Daily Archives: March 2, 2020
Angry Management Gone Wrong . . .
First, A Viral Update:
According to the CDC as of this afternoon, 6 people in the US have died from the Corona Virus, all in Washington State. And all of them having previous serious chronic conditions.
But since January 1st, over 10,000 people in the US have died from the regular flu. This was from an infected population of over 30,000,000 since last fall.
And No, you can’t get the virus from Corona Beer.
I’m not kidding. That’s the latest rumor going around.
FWIW Jan and I have boosted our D3 intake from 2000 IU to 10,000 IU per day.
Back around the first part of February, I posted a blog called Before Its Time – This Was A Peloton Before There Was A Peloton.
At the end of that blog I mentioned the rest of that story, involving a hammer, a brutal murder, a psychotic doctor, and 25 years in prison.
I started working with Dr. Patrick Doyle in the late 80’s working on a number of computer-related projects out of his psychology office. At the time I was doing a lot of computer consulting utilizing Commodore computers, both the Commodore 64 and the newer, much more powerful Commodore Amiga.
I had started out writing software to allow the Amiga to control and record data from his Biofeedback machines. But my big project for his office was to build a machine to grade his Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) tests that he gave to patients. At the time,the testing service was selling a grading machine for about $6000, and this was in 1987 dollars.
These tests ran between 400 to almost 600 questions and were a real pain to grade by hand, you know, those tests where you use a #2 pencil to fill in the little bubbles. But after thinking it over for a while I came up with an idea.
I tore apart an old Epson dot-matrix printer, removing the printhead and replacing it with a photocell. Then I wrote a program in Assembler to move the photocell back and forth. stopping at each bubble to record light or dark at each position. Then it moves down one line and does it again.
By placing the test in the sheet feeder, it could grade a test in a just of minutes. I charged him $1000 plus the cost of the printer, which I believe was $200 or so, which he was happy with.
But during all my work with Dr. Doyle, I always thought it was strange that a person who specialized in Angry/Stress Management, among other things, would get so mad about some little thing that he would have to go off into a corner and mumble to himself for 10 minutes or so until he calmed down. And I saw this over and over, even when we were working at NASA a couple of years later.
10 years or so later, I was WebMaster for the School of Business at University of Houston-Clear Lake, where Dr. Doyle had been an Associate Professor for about 15 years or so. So it was not surprising that I would occasionally run into him in the hallways.
And in a way I was not really surprised in 2001 when another professor, who knew I knew Dr. Doyle, ask me if I had heard the news about him. When I said, “No”, he told me that Dr. Doyle had been arrested for a brutal murder up in Kentucky.
He had been visiting his mother in Bowling Green, got into an argument with his stepfather, and beat him to death with a hammer.
UHCL Professor Held in Kentucky for Slaying
It wasn’t until 2 years later that he pled guilty and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Doyle enters plea in murder trial
He had been diagnosed as ‘vastly psychotic and suffering from several brain diseases”, and was considered a suicide risk.
And according to this, it looks like he could be getting out in a couple of years.
Guess I should be relieved that I never made him really mad.
Thought For The Day:
“The truth shall set you free.” Unless you’re in a court. Then you should probably shut up.
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