Jeff Byers got his PhD in quantum chemistry, but don\u2019t let that fool you \u2013 to his core he is a down-to-earth, hands-on guy. He told me the story of the first time he rented a Bobcat \u2013 a small backhoe that he used to dig out his pond (or maybe it was the foundation to the bath house \u2013 I can\u2019t remember which). Jeff always suspected that operating one of these \u201csmall\u201d pieces of heavy machinery would be a lot of fun, but I guess it turned out better than even he expected. When he climbed down from the excavator his wife asked him what he thought. \u201cIt was better than sex,\u201d was his reply. Understandably, Carita was skeptical. So she gave it a try herself. \u201cWell?\u201d, Jeff asked. She had to admit that Jeff was right.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never operated a Bobcat, so I\u2019m speaking from ignorance here, but I found this whole episode just a bit strange. So the first chance I had, I told the story to a couple of construction-working friends who have had many opportunities to use backhoes. They said there was no doubt \u2013 Jeff is crazy. Not that I needed confirmation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jeff Byers got his PhD in quantum chemistry, but don\u2019t let that fool you \u2013 to his core he is a down-to-earth, hands-on guy. He told me the story of the first time he rented a Bobcat \u2013 a small backhoe that he used to dig out his pond (or maybe it was the foundation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microlithography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lithoguru.com\/life\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}