Bob Baumel's Home Page

	Bob Baumel's Home Page
About Me Pages on This Site For Fun Contact	About Me Since you're here, you're probably curious to know something about me. I live in Ponca City, Oklahoma. I am a geophysicist, retired from ConocoPhillips where I worked for more than 21 years. I have been playing around with web pages since 1995. Some of my interests and current activities are described below:
	I am webmaster for the United Ostomy Associations of America (UOAA), a new national organization formed to fill the void created by dissolution of the United Ostomy Association (UOA) which ceased operations on Sept 30, 2005 (I had also been technical webmaster for UOA from Summer 2000 until its dissolution). I am also currently president of the Ostomy Association of North Central Oklahoma and run the combined website for the Oklahoma Ostomy Support Groups.
	I am a runner and have long been involved in measuring and certifying road running courses. I participated in the measurements of several major race courses, including the 1984 and 1996 Olympic Marathon courses. For many years, I served as the Oklahoma Road Running Course Certifier although I recently turned over that task to someone else (Don Garrett). I am still the Secretary and Webmaster for the USATF Road Running Technical Council (RRTC). As such, I maintain certain areas related to course certification on the USA Track & Field site. I also maintain the RRTC website at the easily remembered URL www.rrtc.net, which serves as a handy set of links for resources related to course certification.
	I belong to the US Metric Association and remain loosely affiliated with its website (e.g., see my Metric numbers to remember page on that site). Converting the United States to the simpler measurement system used by the rest of the world would be eminently sensible. However, since the last major push to metricate the U.S. during the 1970s, little progress has been made (although all other major English-speaking countries have either completed the transition or are well on their way to being fully metric). Viewed objectively, metrication may seem unimportant compared with other major issues of the day. At the same time, U.S. stubbornness in clinging to out-of-date measuring units may be viewed as one more reason why Americans are considered arrogant by so many people around the world.

	Pages on This Site I maintain a number of Computer/Internet related pages on this site. Of these, my e-mail related pages are fairly recent, having been prepared or significantly revised during the past year. The cross-platform browsing pages are considerably older and getting out-of-date, so will need to be either deleted or updated: Pages of E-mail Advice: Configuring E-mail Software to Avoid Sending HTML - E-mail was originally a plain-text medium and still works best that way A Few More E-Mail Tips - including advice on avoiding "web bugs," and tips for Mac users on sending attachments to Windows users. Pages on Cross-Platform Browsing & Advice for Web Authors Cross-platform text-size variation - keep your designs robust Use of special characters (ISO 8859-1) - cross-platform considerations For Mac users - improving readability of pages that use PC font Arial

	For Fun Expand your vocabulary and feed a hungry person at FreeRice.com. For each word you get right, this site donates 20 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger.

	This page last revised on: 2007-12-18