The Passing of O.J. Simpson

Two days ago news broke that former football player, actor, and Hertz spokesman O.J. Simpson passed away from a battle with cancer.  For those of us who were around and of adult or somewhat adult age, he was known for being arrested for the murder of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.  This was a really bizarre case and millions were following it.

When the murder first made the news, I didn't know or didn't care at that time who had done it.  As the events unfolded, O.J. found himself on the very short list of suspects, and he was expected to turn himself in.  On that particular Friday, I had the day off from work as that I had been working long hours testing a communications satellite, and I went to the beach.  As I was listening to the radio on the way to the beach, the presumption was that he was going to turn himself in.

After I got home from my outing, I turned on the tube, and a most bizarre spectacle was unfolding.  It was on almost all of the channels.  A slow moving white Bronco was being "chased" by about thirty police cars on the 405 freeway, with police and news helicopters in attendance.  I immediately grabbed a blank videotape, loaded it, and began taping.  This was history and I wanted my own record of it.

It was known that O.J. was in the Bronco.  There was talk that he had been on the cellphone and was going to kill himself.  My guess is that half of the nation was watching this, garnering an audience of a size that hadn't been seen since the first Moon landing.  And yes, I had that morbid curiosity about whether or not he was going to kill himself.  The Bronco eventually found its way to O.J.'s house on 360 North Rockingham, and then it was another 45 minutes, or so it seemed, before O.J. was arrested.

The trial itself went on to be known as the "Trial of the Century".  I didn't watch very much of it, even though I thought Marcia Clark was well north of attractive.  What I do remember is being glad that I was going to Italy for a long vacation and I wouldn't have to hear about the trial for four weeks.  When I was overnighting near Heathrow on the return leg I figured I'd turn on the telly and see what British television was all about, and there it was, the O.J. Simpson trial.  I think I lasted all of thirty seconds before going downstairs to the bar and trying some of the beer.  

I also remember listening to the final argument that Christopher Darden had made.  I didn't listen to what Johnnie Cochran had to say; I had no use for him then and I never did after that.  The next day at work, we were gathered around the radio to listen to the verdict, and were stunned at the "not guilty".  

Now you can make the argument that the prosecution botched the case.  There were some things that they could have done better.  You can also make the argument that Judge Ito lost control of the trial, which in my opinion, he did.  But upon reading Chris Darden's book, there was the statement that the defense savaged the first witness on national television, and no witness after that wanted the center of attention.

It also didn't help matters any that detective Mark Fuhrman denied ever using the word "nigger" in all his life, which he was later proven to have done so.  And with that, there were some people who believe that he planted the DNA and the glove.  I don't personally believe that he did that but I can't prove to you that he didn't.  What I do know is that O.J. became a suspect when he was told that his ex-wife was murdered.  He didn't ask which one as that he had two of them, and he didn't ask about the details.  

All of that said, O.J. vowed to spend the rest of his life searching for the "real killer", and he was diligent in checking out lots of golf courses in his search.  He had more legal troubles after that, lost a civil trial, and was resident at a correctional facility in Lovelock, Nevada.  I was hoping that he would have remained there for a lot longer than he did, but that's not how it turned out.

Regardless, O.J. is now dead.  

One rule that I imposed upon myself about ten years ago was to not celebrate misfortune happening to anyone else.  I am trying very hard right now to live by that rule, but it was all I could do to not jump up and down for joy over this and celebrating it.  Even though it's now two days since I learned about this, there's that part of me that wants to live this one up.  And it's difficult to live by that rule.

That said...........I think I can say that we haven't had that good of a day since Charles Manson died.

My Old Job is Available.......if I want it

 For a number of years, I have been subscribed to job alerts.  No, I am not looking right now, but I remain subscribed as that I think it's to my advantage to know what the market is like for my field.  Without that, I still have sense that it is on the hot side of things, as that I get lots of email from recruiters.  I think things in the industry have slowed down some from where they were six months ago, which I'm going to attribute to the upcoming election.  

What's now happening is that the old job that I've had twice down in Sorry Vista, excuse me, Sierra Vista, is back open.  I worked at Fort Huachuca testing communication systems for a mix of customers who wanted that lab down there to certify their systems.  My first gig down there was from May 2017 to January 2018, for Engility when they had that contract.  Engility lost the contract to Jacobs, and with the changeover being held up for reasons I don't understand Jacobs wasn't able to start on that until May 2019.  Between those gigs, I worked for a local firm that had me working on aircraft security systems and later on, hardware to monitor aircraft engines.  That work came to an end as Jacobs was ramping up, and so I went back down there.

Relations between Jacobs and the government officer who oversaw that contractor weren't the greatest.  He too lost his job when Jacobs came in, and after a furlough he went over to the government side and had to take a pay cut.  I think he had it in for Jacobs and was doing everything he could to make it hard on them.  He succeeded in one way; he forced Jacobs into a position to where they had to lay off personnel, and I was affected.  At that time I was negotiating with a local company that worked in manned spaceflight, and the transition happened in such a way that there was no disruption in my income stream.

Now those jobs down there are again open.  There's no doubt that if I applied for my old job, I would be quickly interviewed and get an offer.  (I'm unclear as to if Jacobs has this contract or not).  I really enjoyed working for Jacobs, but I can't say that I was enjoying the dysfunctional situation that they inherited from Engility.  Jacobs treated me very well, especially the manager who hired me, and yes, I would work for him again in a minute...........except............that I'm in a great situation where I'm at right now, and I just don't have the inclination to update my resume.  If I have my way, my next job is retirement, and then coming back to where I'm at now as a part time contractor (and my employer has told me they would love to have me back).  

As for retirement, as I've said before........not this year.  That crystal ball that I can't see thru isn't telling me anything (as if an inanimate object could do so in the first place).  I have a rough date picked out, which I'm keeping to myself, mainly because if I were to announce it now when that would be then something would emerge to make me change the date.  

Interestingly enough, my most recent former employer is looking for people too.  I am in regular touch with them, as that I'm close to a few people who are still there.  The number of them that I knew though is dwindling as that they've had a 60% turnover since I left.  I was telling someone a few weeks back, I worked at Jack-in-the-Box a long time ago and we had turnover, but it wasn't as bad as in the office I used to work in.

With that, I'm going to call it a post.  

Some Catching Up, and Some Thoughts

 The past few weeks have been something of a whirlwind here.  There were some things on the family side to take care of, which I will not get into here, and with that has come a lot of mental processing.  I'm not going to go into details.  It went a whole lot smoother than it could have otherwise.  

As for what I have been doing, well it's been ham radio, work, and research on my family history.  I have it in mind to create some pages here about that and to update them from time to time.  I also want to add some other pages.  But getting back to the family history, I want to create pages to document what I know of my Parker, Pilkington, and Bonsall roots.  There is a lot of documentation out there on these lines.  I have some charts to work on and more research to do.  

As for work, I am enjoying my new assignment much more than I've enjoyed some others.  Yes, I think about retirement, but with my current gig I don't see that happening this year.  Next year all bets are off as far as that goes.  I told myself a long time ago I'll retire when it's no longer fun, and folks, engineering is still fun.  

And with that I will bring the first entry of this year to a close.  

Odds, Ends, and Corrections

 I am going to start off to note the passing of Myles Goodwyn, one of the founders of one of my favorite bands, April Wine.  The man was undoubtedly a talented songwriter, who covered a wide variety of styles ranging from ballads to hard rock to blues to eclectic.  I had the pleasure of meeting him, but only once, and that was back in 1993.  Myles retired from touring earlier this year, but wanted the band to continue, which they are.  Unfortunately no one down here is booking them, so they play most of their gigs in their native Canada.

Myles was a nice guy when I met him, but I can't describe him as a people person.  He was strictly business, but he had a sense of humor.  Later on he did interact with the fans on a message board, and answered a lot of our questions.  

I hope that the Good Lord is giving his family the peace and strength that they need at this time.

* * * * * * *

I have started a new assignment at work this past Monday.  It is so far going well, but I am looking forward to our year end holiday break,   I'm going to decline comment on my previous assignment other to say that I really wanted out of it.  The new assignment will likely have the effect of delaying my retirement.  There's part of me that wants to retire right now, but the other part of me is saying that it isn't yet time.  But that day is one day closer than it was yesterday.

* * * * * * *

From the Department of Corrections:  I am NOT descended from John Dudley, the 1st Duke of Northumberland, as I reported a few posts ago.  I spotted an error and the web page where I got that from has subsequently been corrected, as that someone else must have spotted that too.

I am descended from a Mary Dudley who was born around 1575, but not from the Lady Mary Dudley.  I am still doing some digging into my roots when time permits, which it doesn't a whole lot.  I may create some pages about my family history, with the first page being about my Parker roots.  There's also the Pilkington and Bonsall lines to research.  

* * * * * * *

Most of my spare time has been spent with my ham radio hobby.  With active sunspots I am able to get out a lot more on the high frequency bands.  Country #130 was worked this afternoon, that being Eastern Kiribati.  

* * * * * * *

I have this craving right now for some New York style pizza, and I think I will now get some of that ordered.

To the Metroplex and Back

 Sheila and I spent most of last week in the Dallas area.  I could have told you last March that we were intending to this, but I'm not known for announcing travel plans in advance, and plus it's not a sure thing that you're going until you pop for the tickets.  Even then it's not a sure thing.  Our airlines, as good as they are (or are not?) sometimes suffer from outages of one kind or another.  Sometimes you get stranded in airports.  Getting stranded from a missed connecting flight though was not an issue as that almost all cities that are big enough to heard of will have a flight to Dallas.

Anyway, there was more than one reason to do this.  Sheila's best friend from her high school days is living in the Metroplex.  Mark, my best friend from high school, visits the Metroplex on Thanksgiving.  I was thinking, we have an opportunity here.  Why not take it?  And plus, there's that Texas barbecue.  I was also figuring that we could play tourist and visit the Grassy Knoll to look for spent shell casings.

Well we got to see Mark and his wife.  We got to see Jody and her family.  We had some really excellent Texas barbecue, and there was a most unforgettable hot pot place in Plano called Sea Pot (I highly recommend them!).  We didn't get down to Dealey Plaza though.  (Aside:  I have my own unique theories about the JFK assassination.  One is likely, another highly unlikely, but neither tend to fit the prevailing mold.  Especially my second theory).  

As for that part of Texas, I really loved it.  I have been to Waco before, I've visited east Texas, I've been to El Paso, but I had never been to Dallas, outside of connecting in DFW more times than I can remember.  If the Metroplex is really representative of the rest of the state, I'd say that Governor Abbott is doing a fine job.  But, I'm hearing some bad things about San Antonio as well as Austin,  I don't have a favorable view of El Paso either.  

It was a nice getaway, we both needed it, we have standing invitations to visit again any time from both Jody and Mark's son-in-law, and if Mark makes it out there next April well then we just might go out there too.

No..........I did not apply for work at Strumdum Industries.

Forty Years Ago Today

Forty years ago today I graduated from San Jose State University with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.  An offer of employment had already been accepted, and I was taking a few weeks off to visit the Los Angeles area as well as San Diego/Tijuana before starting my career on the 20th of June.  It was an exciting time and one of my neatest memories.

I could not have imagined at that time that I would be closing out my career in Tucson.  My game plan then had been to get my start in Silicon Valley and then move to Florida.  Of course, that move never did happen, but I did get out of Silicon Valley when two very serious adverse events happened, and I have now lived longer in Tucson than anywhere else, and that's even factoring in my year-plus exile in Las Vegas.

There have been a lot of twists and turns along the way.  I have seen the industry undergo two major contractions, and I'm figuring that the next one will be within ten years.  And at that time the plan is to be comfortably retired.  I could be wrong on that, and it will not be any kind of blow on my ego if I turn out to be wrong.

While I'm here writing this, I may create some side pages for this blog.  I have a ham radio blog where I got that figured out, and I'm thinking about doing that here too.  I may put up a page with scans of world banknotes that are in my collection, and I may put up some pages regarding family history.  The Parker and Pilkington lines are drawing a lot of my interest, as well as some others.  

I know, no one reads this blog, and I'm good with that, but the intent is to create a historical record that may be of interest to someone somewhere off in the future.  

Where Things Are Now..........and Some Interesting Family History

 I have been intending to post these past couple of weeks.  With this evening being one of those rare ones that are short of distractions I have an opportunity to catch up, so lets get going.  

The first part is Where Things Are Now.  That is, where they are in my life.  I am in week number four of the new job and my first thought to pass along that it's nice to be doing real work again.  When I was in the Navy TechRep office, opportunities to make technical decisions were rare.  I can only recall making one, and I can't remember what it was now.  In that role we were facilitator between a defense contractor and a Navy Program office for a variety of projects.  It was paperwork, attending meetings, and sitting around doing a lot of nothing.  I hated that, and I kept asking for more things to do.  That got me noticed for performance review time, as that I got an "Outstanding" rating and the maximum raise package.

Now the pendulum has swung the other way as far as workload goes.  I'm pretty swamped.  My first two weeks were training, and I'm still in training in the OJT sense.  I've never been a Production Test Engineer before.  I have some understanding of factory flow, but I haven't worked in a manufacturing capacity since 1985.  I've been development, I've helped transition projects to get ready for production, and I've done some field testing of equipment.  So what this is, is a new animal for me, and it is definitely stretching my envelope.  I regard that as a good thing.  As busy as it is on the factory floor, I am not working overtime, and none is expected.  There are test techs working around the clock, and if something goes wrong then the team that I'm on takes care of it when we come in the following morning.  And I've already written up two evaluations on the electronic subsystems we are testing, which gives me that sense of accomplishment that I want to take home with me.  It's so far a lot of fun, and I see myself riding this train for some time.

With that, we now get into the other subject I want to talk about.

During my 2 1/2 week hiatus, I decided to do some digging on my ancestry.  Now it's been known since I was in high school that I am descended from some colonials.  Most of my ancestors came over in the 1840s from their home country of Germany, some came over from Ireland around the same time, but my paternal grandmother had some Scotch-Irish ancestry and one of my uncles did some digging into this.  He found that we were descended from a William Riley Parker, who was born in Surry County North Carolina, and moved to Indiana and later on Doniphan County, Kansas.  Later in life he became interested in politics, and was elected to the lower house of the Kansas Legislature where he served one term, failing to win reelection.  

We know that his father was John Parker, who had a good chunk of land in Surry County, and in my digging I found that his brothers farmed across the state line in Virginia.  William Riley Parker's father-in-law was Edmond (Edmund?) Hodges.  There appears to be evidence that John Parker and Edmund Hodges served in the Revolutionary War, but I can't prove it.  There was also a John Parker in Surry County who was a moonshiner, but we don't know if there was a second John Parker there at the samet time and the same county.  Census records so far indicate only one.  So I'm going to claim descent from a moonshiner and proudly so.  OK?

Well my recent research went in another direction.  My grandmother also descended from a Levi Pilkington, and she was a granddaughter of Letitia Pilkington Penny.  Family legend has it that Levi Pilkington was run out of the Quakers for swearing and engaging in military activities, and yes I'm going to take some pride in that one.  I decided to see what I could learn about Levi Pilkington.  And here is where it gets interesting.

Levi's grandfather was also named Levi Pilkington, and one website has him as a Revolutionary War veteran.  He was born in southeastern Pennsylvania.  I took the Pilkington line back to 1687, and then took his mother's line back some.  This continued on to John Dudley, the 1st Duke of Northumberland, who was a trusted advisor of no less than Henry VIII!  John Dudley, who was also the 1st Earl of Warwick, has a Wikipedia article, as that he was executed for high treason at the Tower of London for trying to get his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, on to the throne.

The line goes back even farther, as that I have learned that I share a common ancestor with George Washington.  And that's the good news.  The bad news is that King Charles III is also descended from this same ancestor.

Another trace that I need to work on (verify) is one that goes all the way back to Charlemagne.  There is also evidence of Spanish and French royalty, and who knows where it will go from there when I pick this up again.

Meantime, this has inspired me to learn about British history.  How do Dukes become Dukes?  How does an Earl become an Earl?  I've learned that the reigning monarch made those decisions back then, as a means of recognizing and rewarding talent that they valued in those times.

I am now reading a book on Henry VIII, and already John Dudley is being mentioned on page 7.  I may have to search Amazon to see if anyone has written a book about him.  I get the sense that my ancestor is not well liked as a historical figure, in spite of some significant military accomplishments that he led.  

All of that said.........I've got a lot of work to do, not only at work, but also in family history.