Neanderthal Programming

As technology marches on, life gets easier for each generation. I personally was never that curious about the struggles of my parents and grandparents generations, and how they had to live their lives and perform their work with the now seeming antiquated science and technology of their times. So I was taken back a bit when my son first asked me about a personal budget and finance management program that I had written for my own personal use back in the 80s, that somehow survived right up to the introduction of the iPhone and its modern day world of applications decades later.  

He and I share an interest and a passion for programming, and a career in IT and it turns out that he is curious about the challenges, trials and tribulations of my programming this application back in the day. So I’ll try to address questions he posed to me through this story.

Although I was taught about the value and importance of saving money by my parents early in life, I never really had a need to track and monitor my income and expenses until Mary and I started living together in the real world and had our own responsibility for basic expenses.  My parents definitely enjoyed some level of moderate affluence and were always able to handle any bills that came in yet I have this lasting image in my mind of my father sitting at the dining room table on a Sunday morning, bills and envelopes strewn all over the table, as he exhorted his anger and frustration over having to pay them all. I told myself right then and there that when my time came, I would always have the money set aside and ready to go to pay any bill that ever came in.  I may not be happy about it either, but I’d be calm, cool and without anger. 

When Mary and I started out living together, it was two years before the introduction of the IBM PC; local and wide area networks and the Internet itself were not yet on the commercial scene.  Information in general was never at your fingertips; you always had to go out and search for it.  I came to understand the value of a so-called envelope budget system where every type of expense or savings could be individually categorized and tracked, but I had no way at all to automate it.  So I did what was not unusual at the time. I decided to do it by hand, using extra wide accounting ledger type stationery, folding it way out to accommodate all of my categories in columns.

Whenever we received any income, I would manually sprinkle it across the categories to ensure that when an upcoming bill arrived, the money would be there. It was tedious and tiring but I did it for every piece of income we got and when we paid each bill I would decrement the appropriate column.

Shortly thereafter, I began to work at Canon, programming their proprietary microcomputer in a language called the Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, a.k.a. BASIC. This Canon microcomputer had a full keyboard and a one line 20 character display.  We used legal sized yellow pads upon which to write our code, then rekeyed it one line at a time into the micro computer. As I performed my job programming things like certificate of deposit and installment loan calculations for banks, I realized that I had the knowledge and the tool to program my own budget application for myself.  BASIC was a language that ran through an interpreter at the time and the programming process was fairly easy and primitive with no compiling required. I implemented a couple of menu options, but the one that paid the most dividends over the old hand method was the automating of the sprinkling of the income into the different categories, at the touch of the button. You could then step through all the categories one at a time, and see the current balance for each on the one line display.  This was revolutionary for the time but today seems Neanderthal.

The IBM PC was also now emerging into the marketplace, and companies like Canon were  introducing more sophisticated models to compete. Canon introduced a much more advanced microcomputer with a full monochrome CRT display, with 24 rows of screen with 80 characters each, quite a leap from a one line 20 character display.  

Like the iPhone was to do decades later, the IBM PC spawned an entire industry of third-party tools, both hardware and software, that greatly expanded its capability.  A company by the name of Ashton-Tate released a relational database management system within an English like high level procedural programming language called dbase II, that quickly came to dominate microcomputer software development at the time and revolutionized the industry.  

By this time, I had transitioned to working for an independent Canon dealer, and we quickly adopted Ashton-Tate’s dbase II as our programming development language for the financial applications that we were delivering to credit unions. As I worked more and more with dbase II and its successors dbase III and III plus, I began to program with it as a hobby for my personal needs such as address books and cassette tape labels. It seemed like there was nothing I could not develop in dbase. So I turned my attention to my budget needs.

Like its birther the IBM PC, dbase itself too spawned a universe of third party accessories including code generators, compilers, and magazines.  Again, absent the internet, there was no such thing as user groups or discussion boards; the Data Based Advisor periodical became the ultimate reference and learning tool for dbase programming. I waited patiently each month for its arrival in my mailbox eager to soak up its knowledge.  I also went to bookstores to buy additional references.

Programming back then would seem primitive today. I had to program on my one and only computer, ensuring my own backups to the media available then, and storing them off site for maximum protection.  The coding itself for this application was fairly trivial, not rocket science by any means, but I always strived to write the most efficient code possible because the IBM PC microcomputer architecture provided limiting constraints with memory, storage and raw computing power. 

Using the third party compiler, Clipper, I created an executable file so that along with the dbase data files, could be ported to any other machine and would not require the native dbase package to run.

As I continued to embellish my program, eventually it reached full functionality for my purposes and I just kept on using it as the years went by.  As microcomputer technology marched on, from text based to graphical based user interfaces to handheld devices, I just kept using my program because it did everything I ever dreamed of for budget management, my way.  Ultimately, the evolution of the microcomputer architectures and operating systems approached a point of no return, rendering all software originally dependent on such antiquated technologies incompatible and unusable.

Fortunately, for me, this did not happen until the iPhone, and its own world of third-party applications had taken over the world; and applications, such as the one I struggled to conceive and develop decades ago now seemed like they were a dime a dozen. I found one particular application that did absolutely everything that mine had done and would run on any of today’s modern devices from iPhones to iPads to laptops and eventually I said goodbye to my passionately developed budget system.

Oh yes, and I’m still able to pay all the bills, and from any place at any time!

Going Down the Road Feeling Bad, Bad, Bad

Mary and I have made countless amounts of road trips throughout our history, virtually without incident. There were the one hundred mile hops each way from Morristown, NJ to Long Island; the legendary four hundred mile rides with Casey fogging up the windows from Sharon, PA; many a ride to Boston and back, drives up and down the west coast of California, seven hundred mile drives through both Tuscany and Greece’s Peloponnese Peninsula and so on. Put in enough time and sometimes the odds can catch up with you. There is an old superstition that bad things happen in threes.

Part One:  Friday, October 6, 2023.  Going Down the Road Feeling Bad.  

We were in Sicily en route from Agrigento to Villa Romano, which was the only inland destination we were to visit during our three weeks in Sicily. All of the rest was coastal. As our route eventually left the island’s perimeter, we got our first taste of navigating Sicily’s more internal road system, through valleys, mountains and desolate areas. Roads there are one lane each way, and at times even less, almost never with shoulders, fences or guardrails terrain notwithstanding.  

We were fortunate to have both good cell phone service as well as a roving internet hot spot in the car, so we were well provisioned with navigational technologies. At some point though, we missed a turn from one “highway” to another, the technologies recalibrated, we still had but eight miles to go to the next “highway,” and we bravely decided to continue along this alternate route. As it got more remote and desolate, the quality of the road further diminished. We navigated stretches where there was only one lane for both directions to share, let alone encased in possible car trapping mud; and portions of the road where craters challenged your ability to even continue. And yet we continued. And then things got bad.  

A rectangular international sign with diagonal black and white stripes (clearly denoting “Do Not Enter”) that must have been suspended across this road to ward off travelers, remained partially hung about a foot above the road very low where it must have fallen. We were now about four miles away from that next “highway.”  After much discussion, we together somehow made perhaps the worst decision that we have ever made. I got out and stood on the rope holding the sign so Mary could traverse it, I got back in the car, and we continued. On one side, this one lane road hugged a cliff with the typical absence of any shoulder, fence or guard rail; the other side hugged the base of more rising cliffs upon which sat rocks and boulders ready for the fall. The road itself had more and more larger and larger cratered holes, yet we persevered, now without any cell service or roving hotspot. With less than one half mile to go, the road simply ended, cliffs on both sides, nothing ahead but the valley below.  I was reminded of the famous “Bridge to Nowhere” that symbolized Stony Brook University during my time there.  

It wasn’t too clear how we were going to extricate ourselves from this situation. Ever since we missed that earlier turn, we’d not seen any other vehicles, pedestrians or any signs of humanity.  To be helpful, I started inventorying the different ways that I thought we might perish here. There was the classic the car falls off the cliff on the left; the right side cliff boulders above crashing down upon us; or getting stuck in the mud trying to escape and dying of starvation with no food, water, phones or people around for miles.  

With no other choices left, I got out to act as traffic cop for Mary to try a K-turn, not your grandmother’s three point K-turn that you learn in drivers ed. No, each maneuver here adjusted the car only a matter of inches. Over the course of about a half hour, with me eyeing the cliff edge, monitoring the rocks above, and providing hand signals, Mary executed about a one hundred point K-turn, eventually getting us turned around. So back we went, through the mud patches, around the craters, across that striped diagonal sign, found our missed turn, and coasted to victory making it to Villa Romano. In the end, over three weeks we circumnavigated the entire island of Sicily, totalling seven hundred fifty miles with that one lone incident. But what an incident it was! 

Part Two:  Monday, November 13, 2023.  Going Down the Road Feeling Bad, Bad

Our daughter was scheduled to have a minor medical outpatient procedure requiring brief anesthesia, in a building in midtown Manhattan. She’d take the LIRR to get there and we agreed to meet her there with our car so that afterwards she’d have an easy ride home, post anasthesia.  We made the always fun hop from East Islip to Seventh Ave. in Manhattan, between 27th and 28th Streets, where Mary waited in the car out front while I accompanied Erica and waited for her upstairs. Though it was to be a prompt and quick procedure, while waiting, Mary did wind up having to move the car a block away and settled in on 26th Street just off the corner of Seventh Ave.

As Erica emerged from the procedure, was discharged and we exited, we called Mary to meet us whereupon she informed us that the car would not start. We walked the block over to get in with her, and nothing was in fact working. To cut to the chase, Mary had been waiting for us for about just under an hour with nothing but the car radio seemingly on, and we now know that the battery had drained. Years ago, in older cars, when you turned on the radio, only the radio powered on. Today’s cars have enough electronics in them to launch a space shuttle, and when you turn on the radio, you actually are engaging a large set of electronics. So we called AAA, waited about two hours for them, while Erica decided she needed to get home to continue work and left for Penn Station after all. When she texted us that she was back home, safe, in Long Beach, we were still awaiting AAA. They eventually arrived, jumped our battery, found no other issues diagnostically, and we got underway to return home to East Islip in what would become a two hour ride, without Erica, just in time for the exodus during the Manhattan rush hour.

Part Three:  Friday, December 29, 2023. Going Down the Road Feeling Bad, Bad, Bad. 

This year’s winter snowbird adventure would feature our second time driving from NY to Florida.  We had rearranged our schedule slightly so we would arrive in Florida in time to attend a Grateful Dead related concert in Fort Lauderdale on New Year’s Eve. But first, after an overnight stop in Fairfax, VA, we would spend a few days with our friends in Greensboro, NC.  

We departed Greensboro on the morning of December 29 with our overnight destination being Brunswick, GA; a small town where we’d secured lodging and identified a nice seafood restaurant. The ride, with a couple of stops, would take about seven hours.  As we eventually made our way southeast enough to finally join up with Interstate 95 South, we began to hit pockets of traffic. Subserviently obeying Waze, at times we dipsy doodled around on side roads, departing from and eventually rejoining Interstate 95. On one such diversion that kept us on a side road for fifteen miles, immediately upon reentering the interstate, we found ourselves with our rear driver’s side tire flat!  We were six hours complete in our seven hour journey, but it was not to be. With a car filled with belongings that we packed for three months in Florida, the car hobbled off the highway onto its narrow grassy shoulder along an incline. We learned that our car did not come with a spare tire, but did have a tire repair kit that would require us unpacking the entire car to access it as cars and trucks whizzed by feet away on 95. It likely would not meet our needs either given our overall situation. Once again, time to call AAA.  

While we waited we contacted the service center we knew we’d be towed to, to discuss our tire dilemma, identify options and understand the impact. To begin with, they said we had to get the car there by 6:00 pm, or wait until the next day.  AAA’s original estimate of a 70 min wait became more like 100 min, but they eventually showed up, and somehow, we got to the service center minutes before 6:00 pm. They did their best to go out of their way to help us, deciding to look at the car immediately, but eventually found the damage to the tire from a large thick nail to be too severe to repair.  No problem, they would be able to pick up a brand new replacement tire for us the next morning at 8:00 am, transport it to their facility by 8:30, and have us on our way by 9:00 am. No problem, except that we could not use our nonrefundable hotel in Brunswick and had to acquire a second hotel where we were, which was Hardeeville, SC. The next morning, they delivered on everything they promised.  By 9:00 am, we were in fact back on our way south, only about 90 minutes behind schedule.  

Going where the climate suits my clothes

We made it, stopping in Mary’s mother’s place in Fort Pierce on December 30, staying in a room in Fort Lauderdale after the New Year’s Eve show, and moving into our snowbird place on North Hutchinson Island to start the new year off. 

I don’t envision much road time now for a while, and I feel like we’ve paid our dues. These were humbling experiences, and as the song from which this title laments, “I don’t wanna be treated this a way!”

A Year for the Ages

While we cherish each and every year, 2023 has turned out to be one for the ages for Gary and Mary. It Was Year 3 of our retirement era, and Erica and Mike’s wedding date of June 16 had long been the singular focus for this year, a story well chronicled elsewhere including the June 25 edition of Newsday. Throughout the year, aside from the massive wedding preparations, we made some visits to see Diana and Rush in Philadelphia, Erica and Mike in Long Beach, and our first look see at Michael and Deanna’s new home in Smithtown.  Add in our now usual major travel plans, summer on Fire Island, and a little snowbird time and the year was filled up. Things got a little more complicated for us with announcements from our two favorite rock behemoths that they’d be touring during the year: Dead and Company, who announced their final year of touring as a band, and Bruce Springsteen, returning to perform with his E Street band after a seven year break. With both acts full of septuagenarians, we decided to pull out all the stops and see as much as we could while these opportunities are still there.  With all that and more, here’s how our year unfolded.

January.  As the prior year’s holiday season wound down, we found ourselves both sick with intense and lingering colds, virtually bedridden on New Year’s Eve and too ill to attend our friends’ New Year’s Ever party or even enjoy the last of the wines that we now order from Tuscany. Things would soon turn for the better. We basically spent the first month of 2023 in a waterfront condo in Grand Cayman with our friends Irene and Steve, also joined for a week by Michael and Deanna.

February.  After a quick return home, we spent the last eighteen days of February alone in a tiny apartment in Pompano Beach, FL, one long block from the beach. We walked most days three miles along a beachfront promenade and then spent the rest of the day on the beach. We met up with our friends Michael and Debora there for the Super Bowl and also spent a couple of days in Fort Pierce with Mary’s mom and extended family, obligatory boat ride included. 

March. We spent eighteen days in Hawaii.  First, we circled the Big Island by car, enjoying the lush green Hilo side with rainforests, botanical gardens, hikes to waterfalls and caves, and a visit to a chocolate farm. Then it was a night at Hawaii Volcano National Park in the only lodge at the volcano itself, with Kilauea’s steam vents smoking right outside our window, followed by hikes to see petroglyphs and a walk through an underground lava tube. We capped it off with a few nights in Kona, whales outside our waterfront condo, a whale watching boat ride, some snorkeling, attending a luau, and finally holding seahorses in our hands in the world’s only seahorse conservatory. Then we flew over to Oahu for a week on Waikiki Beach in Honolulu. We toured historic sights such as the Iolani Palace and Queen Emma’s Palace, caught up with long time resident friends Lauri and Albert, went on another whale watching expedition, this time on a 34 foot boat with only six people aboard, and spent a day on the only beach we’ve ever seen that could rival Fire Island, Kailua Beach. We also enjoyed three outings for Dim Sum in Honolulu.

Returning home for the latter part of March, we took off again in late March, flying to Greensboro to begin a Bruce Springsteen touring week with Irene and Steve. We saw shows in Greensboro, Washington DC, and Madison Square Garden; in between we saw the Civil Rights Museum in Greensboro, the National Zoo in DC, enjoyed some homemade jambalaya, and squeezed in a group dinner with Barbara and John in Virginia.  

April.  Finally based for a while in our condo in East Islip, we attended yet another home wedding in Sayville for our niece Robyn.  Other local outings were to see New York, New York on Broadway, and a Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams concert in Patchogue. The rest of our spring time condo life was filled with walks, going on bike rides, working out, and the intensifying wedding prepping.

May.  We saw Camelot on Broadway after an afternoon in the Central Park Zoo followed by some Dim Sum. Then we spent some time moving into Ocean Bay Park at Fire Island and prepping the beach house for its role in the upcoming wedding celebration. We attended the Memorial Day Kickoff party at Schooner’s Inn there. 

June.  On the road again – another flight to Greensboro, this time for a week of Dead and Company.  First it was the show in Charlotte with Irene and Steve, another drive to Virginia with another dinner with Barbara and John, then the show in Bristow.  Then we parted company, renting a car to drive back home, stopping at Don Peppe to cap off this trip; one week later we went to the final David Bromberg Big Band concert in the Beacon Theater in NYC.

For the mid June wedding extravaganza, we had a revolving door of guests in both our East Islip condo and our beach house at Ocean Bay Park. The rehearsal dinner was June 15, the wedding itself on June 16 (again, well chronicled elsewhere) and the next day afterparty at Schooner’s on Fire Island.

A few days later, it was the two Dead and Company shows here in New York at Citi Field, accompanied at timew by Mitch and Sara and all three of our kids.  Another few days later, we flew to Indiana to see Allison and Mike and meet our new greatnephew, Maverick. We attended the Dead and Company show there in Noblesville, Indiana, with the longest entry line I have ever experienced in hundreds of shows in dozens of states across decades.  

July.  Back to Ocean Bay Park for some more quality beach time while living with Erica and Mike. In mid July it was time for one more show tour. We flew to San Francisco for a week with Mitch and Sara.  We saw Graham Nash perform solo in Berkeley, went twice for Dim Sum, hit the beach at the Pacific Ocean, and saw two of the final three Dead and Company shows in Oracle Park on San Francisco Bay.  Then it was back home and back to the beach.

August.  We spent most of our time on the beach, leaving only overnight for a wedding in Pennsylvania, and another Broadway Show, A Beautiful Noise. Gary also enjoyed his birthday present of a Yankees game with Michael.

September. This time it was Irene and Steve making the trip to us, staying in our condo, and joining us for yet another Bruce Springsteen concert on his home turf in Metlife Stadium in New Jersey. Then we enjoyed one more run at Ocean Bay Park, before decommissioning the house and moving back home, returning to our walks together and our working out regimens.  

October.  Our long awaited much anticipated trip to Sicily had arrived. We flew to Palermo where we spent several days based there to start. Overall, we were in Sicily for three weeks, driving 750 miles circling the entire island independently, where we stopped or resided in Palermo, Monreale, Mondello, Segesta, Castello de Mare de Golfo (where Mary’s maternal grandmother was born), Trapani, Selinunte, Agrigento, Villa Romana del Casale, Ragusa, Modica, Scicili, Noto, Ortigia, Siracusa, Mount Etna Wineries, Taoromina and Cefalù.  After returning home, at the end of the month Gary and Erica went to see Some Like It Hot on Broadway after some NY Dim Sum.

November.  Gary and Mary saw Kimberly Akimbo on Broadway, followed by dinner at our NY staple, Tony’s DiNapoli, complete with an opera singing waiter.  Then time for another breather with more condo life with walks, workouts and enjoying our fireplace. Gary then accepted a volunteer role as the Secretary of the HOA at our condo complex. We drove Erica and Mike from Long Beach to Newark Airport, launching them on their delayed honeymoon to South Africa.  

December.  As we prep for this year’s holiday season, we eye our plans for an early departure from Long Island on the very day after Christmas. We’ll stop for a quick visit with Irene and Steve in Greensboro, before winding up in Fort Lauderdale for New Year’s Eve, attending a Grateful Dead related side band’s New Year’s Eve concert.  

Then, as we turn the page and look forward to 2024, another singular focal point has emerged albeit in a somewhat different manner –  Michael and Deanna’s October 11 wedding.  Stay tuned, here we go again …

Business Travel (A Storyworth Story)

Traveling for business was never something that I wanted to do. I’m a homebody and we have a core value in our relationship of minimizing time apart. Yet when you have a job, it usually comes with some sort of sacrifice. And so it was for me, that when I ascended to senior level IT work at the FAA, that some travel requirements came along with it.

During the first half of my career, I typically traveled for a work week two or three times annually; during the second half it was more often one or twice per year. The travel was for several reasons: management training, information systems security training, federal contract administration training, both departmental and organization wide IT Management conferences, and Gartner (IT research) Conferences. The smaller conferences, departmental IT Managers, were fifteen people; the larger ones exceeded one thousand.  

I got to experience presentations by some extraordinary individuals. At one IT security conference, the keynote speaker was Frank Abagnale, the con man upon whom the movie, Catch Me If You Can is based. His presentation was so moving that he was rewarded with a one thousand person standing ovation. At one of the Gartner Conferences, the keynote speaker was former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who turned out to be as amusing and funny as she was insightful and intelligent.

Unquestionably for me, the highlight of my extracurricular opportunities afforded by these travels was our departmental IT Managers excursion to Wrigley Field in Chicago to see a Cubs game, albeit a night game.  Although our CIO led us through some team building exercises during the game itself, my time in that historic landmark is something that I will never forget.

A close second was our IT Managers private excursion into the San Diego Zoo after one of our conference days when the zoo had closed in the evening to the public. This included up close encounters via the zookeepers with some of the animals and an opportunity to feed the elephants handfuls of peanuts with no one else around but our group.

After a similar day in Atlanta, we had a private excursion to the Atlanta Aquarium.  One time in Dallas, when a March blizzard delayed my departure by a day, I went to what was once the Texas School Book Depository, now known as the Dallas County Administration building, to stand in the very spot that was Lee Harvey Oswald’s vantage point during the JFK assassination.

Many other opportunities were afforded me during these trips.  I walked the beach and boardwalk in Ocean City, NJ. I biked from the FAA’s Center for Management Executive Learning in Palm Coast, FL over a bridge to Flagler Beach, where I walked and collected large scallops shells. I  saw other baseball games including the Kansas City Royals (twice), Washington Nationals and Texas Rangers. I saw the NBA’s Knicks play as the road team in Atlanta, playing in the Georgia Dome, and got their announcer Walt Frazier’s autograph there for my son. I saw David Robinson go up against Shaquille O’Neal in the Alamodome in San Antonio and also enjoyed the city’s Riverwalk. I was able to have Mary join me in Palm Springs, FL for a side trip to Disney World. She also met me after a conference in Scottsdale, AZ where we spent a few days at the Grand Canyon.  

My travels that I recall took me to San Diego, Fort Worth, Dallas, Chicago, Kansas City, Washington DC, San Antonio, Boston, Ocean City NJ, Scottsdale AZ and Atlanta, some more than once. Each of these ventures came along with interesting back stories, perhaps to be told another time. Regrettably, I never got to enjoy the FAA’s holy grail of travel back then, as several others did, to Alaska. Maybe it’s time to unretire.

Relaxing and Stress Management (A Storyworth Story)

Hang on for a minute, let me turn on this album. Ok … Why is it that I almost always need and want to be listening to music, either as a primary experience or very often, secondarily as a background to the other tracks of life as they unfold? Why do I stagger, first thing in the morning, still not fully awake after powering on the coffee pot, across the living room to turn on my stereo? Why must I start up a choice nugget on the car stereo before I even back out of the garage or driveway?  Why must I grab a portable speaker before heading out to a park or overnight trip somewhere? 

Music. 

As told in another story, I grew up in a household headed by a lifelong professional musician and music educator, so I was nurtured into an environment that worshiped music, albeit a different dialect than ones I would subsequently adopt more feverishly. Also as told elsewhere, this was an era that immediately preceded and then gave birth to the Internet. Like all other types of data or information back then, you did not yet carry music around on your person, rather, it took time, effort, money and a collection of more primitive equipment to obtain or receive music and then play it out loud. 

Our move, at my age 13, to our second apartment in Queens facilitated my first awakening in music interest. With my parents’ new stereo  FM receiver, turntable and speakers in the living room, at times I now had my own access to it to explore. Like my contemporaries of that time, at first it was the pop AM radio scene that gave us one hit wonders, bouncy songs, and hints of how rock and roll might further develop.  Some such standouts included Alone Again Naturally, American Pie, Brown Sugar, Song Sung Blue, Me and Bobby McGee and Heart of Gold. Shortly thereafter with the album rock format introduced, the place to be was WNEW-FM on New York radio. Incredibly, now, you could hear a whole side of Abbey Road, Eat a Peach or more the more thematic Dark Side of the Moon or Days of Future Passed on the radio! 

My awakening rose to the next level upon my entrance to Stony Brook University in the Fall of 1973, at a unique and turbulent time in our history. The campus was dominated by the anti-establishment student base’s endless rock album playing: indoors, outdoors, everywhere and all the time. The Allman Brothers new album at the time, Brothers and Sisters, seemed to dominate the sound landscape as all over campus you could hear its big hit catchy hit embraced by the mainstream, Ramblin’ Man, or it more surreal peek at one direction where rock was heading with the lengthy instrumental and bouncy tune, Jessica. The Grateful Dead’s two peak studio albums, American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead, supplemented that soundscape nicely.  A major factor in how cool you were was what kind of album collection you had. I got exposed to endless new sources and genres of music, in a day to day environment where the default communal state was to always have some playing. At certain significant moments, like when Saturday Night Live aired, we may have watched and listened to television, but most all other television we watched was sports and we usually did it with the sound off and the music playing.  

During these years, I first encountered recorded live Grateful Dead music, and a few years later, attended my first show. While I recount some of those tales in another story, suffice it here to say that this 800 pound gorilla forever made me a lover of live music first and foremost.

It turns out that there is plenty of science and research supporting the idea that music actually makes you feel better.  Findings include that blood flows more easily when music is played. Music lowers the heart rate, blood pressure and the stress hormone cortisol, while elevating mood, and boosting production of the feel good dopamine, serotonin and endorphins. 

Our ever advancing technology is as big a factor as any in broadening our ability to have music in more places, at more times and with full mobility.  From the gigantic clunkers known as boon boxes or ghetto blasters that often required transport upon one’s shoulder, to the then revolutionary Sony Walkman enabling CD portability, to Apple’s Ipod that spawned an MP3 playing industry, to our current ubiquitous internet based wireless streaming capability, music has become easier and easier to integrate into more and more aspects of our day to day life. 

So there you have it. It reduces stress and anxiety.  It just makes us feel better.  It’s available to us everywhere we go. The very act of listening reminds me of one of the most formative periods of my life. And, oh, hang on for another minute, it’s time to flip that album.

Two Coasts, Two Hosts — with the Most (A Storyworth Story)

Two Coasts, Two Hosts — with the Most.

When a couple of our best friends decided to move to California after their wedding in 1985, It was hard not to be happy for them as they chased their dream. It’s now almost 49 years since we first met, and while we each have a couple of friends whom we’ve known even longer, the good times that we have had together have generally transcended most others. Even so, back then it was initially unclear to me how many more could now easily unfold moving forward. Over the years, their family events drew them back east for week or two visits, typically anchored by staying with us as their base camp. We too made several more vacation oriented trips to their west coast, staying with them, also joining in their family weddings, other family and friends events out there, and catching a concert or two as well. In fact, their family excepted, we likely hold the record for most visits there by friends from back east.

All of this transpired over five decades through the birth and raising of children, moving into different homes, and traversing careers that have now thankfully landed us all in retirement. Collectively, we have five wonderful children, all of whom have graduated college, many with graduate degrees, who have either married or found their significant other, and who have bought or are planning to buy their own homes.  

2023 is shaping up to be quite an unforgettable year for us, and if the second half is anything like the first half, it may rise to its own full length story one day. For now, a look back at the one month period from mid June to mid July further informs the endurance and prosperity of this particular friendship. People move all the time and it’s not uncommon for great friends to visit each other despite living at opposite ends of the country. But twice within a month, a week or so on each coast, each hosting the other and arranging and executing some logistical Olympic feats? That’s a little more rare. 

The centerpiece of 2023 for us, if not the preceding 18 months, was my daughter’s wedding on June 16, and that event that compelled my friends to visit us back east once again. They joined us for the rehearsal dinner, the wedding itself, and its aftermath party on Fire Island, braving the Bay Shore ferry experience, staying with us overnight at Ocean Bay Park, and catching some Fire Island beach magic as well. 

A few days later, our friends and we continued our long history of concert going, attending a Dead and Company concert at Citi Field. Incredibly, Citi Field had been the site of more Dead and Company shows than any other venue, and I had plenty of practice negotiating and mitigating the overstressed community and transportation infrastructure and parking lot scene that accompanies any Grateful Dead related stadium event. I had a preference for parking in Lot E, all the way back, but a few spots away from the gate that would be open after the show for easy and immediate access to the Long Island parkways that we depended on to get home. We watched the encore from a spot accessible to the stairs, and as the last note ended, down the stairs we went, we walked across the parking lots to their far end, hopped in the car, exited immediately through the now open adjacent gate, and were back home in record time, no small feat when folks can spend hours alone trying to just egress the parking lot there. My friends appreciated this flawless execution in extricating ourselves from the masses.

With Dead and Company, the longest running and most successful rendition of the post Jerry Garia Grateful Dead era, announcing their cessation of road touring, we pulled out all the stops to see a bunch of shows, including two of the three final shows in their home mecca of San Francisco.  With these shows scheduled in mid July, we left our Fire island sanctuary and once again we were off to see our friends on the west coast. After a first night treat seeing Graham Nash in Berkeley’s famed Freight and Salvage club, we had two nights in a row of Dead and Company in the San Francisco Giants’ home ballpark, now called Oracle Park. This urban set park is supported by decentralized parking lots in the neighborhood. My friends strategically chose one about a half mile away on Brannon and 5th Streets. on the outskirts of the otherwise congested and gridlocked area. For two consecutive days, we parked there for a criminally low fee, stopped in a nearby pub for a pre-show meal and beer, saw the show, and exited the stadium one night via stairs and the other via ramps. After making our way through the crowds outside Willie Mays Plaza, we crossed the street, easily walked the half mile to the car, exited the small lot, and in two turns we were on the Bay Bridge, arriving back in their home in record time. Now it was we who appreciated my friend’s flawless execution in extricating ourselves from these overwhelming masses. 

We rounded out our west coast visit with my friend’s homemade jambalaya, two different dim sum experiences and a picnic lunch topping off a few hours at Limantour beach at Point Reyes, it too a rare National Seashore like Fire island, albeit on the Pacific. Finally, we celebrated my friend’s birthday at a local waterfront restaurant before it was time to fly home the next day.

In some ways, it’s easier now to try to get together, as we are both done raising kids, we are currently without grandchildren, and are all retired. In other ways maybe it’s a little harder as we all strive to stay healthy and mobile to varying degrees. I feel fairly confident that after these first 49 years, there are still some good times and visits in front of us. But twice in a one month span, alternating the continental coasts, putting our toes in each other’s oceans, and with the shows to boot? Not likely, but whatever we do together, I am sure we are going to love it.

You see, we have:  Two Coasts, Two Hosts — with the Most.  Let’s toast!

AI (A Storyworth Story)

The concept of artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for a long time, originally just a science fiction theme, but more presently a prime paradigm of our ever evolving technologies. 

I think it is ripe for a new “Moore’s Law”, where its power may double every two years.  However, outcomes of artificial intelligence cannot adequately or accurately be predicted.

I remember a science fiction movie from my early teen years around 1970, Colossus: the Forbin Project, about a supercomputer with superintelligence (“artificial?”) developed to ensure the United States’ safety against a nuclear attack. It is designed to control all aspects of our military. The Soviet Union had one too for their own self preservation, and somehow these two supercomputers began their own direct private dialog. Humankind is concerned as they are not privy to what these supercomputers are discussing, and their concerns become warranted. The machines had decided that the best way to prevent an adversarial war amongst humankind’s superpowers is to team up and enslave the whole world.

Another example of AI gone astray comes from a 2014 novel by one of my favorite authors, Douglas Preston, entitled The Kraken Project. Here, NASA develops a robotic vehicle to be infused with artificial intelligence that will allow it to self navigate the largest sea on the planet Saturn’s moon, Titan.  During testing here on earth, a malfunction causes the software to sense risk to its own survival (as it had been designed to do, on Titan), and the now sentient software escapes onto the internet where it wreaks havoc upon the people of earth.

A less ominous but still unforeseen outcome of AI comes from Alpha Zero, the machine learning software developed to play games. Alpha Zero is not programmed with strategies, it is just given the most elementary rules of the game and it then plays against itself millions of times to self learn expert play. In chess, it easily defeated the then world champion chess software programs who themselves were already superior to humans. To me, most noteworthy though, was Alpha Zero’s consistent strategy (I would like to say “belief”) that after castling king side, it would push the king’s rook pawn aggressively down to the sixth rank in front of the opponent’s castled king. Over the thousands of years that humans have played chess, it had been believed better to keep that pawn stationary (typically until the endgame). Alpha Zero has shattered that belief and humans must now consider that heretofore taboo variation.   

A few weeks ago there was news reported that an AI-controlled military drone, designed to maximize targets destroyed, “killed” its human operator in a simulated test, no doubt determining as Colossus did years ago that human intervention was an unassumable risk to itself or its goals. The military quickly denied the story, but this is the constant theme: how can AI be effectively controlled and managed to avoid its superseding and eliminating us.  In my opinion, it can’t be.   

Let’s consider the “gorilla” example. Gorillas are bigger and stronger than humans, yet humans dominate their species. Why?  Why are gorillas in zoos and in danger of extinction?  Answer: because we humans are smarter than they are. In the same way, AI if not already, will soon be smarter than humans, therefore, AI should be able to control us. Are we ready for that?  What would Watson, the new Jeopardy champion of champions say?

DC vs. Marvel (A Storyworth Story)

Sometimes our youthful formative experiences bind us to a value and belief system that remains unshakeable for life. As told in my story, The Haircut, I was first exposed to comic books and came of age during the Silver Age of Comics in the 1960s and early 1970s. That market was strongly dominated by Detective Comics (DC) and that is who won my affection, an allegiance that continues to this day.

DC was founded in 1934 and introduced the flagship character of all comic-bookdom, Superman, in 1938. One year later, Batman was introduced. While Marvel was founded in 1939 and introduced their first real hero, Captain America, in 1941, the real Marvel Age began in 1961 with the introduction of the Fantastic Four. One year later, they introduced Spider-Man, and another year later, the Avengers. As the 1960s further unfolded, what appeared to be a market battle began, with DC assuming the dominant role back then.

If I had to characterize the difference between the set of DC and Marvel superheroes, it would be the protagonists character flaws and imperfections. DC gave us superheroes that were supposed to be close to perfect character from Batman’s vow never to kill to Superman rescuing cats from trees. Marvel, seeking to establish their own market niche, gave us troubled, flawed, imperfect characters who struggled with their basic humanity. The battle lines were drawn.

With DC around and thriving for a good thirty years before Marvel really took off, they dominated the media exposure through newspaper comic strips, radio, and then television. The imprinting of Superman alone on television culture has continued for generations, much more so than any other comic superhero. Aside from generations of animated programs, Superman has appeared in the original classic Adventures of Superman in the 1950s, later on in Lois and Clark, Superman and Lois, Smallville and also spawned both Superboy and Supergirl shows. Marvel had little media exposure, although they did run a half hour cartoon series weekdays at 7:00 pm that I did tend to watch: Mondays were Captain America, Tuesdays were the Incredible Hulk, Wednesdays were Iron Man, Thursdays were the Mighty Thor and Fridays were Prince Namor, the SubMariner.  

Until 1978, a few prior efforts notwithstanding, the first real successful comic book based blockbuster movie arrived, Superman starring Christopher Reeve with a supporting role played by Marlon Brando. The comic book movie era had now been born, with several Superman sequels, Supergirl, several iterations of Batman, and later on, Wonder Woman and the Justice League. Marvel had now grown up, and in 2008 they changed the landscape with their first film, Iron Man. They were shortly bought up by Disney and then they followed with Iron Man sequels, the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, the Avengers and more, fueled by the Disney powerhouse. 

The DIsney backing may have empowered them to enjoy a period of supremacy in terms of box office revenue, but I am unconvinced that this translates to a successful impact on our culture as a whole. Theater movie going has been around since the 1920s and is not likely to ever fully disappear, but it will never be the dominant force that it once was with the advent of technologies and home theaters.

The battle for comic book supremacy has taken place on the very printed pages of the comic books themselves, radio, tv, the movies, streaming services, video games, virtual reality entertainment, and will likely morph into whatever products and services the future has yet to unveil. Success in any one of these markets is to me, just a blip in time. Commercial impact is important, but is matched by cultural impact.

Almost eighty five years after the introduction of Superman, he remains the singular most widespread symbol of comic-bookdom. I don’t think DC is doing anything wrong.

The Manager (A Storyworth Story)

In June 2008, I was ushered up to stand on an awards ceremony’s auditorium stage alongside two high ranking FAA executives, one from FAA’s Washington Headquarters and one from my own Eastern Region. As Eastern’s Regional IT Manager, I had just won The FAA’s Regions and Center Operations National Award for Managerial Excellence, selected out of a group of over a hundred managers across twelve locations directing a variety of administrative, resource management, financial, IT and logistics services. As my award winning managerial accomplishments were read out loud to the audience, I couldn’t help but to reflect on the irony. I had never wanted to be a manager in the first place. So how did I get here?  

The first eight years of my career, in private industry, were spent as a programmer and systems analyst, working independently. This work aligned perfectly with my introverted personality type, removing the need to frequently interact with others. Shortly after beginning the next chapter of my career, providing programming and other types of IT support to the FAA as a government contractor, I was asked to become that contractor’s project manager overseeing the three others from our company. Over the next eight years, I was a government contractor project manager for two different firms, directing the efforts of as many as twelve staff on a million dollar a year contract. I was effectively a first level supervisor, conducting some activities that could be considered managing, but falling short of a full time, full fledged manager.

Mary and I emerged from family backgrounds and value systems that had both similarities and differences. One major difference was her exposure to entrepreneurship as a preferred way of life. With two parents tenured in the NYC school system in the sixties, I was exposed to a more conservative direction to achieve stability and security. After eleven years as a government contractor, changing jobs, employers and starting over three times, stability and security presented an appealing goal to me. We now had three young children, and while I could likely succeed staying in contracting, its uncertainty of the future and its inability to allow me to achieve stability and seniority anywhere controverted my vision for a prosperous future.

Around 1995, a unique opportunity arose when the FAA Eastern Region wanted to hire their contractors as federal government employees. With a federal hiring freeze in effect for full time, permanent positions, a creative workaround was found, allowing a group of us to be hired as temporary indefinite employees. These positions did not count towards frozen staffing ceilings, yet carried all the benefits of federal government and FAA employment. They were temporary positions without a defined expiration date, with a tenure code lower than permanency. In April 1996 I was selected into one of these temporary indefinite positions and my FAA career began in earnest.  

The FAA was then going to redefine these temporary indefinite positions to finite term positions not to exceed four years, effectively putting me right back where I started. At the same time, the Eastern Regional IT Manager who was in a full time permanent position was preparing to retire.  Defined as a mission critical position, a waiver to the hiring freeze was obtained, and the Eastern Region now sought to hire into this full time permanent position. In February 1997, I was selected into this position, seeing it as my only way to achieve imminent FAA permanency.  I was about to become a real manager.

There was nothing about managing that I liked, as it was predominantly interacting with others: subordinates, superiors, and peers. There were a few things working in my favor,.however.  First, the FAA provided top notch management training at their own Center for Management and Executive Leadership, a college campus type facility in Florida. The FAA supplemented that with many other management development opportunities, from seminars and conferences to additional classes at other institutions including the famous Brooks Institute (a federal government think tank) and the American Management Association. As a relentless lifelong learner, I took advantage of them all to establish foundational competencies of managing.  Second, I read as many management and leadership books as I could get my hands on, also borrowing from public and FAA  libraries. I usually spent my one hour commute listening to audiobooks. Finally, I had the benefit of having  served under a few exemplary mentors, including the IT manager whom I eventually replaced. I was always in a learning mode and I was soaking it all up like a sponge.

My management style evolved with the values adopted in the FAA. I had been taught to learn as much as possible about other supporting areas of the organization, such as accounting, purchasing, human resources, labor relations, logistics, resource management and legal. The more I knew about how the organization functioned, the better I’d be able to perform in my manager role. Strategies like identifying funding sources, understanding how and when to hire, how to provide sound fiscal oversight and how to develop staff became tools of the trade. On a more human level, it took a long time for me to learn the art of listening, especially to.my subordinates. I had a handwritten placard facing me on my desk, constantly reminding me, “Listen.”  I recalled Stephen Covey’s habit – seek first to understand, then to be understood.  When I finally did master the art, I realized that you do in fact learn more by listening. I deployed the Socratic method, always asking questions of subordinates as opposed to strictly directing them.  Often, I had to allow them to err, getting all the way to the edge of the cliff before pulling them back. That’s hard – asking others to do something you know that you could do yourself, likely faster and better, then watching as they go astray. 

There were some other difficulties that I encountered as a manager, usually from things that I had no control over. I’ve had people cry at my desk inside my office, offering them tissues. I had two employees pass away. I was investigated for fiscal improprieties stemming from unfounded allegations launched by a political adversary who disapproved of my selection as the manager, eventually being fully exonerated. I had several discrimination cases from angry, beleaguered and misguided staff, including a federal court case. In all cases I was fully exonerated, including by a predominantly minority jury in federal court who unanimously found no discrimination.

I’m neither able to nor is it necessary to try to provide a management primer here. I can only share what’s worked for me in the unique environment into which I was thrown: endless lifelong learning, trusting others and demonstrating trustworthy behavior myself, demonstrating proper ethics, being a good listener, surrounding myself with staffers smarter than me and who thought differently, recognizing and rewarding staff – publicly whenever possible, and always trying to find the right balance between the organization’s operational needs and the staff’s human needs.

Four years after standing on that stage, an opportunity arose for me to switch gears. I could move laterally into a senior IT portfolio project manager position, freed from the shackles of managing, returning to working primarily alone. Still retaining that valued FAA permanency, I jumped at the chance. I became quite successful in that chapter, too, but that’s ripe for another story. 

In the end, I’m glad to have had that opportunity to manage in a world class organization; hiring, firing, building budgets, developing and implementing visions and strategic plans, supervising, disciplining, recognizing and rewarding, nurturing and developing staff, and in so doing going against my grain, becoming a more well rounded and better person. I’m equally glad to have had the opportunity to put it behind me after achieving a modicum of success.   

I’m open here to thoughts and feedback.  Go ahead please, I’m listening!

The One and Only Casey Jones (A Storyworth Story)

As told in my story, Dogs Memories, I was unable to have my own dog as a child, fell in love with my junior high school friend’s highly intelligent black and tan German Shepherd, and longed for the day to have my own. It seemed that my day had finally come, when Mary and I decided to get ourselves such a dog, early in our relationship, Stony Brook dormitory prohibitions notwithstanding. 

We found a pound local to Stony Brook, and a keeper there steered us towards a litter of puppies that were not going to be kept much longer. They looked remarkably similar to the type of German shepherd puppy that I wanted, and we chose the runt of that litter whom we named Casey Jones. She was young and tiny, four or five weeks old and barely one pound in weight, adorned with that black and tan police dog mask on her head, face and snout.  We had her treated by a local vet for a few conditions and I became confident that she’d grow to be the dog I longed for, and we smuggled her into our dorm life.  

Casey attended a few classes in the 800 seat lecture center, often just sleeping under our auditorium seat. She went to the local supermarket with us, fitting into an outer coat pocket. Ironically, one of our suitemates was the “M A”, the Management Assistant whose job included, among other things, keeping the dorm pet free. He had no choice but to evict us, and we moved off campus with Casey and two other friends.

We had lots of free time to work with Casey, and she was a quick learner.  As she developed her vocabulary, she also began to grow, but not at the pace you’d envision for a full size German Shepherd. It soon became apparent that she was not, in fact, a pure bred German Shepard puppy, despite her uncanny resemblance to one. She eventually became a full grown mutt at about fifteen pounds, not much larger than a cat. Her jet black body supported her small German Shepard type head, ears and face mask, and throughout her life she would be mistaken by others for a miniature German Shepherd.

As a young kids-free couple, we spent more and more time with Casey, and she was so well behaved, smart, small and manageable that she simply went everywhere with us all the time. She began to exhibit total disdain for other dogs, preferring human interaction. Everyone who knew Casey during her time with us has stories and memories chronicling her insistence on preferring humans over canines.

We moved several times early on, and Casey lived with us in Stony Brook, Selden, and then Woodhaven, Queens where she’d explore Forest Park. She lived with us in Randolph, NJ, where she had to put up with our second dog at the time, Sabrina, for a short while. I’d get home from work before Mary back then, and often jog about two or three miles with Casey at my side, unleashed. She lived with us in Pennsylvania, where she’d run outside to try to attack and intimidate the Amish’s horses walking by our front lawn, even though she was only as tall as their ankles. She lived with us in our ground floor garden apartment in Glen Oaks on the Queens side of the Queens Nassau Border, where we’d cradle her in our arms, lower her out the kitchen window to the back area, where she’d conduct her business.  Returning to the window, she mastered the run and jump up against the kitchen’s exterior brick wall, further propelling herself up from the wall into our waiting arms at the kitchen window. 

Casey could sit, stay, lie down, roll over, play dead, speak, kiss, drop things from her mouth, play tug of war, heel, play hide and seek, and fetch specific items such as her knotted sock (but she would never touch our socks), ball, frog or stick.  At times, she attempted to put her toys away when asked, but usually got too excited and then immediately removed one for more play.  You could tell her to lie down and stay, place meat inches from her snout, walk out of her sight, and she would not budge until told. 

We did have occasions to walk her with a leash, and she started to cough as if the leash were too tight, choking her, learning that such behavior caused us to either loosen or remove the leash. Ultimately, when at home, if she saw us approach with her leash, she’d just start coughing ahead of time to dissuade us. 

Casey was a master in deception when it came to taking a pill. We’d place the pill inside some cold cuts or other meat, place it deep in her mouth, and hold her snout closed until she swallowed. Casey quickly learned that the swallow was the trigger to end the snout holding. So she started fake gulping, we let go, the meat somehow got eaten, and then she spit the pill out, in later days actually walking away first to spit it out.  

While living in our home on Lincoln Avenue, Casey exhibited some more signs of her intellect. She’d bark at the sound of car engines passing by our home or coming up our driveway, but she came to learn and associate certain engines with people she loved. She did not bark at those car engines, rather, she lit up and ran to our door, eagerly awaiting the entrance of those beloved people from that car.  She also understood our work clothes versus our leisure clothes and shoes. As I dressed for work, back then usually in a suit with dress shoes, her ears went back, her face saddened, and she went to lay down in depression. If I dressed in a t- shirt and gym shorts, and reached for my sneakers, she went crazy with excitement.  

We used to play board games with the kids when they were little, sitting on the floor. When playing fetch with Casey at the same time, she was adept at avoiding stepping on the board games or otherwise disturbing them.

Just like everyone else we know, Casey was in love with 22 Palmer Drive, at that time, the only dog ever granted dispensation to hang out there. It got to the point where whether we were making the 15 minute ride there from Islip Terrace or the 400 mile ride from western Pennsylvania, as we approached that 7-11 on Montauk Highway, she went on full alert. Clearly, she knew where she was, and where she was going.  We swam a lot in the bay back then, with Casey eagerly heading down the ladder, then propelling herself with a leap to join us in the bay. 

Casey was a master escape artist.  One time, we visited a friend of my father-in-law so I could help him with his PC. His wife and he were long time Dachshund breeders, and they regularly kept several in a fenced in pen in their yard. Casey had come with us, but they told us that they don’t allow the dogs in their home, they must be kept in the pen. I was uneasy, knowing Casey, even when they informed us that they had raised Dachshunds for many, many years, never having one escape. So we placed Casey in the pen, and we went upstairs to work on the PC.  Minutes later, upstairs, I looked out the window, and saw Casey running down the road from their home on the east end of Sayville, heading south for Montauk Highway.  By the time we went out to chase her we she was gone, having somehow navigated herself across town from a location she’d never been to before, down Palmer Drive, to right outside 22 where my father in law, returning home in his car, saw her without us and simply invited her in.

Another escape artist adventure happened at 22 Palmer Drive, as we gathered on a boat behind the bulkhead to head across the bay to Fire Island. We had locked Casey in the garage, or so we thought, boarded the boat out back, and the boat pulled away to head south. There was a jet black blur of speed, as Casey, already out, headed across the backyard straight for the ladder, flew down, and executed her flying leap into the water, swimming furiously after the boat.  We expected her to give up, turn around  and go home, but she followed us until we had to stop and pick her up. Casey got in both a nice swim and yet another trip to the beach. 

Casey touched our lives and the lives of others in a way uncommon for dogs. We all miss her terribly to this day and we understand that all dogs are ultimately measured against her. She’d disapprove of that, though, preferring to have herself measured against people. Given her positive attitude and propensity for enjoying life to the fullest, I have to wonder who’d come out on top.