As it turns out, Frank sang in a group called the Holidaes in the 1960s. "I was an old doo-wop guy," he says. "I get Billy Joel, Sting, Jimmy Fallon in here. Jimmy Fallon loves to sing doo-wops! So whenever he's here, I start singing, and boom, he jumps up and starts singing. And before you know it the whole room is going nuts." Different modelling and design criteria will affect the nature of the 'ideal' RAO curves (as plotted graphically) being sought for a particular ship: for example, an ocean cruise liner will have a considerable emphasis placed upon minimizing accelerations to ensure the comfort of the passengers, while the stability concerns for a naval warship will be concentrated upon making the ship an effective weapons platform. The RAO is a transfer function that is only defined when the ship motions can be assumed to be linear. The above forces can then be assembled into an equation of motion: Anthony! This is Anthony Abbot," Frank says. "He's a member of Stanwich, a great golf club. He invites me to play golf with him." Abbot went on a golf trip with 11 other guys 20 years ago. Frank was one of them, and when names were drawn out of a hat, he and Abbot were matched up.

It's 10:20 p.m. We've been here since 7:45, but the hours have gone by in a flash and I have no desire to give up my bar stool and leave the center of all the action.

GENERAL INFO

A waiter comes over and says he's setting a table for us. We invite Frank to join us, since it's unclear whether he's eaten tonight, but he politely declines. He says he'll come sit with us later on, but he won't eat.

I need your help," he tells Tantillo. "You remember my cousin? He sent me an invitation to his son's wedding and I need you to interpret the letter. I want to send him them something." Tantillo speaks fluent Italian. Frank doesn't. Good guy. I like him. He's okay. I could sit with Peter King and say what I like and what I don't like. I'm a political junkie," Frank says. There's a letter from President George H.W. Bush on the wall. Frank doesn't discriminate. Whose table are you at?" he asked. I said we weren't at a table and had stopped in for a drink. (The tables, as I knew, are all "owned" by regulars who come themselves, invite friends, or donate the table to charity auctions where just the reservation regularly sells for thousands). RAOs are effectively transfer functions used to determine the effect that a sea state will have upon the motion of a ship through the water, and therefore, for example, whether or not (in the case of cargo vessels) the addition of cargo to the vessel will require measures to be taken to improve stability and prevent the cargo from shifting within the vessel. Generation of extensive RAOs at the design phase allows shipbuilders to determine the modifications to a design that may be required for safety reasons (i.e., to make the design robust and resistant to capsizing or sinking in highly adverse sea conditions) or to improve performance (e.g., improve top speed, fuel consumption, stability in rough seas). RAOs are computed in tandem with the generation of a hydrodynamic database, which is a model of the effects of water pressure upon the ship's hull under a wide variety of flow conditions. Together, the RAOs and hydrodynamic database provide (inasmuch as this is possible within modelling and engineering constraints) certain assurances about the behavior of a proposed ship design. They also allow the designer to dimension the ship or structure so it will hold up to the most extreme sea states it will likely be subjected to (based on sea state statistics). How we doing guys? I'm Joe," our waiter says. He sits down at the table. "What we like to do is, we serve everything family-style. For appetizers we have seafood salad, roasted peppers, baked clams, fried calamari, mozzarella in carrozza (that's deep fried), fresh mozzarella and tomato. We could do a salad. I also have mussels in white wine sauce. Those are the appetizers."

I say to my wife, 'I wish I had a Rao's to go to. I wish I had a Rao's to go hang out in, to go sit at the bar and meet wonderful people, and then sit down and have a wonderful meal," he says. I can see why. In the field of ship design and design of other floating structures, a response amplitude operator ( RAO) is an engineering statistic, or set of such statistics, that are used to determine the likely behavior of a ship when operating at sea. Known by the acronym of RAO, response amplitude operators are usually obtained from models of proposed ship designs tested in a model basin, or from running specialized CFD computer programs, often both. RAOs are usually calculated for all ship motions and for all wave headings.