had the first "Snow" of the season. Right now we are getting freezing rain, so tomorrow will be amateur hour as most drivers relearn how to drive under slippery conditions.