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Sunday, June 13, 1999
Don't forget tomorrow is Flag Day. Proudly display the Stars and Stripes at your home.
We're moving into day 2 of Suzy's absence and today Andrew will be joining our friend Scott Rainey for his first live wrestling match. I don't know why this entertainment has taken on such a storm in US. Heck, where the Tuesday morning water cooler gossip at the office used to be about the latest episode of Jerry Sienfield, now it's wrestling and Allie McBeal. What gives?
I remember as kid the local fire department in Farmville would stage these wrestling matches as a fund raiser and all of the wrestlers who would later be trying to take each other's head off in the ring would arrive in the same car with the referee driving. Now they have chauffeured driven limos, action figures and television contracts. Ah, I think I just answered my question...it's marketing and licensing. Ain't America great!
Anyway, I have a meeting this evening and Katie will be staying with our friend Gail while Andrew whoops it up at the coliseum annex wrestling match. Tomorrow Andrew begins his early mornings at the Muggsy Bouges basketball camp.
I am threatening Katie to try to get her to start cleaning that pig's stye she calls a bedroom. Wish me luck.
I find it rather interesting to look at the different types of domains that visit Wakeolda every once in a while. My quick count shows that visitors from almost 30 different countries have visited this site, not including visitors from the USA. Here is a quick listing of the different types of domains that have visited Wakeolda. You can look here to see which country is the most frequent visitor as well as other statistical information that is compiled on this site early each morning.
Tuesday, June 15, 1999
I have added a page on CD recorders with many links. Please let me know which ones don't work as I am sure I probably fumbled more than one.
A new chapter in R. J. Reynolds' history began today. After a 30 year absence on the New York Stock Exchange, the ticker symbol RJR reappeared. Getting a fresh start from its spinoff from RJR Nabisco, the tobacco company became again what it started as better than one hundred years ago...a tobacco company. RJR now is just Reynolds Tobacco. The tobacco merchants are now free from the New York shackles and answer only to themselves, the public and their shareholders while the cookie monsters has been rid of the boat anchor known as tobacco that was holding them back. Wonder how long it will take the crumb crunchers to realize that when tobacco went away so went the money? There are many here in Winston-Salem who are excited about this new era. Funny how everything eventually comes around. Maybe that old suit will come back in style :-)
Wednesday, July 16, 1999
I thought it was rather timely that ZDTV's ScreenSavers program ran a bit on CD-R just after I has posted a page here will all kinds of links, so I have added their discussion to the General Spin section of the CD-R page. The articles include: How Phase-Change Recording Works, How CD-RW Works and DVD-RAM and CD-R
We've hit hump day on Mr. Mom and happy to report that both of the kids (as well as dad are no worse for wear). Actually, it's been a pretty cool adventure, but not one I would want to sign up for on a regular basis. It probably would have been much different if Andrew were not taking part in the Muggsy Bouges Basketball Camp this week, which means both dad and kids need to rise very early, just like it was a school day and I can promise you that we have not been following school day bedtime regulations. If it weren't for Muggsy though we probably would have slept at least one-third of the day away. Andrew and Scott Rainey have a trip planned to Sci-Works tomorrow afternoon and then maybe on Friday we'll check out Star Wars. Katie has already seen it, but of course has volunteered to check it out again.
I am almost sure Timex and Motorola had me in mind when they invented BeepWear Pro, a watch with a list of features almost as long as your arm. With a 150-person contact list, a beeper that can hold 16 outgoing text messages, and ten separate alarm settings, the BeepwearPro is maybe the most versatile watch on the market. Oh, and yes, it does tell time—in two time zones, no less. However, the drawbacks to this watch will be, IMHO, it's ugly design (no designer model yet) and its short battery life, not to mention that at $180 it's very pricey. Hopefully it'll be $29.95 by Christmas 2000. Download the demo and you'll want one today...just like me. Now I just need to find out if my current paging service will work with this watch!
Thursday, July 17, 1999
I have added a page on the Sony Mavica digital camera. The biggest problem I have had with this camera is the flash is very hot and there have been some interesting workarounds posted on the web.
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There’s a major event about to take place here in North Carolina as the Cape Hatteras lighthouse begins it creep about a half-mile inland (2900 feet). |
It’s hard to believe the lighthouse came online way back in 1870. The lighthouse has endured the battering weather of the North Carolina Barrier islands for almost 130 years in its current location.
I knew little about the lighthouse, except it was there and many North Carolinians took immense pride in it’s landmark status, until I heard a trivia contest on a local radio station this morning. I already given you the answer, but the question was when did the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse begin operation (December 1870). The answers were all over the place and the station was a little late for its local news break while fishing for the correct answer.
After this trivia contest I decided to do a little research on the lighthouse and was quite amazed at what I learned about the spiral’s structure and how it was built. I guess I never gave much thought to the only thing that have to build on down at the beach is sand and this thing was built long before high-rise construction and the ability to drive steel pilings half-way to China.
The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is built on a floating foundation. Yellow pine timbers sit in fresh water on compacted sand, with a brick and granite foundation on top of them. This foundation was built because pilings could not be driven through hard sand barely 8 feet below ground level when construction began. As long as the sand surrounding the foundation remains in place, and the timbers remain bathed by the fresh water in which they were placed in 1868, the foundation is secure. If a storm erodes the sand or the fresh water is disturbed by salt water intrusion, the timbers will begin to rot and the foundation will eventually fail.
Hatteras Island is a barrier island migrating westward. Since the 1930s, efforts have been made to protect the Lighthouse from the encroaching sea.
The Coast Guard and I suppose the Army Corps of Engineers (I guess they work together on these kinds of things, heck I don’t know if they even speak) have tried various workarounds (patches in computerese) to try to save the lighthouse form the sea. This has included the installation of sheetpile "groins" (walls built perpendicular to the shore) to try to protect the tower. But the ocean continued to come closer. In the 1960s and 1970s, the attempted fixes included beach nourishment and three new groins. A severe storm in 1980 accentuated the island’s westward movement washing away the foundation of the first (1803) lighthouse, which had been 600 feet south of the existing lighthouse. In 1803, that lighthouse had been one mile from the shoreline. I suppose that’s when the idea of moving the lighthouse inward began to blossom, but like anything in government it took a couple of decades to actually begin the work. Maybe the guys that run the highway department are in charge of moving the lighthouse.
By now you are probably asking why there is such an important lighthouse on the North Carolina coast. According to the National Park Service:
Extending about 14 miles offshore from Cape Hatteras are the shallow, shifting Diamond Shoals, a hazard to nearshore navigation. By day or night, the Cape Hatteras lighthouse provided a navigational bearing, enabling ships to avoid the treacherous shoals. In the 19th century, coasting (sailing along the coast) was a simple, reliable form of navigation; and in case of trouble, the shore was within reach. Along the North Carolina coast, shipping also made good use of favorable currents — the Labrador current, flowing south near shore, and the Gulf Stream, flowing north a bit farther out, provided additional speed.
The Outer Banks of North Carolina are widely known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. One account says 230 ships of more than 50 tons sank off what is now Cape Hatteras National Seashore, between 1866 and 1945. Another says well over 2200 ships have sunk off the Outer Banks since Europeans first arrived
If you are interested in this piece of history, here a few links that will take you directly to Cape Hatteras.
Live Camera shots from activity at the Cape Hatteras LighthouseCape Hatteras National Seashore Homepage
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Purchase books about Cape Hatteras from Amazon.com
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Tomorrow is the final day of the Muggsy Bouges Basketball Camp for Andrew, which includes an autograph session and photo opportunity with Muggsy himself. Each kid gets to bring a couple of items for "the man" to autograph, or as Muggsy puts it, "you can bring more than two...maybe three, just don't bring the whole house." Now if I can just get Andrew to decide what he wants to take. I have been asking the probing question all week and have gotten the same response, "I don't know," but I'll bet you he knows exactly what he wants to take.
Andrew and Scott Rainey took their sojourn to SciWorks this afternoon and much to their disappoint the Science of Racing display was closed. This has been one of the more popular exhibits there and there has been talk of taking it on the road. Hopefully there has been enough interest to take this show on the road and they are not closing it due to lack of interest.
Friday, June 18, 1999
Today was the final day and autograph session for Andrew at the Muggsy Bougges Basketball Camp. After the photo session we headed off to Chic-Fil-A (eat mo chicken) and then to take our turn in the barrel at a showing of Star Wars. I'm not going to drone on about the special effects flick, but will say we all did enjoy it very much. One side note. I lectured Andrew not to spill the popcorn and then who immediately goes and dumps half of the bag on the floor. You got it...your's truly. Andrew should have been lecturing me. I get ticked every time I visit the concession robbery kiosk at the these theaters for what they charge for a soft drink and a lunch bag size popcorn. Remember, we attended a matinee and still went through the better part of a pair of 20's and that was with Andrew and I sharing a drink and popcorn. Of course Katie had to have her own. There should be a law.... There was one cool thing. They did have these oversized soft overstuffed chairs and stadium seating. I guess maybe the popcorn gouging does go for something afterall.
After the movie we enlisted the help of Bob Thompson to get Suzy's Mazda out of hock, complete with a rebuilt transmission. The first estimates for this emergency repair were going to be better than three grand, but I was lucky enough to be recommended to L&R Transmissions here in Winston-Salem for the rebuild. You can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was when presented with an invoice for less than two big ones. Now, mind you, this is still quite a chunk of change, but I feel like I just made $1,000. I asked Bobby Loflin, the proprietor of the trans shop, if there was anything we could have to prevent this surprise repair, like maintaining a better regimen of transmission fluid and filter changes. He may have been trying to make me feel better when he said that had nothing to do with this problem, but since this transmission is computer controlled and the controls spend their life submerged in the fluid that we should change the fluid and filter every 25,000 miles. So maybe it's not just a sales pitch when the guys at the oil change shop try to get you to let them delve into your transmission. I think I will have Bobby's boys take care of changing the trans fluids in our vehicles.
I may have mentioned that my ISDN line went down back in Mid-May. I was surprised to see that BellSouth actually credited my bill for the 32 hours I was out of service. I think Bob Thompson had mentioned something about the tariff that as a small business customer they had to credit me for the time I was without service, but I never thought I would see a dime. I wasn’t going through voice mail hell at BellSouth to try to find a human that had any idea what I was talking about, so I never tried to get the refund. Glad to see them do the right thing.
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I received an email today from Bobby Johnson, an old high school buddy in Farmville, VA.
...Ed Clark was in town last night (17th) and spoke at our local sports club meeting. It was really good to see him, gosh it’s had to believe I had not seen him since your wedding in Daytona....doesn’t time fly? He is such a good ambassador for the sport, I really think he would be doing what he’s doing even if he wasn’t getting paid....It’s very evident he has a deep passion for the sport and the people involved in it, and I think he epitomizes what NASCAR racing is all about....just plain "good people", that have not forgotten where they came from.......
I was telling him about your website, he thought it was a cool idea, I am passing along your web/address so he can check it out......also, were your ears burning last night? Your name came up in a couple of stories from the past (ALL good stuff!) Peggy and Paul Cave were telling a couple of "good ones" on you (and me too!) that had us all in stitches......I didn’t remember the stories at first, but the more they told, my memory resurfaced and I have to say it was pretty funny.......
Bobby is exactly right about Ed. He is a class act. Ed and his father Garland took me to my very first NASCAR Winston Cup race back when we were seniors in High School at Prince Edward Academy in Farmville. It was the spring race in Martinsville. And you might say I was bitten with the bug that day because we attended several races after that, enjoying many events in Martinsville and Richmond. I really have to thank Ed for getting me started towards this career I am enjoying in motorsports. Ed introduced me to the sport and then Benny Phillips in High Point, NC helped me to land my first full-time job (NASCAR News Bureau) in the sport. I may have taken the car around the track, but these two buddies opened my eyes and the door, for which I will be forever grateful.
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I don’t know why I have never mentioned this before, but if you would like to have the day’s headline delivered to you mailbox InfoBeat http://www.infobeat.com/ is a a great free service. They offer sports, financial, news, weather, snow reports and entertainment news delivered to your mailbox daily. They even offer a reminder service so you don’t forget those important dates like wedding anniversaries and her birthday.
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Microsoft has teamed up with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and Shaquille O’Neal to launch an innovative new program that gives children valuable technology skills while teaching them the principles of online safety.
Starting next week, world chess champion Garry Kasparov will take on a world team, made up of anyone who visits MSN and wants to participate, in an online chess match that is expected to last all summer.
Microsoft has been taking it on the chin with these email viruses of late particularity attacking their Outlook email package. Visit the Microsoft website for an update to Outlook which presumably will increase protection against viruses such as this one. If you receive an email with an attachment named Worm.Explore.Zip it's a virus and should be deleted immediately. Then don't forget to promptly empty the recycle bin, 'casue if you don't the virus is still on your hard drive and you might open it and set its nasty self to work by mistake.
Email Steve Tucker