here a ‘D’ there a “D’

Happy Saturday – Last week I mentioned the almost open neighborhood Dairy Queen as our forerunner of Spring. Now it can be safely said that Spring is exactly one month away.

And after this winter I am beyond ready.

The other day I came across a news view of a Barge heading up-river through broken up ice. Considering I worked late summer’s River Roots Festival and watched the Riverboats cruise up and down the river with Calliope’s playing merry tunes, this view was a far cry from those jolly days.

Let’s pretend that I am enjoying a celebratory mug of Peets coffee [Peet’s just IPO’d at $17Billion] this very morning as I sip and look towards Spring, one month into the future. Better yet, in the meantime ease back and celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year, the year of the Fire Horse.

Pressure? – With all the happenings (turmoil?) this winter I am completely out of sync with any prep work for proceeding with some of the 5Ks I’ve participated in over the past several years.

Now this! A week ago a gentleman by the name of Gary Patton NYRR’s Night at the Races #5 held at The Armory in New York City, saw 80 year-old Gary Patton run 6:38.10 setting a new world record for 80-84 year-olds for an indoor mile run!
Really?
OK, now the pressure is really on!

A short while ago – So many things and capabilities we take for granted were brand spanking new just a handful of years ago. When I talk with my grandkids and as they describe some work requirement for school done on-line during the evening, submitted as homework, and graded by the start of the next morning’s class as the forever norm. That ‘norm’ as many others were barely thought of just a short while ago.

Think of YouTube, we almost live on YouTube. Need to look anything from music, science, repair, and on and on. All can be readily found among the multi-millions of clips online. You’d think that all this availability dates back many decades earlier.

Well, here is an eye opener.

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is now offering visitors a new landmark display. featuring the first video ever uploaded to the site (waaaay back in 2005): Jawed Karim’s “Me at the zoo“.

The video shows a young software engineer, Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube, on the first up-loaded video in 2005. A year later Google purchased the technology, and thus it all began.

Presidents Day – Here is a quick question. Who of you all actually spent a nano-second reflecting on even one of our Presidents last Monday as we celebrated the 147th Presidents Day (1879).

I would guess that topping the list would be critical events such as mistakenly putting out the garbage a day early. Or checking the mailbox forgetting that there was no delivery that day.

Was your bank open, did you buy a piece of furniture or a mattress? Any of you care to share your favorite screw-up?

Where is the joke? – this two-week period sees an array of birthdays in my circle; and three of them have names starting with the letter ‘D’. I mention this not as a joke since I consider all three as being ‘A’.

Life is AMAZING!

Dirk

BONUS POINTS:

How often do we watch a spot on the evening News that another satellite was launched. Actually, what has recently been proposed by SpaceX is an application with the US Federal Communications Commission for a megaconstellation of up to one million satellites to power data centers in space. As of this month approximately how many satellites are currently in low earth orbit? One number is correct.

1. 875
2. 14,000
3. 1,400
4. 900
5. 125,000
6. 1,850
7. 692,000

Last week answer – #5