One of my favorite machines was a game machine called pin ball. I am not sure when I first discovered pin ball, but when I did, I was instantly hooked for life. (I still own one of the early ones). In my memory, you got three plays for a dime, and five balls to a … More ChangesTheBook Chapter 35

The pay phone had a little box built in for the Coin change to fall in and for AT&T Bell to send their guys around and collect. They were not private then. There was only one phone company, for the whole country and there was no competition. You would dial the number, using a rotary … More ChangesTheBook Chapter 34

Hey lets go back to vending machines. I am sure that they were invented long before my childhood, but they were around sparsely then. When you found them, they were really cool things. Remember we talked about the soda machine? The one for a nickel. Well lets count some of the others. Besides soda, there … More ChangestheBook Chapter 33

This airplane also had a HUD or heads up display. It was also computerized by the same system and used a cathode ray tube to display an image from a projector using mirrors and such.  The projected image would then beam on the glass in front of you. It would give you raw data feed … More ChangesTheBook Chapter 32

Living in Tucson, and sometimes shopping at Safeway, it was impobbile for me to believe that our sleepy, happy, freindly little town could harbor such a crazy.  My son and his family often shopped there. I was devastated by what happened.  On Sunday, the Priest focused some of his homily on the event.  He said … More Tragedy in Tucson

Besides navigation, over the ground, it could give you ground speed read out, elevation and help in computing bombing equations. This is very difficult science to do manually, so this little device, when it worked properly would aid in keeping you oriented and proficient at hitting targets. Its flaw was that it was very, very … More ChangesTheBook Chapter 31

How will your New Year be?  It isn’t entirely up to you, but it sure has a lot to do with how you think and where you put your self.  Watching the Rose Bowl Parade on TV reminds me how much the television coverage of events has changed.  Of course, for some of us, it … More New Years Day 2011

Well, I guess obviously, you have figured out that I got un lost.  But it was a mini crisis to walk up to someone in my American accented English, and ask a Bloke, “hey, can you tell me where we are?”  pretty strange looks came out of that question in the middle of the English … More ChangesTheBook Chapter 30

  The perfect “Changes” story to add for Christmas It was Christmas Eve 1881. I was fifteen years old and feeling like the world had caved in on me because there just hadn’t been enough money to buy me the rifle that I’d wanted for Christmas. We did the chores early that night for some reason. I just … More A Real Christmas Story

But not with the new navigational devices. Unless they fail. I was driving with one in England, with absolutely no idea where I was. I knew where I wanted to go, and I knew where I started from. Suddenly, my nav system without so much as a small warning, just quit. It had never done … More ChangesTheBook Chapter 29