From Here and There

I tried to give the Red Cross my blood yesterday, but they don't want it for another 7 months.  I passed the screen for mad cow disease, but apparently Cozumel was recently put on the malaria risk list.  Jamaica,  however, is not on the malaria risk list even though they're at about the same latitude.  When you think about it, the pool of possible donors must be very small.  Once you rule out all the people who have lived overseas for more than 5 years, others who have traded sex for money or drugs, people who have had sex with someone from Africa even once since 1977, those who have shared needles with others since 1977, men who have had sexual contact with other men since 1977, anybody imprisoned for more than 72 hours, people who have traveled to Central or South America recently, those who are taking or have taken certain prescription drugs, everybody with a family history of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and people who have been in contact with another person's blood in the past year, the pool must be pretty small.


I had my air conditioner yearly maintenance done last week, and I now have a new approach to the air conditioner.  My previous approach was to try to run the AC as little as possible.  When I was talking to the service technician this time, he pointed out that sometimes it's good to run the AC a little bit more regularly to keep everything well-oiled, etc.  This is a large philosophy shift for me, but he does have a point.  I know cars don't work well if they're not run on a regular basis, so it does make sense that I should occasionally run the AC throughout the summer.  Therefore, the new policy is:  I will keep the thermostat at 78 degrees, which means that on most days when the temperature gets above 85 degrees, the air conditioner will probably run.  Today was one of those days as it was above 90 degrees today, and for the night I may have to bump the AC temp down to 76 or 74 degrees in order to sleep comfortably.  I think I'm OK with my new policy change, especially since the summer could be a hot one if it's already above 90 in early June.

I was catching up on my alumni news, and I read that my favorite electrical engineering professor died of cancer.  He wasn't even very old.  I'll post the tribute to him at the end of my post.  He was probably one of the toughest professors I had, but he was also one of the best at explaining concepts so that I could clearly understand them.  He gave me my love of Signals and Systems.  Austin Zeller in the photo with Dr. Schultz?  Yeah, I know him too.  He and Poppins were study buddies along with Richard and Jason.