Well, what’s with my stupid title, “I like karate cause it’s so darned hard to learn”?  Well, for those of you who never heard about my initial foray into the art (I joined with Sensei Peter in 1970), I had a very narrow objective when I first started – to learn how to do a good kick and a good punch.  Previously, I had trained in Aikido for several years and thought that I only needed to pick up kicking and punching skills.  This was my main objective.  Fortunately, from the outset, both Sensei Peter and I were extremely good at copying the basic techniques that we were shown.  I swear that we could have passed ourselves off as color belts after just a few lessons – and that fact proved to be a negative in my training…I felt that I had achieved my rather limited training goals and promptly quit after just over a month (can you imagine my arrogance as a young teenager, haha). Luckily, Sensei Peter continued to train and it was only by watching his skills and knowledge continue to grow and grow over the next year that I gradually realized how little I had actually [...]

I received some sad news about the passing of a former co-worker at IBM Corp, Mr. Harold Uehara.  Harold was 82, and the last time I saw him was some twenty years ago when he retired from Big Blue.  Everything about Harold was colorful and unique.  Even though we considered him an “old man” at 60+, he was extremely youthful looking, well-muscled and always looked very dark…hence his nickname of Koge.  He was a field manager at the company, rumored as the uncredited creator of the “barefoot” design that was a trademark of notes from him.  I always admired his handwriting – beautiful (a fast-disappearing skill in our modern world of keyboarding)!  As I recall, like Sensei Peter and myself, he was a former member of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) in the US Air Force.  I think he once told me that he was flew in one of the three B52 bombers that circled the globe non-stop way back in 1957.  He was always extremely proud of his two children – in fact, his son worked for me at IBM for a summer, following his high school graduation.  At an IBM picnic way back in the late 1970’s, a couple of [...]

As many of you know, I love to read – always have.  My taste runs to history, hard science, social science, current events and the occasional good sci-fi book (hard to find these days).  Relatives have told me that they recall that I self-taught myself to read when I was 3-4 years old.  Whether that’s true or not, my parents used to credit the many Golden Books they bought for me when I was very young.  Despite their investment, I can only say that my favorite reading material when I was very young was….DC comic books!  I especially loved the DC Action comics which featured my favorite superheros: Superman, Superboy, Green Lantern, and The Justice League of America!! Back then, the comic book cost 10 cents – some years later, I remember that the price was raised a whopping 20% to 12 cents an issue! Since each issue had to last me until the next one arrived at the stands, I always made sure to read each and every page again and again.  When I say each and every page, that included the Letters to the Editor section, which sometimes was more entertaining and informative than the stories in the [...]