Updated:  12/07/99 11:04 PM

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Sunday, October 24, 1999

The Winston-Salem Journal has starting printing it's investigative report of the fall of the tobacco Industry and in particular the rise and fall of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco.  RJR once employed one-fifth of the city's workers, but has since relinquished the title to Wake-Forest Bowman Gray Medical Center.  The hospital may not employ 20% of Winston-Salem's workforce, but it is easily the largest employer in town.  I would bet that RJR is not even No. 2 on the list today with a mere 5,000 employees.  When I started there in 1988 our workforce was better than 12,000, a reduction of almost 60% in just 11 years.  Hopefully this trend will not continue.

The Journal's series, Lost Empire - The Fall of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, is the culmination of some 18 months of investigative reporting.  The Journal plan to print the series in chapter format over the next two months and place the series on its JournalNow website.

I have been playing around with a new opening page for Wakeolda.  It's not quite ready for prime-time yet, but if you would like a sneak peak click here.  I am hampered by my inexperience in creating graphics, etc.  I have used Microsoft's Image Composer, which was bundled with FrontPage 98 to create the graphic at the top of the page.

Here's one for the this will frustrate you department. Since the documentation that ships with IBM's IntelliStation M Pro is limited I followed their directions (for once) and hopped over to the support site.  There were three Acrobat documents that I thought I should have -- Technical Information Manual, User Guide and Installing Options Manual and the most important Understanding  Your IntelliStation manual.  I downloaded the User Guide and Installing Options manual first because I want to install another hard drive and wanted to see if there were any tricks to the case before I started ripping things apart (read this I couldn't exactly figure it out by looking at it).  The download was about 7 megs, which is a painless download for my ISDN connection.  Grabbed the download and then fired up Acrobat and it puked saying there was an error.  Naturally I figured the download was corrupt, so I deleted the original and went back and grabbed the same document again.  Same error.  I was saying Hmmm.  The third time I told IE to open the document from the site and still the same error.  By now I was wondering if maybe this document was written with a later version than the 2.1 I still had on my system.  I then set out to find the latest version of Acrobat, which wasn't readily available on the Adobe site.   I was able to download Acrobat 4.0 and the saved file opened just fine.  I wish IBM had made it plain to users that this document required Acrobat version later than something.  This is the same thing that bugs me with the new versions of Quicken and Microsoft products.  Why do they always have to change their file saving structure.   I guess they just want to humble guys like me.

Anyway, when I started into this tirade it was to mention something I found in the manual about added a second processor.  First, I wanted to see if IBM said anything about making sure to match the S-Spec of the original processor.  They had already mentioned in the limited documentation that ships with the system that you had to match processor speeds...duh.

One thing I found interesting in this documentation was the notice to run a utility that ships on the utilities CD named ADDCPU.EXE.  I suppose this prepares the machine to add the second processor...maybe tells the bios help is coming.  It then gives you detailed instructions on how to add a processor, including the advice of updating the bios if the system doesn't recognize No.2 at bootup.  I'll let you know what happens when the second P II 400 arrives.

I see Intel has let the word leak out to the   media they will be introducing better than a dozen new processors tomorrow.   Just in time for the public to do some Rambus beta testing for them.  Wonder if they got there problems with Rambus cleared up or are just making more problems.   Naturally, as an Intel stockholder I hope there are no problems and they sell a zillion of these things.

I would say that ESPN got exactly what they hap hoped for when they put a live mike on Todd Parrott (Dale Jarrett's crew chief) at last week's Winston 500 in Talladega.  They probably wanted to hear the off radio banter of a top Winston Cup crew chief and maybe somewhere in the back of their mind they thought   they might be able to bring the viewers and listeners at home some of the colorful language that is a part of pit road.  And every major league's dugout, huddle or locker room for that matter.  Well, they got what they asked for and more.  Sure enough they got some colorful language and all of a sudden the powers to be at the top this sport and in the NASCAR offices were seeing a little red.  You see, the marketing boys at NASCAR are trying to reposition this sport as a wholesome day of   entertainment the entire family can enjoy.

Hey guys, these fellas are going for millions of dollars and a lot of bragging rights to boot.  It's gonna get colorful every once in a while.  You get the good with the bad.  Why do you think they are no live mikes on the fifty-yard line?

And then NASCAR sorta over reacted in my opinion.  Yes, I realize you shouldn't be uttering  the nattiest of four letter words on national television (hey, it was cable afterall), but lets not overreact either.  The NASCAR boys effectively said this week that cussing on TV is just as bad a losing your temper with another driver and trying to pick a fight on the race track.

They fined Tony Stewart after Martinsville $5000 when he got so mad at Kenny Irwin that he tried to crawl in the car with him during the race and discussion their bumping session.  There, Tony stood on the race track, having his little temper tantrum and throwing anything he could get his hands on at Kenny and then tried to crawl in the passenger side window while the car was rolling to discuss the "incident" even further.  Kenny wisely pulled away, almost leaving Tony on his butt on the race track (can I say that?)

And they fined Todd five grand for his expletive.  Most think Todd's fine was a little harsh and the web pages (including this one now) have been full of comments on this subject this week. 

Dale Jarrett was the first to come to his crew chief's defense in a story published from Rockingham by the Associated Press.  Mike Harris' story was followed over the weekend with this sampling:  Raleigh's News and Observer says NASCAR wants color, not blue language.  In the Charlotte Observer, David Poole opinioned:    Parrott said it, but ESPN screwed up. In the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Rea McLeroy wonders if fine raises concern over scanner access.  In the Fayetteville Observer, Thomas Pope said, I swear, Parrott should not be fined. And in his SPeedVision column, Bruce Martin offered:  Big Brother NASCAR makes Parrott pay.

Monday, October 25, 1999

I decided to go ahead and make the new home page I have been playing around with live. If something doesn't work, I would appreciate some email.  Does the Java clock applet work on your system?

Another added attraction to Wakeolda is a guestbook.  So far I am the only entry, which makes sense since I am the only one who knows about this feature until now.  Leave an entry and a comment.  Again, please let me know if this does not function for you or you run into any problems.

It must be my day for Java.  Also added this Lunar Phase table.

Tuesday, October 26, 1999

I have been thining about trying to develop an overall theme look for Wakeolda without resorting to using the bandwidth hogs that Microsoft provides.  This and the changes I made to the home page are my first attempts.  Not sure what I really want to do yet.  What do you think?

I have gotten a couple of comments since putting the guestbook into place. Most have centered around the clock.  This applett is pulling the time from your system.  I'll bet there might be a way to display my current time (EST) as well as the time on the local machine.  If you don't keep the accurate time on your machine, then this one will be incorrect as well.  It should be interesting on 1/1/00.  I don't really like the digits on the current clock, so I am still looking. 

I also have a new java script that I want to test.  This one returns the time, a simple message from me, your host name and the ip address.  As an example, since I use a 3Com ISDN router it returned the private network address that I use in my router.  However, if you are dialing in to an ISP and are not running a proxy server, it should return your IP address.  Try it.

While surfing last night I ran across this neat little chart for color hexadecimal conversion.   I know you could do the math yourself, but this crutch makes it easier for dummies like me.

Wednesday, October 27, 1999

If you been reading these notes the last couple of days you may have noticed that I have been playing around with some new looks for Wakeolda.  I first started with he earth tones, but now I seem to like the white backgrounds and standard colors better.  I will more than likely go to the home page and create the main Wakeolda logo in colors similar to the one at the top of this page.  I suppose I originally chose the earth tones because of the colors in the photo I have of Wait Chapel, but I am now leaning to a cleaner look.  Have an opinion?  Drop me an email.  I will be the first to admit that I am not a graphics artist (but will take helpful suggestions) and than I can not spell.   Even the spell checker screws me up from time to time. 

The logo at the top of this page was created with Microsoft's Image composer.  I created one yesterday with Adobe PhotoShop, but Image Composer seems to be truer in color.  As an example I created the Wakeolda (earth tone) logo with the colors 247|216|179 in PhotoShop and when I chose those same colors as a background in FP the colors were off just a shade.  I played with the numbers a little, but my paint mixing abilities were weak and I kept getting them farther apart.  An example of the logo I am speaking of here can be found on the Previous Notes page.

I FOUND SOMETHING INTERESTING while flipping through the ZDTV newsletter this morning.  There's a new free service on the internet that will help you get over the 1MB (in my case) email limit your ISP imposes when you transferring mail.  This effectively eliminates the ability to use the email system to send, as an example, a MPEG or AVI file.   These kinds of files seem to be quite large. 

Whalemail is supposedly a web-based service which acts like FTP.  You can sign up for a free account, post your file there and notify your email friend that he/she has a file there for downloading.  Whalemail says it will leave the files there for only 7 days. 

I think the service works something like this.  You post the file and your recipient gets a email there's a file waiting for him on Whalemail and then the fires up his browser and goes and gets it.  I said I think this is the way it works because I have been unable to get to the site since their mention on ZDTV.  You can get to the site and can get to the application page, but when you submit your completed application the browser times out.  I tried once earlier today and got the nasty IE5 page not available message and tried again later to see a pop up message that because of high demand you may not be able to complete the signup process.

I once had the ability to attach large (several megs) files to an email and have them chug through efficiently, but this was in the early days of the internet and as the web grew, ISP's started to guard their precious disk space and imposed the limits.   Heck, we even have a 5 meg limit at the office.  Seems like one of those 5-10 meg AVI's got passed around the network one day and ground out system to a halt.  The IR boys were not happy and sharply worded emails followed from the powers that be.

Since I lost this transfer ability, there have been many times that I would I could transfer a file, short of giving someone my account ID and password at pair and having them FTP a file to my server.  That's not secure enough for me and I don't know how secure this Whalemail service might be.  Not very, I would guess, but better than burning a CD and shipping snail mail.

I FAILED TO MENTION earlier in the week that I am taking a few days off this week.  Have some vacation/Comp time that I needed to take or lose it at the end of the year.  I decided to take some days before the end of the year, because, in the past when I have tried to save them all for the end of the year, things always get hectic and you can't find the time to take your days. 

I have also ended up with a very sore back.  On Monday while waiting for Andrew to arrive from the bus stop I got out my tree limb pruner, the kind that telescopes out to about 10-12 and you pull the cord the whack off the limb.  I suppose I tried to cut a limb that was too large for this device and pulled down extra hard on the cord and the next thing you know I am writhing in lower back pain.  In fact, I couldn't climb out of bed Tuesday AM.  I had to carefully roll out.   After I helped get Katie off to school I promptly went back to bed with the company of the heating pad.  I felt fine sitting in my chair in front of the computer and felt somewhat better when negotiating out of bed this AM.

However, by taking up residence in the computer room downstairs, I missed the UPS call for the broken monitor.  Hopefully I will catch them today, but I doubt they will accept the parcel in the shape they left it at my front door.  This should be interesting.

BOB THOMPSON AND I HAVE been having this discussion about Front Page and Front Page with extensions installed.  It appears my little web site has gotten too large for Front Page w/ extensions installed to handle.   I have considered having the extensions removed, which should solve my problem of getting a message that I couldn't complete my publishing chore.  To date, when I have received this message the site has been published without flaw.  Let's knock on wood here.

The one thing I liked about have the extension installed was the ability to log on to the root server and update my pages while traveling.  I'll admit I seldom took advantage of this opportunity, but it was a nice crutch to have in my closet.   FP with extensions would also allow me to publish or copy pages from the root server back down to my local copy.  I think I would lose this function if I had pair uninstall the extensions, but the message is annoying enough that I am considering this route.

While I am at I am also considering, asking questions and doing some basic research as to whether Front Page is the best package.  I have heard very good comments about other packages like Adobe's Page Mill and MacroMedia's DreamWeaver, but I haven't actually talked to anyone who has used these packages to maintain their web.   My entire office suite is Microsoft and for the most part I like their applications (Bob doesn't particularly like Word) and my applications are compatible with the one I use at the office, so I can exchange files fairly easily.  I wish FrontPage were better.   But then, I wouldn't have to be having this conversation, would I?

In this email from Bob he seems just as confused as I am  [thompson@ttgnet.com]

I don’t know the answer. I’m so confused by FP98 versus FP2K and by extensions versus no extensions that I’m not sure what does what any more.

At one point, I tried to use FP to maintain my local copy and then use FTP Voyager (which has a "synchronize" function) to update the site at pair. The problem is, FP modifies a whole bunch of files every time you use it. For example, this morning I modified only 1025RTDN.html, thisweek.html, and index.html. When I published with FP, it uploaded only those three files. But if I use NT Explorer to check the actual files on disk, I find that many have changed. If I use an FTP program to upload changes, I end up having to upload 50 or 100 files each day. The only solution I can see is to continue using FP’s webpost or to quit using FP to maintain my local copy.

If your're confused, how about me?  I just know that barking message from the server is annoying.  Maybe a software change is on OUR future?

Fellow Day Noter  Jan Swijsen [qjsw@oce.nl] and I had a conversation about the time my Java script was reporting on his system across the pond.  Jan had this response to my suggestion that the script was getting the time from his machine and not my server.  I would also like to be able to report both times in the future.

I stop by at most daynoters as a morning warmup routine (just count the hits you get from OCE). I just don’t fire off that much.

That clock is either asking the time from the operating system or from the machine (BIOS). The clock that Windows shows is adjusted for summer/winter time. So that is where the difference comes from. I don’t know any Java (I am a tea drinker after all :) ) but it should be possible to check the time zone on the client and adjust the time to display the actual time of the server.

That's something for the "to-do" list.

I GOT A CHANCE TO SEE HOW QUICK my reactions were this AM.  My seven year old, Andrew, asked if I would check his email, which I did with no problem.   He's at that age when little boys still get excited about Halloween, so he asked if there was a Halloween site.  My response was, "let's check."  As I have said before I am not a good speller, so I punched in www.haloween.com (not trying to promote the site here) and when the screen started to paint with one of those sex sites I quickly closed the browser as we looked at each other in astonishment.  I got similar results when I spelled the site's name correctly, however, there were a few halloween lines there.   Someone's idea a funny joke I suppose.

Thursday, October 28

I have spent a fair amount of time revamping  this web site this week.  I have changed the style of the site from the earth-tone to one or a more basic color look.  If I have done away with something that you liked drop me an email.  I didn't delete anything, just changed the way the shared borders are operating, so I should be able to implement a quick fix.

One of the more annoying features I added was a new opening screen which redirects you to the site after 5 seconds.  You can click on the graphic and go directly to the site, but it will redirect you in about the time it takes the page to load, that is unless you have this page cached.

I tried to jazz up the guest book at the same time but screwed it up, so we are starting from ground zero on the guestbook.  Sorry if I lost your entry.   Maybe I will now know better than to make ANY changes in this perl code.   Whenever I do I mess something up.  I never learn. Where is that backup.   Must be with my change log :-)

Bob Thompson let me know that Microsoft's Service Pack 6 was available for downloading, so naturally I went to grab it.  I went for the network download and the 128bit encryption model.  I always get amused by the amount of download time Windows calculates when a download first starts.  Today, this 35 meg file indicated >25 hours via my ISDN connection.  Currently with +/- 16% of the file downloaded, I have just an hour to wait.  However, I think I will give it a week or two before installing on my machine.  I seem to remember with Service Pack 5 Microsoft pulled it back after about a week to make some fixes.  I am in no hurry,   However, this must be an indication that Windows 2000 Server is going to be delayed even further.

I did finally get an account on www.whalemail.com last night.  Now I need to scrounge up some big files to send someone.

Friday, October 29, 1999

I was sent on a scavenger hunt yesterday.  Actually it started a couple days ago when Suzy asked me if I would get a couple of pumpkins for the kids the carve.  There is a Methodist church just down the street from us whose Youth Group usually sells pumpkins and we have always chosen to make our purchases there.  They fill the front yard and you make your best deal with the kids.  However, this year their supply seemed somewhat small and most wre already beginning to rot.  By Wednesday of this week ther store was closed.  I then decided to givethe Harris Teeter grocery store a try with no luck.  I did finally find a couple a the Lowe's food store in our neighborhood and even there the selection was low.  I thought I should grab a couple while the getting was good, as slim as it was.  And as luck would have it, I was out riding around this AM and ran across a lot (as in Christmas Tree, but with pumpkins) who had plenty.  I had wondered about this particular place earlier, but did't want to take the chance.  I will be you that if I had waited to go there no pumpkins would have been found.  I think they call this Murphy's Law.

WITH ALL OF THE CHANGES I have been making to this site I have screwed the guestbokk up a couple of times.  I thought it was working fine, but then Barbara Thompson let me know the finicky script was puking on me.   I think I have it fixed this time, but I haven't published again since it's been working.  We'll see what happens after I publish these notes today.  If it still works I am going to leave well enough alone.  I know it's not very fancy, but if it's working, that will have to do.  It if quits again, I am going to bag the whole thing.

Saturday, October 30, 1999

When you have a couple kids (ages 12 and 7) Halloween is a particularly exciting time.  Especially when you are seven.  Andrew's excitement meter is pegged.  And I thought Katie may be getting close the time when she no longer wanted to dress up.  Not true for 1999.  Katie is portraying herself as a cute Dorothy (from the Wizard or Oz) and Andrew is a scary Scream.

With Daylight Savings Time ending tonight (actually on Sunday at 2AM) it will be interesting to see what doesn't work tomorrow in computerland.  I remember during the time change earlier this year I thought I had messed up my cron jobs for this site.  I had these nightly batch jobs set to run around 2:15 AM which never arrived this spring.  When it reached 2 AM it was suddenly 3 AM and the jobs never executed.   I have cured that problem.  I don't start any cron jobs until at least 3 AM now.

THE PLANE CRASH that killed Payne Stewart earlier this week also had ties to the Winston Cup racing community.  Stewart's agents, Robert Fraley and Van Arden also had a piece of business int he racing community.   Fraley represented Joe Gibbs' and Haley was Rey Evernham's agent.

EARLIER THIS WEEK I MENTIONED WhaleMail as a web site that would allow you exchange files with another user that are too large to send through the email system.  And then yesterday I stumbled across the Internet File Zone and signed up.  Haven't tried the service yet, but I noticed that PC Magazine has a review on four such sites on their First Looks web page.  Might be a good place to store temporally, but I doubt it's very secure.  Here's the idea.  You have a large spreadsheet file at office and you want to work on it at home.  It won't fit on a floppy.  You could store it here or send it to yourself via WhaleMail.   Probably a better example would be to exchange MP3's or AVI files.

Email Steve Tucker