Ah, the essence of technology

Mary had the long day today with blood test, an extra half hour on her old friend LA9 as they debugged the computer after she had already gotten into the machine, a wait for the weekly doctor visit and then--voila!--no cell phone to call Bill! Seems Mary was a bit distracted when Bill arrived to take her to Stanford, and given it was a long session, he ran errands rather than hang around the Cancer Center. Mary's phone was left on the table at home and she didn't notice it until she went to call him. It is really tough to get a cell phone technology to work when its 21 miles away from where you are.

Mary nor I have Bill's cell phone number memorized, probably because these days once you load a number into a phone and put a name on it, you never look at the number again. Oh how technology frees our minds from clutter!

Mary called me at work about 30 nanoseconds after I had instructed my pc to shut down because I was in a meeting. Do you have any idea how long it takes a corporate computer with all those corporate background programs to first shut down and then reboot? I think Mary was on the line for 20 minutes or so. Eventually, I got to the phone directory for Mary's Taxi team and looked up Bill's number.

Mary did get home so I assumed they connected! She is fine today, feeling the radiation a bit and taking her sleeping-nausea medications. Apparently, the one that has no side effects is not generic so the insurance company doesn't reimburse as much and Mary is trying to save a few $$. I'm gonna talk to our girl about that!

Now, a technology marvel was the moon landing 40 years ago. My sister, Maureen, reminded me that my folks had a combined graduation and going away party for me on July 20, 1969. We had a house full of people and a good time was had by all. But, it was the party that would not end.

We had set the hours for a kind of open house on Sunday afternoon to align with the planned moon landing and moon walk--approximately 2PM to 5PM, Minnesota time. Our buddies Buzz and Neil landed at the right time, 3:17PM Minnesota daylight time--it sure made for a memorable party for my career send off! But, Buzz and Neil blew us off and delayed the moon walk a few hours. The net result is that no one, and I mean no one, would leave because they didn't want to miss the moon walk. Hey, no video recorders or TiVo's or any of that back then. My Mom was going nuts. We were out of food, out of drinks, out of everything and no one would even run to the store to pick up some more goodies. They might miss it! So Dad kept a pot of coffee brewing so our guests' choice became coffee or water.

My sister reminded me that my dear Aunt Peggy was in great spirits, telling stories, laughing and generally being really upbeat as the evening wore on and we couldn't figure it out. I mean, the anticipation and tension among the rest of us was so thick you could cut it with a knife! Much later we learned Aunt Peggy was the reason the coffee was disappearing--and the whisky at about the same rate! She was, shall we say, relieving her tension with the aid of some good Irish stock my Dad kept around the house.

As I write this, I am listening to the JFK Presidential Library's replay of the audio tapes from 40 years ago. They have them synchronized so they are exactly 40 years plus or minus a second later from when they really happened. They just announced the EVA (External Vehicle Activity) would begin in 36 minutes. Well, that means the EVA happened at roughly 9PM Minnesota time--which means the afternoon open house ran a bit late, like maybe four hours longer than we planned? (The JFK library is making the tapes available for on-line replay after the sequence has been fully run.)

The wonder of it all. Those guys were nuts! I recall the worry that the moon dust and rocks would come back carrying an unidentified virus or bacteria that would wipe out life on earth as we know it. Or, that the moon walk suits would fail and we'd watch in horror as a brave astronaut died on live TV. Or the LEM (Eagle) would not be able to take off and reconnect with the capsule (Columbia). It was truly an amazing feat. And, given that we have not returned to the moon since then, it is an indication of what a tremendous accomplishment it was.

I've looked it up and Neil Armstrong started down the ladder at 9:39 CDT and stepped foot on the moon at 9:56PM CDT. They walked for about two hours until just after midnight, 12:11AM CDT on Monday.

Ok, now for the trivia bit. Do you realize that reality, more often than not, is far more reaching than we can imagine it. How so, you ask? For decades, perhaps longer, science fiction writers imagined traveling to the moon. And, for decades, science fiction writers imagined TV (or some instantaneous image transfer device). But no writer ever put the two together that a TV image would be broadcast back to earth while the first man stepped on the moon.

OK, time to go.