Industrial Espionage and Kansas

First of all, does anyone read what I write, or am I wasting my time? If you read, please post a comment! You don't have to be a member to post a comment. Even if it's a dumb comment, I'll know someone is reading...

This really idiotic company (I did appreciate them in the end) stole (didn't do a very good job) a capacitor recipe from a competitor. The problem is that they didn't quite steal the whole recipe, they missed a couple incgredients. The other problem is that they made a whole bunch of them. Another problem is that they put it on a bunch of motherboards. Even worse they put it in some avionics; while worse, this doesn't affect me so directly, unless it were commercial avionics. A bunch of those motherboards were in a batch of computers we bought. Sometime when these capacitors go bad, they literally blow up. Other times they just start to bulge and ooze gooey, yellow liquid. A site I found has a nice summary:

According to PC columnist John Dvorak, a certain make of capacitor is exploding in PCs. Capacitors are used for storing electrical charge, and generally consist of two metal plates separated by an insulating dielectric. According to Dvorak (and corroborated by a number of other sources), a certain capacitor make is faulty and tends to blow up on circuit boards. Unfortunately, millions of these capacitors have been made, and many computer makers aren't willing to confess that a problem exists. Dvorak even speculates that some of these faulty capacitors may have ended up on aircraft avionics. Apparently the problem was due to an incomplete electrolyte recipe that was stolen from a Taiwan company. IBM has come forward to admit the problem, but few other computer makers have. Let us hope that the aircraft industry has some means for preventing faulty electronic equipment from being used on aircraft. Fly-by-wire systems, which are becoming increasingly common on both foreign and domestic aircraft, would quickly cause a crash if the onboard computers went down. Check out our previous coverage in a Geek.com News item and a ChipGeek blurb.

Long story, short: Computers in Kansas go bang. Me fly out to fix. Me find out (after I buy my tickets) that Center AM Church is having their youth retreat the same weekend. I fly to Kansas. Do my work fast. Go to retreat.

I got my load of celebrities on the way out to Kansas. I saw Jackie Chan on the airplane. He was hilarious. Doing his karate moves and cracking funny jokes:

He was in a tree. The cameraman was below him. He fell out of the tree. The cameraman was supposed to catch him. The cameraman jumped out of the way. “The camera was more important than me!” He went to the hospital with a fractured skull.

I saw a gorgeous woman walking along in Chicago O’Hare Airport. I recognized her instantly. My brain rushed through all the actresses that I’m familiar with. It took me about 10 minutes to place her. She played the Dr. Susan Calvin in “I, Robot”; her name is Bridget Moynahan. Oh, and Jackie Chan, I saw him on TV on the plane, but Bridget Moynahan was a live appearance.

My lingual skills got a workout at the Chicago Airport McDonalds. I ordered from a Hispanic dude en Español: "Querio un grande numero diez con un leche-shake de chocolate." He grinned at me and didn’t say much; I got my order and turned around and saw that an Amish girl was behind me in line. I queried, “Kansht du dacsht schwetza?” I received a very surprised, “Ja…” “Ich bin un Beachy. Vou bisht du foon?” “Ich bin foon Michigan.” The conversation continued in Pennsylvania Dutch for a while; here is a summary including the above portion: “Can you talk Dutch?” “Yes…” “I am a Beachy [a subset of Mennonites of which I am a member] Where are you from?” “I’m from Michigan.” She asked where I was from and where I was going. She said she knew the Amish in KS. I told her that I work for Golden Rule and she predictably had bought her tickets from us. We bid each other good-by and wished each other God’s blessing and a safe trip.

On the way to the office from Wichita, we stopped at Mickey D’s for lunch. We heard two of the employees ranting about this other employee that “kept snitching on them for sleeping!”

Friday afternoon I went to Pilgrim High to play VBall over break and then we went inside and watched a funny Dr. Seuess cartoon about the environment. After that I went back to the office and I was working as hard as I could because S**** (1st cuz, Shane; I know Ted, I am such a copycat) was leaving at 4 PM (he was on Youth Committee, senior member; basically Youth Leader) for the YR and I still had work to do. I saw I couldn't make that time, so Shane suggested that I go with Marilyn (2nd cuz). She said that's fine, but I'd be going with a boatload of girls. She later reconsidered the "fine" part and arranged for me to go with Daniel. Daniel was never lost on getting there, we always knew exactly where we were, and we always knew were we wanted to go, we just didn't always know what road to take to get there. It took us about 30 min when it should have taken 10.

We got there in the evening just in time for supper. We ate supper and then had Chapel. Tim (2nd cuz) talked about relationship evangelism. Shane asked for a representative from the Youth Group to come up. He gave Brian, the rep, a big butcher knife. He told us that this is the first time the CAMCY had a 3 day retreat. "It is on a trial basis. Please cooperate in not going to bed too late, because a lot of people, including myself, have stuck our necks out to make this possible. You have the knife. We are going to have curfew of no later than 5 AM on Friday night, and on Sat. night you are to be in your dorms by 11:30 and lights out by 12." I laughed along with everyone else at the mention of 5 AM. Later I realized it was no joke. We played VBall till 12. Then we played basket ball till 2:15 or so. It was up there among the top 3 bball games I have ever played! I had a hot night! Hooking shots and driving inside... Then we played vball again till 3:30. Got to bed about 4:00 I thought at first that Shane's neck was quite totally severed by now, but I learned that the CAMCY showed much restraint and headed to bed much earlier than normal. Last year a bunch of them got around 15 min of sleep before breakfast.

The dorms were rather interesting. The boys' dorms were down in the dungeon of a basement. They were all bunk beds with skinny matresses. The bathroom was most interesting. There were six shower heads in one room. No curtains. There were two showers that were slightly hid from view, but still were totally open. Shower room:

|--------------------------------------|
|   ^   |    ^         ^        ^      |
|       |                              |
|
|       |                              |
|   ^   |    ^         ^        ^      |
|--------------------------------------|

With the ^ character representing shower heads. Pretty sad situation anyway. The urinal (notice that is singular, not plural) was also rather interesting. Here is a side view:

__
|^
|            _
|           / |
|         -|  |
|           \ /
|            ||
|            ||
|            ||
|            /|
|_________| /  \

The dash sticking out of the head is then nose. The ^ is a "flushing" nozzle. It was about as long as me, though I didn't lay in it to check. Someone suggested seeing how many could use it at once. We declined. The one fortunate spot in this whole constellation of expired stars was the fact that the other bathroom had (a grand total of) two showers with curtains. The bad part about his bathroom number two is that you would see hands on the bottom of the stall doors (yes, they actually had stalls and doors). The reason for this being that they had no method of closure.

We all stumbled into the Chapel on Sat. morning (the morning after Fri/Sat night/morning) for Ellis' (2nd cuz by marriage) excellent message on Local Project Evangelism. We had brunch. That morning we played some VBall. That afternoon we had a thing called walk/talk. The gym was closed. Everyone found a partner to walk/talk with. They requested that if this partnership included more than a single gender that a third person be included. I went with Jonathan...to the dorm to get a nap. We both agreed before it started that that would be a very good thing to do. We got down there and I lay in my bunk and he laid in the one above me and we ended up talking the whole time (1.5 hr). I learned some very interesting things about various people. Something happened that confirmed my belief in a very accurate inner human clock: Jonathan asked, "What time is it?" I looked, "Exactly 3:30, with the second hand at five after." My watch is synced exactly with the aromic clock. It took be about 5 secs to climb out of bed on pull my watch out of my suitcase too look at it. We then went out to the gym.

We hit the VBall around, played some 2 on 2. We soon got bored. We soon got unbored. There were these huge mats there. Brian (BIG dude: 6+', tallest, biggest guy there) was running and doing a graceful flip in midair and landing on the mat. He did it perfectly a coupla times. Then the entertainment began. One time he started to do a flip then decided he wasn't doing it right and would end up breaking his neck if he continued in it, so by flailing his arms a bit (he was in midair) he sorta straightened himself into a belly flop. It was hilarious. I forgot to tell you, the concrete floor in there is very slick. Two times on his approach he started slipping and lost his balance and sailed, a jungle of arms and legs, onto the mat. Loyal was amazing. He ran and flipped. The lowest part of his body was probably six feet in the air! Then we decided to esalate. We got a ladder and they climbed up onto the basketball hoop and backboard. Then they would hang with their hands and feet onto the pipe the went to the ceiling. Then they would drop: (the vids are in QuickTime (.mov) format and are sideways; any suggestions on how to get them unsideways and out of QuickTime format would be helpful)

• Josh Nisly in his Firefox shirt
• Josh Totsen doing a near suicidal Kerry-like move
(best!)
• Me not paying attention on the safety mat and getting remonstrated
• Daniel hangs before falling
• Drop from way up there with a particularly sickening whump
(second best!)

That evening as we ate supper:

I sat next to Jared and his fiance, Yolie (Yolanda):

He asked if I was coming to the wedding. I said I wasn't sure. We had a Taco Pizza right in front of us. It had little packets of sauce to go with it. He started picking them up and throwing them at a girl at another table. He kept doing it and doing it. The girl tried to throw stuff back, but she kept missing and hitting other people. So I got up and got a drink refill and in the process grabbed 2 or 3 ice cubes; I came back and casually stuffed them down the back of his shirt. I was going to sit down and I thought he screech a bit and shake out the cubes and that that would be that. He came at me with a glass of coke. I thought, "I bet I'm not invited to the wedding anymore!" I decided it would be expeditious to leave very quickly. I left. At an unusually high rate of speed. The problem was this. He left at a high rate of speed as well. He was not running the opposite way as I was running. He was about a step behind me. I decided, as I am fatter than him and in worse shape, that this was not going to end well unless I did something to end this inequity of attributes. I pulled a chair in his path. I hoped he would slow down. He didn't slow down. He tried to go through the chair. However, as various nuclear physicists have discovered, that although atoms contain mostly empty space, their electrons rotate at such a high rate of speed and give most objects relative solidity. In this moment, Jared was a experimenting nuclear physicist (this is the best kind of scientist to be) and discovered this fact. Unfortunately, he banged himself a bit, which, I believe, contributed to the magnitude of the revenge. These nuclear experiments I found out later about. The last I knew was that I was running for the back kitchen stairs and that despite me putting a chair in his way, he seemed intent upon disregarding all seemingly solid objects. If I touched any of the stair treads on the way down, I don't remember. I ducked through the maze of hallways that is the boys' dorm and ducked into the bathroom that contains the communal showers. I went and stood in the shower that is in the bottom left of my illustration above. I pressed myself up against the right wall, pointed the shower head at the doorway, turned the selector switch to cold, put my hand, ready to pull it out, and hoped Jared would find me. I soon thought about all the interesting conversation I was missing and how boring it was standing in the communal shower with my clothes on holding on to a shower head for dear life. I slowly snuck out the basement door and around the building. I saw Jared standing on the balcony grinning at me triumphantly with a whole glass of water in his hand. He threw it at me. I dodged and he missed. I at this point, foolishly, thought it was over. I went back in the kitchen, because I had volunteered to help clean up from supper. I went over to the sink and asked Sheri what to do. At this point, Jared and Yolie walked in the room, Jared with a full cup of water and Yolie with an empty one. They strode over to me purposefully. I was like, "Uh-oh..." But I thought they surely wouldn't dump any copious amount of water on me because I was inside. Was I wrong!! Yolie kinda pushed past me and went to the sink. She filled her glass. I didn't really see her do this 'cause I was talking with Jared. He was kinda giving me the victor's speech before the execution. Yolie walked up behind me so I turned to look at her. She poured her whole glass of water down the front of my shirt. I turned back to Jared and he splashed his whole cup of water over me from head to toe! I just stood there and ruefully looked at it as Jared went to get a mop to clean up the floor. I thought, now that they got their revenge, I'm probably re-invited. I then calmly offered my services to Sheri to wash the dishes, commenting that "I can't get much more wet." That evening as we had chapel I shivered until I finally went and took off my damp shirt and put on a nice warm Redskins sweatshirt.

That night we had a nice campfire. Marshmellows and s'mores... Nice... Cozy... Jared and Yolie sitting close together... Romantic...

THE PERFECT TARGET!! I went inside and filled two cups full of water. I thought about packing them with ice and letting them set a while, but I decided I was too nice for that. I walked out to the campfire with the cups held surreptisiously Josh Yoder instantly noticed I was hiding something. In his customary way he started talking loudly about, "Hans! What are you doing! What do you have?" I took a step toward him to try to shush him. He jumped back like a frightened rabbit and said, "Hey!" and put his hands out to fend off whatever I was going to do. I hissed at him, "I'm not going to do anything to you!!" I casually walked up behind the love birds and lovingly doused them from neck down on their backs. A full glass of water a piece. Exact retribution! (Unlike, I might point out, what I got: 3-ice-cubes != two glasses of water; on the other hand, it might not have been exact retribution: two-glasses-on-one-person > one-glass-apiece-on-two-people) I doubt they noticed my thoughtfulness in the way I did this, but I did think about it beforehand: I made sure and kept it below neck level. I knew that the water would melt Jared's plastered hair and I also knew that girls hate when their hair gets wet because it takes so long to dry. I have my serious doubts whether they caught my gentleness, but I really was quite generously considerate. (if you're confused at this point whether I'm beinging sarcastic or not, don't worry, I'm not sure myself! :) After performing the deed I ran away at top speed and the while thinking, "So much for being invited to the wedding!" That night in the gym he called a truce and we shook hands. I guess I have a chance at being invited to the wedding after all...

That evening back in the dorm, Daniel started dispensing wedgies. Shane, David, Titus, and a couple of others were on the quite ungrateful end of this unwanted wardrobe elevation. They made dire threats. Nothing much seemed to come of them for a while except for the fact that Daniel had his pants' string as tight as it would go and that his shirt seemed permanently married to his pants by his hands' rather tight grip. The fun continued as showers were taken, and Daniel was forgotten. People prancing around with such an scant wardrobes prompted remonstrating comments about such celestial objects as our moon. About people taking showers. Glasses were procured. (a cold pizza was also procured and eaten) The glasses were filled with cold water. The glasses were dumped over the shower curtain much to the aural entertainment of the entire boys' dorm's occupants gathered at the bathroom door. After about the third time of this entertainment, the shower taker started to get ticked. Daniel was the slowest one out and got nailed by a SWFW... that is a Sopping-Wet-Flying-Washcloth. Everyone retired on to bed with a coupla fake wedgie attempts on Daniel's closely guarded south end that produced some entertainment. Daniel was in bed and the lights were out and things looked to calm down. That's when the two wedgied brothers, Titus and David, came out of the bathroom. David with a glass of water, and Titus with a high-powered can of shaving gel. Both were deposited rather directly on Daniel. Mark got some good pictures, but he censored them out before he gave them to me... Apparently this was caused because he forgot about them and they were seen by a girl looking at the pictures on his digital camera and she about passed out on seeing them. This produced a renewed sense of vigor on his part on censoring.

On Sun. morning we had a great review of the weekend by Grandpa in chapel. We sang for about an hour. The rest of the morning/afternoon we basically sat around and talked and transferred pictures to laptops and burned them to CDs.

That evening was the Center Youth singing at Dwight and Karen's. We went there and I went in and sat down. I noticed there was a couple of more visitors, but I didn't recognize them. Then I heard the stranger introduce himself as Ronald Yoder (20) to someone else. All of sudden it dawned on me! This was my double second cousing from Costa Rica that I had missed. I rose and shook hands with him (he has changed soooo much since I saw him last as a little boy about 10 years ago.) We had a great evening. I met my other two double second cousins, Diana (23) and Karen (17), two lovely young ladies that remind me a lot of my grandma...

Pictures:

Me exhausted after playing basketball. Titus at right.

The youth committe. Top pic: Left to right: Sheri, Shane, Craig; bottom pic: Sheri, Angela

Hilda with an audience: Loyal, Daniel (green shirt, almost hidden), Brian, Josh Yoder, Shane, Mark

Group picture