Travel, Wyoming: US 85 through Cheyenne, WY

I will be taking photos and listing businesses and other locations along Highway 85 (Greeley Highway) through Cheyenne.

US 85 enters Wyoming from Colorado 8 miles (13 km) south of Cheyenne. In Cheyenne it joins with Business Route 87, and a mile later with Interstate 180 until it meets with U.S. Route 30. The segment with I-180 is the only fully at-grade interstate route in the U.S.

At exit 12, it joins with I-25 and U.S. Route 87 in a concurrency for 5 miles (8.0 km) until US 85 leaves at exit 17 and travels northeast towards Meriden. From there it heads north to Torrington, where it meets with U.S. Route 26 and concurrencies for 10 miles (16 km) until Lingle, and 47 miles (76 km) later it meets U.S. Route 20 and U.S. Route 18 at Lusk. It shares the next 47 miles (76 km) with US 18 and 33 miles (53 km) later meets U.S. Route 16 near Newcastle. From here it is 29 miles (47 km) until it enters South Dakota in the Black Hills.

As you enter Wyoming from Colorado on US 85, the first thing you'll see on the left is a blank brown sign.

If you were to look at the sign from the other direction - as it might be if you turned into the parking lot of the Stateline Oasis Lottery seller and Off Track betting parlor, you'd see that it looked like the above photo.

(When I first moved to Wyoming a year ago, this sign had various colors for each letter of the word colorful. A few months ago they took that one down and put up this one, with each letter a plain white. Never have known why they decided to do that.)

Restaurants: Grand Opening Advertising - Panda Express

There was more to the Walmart parking lot on Dell Range Road up until about two to three months ago, when the new Panda Express started being built. I think it's been open for about two weeks now, and has already been very popular. Nevertheless, there was a big "do" today - a man in a Panda suit outside the restaurant waving at folks, a giant Air-Panda, and free food.


The big air-panda was new today. There was also someone in a Panda suit, whom you can see in a couple of photos, going into the restaurant. He'd been standing outside the restaurant waving at folks, but by the time I got my camera out, was going inside.





You've got about 5 hours left TODAY to get a free plate of food at the new Panda Express located right by the Walmart. They are giving away a plate with two entrees, and a free drink, from 11 am to 8 pm.

Movie Soundtracks: The Raven

I collect soundtracks - of movies that I've seen and liked, or at the very least of movies that I'd've liked to have seen. This separates me from the majority of soundtrack collectors, I think. They seem to collect music just because they like a certain composer -- they have no interest in seeing the film from which the movie came!

My collection is not large, indeed it's extremely small.

One reason it's small is because most of my soundtracks were vinyl records that I purchased in the 70s and 80s, and in the process of many moves these were lost. I used to have the original Star Wars soundtracks, for example, and Star Trek, etc. etc. etc.

I've only recently started adding to that lost collection, and re-acquiring that old collection via CD - purchasing them from Ebay and Amazon's used music service. (I do feel guilty about that. If I were the producer of a new CD or record, and found that my sales were being cut into by Amazon offering used CDs on the same page, I'd be pretty torqued. But as a collector of many, many things, whose discretionary funds do not really include funds for music CDs, I have to go with used copies.)

Anyway, today I received The Raven/An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe - both composed by Les Baxter, from Kritzerland. They are a small label who have done about 100 soundtracks... the vast majority of their stuff is not science fiction related and is of no interest to me.

I shall start this series of articles on soundtracks with the three from Kritzerland that I have, then list the 3 sf-related ones that they've done that I don't want, but offer up as knowledge to other potential SF soundtrack collector) before moving on to my other soundtracks.

Well, The Raven isn't science fiction , but rather fantasy, but it, and An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe, did star Vincent Price, and I'm a fan of Price's. Indeed, I'd like to assemble soundtracks from all his movies - but he made so many and I doubt if more than a handful are available... well, that would make it easy to assemble a collection, anyway!

According to the Kritzerland folks, they could find only one of the two original reels that the music for this movie was on, which is why they fleshed out the CD with music from An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe.

On its own, I don't know that I'd care for this music, but because I've seen both movies (and indeed, have them on DVD), when I hear a certain track I can call to mind the action in the movie that goes with it, and it's that conjunction of memory and music that makes this fun to listen to.

(Vincent Price plays Erasmus Craven, a sorcerer who lives in a castle with his daughter. He is meek and mild - drinks milk and spends his time studying and mourning his dead wife, Lenore. He is visited by a raven who can talk - Peter Lorre. Craven learns that sorcerer Dr. Bedlo (Lorre) was turned into a raven by his arch nemesis - Dr. Scarabus (Boris Karloff). Bedlo also tells him that he saw his wife, Lenore, in Scarabus' castle! So he and Bedlo, and his daughter and Bedlo's son (played by a young Jack Nicholson) set off for the castle to defeat Scarabus. But all is not as it appears.)

This CD is sold out at Kritzerland (they only made 1000 copies) but is available at other soundtrack websites as Intrada.com

The liner notes, as usual for a Kritzerland release, are disappointing for those who want to be educated about the music, and don't need to be told anything about the film! (The more so since the guy who does these things is very knowledgeable about music. But he prefers to hoard that knowledge, I guess.) For those who are "casual" fans of the movie, the liner notes are of interest to expand their knowledge of it.

Magazines: Computers in Science

(Rear cover)
I have one issue of this magazine, the Nov/Dec 1987 issue. It's volume 1, issue 3. And I wonder if it folded after that, because I can't find any mention of it anywhere! It doesn't have an entry at Wikipedia, nor did it come up via a Google Search.

The description in the mag is:
Computers in Science [ISSN 0893-1909] is a magizene dedicated to exploring diverse ways scientists and researchers are using computers in universities, government, and R&D laboratories.

Computers in Science is published bi-monthly by CW Communications/Peterborough Inc., a division of IDG Communications, Inc.

(The rest of the info is just addresses.)

Cost wad $3.95 in US, Canada $4.95.

Guest editorial in this issue was A. G. W. Cameron.

Cameron was a pretty big wig even at this time. Here's his Wikipedia bio:

Alastair G. W. (Graham Walter) Cameron (born 21, June 1925 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; died 3 October 2005 in Tucson, Arizona, USA) was a Canadian astrophysicist and space scientist who was an eminent staff member of the Astronomy department of Harvard University. Cameron, the son of a Canadian biochemist, was born in Winnipeg. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Manitoba, and a doctorate from the University of Saskatchewan. In 1959 he emigrated to the USA, where he held academic positions at the California Institute of Technology, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and at Yeshiva University. In 1973 he became a professor of astronomy at Harvard University and remained there for 26 years. From 1976 to 1982 he was chairman of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences. He pioneered the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis – the production of chemical elements in stars. He was also the first to theorize that the formation of the Moon was the result of an extraterrestrial impact on the early Earth by an object at least the size of Mars.

Cameron died on October 3, 2005, from heart failure. He was 80 years old. Five days before his death, there was the announcement that Cameron would receive the 2006 Bethe Prize for his work on nuclear astrophysics, which was then 50 years old, but still the basis of current research.

Publisher: George Laughead
Editor: Charles D. Weston
Senior Editor: Michal J. Comendul
Managing editor: Bud Sadler
Science Editor: John Root, PhD
Art Director: Phyllis Pittet

Table of Contents
Features
Computer Modeling and Imaging Underwater
NSFnet Links Scientific Community

Colums
Networking: Modeling the Monitor (USS Monitor, first ironclad)
Expert Systems: Breaking the Expert Systems Bottleneck
Spreadsheets: Fitting Curves and Plotting Functions with 1-2-3

Reviews
StatGraphics 2.1
UnkelScope
Eureka

Departments
Editorial: The Number Crunching REvolution
News
Field Notes
Q&A, by Philip I. Good
Advertiser Index

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Regular blog postings begin on DECEMBER 26, Monday.

16 December: This Day in Mystery

The second Sherlock Holmes film starring Robert Downey opens in the United States.

Exhibit: Women's Aviation: WASP First Day Cover

A First Day of Issue Cover or First Day Cover is a postage stamp on a cover, postal card or stamped envelope franked on the first day the issue is authorized for use within the country or territory of the stamp-issuing authority. Sometimes the issue is made from a temporary or permanent foreign or overseas office. There will usually be a first day of issue postmark, frequently a pictorial cancellation, indicating the city and date where the item was first issued, and "first day of issue" is often used to refer to this postmark. Depending on the policy of the nation issuing the stamp, official first day postmarks may sometimes be applied to covers weeks or months after the date indicated.

Postal authorities may hold a first day ceremony to generate publicity for the new issue, with postal officials revealing the stamp, and with connected persons in attendance, such as descendants of the person being honored by the stamp. The ceremony may also be held in a location that has a special connection with the stamp's subject, such as the birthplace of a social movement, or at a stamp show.

Various companies and individuals create these First Day Covers - from large companies that do hundreds a year, to small companies that do just a handful a year. (An individual can be just one person with a printer and a gift for design!)

Although the illustration on this FDC is of a WASP, the "first day ceremony" was actually for the Purple Heart stamp - something that a WASP was never awarded, since they were civilians and the Purple Heart is only for military personnel).