When I was 8 years old, our family business was still small and struggling financially. Earlier that year, my dad flew to New England to try to buy the rights to a new brake design with a $10,000 check in his pocket; the most that we could afford to pay. The trip was a success and he bought the design. After engineering our own ideas into it and building a dedicated manufacturing line, Tapco introduced the “Professional” series of brakes. Later this series name would be shortened to “Pro”, but it’s still an active product line.

He used his own image in ads and brochures, so by that time my grandfather (ever the self-promoter) had made a name for himself in the industry. To introduce his new product line, he decided to create a marketing campaign based on two generations of our family. The ads would have a double meaning. He chose me to be featured in the ads with him.

With the promise of a new catcher’s mitt upon completion, I had my first (and only) modeling job. It was a neat opportunity and an experience with my grandfather that I’ll always treasure.

The photos were used in brochures and full page ads that were run in all the trade magazines. After that, my grandfather and dad would bring me to tradeshows and have me talk to customers while operating the brake (which I was pretty good at, as long as I was only using 12″ long pieces) in order to demonstrate how easy it was to use. That experience proved to be invaluable when I was much older and working as a Regional Sales Manager for the company. I was able to operate the brake better than any of my sales reps. At 8 years old, in my mind I was famous!

(Click for a lot more detail)

Side Note: When attending a tradeshow or convention, to promote himself, my grandfather would always have himself paged over the loudspeakers, “Windy Marsh from Tapco please pick up a white courtesy phone. Windy Marsh, pick up a white courtesy phone.” To this day, I still think that’s brilliant.

Google Maps has introduced a new feature called “My Maps”. I’m sick of everything being named “My” something. Can we knock that off already?

Okay, back on track. As a warning, My Maps is like crack. It’s a simple concept; it just allows you to overlay your own markers on top of Google maps. Between this afternoon and now (2 a.m.), I’ve burned up like 6 hours on this thing. Using the satellite imagery of my hometown in Michigan, I’ve overlayed some (140+) of my childhood memories over it. I tried to be entertaining in my comments and there are some hidden gems about my psyche in there.

Without further adieu, I present to you my hometown map. Use the navigation panel on the left. There are three pages of points of interest.

I promised my friend Chris that I’d post a picture of the Heritage Fly-by from the air show this past weekend. This was a very rare opportunity to see historically significant aircraft from different eras flying in formation. From left to right (along with the year they were first put into service), there is a P-51D Mustang (1944), an F-16 Fighting Falcon (1976), an F-4 Phantom II (1960), and the A-10 Thunderbolt II (1977).

(Click to Enlarge)

I’ve been trying to locate a Silicon Graphics Indigo for a couple of months now. I’d like to have one as a “show piece” since I used one a decent amount a while ago. I’m sure Joshua remembers it well. I believe the one we had cost more than twenty thousand dollars when it was new (in 1993). I’ve seen some on ebay in pretty poor condition go for like twenty dollars lately. I’d like a nice one, though.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, I like ebay’s feature which lets you retrieve a pre-defined search via RSS. It’s helpful.

In the 80’s, there was FIA Group B rally racing in Europe. Here in the U.S., before there was public internet access, a WWW, or bandwidth to watch it on anyway, we didn’t get to see to much of it. As a teenager though, I knew what it was. My friends knew what it was. We used to talk about the 4WD Porsche 911, the Audi S1, and the RM 6R4; each with 500-600 turbocharged horsepower goodness.

Group B racing, for better or for worse, was my inspiration to venture across the steet from high school to bomb down Reid Rd. On my trip to Michigan this summer, I was going to take another run down it, but they’ve closed it off apparently since there were a few deaths at the unsignaled train crossing and in the swamps surrounding the tight, curvy, gravel road. But to a seventeen year old like me, it was an automotive playground.

A Group B racing video I found on YouTube: