When I first bought Cindy a computer last year for her homework, I didn't bother to hook up the telephone connection to the Internet, because frankly, I didn't think it was worth it. We used to use the Internet at Oral Arts Laboratories back in the eighties, but it was a real pain. If you wanted to access a paper that was posted on-line, for example, you'd have to manually type into your computer the telephone number of the computer where the paper was located (this was before browsers), then wait and wait for the file to be transmitted. And everything was limited to black text on a white background, of course.

After Cindy told me she had to be connected to the Internet in order to do research for her homework, I broke down and signed up with one of the Internet service providers whose software had been shipped with our PC (although I wasn't too pleased about having to give my credit card information over the line).

Well, you can imagine my surprise when the connection was made and the screen suddenly downloaded all these different colors, and photographs, and moving text! That sure wasn't the way it was fifteen years ago!

Since then, I've had an opportunity to explore quite a bit of the "Web", usually in the evenings after Cindy has gone to bed, and I must say I'm impressed with all the work everybody around the world has put into it. There are some pages that aren't exactly my cup of tea, but that's okay. "Different strokes for different folks", as Sly and the Family Stone used to sing.

Here are some of my favorite pages, followed by Cindy's. Some of my links I've visited quite a few times. Others I've only looked at once or twice, but know I'll be back to explore further, so I'm considering them to be a favorite for this links section.

At the end, I've also included some links to home pages created by friends and neighbors. I hope you'll pay them a visit, too.

Chemistry and Industry Magazine is one of the better journals devoted to my profession, although they're kind of stingy about putting free articles up on the website. It's a good magazine though.

I know a lot of people get a little nervous about biotechnology, just like they did about putting fluoride in the drinking water years ago, but the truth is biotechnology is going to improve our lives in so many ways, from growing high-yield crops to feed the hungry of the world to coming up with painless cures for some of our oldest, worse diseases. If you'd like to know more, please take a look at Why Biotech.

There are a lot of magazines out on the Web today. One of the best, for my money, is The Economist.

Every once in a while during the day while I'm at work I like to check to see how the market's doing. There are a lot of sites out there for that, but I find CBS MarketWatch to be the best. Plus their news on individual companies seems to be more up-to-date than a lot of the other sites.

If you'd like to know more about the town where Cindy and I live, check out the official City of Richardson homepage. It's a great town. Every Spring they seed wildflowers all along the medians.

On my commute to work each morning and evening I listen to WRR 101FM, a classical music station broadcasting out of Fair Park, which is in Dallas. WRR is the oldest radio station in Texas, and plays a nice selection of pieces. Plus they have a "March of the Day" each morning at 7:30 to get your juices flowing. No matter where you yourself might live, you can listen to their broadcast over the Internet by visiting their site.

Even though I mostly listen to classical music now, every once in a while I like to "take care of business", and there's no better band to do that with than the great Bachman Turner Overdrive. My friends and me wore out their records growing up, and you can be sure we'd crank up the car radio whenever "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" came on. Did you know they're Canadians?

Music has changed these days, of course. I tried to interest Cindy in The Beatles and a couple of the other great groups from the recent past, but she prefers N'Sync. They're a band of four or five young men who are very popular right now. I've seen some of their videos and they're very creative-- in their latest one, they portray themselves as puppets. Their site uses ShockWave, which I have to admit is kind of cool.

Cindy's favorite actor is Freddie Prinze Jr., who's appeared in a lot of different movies, and who is, I believe, the son of Freddie Prinze from the old TV show Chico and the Man.

Another young actor Cindy likes a lot is Seth Green, who is known for being a bit of a rebel, but who has a good sense of humor, from what she's said. I think he's on the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or else makes guest appearances on it.

Like a lot of kids her age, Cindy loves the Harry Potter books. We bought the latest volume (you wouldn't believe the lines), but I was a bit disappointed when some of the pages fell out of the book, and other pages looked like they hadn't been printed very well. To visit the official movie site, please go to The Harry Potter Movie Site.

This section of our links pages will be devoted to friends and neighbors of ours who have pages of their own on the 'Net.

When we were kids growing up in Idaho, we lived briefly near Ed and Velma Schuldt. They were a really nice couple, and always had a kind word to say to everyone. Mr. Schuldt helped my Dad get his truck out of the mud one time after a really bad rain.

DeLoy Roberts is the biology/zoology teacher at Skyline High School, my old stomping grounds, in Idaho Falls, Idaho. His Animal Skull Collection is the best I've ever seen on the Web. Definitely worth a look-see.

One of my mentors growing up in Idaho Falls was Beak McDonald, who taught me a lot of hard-earned lessons in life. I'll never forget when I stopped calling him Mr. McDonald, and started calling him Beak. That night I felt like I had 'arrived' as an adult. Beak has his own page on the web, at Tribute to Colonel Sanders. "Hey, Beak! There's too much lasagna in here!" Those were the days.

SENTENCE

Wally and a monkey were sent up into space in a capsule. Each was given an envelope they were supposed to open once they were in orbit around the Earth.