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  • As I was randomly looking through some of my previous stories on this web site the other day, I noticed a disturbing trend about how my life gets represented. To someone who doesn’t know me any better I might come across as a lazy bum who stays up all night long laying on my couch flipping television channels between mindless infomercials and fifteenth century battle recreations on the History Channel. Which is absolutely true, but besides the point. In addition to my odd nocturnal habits, I also engage in a vast array of interesting—if somewhat more mainstream—activities. Just the other day, for example, I ran my dishwasher.

    I find that many otherwise ordinary activities, such as operating kitchen appliances, become less monotonous when made into some sort of a game. To spice up the extensive amount of time I spend cleaning my kitchen, I have created a game called “dishwasher safe or not dishwasher safe?” The rules are quite simple: one person picks an ordinary household object, and the other person has to predict how well it will survive in the dishwasher. (Side note: For readers over the age of twenty-one, this can also be played as a drinking game.) My experience playing the game has taught me quite a bit about high temperature hydrodynamics. Things that fall into the general “dishwasher safe” category include music CDs, dirty socks, and lava lamps. “Not dishwasher safe” items include wax candles, the Sunday newspaper, and unopened boxes of “Hamburger Helper.”

    While I’m no Richard Simmons, I do make an attempt to get to the health club a few times a week. For reasons I don’t completely understand, sitting in front of a computer for long periods of time does not seem to burn very many calories. Despite the feverish pace of my brain during these episodes, I need to supplement this time with activities that require more physical demands on my body.

    One thing I have noticed is that people generally don’t look very approachable when working out on fitness equipment. I’m not sure what everyone else is thinking when working out, but I know that while exercising on the stair master every one of my brain cells is preoccupied with keeping my body from falling off. If I did attempt to communicate with the person next to me I believe the conversation would start of with me saying something to the effect of “hi there—so, do you like living in Boulder? I hope the fact that I’ve somehow managed to tip over the stair master doesn’t make you think less of me.”

    One day, while riding on the stationary bicycle something hit me. And, no, it wasn’t someone else falling off the stair master. I realized that I spend a fair amount of time surfing the Internet and talking to friends on Instant Messenger. The only thing that gets any exercise are the muscles in my fingers. This led me to realize something totally different than my original realization (which I haven’t gotten to yet—please bear with me). Fingers don’t actually have any muscles in them. The muscles that move fingers are located in the forearm area. Or at least that’s where I think they are.

    So, getting back to my great idea—I think someone should build exercise equipment that is connected to the Internet. Since most of the equipment requires the person sit or stand in a stationary position, adding a touch screen would not be too difficult. Everyone seems to stare blankly ahead anyway. I’ve extensively researched many, many web sites on the Internet about people who are addicted to the Internet. Not that this plan would help them out at all with their addiction, but it wouldn’t hurt the situation if they had to pedal a bicycle while they jumped from web site to web site. Sure, they would still be pasty white computer geeks, but at least they would have well defined leg muscles.

    Well, I hope this helps shed some light on the subject of “What does Omar do all day long?” I’m sure that if I really put my mind to it I could have come up with a dozen more productive activities in my life. Unfortunately (for you, the reader), I was glancing through the TV Guide and just realized that a three hour special about starting land wars in Asia is about to begin. So until next week, try to think of me as a productive member of society.

  • After witnessing the popularity of recent book titles such as “You Might Be a Redneck If…”, “You Might Be Rush Limbaugh If…” and “You Are Most Likely Stuck In Someone Else’s Trunk If…” I decided the time has come to write my own words of wisdom about some of my quirky personality traits. My first thought was to write about being a computer geek. While I saw a lot of potential in this aspect of my life, the real inspiration came to me at 5:30 in the morning when I was watching “Invisible Mom 2.”

    Now I don’t want to go ruining the surprise for those readers out there who have “Invisible Mom, the prequel to Invisible Mom 2” on video tape and plan to watch it later on in the week. The basic plot is that the mother in the family can for some reason turn completely invisible. The only way the other characters know she is around is through seeing the movement of otherwise inanimate objects, hearing her voice, and looking at any recently consumed food in her digestive tract. And sometimes she became visible at just the wrong moment for reasons I don’t understand. I fully expect that aspect of the movie to be completely explained in the next film in the series which is tentatively being called “Invisible Step Mom.”

    So what is so important about this movie? In all honesty, the movie itself is only half of the equation. This movie, and countless others come on in what I refer to as the “golden hours” of the night. It’s too early for HBO to start showing their children’s programming, but it’s too late to spool up another soft porn movie. This seems to be the time when I get the most productive work done. And please keep in mind that the phrase “most productive” is relative to the rest of my day. Sometimes just doing less damage to the world in general can be productive.

    If you are anything like me, you wisely spent this “golden hour” wondering why telephones and calculators have their numbers in a different order. I’m not a brain surgeon, but I suspect these types of random thoughts running about freely in my head while I’m sleeping may contribute to my somewhat abnormal sleeping habits. Well, maybe not having a steady job for the past year might be a contributing factor.

    Just to set the record straight, calculators have the 1,2,3 row on the bottom row while telephones put it on the top row. I’m not really upset about this arrangement, but the fact that it took me 27 years to figure it out bothered me. The 4,5,6 row always seems to be middle and zero is always at the bottom. Why couldn’t everyone agree on a common format?

    After quickly dismissing the idea of getting “everyone” to agree on this, I started thinking which system is better. If you start typing numbers in a word processing document from lowest to highest, the lower numbers would appear to be higher on the screen. However, if you gathered up a bunch of people at a party and arranged them by height you would have the shorter people closer to the ground and the taller ones closer to the ceiling. While it proves a point, this does not make for a very amusing social get together. You know you are at a bad party if someone does this and it becomes a highlight of the evening.

    Of course I haven’t even gotten into zero yet. No matter what, zero appears at the bottom in a row without any other numbers. That doesn’t seem to be very fair to the other numbers who are forced to share. It seems that since zero and one are neighbors on the number line that they should be close together everywhere else. Now every where I go I look to see which order numbers appear. Calculators and full sized computer keyboards put the lower numbers at the bottom. Telephones and remote controls all seem to put the low numbers on tops. Automated Teller Machines go both ways. But I digress. From what, I’m not sure.

    While I couldn’t possibly write down every single thought that I’ve had tonight, here are a few of the other questions that I have been pondering. How much do my lava lamps add to the electricity bill? Should I go out and say hi the person delivering my newspaper? What is Kathleen going to dress up as for Halloween? How long until the mustard in my refrigerator goes bad? Why is the ceiling in my apartment more bumpy than the walls? If you are asking these questions as you stay awake all night, you just might be an insomniac.

  • The decade of the 1980s ushered in many new revolutionary changes that affected every person in this country not living in a shack in remote wilderness area of Montana. Some of these changes included witnessing the new found fame of the denim overall (and nothing else) clad rock group Dexy’s Midnight Runners, electing an actor to the office of President of the United States of America, and having a surprisingly large percentage of the world running around screaming, “Where’s the beef?”

    While all of these events are important to the evolution of the planet, this decade was witness to one of the most critical single advancements in the computer industry. Without intending any disrespect to the Pac Man stand-up video game, the world was never the same after the introduction of the first Personal Computer.

    While various computer systems were available to the general public before the “Personal Computer”, many potential customers were turned off by the disclaimer on the box stating “some assembly required.” For just about any other product in the known world this would mean getting out a Phillips head screw driver and an adjustable wrench. Assembling a computing system of the time required a soldering gun, a high precision metal lathe, and a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering.

    IBM changed all of this with the introduction of its Personal Computer. The whole system was already assembled and loaded with the state of the art operating system known as DOS. All that a new user has to do is to take it out of the box, plug it in, and turn on the power switch. It couldn’t be any easier. Or at least that was the theory.

    From the hardware perspective, the Personal Computer helped standardize computer parts. Since IBM didn’t want to be in the business of manufacturing every component that went into their systems, they helped create standards. This allowed different components to be swapped in a single system. For example, if you were running out of space on the hard drive, you could go to the computer store and buy a bigger drive. After taking the case off the computer, you simply swap the old and new drives. After getting the case back on you turn on the power only to see a blank screen come up. The next step is to put the old drive back in, only to get the same blank screen when it boots up. Finally, you go to the nearest drinking establishment and order a double shot of whiskey as you come to realize the last six months of work is trapped inside an uncooperative computer component.

    Pretty soon there were a few computer component manufactures that got this idea in their heads to build their own Personal Computers. Well, IBM had already seen this coming, and had taken steps to prevent this from happening. They built the Personal Computer around a single chip named BIOS that only IBM manufactured. Without this chip, all the other hardware was not able to talk to each other. In effect, you could not build a Personal Computer unless IBM let you.

    This situation is quite similar to the safe guards put in place in the movie, “Jurassic Park” to keep the dinosaurs from reproducing. And we all know how well that worked out. With the exception of countless bad sequels, the exact same thing happened in the computer industry. One of IBM’s rival companies figured out the exact functionality of the BIOS chip and constructed their own version. This processes of reverse engineering opened up the electronic flood gates. Anyone and their dog could now build their own Personal Computer with only the basic understanding of what was happening inside the computer.

    While IBM didn’t really seem happy about the entire situation, countless new computer companies were cheerfully popping up overnight. They didn’t all survive the test of time, but companies such as Dell and Compaq expanded and eventually came to dominate the industry. This created fierce competition in the industry. The costs of systems was constantly coming down while their speed and capacity was improving. This behavior benefited consumers by having any system they purchased be obsolete by the time they drove home and took it out of the box.

    The development of the Personal Computer changed the way the world looked at electronic devices. For better or worse, everyone had to have a computer to get through their daily lives. Even when they made our lives more complicated it seemed like a good idea at the time to do everything on a computer. Well, that’s all for this week-I’m off to go finish my game of computer solitaire.

  • While there are many, many ways in which computers have been used to make the world a better place to live, the 1970s was witness to the scientifically verifiable best possible use of this emerging electronic technology. No, I’m not talking about the perfection of the Andy Gibb robot duplicate (which ranked 5th over all), but rather the birth of video games.

    Up until this point in time, playing games generally involved social interaction and physical activity. In retrospect, it’s hard to believe that people even bothered with this type of behavior. But this was a time in the history of America when people really were not too concerned with their own health or the general state of the planet. As evidence, many people smoked cigarettes and the Bee Gee’s music was allowed to propagate with little or no government intervention. We didn’t realize back then that the best way to preserve our bodies and minimize physical injury was to sit inside and dedicate large periods of time alone sitting in front of some type of computer controlled output device.

    The first commercially successful video game system was named Pong. This simulation was an exact electronic replication of the game of tennis. The only minor components of the sport removed included: rackets, nets, gravity, wind resistance, the third dimension, and of course, Arthur Ashe. And the ball was square instead of spherical. Despite these limitations, the game of Pong was a tremendous success. This goes to show how a well-run marketing department can make or break the release of a new product. The lead computer programmer for the company described the game as, “two sticks that can move up and down bouncing a ball back and forth.” The packaging of the product in stores proclaimed the game of Pong to be, “Virtual reality fourth dimension alien space tennis with real lasers.”

    The next major video game system to capture the hearts and minds of the American public was the Atari 2600. Unlike the game of Pong, this setup allowed for different game cartridges to be inserted into the main unit. When people grew tired of their existing game collection, they could just drive out to the nearest retail store and buy a few more.

    This system also had the advantage of separating the hardware and the software components of the video game system. Which meant that any Tom, Dick, and Harry could get together in their garage and start making their own video game titles. When this phenomena occurs the results can revolutionize the world. But usually it meant they came out with a few very mediocre titles. While several impressive game titles ran on the Atari 2600, countless forgettable counterparts would sit next to them on the shelves of the store. Unfortunately, consumers had a hard time determining which of these games were worth buying as they all claimed to be some slight variation of “alien space tennis.”

    The Atari 2600 era largely ended with the introduction of the Commodore 64. While not exclusively a video game system, this system included a keyboard and optional floppy disk drive. This meant that anyone who owned a Commodore 64 could write their own programs and distribute them on a floppy disk. Potential computer nerds didn’t even need to work from their garage anymore-code could be written from the comfort of their own living rooms without creating a big mess of wires, circuit boards, and duct tape. In addition to rampant unchecked piracy, this system also led to some of the most well designed video games the world has ever seen. I’ll always lovingly remember my Commodore 64, despite the fact that my mom threw it out when I was away in college.

    The video game industry has been continually improving their systems to keep up with the demands of consumers. While these “consumers” do not have a centralized leader or clear command structure, intelligence reports indicate they demand games that are colorful, make interesting noises, and inspire them to remain motionless for indefinite periods of time even when it is nice enough to go outside and play. The computational resources needed to operate these games is quite impressive. One recent study reported that if all the processing power from all the computers running video games could be harnessed at once, the resulting system would be powerful enough to master the game of chess, sequence all the DNA of the human race, or locate Jimmy Hoffa. Since that isn’t going to ever happen you might as well go to the store and buy “Ultimate Alien Space Tennis 7.”

  • After the concepts involved in the Eniac computer were proved to be a success, people started asking a lot of questions about the future of computational devices. “What else can it do?”, “Can it be made smaller than 200 tons?”, and “Does it come in blue?” were just a few of the many, many thoughts people had about the topic.

    The 1950s and 1960s were quite exciting times for the development of computers. Successors to the Eniac system allowed researchers to gain valuable insights into mathematical and sociological functions of our world. For example, the companies who won large and profitable government contracts to build and maintain computer systems quickly learned to construct their systems with large panels of blinking lights. While a few of the lights actually corresponded to actual parameters related to the machinery such as “power”, “something is going on inside”, and “an unknown error has occurred at location at 57EE:009B”, most of the lights were designed to blink on and off in such a way that was aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

    This functionality proved to be critical when top level defense department officials or members of congress stopped by to see the final results of their considerable expenditures. After a tour of the facilities, the gentlemen would light up their pipes, puff out their chests, and confidently spew out random pleasantries like “Good work men!”, “This is EXACTLY what we need to beat the Commies!”, and “I don’t know about you, Bob, but I think it needs more blue lights.” Eventually the contractors brought in interior decorators during the hardware design phase to coordinate the color schemes of the systems. Some of the individuals who programmed the computers started to develop software that did nothing more than make the lights blink in the most interesting sequence possible.

    Eventually blinking light technology reached a limit and computer designers were forced to explore other avenues. An in depth investigation revealed that in addition to changes in light intensity, the human eye responds positively to periodic rotational motion. Armed with this knowledge, computers were enhanced with state-of-the-art tape drives. While containing little, if any, adhesive properties, these devices were used to store and retrieve information on a long and thin strip of material capable of holding a magnetic charge. The constant back-and-forth motion provided a convincing illusion of productivity. Often times the managers of these facilities would be giving tours of the computer facility while the rest of the office was busy in the break room building elaborate paper fortresses with rolls of scotch tape and reams of used continuous feed paper.

    In addition to the blinking lights and reel-to-reel tape devices, each generation of computers was becoming smaller and more powerful than its predecessor. The development of the integrated circuit allowed designers to eliminate bulky vacuum tubes. These types of technological advancements allowed for the same amount of computational power to occupy a continually shrinking volume of space. This phenomena is often times referred to as the Carnie Wilson effect.

    All of this visual stimulation associated with computing devices led the general public to assume that while computers were useful in some abstract manner, they would eventually become sentient and bent on destroying the human race. While it isn’t mathematically feasible to prove such an event will never happen, many popular films of the era encouraged this concept. One prime example is the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

    After successfully sending its crew half way across the solar system, HAL, the talkative onboard computer system, decides to fling the crew into outer space one at a time just because he had nothing better to do. In all reality that is not how computers of the day would have worked. The worst thing that could have happened was the “fling yourself out the airlock one at a time” light would have lit up. Eventually the crew would have realized this was a computer error and not in the best interest of the mission. If this occurred before everyone followed the instructions one of the remaining crew members would have put a small piece of tape over the light and ignored it for the duration of the movie. I believe this would have all been clearly explained if a logistical error during the final editing process hadn’t caused extensive quantities of a completely different film to accidentally replace the intended ending of the movie.

    While the 1950s and 1960s were a time of extensive change in the world of computers, the true power of these devices were just beginning to be discovered. Will these machines of our own creation, with their hypnotizing blinking lights and magnetic tape drives, indeed take over the world? The world may never know-unless, perhaps, you are Bill Gates.

  • August 24

    For the last two full days of our vacation, we decided to take a road trip with Scott’s parents. The original plan was to drive Scott’s parent’s Volvo, but the word from the repair shop was a cracked cylinder head caused the explosion on the trip home from the airport. While I’m admittedly no automotive mechanic, I think fairly highly of Volvos made in 1988 that have been driven 176,000 miles. But all good things must come to an end, and this was no exception. After a brief discussion, we all agreed the only logical course of action was to break into the local mortuary, steal two cadavers, situate the bodies in the front seat of the Volvo, and roll the vehicle on to the autobahn during the middle of the night.

    While Scott and I were taking in the sights in Berlin, his father was busy trading in the Volvo for something else. After a series of intense negotiations he exchanged the car for a very nice cup of coffee to enjoy while looking for a new vehicle. He eventually agreed to buy another slightly less broken Volvo. I assumed we were going to take the car on our weekend excursion, but in Germany it takes roughly two weeks to buy a used car. I’m not sure what is involved in the whole process, but it starts with multiple signatures, continues with an extensive paperwork trail, and somewhere along the line requires a complete DNA sequencing analysis from all parties involved in the transaction.

    Fortunately, Scott’s father was able to secure a rental car for the weekend. Given the extensive presence of the German automobile industry around Stuttgart, I was expecting to spend the next two days driving around in a Mercedes or BMW. But since the reservation was placed less than the customary thirty weeks in advance, we ended up with an Imbizu. Yes, it’s the best four-door compact diesel that Spain has ever designed and manufactured. Ever.

    August 25

    As much as it pains me to do so, I must admit that the Imbizu is doing a pretty good job of getting us around. It doesn’t do much to make me feel cool, but it does manage to get us around the steep mountain roads. To the best of my knowledge none of the cylinder heads have cracked. That is, of course, if diesel engines have any.

    That is enough about cars. After spending the past eight days with Scott, I can’t help but to notice that he likes to walk a noticeable distance in front of everyone. At first I thought it was just me walking too slow, but now that we are with Scott’s parents I’ve decided he walks faster than everyone in the group. I’ve mentioned it a few times, but he still does it. I don’t really mind except for the fact he is out of earshot, so it makes any kind of conversation rather impractical. I’ve been entertaining myself by calling him “Scout” and envisioning him getting snared in a trap involving a net concealed under a bunch of leaves and attached to a nearby tree. Perhaps I’ve watched a few too many episodes of “Xena Warrior Princess.”

    We have spent the day visiting various castles and their surrounding towns in Germany and Austria. While castles come in many shapes and sizes, the one thing they all seem to have in common is that they are all built on ground that is a lot higher than the rest of the area. The only exception to this rule seems to be the “White Castle” hamburger franchise which generally settles in the crappy part of town all across the Midwestern United States.

    While getting to these structures requires a moderate amount of uphill hiking, seeing them close up is worth the effort. In one village in Austria, we walked up to the ruins of a 12th century defensive outpost. Despite the fact that many of the upper levels had collapsed, you can still see the general design of the building. I kept thinking this is what my apartment is going to look like a few years down the road.

    August 26

    Today we drove through Liechtenstein. Proportionally, I’ve already spent too much time writing about it. I’m not sure how they managed it, but this country is a four mile wide sliver of land sandwiched between Austria and Switzerland. The most notable quality of this country I’ve discovered is they charge you to stamp your passport.

    We rather briefly drove through Switzerland, but most of the time was spent driving on a road next to a large lake. While visually stimulating, I don’t really feel as though I got to experience the true Swiss culture. I didn’t even see a single person drinking hot chocolate. So even though I can add it to the list of countries I’ve been to, I think sometime in the future I’ll come back to get a better look around.

    August 27

    Well, that wraps things up for my trip to Germany and neighboring countries. After spending ten days here I’m definitely ready to be back in Colorado. The public transportation isn’t as good and we don’t have quaint little villas in Colorado, but at least we never had to worry about evil oppressive forces occupying parts of our state. Unless, of course you count Colorado Springs.

  • August 20

    I’m sitting on a train I am moderately convinced is heading towards Berlin. I think the uncertainty of getting on a train in another country where they don’t speak English makes the experience just a bit more exciting. I could just imagine getting off the train only to realize we somehow managed to end up in western Canada. In case you aren’t familiar with the events of my life, I’m in the middle of a ten day vacation trip in Germany with my longtime friend Scott.

    Growing up in Colorado I have developed a resistance to using public transportation. One thing I’ve been noticing is that trains in Germany can go really fast. In addition to numerous messages in German, the electronic message board at the front of the passenger car would occasionally say how fast the train was moving. During the trip the speed of the train would reach 250 kilometers an hour. To put that into perspective for anyone not familiar with the metric system, that speed is 108 times faster than any form of public transportation moves in the state of Colorado.

    After watching the German country side for an hour or so I eventually dozed off. I’m not exactly sure how my brain works, but my overactive imagination doesn’t seem to sleep when the rest of my body is recharging itself. I started dreaming about my apartment back in Boulder. I suppose I need to preface this by saying I’m not the best at keeping my apartment as clean as I possibly could. In my shower I have a circle of rust from a shaving cream can that has been there for, well, a lot longer than I really want to admit. It’s there, and I know it’s there, and it knows I know, but it doesn’t smell funny or seem to be growing, so I generally don’t spend much time worrying about it or attempting to get rid of it. But in my dream, the ring of rust penetrated all the way through the material of the tub and a perfect circle fell through to the floor as I was shampooing my hair. Mental note to self-clean shower upon returning to apartment.

    Our hotel room, which Scott picked out, is quite clean and spacious. And it is right across the street from the “Erotik Museum.”

    August 21

    We started the day traveling to the east side of Berlin. Until 1989 this section of the city was controlled by Communist forces where the general population was forced to wear funny hats and dance the mamushka every night. We took the subway to one of the main squares in East Berlin to get a better idea of what life would have been like under such an oppressive regime. As we walked up the subway stairs one of the first things I saw was a man wearing brightly colored clothes, a large rainbow umbrella, and a strange mechanical contraption around his torso. Upon closer inspection, the equipment was a completely self-contained grill designed for cooking sausages. Say what you want about communism, but they are light years ahead of us in personal hot dog vending devices.

    Despite several navigational errors on the local subway system, we are still in Berlin. Due to a massive misunderstanding in the scale of our map, we decided to walk the entire length of a park located in the center of the city. On the map the park was roughly the width of my thumb. In reality it is much, much bigger. By the time we got to the exact middle of the park we realized the magnitude of our miscalculation. Of course by then we didn’t have any choice but to walk the rest of the way out of the park.

    August 22

    After seeing a few more sights in the morning, we headed back to the station to catch the train back to Stuttgart. I’m not sure why, but the train stations in Germany have a noticeable lack of seats. I guess they decided the trains are so punctual that there isn’t any need to wait for a train-it’s just there when they say it is. Scott and I were sitting on the ground waiting for the train to arrive when what looked like a homeless man started talking to us in German. Being that I can’t even pretend to speak German, I just kind of nodded. When he realized I didn’t know German he got all annoyed and started saying things I can’t repeat here. Not because they were profane and inappropriate, but because we was yelling at me in German which we have already established is not my language of choice for optimal communication. After a few minutes he got bored and walked away, possibly to yell at someone else who doesn’t speak his language.

    These are the highlights from Berlin. Stay tuned next week for the last part of my vacation involving a road trip to the countries of Austria, Switzerland, and, most important, Liechtenstein.

  • No matter how many times it happens to me, I’m never totally comfortable when I am stranded near a nuclear power plant and witness an explosion. I suspect this is a good thing. But, as usual, I’m getting ahead of myself.

    This story is the first of three documenting my recent trip to Germany. If you are anything like me, you may be wondering what exactly I was doing several thousand of miles away from my apartment in Boulder, Colorado. Like every other aspect of my life, it just happened.

    The whole situation started when I decided to accompany Scott (a friend I have known since I was three years old) to visit his parents who recently moved to Stuttgart, Germany. After flying into the airport at Frankfurt we found our luggage and met up with Scott’s parents. We piled our stuff into the back of the used Volvo they purchased after arriving in the country and headed out on the Autobahn.

    I’m not exactly sure what caused the car to overheat on the way back from the airport. I suspect it was either a larger than usual payload, extreme heat and humidity, or what the German people like to refer to as “fahrfegnugen.” Before this trip I had always assumed it to be a condiment for bratwurst. Whatever the reason, we pulled over at a rest stop to investigate the situation in more detail.

    After coming to a complete stop and opening the hood of the car, the three males got out to troubleshoot the situation. A few minutes of quiet contemplation produced three completely different and largely contradictory explanations as to the cause of the overheating. It was either A) the radiator, B) the water pump, or C) the windshield wiper fluid. Always the optimist, I decided to choose the one component in the car which I knew the most about. Having run out of windshield wiper fluid in my own car before, I knew how to handle the situation. The fact that the situation shared no common symptoms with my previous experience in no way influenced my diagnosis of the situation.

    My idea about the windshield wiper fluid being low turned out to be incorrect. After locating the reservoir, it quickly became apparent there was enough of this fluid for the car to operate. Adding to my extensive database of car repair knowledge, I now hypothesize that windshield wiper fluid is not directly related to the regulating the temperature of an automobile engine. At least for Volvos.

    While I did learn something new, it wasn’t proving to be immediately useful in getting the car back in working order. After letting the engine cool down a little bit we slowly opened the radiator cap and noticed it seemed a bit low on whatever type of fluid it was suppose to contain. We ended up pouring a bottle of water I had filled up back at the airport into the radiator. We started the car back up and the temperature returned to an acceptable level. We cautiously got back on the highway.

    After a few minutes, the temperature returned to its “too hot” reading on the dashboard. Lacking any actual numbers on the temperature gauge, I can only make an educated guess as to what constitutes an abnormally high engine temperature. Based on causal observations I believe the far left side of the gauge represents room temperature and the far right side represents the surface temperature of the sun.

    So once again we pull off the highway. This time, however, we stopped right next to a nuclear power plant. This is when I remembered I recently purchased a membership in AAA. I whipped out my cell phone and called the 1-800 number. After explaining the situation with the vehicle overheating the woman on the other end of the line explained to me that AAA stands for something something of America, and that they did not have the resources to dispatch a tow truck to Germany.

    After several additional calls to a more local automobile support group, we were able to get some assistance. A man in bright orange overalls filled the radiator full of water. He then shook one of the rubber hoses that ran from the radiator to some other part of the engine. I don’t think he should have done that. The hose burst open and steam and water came flying out in all directions. The guy wasn’t hurt, but the car seemed to be done moving under its own power for the day.

    Eventually a tow truck arrived and took us all to the local Volvo shop. By then it was after 6 PM on Saturday. Being that we were in Europe the shop had already closed. The sign on the window said, “We will be open again in September-October at the latest.” We left the car at the dealership and took a series of taxis and trains to get the rest of the way back to Scott’s parent’s house.

    The flight from Denver, Colorado to Frankfurt, Germany took roughly nine hours. Getting the rest of the way only took another six. We did all manage to get there without any other difficulties. I learned a lot on the trip, and I’ll never forget how to say in German that, “The automobile has exploded by the nuclear power plant.”

  • The year was 1946- the world was busy with its new, “Can’t we all just get along?” campaign, the United States military was busy building, among other things, the most technologically advanced computational devices the world had ever seen, and the weather seemed, in general, more pleasant than usual. The answer to the first questions is by in large, “No, we can’t all just get along.” The part about the weather turned out to be nothing more than a statistical anomaly. Which leaves the part about constructing computers unexplored. Put your thinking caps on as we prepare to examine this topic in an objective and historically accurate manner.

    In order to make this machine sound more like a cute, furry animal and less like a cold blooded killing machine, the people who came up with the idea in the first place decided to call it “Eniac.” While this name sounds somewhat cute and furry, its meaning comes from an old Czechoslovakian phrase that roughly translates to “factory workers with steel shells who attempt to enslave humanity.” The United States built Eniac after identifying a need to calculate the trajectories for their long range thermonuclear weapons.

    Once constructed, the military also discovered they could use Eniac to beat the Russians at their own game: tic-tac-toe. After months of tedious programming, the system consistently advised players to always go first and pick the center square. Future versions of Eniac were enhanced to play the game show variations of tic-tac-toe such as “Tic Tac Dough” and “Hollywood Squares.” Some of the general pointers for these games generated by Eniac included, “Caution: Wink Martindale is a robot” and, “Agreeing to appear on Hollywood Squares automatically makes you a loser.”

    The heart of the Eniac consisted of thousands of small vacuum tubes that were used to store information while calculations were being performed. While bulky and unreliable compared to the technology available today, these vacuum tubes were a critical component for Eniac to function properly. When a vacuum tube malfunctioned, one of the operators had to locate and replace the tube with a fresh new one. This maintenance consumed quite a bit of the operators time and, by in large, kept them from their favorite activity involving day dreaming of a future where all enemies of the United States could be destroyed with a push of a button.

    The process quickly became tiresome and the military eventually hired low paid foreigners to change out the malfunctioning tubes at night. In the meantime, the men and women who built Eniac could focus on the next objective of deciding on the color of the buttons that would be used to fire the missiles their computer was helping aim all around the world. In the end they chose red.

    This system created somewhat of a security issue when the mathematicians and computational theorist came into work one day and noticed the 200 ton computer was missing. Naturally the cleaning staff was accused of walking off with the system after everyone else had gone home for the evening. These individuals continually proclaimed their innocence in their native language, which really didn’t do anything to help their cause. In fact, it made them look like raving lunatics-exactly the type of individuals who would steal a state of the art computer. Eventually they were cleared of any and all wrong doing after a complete audit of all the militaries computational devices located the lost piece of equipment. For reasons that have never been completely explained, Eniac was accidentally placed in a seldomly used supply closet.

    One rather critical issue with the Eniac computer involved error handling. This system was constructed long before traditional computer screens with the ability to turn completely blue had been invented. To put this time frame into perspective, the top computer scientists of the day were just beginning to coin the phrase “an unknown error has occurred at location 57EE:009B.” Despite incredible advances in the field of computers, much of the behavior of the Eniac system is to this day not completely understood. For example, when an error occurred in a program, the system would calmly and confidently instruct the Navy to launch every long range missile at the five richest kings of Prussia.

    Eniac represented a monumental investment in time and money for the United States. Fortunately, World War II was, for the most part, an “away” war that left our nations infrastructure intact. While most other countries in the world were busy rebuilding roads and buildings, we were able to get a head start on the computer craze. Eniac blazed the path for modern day computers. Most importantly, it started an entirely new belief that given enough time every sufficiently powerful computer will eventually do everything in its power once its operators have let their guards down to take over the planet and enslave humanity.

  • While I am generally happy with my apartment in Boulder, Colorado, I’ve never had an abundance of love for my patio area. In the past I’ve commented on how it directly faces one of the busiest roads in the city and does its best to not foster any type of a social environment. Sure, it’s a good place to keep my barbecue grill, but that’s about it. The other day, however, I found a completely new and unexpected use for this architectural monstrosity. For better or worse, I can use my patio to trap local wildlife.

    This whole situation started, like so many of my stories, with me innocently sitting on my couch watching television. Right in the middle of a rerun of “Family Ties” I heard a strange scurrying noise near my patio. The fun part of living in an apartment involves putting up with everyone else’s noises. Over the past two years I have been able to completely tune out the normal noises of traffic, the lawn getting mowed, and the woman in the apartment above me hosting weekly square dancing competitions. Aside from my Thursday night dreams containing a higher percentage of serenading and “do-si-do”ing than during the rest of the week, these noises do not seem to have a large impact on my life.

    But this sound did not register in my brain as one of the typical apartment sounds. I jumped to the conclusion that a small furry animal was scurrying around near my patio. I stood up and looked outside to see my initial guess was exactly correct. A ground hog was sitting on the concrete barrier of my patio. I’m not sure exactly what he found so interesting about my patio. For a few minutes we just stood there looking at each other. I was thinking to myself, “I hope he doesn’t fall off the concrete ledge and get trapped on my patio.” He was thinking, “I wonder what happened before the Big Bang? Was there just nothingness or did the cosmos exist… OOOOOOOO CRAPPPPPP!!!”

    The next thing I knew the groundhog population of my patio had suddenly increased by one. I have no idea why he decided to make the four foot vertical plunge onto my patio, but it quickly became clear that he was not equipped to make a four foot vertical jump to escape. After recovering from the fall, he ran around in a big circle a few times and then decided the best course of action was to hide in the corner under my barbecue grill.

    I like to think of myself as a pro-animal person. Especially the cute little furry ones. I briefly thought about keeping him as a pet. But then I remembered how they instinctively burrow tunnels for their homes. I looked around my apartment and decided I would probably be better off without having small mammals running around inside my upholstered furniture.

    I wasn’t really sure what to do at this point. The one thing I was sure of was that the groundhog was either unable or unwilling to get out of my porch without some form of outside assistance. I didn’t have any little groundhog sized ladders I could set up to help the poor guy out. Instead I opened up my patio and front door a few inches. I moved my coffee table over to form a path way for the groundhog to get away through my front door.

    I tried gesturing to the animal that it was in its best interest to follow the path I had just constructed. I don’t think I would make a very good professional mime– the groundhog just sat motionless under the grill, oblivious to my frantic pointing towards the door. I decided a more proactive approach was needed. So I moved the grill out from the corner of the porch and tossed a few rocks around him in the hopes of getting him in motion. After about five or six attempts, it became clear that 1) I throw like a girl and 2) the groundhog realized this and didn’t feel any particular reason to move out of the way from these incoming projectiles.

    My attempts were finally successful when I went inside and got the broom out. I knew there was a reason why I bought it years ago. After a few gentle nudges with the broom, the animal finally went into motion. He quickly located the escape route I created for him and scurried out the front door. Problem solved. I’m not sure what exactly I have learned from this experience. I suppose the moral of this story is that groundhogs are not very smart. The odds of them suddenly progressing through an evolutionary advancement and enslaving humanity do not seem to be very good at this point.

  • Part two of this series left off with the ancient computational tool known as the abacus. From there we fast forward through history to the nineteenth century. Sure, a lot of important things happened in that time frame, but none of it was really central to the advancement of the computer. Most of that time was spent fighting each other, fighting off the plague, and fighting over how much it should cost to paint the ceilings in prestigious religious establishments.

    These events are part of what is known as the “Dark Ages.” Despite the fact that on average the amount of sunlight the planet received had not changed, the people on the planet were depressed, wore dark clothes and sunglasses all the time, and didn’t spend a lot of time learning the ways of the abacus. In more informal situations, many historians refer to the period of human development as the “pimply moody teenage years.” This situation did very little to stimulate the creative juices of the general population.

    The next major advancement in the area of computational machinery came in the late 1800s in a rather unlikely form. No, I’m not talking about evil alien time traveling robot monkeys who ruthlessly scavenge the planet for shiny pieces of scrap metal. At the time of this writing the monkeys in question have only achieved limited success in building their time machine. The piece of equipment to which I’m referring relates to, of course, the textile industry.

    At this point in time many nations of the world were busy building expansive factories and cutting down vast forest lands to keep the factories up and running. A few individuals focused their time and attention to making the world a better place to live. Despite the dark ages being over for the most part, being optimistic and proactive was not very fashionable at the time. Even so, some of these people voiced the opinion that cutting down the forests and building factories that polluted the air wasn’t very good for the planet. Oddly enough, these people tended to die in unfortunate industrial accidents such as falling into smoke stacks or having large trees fall on their house in the middle of the night.

    A few slightly less radical individuals got together and decided the world might be a better place to live in if instead of producing endless quantities of drab colored fabric, the textile factories made blankets with images of cute little bunny rabbits woven into the cloth. After looking into the situation, they discovered it was quite simple to produce fabric made of a single color, and quite difficult to integrate mammals into the design.

    To solve this problem, they designed a revolutionary new weaving loom that used a special series of cards with holes in various positions. The individual strings on the loom would be positioned based on whether there was a hole in the punch card at that location. A series of these cards allowed for intricate designs to be produced with little additional effort. The guy operating the machine does not need to know the exact details of why there are random looking holes in the punch cards. They just slide the “bunny rabbit” cards into the machine until enough fabric has been produced. Then they can quickly stop the machine and put in a different pattern, such as “evil monkey robots.”

    For various reasons this device was never a wide spread commercial success. In addition to being bulky and expensive, whenever any of the two dozen delicate threads feeding into the machine broke, the blanket produced was totally solid with the exception of a message in the exact center that would read “an unknown error has occurred at location 57EE:009B” along with a special 1-800 number and web address to contact for further assistance. Since neither the telephone nor the Internet had been invented yet, the technical support department had quite a bit of free time to pursue other activities such as creating loom patterns that produced wildly inappropriate images of the high ranking political figures of their day.

    While this may seem like a small technological advancement, this new design allowed for information to be stored on punch cards and used on different machines. The designers probably didn’t know it at the time, but a hundred years into the future this concept would be used as a fundamental component of modern day computers.

    This completes another installment on how computers work. So tonight when you crawl into your bed with your special Mr. Honey Bunny blanket, you can sleep a little easier knowing how it came to be. And don’t worry too much about the evil alien robot monkeys. The odds of them suddenly materializing in your bedroom are rather slim. But on the off chance they do launch an offensive attack, don’t let them see that new sliver filling on your back molar.

  • I’ve always had a healthy respect for Kathleen– the woman living in the apartment directly above me. In most respects she is an ideal neighbor. While we aren’t exactly the closest of friends, when we do run into each other we usually have a pleasant conversation about what is new and exciting in our lives. She even accepted my invitation to watch the game at my last Super Bowl party. Always concerned about making too much noise, she even asked me once if running her dishwasher after 10 PM was going to be too loud for me. Despite all this, I can’t seem to shake the notion that Kathleen spends her free time raising marsupials.

    Even though my knowledge of biology is limited to reading National Geographic stories while sitting in the dentist’s office waiting room, I am almost positive that kangaroos are not indigenous to the state of Colorado. Sometimes after Kathleen leaves for work in the morning I hear the unmistakable sound of rhythmic thumping from her apartment that could only be produced by small mammals hopping around. At first I just chalked it up to my overactive imagination. All that changed a few weeks ago on a warm summer night when I was sitting out on my patio waiting for a friend to come over. Kathleen’s patio door must have been open because I couldn’t help but to hear what she was saying. In a playful baby voice she kept saying, “Who is my favorite kangaroo? You are-yes you are!” The last trace of doubt was removed when she replaced her old regular license plates on her car with a customized set with the letters “LVN ROOS”.

    While I like to think of myself as a fairly liberal individual who doesn’t like to poke my nose into other people’s business, I just can’t sleep well at night knowing what is going on in Kathleen’s apartment. What could I do if the kangaroo in question gets bigger and crashes through the floor into my living room when I’m sitting on my couch? My apartment is messy enough as it is without the ceiling caving in and kangaroos hopping about wildly out of control. And that doesn’t even address the issue of my damage deposit.

    Fortunately, the city of Boulder passed an ordinance to protect not only myself, but the countless other individuals in the area who live their lives in constant fear of exotic animal related mishaps. The Boulder City Council recently passed legislation that will help get all of the kangaroos out of the city once and for all. In addition to the aforementioned marsupials, the law also forbids individuals from owning bears, skunks, weasels, otters, badgers, venomous reptiles, raccoons, elephants, seals, sea lions, hyenas, anteaters, sloths, armadillos, mongooses, hippopotami, rhinoceri, giraffes, camels, zebras, monkeys, chimpanzees, alligators, and crocodiles.

    It’s about time that the City Council members climbed down from their ivory tower and created legislation that helps out the regular Janes and Joes of the world. Just the other day I was watching some children playing on the large bronze animals in the center of the Pearl Street Mall when a hungry pack of hyenas came along and… well, lets just say it was not a pleasant situation. The owner of the hyenas didn’t realize the animals had chewed through the six foot high electrified barb wired fence until after the damage was done. And you really can’t fault the hyenas- their instincts tell them to gather in packs and chase down the slowest mammals in the immediate area. The parents of the mauled children and most of the witnesses came to the conclusion that despite the extensive effort made to contain these animals, the owner of the hyenas was largely to blame. Without any exotic pet ordinance to back them up, the police officer at the scene could only give the owner a fifty dollar fine for violating the city leash law.

    Exotic animal maulings frequently go unreported in city of Boulder. Newspapers only have so much space to report the news each day. While the reports regarding the JonBenet Ramsey murder have slowed to a trickle, the reports detailing the mistakes made during the investigation keep flowing into the papers. And of course the public needs to know about the reports of people who are upset about people who criticized anything involving the investigation. Given the need for perpetual coverage of this still unresolved situation, the true cost of exotic animal ownership may never be known.