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Sunday May 9, 1999,
Happy Mother's Day.
Not much happening in the computer room today.
As a family we may be a little warped. On day's like Mother's Day and Father's Day the kids give Suzy and me something they might like for themselves. In the case of Mother's Day this year Suzy received a VHS copy of You've Got Mail (Katie wanted this) and Andrew gave Suzy a bicycle helmet. He wanted to give her Jewelry and was upset this morning by his gift. Anyway, Katie had received a bike that was too large for her last year (she wanted one with gears) and now Suzy can ride Katie's bike safely while donning her helmet. Not that this will happen, but we could ride bikes as a family, from Andrew spinning his training wheels all the way up to poppa bear's 18 speed mountain bike, which by the way has never seen a mountain.
Monday, May 10, 1999
Here's one that came as a surprise. International Speedway Corporation and Penske Motorsports announced late today they have completed a merger ... like become one. The new company will carry the International Speedway Corporation name and will have 10 motorsports. facilities and 14 Winston Cup dates under its control. We're talking tracks like Daytona, Darlington, Talladega, Watkins Glen, Phoenix, California, Rockingham, Michigan, Nazreth and Homestead.
Now I don't know much about this merger, but let's make a few assumptions. Suppose the racing teams that were formerly a part of Penske Motorsports now belong to International Speedway Corp. Penske owned a CART Indy Car team and a portion of Rusty Wallace's NASCAR Winston Cup team. Bill France is still Chairman and CEO of ISC and NASCAR. Would there be any potential here for some apparent conflict of interest. The next few weeks should be very interesting. I am sure the racing pundits are going to have a field day with this one. Of course Mr. France could remove himself from one of these positions. Check out more on this story from the Charlotte Observer's ThatsRacin website or see the press releases at Yahoo from Reuters and the Business Wire. In addition to that we're talking some big bucks here.
Thursday, May 13, 1999
Now I don't mean to sound like the helpful hint lady, but one of the gals from the office shared a list of additional uses for the Bounce laundry sheets. They ain't for just taking the static cling out of your laundry anymore!
I was down at Charlotte Motor Speedway today and before you know it, The Winston will be here. This is the favorite race of many non-Winston Cup die-hards. It's short, sweet and to the point. There's a good amount of construction going on in the speedway area and it looks by the fall the Concord Mills Shopping complex will be opening for business. I think they will call this an outlet center. Outlets used to be where you got good deals on seconds and merchandise that wouldn't pass the quality control inspector's wary eyes, but today they're really just shopping centers. Most of the items are overstock first quality items. I suppose I should say selling at a more reasonable price than the inflated MSRP. Just what we need. More shopping.
As the school year winds down here we can always tell the end is year by the kids intensity. I wouldn't want to be a teacher at this time of year...or anytime for that matter. Thank God there are some who have better nerves than yours truly.
On top of the end of the school year Andrew (the 6 year old) always turns up the wick about a month before his birthday (we're in that season now) and then as soon as the presents are opened and the paper strewn, he (usually) goes back to being a normal child. Hopefully the same return to normalcy will return this season.
The Greek Orthodox Church is holding there annual Greek Festival in Winston-Salem this weekend. I hope I can talk the family into attending. The Greeks (they run just about all of the restaurants here in Winston-Salem) can really cook and this fling brings out their best. You know they ain't all bad when you attend the Greek Festival at their church and the first vendor you encounter is the beer tub!
Friday, May 14, 1999
We're one month to the day away from Flag Day. Bet you couldn't have made it through the day with that interesting note, could ya?
Have those clever marketeers at Microsoft found another way to say maintenance release? Big M announced yesterday that its Windows98 Second Edition has been released to manufactured and could be appearing on the shelves of a computer store near you very soon. This fix will include Internet Explorer 5, Net Meeting 3, Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) (to quote from their press release -- "a set of advanced home networking technologies that enable multiple users to share a single connection to the Internet for simultaneous Internet access." Sounds like a built-in proxy server to me). It also includes advanced hardware support (read that an enlarged driver library) and Windows98 Service Pack. It also said the service pack will be available for download sometime in the near future.
If you're into video, Big M also announced the first publicly available beta release of Windows Media Technologies 4.0. The major upgrade of the Microsoft streaming media platform offers high-quality audio and video and allegedly cuts audio download time in half.
And for the kids, Microsoft and Scholastic Entertainment have launched the seventh CD-ROM in their Magic School Bus™ series. "The Magic School Bus Explores the World of Animals" is the latest release. I know my kids enjoy the Magic School Bus CD's and Andrew even likes the morning cartoon of the same name. Don't know if Big M has anything to do with the television series, but I wouldn't doubt if they had their hands into it as well.
And while we on talking about the cutting edge of Big M technology here, my friend Bob Thompson has started to play with Windows 2000 Beta 3. His reports can be found on the TTGNET website if you'd like to learn by his, well I would never call them mistakes.
I probably should not admit this, but our life has been hell the last couple of days. We have a major Thunderstorm Thursday night (actually early Friday AM) and as a result I somehow lost my ISDN line and thereby my internet connection. I reported the problem to BellSouth and while I guess ISDN throws me in as a small business customer they have been slow to react. I'm glad I am not a real small business and depending on the phone service for my livelihood.
The reason I shouldn't admit the above is an example of how dependent we have become on this high tech gadgetry. I'm not the only who is lost. Katie wants her internet connection back so she can AOL her friends. She uses the AOL instant messenger to keep up contact with her friends. I haven't told her we can make a switch and get on the net. The machine with the modem doesn't have her AOL software loaded anyway, so I guess I am in the clear.
I do still have one machine with an analog modem and I switched it over yesterday to pop my mail and to check the stock market, which I wish I hadn't done after seeing the modest crash it was going through on Friday.
You may ask how my Friday notes got on the net with no connection? The machine that houses my FrontPage software is only connected to the net through my LAN. For the fist time I had posted my notes for the next day in the late evening. Maybe I getting paid back for actually posting my Friday notes a day (really only just a couple of hours) early.
I have been bugging BellSouth and my latest call to their repair center (at least they answer this line without a mountain of prompts and in most cases on the first ring) reports that a repairman should be here within an hour of the time I am writing this. I will report back with their accuracy.