Archive for October 18th, 1999

My Tube Type Radios

Monday, October 18th, 1999

Dear   [Lynn],

I listened to this old tube type radio. No instant-on stuff with that unit. When you turned it on, it took about 20 seconds for the tubes to warm up enough to begin conducting electricity and the music to appear.

My bedroom was very small and, during the winter, quite cold. And I used to hold that radio on my lap to keep warm, as it gave off a lot of heat – like a water bottle or heating pad perhaps. It still amazes me that I never burned the house down with it.

Then, Mom bought me a transistorized AM receiver that sounded much better and did not heat up at all. So, I easily gave up the tubes, although I do occasionally miss looking into the back of the radio and wondering what al those little orange and yellow lights were inside (as you probably know, transistors do not glow like tubes did). The glowing tubes fascinated me, and I went on to study electronics and eventually get my ham radio license.

Did you listen much to radio in the 1970s? If you know Melanie, I suspect that you listened a good bit. What’s your music collection like? Did you have favorite artists. If so, who were they? Were you a David Cassidy groupie? :-) Maybe Bobbie Sherman was more your speed. Or, how about Tommy Roe or B. J. Thomas?

Out of steam for now. Talk to you soon.

Tom Hesley

Posted in AM Radio, Electronics, Journal, Letters, Lynn, Music, People, Radio, Relationships, Romantic | No Comments »

My Crush on Melanie

Monday, October 18th, 1999

Dear   [Lynn],

I had the biggest crush on singer Melanie when, as I turned 11 years old, she released that Brand New Key song. She had a few other delightful, simple, positive sounding hits like Ring the Living Bell and Bitter Bad.

But much of her music was, um, what shall we call it? Dark? She often used doleful-sounding chords and key signatures.  Her lyrics, though often quite realistic, still depressed me.

She seemed very in touch with the world – definitely a 60s person. But her songs and others of those days from The Grass Roots, Redbone, Donnie Osmond, and The Jackson 5 really defined the 1970s for me.

Karen Carpenter also weakened my knees; her, as well as the girls in the DeFranco Family. Yep, music was easy to understand then.

Tom Hesley

Posted in Journal, Letters, Lynn, Music, People, Relationships, Romantic | No Comments »

Dear Lynn: My Weaknesses

Monday, October 18th, 1999

Dear   [Lynn],

I am interested in just about everything to some degree or other, except for discussing my weaknesses. :-) I shy away from that. *snicker*

Later,
Tom Hesley

Posted in Journal, Letters, Lynn, People, Relationships, Romantic | No Comments »

The Hacker Gets Hired

Monday, October 18th, 1999

Dear   [Lynn],

Hmmm. No, I’ve never read Hugh Gallagher’s application essay to NYU. But, what a gutsy guy!  He reminds me of the computer hacker, who, after being discovered, is hired by the company he breached, to “bullet proof” their systems against future, similar attacks.

Moral: Challenge the system in the right ways, and you might get a pleasant surprise, and be rewarded for it. And of course, since the “right” ways to challenge are generally not known up front, a bit of the gambling spirit is also required. It pays off sometimes though.

Tom Hesley

Posted in Journal, Letters, Lynn, People, Relationships, Romantic | No Comments »

Dear Lynn: Data Packaging

Monday, October 18th, 1999

Dear   [Lynn],

The company I work for specializes in data packaging. Data packaging refers to the process of collecting, storing, searching, retrieving, beautifying, and the delivering of information to customers, in appealing and useful ways.

Examples of data packaging: Taking a collection of magazines, and typing their text into a database so that a customer could run queries against it and easily find the most relevant articles to his interests. Translating data in one format into a more accessible or otherwise applicable format might also qualify. Hard copy publishers do data packaging also – they package it in the books they print. :-) Where I work, we also publish books, CD ROMs, and electronic databases of online information, gathered from roughly 5800 publications. All of that can be searched in less than a minute. Plus, there are very sophisticated methods available to the customer wishing to narrow his search parameters – you can even type an English-style question, and our service goes and finds the documents most likely to contain the answer you seek. So, that, in a nutshell, is what data packaging is. There’s much more to say on it. But I won’t bore you with any more  just now.  :-)

Bye for now,
Tom Hesley

Posted in Journal, Letters, Lynn, People, Relationships, Romantic, Work Experience | No Comments »