Edition 6-28-05

Plant City Bike Fest
1st Sat of the Month

Just in case you were planning a trip to the Himalayas:This Travel Warning is being issued to alert American citizens to ongoing security concerns in Nepal. The Department of State continues to urge American citizens to defer non-essential travel to Nepal. This supersedes the Travel Warning issued on October 26, 2004.

To save energy, convert incandescent fixtures to fluorescent wherever practical. Fluorescent tubes illuminate more efficiently than incandescent bulbs. They are great in a kitchen or work area

TAYLOR HORSEFEST
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July 23, 2005 Taylor, ND
701-974-3871 Founded to honor the animal that played such a major part in North Dakota's heritage, this twelve-year-old event takes a step back in time with a non-motorized parade, crafts and food vendors, exhibitors, pony rides, other children's activities, and music. It is always held in July and draws anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 people. Proceeds from the event will go toward purchase of land for construction of a heritage museum and activity center.

To remove those tough stains from the bottom of a glass vase, just fill with water and add two Alka-Seltzer tablets let set and Wola! Stains are gone.

A group of Wisconsin friends went deer hunting and paired off in twos for the day. That night, one of the hunters returned alone, staggering under the weight of an eight-point buck.

"Where's Henry?" the others asked.

"Henry had a stroke of some kind. He's a couple of miles back up the trail," the successful hunter replied.

"You left Henry laying out there and carried the deer back?" they inquired.

"A tough call," nodded the hunter. "But I figured no one is going to steal Henry!"

Jack Kilby, whose work on integrated circuits in the 1950s ushered in the digital era, died Monday after a battle with cancer. He was 81.
In the summer of 1958, while working at Texas Instruments, Kilby built the first electronic circuit in which all of the components were fabricated into a single piece of material. The device, about half the size of a paper clip, was the world's first integrated circuit. The microchip was later demonstrated on Sept. 12, 1958.difficulties, paved Jack Kilby

The way for integrating electronics into a variety of devices. Prior to integrated circuits, engineers had to solder several parts together. Intel co-founder Bob Noyce came up with a similar integrated circuit a few months later.prototype, which cut down on costs and engineering

The work, which Kilby performed during the two-week period at TI when other employees traditionally took a vacation, ultimately led to a Nobel Prize for physics in 2000. When the news was announced at the Microprocessor Forum that year, the surprised audience gave him a standing ovation.

The invention also jump-started Kilby's career. Over the next several years, he held several positions at TI and won a number of awards. He formally retired in 1970 from the company, but still served as a consultant. Between 1978 and 1984, he served as a professor at Texas A&M University.

"In my opinion, there are only a handful of people whose works have truly transformed the world and the way we live in it--Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers and Jack Kilby," TI Chairman Tom Engibous said in a prepared statement. "If there was ever a seminal invention that transformed not only our industry but our world, it was Jack's invention of the first integrated circuit."

June 15, 2005, 8:45 AM EDT

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- The state correction department had the right to discipline five prison workers for their association with members of a biker club, a federal judge has ruled.

The state did not violate the constitutional rights of the workers when it disciplined them for associating with the Outlaws Motorcycle Club, U.S. District Judge Mark R. Kravitz said in a ruling released Monday.

Kravitz wrote that although government employees don't relinquish their First Amendment rights, the government may impose some restraints on employee speech.

The government employee must show that the speech was of "public concern," wrote Kravitz, citing U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

Kravitz ruled that the prison workers' association with the club was not a matter of public concern.

Gary Piscottano, James Kight and Randy Sabettini were fired as correction officers last year for being "less than truthful" during a departmental investigation into their association with the club. They admitted they had been members of the club at one point.

Officers Mark Vincenzo and Walter Scappini were formally counseled for their "unprofessional conduct." They had attended parties sponsored by the biker group. Vincenzo was later fired for attending an Outlaw-sponsored fundraiser for a soup kitchen in Enfield.

Piscottano, Kight, Vincenzo and Sabettini all have correction department grievances pending.

Jun 12, 2005 (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News via COMTEX) -- Today, almost eight years after Jeffrey L. Bleustein became chief executive of Harley-Davidson Inc., a share of Harley stock is worth nearly four times more than when he took the top job at the Milwaukee motorcycle-maker.

That's one reason a relentless critic of soaring executive compensation finds it difficult to be upset that Bleustein made $46.9 million in pay last year -- about $42.3 million of it from stock options that grew in value over his years with the company.

Put simply, while Bleustein took his turn running the company after he and other believers saved it and revived it in the 1980s, he was boosting the stock value for regular shareholders as well as increasing his own fortunes.

"Bleustein is part of that turnaround. He took a flier way back when on something no one ever thought would happen, and did it the old-fashioned way,"said Daniel J. Steininger, president and CEO of Catholic Knights in Milwaukee, who speaks out frequently against big executive pay packages. "You don't begrudge those kinds of guys in a situation like that."

Bob Simonson, a stock analyst who covers Harley for Chicago's William Blair & Co., put it this way: "Jeff has just been an extraordinary steward of that brand name and of nurturing it and getting the value out of it, and helping to build an organization that is very focused on producing a good quality product that people want to buy -- and selling an experience as well as a motorcycle."

With his enormous pay package in 2004, Bleustein, 65, who in April stepped down as CEO but remains chairman of Harley, is the highest-paid executive in the Journal Sentinel's annual executive compensation survey of Wisconsin's public companies.

A man standing in line at a check out counter of a grocery store was very surprised when a very attractive woman behind him said, "Hello!" Her face was beaming.
He gave her that "who are you look," and couldn't remember ever having seen her before.

Then, noticing his look, she figured she had made a mistake and apologized. "Look," she said "I'm really sorry but when I first saw you, I thought you were the father of one of my children," and walked out of the store.
The guy was dumbfounded and thought to himself, "What the hell is the world coming to? Here is an attractive woman who can't keep track of who fathers her children! "

Then he got a little panicky. "I don't remember her," he thought but, MAYBE..during one of the wild parties he had been to when he was in college, perhaps he did father her child!

He ran from the store and caught her in the parking lot and asked, "Are you the girl I met at a party in college and then we got really drunk and had wild crazy sex on the pool table in front of everyone?"

"No", she said with a horrified look on her face. "I'm your daughter's Sunday School Teacher!"