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Monday, September 20, 1999

I am probably guilty of the "early chirp" on Thursday. I foolishly thought after Hurricane Floyd passed through the Carolinas on Wednesday and Thursday that I would encounter no air travel problems. I assumed (you know, make an ASS out of U and ME) that things would clear up in a single day. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

When I arrived at the Greensboro airport early Friday morning for my trip to Manchester, New Hampshire (Loudon was my final destination) there was quite a line at the US Airways ticket counter. Unusual for 7:15 AM. After I stood in the slow moving line and inched my way to the counter for my turn, I had noticed that my departing flight to Philadelphia was delayed. I overheard some other travelers saying the Philadelphia airport was flooded. This conversation sparked a memory that I had noticed some kind of river on the final approach to Philly on several occasions into the airport.

Finally it was my turn at the ticket counter where I volunteered that no one unknown to me had asked for me to carry anything on to the airplane and that my bags had been under my control since I packed them. I wonder what you should answer if your spouse packs for you? I don't have that problem. I pack myself. There is no one better than me to know what I am going to need on a particular trip. I have attempted to get Suzy to pack for both on us on previous pleasure trips...to no avail. I digress, however. Lately (in the past couple years I have almost considered returning a Hitler-like salute when asked the airport questions. Supposedly this "tightened" security measure was only a temporary thing when we were having trouble somewhere in the world. I am sure it is now here to stay.

Anyway, back to the ticket counter. I asked the US Air agent that since my flight into Philadelphia was delayed was it going to affect my connection to Manchester. I needed to get to Loudon for a meeting around noon. She punched a few thousand keys (in these days of computers and high-tech programming it always amazes me how many lines of code the end user at an airline's terminal have to punch in to answer one question) and came back with the answer that my flight to Manchester had already been cancelled. Remembering the trouble my associates had encounter the day before attempting to take the same route, I quickly asked if she could get me onto a flight to Boston. Boston is just a little over an hour away and would be an easy drive. I also asked her to check United, having remembered they also serve the Manchester airport. While she was checking on Boston I used my Dick Tracy cellular telephone to call Hertz and get a car that I could pick up in Boston and drop off in Manchester. I was lucky. I was able to get on to a flight that arrived in Boston (via Charlotte), grabbed a car and was only a couple hours late for my meeting.

I was also supposed to the traveling with two more associates on this day. They had boarded the Philadelphia plane and were stuck in Philly for the day. We were supposed to be in this meeting together, so when I arrived there I decided to postpone the meeting until the next day so all of the planned attendees could be there. I enjoyed several voicemails relating their troubles in attempting to get from Philly to Loudon, including at least a couple more cancelled flights. The group the day before had ended up taking a rental car and driving from Philadelphia to New Hampshire. Their trip took TWO days. The weather was so bad and roads were so flooded they decided to stop in Danbury, CT for the night. My traveling companions at least made it to Loudon late that evening, albeit somewhat travel worn.

The weather in Loudon on Friday was lousy.  We encountered a spitting rain, cool temperatures and high winds.  The winds must have been steady in the 25 to 30 MPH range with gusts in the 40-45 MPH range.  We have a promotion planned Friday evening and the guys setting up the Team Winston Pit Stop exhibit had a bear of a time, but we were able to get open and some were surprised by the attendance in such conditions.   I wasn't.  I know race fans.  Build it or open it and they will come, which they did.

When I packed for Loudon I took all of my foul weather gear, so there I was walking around in Gore-Tex rain suit pants and my heavy winter ski parka and gloves.   I was dry and warm while some of those around me were cold and jealous.  I have learned that you better pack warm clothes for any event after Labor.  Heck, you had better pack the stuff for summer time races in the North.  Some of our early morning and late evening outdoor events can be a little chilly.

Sunday was Katie's 12th birthday and originally I had told everyone that I would not be able to make it back to Winston-Salem until late Sunday evening, past the time when the kids would be in bed.  However, things were going well in Loudon, so I hopped on an earlier flight and made it back to Winston-Salem in time to participate in the birthday celebration dinner at her favorite restaurant - Rock-Ola Cafe - and then the later cake and ice cream at home accompanied by present opening.  Katie's birthday presents now consist of clothes for the most part, although she did get a 35mm (film) camera.  She seemed elated and I was pleased that I was able to get back.  It would have been the first birthday of her's that I had missed.  Something about Daddy's and their little girls.

* * * * * *

Could Jeff Gordon's dominance of the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit be about to end?  It appears that Ray Evernham wants to move to a loftier role in Hendrick Motorsports camp and give up his day-to-day pit road and garage respobsibilities.   This was just a matter of time.  Drivers and crew chiefs and car owners and sponsors do not stay together forever.  Richard Petty is probably one who did this different, but even the Petty camp had its differences.  Dale Inman left Level Cross for a while and even Richard tried a different car owner for a few years before pyutting the family opertion back togehter.  It has been rumored for a while that Ray wants to make a move like this and it will be interesting to see how things unfold.  The Charlotte Observer published a story that should really get the talk heated up this week on the Jeff Gordon subject.   This one will be interesting to watch..

* * * * * *

This should be under the category of "It Must Be Nice."   Bill Gates and his bride have pledged $1 billion (yes, billion with a B) for college scholarships to minorities.  Gates' foundation will find 1,000 worthy prospects in the fall of 2,000 and begin pumping out the riches to African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and American Indians.  I wonder if Gates thinks this move will make the FTC or the public take it easy on him because of his generosity.  If you take a page out of the tobacco industry, I can tell you it don't work.  Once a group like "anti-smokers" or the "anti-Gates" get on your case there is nothing you can do to please them.  Nothing short of going out of business. I wonder if Al "the fouder of the internet" Gore can take credit for Gates' generosity?

Tuesday, September 21, 1999

Katie's first experience with he school activity bus was less than desirable today.  She didn't get home from school until after 5 PM.  She spent longer at school today than I did at the office.  It was her choice.  She is participating in chorus and they had an after school practice.  The school provides an activity bus to take the kids to several drop off points and since one of the drop off points was at the corner near our house she wanted to give the activity bus a try.  I think she wants someone to pick her up the next time.  She has already asked if I could get off work early.  Don't push it kid.

This evening I took her to some additional band lessons at Home Moravian Church.  The gentleman there claims he can teach anyone to play.  There were kids as well as grandparents there grabbing their first taste of playing a musical instrument.  Katie's ultimate goal is to be able to play in the Moravain band for Easter Sunrise service.  I told her this meant leaving our house at about midnight with no sleep before Easter, but she wasn't discouraged. 

I suggested to her that we play a trick on her mother and tell her that since I would have to be waiting for Katie during these lessons that I had decided to take the same lessons to learn to play the trumpet.  Katie thought it was a good idea, but we didn't go through with it.

Katie now has something to do just about every afternoon.  She'll probably determine she's taken on too many extra curricular activities very soon.

I am still adjusting to the world of bifocal glasses and Barbara Thompson [barbara@ttgnet.com] offered me some words of encouragement:

Hi Steve,

Catching up on the news on your web page. Welcome to the world of progressives. They are pretty easy for me to get used to except going up and down steps. I have to be real careful. Just remember you have to move your head and not your eyes and the progressives will not let you glance out the corners of the lenses. When I first started wearing them I felt like one of those dogs you see in the back of car windows that bobs his head up and down with the motion of the car.

I am sort of getting used to the bifocals. I haven't had any problems negotiating steps yet, but it has killed my side vision. The biggest problem I have encountered to date is going from the computer screen to the keyboard. I know, I should be using the home row and never having to look at the keyboard. Well am about 50% there. Still have to cheat. Did when I learned to type.

And like I said, forget about a side glance. I have also noticed that when I lean back in my office chair that I have different vision. Have also had a hard time finding the right place to look while laying on the bed or couch watching TV. I cheated last night and brought 'em down on the tip of my nose. I told my boss that I could no longer glance at his desk and read the papers he had laying about :-). However, the really good thing is I can now read some small print that I didn't have any chance of reading before.

So for the most part I think it is a good change. Give me a few weeks and I will have these head movements down pat. I am like you. I feel like that dog with the bouncing head that I remember from my youth.

This from Bob Thompson [thompson@ttgnet.com] about my posting of the travel trials and tribulations.

Very nice post today. You seem to be writing more lately.

Thanks for your kind words. I am sure you are glad Barbara is back.

I decided to whip out my laptop on the trip home yesterday and starting compiling the notes. I suppose the kind of and amount of notes I write has a direct correlation to the amount of time I have. Some days there is just nothing to write. I am sure you can relate when you sit down and start on a chapter. However, you always seem to have plenty of mail to post, which helps to fill your space on some days.

Actually, my notes are more like a diary, something I thought I would never attempt to keep.

Thursday, September 23, 1999

I think I may have messed the Win NT install on one of my machines.   Fred was running just fine, but of course I can not leave well enough alone.   The first thing I did was to install the Windows NT Service Pak 5 on Fred and for the most part it seemed to go well.  Then I noticed that Fred was now displaying only 16 colors in 640x480.  I have a Diamond Fire 1000 GL video card in this machine, so I assumed the simple fix would be to go to Diamond's web site and grab the updated driver for this card.

I went to Diamond and got the install program for the video card (Win 95/98/NT version), but when I went to install it would hang just before it finished and of course did not install the video driver.  I attempted this routine several times and even downloaded the file again, just in case it had developed some hiccup in the download.   It was the same for both versions.

Then I located the original disk that came with this video card and went to settings to change the video driver using the original CD.  I was politely told that I was using a version later of Windows NT.  This led me to uninstall Service Pack 5 and drop back down to SP4.  Same problem.  I have tried to install the driver several times with service pack 4 installed and am getting the same results.   I am getting one of several messages upon installation. One, that I need a newer installation disk set from the manufacturer, which I have and it also fails.  Or two, it will appear like it installed, but when you reboot it actually hasn't installed.   However, Win NT is reading the bios from the video and reports it as a Fire GL 1000 , which is correct.

I guess I could go all the way back to the beginning and reinstall Win NT version 4.0, then install the video drivers and then install service pack 4.  Seems lot a lot of work.  I think in the mean time I will take a look on the Microsoft and see if there is a driver the the Diamond Fire 1000 GL card.  Wish me luck.

Upon further investigation I find that "glint" is conflicting on this system with mpu401.  It appears they are both fighting for interrupt 9.   Now what did I change to create this problem?  Let me check the change log.   The only change I made was to install a different network card.  I suppose that is the mpu401 device.

To add insult Win NT responds with an idiot boc message that the driver was not installed.  You may not have permissions to install drivers it says.   Heck I am signed on with an administrator level account.  Go figure.   This will not beat me <g>.

I HAVE ANOTHER MACHINE with NT workstation installed (Barney) and attempted to put the second Ethernet card into this machine, but it looks like I am going to have to do a little research on this subject.

I want to install the second Ethernet card in preparation to installing a proxy server like WinGate on this machine.  I plan to connect one card to my 3Com ISDN router and then install WinGate on Barney and then use the second Ethernet card to connect the remainder of the network together.  I got both cards installed fine, but stumbled when it came to which card would access the network since I have not yet made the switchover.  A set up like this will allow me to cache the web pages I view, which should improve my access to the net.  It will also put me ahead of the game if and when cable modems and/or ADSL are available in my area.  For once I am trying to be ahead of the game and not make mega changes at one time.  When I make these changes all at once and run into problems my friend Bob Thompson always asks me about referring back to my change log to see what I had changed most recently.  Of course there is no change log and it's good for a half-0hearted chuckle.  I have started telling him that either my change log got mistakenly erased or that is was otherwise blank.   There is no change log on our network.  Keep 'em guessing.

I NOTICED AT THE END of the day that Intel's stock took a major hit.  When I first saw this I thought maybe it might have something to do with the earthquake in the far East, but then I went to the Yahoo financial news section and found out that Microsoft's president Steve Ballmer sent the markets tumbling with some colorful comments about the tech market valuation.  It affected all tech stocks.  Even Big Blue took a hit.  I wonder how much Mr. Ballmer's cost Bill Gates.  Let's see.  Microsoft was down $4.875 and Gates owns something around 1.2 billion shares.  That's a one day loss of $5.8 BILLION.   I'll bet he's glad it's only paper.

IF YOU HAVE A strong heart or a spare machine, Release candidate No. 2 of Windows 2000 is now available.  I've always heard that Windows 2000 is being rushed and  is really not ready for prime time, therefore I would only install this release candidate on a machine that I wouldn't mind having to frisk the drive and starting over.  The first maintenance realize of Windows 200 will probably end up being what should have been the original shipping version, but then Microsoft has all of us willing to pay them to beta test their software.  We JUST have to have the latest and greatest.  Couldn't dream of someone running a newer version of the operating system than the one I have installed. 

If what I have heard about Windows 2000 is correct, in that is more akin to NT than Windoze, then Windows 95 and 98 users and going to be surprised when they make the switch.  Sure it will look a lot like the desktop they have been used to using, but then internal workings, the time it takes to boot and shutdown, etc. might be a big surprise.

Friday, September 24, 1999

There is finally some indication that cable modem access may be coming to Winston-Salem, but don't get too excited.  It appears the startup date has now been moved to mid-year 2000.  At one time Time-Warner was telling folks to expect the service in late 1999.  But there is improvement in information flow.   Time-Warner now has a RoadRunner  web page for this area.  It's mostly a FAQ page, but there is a section for early sign-up to get you name in the queue when the service is ready.  Maybe this will also make BellSouth get off their backside and make ADSL service available in our area.  If I can get ISDN, I should be able to get ADSL, right?

So you're going to ask I completed an early-bird signup?  Yes.   Of course.  Better to have your name in the queue and change your mind about service than to try to jump in later in the ball game.

THERE HAS BEEN AN outpouring of support in our part of North Carolina for our neighbors to the East who are suffering through the remnants of Hurricane Floyd.   Many of our neighbors have lost all of their possessions, including their homes, to the flood.  One of the local radio stations here has begun an auction sale of memorabilia and will be sending the cash to the flood relief effort.  That's just one of the efforts taking place.  Collections are also taking place in just about every church and school.  In fact, I stopped by Katie's school (Wiley Middle School) today the lobby was packed with bottled water and canned food.

The state if North Carolina has included a special section on its web site to assist with Hurrican Floyd relief efforts.  The North Carolina office of Emergency Management also posts its situation reports.   The NCEM page also includes a link to the Raleigh News and Observer's photo gallery from Hurrican Floyd

ONCE AGAIN, THANKS to my friend Bob Thompson and his knowledge of the Win NET system, I think my conflicts have been solved and my screen is now back to a better size.  I am currently running 800x600 on Fred and the system now sees the Diamond Fire GL 1000 card.  It would probably be safe for me to go back and install Service Pack 5, but that can wait for the weekend.  I can not leave well enough alone can I?   I am going to assume from the steps I have taken that my problem was not with the service pack, but with a conflict between the new network card, the video card and a sound card.  Since Fred is my main NT files server I am going to say that I am not to concerned about sound from this machine.  I am sure I will rescind this statement in the near future.

Here's Bob's message that started me on the right path.  After his encouragement I loaded NT's control panel | Devices and disabled the services that appeared to be sound related.

Upon further investigation I find that "glint" is conflicting on this system with mpu401. It appears they are both fighting for interrupt 9. Now what did I change to create this problem? Let me check the change log. The only change I made was to install a different network card. I suppose that is the mpu401 device. mpu401 is a sound card. "glint" sounds to me like an interrupt assigned to a GL graphics driver. Try removing the Open GL ICD from the video driver configuration (or re-installing without it).

Thanks once again for setting me on the right path.

I was getting this error message in the log (did I actually say log?).

The following boot-start or system-start driver(s) failed to load:
cmedia
cmsb

The first thing I did was to disable the MPU-401 compatible driver and reboot, but do luck.  Actually I think I forgot to go to settings and check, but I was still getting the error message in the log, so I then disabled c-media sb16 and c-media wss drivers and now all seems right with the world.   I can see the network and the letters on the screen are no longer huge.

You can through one more time.  Thanks for the hand-holding, er, e-mail holding!

Saturday, September 25, 1999

Was bumbling around on Dr. Keyboard's site  and found the un-telligent test. His score was 70 and as you can see I got a 68. I will admit to some silly answers. Try the test for yourself. What;s a few minutes of entertainment.

The Un-telligent test

Here are my results from the un-telligent test:

Now if you have some time to kill, here are a couple more tests from The Spark.

The Purity Test
The Death Test

My purity test results:

Here are my results from the death test:

And who said the internet wasn't a useful tool :-(

* * * * * *

AND MORE ON HURRICAN Floyd, I found the North Carolina Disaster Center message board.  If you're interested in keeping with the goings on with the relief effort, this might be a good place to begin your browse.

* * * * * *

I MAY HAVE MENTIONED here before that I would like some kind of phone system in my home.  My friends John Mikol and Bob Thompson have the Panasonic system in their homes, coupled with a BigMouth voicemail and auto attendant system. 

I want the best of all worlds and I don't want to spend much money.

Currently we have 2 incoming central office lines.  I have line 1 set to forward to line 2 on busy.  I addition I use the BellSouth Memory Call service (voicemail).  I only want to buy one voicemail service (only on 1 line) from the phone company so I currently have line 1 set to forward to line 2 after no answer on 3 rings or busy and for line 2 to go into the voicemail system after 2 rings.  This gives the caller about 5 rings and then the voicemail system picks up, which is about normal.  Any more rings than that and callers would more than likely hang up.

Here's what I would like in the home system:

At least two incoming lines (sprouting teenagers here)
Voice Mail that would send all messages to one mailbox
The ability to easily check voicemail remotely
Visual indicator when there is a voicemail message
Caller ID appearing on all phones
Intercom
Conference Calling capabilities
The ability to mix system phones and POT (plain old telephones)
10 to 12 extensions
...and more

Bob and John have recommended the Panasonic system to me on more than one occasion, but quite honestly I was trying to find something that would do everything I have mentioned, but not quite so expensive.  The voice mail system in the Panasonic system really runs the price skyward,

Rewiring my home with 3 or 4 pair station cable will not be a problem. At first I was resistant, but now have succumbed that if I install any decent key system, then some rewiring will be required.  Fortunately I began planning for this earlier and each new phone extension I have installed is a home run, terminating at punchdown blocks in a make-shift equipment room.  The punch down blocks are screwed to the wall at the phone company's entry point.

I was flipping through the October copy of Home and Office Computing and found a short article on the Nortel Venture telephone system.  At first glance it looks like this system would accomplish many of the goals I have set forth above, but to be honest, I haven't done that much research on the system yet.  I welcome any experiences you may have had in trying to install the "perfect" SOHO telephone system.

I have updated my telephone page to include this note.  I have to remember that I plan to use this page to collect links on SOHO phone systems.  Hopefully I will find the right system one day...at the right price.

5:00 PM EDT:  It was time to give to the fish tank a little cleansing.  I think I have been leaving the light on a little too long because I have quite an algae build up on one side of the tank.   Also, the algae side of the tank has a different fluorescent bulb.  It's one made for an aquarium, but must put off too much light because the algae is building up only on one side of the tank. 

I sucked about 25% percent of the water out during this cleaning cycle.   Actually, I am guessing on the amount of water I changed, so it will be interesting to see if any of our fish croak.  The last time I did a water change I lost just one fish.  I can either attribute this to the fish just finding the time to croak or maybe to the fast that I just guess about how chlorine killer to put in the water.  I usually put enough de-chloriner in the tank for 20 gals.  It's a 55 gallon tank and I am taking changing what appears to be less than one-third of the water.

I am thinking about turning the tank into chiclid tank.  I am almost there. When I started the tank back I used some goldfish to get the tank going biological, but they seem to be rather hardy boogers and are still hanging on and growing.  I have added a school (5) tiger barbs and they seem to be getting along nicely with the original goldfish, the swordtails and a danio's we started with.

Email Steve Tucker