#169 Ten Unusual Things I’ve Done That You Probably Didn’t Know About

There are two challenges going around AOL Journals that I find interesting. One is to list ten things you have done that you think very few others might have done (the originator says you’d be surprised how many other people have done it too), and the second is to list things "you don’t know about me". I’ve decided to combine them. So:

Ten Unusual Things I’ve Done That You Probably Didn’t Know About

1. I spent a week at a retreat with Trudy Bell (editor for Scientific American magazine(1971-78), founding senior editor for Omni magazine (1978-79), a senior editor for IEEE Spectrum magazine (1983-97)), Isadore Adler (worked in extraterrestrial Geosciences, utilizing remote imaging from satellites, played a major role in the Mariner, Viking, and Voyager missions, consultant on the VLA project), and Isaac Asimov (who doesn’t already know Isaac? BTW - science fiction is a minor part of his CV.), and about 20 other people.  We worked on a project for the feds, between fun activities.  Isaac autographed a book for me, “To the top banana with the great pear.”  The book is packed away in the basement at the moment, so I can’t check whether he spelled it “pear” or “pair”, but the meaning was unmistakable.  That was my Dolly Parton phase, before Mae West moved in.
2. I am trained as a Masters & Johnson-method sexual surrogate.  Before you get all excited, a) the training was in impotence, in which it is important to stress that there is no pressure, which means that one does NOT “do it”, b) it was 30 years ago, c) it was in Missouri, where it was illegal for a “surrogate” to be anyone other than the wife or fiancée of the subject**, so if a man had a "problem", the wife got the training and d) after all that training, I never got beyond session 2 of the treatment because my subject kept falling asleep. 
3. The term “nibble” for half a byte was coined expressly for me in 1968 by my classmates in The Company’s basic programming school.  A bit is one tick, a byte is eight bits, but it’s always written with a space between the first four and the second four bits, which confused me into thinking a byte was four bits.  The intermediate term “nibble” made it clear for me.
4. I’ve seen EFVs (UFOs to the rest of you), as you learned in a prior entry.
5. I’ve read some original unexpurgated Project Blue Book files, also in a prior entry.
6. I had a Company VP stand in my office and shout at me because I refused to sign a particular letter.  When I still refused to sign, all my projects were taken away and I was stuck in a backwater while they searched for a reason to fire me.  Six months later, I won a significant monetary award for having refused to sign the letter, and was promoted to technical assistant to a third-line manager.
7. I was offered a “mistress contract”.  I’ll do a whole entry on that sometime.
8. Sony owes me a few million dollars.  I’ll do a whole entry on that sometime, too.
9. I do believe that there is a lot more to reality than we can sense.  I hate to mention ESP and precognition, because weirdoes have spoiled the terms, and others have an idea in their head that doesn’t match the definition in my head.  However, my parents reported that as a child I could count fingers held behind my head with 100% accuracy, on several occasions I have had repeating dreams that later came true in minute detail, and ... some other stuff I won’t go into.  No, it doesn’t happen on command, and it doesn’t happen if I think about it.  Too much of a concentration on the real seems to block it.  It happens spontaneously.
10. I can stand a raw egg on end.  Lots of people have seen me do it, and they are mostly convinced there’s a trick, but there isn’t.  Anybody can do it.  Details in the next entry.

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** Missouri considered a paid surrogate to be a prostitute.  The state stipulated that the "surrogate" had to be the spouse or fiancée of the patient (and therapy was to be undertaken at home), which of course made him or her no longer technically a surrogate.  In fact, since there were already likely to be heavy issues between the two, it also rendered the therapies pretty much doomed.  But one couldn't be sure of that until one tried.