African Queen
The Big Country
Ninotchka
North By Northwest
Victory at Sea
Chocolat
Casablanca
The Fountainhead
Zorba the Greek
The Mummy
Sparticus
Vertigo
As You Like It
Maltese Falcon
Mask of Zoro
Gatica
Shawshank Redemption
All About Eve
The Lord of The Rings trilogy
Queen Christina
Conagher
The 39 Steps
Shadow Riders
Crossfire Trail
From Russia With Love
Goldfinger
Sound of Music
Tomorrow Never Dies
The Apartment
The Winslow Boy
Scarlet Pimpernel
Sahara
The Bridge Over River Kwai
The Seven-Year Itch
His Girl Friday
The Sands of Iwo Jima
Duck Soup
To Have and Have Not
Gone With the Wind
Sabrina
Star Wars
Back to the Future
E.T.
Cleopatra
300
October Sky
Guns of Navarone

Three Body Reactions From Anti-Proton Neutron Interactions at 3.5 Gev/c

Validating Requirements for Fault Tolerant Systems using Model Checking; International Conference on Requirements Engingineering 1998 IEEE Computer Society Francis L. Schneider (This paper won first prize in its class.) http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=853144&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=52570406&CFTOKEN=96121669

Software for Detecting Anomalies and Responding to Faults NASA Tech Briefs, Aug 1999,  Schneider, Francis http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3957/is_199908/ai_n8854826

Hot Rod Lincoln by Charlie Ryan

Have you heard this story of the Hot Rod Race
When Fords and Lincolns was settin’ the pace
That story is true, I’m here to say
I was drivin’ that Model A

/ E – / A7 – / B7 – / E – /

It’s got a Lincoln motor and it’s really souped up
That Model A body makes it look like a pup
It’s got eight cylinders, uses them all
It’s got overdrive, just won’t stall

With a 4-barrel carb and a dual exhaust
With 4.11 gears you can really get lost
It’s got safety tubes, but I ain’t scared
The brakes are good, tires fair

Pulled out of San Pedro late one night
The moon and the stars was shinin’ bright
We was drivin’ up Grapevine Hill
Passing cars like they was standing still

All of a sudden in a wink of an eye
A Cadillac sedan passed us by
I said, “Boys, that’s a mark for me”
By then the tail light was all you could see

Now the fellas was ribbin’ me for bein’ behind
So I thought I’d make the Lincoln unwind
Took my foot off the gas and man alive
I shoved it on down into overdrive

Wound it up to a hundred-and-ten
My speedometer said that I hit top end
My foot was glued like lead to the floor
That’s all there is and there ain’t no more

Now the boys all thought I’d lost my sense
And telephone poles looked like a picket fence
They said, “Slow down! I see spots!
The lines on the road just look like dots”

Took a corner, sideswiped a truck
Crossed my fingers just for luck
My fenders was clickin’ the guardrail posts
The guy beside me was white as a ghost

Smoke was comin’ from out of the back
When I started to gain on that Cadillac
Knew I could catch him, I thought I could pass
Don’t you know by then we’d be low on gas

We had flames comin’ from out of the side
Feel the tension, man, what a ride!
I said, “Look out, boys, I’ve got a license to fly”
And that Caddy pulled over and let us by

Now all of a sudden she started to knockin’
And down in the dips she started to rockin’
I looked in my mirror; a red light was blinkin’
The cops was after my Hot Rod Lincoln

They arrested me and they put me in jail
And called my pappy to throw my bail
And he said, “Son, you’re gonna’ drive me to drinkin’
If you don’t stop drivin’ that Hot Rod Lincoln!”

Richard III ACT I SCENE I

GLOUCESTER

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;

Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

La Donna e Mobile from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto (1851)

La donna è mobile
Qual piuma al vento,
Muta d’accento — e di pensiero.
Sempre un amabile,
Leggiadro viso,
In pianto o in riso, — è menzognero.

Refrain
La donna è mobil
qual piuma al vento
Muta d’accento e di pensier!
e di pensier!
e di pensier!

È sempre misero
Chi a lei s’affida,
Chi le confida — mal cauto il core!
Pur mai non sentesi
Felice appieno
Chi su quel seno — non liba amore!
Refrain
La donna è mobil
qual piuma al vento,
Muta d’accento e di pensier!
e di pensier!
e di pensier!

Aristotle
Ayn Rand
Dostoyevsky
Homer
Thomas Jefferson
Erle Stanley Gardner
William Shakespeare
John Grisham
Louis L’Amour
Isaac Asimov
John Dickson Carr
Raymond Chandler
Dashiell Hammett
Ian Flemming
Thucydides
John D. MacDonald
Edgar Allan Poe
P.G. Wodehouse
H.L. Mencken
Mickey Spillane
Robert Parker
Honoré de Balzac
Keats
Tennyson
Voltaire

I grew up in a place called Mahwah in New Jersey. What a great place to spend a childhood that was. I graduated from Ramsey High School in Ramsey, New Jersey. And, finished a PhD in Physics at Ohio University. Since then, I have Worked at Caltech in the unmanned space program after holding varoius teaching positions. My work has involved teaching physics, computer science, and operations research. At the Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory my focus was on software quality assurance as applied to ground and flight systems. See my publications list for a couple of my accomplishments. I am unmarried and have two daughters. One is an attorney and the other is a pharmacist.

Recently, people have asked me why are you here in Oregon?

A very good question – why am I here? Always had it in the back of my mind that this was a great place – reason being childhood friend’s son and his two younger sisters have lived here for years and love it. If you are from that family, let me say that you lived on the corner of Mahwah Road and Alcott Road. Before the mass exodus from Manhattan occurred my childhood home was a reminiscent of the western Oregon too!

Of course if you are an outdoor type it isn’t hard to see why Oregon is a great place to make your home. It appears that there are no polluted lakes, rivers or streams and lots of them are everywhere! One has anadromous trout (steel head), and salmon among many other species. The Cascades stay snow capped all year around; feed the trout streams and lakes; and these streams do not flood. Population is low in all but north western Oregon – then again if you need a Best Buy you can get over there for such things. A friend and is girl friend visited a couple of weeks ago; and, their comment was we’ll be back!

In short Oregon has beautiful coastal rain forests; central farming region; and a high desert/grazing country area where a 200 acre farm can still be bought for less than a fortune … well maybe a small fortune. This is the area where they say the real American West can still be found – cowboys and cowgirls wear their duds all year around as a matter of course not just at rodeos and state fairs. I guess the biggest reason I like this country is that I’m not really partial to the desert as in what I have seen of say the Phoenix area. And, as you know in the case of the high desert – the high desert isn’t really what one might call desert – translation you’ve got ponderosa pines and other flora that fill out the natural landscape. The Sisters area is a fantastically beautiful area in this respect. You’ve Cacades views (Three Sisters etc) and trout streams all in one location! The high desert town of Bend is right in the middle of this! Imagine my surprise as I drove through this nature’s wonderland to discover a Wild Oats; a Recreation Equipment International; and a Barnes and Noble (complete with Starbucks) all in one location! Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

Actually my current thinking is to opt for the south western coastal rain forest areas. You might get one snow per season and that is gone by noon so they say – I don’t know for sure but climate maps show 40 degrees F average winter January temperature. The reason for preferring the rain forest area – aside from the beauty and affordability is that one can run a green house year around for vegetable and fruit production. Place where I’m living for now has such a greenhouse. In addition to the usual vegetables they’ve got dwarf fruit trees – lemons and avocados among them. Aside from all of that according to EPA measurements the air quality in the Coos Bay area is about the best in the country. Whilst, checking out the daily east coast pollution levels shows that during the period mid July through November generalized quantitative air pollution levels – in many areas – get into the heavy moderate and in some areas into the hazardous levels! I just like breathing fresh air and Oregon has it in spades.

If you have a bunch of money, there is 17,000 acres of the most boring sand you ever viewed in south eastern Oregon that can be had for a mere one mil. or so.