H-XM-2000

Happy Holidays 2000 – We hope this finds each of you Well and Happy

Plaques by David and Mary: Unique 19^th BG plaques were made by David and Mary, an image of which is used for the front cover below – these use a combination of engraving and photo imaging.

19^th BG Reunion San Diego: The first big event of the year was the 19^th BG Reunion in San Diego. In preparation I had strived to have “Intranet” 19^th History CD’s available but failed to work out the bugs in time. I provided logo information to Art Aronsen, a 28^th sqd weather officer, who arranged to have them painted in China on the inside of Glass Balls, see photo next page. We passed these out, along with a “certificate of achievement” to all those who attended. Julia took photos of the recipients. I resigned as Chairman of the Board and Bob Ley, the President, was made the new Chairman.

Mary’s computer upgrade: We set up a desk on the enclosed patio and equipped it with an upgraded computer – she now has a 600 mhz Athelon machine with a 21 inch monitor. She’s been mastering how to handle email, she’s: mflandau29@peoplepc.com.

Trip to visit Marjorie in Houston: This was a happy event, long overdue, to see Marjorie’s lovely home. While Mary and Marj saw the sights – between spoiling “Cassy”, Marjories dog – your’s truly dabbled with the computers. We were able to take photos, meet and visit with many of Marjorie’s friends. It was a very happy event.

Computer state of the art: Faster motherboards had just come out; Marj’s new system was a 500/133 CPU and 133 mhz motherboard bus using 133 mhz RAM. The year before they had gone from 66 to 100 mhz.

Trip to Oberlin and Alumni: We spent Memorial Day in Oberlin, attended Alumni and visited with friends.

19^th Bomb Group History Book: I’d been given a draft of the 19^th BG Book being done by Turner Publications. It was not up to what I expected and after writing and talking with the publisher decided to proceed with my own book. There is a huge amount of excellent written and photo material which makes publishing difficult. I decided to extract from the material I had to make a printed copy and include the total on CD’s in the back of the book. I found there was a Book Binder at Seldon KS, visited them and committed myself to a plan to proceed on my own. The above is a reduced size image of the cover.

AGOM reunion in Denver: The American Guerrillas On Mindanao, half of whom had been in the 19^th BG held their reunion in Denver. I was made an honorary member because their history is included as part of the 19^th BG history.

Second stay in Oberlin: We stayed over in Oberlin, and celebrated our wedding anniversary with Mary’s friends at a Café in Norcatur KS – her friends remembered, though it had slipped our mind.

Bobbitt Reunion in Medicine Lodge: The reunion was sponsored by Geraldine and Allan Probst at the time of the Medicine Lodge Pageant celebration. It was a marvelous success – another happy event that will be long remembered.

B-29 Memorial Great Bend KS: We stopped to see the B-29 memorial at Great Bend, it’s incomplete but some of the plaques and bricks – identifying donators – were in place. We hope to support it’s completion.

Family gatherings on the Internet: Marjorie and our kids, David, Monica & Julia frequently visit using VISITALK on their computers. Though thousands of miles apart they are together for periodic chats.

Marjorie and Davids Internet site: David advertises their business via his site geocities.com/dhlimaging/index.htm on the internet and Marjorie publishes stories written by family members on her site geocities.com/metwo77379/mypage.html. These are major achievements, part of the transition on how we humans live.

Refurbishing our CA home: Mary had blinds added to the now enclosed back patio, then had the back bathroom redone. The shower had to be rebuilt – and is now gleaming white tile.

Continuing 19^th History effort: This fall work has continued on the History effort. The game plan being to have Word Files from which a book will be printed, browse-able Intranet files, which are CD htm duplicates of doc book files plus complete source files on CD. This required renaming so the files list in the sequence to be printed, and include filing information on each sheet. These necessary modifications take time. I recently lost the main files when I was trying to do a backup. Thankfully I had saved the latest Word files and by converting them to html documents was able to extract and reconstruct the lost photo files, like those above – I lost 90% of a 40 gig hard drive – 95% is now recovered.

Recent Computer Upgrades: They had a sale on an 800 mhz Intel flatpack CPU with a D815EEA new kind of Intel chipset 133 mhz motherboard at the time of my computer crash – so I built a replacement machine. The machine that crashed was one equipped with four IDE ports on the motherboard – intended for use by those who wish to use RAID, Redundant Array of Independent Disks, for active preservation of data. While at it I’ve installed Windows 2000 and used it to achieve dual boot of it and Windows Milenium or Windows 98 on the same hard drive. These computers, semi dedicated to special functions, are LAN linked. The industry will soon be adding SAN, Storage Area Networks, to perform real time back up over a parallel path while systems operate on the standard LAN Local Area Network.

What might have gone wrong: The BIOS Auto detect of hard drive parameters, when tested using Partition Magic Software, gave an error message “do not try to write to this drive”. Hard drives can be defined as: Normal, Large or LBA. Normal is the definition on the hard drive label. Most hard drives are converted to LBA, Large Block Assembly, when formatted. If the BIOS uses the wrong definition the entire Extended DOS part of the drive can be lost.

New Mice: There are cordless ones, with no tail and optical ones with no ball.

Things learned: Windows 2000 will not uninstall. Also, if you install dual systems on a hard drive, then add a second hard drive, the drive letter D remains D using Windows 2000 but changes from D to E when using Windows Millennium or 98 – dual boot no longer works.

Mary’s Art: Mary is now a leading member of the Garden Grove Art Guild and participant in the Anaheim Art Guild.

Paula’s Wedding: Many of us gathered north of San Francisco to attend Paula’s wedding to Shannon Chapman. Marjorie joined George to give Paula away. Phyllis would have liked that and she was with us in spirit. Kurt and Michelle were there from Denver, Eric and Peggy plus their kids Erica and Stephenie completed Paula’s immediate family. Darrell & Mary, JR and Julia Richards were there representing their family. Georges brother Phyl and wife Marky completed Georges family; most of the others being Shannon’s family many of whom live in the San Francisco area. The ceremony was a blend of serious and light hearted, making it a happy memorable occasion. The site was a winery situated on a hill up from Napa Valley vineyards. There was a hall used for greetings, and dancing after the formalities and the dinner. The dinner was served in a “wine cellar” carved into the mountain to a depth and size fitting for a dinning hall. The clouds and mist preceding a drizzle did not dampen the occasion.

Marie Louise: Art Aronsen picked us up for a visit with his wife Marie Louise who has been in the hospital since the second week of Sept. She had a heart bypass operation then staff infection set in and she’s been doing battle ever since. They had invited Mary and Julia to go to China with them – we sat at the same table at the 19^th Reunion. The radio operator on Art’s crew found their B-29 is at a park in Georgia – the same serial number – one of the few to survive.

Election 2000: This season will be remembered for: chads, over counts, under counts, butterfly and dimpled ballots. These terms will soon be obsolete requiring explanation. In these by gone days voters still punched holes in cards to register a vote and the outcome hung on the Florida count. Chads were dangling paper “holes” that could opaque a machine count. Repeated machine counts flaked these off and counts went up. Word smith’s played games calling no votes “undervotes” claiming these had to be counted by hand to determine the will of the voter, as if everyone intended to vote for a president. “Over votes” were double holes, for more than one candidate – some insisted hand counting could resolve the voters intent. Butterfly ballots, holes in the middle and names on both sides, had many “over counts” and were touted as being too confusing. A sampling of third graders used them with no confusion. The term dimple was applied to “near votes” where the voter had a change of heart and did not to push the plunger all the way – voters are human and change their mind – uncertainty or discontent with either candidate caused lots of near vote dimples. Those behind were dependent on these being “manually” counted as votes by divining the will of the voter. Persons of all ages received a lesson in how our government works: Federal vs state powers, legislature vs judicial authority. Jurors varied in their opinions as they too are only human. In the end the rules before the election prevailed and the supreme court overruled the state court for changing the rules after the fact. The legislature defined nebulous term, “the intent of the voter” – caused most of the stress. Everyone wanted fairness – from a flawed system. A majority recognized the flaw in the procedures and let the process come to a legal, if not idealistic, end. The founding fathers had done a remarkable job – laying out a plan for representation of all peoples – they knew they were dealing with imperfect humans. Like the two below . . . . . .

A little warped but still smiling

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!