Yogi is Grumpy at the City of Tulsa.

My blogging friend Baloney is miffed and I’m pissed and getting quite grumpy. The problem you see is that Tulsa Parks is considering dropping the DDA Day Camp for Special Needs Kids this summer. Last year was SuperPizzaBoy’s first year in the camp and he had a lot of fun. The kids went swimming, bowling, and all sorts of other things.

The city provided trained people to make sure that all the kids participated and were safe.

The link to the Tulsa World article on the matter is here.

I don’t blame the Tulsa Parks people at all. SPB and I have met some of those folks through our geocaching hobby and they all have a heart for what they do and generally go above and beyond the call of duty. They are very hard working people.

The City is using doublespeak to describe the situation. “… the primary reason for discontinuing the camp was to include special needs children in other programs.” Excuse me folks, any children present? That is a bunch of bullcorn!! I’m sorry. I find it a very cynical use of language to justify the action. I resent it a lot.

According to the City spokesman, this is the only summer day camp that has been cut from the schedule. They do however “hope” that the kids will be able to participate in the other camps this summer. Gee, I hope so also.

Now we are taxpayers and we know that city tax receipts are down and everybody has to tighten their belt but why is the DDA camp the only camp cut? And the only alternative is “hope.”

We have a little disconnect here. Many special needs kids cannot be left to their own devices. Either they stay internal and don’t participate, or they drift off from the group, or they get frustrated and mad and act out towards the staff or fellow kids, or they get picked on, bullied, and attacked by the other kids. Many parents, have tried just dropping their kids off at some program and hope for the best. This doesn’t work too well generally for anybody involved.

For example, I have seen our son, SPB, punched in the gut and hit in the face by other children at our son’s Sunday School class here in Tulsa. That is one reason Sweetie and I taught in our son’s class. So we can keep an eye on him. The church stepped up and provided adult “Buddy’s” for special needs children to the benefit of all concerned.

Anyways if you live in Tulsa and would like to help please call the Mayor’s Action Line at 596-2100. I talked to them a little bit ago and they do a very good job of registering your comments and are very pleasant, professional, and courteous.

Also contact your City Councilor. They have email. They will answer your emails, if your courteous. You can find who your councilor is and their email addresses here.

I finally got around to it.

We have a bicycle problem at the house. Sweetie’s is propped up against the wall. Makes it kind of hard to get in and out of her car.

Mine is balanced all wobbly on my work bench. So if I need to do anything I have to move the bicycle. Pain in the butt.

So after school today SuperPizzaBoy and I went to Home Depot and found two fold down bike racks for $5.95 each, plus tax. They come with screws but I spent a few more pennies on some heavier duty manly lag screws.

Come home, did my manly home project. Sweetie will be so proud of me when she gets home Thursday night! I’ve been telling her that I would take care of it since about 1992, and I did. Isn’t it nice to have a guy around the house who follows through?

Tulsa Tea Party

A big party going on downtown in the Oilfield Capital of the World. A tea party. I’d never heard of such a thing but when I looked out the window at the crowd my coworkers had to tell me what was going on. Where have I been?

So I had to go check it out at lunch. Lots of signs, lots of nerdy looking people with cameras. A helicopter showed up. The photographers went crazy. I refused to join the crowd wasting electrons on a whirlybird a 1000 feet in the air. So I took a picture of this guy taking a picture. He has a lot better camera than I do. The speaker told everybody to wave at the helicopter, and they did!! Who’d have thought a bunch of free thinkers could be led so easily. Kind of worries me, how about you, you worried?

I don’t know what everybody is all bent out of shape about but the speaker kept on talking about taking back our nation, we are a nation of Christians…, yadayadayada badababadababa blah blah blah… No disrespect intended. I hate all political speeches. But I love politics, go figure. I was more into people watching. Then I switched to signs.

Its like everybody was just milling around waiting for something to happen. A couple coworkers came by and chatted. While we were talking every once in a while the crowd would cheer and clap and my friends would clap also. I asked them “Why you clapping. What did the guy say.” They said, “We didn’t hear him, we are justing supporting him.” I asked “Who is he?” They didn’t know. I guess I don’t get it.


I got bored. Time to get a hamburger!

Garmin nuvi 500 and Geocaching

I had a birthday recently and in addition to cake, ice cream and a lot of fun Sweetie and SuperPizzaBoy got me a new gadget. A new GPS receiver. The Garmin nuvi 500. It is a crossover GPS in that it does car navigation and geocaching. If you are a premium level geocaching.com member you can download tons and tons of caches to your pc and with then into the nuvi 500.

So anyway we have only found a few caches with this and I’m still learning how to use it so I don’t know whether it is going to supplement or replace my old gps. The nuvi is not very handy to hold and doesn’t seem to be as rugged and waterproof as the handheld gpsr’s. Also, you have to do a manual change from vehicle navigation to cross country once you get out of the car and I had’t quite figured out how to do that smoothly.

The thing that is helpful in geocaching is the cache description, hints, and logs of previous finds. Most handhelds just hold the name and location. For the other stuff you either have to print them out and carry (yuck) or you can use software for your cell phone like cachemate I use on my Palm Treo cell phone. That’s OK but then you have to juggle two gadgets. The nuvi carries all that stuff in it. That is incredibly handy.

The screen is nice and bright in sunlight, and you can have a lot of fun with the car navigation feature. SPB and I made the vehicle icon into a pickup truck to match good ole 666BOI better and we switched the voice from a bitchy lady Californian (it sounded to my ear) to a merely irritated English female voice. We are going to download a pizza slice icon from Garmin’s web site to be the vehicle icon.

Anyway, the jury is still out on the nuvi. Its a keeper for navigation, and I am definitely going to use it for geocaching to at least supplement by my existing gpsr. I can see using the nuvi to use to drive to the vicinity of the cache and then my handheld to find the cache. I’ll just have to experiment.

This is my existing gpsr. The Lowrance Ifinder Hunt. (Lowrance is a Tulsa based company). I have found maybe 600 caches with it and love it. It can hold in memory about 2000 caches. The nuvi can hold about 4000.

If you are going to do geocaching then you are going to need GSAK. An incredible piece of software that facilitates downloading caches from geocaching.com and uploading to your gpsr. It’s cheap, you can try it for free for a while before a nag screen appears.

My World – Philcade Building

The Philcade Building is at the corner of 5th and Boston in downtown Tulsa. It was built by Tulsa Oilman Waite Phillips (brother to Phillip’s 66 founder Frank Phillips). Construction started in 1929 and finished in 1931. It was designed by Leon B. Senter of the Tulsa architectual firm Smith and Senter.

It seems that the Philtower building across the street gets most of the recognition but I prefer the Philcade building because of the elegant arcades on the first floor. The first two floors were built as retail space.
The first floor is very attractive from the street level and at one time there were many retail stores. The storefronts were converted to office space but are slowly being reconverted back to shops as Tulsa downtown seems to be coming back with all devlelopment and construction going on.

To me the detailing is the key to art deco and the exterior detailing in terra cotta does not disappoint.

The interior is stunning. I worked in downtown Tulsa for nearly 16 years before I first walked in. There is lots of gold leaf and the owners of the building keep it in immaculate condition. They will also let you wander around the first floor, look, and take pictures as much as you please, ” please feel free” a security guard told me.

For other views of our world check out My World Tuesday. Join in!

Easter Weekend Happenings

Whirlwind Easter Weekend. Saturday SuperPizzaBoy and I were by ourselves most of the day. I had taxes to do but the weather was too nice, plus I had a brand spanking new Garmin Nuvi 500 crossover GPSr that needed a workout, so we went Geocaching! Found two, one in east Tulsa took an hour to hike to and then find. SPB got a little tired of that one.

First two ticks of the season. One for him, and one for me. So we are tied!!!!

Then Sweetie and Nana made it up from Antlers with Nana’s two kittys. Meet Gypsy (calico) and Piwacket (“Wackycat”). They are spending their time getting acclimated to Nana’s new house in Broken Arrow. Gypsy was nervous and moved into Piwacket’s crate, Wacky wasn’t too happy about that. Move in is later this week! Got to meet one of Nana’s new neighbors also.

Sunday night dinner, Yogi cooked his specialty fried chicken. Hadn’t cooked it in about 15 years. It took me a little to get the hang of it again but everybody said it was pretty good. Sweetie says that I can cook it for Mother’s day. I think I will!!

The drumstick on the left tasted better than it looks.

Then a cut throat game of Farkle. A very fun game with 6 dice that I got as a birthday present. Its fun. But I never win!!! What’s up!!

Oh yeah, and I finished the taxes.

Camera Critters #2 – Our Family

We have too many critters in our Family! We are keeping them all though.

Below is the Queen, a rescued Maine Coon. Is she grateful? Sure she is. Her name is Chrissy and she is about 6 years old or so. We recently acquired the chair. Little did we know we got her a throne.

As you can tell, she is very comfortable in her position as Queen.


And below is the prince, LJ. LJ is just a few months old and he isn’t afraid of anyone. Not even the Queen.

Every once in a while he gets a little cheeky with the Queen and she has to have a talk with the boy. This is Abby. Abby is half Maltese, half Shitzu, and she is our fun loving play puppy. She is only a couple years old. She is a lot of fun but she is a brat.

She is very easy to get along with but even she has to have a talk with the boy every now and then.

This is Ginger, some sort of Dachsund mix. She is our sweet puppy. She loves to curl up with you while you are reading or watching TV. LJ doesn’t mess with her much. So I don’t have any pictures of any discussions between the two of them.

Check out Camera Critters for pictures of all sorts of critters from all sorts of places around the world.

Pizza and Mary Poppins

SuperPizzaBoy and I are batching it Friday night. Sweetie is out of town helping her Mother, Nana get ready to move to Tulsa.

We went to the video store to find something. We settled on Mary Poppins. I have not seen it since it came out. The first time, a long time ago.

We started the movie and and put the pizza in the oven to heat. SPB picked the pizza out at the grocery store. He says that Digiorno makes the best frozen pizzas. It is pretty good, for a frozen pizza.


Lets see, of those present, who is interested in the movie, and who is interested in the pizza cooking? Need a hint, I was standing in front of the oven while taking this picture. Excuse me a second (for crying out loud pizza boy move away from the tv a little. You sit that close, all your kids are going to be born naked!) Ok, I’m back. Lets move on.

The movie was better than I remembered it. Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke do a great job. The singing, the dancing, the romance, the magic. I could see this again. I rate it four stars out of four.
Below is SPB’s favorite dance number “A Step in Time” with the chimney sweeps. SPB loves chaos, and this long number has lots of it especially about 6 minutes into it.

The One Minute Engineer

Remember all the “One Minute” books way back when. The One Minute Manager, The One Minute Teacher, The One Minute Leader, The One Minute …. uh no.

Anyway, I never did see a book for the One Minute Engineer. So I decided to write one and did, it took me about a minute. Couldn’t get a publisher in the one minute I tried so I’m doing a one minute post. I have this information and I also have early onset so if I don’t get this out in one minute, its gone forever.

We are going to concentrate on Chemical Engineering! Wow, ok, ready, there are four lessons. Don’t worry, all four lessons take about a minute! This will be quick and it will change your life.

Lesson 1 – What you need to know is that any type of chemical facility, whether it is a refinery or a chemical plant consists of only two types of equipment (and of course interconnecting piping). These two types of equipment are: LRO’s and TST’s. We are done! Wow, review if you feel the need.

Lesson 2 – Notice the picture above. It is a LRO. LRO stands for Large Round Object. Got it? Need to go over that. OK! Great, you are doing wonderfully. Congratulations. These are very important for the proper functioning of any chemical facility. You are halfway done to a Chemical Engineering Education.

Lesson 3 -Now pay attention, we are stepping up here. The above equipment are TSTs. TST’s are Tall Shiny Things. Go ahead and repeat. These are also necessary for the proper and safe operation of a refinery or chemical plant or whatever else you want to build. OK, you are ready for the final lesson.

Lesson 4 – This is the wrap up, so pay attention. This is where all your hard work comes together. What you do to build a chemcal facility is arrange all your LROs and TSTs into a pleasing configuration. This is where all your design and composition skills come into play. Like above, the tension between the tall and skinny and the short and round against the cloudy sky. Cannot beat that. Oh yes, make sure that the guys and gals you hire to run the thing know how to connect the LRO’s and TST’s together.

We are not done! We have graduation. Below is your reward. Not a diploma, something better, a T shirt! Aren’t you glad you did this? I am. Thanks very much and I wish you much success in your new career.

Thanks Dave for the inspiration.