Jim Stafford – Page 15 – Jim Stafford's BlogOKC

Baseball deaths and the passage of time

Colt Stadium in Houston was the locale for my first Major League baseball experience

The death of baseball Hall of Famer Joe Morgan this week took me back to the early 1960s and a rickety old stadium in Houston where I saw my first Major League Baseball game. I was there with my Little League team from Bryan/College Station.

We all wore our uniforms, as did about 5,000 other Little Leaguers that day. The outfield stands were a splash of rainbow colors from so many uniformed youngsters sitting together.

While I don’t remember anything about that game from 1963, I do remember that Joe Morgan was a member of the Houston Colt 45s, who were playing the St. Louis Cardinals. Jimmy Wynn, known as the Toy Cannon, also was a member of that team.

Bonus memory: We could see the Astrodome under construction right next door to Colt Stadium, so the baseball future held a lot of promise for a 10-year-old.

Of course, Morgan eventually was traded from Houston and built his Hall of Fame career as a key player with the 1970s Big Red Machine in Cincinnati. The Houston Chronicle published a story this week about how he was the one that got away. Read it here.

That 1963 Houston Colt 45s experience pretty much ensured I would be a lifelong baseball fan.

Like most kids of the time, I collected baseball cards and memorized the starting lineups of the teams. I even made up my own stats-based game that mimicked the APBA baseball board game but used a spinner instead of dice.

Fast forward more than half a century to the awful year of 2020. Morgan and Wynn both died this year. They are among a host of former Major League players who passed away in 2020, a list that includes all-time greats like Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Tom Seaver, Al Kaline and Whitey Ford.

Baseball Reference publishes a running list of every former player who died this year. You can see the list here.

The deaths of Seaver, Ford, Brock, Gibson and Morgan came in rapid succession. It hurt. As a child of the ‘60s, it’s painful to watch my heroes pass into history.

Each death hammers home the passage of time, but I’m hanging on to the distant memories. It’s all we have left in the end.

My 2007 test drive with the original iPhone

Steve Jobs holds an original iPhone at the Apple launch event in 2007.

Editor’s note: In honor of Apple’s special product event today, I’m reprinting a column I wrote as technology reporter at The Oklahoman in 2007 after using the original iPhone for a week at the invitation of AT&T. I’ve been an iPhone user now for almost a dozen years. However, in the months after the iPhone debuted in 2007, I had only a lowly flip-phone and some serious iPhone envy.

I was seated prominently in a popular lunch spot along Western Avenue on Monday afternoon talking on the new iPhone that AT&T provided me for a one-week tryout.

I was there to show it off.

Parked at a table in the center of the busy restaurant, I whipped out the shiny new high-tech toy and proceeded to flaunt it for 45 minutes.

Important e-mails were read and sent, using the iPhone’s virtual keyboard that magically appears when any typing is needed. Web sites were accessed, appearing just as they do on a desktop or laptop computer. Tunes were cataloged on the device’s iPod. Photos were taken with the camera phone.

Nobody seemed to notice or even look my way.

Obviously, the crowd was suffering from a serious case of iPhone envy. Their jealousy caused them to look the other way, even as I held it up to input an important appointment on the calendar.

So, I stepped it up a notch and took a very important phone call. I let the telephone ring several times before answering it. Loudly.

People continued their conversations at neighboring tables. I’m sure they were seething because they had no iPhone like the one that was providing me with such child-like wonder.

Meanwhile, I was seething at their ignorance. Or was it apathy?

Of course, they had no way of knowing that the very important phone call I took came from a coworker whom I had asked to call me at that time so I could make a show of taking a very important phone call.

I was engaged in animated conversation on the iPhone for several minutes when I looked around and noticed that the entire section of the restaurant was empty save for me.

I gave up, inserted the phone back into my shirt pocket and quietly walked to the car. Lunch was a bust.

When I walked back into the newsroom, my mood brightened. At least I had a captive audience who couldn’t run when I whipped the iPhone out. I could show off its many great features, from the easy YouTube access right on the main screen to the Google Maps button that let me see a great close-up satellite view of my house.

So, I walked into an editor’s office and pulled it out of my pocket. He was armed only with a Blackberry, which was suddenly relegated to old school technology status. The editor wanted to see the iPhone’s Web browser in action.

We had no WiFi network for the device to automatically find and use, so I called up a page using AT&T’s wireless network. We waited. And waited. Finally, we both had to go back to work.

“I’ll bring it back in when it’s feeling better,” I said, walking out.

On the way back to my desk I passed a co-worker I’ll call “Paul” and sprung the iPhone on him.

Just as I was about to list some bragging points of the device, he reached in his pocket and pulled out … an iPhone.

Paul had had it for a week and never told anyone until that moment. I almost quit on the spot.

Instead, I put the phone away and slinked back to my cubicle. An editor shouted some instructions from her desk.

“Write something about your experiences with the iPhone.”

Oh, great. Well, at least my wife liked the device until I told her about the $600 price tag. She made me put it in a drawer for safekeeping until I could give it back to AT&T.

iPhone, I hardly knew you.

Precious memories in black-and-white

When I was a kid, one of my favorite things was looking through stacks of old black-and-white photos at my grandmother’s house. It was a trip back through the decades before I was born, seeing my grandparents as young adults and ancestors I never had the opportunity to meet.

In my mind, I can still hear my Grandmother say “Daddy, get the Kodak” whenever there was a photo opportunity at a family gathering. Those “Kodak moments” created some precious memories.

So, now I’m an adult with a stack of old photos of my own. And this past weekend I pulled a couple of my favorites out of the digital drawer and posted them on Facebook in honor of my late father’s birthday and for “Sibling Day,” as if that’s really a thing.

The two photos I posted are the favorite snapshots in my possession.

The one posted at the top of this blog post is No. 1 on my personal hit parade. It was taken (by my grandfather, I think) at the Fort Smith, Ark., airport moments before my mother, sister and I boarded a Braniff Airways turboprop to begin our journey to the island of Okinawa.

I told my mother that I loved this photo because of all it represents. Traveling 8,000 miles to join my father, who was in the military and stationed on the island. We would live there for about 18 months. I would begin high school at an American school for military dependents on the island.

There’s more. All three of us were dressed in our Sunday best like we were headed to church on Easter because that’s how you traveled in those days. At least in our family. I’ve never let my mother forget that she made me travel 8,000 miles in a suit coat and clip-on tie.

The second photo, posted to the left, shows my dad and me in the front yard of our home at Fort Buckner, on the island. It was military housing, with my dad’s name and rank posted near the front door.

I don’t remember the circumstances of the photo. It’s obviously early in the morning because of the shadows. I’m clowning by putting my dad’s pipe in my mouth as we pose. Ha ha. But it’s a moment of time that I now cherish more than 50 years later.

The point of all this is that these two photos have motivated me to find those old photos that were my grandmother’s and digitize as many of them as possible.

I want to share those precious memories with my children and grandchildren.

This is a fantastic, tremendous, INCREDIBLE betting line

Donald Trump providing a fantastic Coronavirus briefing. Photo by Evan Vucci/AP/Shutterstock

One of the fascinating things about watching the daily Coronavirus briefings from President Trump is anticipating certain words or phrases he says repeatedly. “Fantastic. Tremendous. We’re doing a great job.”

Unless you are wearing a Make America Great Again cap, you realize it’s all bluster and BS.

Now, I’ve discovered that I can actually wager on the number of times he repeats some of my favorite words or phrases. My friend Ed forwarded an email to me with betting odds on some of Trump’s favorite words and phrases he uses when he has no real information to relay. It made me laugh out loud.

Thanks, Ed, for brightening my day. Now, I’ll watch the briefings even closer to see how close Trump hits the betting line.

I’ll take the over on all of these.

Here’s the list of words and phrases and their odds from an outfit called SportsBettingDime.com. Enjoy:

PRESIDENT TRUMP DAILY PRESS BRIEFING OVER/UNDERS

Fantastic +Incredible + Amazing + Tremendous 24.5
Great 11.5
Big/Bigger/Biggest 10.5
More Tests than any other Country 9.5
Fantastic 8.5
Incredible 6.5
Amazing 5.5
Tremendous 5.5
Best 5.5
I/We’ve been treated unfairly 3.5
I/We inherited a broken system 3.5
Working Very Hard 2.5
We’re doing a great job 2.5
Not our fault 2.5

In search of elusive ‘Seniors Hour’ grocery shopping

Shoppers stand in line at 7 am this morning to check out at Crest in Edmond

The idea of a “seniors only” hour of grocery shopping lured me to Crest Foods in Edmond this morning.

Turns out the tip I received from my wife last night was a bit of fake news. Crest doesn’t filter shoppers by age at 7 am, despite what she may have read on social media.

“We don’t limit shopping to seniors because we’re open 24 hours a day,” the Crest employee who scanned my groceries at the checkout counter told me. “We’ve discussed it, but it would be difficult to limit it to just seniors.”

Here’s what went down for me when I rolled into the Crest parking lot at 6:57 this morning.

First, I was surprised to see the parking lot was already loaded with cars in the predawn darkness. After finding a parking spot, I walked into the store, passing several shoppers who were decades younger than me on the way in.

Inside, it could have been prime grocery shopping hour – say, 4 p.m. on any given Sunday – because the store was swirling with shoppers. Carts were at a premium, but I snagged one as I walked in. Sorry, lady.

The large crowd made it difficult to maintain proper social distance. We also had to negotiate aisles that were full of cardboard boxes as Crest workers were working to restock shelves as the day began.

The bread aisle reminded me of Broadway Extension at 5 p.m. when lanes are packed and traffic inches along. The bread shelves were mostly bare.

Checkout lines were the longest I’ve seen at Crest, which normally moves people out at an efficient pace.

But there was a positive to this morning’s experience. Toilet paper! The store had a virtual wall of toilet paper available at 7 a.m. So we early birds got the TP worm on this morning.

By the way, Homeland Stores in the OKC area ARE providing a seniors-only shopping hour beginning at 7 am each day. Here is a story in today’s edition of The Oklahoman that talks about the senior hour at Homeland and other venues.

Stay safe out there!

Tulsa’s AAON makes it rain – and snow – in high tech Norman Asbjornson Innovation Center

Editor’s note: This report was written after I toured the AAON manufacturing campus in Tulsa at the invitation of my friends at the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST).

By Jim Stafford

TULSA – Mark Fly can make it rain at the massive Norman Asbjornson Innovation Center on the manufacturing campus of Tulsa’s AAON Inc. And snow.

Fly is executive director of AAON’s new R&D laboratory, a 134,000 square foot building that opened in 2019, and was a key designer of the facility. The Norman Asbjornson Innovation Center (NAIC) consists of 10 testing chambers, some of which can simulate heat, cold, rain, snow, wind and humid or arid conditions to test the durability of AAON’s industrial heating and air conditioning equipment in the most brutal of conditions.

“In our extreme environmental chamber, it can snow up to two inches an hour or rain eight inches an hour and do so with a simulated wind of 50 miles per hour,” Fly told me and colleagues from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) as he recently led us on a tour of the NAIC.

Mark Fly with AAON takes us through a tour of the company’s manufacturing and warehouse floor

“Our environmental chambers can be controlled to minus 20 degrees or up to 130 degrees, and humidity from 10 percent well into the 90 percent range,” Fly said. “We can simulate any outdoor environment in the world.”

AAON is a publicly traded (NASDAQ: AAON) manufacturer of commercial and industrial air conditioning and heating units. It employs approximately 1,900 people who work in 1.5 million square feet of manufacturing space at its Tulsa headquarters.

Named after company co-founder Norman Asbjornson, the NAIC provides AAON with testing capabilities that are unequaled in the industry, said Gary Fields, AAON’s president.

AAON employs 47 engineers among its 125-person R&D division affectionately known as “Area 51.”

“The innovation that we are noted for here at AAON is very much accentuated in this laboratory,” Fields said. “R&D has been the core value of AAON since the beginning.”

AAON was founded in 1988 when Asbjornson and partners purchased the heating and air conditioning division of the John Zink Company. Asbjornson is AAON’s CEO and chairman of the board.

Today, AAON employs 2,400 people across the company that also includes locations in Longview, Texas, and the Kansas City, Mo., area. Annual revenue is approximately $500 million from a diverse customer base.

“One of our premier customers that would be noteworthy would be the Jacob Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, N.Y.,” Fields said. “We shipped 26 units that were as much as 77 feet long; each unit took two truckloads to get to the facility.”

Nike Inc., on the west coast, is another premier AAON customer, Fields said.

OCAST has supported AAON’s R&D over the years with Oklahoma Applied Research Support (OARS) projects involving computer modeling on energy measurement and prediction, as well as controls, Fly said. The company also has been a participant in the OCAST Intern Partnerships program that places promising Oklahoma college students in real world work environments.

“Oklahoma has always been a very manufacturing-friendly state,” Fly said. “It is very supportive from both a tax and incentive standpoint, which includes programs like OCAST.”

Fly eventually led us into AAON’s sound test chamber that featured 12-inch thick concrete walls adorned with rectangular metal plates designed to echo sound.

“Customers want to know how much noise the equipment makes, because it may be going into a concert hall or a school,” Fly said as his voice reverberated back to us. “The sound is virtually the same everywhere in this room because of the echo.”

AAON performs acoustical, air flow and thermal testing simultaneously in the sound test chamber, Fields said.

“This capability exists nowhere else in the world,” he said.

Now that’s making it rain.

Jim Stafford writes about Oklahoma innovation and research and development topics on behalf of the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science & Technology (OCAST).

The people’s choice in convenience store poll reflects shifting OKC market

OnCue store under construction at Western and Edmond Road

When I saw this story in The Oklahoman that the OKC 7-Eleven franchise had sold to the much larger Irving, Texas-based 7-Eleven Inc., my first thought was that the emergence of OnCue in the OKC market prompted this transaction.

OnCue is the shiny new toy in the convenience store market, and people naturally gravitate to what is new, clean and offers a bigger selection. OnCue is all those things, and it seems to be building new stores in every neighborhood across the metro. There is even one set to open in just a few weeks at the intersection of Western and Edmond Road, right across from the neighborhood we live in.

I won’t embarrass myself by admitting how giddy I was when I first saw the sign more than a year ago that OnCue was going to build at that location. Ask my daughter.

I figure that the sale of the OKC 7-Eleven franchise is similar to newspaper owners who see where the publishing industry is headed and sell their property while it still has value. They get out while they can.

All of that prompted me to run a poll on Twitter, where I asked readers to vote on which was their “go-to” convenience store brand: 7-Eleven, OnCue, QuikTrip or Love’s Travel Stops/other. I figured it would be neck-and-neck between 7-Eleven and OnCue.

Turns out it wasn’t close.

OnCue lapped the field, claiming 58 percent of 189 votes. Compare that to the 19 percent that 7-Eleven received, a smaller share than what QuikTrip got, and it has no stores in the OKC area.

I wasn’t surprised that Love’s Travel Stops trailed the field because most of its stores are convenience stops for highway travelers across the nation. It is our family’s go-to stop when we hit the highway.

Anyway, I was quite surprised by how OnCue ran away with this unscientific poll. For decades, 7-Eleven has been the destination of choice for people who need a late-night six-pack or an early morning cup of Joe on their way to work.

But that’s where today’s market is headed, even if 7-Eleven has remodeled its local stores and is building in new locations. We’ll see if new ownership can impact the trend.

Meanwhile, we noticed there is a sign in an empty lot at the intersection of Western and Danforth, just north of our neighborhood. “Coming soon: 7-Eleven.”

Bring ‘em on.

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming

Air Force One sits on the tarmac at the Fort Smith Municipal Airport on December 6, 1969; Winthrop Rockefeller (white hat in left photo), and Richard Nixon shook hands with the crowd before departing for Fayetteville.

On December 6, 1969, President Richard Nixon flew into Fort Smith, Ark., on Air Force One as he traveled to Fayetteville and the “Game of the Century” between the Arkansas Razorbacks and Texas Longhorns.

That makes today a huge personal anniversary for me.

I was among the approximately 2,000 people who greeted Nixon at the airport 50 years ago today. I was 16 and living in Fort Smith with my mom and sister while my dad served a tour of duty in Vietnam.

But I wasn’t there to protest the war. I was there to see history in the person of a sitting President arrive in Fort Smith, no matter how brief the visit.

I borrowed my mom’s car and drove out to the airport a full two hours before Air Force One arrived and snagged a great spot by the rope barrier that had been set up. Security was pretty light. No one frisked us or questioned us as we ran onto the tarmac area in an attempt to beat the crowd to the best viewing spot.

When Nixon finally arrived, I don’t remember any actual remarks, although there was a podium set up. But I do remember that he came down the line of people along the rope to shake our hands. He was accompanied by Arkansas Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller (white cowboy hat in left photo above).

When the President got about two people from me, someone apparently suggested that it was time to board the helicopter that would complete the trip to Fayetteville. Nixon turned away and took a step toward the waiting helicopter. The crowd let out a collective groan, and the President immediately turned back and resumed shaking our hands (mine, too!). He continued shaking hands down to the high school bands that were playing, where he shook hands with some of the young musicians.

It was a highlight of my youth, despite the fact that Nixon turned out to be, well, Richard Nixon. Watergate and the corruption of his administration surfaced years later.

Two memories stand out from that day.

One was shaking the President’s hand.

The second memory occurred before Nixon arrived. A guy holding a small Instamatic-type camera climbed on top of one of the barrels set up to hold the rope barricade and immediately drew sharp reprimands from the security detail. The camera guy was incensed as he climbed down, and yelled “come the revolution, you’re going to get yours!”

It was a sign of the times, even in a small Southern city like Fort Smith.

OU showcases Stephenson Cancer Center at End2Cancer conference

A scientists presents his findings at the End2Cancer conference at the Samis Education Center on the OU Health Center campus

By Jim Stafford

The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and the NCI-Designated Stephenson Cancer Center delivered an academic doubleheader for about 200 cancer research scientists at the recent 2019 END2Cancer conference at the Samis Education Center on the Health Center campus.

For the main event, scientists came to share their research or hear presentations given by counterparts from across the country who are pursuing breakthrough discoveries in the area of cancer treatment. At the two-day conference, the scientists focused on emerging nanotechnology and cancer drug delivery applications.

At the same time, OU showcased its renowned Stephenson Cancer Center on the Health Sciences Center campus, said Rajagopal Ramesh, Ph.D., conference chair and professor, Department of Pathology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine.

“The whole idea in organizing this conference for the third consecutive year – beyond the science – was to put Oklahoma on the map and have the Stephenson Cancer Center recognized for the great science that we do in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer,” Ramesh said. “We have eminent speakers coming in from all over the country, and the majority of them have never been to the state of Oklahoma or to the Stephenson Cancer Center.”

The NCI-Designated Stephenson Cancer Center ranks in the top 50 in the nation for cancer care in the 2019-2010 U.S. News & World Report ranking and currently ranks No. 1 among all cancer centers in the nation for the number of patients participating in clinical trials.

“They were highly impressed,” Ramesh said. “The first thing I hear when they come in is ‘Wow, I never knew such an outstanding cancer center with top-notch research infrastructure exists.’ We wanted them to come in and have the opportunity to go to the Stephenson Cancer Center and look at some of the cutting-edge clinical trials we are doing at the center.”

Ramesh pursues his own cutting-edge research at the Stephenson Cancer Center, developing nanoparticles that can deliver drugs specifically to tumors and minimize the toxicity that is often a cancer treatment side effect. He specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer.

Ramesh recently received a grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to explore a means by which tumor cells may be avoiding immunotherapy in lung cancer. The study is unique in that it is being conducted on lung cancer patients in real time while they are on a clinical trial receiving an immunotherapy medication.

The Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) also supports Ramesh’s lung cancer research with a $135,000 Health Research grant.

“OCAST has been beneficial not only to my lab but across the entire state of Oklahoma,” Ramesh said. “The whole idea of OCAST is to bridge the transition from academic research to an industry setting in the state of Oklahoma. By receiving funds from OCAST, we are able to generate new ideas and test them first in the lab.”

Wei Chen, Ph.D., professor and dean of the College of Mathematics and Sciences at the University of Central Oklahoma, is another OCAST-supported scientist who moderated an END2Cancer panel discussion and presented findings from his own nanotech-based research at the conference.

“Ending cancer is everybody’s dream,” Chen said. “So everybody in this conference and many researchers around the world are contributing to the fight against cancer. We are making good inroads both in terms of nanotechnology and other methodologies. But cancer is a very tough enemy, as we know. Therefore, we still have a long way to go.”

Jim Stafford writes about Oklahoma innovation and research and development topics on behalf of the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science & Technology (OCAST).

Don’t criticize me! Steve Jobs shows how to respond to criticism

I’ve never responded particularly well to criticism. I tend to have an instant reaction and lash out at the person providing the critique with words that I regret. It’s something that I’m aware of and have to guard against constantly.

But it seems that I never handle it as well as I should. Call it a character flaw (among many).

Anyway, I saw this clip of Steve Jobs responding to an insulting question from an audience member at a 1997 developers conference. The guy wanted to show that Jobs didn’t know what he was talking about as far as software programming, along with a second question on what he had been doing the past seven years.

Jobs’ response blows me away. Instead of becoming angry and hurling an insult back at the guy (as I almost certainly would have), he sat and thought for several seconds. You can see that the wheels are turning as he formulates his answer and responds initially with a cliche about pleasing some of the people some of the time. His long answer actually provided insight into why Apple developed products as it did.

Finally, he responds directly to the insult by admitting that he sometimes doesn’t know what he’s talking about and that mistakes will be made. At least someone is making some decisions for the company, he told the audience.

Jobs’ response seems heartfelt and honest. It’s something I hope I can emulate in the future.

I invite you to click on the video and watch Jobs respond to the insult. I hope you find it as inspiring as I do.