Other Interests and Activities

Amateur Radio

In my spare time (or more accurately, when I used to have some spare time) I like to talk to people around the world from my amateur radio (AKA "Ham radio") station K0KT. I prefer hanging out on the lower ends of the 80 and 40 meter (3.5 and 7 MHz) CW (using Morse code) bands around the time of sunrise and sunset. At these times of the day there is often very good propagation the the other side of the planet along the "grey line" separating night from day. Click here to see me at my operating position.

Running

I try to get out three or four times each week to run (or at least slog) three miles along a gravel road, through the corn (or soy bean, some years) fields, near our home. Click here to see Kala, the lovely lady who always wants to run with me. The real runner in our family is my daughter, Katherine, who ran Cross Country at Colgate University.

Fishing

I like to go fishing when the weather is nice and when there is some reasonable probability of catching a fish. As a youngster, I always had bad luck in the ocean, near where I lived. In Iowa, ice fishing is big, but, as indicated above, I am a fair (and warm) weather fisherman. Click here to a picture of me on one of my luckier days.

SCUBA diving

When I was in grade school, I used to watch Sea Hunt on television. I liked the show a bit, but mostly it inspired me to want to try SCUBA diving. But I never had the opportunity until the 2001 INFORMS conference in Maui. When not attending technical sessions at the conference, I studied and practiced diving. Click here to see the guy that I hung out with for a little while at the end of my last drive. It was great fun, and now I am promising myself to try it again, probably in another appropriate location.

Collecting

I collect lots of things: stamps, coins, old radios, old radio parts, old books about radios, old computer parts, sea shells, rocks, and minerals. I was returning home from a trip once and the person at the airport checking my bag jokingly asked "What do you have in here? Rocks?" I had about 50 pounds of rocks safely packed away in the bag!