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Interview
With a Virginian
By Keith Cunningham
From Spatial Data Revealed, 1994
Last November, I was working in Virginia polishing some field mapping for
Geographic Sciences of Tampa, Florida. This particular community in Virginia
is nestled in the Shenandoah Valley and most of its citizens are not yet prepared
for the cusp of the 21st Century.
This observation is well-founded. One early and brisk morning, with frost still on the ground, I was updating some maps in an older part of town. This particular row of houses was located down the side of a hill and I didn’t want to negotiate a rutted drive, so I walked down to the first home and stepped onto the front stoop to knock on the door.
Of course, all homes in this portion of the county had day-glow orange “No Trespassing” signs affixed to every fence post, chicken coop, and outhouse—yes, I am no making this up, pit toilets.
I had begun to knock on the front door of this shack to collect the information I needed when I heard someone say “over here.” I turned and looked up the hill and saw an old Virginian sitting in an outhouse. His pants were around his ankles. A road busy with the morning traffic could be seen further below from his perch (and from his porch).
Pretending not to be embarrassed, I walked up to him and asked for his name and mailing address. He was hard of hearing in addition to being immodest. I spoke louder and he still didn’t understand me. I was prepared to simply say “thank you” and leave without my information when the old man said, “Go into the house an’ ask my son what you need. He’s asleep in bed, but you can wake him.”
As this man must have been at least 70, I thought his son must be at least 40. My curiosity was piqued so I accepted.
Back down the slope I sauntered and opened the front door of the shack. The living room and kitchen joined each other and another closed door had to be the one leading to the bedroom. I opened the door and found the old man’s son, another old man, asleep in the bed.
I shouted to the sleeping son and startled him awake. In his shocked and incoherent state I got his name and mailing address before he could sit up in bed. I left the home as quickly as possible and thanked the father, still sitting in the outhouse with the door open, as I negotiated my way back up to the car.
Las
Vegas Landing!
From Spatial Data
Revealed, Spring 2000
I’d never
been to Vegas (sounds like a song, doesn’t it?) and honestly wasn’t
expecting too much. Mike, our programmer, loves Vegas and had convinced us
it was the perfect place for our annual corporate retreat and conference.
Heck with those cold ski slopes! (Mike had once suffered a double ski expulsion
in the training corral resulting in a bruised knee and wounded ego.) We were
going to Vegas!
To further convince us that Vegas was the way to go for future corporate meetings,
Mike and wife Shelley took care of the travel arrangements. We’d be
staying Sunday through Thursday at the Monte Carlo and would be traveling
on a FunJet charter. Keith and I were the only ones flying out of St. Louis.
The other four hopped aboard an ancient L1011 in Kansas City and were on the
ground in Vegas shortly after we took off.
Our departure was delayed in part by the St. Louis Rams final playoff game
(to determine whether they would go to Super Bowl 2000). As we sat at the
gate and waited to board, I observed one group of a half dozen or so older
ladies run across the concourse to a television set to get closer to the action.
They reminded me of a cartoon—the kind where a whole group of people
scuttles en masse like a herd of lemmings. Because the game was winding up,
and it was close, people waited until the last minute to board.
Keith and I had the window and middle seat on the 737, with lady #7 of the
lemmings group seated next to Keith in the aisle. Her six other compatriots
were seated directly in front of us, and her seatbelt prevented her from chatting
with them during takeoff. She decided to chat with Keith instead. He finally
put his jacket over his head.
During takeoff, as we were gaining speed, she tried to stand up to get something
from her pocket. Ever hear flight attendants scream?
We were still gaining altitude when someone in the back of the plane yelled
“Touchdown!” Weren’t all electronic devises supposed to
be turned off?
An hour and a half into the flight, when the pilot had announced we would
be going over the Rockies and might have some turbulence, Keith turned to
me and said: “I think we’re descending.” A minute later,
I felt my ears register the change in altitude. A minute later, the pilot
came on, announcing he had to shut down an engine and we would land in Colorado
Springs to have it looked at.
“Hmmm,” said Keith, the world traveler, completely nonplused.
“Guess they don’t want us to crash-land in Denver.”
“How many engines does this plane have?” asked his seatmate.
“Just the one,” answered Keith.
She looked worried and got out her rosary.
The plane landed without incident, though one engine too few meant that it
took a lot longer to stop. As we reached the end of the runway and turned
to taxi back, I saw a fire engine behind us. Hmmmm.
We headed for the terminal. NOT. Instead, we went for the repair hangar where
we were told we would not be able to leave the plane. The pilot did announce
that the Rams won. That held everyone’s attention for 10 minutes.
An hour later, they started letting people off for cigarette breaks.
After two hours, we were herded inside the hangar office. A part was on order.
At four hours, 40 pizzas arrived on a Domino’s delivery pickup truck.
The natives were restless. This delay was significantly affecting their gambling
opportunities. An opportunist starting taking bets on when we’d get
out of there.
I observed Keith tearing off the end of a box that indicated a price of $389
for the pizzas. I suspect he filed it as an entertainment expense.
At five hours, an announcement was made that the part had arrived and the
mechanic was hard at work.
At six hours, we were herded back on the plane. Which had never left it’s
original place in front of the hangar. Wasn’t anyone going to give this
thing a test run? The guy in front of me threw a cigarette butt on the ground
from the stairs. Right under the plane.
Mutiny. The ladies in front of us and beside us were talking lawsuits. Getting
all our money back. Writing nasty letters to FunJet. Good luck. I was just
happy we had made it down in one piece.
Arrival in Las Vegas was exactly 6 and a half hours later than expected. We
deboarded to find 160 tired and broke people waiting to get on our plane.
They looked sad. What money they had come with to the airport had been lost
in the convenient airport slot machines.
Keith and I celebrated getting away from the old ladies by taking a limo to
our hotel. Damned if we didn’t run into them there the next morning.
“Will you sign our letter of complaint to FunJet?” asked #7.
Keith put his jacket over his head.
R&R:
Corporate Retreat at Crested Butte, Colorado
From
Spatial Data Revealed, 1999
SDR employees took to the slopes in late January for three days of rest and relaxation in Colorado. Though programmer Mike D’Attilio (see picture on page 2) grew up in Colorado Springs, he had never before hit the slopes. So it was certainly a good idea that he and his wife Shelley, along with Keith Shaw, signed up for ski school.
Mike sailed through the ski rental process, soared through the “locating the ski school” test but first bogged down during the “putting on your skis” lesson. Once that was conquered, he was ready to…move! And move he did! While still in the training corral (with a slope of 5 degrees and a total length of 15 feet), he suffered a “double ski expulsion” when he tripped and fell, sending both skis flying into the air.
Still, he persevered and by afternoon, the class was ready for the “pony” lift. This discus lift led to a 100’ run with a slop of 10 degrees. The discus is a small round metal and rubber “seat” that one places between ones legs and clamps onto with full thigh traction. Mike had no trouble with this lift. His spirits were high as it pulled him on his skis up the slope. And past the exit point. And over the speed bump. And into the “trip the circuit” bar, which shut the lift down as he slowly made his way backward to the exit.
Toward the end
of the day, a final fall resulted in a sprained shoulder. Mike retired to
the condo with a heating pad, his Tylenol and the Super Bowl. His wife joined
him later after her trip to the First Aid Station. She had been the star of
the class until the last minute when she fell backward and hit her head on
compacted snow. She swears it had nothing to do with the sudden vision she
had of Noah, the young and fit ski instructor, peering into her eyes and offering
to come to the condo after class for an intensive post-slope rub-down.
From Spatial Data Revealed, 1999
If you think that we here at SDR have very little time for personal adventure and excitement, you’re right. Keith is on the road as much as he is here and I have my hands full trying to hold up my end of the business while coordinating the activities of the kids and my own stimulating and invigorating social calendar.
Be this as it may, we did find some time at the end of July to jump out of a plane. OK, I didn’t actually jump out of it (or even get in it for that matter), but it felt like I did after the ones that did jump relived the experience for six hours.
Our good friend Eric decided his life was boring and predictable. The solution? Sky-diving. I knew that would appeal to my husband, so we packed up the kids and headed off to Anderson, Indiana for a morning of training and an afternoon of jumping.
We almost missed the “airport” (I use the term loosely)--it was disguised as a ramshackle storage shed, a couple of trailers and a cornfield. The planes (both of them) gave away the facility’s true identity in the end, however. We dropped Keith off for his rigorous training (which started with a video tape of a lawyer saying “You cannot sue us”) while the boys and I went off to shop and fill the time until lunch.
Lunch was filled with talk of the morning’s training. The three potential jumpers--Keith, Eric, and Sheri, Eric’s co-worker--recited a litany of “things that could go wrong.” Eric, whose initial concern (before training) was that the chute might not open, said “I’m totally convinced that the chute will open. That’s the least of my worries now.”
Parachuting, I found out, was not at all as I imagined it would be.
Myth #1: The
plane is large.
Fact: The plane is very small. When eight people crammed into it, I was reminded
of clowns getting into a tiny car at the circus.
Myth #2: The
chute is round and olive green, resembling something from an old “I
Love Lucy” or “LaVerne and Shirley” episode.
Fact: The chute is rectangular and brightly-colored. The chute and pack cost
$4000 and are brightly colored so the sky-diving outfit can get the chute
back (if not the body) if you land in a lake, quicksand, power lines, or on
the interstate.
Myth #3: You
actually jump out of the plane.
Fact: You must manuever your body to a seated position with legs outside the
open door of the plane. You then grab hold of the strut holding the wing to
the plane, slide your arms out, let your legs go and fly superman style at
80 mph 3500 feet above the ground. Then you have to let go.
Myth #4: Landing
is the hard part.
Fact: Getting out of the plane is the hard part.
Myth #5: Once
is enough.
Fact: Once is never enough. And each additional jump costs $30.
I did get some
great pictures and videotape, and the kids loved it, especially Ryan, who
really wanted to do it himself and couldn’t believe you have to be old
enough to sign away your life before you can legally jump. One day, he’ll
figure out that age gives you the right to make your own decisions--even stupid
ones.
From Spatial
Data Revealed, 1998
John Hayes, retired from two jobs and still wanting to work, has been in our
employ for a year and a half as a field data collector. Imagine a short Santa
without the beard (but with the mustache), jollier than the original but just
as rosy-cheeked, with a parcel of grown children with names like Fulvio and
Claudio and Aurora. A guy who drives a red Geo Metro because you can turn
it around on a dime and get out of nearly any messy or tight field situation
you find yourself in.
Now imagine this guy, who everyone loves during the day, kind and generous to the fault, as Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde. When night falls and he goes to bed, the real John, the repressed John, emerges. John, the locomotive snorer. How do we all know all this? Because John is the permanent inhabitant of our Texas office/apartment, the one we work and sleep in when we’re down there. At one time or another, Gary, Keith Shaw, Keith C., myself and Fulvio Hayes have all spent overnight time in the apartment with John. It’s worse when I’m there, and Keith S. or Gary feels obligated to bunk in the same room as John does because of issues of privacy and decency, erroneous as they may be. The secret, I’ve heard, is to fall asleep first. Impossible, of course, as John is usually asleep before his head hits the pillow
Gary and Keith Shaw recently teamed up to combat the problem, and have so far tried the following with varying degrees of success:
1. Ear plugs (Didn’t hear the alarm clock and overslept)
2. Turning John over on his side (John snored “in” through one nostril and “out” the other)
3. Turning John over on his stomach (Vibrations caused by snoring led building residents to call 9-1-1 reporting an earthquake
4. Recording the snoring then playing it back at bedtime (Caused John to hum along)
5. Surgery (Had all the instruments sterilized and patient prepped, but neither Keith nor Gary could make the first cut. They should have called Keith C. who has no qualms about performing surgery on employees.)
Ideas are being solicited by SDR to cure the problem. The contributor of the winning solution will receive a complete set of four 9-1-1 jar openers/coasters. Please send your ideas to: “Silence of the Lambs” c/o SDR, New World Headquarters, P.O. Box 1311, Columbia, MO 65205
Keith Becomes Doctor Or: Gross Stuff in Texas
From
Spatial Data Revealed, 1997
On Memorial Day weekend, Keith and one of his contractors, Fulvio Hayes, had
driven down to southern Texas to begin collecting GPS points. Fulvio arrived
several hours before Keith and decided to stretch his legs by taking a bicycle
ride around a small Texas farm town. A car cut him off, however, causing him
to crash and gash his shin deeply. He pushed his wrecked bike back to the
hotel, where he found that Keith had arrived and checked in. He went to Keith’s
room with blood still spigoting down his leg. Keith cleaned the wound and
determined that it needed stitches, but the he-men decided not to disturb
the sole doctor in town on the holiday. They bandaged the cut with butterfly
bandages. Approximately eight hours and one case of beer later, in the middle
of the third war movie on TNT, Fulvio decided to take a look at his injury.
It was apparent that the butterflies would not hold up to the coming week’s
work out in the field, so both agreed that stitches were in order.
The medical team of Cunningham/Hayes went to the front desk in search of a needle. They got needle and thread there but Keith broke the needle in half as he tried to bend it into a crescent shape. He then remembered he had a complementary hotel sewing kit. He got out a needle, but then determined that the thread wouldn’t stand up to the blood and guts.
Brainstorm.
Keith pulled out his green, mint-flavored dental floss and soaked a two-foot length in hot water to remove the mint flavor. He threaded the needle with the floss.
The flesh on the skin is amazingly tough and the blood makes it slippery. But after a lot of hard pushing and three stitches, Fulvio was sewn up. The stitches held very well, but two days later, Fulvio decided to have a doctor take a look at the wound. The doctor looked at the stitches, sat back and laughed. He examined them closer and said “We’ll just leave these in. They’re amateurish but should hold well. Is this green thread what I think it is?”
Keith will never be a plastic surgeon, and Fulvio will always have a scar to remember the incident. They also took a picture with a Kodak one-use camera, but unfortunately, the case of beer affected their photographic skills. The photo looks more like a moon crater than an infected shin with green stitches. My advice: if ever you're injured in Keith’s company, run, don’t walk, to the nearest hospital!
More Gross Stuff From Texas . . .
From Spatial Data Revealed, 1997
After stitching Fulvio up and putting in a long week in the Texas heat, Keith was heading home in his sporty Mazda Miata (cleverly disguised as a 323 hatchback). He was going at a good clip when he crested a hill and saw a large gathering of vultures on the road ahead of him, snacking on road kill. Seeing him coming, the birds began to fly off. One greedy old bird, however, lingered too long over his lunch. When he finally made it into the air, Keith was upon him. The vulture smacked into the corner of the windshield on the passenger side of the car.
This was the end of the vulture but not of the story. Being preoccupied with the vulture meat on the windshield (and regretting having just eaten a Big Mac), Keith at first did not notice the vulture juice splattered across the ceiling of the car. The hot Texas air quickly dried the vulture juice, so by the time he made it to a gas station to scrape the hamburger from his windshield, the juice had dried to a white scum on the headliner of the car. Keith is still pondering what buzzard organ produced that juice.
Alone in the Woods in St. Francois County
From Spatial Data Revealed
When we took the job in St. Francois County, Missouri, we all thought it would be a snap. Only 40 miles from our Cedar Hill office, it was a breeze to sail down for a day of fieldwork. It took us less than a day to realize that things are never as trouble free as you’d like them to be. The particular spot on the earth where this lovely county sits made it a bear to get consistent, good GPS lock. Easy going John, field worker number 1, practically knelt down and kissed our feet when we sent him from St. Francis County to Nebraska. Field worker number two, Marvin, packed it up and went home after a week. That left field worker number three-me-to-finish the job.
Keith Shaw, in Columbia, suggested that we switch from the Sokkia Spectrum GPS system to the real-time Trimble equipment, and volunteered to train me how to use it. He printed out a map of a subdivision that needed to be worked and showed up in the company’s low-riding Civic with the brand-new rebuilt engine, showing more excitement about a field project than I had ever seen him display. I noticed that he had a jug of water, a shoebox, a thick chain and a camera with a 400 mm telephoto lens on it in the backseat. When I glanced at these things curiously, he shrugged in an offhanded manner and said “Gary’s stuff. I don’t ask questions.”
Thus I set out, carefree and unsuspecting. The “subdivision” (I use that term loosely) was in the Northeast corner of the county, a desolate area full of rocks, ruts and only a handful of people, most of who lived behind orange, hand painted “No Trespassing” signs. I should have smelled trouble, but game as I was, we continued, stupidly plowing on as the road narrowed and the trees closed in around us. When it became evident that we could never, ever, never turn the vehicle around, we were left with the choice of continuing or backing up. Keith, usually the cautious voice of reason, voted to go on.
I took my shoes off early in the adventure to wade through a stream crossing the road to judge its depth. Before the ordeal was over, I would be out of the car on countless occasions to move big rocks, break down small trees, wade through more water and check to be sure the muffler was still attached to the vehicle. While Keith should have been tense and distressed, mentally composing his letter of resignation, instead he was sharp and alert, gazing out the window into the trees and from time to time getting out of the car to brush leaves from the ground and make cryptic annotations in a tiny notebook.
When at last we broke free of our imprisonment, one hour and three miles later, I myself was composing that letter of resignation. Somewhere between the first rutted pathway and the sideswiped tree, I had totally given up even worrying if the GPS was tracking our progress. The thought of ever returning to that God-forsaken place made me hyperventilate. Keith, on the other hand, had a distant, dreamy look in his eyes. He looked behind us almost wistfully as we left the wooded area.
We spoke very little as we drive away. I filled the time by thinking up various excuses to give Gary for the scratches to his car. The best ones all involved Keith’s careless driving, but the most interesting ones were based on us being chased by a bunch of drug smugglers, a pack of wild dogs, a mountain man and perhaps even Bigfoot himself.
Bigfoot! How could I have forgotten Keith’s obsession with this mythical being? Now I understood his refusal to turn the vehicle around while it was still possible, his dogged determination to continue into the desolate wooded country and the odd collection of items in the backseat. His selection of that particular area hadn’t been accidental at all. Suddenly I remembered the rustling I had heard in the woods while clearing rocks away at a particular nasty dip.
I stole a glance at Keith. Was I imagining that heavy five o’clock shadow and those feral eyes? And what about his unusually hairy legs that our 7-year-old once “petted”?
Suddenly, I remembered the movie ET. His frantic attempts to contact his people, to return home. Hadn’t Keith said that he was a full head taller than anyone else in his family? That he never really felt “at home” in Iowa? What about those “power bars” he ate for lunch? His size 14 shoes?
I began to grow hot and uncomfortable in the car. The harsh practicality was this: What if the insurance company found out? SDR would go under trying to insure Bigfoot. Clients might object as well. “Your system crashed? We’ll have Bigfoot down there in three hours.”
Is it PC to have a Bigfoot on your payroll? Is he a minority? Could we qualify for special grants and waivers? Food vouchers? Could he still be trusted in the same office with the 20 lb one-year old daughter of the Vice President? Did she look too much like an appetizer?
Suddenly, it
hit me. The solution to all of our problems in Texas. Whenever anyone called
from Grayson County, we’d just refer them to Bigfoot. I looked at Keith
with new eyes. In an instant, he changed from menace to savior.
“I think you need a raise,” I said aloud.
“Grrrrrrrrrrr.”
This article was written in 1994. I gave up my last MacIntosh in 1998, but am happy to report that a Mac G4 still inhabits the office, used for our graphic arts. It’s the computer we routinely use when we can’t get any of the PCs to print to the laser printer (a common occurrence since we “upgraded” to Windows XP).
My experience with computers has been a strange one. I (deliberately) missed out on computer programming in college after watching many of my friends sort piles of computer cards with strange, rectangular punch marks in them. The “main frame,” they told me, was located in the basement of the math building. In fact, it was the basement of the math building! Whoa! I thought. But I didn’t enroll in computer programming. Instead, I used those computer cards for bookmarks.
In 1986, my life changed. Keith and I picked up a tiny black and white computer and dot matrix –printer—a Macintosh 512—for the paltry sum of $1800. The Mac Plus had just come out so they were practically giving away these outdated models.
The computer that was, according to my husband, “As much as we’ll ever need,” was replaced by a Mac SE several years later. What power we now possessed in this little box! It was faster! It was better! It was newly accessorized with an internal hard drive! But Keith’s testosterone level crested again only a few months later. The Imagewriter gave way to a Stylewriter and the Mac SE went to live with my oldest brother, a chemical engineer who uses it primarily to play Tetris.
Enter our LC III. A couple months later, Keith started the business, the LC III became “my” computer and Keith started his fourth love affair, this time with the Centris, a new Laserwriter, a monitor almost as big as our television and a CD full of Monty-Python sound bites.
So there I was, schooled on the Macintosh, with double clicking and dragging so engrained in my being that I click and drag in my sleep, when Keith brought the alien home.
I looked at the small, heavy laptop with suspicion.
“Where’s the mouse?” I asked
“It’s built in,” he replied, showing me a tiny ball above the keyboard with tow buttons above it.
“Why does it have two buttons?” I asked
He started going on about “gooeys” and event-driven interfaces. Seeing the glazed look in my eyes, he said: “Let’s have a lesson in DOS.”
Why was he speaking German? Das ist gut, ja?
I was terrified. Images of C:\ were branded into my head. What does “DIR” mean? Where was my nice “desktop?” The trash can? Where were my icons? Why did all the file names have a period in them? Why couldn’t I give them more memorable, creative names like I did on my Mac, calling my folders “Keith’s nasal hair follicles” and making my hard disk icon look like Homer Simpson?
I don’t know if I’ll ever accept that laptop computer, and I’ll never willingly betray my Macintosh loyalty as Keith has. Just as our cars are all Mazdas, our computers should be Macintoshes. Why does a man who insists that we use only Crest toothpaste (regular flavor, twist-off cap) not understand brand loyalty when it comes to the really important things in life?
