Old Rittenhouse Road

I took a nice stroll with Chiquita just after lunch along Old Rittenhouse Road, which is about a mile from my house. Parts of this road still exist, but the section between Williams Field and Power Road where we went walking was decommissioned several years ago during the housing boom. I love walking along the railroad tracks. I always find something interesting (railroad spikes, old glass telephone line insulators, baseballs from the high schools in the area, and lots of cast off junk). The other perk is when the occasional train comes rolling by.

Close to the end of our walk, I noticed some writing on the side of the railroad track and decided to get a picture. While setting up my shot, Chiquita walked right into my field of view, so I asked her to stand and got a really nice picture of her. She blocked the writing, which states "100% Power Road --->". It's pointing in the direction of Power Road, but what does 100% mean?

The next picture shows a farm road that runs along the irrigation canal where it crosses the tracks. In the background, you can see Four Peaks, the Superstition Mountains, and the water tower at ASU Polytechnic.

The most interesting part of our walk came when a large hawk I had noticed in the area decided to fly over us and really gave Chiquita the once over. When I first saw the hawk, I put my dog on her leash just in case the hawk wanted to snatch her up. You might think this is a bit far-fetched, but a friend of mine had a close call with a very large owl and his dog out in Gold Canyon. Birds of prey don't care if it's a Chihuahua like mine or a jack rabbit. They're about the same size and food is food. Actually, a jack rabbit is bigger than my dog. LOL. Anyway, we were walking along when I saw the hawk's shadow pass over us. I looked up and it was close enough for me to see its eyes. It looked at me and then craned its head and looked directly at Chiquita, more than once. I told it "forget it, bird" and it slowly glided away in search of another critter for lunch.

Meowy Kittmas, everyone!

My cat, Cali, always checks out the Christmas tree each year. Now that she's older, she's really good about leaving the ornaments alone. She does a lot of sniffing and poking about, but she hasn't attacked an ornament in years. This year I put the tree in a different spot, which provided her a much better vantage point for viewing the tree. I snapped a photo using my phone that shows her taking full advantage of this new location.

Merry Christmas!!

Ed Moses -- Against the Tide - Episode 1

Really well done video, which chronicles Ed Moses' swimming comeback attempt for the 2012 Olympics. Ed attended and swam at the USMS Spring Nationals in Mesa this past year. I hope they show some of this footage in the next episode. It was exciting to be there knowing what he is attempting to do.

Calma Company Demo Room -- circa 1980 -- Sunnyvale, CA

OMG!! I love the Internet. I was Googling for other images and came across this image today. This is none other than the state-of-the-art demo room we used to demonstrate the new GDSII IC layout system, which was developed by Calma Company of Sunnyvale, CA. This picture was taken in 1980 and was used in lots of our sales literature. I began working for Calma as an IC Applications Engineer in January of 1980. I worked with Calma GDS1, GDSII, and GDSIII systems from 1973 to 1988. They were the premier layout system for full-custom IC design during that time.

From left to right: Magnetic tape drive, expansion unit, Data General 16-bit Eclipse mini-computer, 300MB hard drive, TTY/Printer, Hazeltine CLI console, Versatec 36" color electrostatic plotter, and a single layout station. This was considered "high tech" back in 1980. Click the picture to view this system in all it's glory.