CAPTAIN BOWES LANDING ON ZWICKLAND

Captain Joseph Bowes of the Mossyrock Airlines has initiated commercial flights to the Zwickland Airport. As you can see, Captain Bowes was delighted with his excellent landing.

Captain Bowes flew from the airport at the Crossroads Country Ranch Airport to the Zwickland Airport in a record setting 1 hour 10 minutes. Of coarse the initial flight would be a record setting flight as there have been no other flights to compare the his flying time with.


Regular commercial flights to Zwickland will commence as soon as the Zwickland Airport personnel can determine how to get Captain Bowes’s aircraft into the air. It seems the Zwickland Airport runway is too short for a proper takeoff.


Press release by MELVIN ZWICK The editor of the Zwickland Islander Newspaper

GRANDSONS IN AFGHANISTAN OR IRAQ

Two of our Grandsons are in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Colby is on an air craft carrier.

Anthony is on a ship but going ashore most of the time. He is a combat medic.

Anthony was born back East. This is his first visit to our home. He took to me like we were old long lost friends. I had to be careful because he wanted to chew my sneakers.

This is Anthony somewhere in Afghanistan or Iraq. He is a combat medic. He no longer chews on my sneakers.

ELECTRICITY LESSON

Hi Kyle,

A simple lesson in electricity brought to you by the great MELVIN ZWICK.


In order to be shocked one must make a good electrical connection between the electrical source and the ground. If one is wearing shoes the connection to the ground may not be there as the soles of the shoes act as isolators.


However if the ground is wet things might be a little different. If the electrical potential is great enough the electricity will jump the soles into the ground. That would not happen with normal house voltage but with lightening the electricity will jump the soles.
Now the lesson:


Electricity consists of two things.


Voltage and the current. The voltage is like the water pressure in a hose. The higher the pressure the greater chance it will break the hose. The higher the voltage the greater chance it will jump around an insulating thing like the sole of the shoe.


The current is like the flow of the water in the hose. The flow of current is what can kill one. Low current is not dangerous.


I am sure you have seen the spark between your finger and the door handle when you rub your feet on the carpet. This is static electricity. It is very high in voltage (power) but extremely low in current (flow). The voltage is great enough to jump across the soles of you shoes and jump the air gap between your finger and the door handle but the current is so low all you get is a slight shock.


If one is bare foot standing in wet ground the connection to ground is very good. Even small electrical potential will carry through the body into the feet then into the ground.


Electricity is measured in voltage. A normal battery might only have 1.5 volts. You can taste the voltage in a flashlight battery if you put the battery on you tongue. Do not put higher voltage on your tongue.


House voltage is 120 volts and can be pretty high in current. This is enough to kill you if your body makes a good contact to house voltage through your heart into ground. The electricity has to travel through you heart to kill you. The connection can be through you heart from one hand to the other hand. It is the current that kill a person. The low current in the static electricity in the shock you get from rubbing you feet on the carpet has no current. However if that amount of voltage had a high current (the amount of electricity that will flow) it could kill you.


You will get a very big shock if you touch ground and the house voltage through one hand only. For instance touching a live wire with one finger and ground with the other finger.


The electricity that supplies houses form the main source can be 440 volts or more. The voltage in the main lines from the generating station can be in the thousands of volts.


A fellow here was trying to get a cat down from a power pole. He touched the thousand volt line and a ground. The voltage knocked him down 30 feet to the ground. He died.


NEVER STAND IN WET GROUND WHEN YOU ARE FOOLING WITH A POWER CORD. IT IS NOT WISE TO STAND BAREFOOT AND TURN A LIGHT SWITCH ON OR OFF.


Well enough of the electricity lesson. Kyle it seems so simple when I explain it but I had a difficult time understanding it when in college. You can study electricity for years in college in things like computers to the transmission from the power plant to the lights in your house.
If you have any questions let me know.


And now another story from the great MELVIN ZWICK.


When Grandpa was at a cement plant in Hagerstown, Maryland he was about to test a circuit on a control panel he had designed. He was sitting on the floor underneath the shelf of the control panel and about to put a test probe on a wire in the panel. Now Grandpa did not like electricity and even though the voltage and the current on the wire was very low he was a little hesitant to touch the wire. At the same time Grandpa touched the wire the operators started the grinding mill in the next room. The grinding mill is a massive piece of equipment which shook the whole room when it started. At the sound of the mill starting Grandpa jumped up, hit his head on the shelf of the control panel and looked around the room like a deer looks at the headlights of the car that is about to hit it.


Everyone laughed at poor old Grandpa. After the laughing stopped Grandpa’s boss told the following story:


There was a young actor in New York who wanted very much to be on stage in a major theater production. He had tried for many years to reach his goal. He finally got a very small speaking part in a Civil War play. He was to be standing in a dance hall in a confederate uniform when there was a noise in the background. He was supposed to say, “Hark is that cannon fire I hear?” He practiced those words until he could say them in his sleep.
He was on stage opening night with all sorts of confidence. It was time for his part. Some one fired off a cannon back stage. He was so shocked by the sound he jumped around and said, “What the heck was that?”


From that time on Grandpa was known as the “What the heck was that guy?”


And so ends the “What the heck was that” story.

Grandpa

ONE SHOCKED DOG

ONE SHOCKED DOG

I received a post about a Kansas farm wife who called the local phone company to report her telephone failed to ring when her friends called - and that on the few occasions, when it did ring, her dog always moaned right before the phone rang.


It turned out that the dog was connected to the phone line with a metal leash. When a call came in the line would shock the dog which caused him howl and to wet which made a solid connection for the phone so it could ring.


This post about the dog being grounded to the phone line reminded me of something that happened to my little dog, Mike, when I was stationed in Ft Hood, Texas.


The housing in Kaleen, the city next to the Fort, was terrible. My wife and I finally had to buy a mobile home. Thats right. We were trailer trash for a while.


Now on with the story.


It had been raining during the night. In the morning I let our dog, Mike, out through the front door of the trailer. A very short time later I heard a yipe from my pouch. He was at the door shivering when I opened it an instant later. I looked around and could find nothing that might have caused him to yipe and shiver so I let him in and consoled him. There were no scratch marks on him so his actions were left a mystery.

The next morning it was still wet from rain when I let him out. This time I watched him as he left the door. He promptly went to the metal front jack of the mobile home and heisted his leg and let a out a squirt on it. He jumped about a foot in the air with a loud yipe as his water hit the jack. He was in my arms, shivering, in the next instant.

It seems the people who set up our mobile home did not properly ground our trailer. Poor Mike was making an electrical connection between our ungrounded trailer and the wet ground.


Mike never heisted his leg on the trailer jack again.


A little about Mike the dog.

Mike as a miniature Doberman who stood about 9 inches if he was on his tip toes. He would never chase a cat. There were several feral cats around out home when we moved to Phoenix.

The only way I could get Mike to do his doggy thing and chase the cats away was to throw him at them. He found it fun to chase after them for a very short time. Then he lost interest.

One time Mike was in the front yard chewing on a bone. He had his rump in the air and was on his front elbows as he nibbled on that savory bone.

One of the stray cats decided he was a standing target and ran at him. Mike just moved his rump out of the swing of the cat as the cat ran by. This went on for a couple of times until the cat gave up. Mike never missed one chew on his bone and never got popped by the cat.


We visited a lake near our home in Kaleen right after we got Mike. We were splashing in the water but Mike would have nothing to do with the Lake. I decided that Mike needed to get introduced to water so I picked him up and threw him in to the lake where the water came up to his belly. He just froze there like a bronze statue in the pose he had when he hit the water. all our calling did not get him to move. I finally picked him up and put him on the bank. He immediately ran back into the water.

One of his amazing tricks was to fetch the exact stone I would throw into the water. He would dive for it and always came up with the exact stone.

Grandpa

A THOUGHT FROM THE FUTURE


It was 3:28 AM when Melvin’s brain groggly became active. He was bothered by a very bad cold that prevented comfortable sleep. He thought it was strange that in the year 2049 Scientists had finally developed ways to prevent the majority of diseases that plagued the human race but they had not been able to eliminate the common cold virus. The lowly cold had never left mankind. And that was the ailment that was bothering Melvin. It was the most sever cold he had ever had. No amount of medicine made the blocked sinus passage clear up or the aching in his head to leave him.


But all the physical unpleasantness of the cold was not what was bothering Melvin. It was the thought that he lovely family in Mossyrock, Washington was suffering with the same ailment. Why should it be that both Melvin and his family should suffer from the same ailment at the same time? The similarity of the aliment and its timing was obvious to Melvin because he and his family spend a lot of time on the Wireless Communication System. The symptoms had developed simultaneously between Melvin and his family over the last couple of days. Why should that be?
Melvin thought he would get on line with his family and discuss this strange phenomena with them. But first Breakfast.


Melvin went to the kitchen where he placed his finger on the Kitchen Key Pad and thought of scrambled eggs and bacon. Almost immediately the food storage unit opened and a mechanical arm reached in and gently picked up two eggs and placed them on the counter. The arm then reached back into the food storage unit and picked up three slabs of bacon and placed them on to a hot plate on the electronic cooking unit. In just a minute or two the bacon started to sizzle. Melvin knew the fragrance of cooking bacon was filling the air. Unfortunately his blocked nose did not allow him to smell the desirable scent as it raised up from the bacon sizzling on the hot pad.


The mechanical arm then cracked the two eggs into a bowl and beat them until they were fluffy. The arm then deposited the yellow fluff on the hot pad next to the bacon.


The Key Pad was placed on the market several years ago. The engineers at Compudyne had developed a Key Pad that could read the mind of anyone who touched it. The Key Pad replaced the old style keyboard that was connected to the electronics of the house. No longer did Melvin have to type in what he wanted the house to do. All he had to do was touch the Key Pad and think what he wanted the house to do. The Pad read his mind and things got done.
Within minutes Melvin’s kitchen served his breakfast on a plate on the table.


One of the symptoms of this terrible ailment was a closed nose. The blockage was so sever that swallowing was almost impossible. Melvin had to develop a new way to swallow with his mouth open. Swallowing with his mouth closed popped his ear drums. Thank goodness for Melvin’s taste buds. Even thought swallowing was difficult the eggs and bacon tasted delicious.
Melvin touched the kitchen pad and thought the dishes into the dish washer. He though of a shower and the shower turned on and the temperature was adjusted to Melvin’s thoughts.
Melvin stepped into he shower and was immediately drenched with warm water. The temperature was to his liking as he had mentally controlled it by touching one of the Compudyne key pads in the house. An instant later he was sprayed with soap suds. The soap had been developed several years ago. It contained micro scrubbing bubbles that gently scrubbed his body. Melvin laid his chin on the shaving control pad. An arm holding a safety razor moved out of the wall and gently removed all of Melvin’s whiskers. A quick rinsing and drying and Melvin was ready to face the day. Although facing the day with his terrible cold was not a pleasant thing.


Along with the pain in his head, the blocked nose and the cough in his chest he noticed that his right index finger felt funny. He looked at his finger thinking that he might have a splinter in it but could not find anything. Oh well it was not much of a bother until he placed it on the Compudyne computer key pad. That’s when his finger felt most like it had a splinter.
Melvin has some business to attend to that would keep him busy for most of the morning. He thought that he might contact his family after lunch.

Melvin dressed and moved to he easy chair. He brought out his brand spanking new Compudyne Computer Key Pad and placed his finger on it. The Compudyne Computer Key Pad was a tremendous step forward in computer technology. The Computer was no more that an inch long by half inch wide and about a half inch thick. It was attached to the Key Pad. The whole thing slipped on the index finger. The Computer generated a 10 by 14 holograph display screen. Even in the brightest of rooms the display screen was easily read.


He thought of his Holograph Computer Screen. An instant later it was up and in front of him. He mentally adjusted its size and location.


He thought the words of several letters and then sent them over the World Wide Wireless Network to the recipients. He did some mental bookkeeping and played a game or two and then it was time to contact his family.


Melvin placed his finger in the Compudyne Computer Key Pad and thought his family’s address. In an instance he found their blog. It told him what he had already knew.
They were still suffering from their illness. They had placed the following message using their new Compudyne Computer Key Pad:

“The last four days have been some of the strangest ever for this Zwick Family.It all started with a call from a realtor on Thursday morning wanting to show our house on Saturday at 2pm. This in-and-of-itself isn't all that strange, although it does tend to send our household into an extended, unusual frenzy. For two-and-a-half days we dropped everything else we had planned and went to plan B: shooing away large dust bunnies, stuffing closets with things that wouldn't normally go into closets, making fourteen dogs disappear, etc.But the surreal part of the past four days is that most of the members of our family of nine have been hit hard with the most unpleasant bug I think we have ever had in our home. (Certainly according to Lydia, this is the worst sickness she has EVER had!) It has driven our usual energetic, hard-working children straight to bed . . . for days. Each child has been hit with varying degrees of discomforts and tiredness, but for the most part, it has really wiped everyone out. It is as if our little world here in our neck-of-the-woods has stopped for a time!And the house has been eerily quiet.

Melvin sent them a quick note describing his condition. In it he commented how strange it was to have the illness occurred simultaneously between them. Without giving it much though he mentioned the feeling of a splinter in his index finger.
Then it was off for more work. Later in the day Melvin thought of his family again and found they had answered his thoughts.

"It is strange that we all have the same illness at the same time. The illness is contagious so we can understand why we all have it but it is weird that you should have it at the same time. Maybe the cold virus has traveled over the wireless network just like a computer virus. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our symptoms are the same as yours. A blocked nose, headache and a hacking cough. It is strange that we have noticed that our computer finger also feels like there is a splinter in it. Strange very strange!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.
Love"

Melvin didn’t give the finger thing much though. The blocked nose and the headache made it difficult to concentrate. In fact Melvin had a difficult time getting a lunch. It seemed that his thought process was somewhat confused and the poor Electrical Kitchen was having a difficult time getting the correct things for his sandwich.

Later in the day Melvin’s brain seemed to clear up a bit. He found it easier to maintain a thought process. He started thinking about what his family had jokingly said about a cold virus being sent over the Wireless Network just like a computer virus.

He though it was a rather stupid thought but it would not leave him. What the heck. Why not contact Compudyne and ask them if they had heard of such an outlandish thing as a cold virus being sent over the Wireless Network.

Melvin slipped on his “Compudyne Computer Key Pad and thought of Compudyne and the virus question. He immediately made contact with Compudyne and moved to their, “Contact us” page. The computer would not accept a question about cold viruses. Melvin would type in, “Are any of your customers complaining about a terrible cold virus?” Just as Melvin was ready to send the message it would disappear from the Holograph Screen. It was almost as if the Computer did not want to send a message about a cold virus to Compudyne.

Melvin decided to take another tact. He went into the back room where his old computer was. It was the old style with a regular keyboard and computer screen. He dusted it off and fired it up. Melvin wondered how people accepted the slowness of this old workhorse when compared to the new Compudyne Computer Key Pad.

Melvin’s attempt to contact Compudyne was handled without incident. It was a little difficult remembering how to type. He went to their “contact us” page and wrote them the following:

“This is a dumb question but I feel obliged to ask. Are any of your customers experiencing a terrible cold?”

Several times during the day he put on his Compudyne Computer Key Pad and searched for an answer from Compudyne. None existed. On a lark Melvin went back to the old workhorse computer and looked for a response from Compudyne. And there it was.

“We are investigating why many of our Compudyne Computer Key Pad customers are experienced a sever cold. It seem everyone using our Key Pad have blocked noses, sever head ache and a hacking cough. All are complaining about the feeling of a splinter in their index finger. We have found that the Key Pad has developed a wire that is sticking up into the finger area of the key pad. We have not been able to prove it yet but we suspect that the Compudyne Computer has caused the Key Pad to grow the wire that is sticking our customers in the finger and passing on the cold virus. It is recommended that you no longer use our Computer Key Pad until we can solve the possible problem.
To add to our suspicions our Computer Key Pad would not send out a message about a cold virus. Every time we wrote a message about a cold virus our computer screen would go blank. We had to go back to our old computer system to get this message out to our Compudyne Computer Key Pad System.
Thanks for you patience. Compudyne”

How scary is that? Ever since computers could talk to each other they have been capable of passing on viruses to each other. And now we find that computers might be capable of passing on cold viruses to their human operators. Was the Compudyne Computer Key Pad smart enough to protect itself and not pass on the question of a possible cold virus being passed on by itself? The thought is a chilling one.
And so its back to the old key board and computer system which we will have to use until Compudyne determines how to give their Computer Key Pad an inoculation to wipe out its cold virus.
Within days Melvin and his family were back to their old selves.

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things . . .

The Bowes kids always find things to challenge MELVIN ZWICK. This is the challenge:

This week's assignment is titled "Happy Lists". All we needed to do was think about all the things that make us happy in life. But the creative twist is to plug these favorite/happy things into an acrostic of our names.


M-Momma Bowes whose chocolate loving is second only to MELVIN ZWICK
E-Every word Grandpa’s Grandkids write
L-Lots of all color M and Ms
V-Valerie and Victoria
I-Imothy What the heck I, MELVIN ZWICK, do not have a “T” in my name
N-Never running out of stories for MELVN ZWICK to tell


A-And Computer expert Pappa
L-Lydia
W-Whole bunches of Chocolate covered Strawberries.
A-All of Grandpa’s daughters and Grandkids
Y-Yummy Green corn tamale, Baja style
S-Slushy root bear floats so thick you have to eat with a spoon


G-Goseph, What the keck I, MELVIN ZWICK, do not have a “J” in my name
O-Oodles of chocolate with almonds
O-Oodles of praline and cream ice cream
F-Furry kitties
E-ESCAPE Crew, Every Sheep Can Always Plan Escapes
Y-Yummy German Chocolate cake


Z- Zeal of Grandpa’s family
W-White and Black kitties
I-Ice cold Crystal Lite drink in the summer time
C-Caroline
K-Kyle

TIMOTHY'S CATCH

Hey Robyn, There is a great fire engine site where you can click on various sections of a fire engine to see what is behind the door.


http://www.city.davis.ca.us/Fire/tour/

Love You all big Bunches
Grandpa