Ron's Big Life Update - July 1999

Hi, y'all. I finally had a good vacation, and I'll tell y'all about it now. (Nope, the word y'all still sounds ridiculous to me, despite my having used it twice in two sentences.)

We'd never been to the Badlands or Devil's Tower, and I was almost convinced that the state of Wyoming didn't even exist, so, in the fine tradition of Chevy Chase movies, Margaret and I took a Road Trip. It was wonderful.

First, we brought Margaret's old '83 Accord to our Über-mechanic, who pronounced it fit for driving. (Yes, we took Margaret's car. The Hondastein - made up of pieces of old dead Hondas. More on this later.) Then we swept and vacuumed the inside of the car at our Über-carwash, which was a requirement of mine. If you'd ever seen the inside of Margaret's old car, you would understand.

Then, we hit the road Tuesday night (6/29) and made it to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Not much happened, since we drove at night.

We awoke casually on Wednesday (6/30) and drove clear across South Dakota, which only took a few hours. More importantly, I got to drive a significant stretch of I-90. This is only relevant because I had practically no prior experience driving a stick. I mean, in PRINCIPLE, I can drive a stick. Sure, no problem. But, in practice, well, I never really got out of the on-deck circle. (For fun, let's review my prior vehicles, all of which contained automatic transmissions: a 1979 Ford Fairmont, a 1979 Chevy Caprice, and a 1986 Toyota Tercel. I can recall getting stranded in all of them, usually in remote parts of New York state, and once in Canada! Ah, sweet memories...) Long story short - I can get it into 5th without incident, and I can go from 5th to neutral on the exit ramp. I am Riding-The-Clutch-Man, and I have come to terms with my inflexible driving style. Margaret did all the driving through the small towns with traffic lights (because I didn't feel like having the South Dakota natives point and laugh), and I did about half of the highway driving. Surprisingly, no damage done to the car, and I only stalled once in reverse. (Amazingly enough, the Honda is still on its original clutch, even after my driving skillz,,,)

Most of South Dakota is pretty desolate, as you might imagine. Flat. Cows. More cows. A tree here and there. I got the impression that most of South Dakota exists so that you can gas up and get out of South Dakota.

All that changed once we reached the Badlands in the western part of the state. The Badlands are absolutely astounding, and we far and away the best thing we saw on our trip. My measly words can't even begin to describe the rock formations, so I won't even try. I got some great pictures of Margaret standing by the pretty rocks, and one of them will end up on my desk at work. Just north of the Badlands (off I-90) is Wall Drug, which is the South Of The Border of the upper midwest. We didn't even stop.

We stayed overnight in Rapid City, South Dakota. We were directed by some locals to a Heritage Festival (although I don't know exactly whose heritage), where some mildly ethnic food was served, and Lamont Cranston (sp?) was playing guitar up on the stage. Neat!

We got up nice and early on Thursday (7/1), and did most of the touristy things in the Mount Rushmore area (SW corner of SD) all in one day. I will summarize and give capsule reviews, à là Leonàrd Màltin:

• Breakfast at Rapid City. 1-1/2 stars. Toast and juice, with no meat and nothing deep-fried. Disappointing, considering that the state of South Dakota has some anti-animal-activist billboards. (That's pro-hunting.)
• Mount Rushmore. 2-1/2 stars. A big mountain with four big stone heads carved in it. Impressive. We didn't hike the trails around it, so it was pretty brief. I hypothesized that the rest of their bodies was also carved into the mountain but was mistaken left underground, and was abruptly silenced by Margaret.
• Black Hills Wildlife Preserve. 3 stars. It's got little teeny two-lane roads that snake through it, and it's very pretty from the car. We encountered a buffalo that was walking down the road in the opposite direction (and on the proper side of the road, too!) Naturally, I didn't have my camera ready and had to settle for pictures of some antelope later on.
• Crazy Horse. 2 stars. From the road, we could see the mountain where they'd begun carving, but all there is is the top of his head and one of the fingers on his hand. ("Pull my finger." Ha! That just kills me...) The admission price to the park was pretty steep, so we just turned around in the parking lot entrance and took a picture. Maybe it's impressive when you're standing right in front of it, but now I'll never know.
• Hill City. 3 stars. Well, I guess the whole town doesn't deserve three stars, but the little mom-n-pop place that served us buffalo burgers for lunch was great. Buffalo is tasty.
• Lead, South Dakota. (pronounced leed, not led as one would think.) 2-1/2 stars. Lead is a town of about 500 people, where one-third of the population works for the Homestake gold mine. We got a tour, and it was pretty cool. I guess the total daily output of the mine is about one brick-sized brick of gold, or somewhere around $100,000 a day. We didn't get to go underground, though. Fooey.
• A Petrified Forest just southeast of Sturgis. 2 stars. Apparently, having a few petrified stumps lying on the ground qualifies it as a forest. It's my first experience with petrified wood, which looks like wood but feels like rock. Margaret liked it much more than I did, and practically cleaned out the gift shop.
• We stayed in Thursday night in Sundance, Wyoming. A nagging voice in my head says that that's where the Sundance Kid got his name, but that must have been way before we got there. We didn't meet anybody famous.
• Donuts for breakfast. 4 stars.

Friday morning (7/2), we drove up to Devil's Tower, which is the giant-sized rock from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. (Oddly enough, no signs about the movie or where it was filmed. Maybe it wasn't shot at Devil's Tower after all...) It was, for lack of a better expression, really cool. There are trails that you can hike around near the base, and if you sign up beforehand, you can climb up one of the faces. It's not for beginners, and you have to be quite the rock-climber-with-gear to attempt it. I got one superb picture of Margaret's car in front of Devil's Tower, which will undoubtedly be shown to future Honda owners everywhere.

The rest of Wyoming seemed even more desolate than South Dakota. We passed through the teeny towns of Moorcroft, Upton, Newcastle, Lusk, Torrington, and not one made any impression at all. I ate an ill-advised chili-burger in one of them.

We stopped at Scottsbluff, Nebraska, which was sorta scenic and very windy. It would have been much nicer if we hadn't just seen the Badlands, which dwarfs all in its path.

We ended up in Yuma, Colorado at Margaret's mom's house on Friday night. Saturday (7/3) was tied up with family stuff, except for a three-hour pilgrimage to Don's Discs, an outstanding record store in Denver. I dropped a few bucks, but isn't that what a vacation is for?

Sunday (7/4) was fun - we threw a 60th birthday party for Margaret's mom, and the rest of the family flew in from all parts of the country. It was a surprise party, and boy was she surprised. Her birthday isn't until November, so she didn't suspect a thing.

Sunday night, the guys across the cul-de-sac from my brother-in-law must have shot off a thousand dollars worth of fireworks. No joke - they had 20 or 30 people sitting in front of the house on lawn chairs, and they must have spent a pretty penny. The two that went off on the ground sent us running for cover, but it was still very impressive.

Monday (7/5) - we saw some friends and family in Denver, including Margaret's Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob is a Civil War buff, and has been involved with re-enactments and stuff for over twenty years. He's a collector, and has the coolest stuff of anyone I know. Lots of fun.

We gave Margaret's old Honda back to her brother, the very person who gave it to her all those years ago. He likes it so much that he'll probably drive it around town. Whod'a thunk? It still gets around 40 miles per gallon, so it's better than the gigantic pickup trucks for little trips. Use it well...

Tuesday & Wednesday (7/6 & 7/7) - we rented a U-Haul and loaded it up with furniture from Margaret's mom's house in Yuma, as did Margaret's sister and brother. Woo-hoo! Antique furniture! Now we can get rid of the crappy yard sale stuff that we've had for years! Life is good.

Thursday (7/8) - we drove from Yuma, Colorado to Minneapolis. This was less fun than one would imagine for three reasons: (1) The alignment of the U-Haul's front tires was so far off that it was a perpetual struggle to keep it in the lane, (2) The U-Haul got 7 miles per gallon, and (3) It took 16-1/2 hours to drive from Yuma to Minneapolis, which is way too far to drive in one day. We'll know for next time.

We got in at around 2:30 AM on Friday morning (7/9), and I made a token appearance at work for about an hour. (I have 74 new e-mail messages! Hooray!) We spent the weekend unpacking and rearranging furniture, and if we ever finish I'm sure the house will look smashing.

Plus, we got rid of Margaret's old Honda and found someone who will use it! We're down to two cars between us, and I'm not buying another car for at least ten years...

So, welcome back. (Although I'm the one who's been gone, I feel it's appropriate to welcome back to wherever you are now.)

Talk to y'all soon. (Nope, still sounds silly.)

Ron

Ron's Big Life Update - May 1999

"In cars." - Gary Numan, 1980

It's been a long, strange few weeks out here in Minnesota, and for me, it has focused completely on cars. In order to maintain my sanity (and my need to vent), I will now describe the beginnings of what will undoubtedly be the longest family squabble ever in the Gerber family.

I found out last year that the lease on my mom's car will expire later this year (late '99). This will leave her with no car to drive, and frankly not a lot of money to buy a new car. I figured that I could afford to help her out, so I started looking at used cars last summer. Last November, I found what I thought was a perfect replacement for the awful Mitsubishi Galant that she likes so much. I found a 1993 Geo Prizm (clone of a Toyota Corolla - same car, different nameplate). It looks just like the Galant: it's white, it's the same size, it has the same color interior, it has the same power windows and power door locks, which my mom described all as very important features to her. More importantly (to me anyway), it will start every day. I don't want my mom getting stranded anywhere, so what could be more reliable than a Corolla? The Corolla's TV ads tout its reliability, and I can attest to that, being a happy Corolla owner myself. My co-workers agreed; a casual survey of their experiences revealed a Corolla with 200,000 miles, a Camry with 108,000 miles, an Acura with 120,000 miles, a Mazda with 100,000 miles, and so on. Virtually everyone I found who's owned a Toyota wouldn't part with it for the world, even with 100,000 miles on it.

So I bought the Prizm and immediately had lots of preventative work done on it. I replaced all the fluids, belts, hoses, filters, wiper blades, brakes, and tires, and I gave it a tune-up, a wheel alignment, and quite a few other things that I can't remember off the top of my head. I gave my mechanic instructions to replace anything that might be questionable, and he went to town even though the car was in great shape to begin with. So when all was said and done, I had a remarkable little car that I thought my mom would love.

Margaret drove it around town from last November until May. (Her old '83 Accord doesn't like winters, but I put off replacing it until after my mom's car was delivered.) Not surprisingly, the new Prizm survived the Minnesota winter quite nicely, and became the car of choice when we wanted to drive somewhere. (It has a bigger engine and more pep than my own car.) We drove it up to Duluth (3 hours each way) at ridiculously high speeds to check out its gas mileage. (40 MPG. God bless.)

The plan was that I would drive it out east in May, visit with mom, and fly back home, leaving the car with her. Simple, or so one would think. Margaret and I drove the 1500 miles to NY last week, and the car performed beautifully, but mom rejected the car. At some point, one of her friends put the bug in her head that the car was unacceptable because it had lots of miles on it. Never mind the fact that my own wife drove it through a Minnesota winter (if it's good enough for my wife, shouldn't it be good enough for my mother?), or that we had just driven across eight states through some of the most isolated parts of the country without batting an eye. Nope, the car was unreliable. So I gave it to my brother, who was also out east and now owns two cars. (The other one is an '83 Chevy Celebrity with 155,000 miles, and despite his claims that it's the best car ever built ever, it won't live much longer.)

So I'm an "irresponsible" son, in her words. Unbelievable.

Now that I've gotten all that out of my system, I'll fill in some of the details about the trip. We drove through Chicago, and saw a few billboards with ads for genetic testing services to find out if a baby is yours. I am not making this up. They just need a little saliva, and presto! You're either off the hook, or you're a dad. I guess these services were inevitable, but it's creepy nonetheless.

We drove about 12 hours the first day, then met a dear old friend in Detroit, which is almost exactly halfway between Minneapolis and New York. I had heard that Detroit was not particularly friendly towards foreign cars, but I was still surprised to see that 90% or so of all the cars on the road were American. Out here, the cars are mostly Hondas and Toyotas, but it's strictly the Big Three in Detroit. (As opposed to the Big 803, which is my brother's cryptic nickname for his beloved car. Let's all sing the Big 803 song... but I digress.) We saw a Tigers game, and thanks to Terry's corporate seats, we sat 9 rows behind home plate. Woo-hoo! It's the last season for the Tigers before they get a new stadium, but I didn't see much wrong with the old one.

We left Detroit the next day, then drove through Cleveland to New York in one shot. It was only about 11 hours, and 3 hours shorter than MapQuest's estimate. It might have taken longer if we had stopped for any appreciable amount of time. We did stop at a rest stop in Ohio, and while I was waiting, I noticed the big pile of bad cassettes for sale by the cash register. ("Loggins and Oates" - the Simpsons) They were selling one tape by the country group Asleep At The Wheel, which has to be the worst choice of driving music that one can make.

The stay in New York was brief and rather unpleasant, and I apologize for not contacting anyone while I was there. I did get my teeth cleaned by my childhood dentist, which was a bright spot. Good dentists are very hard to find, and I recommend anyone in the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut area to stop by and see Dr. Wolff. (In hindsight, it couldn't have been a wonderful vacation if the high point was a teeth cleaning.)

I noticed that New York radio has reshuffled its cards again. Z100 and WPLJ, the two top 40 stations from my childhood, are both back to teen pop music again after taking a few years off. (They were adult contemporary and modern rock, respectively. I still cringe when I think of one of Z100's ill-fated slogans: "Do you like Pearl Jam? We like Pearl Jam.") The last time I was in NY, there was an all-'80s station with a painfully tight playlist (imagine Springsteen's "Dancing In The Dark" and Donna Summer's "She Works Hard For The Money" and nothing else.) It has since become Jammin 105, which seems to play nothing but the Spinners and Al Green. They won't last. I did get to hear one of my favorite DJs, Broadway Bill Lee. He's working at WKTU, which is a new incarnation of the disco-era KTU, and he's still got it.

So Margaret and I flew back here on Sunday, one day ahead of schedule. (My trip was so unpleasant that I changed my plane tickets.) I was never so happy to come back to work...

In other news, we saw "Go", which was immensely entertaining (even though it was really derivative of "Pulp Fiction") and "Election", which wasn't bad, but seems to have had all its elements thrown together by a committee. ("Let's have Matthew Broderick get stung by a bee for no good reason! That's funny!")

"Crap From The Past" is developing a pretty devoted following, thanks in no small part to my FABULOUS PROMOTIONAL PENS, which have been available in local record stores for about a month now. People seem to love pens, and I recommend the Bic Stics to anyone who's interested in tooting one's own horn.

My idea for the greatest Halloween costume ever: The One-Man Food Fight.

Margaret just started work at a new and better job. She's doing jewelry stuff for a company in downtown Minneapolis. She takes the bus in with all the other commuters, and she works on the 11th floor. That's pretty tall! I think she'll be doing bench work, but I don't know any of the specifics yet.

We also got a newer car to replace Margaret's '83 Accord. She now has a mint-green '96 Civic hatchback, and it's pretty cute. So finally, no more car stuff. I don't ever want to hear anything about cars ever again...

Well, thanks for letting me vent. I really do feel better now.

Ron & Margaret

Ron's Big Life Update - March 1999

Howdy and hello, or as our governor would say, "I ain't got time to bleed".

It's been a while since I last gave the Minnesota update, and actually quite a bit has happened. In January, our department at Seagate had a pretty severe cutback, and we reduced our headcount from around 80 to 20. (The remaining 60 or so were redistributed to other departments here in the Twin Cities.) Morale around the department was pretty bad for a while, as you might imagine. I'm still employed, and I still like the work I'm doing, but I wonder how much longer my project will exist. I give it about a year before the rest of us are sent scurrying to other departments. And so it goes.

Margaret found out about all this and got scared enough to get a job! She's now manning the repairs counter at JB Hudson, the fanciest jewelry store in one of the local malls. (Not the BIG mall - that's too scary.) She dresses super-fancy for work, and I tell her that's it weird to see her dressing in drag. Her co-workers seem pretty cool, and she likes the job. The only down side is that she has to work sporadic mall hours, which includes some evenings and weekends. Not the end of the world.

"Crap From The Past" FINALLY got its own weekly time slot on my tiny radio station out here. Sundays at midnight on KFAI, Minneapolis. Not the greatest time slot, but it's weekly and it's all mine. Finally! (After almost two years of waiting for a slot to open up.) I figured that the first order of business is self-promotion, so I ordered 500 "Crap From The Past" pens. They're Bic Stics, burgundy barrel, burgundy cap, white printing. And they're due in by next week! Oh boy! A box o' pens! All toward the goal of media saturation! Woo-hoo!

"Shakespeare In Love" won the big enchilada! I'm surprised that "Saving Private Ryan" didn't win, but I thought both films were outstanding, and I'd put them in a dead heat as my favorite films of the year. Of course, one of those movies was the feel-good-hit-of-the-year, and other, well... a bit of a downer. Saw "A Simple Plan", directed by Sam Raimi ("Darkman", "Evil Dead 2"), and done very well. Also saw "Elizabeth" - pretty overrated, but not bad.

I found one tiny bright patch in the musical wasteland - Jason Falkner. He writes, produces, and plays all the instruments on his 2 albums, and his songs are catchy pop tunes, similar to Aimee Mann's solo work. I'll be wonderfully surprised if anyone outside of my office hears his single, "Author Unknown". And who let former New Kid On The Block Joey McIntyre back on the radio? I demand a recount...

Gabe Kaplan's birthday is on March 30th. (My "Crap From The Past" tribute to Mr. Kotter airs until the 28th at kfai.org.)

Winter has been lame-o out here. (Which is good.) We got practically no snow in November and December, 1000000000 inches in January, nothing in February, and nothing in March until we got 15 inches all at once about three weeks ago. It was the largest single snowfall out here since Halloween 1991 (and I was here for that, too.) The weather turned mild right after that, and now the only snow left outside is right up close to buildings, where there is no exposure to direct sunlight. You can see a sharp edge near the bottom of the building here at work, and I think it's pretty entertaining. It hit around 60 degrees today, and I think Minnesota is getting restless for spring. I can't wait to start sleeping with the windows open (a bad idea right now because 1. it gets below freezing at night, and 2. Margaret would beat me senseless.)

Hope all is well in the portion of the world that I like to call non-Minnesota. (It's my New York heritage leaking through. You're either from New York, or Who Cares?)

Stay warm,

Ron and Margaret

Ron's Big Life Update - December 1998

Happy holidays! I apologize in advance for this mass e-mailing, but I figured that this is better than sending a chintzy card that doesn't say much. Plus I hate addressing envelopes. So with plenty of further adieu...

Margaret and I have had a mixed 1998. We both lost our fathers in the first half of the year, so we figured that it was gonna be a horrendous year start to finish. Actually, the second half of the year was pretty entertaining, and I will hit some highlights:

I got a solicitation to purchase the bestest book in the world: "The Gerbers in America: From 1790 to 1998!" Joy joy! "You'll go back in history and meet Gerbers like Francis, a farmer, who lived in Monroe County, Illinois in 1850." The author of the invitation, Eugene E. Gerber, "guarantees that once you've started this Gerber book, you won't want to put it down." Utterly spellbinding! "No direct genealogical connection to your family or to your ancestry is implied or intended;" I guess we're supposed to delight in the listing of our non-family namesakes. Well, at least "each heirloom quality Gerber book is handmade to order and elaborately illustrated," so that my $34.50 plus postage and handling would not be wasted if I actually cared about my namesakes. The publishers were nice enough to include a wholesome picture of three Gerber-looking people smiling at each other while flipping through a rather paltry-looking paperback book. Margaret got a similar solicitation to buy the book of Vonderwahls, but since there are only seven or so Vonderwahls on the planet, she passed it by.

Minnesota was probably the only place in the world that warmly embraced El Nino, which graced us with the warmest winter on record. It wrought havoc over the summer, though, and we had two monster storms in May, two weeks apart. The first one was a lovely hailstorm, and Margaret assures me from her Colorado upbringing that this was a serious hailstorm. And, courtesy of God and my homeowner's insurance, we had a new roof put on, and we'll be getting new aluminum siding on the side of the house in the spring. Two weeks after the hailstorm, we had hurricane-force winds that left us without power for five days and knocked a tree onto our garage. And thus, a new garage roof. All in all, the insurance companies paid out more for these two storms than they had in the past 31 years combined, and I believe the exact figure was around $848 million. Woo-ha.

We discovered something odd about a motion sensor that came with the house. For months after we moved in, we couldn't get the thing to work. The first time it came on was after our big hailstorm, so we figured that it jostled a loose wire or something. Well, at the end of the summer, Margaret replaced the motion sensor, and noticed that both old one and new one had a big warning printed on them that read, "Do not install upside down." Naturally, the old motion sensor was installed upside down, and I think it's very funny that the first time it ever came on was during the big hailstorm. As if to say, "AAAAAAAA!!!!! Something's moving all right!! Ow!!! Ow!!!"

Gas prices dropped to an absurdly low level recently. I paid 83.9 cents a gallon less than a month ago. Ridiculous, although I can't complain.

I had my teeth cleaned by the worst dentist in Minnesota. That is the last time I pick a name off the list that my insurance company gives me.

We turned in our idiot neighbor to The Man for illegally selling plants off her driveway in a "permanent" garage sale. It worked; no more of her stupid customers parking in front of our house. I will forever treasure the memories of her battles with the police officers that came to ask her a few questions. A helpful hint to those who feel like cursing out police officers: not terribly effective, although supremely entertaining for onlookers.

This past summer, Cindy Crawford married some guy named R. Gerber. Needless to say, this makes me very proud to be an R. Gerber.

Work has been nice and turbulent. Since last year, we've been reorganized three or four times, and we have a new CEO. For some reason, they're still paying me, so I can't complain. My first few patents went through in 1998, so I exist on the U.S. patents database. We finally got a cafeteria in November, after working in the building for over a year. Hoo-ray for lunch! I also took my first sick day ever because a flu shot got me very sick for exactly one day.

The Minnesota Vikings are obliterating everything in their path. It's about time.

Our free cable got turned off last week (Doh!), but it really isn't the end of the world. It appears that South Park has run its course, and Mystery Science Theater 3000 hasn't run any new episodes in months. Although Margaret has a bizarre attraction to The Discovery Channel and The History Channel, I won't be missing cable at all; The Simpsons is still the best-written show on the air, Friends is still funny, and we recently discovered Everybody Loves Raymond, which is excellent. I'm sure that Margaret will be lobbying for a paid cable service, but I stand by my big antenna.

I picked up a Vanilla Ice video for free. (Ron: "I'll give you a dollar." Other guy: "Just take it for free.") It's from 1991, and its only redeeming quality is that it's only about 11 minutes long.

We joined a casual bowling league with two friends of ours. Once every two weeks is plenty casual, and we don't take ourselves all too seriously. Which is good, because we've got last place pretty well locked up. I have a 135 average, which is close to what I used to bowl in college. Not too long ago, I had my best series ever: 180, 186, 185. I thought I had become Mr. Bowler until the next week: 131, 135, 139. Nope, I'm still the king of my 135 domain. Margaret has an excellent acid-green ball that we found in Rochester at an estate sale. The holes fit her hand exactly, and it came with a bag and shoes that fit her feet exactly. If Cinderella was a bowler...

As I write this, it's December 15th, and as of today, the Twin Cities have received exactly 0.1 inches of snow so far this year. Our weather guy says that statistically, it's something like only a 7% chance that we won't have received our first inch of snow by Christmas, but it looks like we'll be able to see the grass this year. Ho ho ho indeed. The ski places out here are getting hurt pretty bad, and I can't imagine snowblower and snowmobile sales are doing too well.

My biggest laugh of the year came from my newfound exposure to the stock market. I will 'splain. About two years ago, while I was still with Kodak, we watched Pinnacle Micro, an optical data storage company with a technical group in Colorado Springs, disintegrate. All the technical people left until it was just one guy, Chuck, who I knew personally. We watched the stock price plummet from a few bucks a share down to around 12 cents. Over the last two years, we'd check up on the stock price and it's been bouncing around between 10 cents and 20 cents a share. Well, I had to call a broker guy for some Seagate stock stuff, so I figured I'd buy about $50 worth of Pinnacle Micro stock as a joke. (Just like in Vegas - it's what I can afford to lose.) I ended up with 500 shares, and the purchase price came out to 11 cents a share. We laughed and laughed, and joked that I now had controlling interest in Pinnacle Micro. Well, that was November 4th. For some reason that I don't fully grasp, it appears that my silly transaction touched off a huge buying spree for Pinnacle Micro, and by November 9th, the stock got as high as 48 cents a share. I was clearly an investment GENIUS, having just quadrupled my investment in five days. Which is all completely absurd when you consider that Pinnacle Micro consists of Chuck, and maybe the desk that Chuck sits at. The crowning achievement came on November 11th, and I present to you the complete press release:

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IRVINE, Calif., Nov 11 (Reuters) - Pinnacle Micro said Wednesday that it has no explanation for the recent rise in the price and trading volume of its shares. Pinnacle said that as previously announced, its liquidity position continues to be severely constrained and that it is looking for sources of longer-term financing. The company said is operating under an informal moratorium on repayment of its trade debt with no defined termination date. The moratorium was granted by a creditors' committee representing a substantial portion of amounts owed to unsecured creditors. The company also said it continues to be in default under its agreement with its secured lender and that if it is declared in default under the secured line of credit by the lender and demand for payment is made, the company would likely be required to seek protection under the Federal bankruptcy laws.

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The stock has since decayed slowly to 13 cents a share, and unless somebody drops another 50 bucks on PNCL, it looks like my little joke is just about over. I'd like to think that I was responsible for all this, and that my puny little self caused some wild fluctuations on the stock market. Margaret laughed, too.

My radio show is in syndication, which is nice. It airs on exactly one radio station, and it's not even the one I work at here in Minneapolis. If you're driving around Rochester, NY at 3 PM on Wednesdays, you'll hear me, as if I never left Rah-chester. If you're not near Rah-chester, the show has a permanent home on the KFAI website, and it's updated weekly in the RealAudio format. (Do a search on "Crap From The Past" with the quotes, and you'll end up at my little web page.) My year-end special airs on the webiste until January 3rd, and I think it's pretty good.

We had a tiny Hanukkah party, and Margaret made a huge gingerbread dreidel! It's the greatest thing ever, so I took about a thousand pictures of it, and we donated it to an old folks' home here in town.

Oh yeah, we elected a former pro wrestler as our new Governor. And you can find your "Our governor can beat up your governor" T-shirts at the world's largest mall in Bloomington, MN. (No, I'm not kidding.)

Have a safe and happy Hanukkah, a merry Christmas, an amiable Festivus, and a Happy New Year.

Ron, Margaret, Stinky, and Pukehead (our two cats; pray that we never have kids!) Gerber

Ron's Big Life Update - October 1998

"I love cheesy poofs/You love cheesy poofs/If we didn’t like cheesy poofs/We’d be lame" - Cheesy Poofs jingle from South Park, sung (oddly enough) to the tune of NPR’s "All Things Considered" theme music

The Minnesota Vikings are kicking butt, the top 40 radio station out here just started running Casey Kasem’s "American Top 40" on Sunday mornings, I finally found a pizza place in the Twin Cities that makes New York City-style pizza, my house has a new roof courtesy of my homeowner’s insurance and a May hailstorm, and the Barenaked Ladies finally have a #1 song. Life is very good indeed.

Aside from all that, not much is happening out here. Margaret just turned 30, so now I’m married to an old lady. I can just see her driving around at 10 MPH, with only her knuckles showing over the dashboard. (At least until I turn 30. Then life will be back to normal.)

I had my first adverse reaction to a vaccine of any kind: my recent flu shot got me very sick for exactly one day. I had a fever, an elevated pulse, and a headache all over my body. Woo-hoo! And one day later I was back to normal. Very odd. I don’t know what they put in those vaccines, but it caused me to take my first sick day ever. Bleh.

We rented a bunch of movies (not all at once). I can heartily recommend Wag The Dog, Donnie Brasco, and Drugstore Cowboy, and I could go either way on Copland (Stallone was far and away the most interesting thing about the movie. The other characters and the plot are ho-hum, but Sly put it a good performance.)

I caught Deliverance on TV a few days ago, and it’s still a remarkably scary movie. Coincidentally, I picked up a horrible album from 1973 called "Banjo Barons", which features banjo versions of then-current songs, like "You’re So Vain", "I Can See Clearly Now", and "Song Sung Blue". Not for the faint of stomach.

Later this month, "Crap From The Past" will be airing a two-part special on the Stars on 45 medley craze from 1981-82, called "Keep Your Feet On The Ground And Keep Reaching For The Stars On 45".

If you check the U.S. Patents database, you’ll see that I have three patents to my name. Nobody is more surprised at this than I am, because all of them were issued for my Kodak work, and since I left Kodak a year and a half ago, the whole department has been dissolved. Well, if nothing else, I’ve left my tiny mark on history. Along with the other 5.7 million patents that have been issued.

We expect snow on Wednesday. Life is back to normal...

Stay warm,

Ron

Ron's Big Life Update - July 1998

"Summer blondes, revealing tan lines/I'll make more moves than Allied Van Lines." - Blotto, from "I Wanna Be A Lifeguard", 1980

Hope you had a good July 4th - beer and pyrotechnics all around.

Not much exciting is going on out here. We're having a large tree removed from our backyard. This is the tree that dropped a branch on our garage in May, and it's a very large, dead tree. I don't know the exact dimension, but I most definitely can't put my arms all the way around it. Maybe half-way around it, if I'm lucky. Margaret got to watch the guys in the cherry-picker, which they drove onto our backyard. (Part of it is paved in concrete, put there by a former owner who presumably wanted a nice place to park his Winnebago. Very Minnesotan.) I haven't seen so much dead wood since I left Kodak. (Badda-BING thank you very much...) It will be nice to have a sunny backyard now.

Insurance companies paid out $848 million to Twin Cities homeowners in the first half of 1998 - more than the last 31 years combined. I guess the storms really were a fluke. We'll be having our roof replaced and the side of the house re-sided in the fall, when the demand dies down and hopefully, the quality of the repairs goes back up.

You might have noticed that everyone's favorite supermodel, Cindy Crawford, married some guy named R. Gerber. Needless to say, this makes me very proud to be an R. Gerber.

In one of the more surreal occurrences in my life, my friend Mia-from-Tucson showed up at our house a few Wednesdays ago. Ding-dong... HI! I was just in the neighborhood and thought I'd stop by! (!!!) Most surprising, since it's something like an 1800-mile drive to Tucson. She was driving across the country, and thought she'd say HI before she drove off to Chicago. She took pictures, had some lemonade, watched South Park with us, and drove off toward Chicago. Very very surreal.

Margaret and I spent the last few days in NY with mom. Grandma was coming in from Florida, so my brother and I had orders to come home to see Grandma. We ate lots of black-and-whites (the same cookies once featured on Seinfeld) and NY pizza, replaced the faucets in mom's bathroom, and saw Grandma. We also made into Chinatown one night, and Margaret bought a $10 watch from some guy who sells watches on Mulberry Street. What a hoot! And despite the fact that my mom's car hit 77,777 miles at precisely 4:44 PM on 7/28 (no joke!), I did not win $290 million in the PowerBall lottery.

We recently spent a day at ValleyFair - the local amusement park. Seagate picked up the tab - it's their annual "Appease The Masses" day. Most excellent, if you go on a weekday. The numbers from "The Wild Thing", their new rolley-coaster are as follows. Maximum velocity: 74 MPH. First drop > 200 feet. Altitude: Highest thing around for quite a few towns. Color: Green, the scariest of all colors. Margaret and I had a very good time, even though she punched me when I kidded her about the "you must be THIS tall" thingy. She's 5 foot 4, and she'll hurt you pretty good.

Rented "The Sweet Hereafter" and "When We Were Kings" - both excellent. Saw "Lost In Space" in the cheapie theater - stinky. There is a cheapie theather within walking distance to our house that's undergone some renovations recently, so it's now the "Cinema Grill". You sit at tables, just like at TGIFriday's, and you order food that's just like at TGIFriday's for prices comparable to TGIFriday's. I don't know if this food-at-film will start a national craze, but it's an interesting experiment. It's good as long as it's not a super-serious movie. ("Shindler's List" with potato chips? I think not.)

I have a friend working in radio in Boston who recently commissioned me to put together some CDs with the worst possible music I could find. I mean jaw-dropping, nausea-inducing, bad music. It's part of a Chinese water torture-type contest for his morning show. No problem! I've sent off 2 CDs already, and I can't even imagine the bodily harm that would come from (a) listening to the discs straight through, or (b) the retribution that one would take from being made to listen to the discs straight through. "Pac Man Fever", Milli Vanilli, the two guys from Milli Vanilli actually singing, "Rock Me Jerry Lewis" (sorry Mike, he asked for it by name), The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" massacred by Barry White, the Shaggs, and many many more. Plus a whole CD devoted to horrible medleys like "Stars on 45" and "Hooked On Classics"! I am beaming with pride that these atrocities are getting airplay, and I am very proud to be the unofficial Godfather of Crap. (Tune in to WFNX Boston to hear the Pain firsthand, and tune in to "Crap From The Past" at www.kfai.org to hear my own show. It hurts real bad.)

In the last two weeks, my organization chart at work has changed twice. We now have a new CEO, and I don't know what effect this will have on my day to day routines. If I have to eat lunch at a time other than 11:30, I'm gonna get mad.

Hope all is well in your far-away places. Stay warm...

Ron "There's a lot of crap on the radio, but there's only one Crap From The Past" G

Ron's Big Life Update - June 1998

Hi, all. First, and most importantly, Crap From The Past now has its own webpage as well as on-line audio (RealAudio for you propellerheads.) Go to www.kfai.org and find the Crap From The Past stuff. I have old playlists, too. Boy, am I keeping up with technology or what?

Well, Mother Nature has been totally wacked out for the last few weeks. I'll explain.

Friday, May 15th: Around 4 PM it got dark enough outside so that the lights in the parking lot went on, which is not a good sign because it's usually light until 9 PM this time of year. I heard rumors that a storm was moving in, so I just drove home. And it's a good thing I did, because Minneapolis got hit with a serious hailstorm. (Margaret confirms the seriousness of it, and she grew up in hailstorm country in eastern Colorado.) The skies got kinda greenish, then pitch black dark, then the winds started to blow pretty hard, then for about sixty seconds, the Twin Cities got pummelled with hailstones the size of melon-balls. (If you have a melon-baller, they looked like translucent pieces of canteloupe.) This may not sound like much, but it was enough to dent nearly all the cars that were parked outside (think ball-peen hammer dent every few inches on every car in town). Not mine, though, because I was a chicken and went home. It also dented the heck out of our aluminum siding on the south side of the house, and broke one window. The insurance appraisial: New roof, new siding on one side of house, new window, four new screens. (Woo-hoo! I would've needed a new roof in a few years anyway!) I saved a few of the hailstones in my freezer.

Two weeks later...

Saturday, May 30: It started to rain in the evening. Margaret and I were over at some friends' house. We got some serious lightning, and decided we better check in with the Weather Channel. (Cliff Claven's favorite!) We managed to see severe thunderstorm warnings all over the state briefly before cable went out. We decided that it was time go home before it got any worse, but nature had other plans for us, as evidenced by the wall of rain, the severe bendage of large tree on our friends' lawn, and the emergency sirens that went off. We spent a few minutes in their basement with a radio on, and carefully drove home about a half hour later during rain that was merely torrential. During the drive home, we heard that there were some large trees down and some power outages, but we had no idea what we were in for when we got home. We found a large branch about 10 inches in diameter resting on our garage, and an even larger branch about 12-15 inches in diameter resting between our house and the neighbor's garage. (It actually squashed a bunch of plants on her driveway, but I'll get to that in a minute.) It turned out that there were straight-line wind gusts over 80 MPH that took down lots and lots of big trees around the city, including the oldest tree in the state, which was something like 122 feet high. My house was without power from Saturday to Thursday, so we ate out a lot and I dropeed the leftovers at the fridge at work. The insurance appraisal: New roof on the garage. (More woo-hoo! That needed a new roof, too!) Needless to say, we lost the hailstones from the last storm.

So what about the neighbor's plants? Well, our neighbor is nuts. Literally crazy, we think. If nothing else, she's an idiot. She's in her 50's and she sells plants in an illegal garage sale from her driveway all summer. We wouldn't mind much if we liked her, but she's an idiot. (Too many instances to describe here. I'm sure Margaret could go on and on for hours, but suffice it to say that she's an idiot and Margaret and I wish nothing but evil on her and her stupid plants.) Well, when the huge branch fell off our tree, it missed everything structural and landed squarely on her plants. We think that God must be pushing the "smite" button.

So we got fed up with the idiot-neighbor's illegal garage sale and we called the IRS on her. (We figured that the Man would be more responsive than the police.) And sure enough, we watched with giddy kid-excitement as a Richfield public safety car drove up, the officer got out, the officer began asking idiot-lady some questions, and idiot-lady went ballistic yelling at the officer. Good plan! I'm sure the yelling part will look good in the police report. Well, that was two weeks ago, and we decided that since the officer's visit had no effect on her plant business (signs still up, etc.), that we'd call again. And sure enough, the Richfield public safety car drove up, the officer got out, the officer began asking idiot-lady some questions, and idiot-lady went ballistic again. Ooh - this is so much fun!!! The plan is to call a third time this Sunday when idiot-lady is in full swing, because this time they can cite her for a bunch of violations like not obeying the first two warnings, not paying taxes on her illegal business, and all sorts of good stuff! We hope she goes to jail. Stupid neighbor...

I have to say that the weather and the idiot-lady next door have totally dominated our lives for the last few weeks. I have seen two excellent movies and I will give them quick reviews here:

• "The Truman Show". I read a review that called it an 80 million dollar art film with Jim Carrey. I thought it was excellent, and unlike anything I'd ever seen before. I'd compare it to "Forrest Gump", but I thought Gump wasn't all that great. Two thumbs way up, and I hope it wins some Oscars next year.
• "In The Company Of Men" (on video). An indie film from last year about two scumbag business guys who try to both seduce and then dump a girl. That's pretty much the whole plot, but it doesn't convey just how scummy these two guys are. I don't think I have ever seen such despicable characters on the big screen (and I saw "They Saved Hitler's Brain"...) An excellent, thoroughly original, and deeply disturbing film. I loved it.

What if there was a stuffed animal store? Literally, a store where you could buy animals, stuffed.

We have riding lawn mowers. So why not a riding vacuum cleaner? Could you think of anything more fun than driving around the house on your riding vacuum cleaner?

I had a dream not too long ago in which I was at some garage sale and was looking through some kids' toys and found one of those old Fisher-Price "record" players, which has the mechanism for a music box in the little "tone arm" and plays those fake plastic records, each with a different "song" on them. I was looking through the records (as I have been known to do in real life) and looking at the titles, and I remember seeing some mundane songs like "Edelweiss" right next to a record by Parliament. PARLIAMENT?!?!? I imaged "Make my funk the P-Funk/I wants to get funked up" played in tinkly music box sounds, and I woke up laughing.

I just remembered my brother telling me about a body-builder friend of his who occasionally refers to people as "Quadzilla", "Tyrannosaurus Pects", and "Rippopotamus". I don't know why such things creep into my mind...

So be sure to tune into CFTP if you have a sound card and an internet connection on your computer. The website has statistics to tell me how many people are listening, and frankly the numbers are pretty puny right now. www.kfai.org

And be sure to wish evil on the idiot-lady next door,

Ron "Boogiemonster" Gerber