About three months ago, or plus, a male and female Muscovy duck pair begat eleven offspring outside the lanai of the condo in which my wife and I now reside, adjacent to our community lake.

I've been watching birds and ducks for a long time, going way back to being a kid when I was "inspired" to leave the house at 5:30AM to go on nature walks, sans parents, which was OK by me. And I watched, was instructed, and learned about ducks..and such.

When my California born and bred wife started paying attention to these 11 Florida ducklings, I tried to soften future hurt by letting her know that the eleven ducklings were unlikely to all make it to leave the "duck flock," or whatever is the proper name, or term, for a duckling group.

In my Ohio recollect, bullfrogs or snapping turtles might get the ducklings one by one, or maybe an occasional hawk.

It was my usual experience in Northeastern Ohio duck watching that fewer than half born survived to leave the parents.

Here in deep South Florida we have snapping turtles, alligators in our lake, ravenous bald eagles, and lots of hawks of various colors and names.

Know what? That mother and father Muscovy duck pair have used our summer rains and high water levels and found ways to bring all of their eleven ducklings to size as big or bigger than either of them.

Now they are teaching them how to fly. All eleven.

Pretty cool to see.

Y'all, check out these 21 signs you're from North Carolina

Admit it. You can't stand hearing people use the term "Carolina" interchangeably to mean North or South Carolina. You know that there's only one REAL Carolina, and it's the best one — the one that sits on top of its inferior southern sibling. Whether you grew up in the mountains, on the coast or somewhere along I-40, you consider North Carolina to be your home. You know all the words to that James Taylor song, would fight Ohio for the Wright brothers any day and seeing a Krispy Kreme donut lights up the "hot" sign in your heart. So grab a Cheerwine, a pack of Nabs and scroll through this list of signs that you're from North Carolina. Or — say it with us — that you're going to Carolina in your mind.

http://now.msn.com/youre-from-north-car ... tale-signs

You're ready for Ohio to knock it off with that "birth of aviation" stuff. You know who's "first in flight."

I'm watching Don Pasquale on PBS at present. I really do not understand it, but the female lead has great boobs and enticing legs.

Oh, and a nice singing voice.

I might be the only guy in America who surfed from NASCAR rain delay post race coverage to catch this PBS airing. It's nice, but I think I'll dash off to watch horse racing from Australia or Japan with one further surf.....

Audio pioneer Ray Dolby dies at 80

Matt Schudel, The Washington Post
Nation | Saturday, September 14, 2013 at 11:56 pm

Ray Dolby, a pioneering sound engineer who removed the hiss from audiotapes and whose innovations brought surround-sound into movie theaters and altered the recording industry, died Sept. 12 at his home in San Francisco. He was 80.

His company, Dolby Laboratories, said in a statement that he had Alzheimer's disease and had recently developed acute leukemia.

Dolby made many key developments in audio design, and his name appears in movie theaters around the world and on countless other products, from video games to DVD players to hand-held devices, that use technology designed by his company.

He first found renown in the mid-1960s, when he invented a "noise reduction" system that virtually eliminated the annoying hiss that was the underlying sound on audiotapes. It allowed musicians to produce recordings of almost pristine audio quality and was first used on a recording of Vladimir Ashkenazy playing Mozart piano concertos.

Among other applications, the technology simplified the practice of multitrack recordings. Although Dolby was an amateur clarinetist and an aficionado of classical music, his technology quickly developed a following among rock musicians. The Grateful Dead reportedly purchased an early version of his multitrack recording device with a suitcase filled with cash.

In 1977, the movie-going public began to experience Dolby's innovations when two popular films, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Star Wars," were released. The soundtracks were recorded in multichannel formats that could create an enveloping sensory experience that came to be known as "surround sound." Thousands of theaters around the world were rebuilt with sound systems designed by Dolby's company.

"Ray's pioneering work in sound played a pivotal role in allowing 'Star Wars' to be the truly immersive experience I had always dreamed it would be," George Lucas, the director of "Star Wars," said in a statement.

Dolby and his company won multiple Oscars, Emmys and Grammys for technical aspects of sound production.

At the 2012 Academy Awards, when the auditorium in which the awards are presented was named for Dolby, Oscar-winning sound editor Walter Murch said his influence was incalculable: "You could divide film sound in half: There is BD, Before Dolby, and there is AD, After Dolby."

Thomas Robertson, a British musician best known for the 1982 hit "She Blinded Me With Science," adopted the stage name of Thomas Dolby because of his fascination with Dolby's audio equipment. (To add to the confusion, Mr. Dolby had a son named Thomas. By contractual arrangement, the British Thomas Dolby could not produce or endorse any audio devices.)

In the 1980s, when digital technology began to alter the recording and movie industries, Dolby found himself behind the technological curve. While he concentrated on refining older analog forms of sound production, other companies stepped into the void. Since the 1990s, however, Dolby Digital regained a large share of the theater market and became the leading maker of sound technology used in home electronics.

Dolby had more than 50 patents, but he charged little for his technology. As a result, producers of sound equipment found it cheaper to use his technology than to try to copy it.

"If it was cheaper for manufacturers to license from us than clone us, why not stick with the Dolby technique?" he said in 1992.

Last year, Dolby Laboratories had total sales of $926 million. Dolby's personal fortune was estimated at more than $2 billion.

Ray Milton Dolby was born Jan. 18, 1933, in Portland, Ore., and grew up in Palo Alto, Calif. His father was a real estate broker who liked to tinker in his home shop and invited his son to join him.

"When I was 11," Dolby told the Los Angeles Times in 1988, "I offered to pull the cylinder head of my dad's '32 Plymouth and do a valve job for him. I started in the morning and finished that night, alone."

He was also interested in music from an early age and played the piano and clarinet.

"Mainly, though," he said, "I was fascinated by the technology of music: how organs worked, how reeds vibrated, why things sounded the way they did."

In his teens, he began working for the Ampex tape-recording company, and he had a major role in developing the first videotape recorder before he turned 21.

He served in the Army in the 1950s and graduated from Stanford University in 1957. He then worked as an engineer in England, where he received a doctorate in physics from the University of Cambridge in 1961.

While working for UNESCO in India, where he was recording local music from 1963 to 1965, Dolby conceived of a way to boost the sound levels of soft musical passages to eliminate the tape hiss. He then adjusted the sound levels for the final version of the recording, resulting in a virtually hiss-free musical experience.

He founded his company in London in 1965 and used generic names for his technology until he overheard a conversation on an elevator.

"I heard an engineer say, 'We have to take the Dolbys from Studio A to Studio B,' " he once recalled. "My hair stood on end. I'd never heard my name used that way."

From then on, his name was synonymous with sound equipment. In 1976, he moved his company to San Francisco, where he served on the boards of the city symphony and opera and contributed millions of dollars to education and medical research.

Survivors include his wife of 47 years, Dagmar Baumert Dolby of San Francisco; two sons; and four grandchildren.

Dolby resented being called a "tinkerer" and considered himself an inventor in the classic mold of Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers.

"A tinkerer is someone who hopes to discover or invent something on an unprepared basis," he said in 1988. "An inventor knows what he wants to do."

Betty Cope, founding president of WVIZ Channel 25, dies at 87
Print By Mark Dawidziak, The Plain Dealer
on September 16, 2013 at 3:11 PM, updated September 16, 2013 at 4:42 PM


WVIZ Channel 25 founder Betty Cope, who died Saturday, at the station in 1976.
Plain Dealer file photo

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Betty Cope, the founding president and first general manager of WVIZ Channel 25, died Saturday night at her home in Bainbridge. She was 87.

A television pioneer whose career in the medium began in 1947, Cope had been ill for about a year. She was the driving force behind getting Channel 25 on the air in February 1965, serving as the station's general manager until her retirement in June 1993.

"It was a very peaceful passing," said Cope's niece, Chris Henry. "She died at her beloved home, the cabin her father built as a summer home on the Chagrin River. She was facing the river. Her little dog was at her side. And she was surrounded by her family."

Cope, a Cleveland native who grew up in Shaker Heights, was a Hathaway Brown graduate. She attended Marjorie Webster Junior College because it had a broadcast program. She was a receptionist at Cleveland's first commercial television station, WEWS Channel 5, when it began broadcasting in December 1947. Although the infant medium was pretty much a men's club, Cope soon became a director and producer at Channel 5.

"Back in those days, receptionist or secretary was about the only off-camera job a woman would get at a TV station," said Fred Griffith, whose long career in Cleveland television started when Cope hired him at Channel 25 in 1967. "But she was a very smart individual with great vision, and she quickly rose through the ranks at Channel 5."

Among the shows she directed was Paige Palmer's popular fitness program.

"Betty Cope was a trailblazer throughout her professional life," said Jerry Wareham, president and CEO of Ideastream, the corporate umbrella over WVIZ Channel 25 and WCPN FM/90.3. "She was a legitimate television pioneer even before Channel 25 went on the air."

During the 1950s, she appeared on the CBS quiz show "What's My Line?" and stumped the panel. They failed to guess she was one of the first and still very few women directing television programs.

Her tenacity, largely responsible for getting WVIZ started, was legendary. During a December blizzard in the early '50s, Cope was determined to get to Channel 5 from Shaker Square, where she was living at the time. She was producing a Christmas show with Santa Claus and didn't want to disappoint Cleveland's children. So, she saddled up a horse and made it to the station for the broadcast.

She left Channel 5 to start her own production firm. Her greatest legacy, though, is WVIZ. In the early '60s, she spearheaded the group dedicated to bringing an educational television station to Northeast Ohio.

"She built WVIZ from scratch before there was a PBS," Wareham said. "The educational and public service work we do today at Ideastream simply would not be possible without the remarkable work she did. We are deeply saddened by her death and forever grateful for her life."

WVIZ became the country's 100th public TV station. It was then part of National Educational Television (NET), the organization that became PBS in 1970. And Cope was the first woman to become the general manager of a major-market television station in the United States.

"She was completely focused on this great potential she saw for television," said Peg Neeson, Ideastream's community relations director. "That could be seen in everything she did. She was driven by that idea -- education and television. The only thing that took precedence over that was her family."

Neeson joined Channel 25 in 1979, working with Cope for 14 years.

"Anyone would have been a pioneer starting an educational station in Cleveland, but TV in those days was a man's world," she said. "And that never entered her mind. She just wanted to get the best people who could do the job. She expected the best of people."

Channel 25's first home was the Max S. Hayes Trade School. That's where Griffith reported for work in 1967.

"I was working at a radio station that got sold, and I was looking for work," said Griffith, later the host of Channel 5's "Morning Exchange." "She was the only woman anyone had ever heard of running a television station. She knew exactly what she was doing, and she let everybody know she knew exactly what she was doing. She was forceful, but in a very quiet way."

Three years after going on the air, the station moved into a new facility on Brookpark Road. That's where an 18-year-old Kent Geist reported for work when Cope hired him in 1968.

"People overuse the words pioneer and innovator, but in Betty's case, those words just scratch the surface," said Geist, who worked with Cope for 25 years. "She had a tough side, but she was as compassionate as she was tough with people. During those early pledge drives, she actually cooked the meals for the volunteers. She not only had great vision, she convinced this community to share that vision. That took incredible tenacity, commitment and belief, and she had plenty of that."

Cope became well known to Northeast Ohio viewers through her appearances during the station's pledge drives and auctions. Her many honors included an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Baldwin Wallace University, the distinguished service award from the Society of Professional Journalists and the governor's award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. She was inducted into the Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame in October 2005.

Twice married and divorced, Cope had no children. But she was a devoted aunt to her nieces and nephews -- to their children and their children's children.

"The cabin was where everything in this family happened," Chris Henry said. "All the holidays and special memories were there. And it was so fitting that she died there.

"She managed to personalize her relationship with each of us. Everything she did was creative, and that included making special days even more special for all of us. Every Easter, we decorated everything and had 40 people out there, each with a hidden Easter basket. She was very caring about individuals."

Cope was preceded in death by her brother, John Cope, and sister, Janet Henry. She is survived by four nieces and two nephews, 11 great nephews and six great nieces, and four great-great nephews and three great-great nieces.

A memorial service is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12, at the West Woods Nature Center of the Geauga Park District.

"We all felt like part of her work, too, because we worked the phones at auction and pledge every year," Henry said. "She was the center of our universe in so many ways. Our life revolved around Betty and that cabin for many years. I can't do her justice. For us, it's like the end of a dynasty."

For Cleveland television, too.

J.R. wrote:Audio pioneer Ray Dolby dies at 80

I first learned about Dolby upon my first high end (of the time) stereo system.


Moving ahead many years, there was a time when I was 32 and not married, and and I thought an at the time 20 year old temp I worked with was cute. And smelled great. And dressed in Laura Ashley influenced flowing skirts and dresses. Which I found quite appealing.

Turned out late she was not quite the age 20 she claimed. Or back up the years, and take your pick of her real age in those and these days.

Hint.... I took her putt putt golfing and to a movie on our first date. Which turned out to be an age appropriate activity.

She turned 19 a month after I turned 33.

Previously I had dated a girl I worked with when I carried a gun on occasion who admonished, "we should not be doing this because we work together," and then offered a graphic verbal presentation of her thoughts on bear bathroom like behavior, and their dining choices in the wild.

THAT girl....(cue Bill Clinton)....the 2nd one....I left.


But only with The Grace of God did I "date" the 19 year old.

Back to task, she educated me on sound systems in movie theaters as she told me her sound preferences with regard to movie theatre advertised sound systems.

We had about four inches of rain in our little piece of The Earth today.

All eleven of the aforementioned ducklings are still hanging together, even as most have outgrown their mother.

These ducklings swimming in the pic are swimming in the street as our community lake has overflowed it's banks today with our rain this year.

True story, I went out and waded the streets around the lake and walked some cars through the flooded streets where I showed them the water was less than a foot deep.

Many places it was more than two to three feet deep on "the streets."

It was near sundown and I was watching for gators and snakes as I walked the streets, knowing they move around when rain events like this happen here near The Everglade Country.

I laughed my arse off when a 12 inch bass swam beside me on a street I had driven yesterday.

We have more rain scheduled tomorrow. No sun will come out.....after midday.


My wife laughed at me for doing the 1/3 mile walk around the lake surveying the current depth on the surrounding roads.

I later this evening laughed at myself for not realizing I could have taken my kayak off the wall of our garage and had a good time while hovering over possible gators, snakes and fish.

I do have "sandbags" on my "to do" list for tomorrow.

These guys got rooked....

(reach for the Funk & Wagnalls)


Posted: 10:54 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013
KTVU.com

SAN FRANCISCO —

Police in San Francisco recently put an end to to the decades-long tradition of people playing chess on the sidewalk along Market Street, saying the games were being used as a cover for drug dealing.

For years, chess games lined the sidewalk on Market Street between 5th and 6th streets.

Now the homeless who often ran the chess games tell KTVU they're caught in between police and people who commit crimes.

57-year-old Marvin Boykins has a long history with the game. He said he was a young boy when he first learned chess as a way to stimulate logical thinking. As a homeless adult, it is a way to socialize.

"You don't know who you're going to meet," said Bokins.

A new challenge came when police recently confiscated his table and chairs along with those of other homeless chess enthusiasts.

Boykins was able to hold on to his treasured chess set

"It's something that consoles me," he explained.

But police said Boykins and others like him are just pawns being used by criminals in their drug deals.

"They would pay for the chess table to play chess and they would sell narcotis while they were seated at the table," said San francisco Police Captain Mike Redmond.

Police said they received 100 complaints a month from merchants and pedestrians passing by the area.

In the two weeks since police stopped the games, they've gotten only ten calls.

Despite criticism, police said they felt that the move to end the traditional chess games was not heavy handed.

"I did what I did to protect the chess players as well as the citizens of SF who have to use that street everyday," said Redmond.

Hilary Hibel of Walnut Creek said she applauds police for trying to stop illegal activity in the area.

"I give them credit for looking at it. We'll see if it stops," said Hibel.

Boykins said the police tactic iss unfair because he and other chess players have no control over the criminal activity around them.

"We're not the ones who made them do what they doing," said Boykins. Many of them don't even know how to play chess."

Redmond told KTVU he plans to meet with Boykins and others on Thursday to return their belongings and work out some kind of solution.

As for if chess games will resume on Market Street, Redmond said he could not make any promises.

How much better does this make the Colts?

"Oh boy, indoor and on turf?'' said Holmgren.

He re-iterated that he offered Colts GM Ryan Grigson his entire 2012 draft to move up to No. 1 to take Andrew Luck.

"I talked to him last year (at the owner's meetings) before we made the trade,'' he said. "I said, 'I'll give you all of our draft picks for the No. 1 pick and I'll take Luck. I'll give the whole draft to you.


"I said, 'Ryan let's do the deal, right now, right here.' He said, 'We're taking Luck.' We were by the pool, I might've even had a lemonade in my hand. He didn't take me seriously, because I was ready to pull the trigger. They were going to take him, and they should've taken him. They did the right thing, but he said if some craziness would've happened, they would've taken Trent Richardson. And now a year later, they get both of them. If you asked him last year, 'Would you trade your 24th pick in the first round for Trent Richardson,' you would do that easily.''

http://www.cleveland.com/browns/index.s ... rt_best-of

I don't really care for or follow the browns much but I do check the scores every Sunday and occasionally will browse the forum and PD articles. In fact, I haven't followed them seriously since the departure of Tim Couch. However, the Mike Holmgren article struck a nerve and reminded me again of how much our franchises have suffered from bad ownership, to bad coaching/managing, and suspect player personnel. To offer an entire draft for one player..........that's insane.............gotta be a joke. Is Luck THAT good? Now Indianapolis has both Luck and Richardson! That just might pique my interest for NFL football again. I'll probably be keeping an eye on Indy scores as well now.

Longtime Tribe fan gloves screaming liner

http://tribevibe.mlblogs.com/2013/09/19 ... 0_12154234

'SEINFELD' ACTOR SHOOTS HIMSELF IN FAILED SUICIDE ATTEMPT



Wednesday, February 22, 2012, 2:11pm (PST)

Actor Daniel Von Bargen has been hospitalized in Ohio after shooting himself in the head.


The 61 year old, who played Mr. Kruger on hit TV sitcom "Seinfeld," attempted suicide on Monday, but had a change of heart about ending his life when he survived the gunshot wound.

In a 911 call, obtained by TMZ, the diabetic actor explained he was set to have his toes amputated as a result of his health condition and he put a gun to his temple because he didn't want to go through with the operation.



He told the operator, "I've shot myself in the head ... and I need help. I was supposed to go to the hospital and I didn't want to. They (doctors) were supposed to amputate at least a few toes."