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Sunday, November 21, 1999

Today was one of those days from hell.

To explain this, I should give some background.

I am chairman of the board of Trustees of our church. Today was the day of our annual meeting. Actually, it was postponed until today from a couple of weeks ago.

Now for some reason I feel that I have to be in attendance at the final Winston Cup race of the season to monitor our promotions and to support my staff. So I thought long and hard about this year, double-checked with my management and determined that it would be safe for me to depart Atlanta on Sunday morning after spending Friday and Saturday at the Team Winston Pit Stop and Winston Thunder Theater. I would only be missing the Sunday execution of the Winston Thunder Theater. The operation would be in the capable hands of my assistant on that program, Jimmy Holder. Some of our most senior management team would be at this event, but I had confidence that Jimmy could handle the situation.

I made my reservation with Delta for a return flight to Greensboro for 8 AM on Sunday. Winston-Salem is about a 35-minute drive from the Greensboro airport, so after the short one-hour flight and the drive home, I should be able to make the 11 AM meeting with no problem.

Enough of the background. That brings us to today.

I returned from the track last night (actually this morning) at 1:30. Threw my clothes into the suitcase and set the alarm for 6:15 AM. I knew this timing would be tight, but I am not a morning person, so this wasn't going to be a pretty morning at any rate.

It seemed like about 10 minutes later the alarm went off and I dragged myself out of bed. Hustled through a shower, finished my very last minute packing, headed to the front desk to check out, then out to the rental car, head for the parking lot toll booth and then to Hertz to return my car. So far everything was going great. There were no lines at the hotel checkout counter, got out of the parking lot with relative ease and was on my way.

Then it started.

It was a misty, sort of foggy morning in Atlanta and the sun had not yet appeared. I was about 500 yards from the hotel entrance and as I started to make a right hand turn to take the "back way" to the airport I catch a glimpse of this jogger jump for his life to get out of my way. It seems that we both had entered the intersection at the same time. He jumped for his life and I slammed on the brakes. A near miss. It was dark, foggy and neither one of us could see very well. However, his laundry bill made have made a northern spiral. I proceeded on to the airport, but did glance back to see what I thought was a glaring stare at my rental car.

Made it to Hertz return center. The return agent was right there to give me the receipt and didn't have to wait for a bus to take me to the airport terminal.

As I got settled on the bus and just as we pulled out of the Hertz return lot my hear sank. My right hand felt light and l looked down and the three-diamond ring that Suzy had given my some 15 years ago was missing. I frantically ran my hand into both pants pockets and the ring wasn't there, which left me to the conclusion that I had stupidly left it in the hotel room as I was getting dressed in my stupor this morning.

I now had a decision to make. Should I call the hotel and ask them to mail it to and continue on to catch my flight and make it back to this very important meeting. That thought didn't last long. I am sorry to say that I simply didn't trust the hotel housekeeping staff to go into the room, find the ring and then mail it to me, although I thought I could direct them right to where I thought I had left the ring.

I quickly hatched my plan. It was about 7 AM, an hour before the flight departed and I wasn't that far from the hotel. If I missed the flight, well, so be it. I didn't want to miss the flight, but to me the retrieving the ring was much more important. I disembarked the rental car bus and checked my one bag with the curbside attendant. If I missed the flight, my bag would be in Greensboro waiting for me when I finally arrived. I then saw a cab unloading a passenger at another curbside attendant's location and knowing they are not supposed to pick up passengers at this point I told him I need to go back to my airport hotel. He reiterated the airport taxi rules, I told him I knew what the rules were, but would make it worth his while to load me up, drive to the hotel and wait for me while I dashed to the room. Being the smart self-employed capitalist he urged me to get into the cab.

We arrived back at the hotel in about five minutes and jumped from the cab and reminded him to wait for me. I hadn't paid him yet, so I felt secure he would be there when I returned. With these new electronic locks on hotel rooms, many times I do not return the key, so I fished in my pocket, but quickly surmised that I must have left the key in the room. Yet another delay. I had to stop at the front desk and ask for another key, which turned out to be a fairly quick process. I was showing the clerk my ID as I was asking for the key in order to save time. Then it was a dash to elevator, whose doors were closing. I threw my briefcase into the doors to make them reopen. I know this was obnoxious, but I was in a hurry.

The elevator made a couple of stops and I then dashed off on the 10th floor, sprinted to the room (all the time, hoping this new key would actually work), opened the door and there the ring was, right where I had left it. It was then back to the lobby and the front of the hotel where I chariot was waiting. Jumped back into the cab and we were back at the airport by 7:35 AM where we ran into a traffic delay on the departing flights ramp. I handed the cabby his fare ($10.50) and my generous tip and thanked him for circumventing the system and was on my way.

I now had to make it through the nazi airport security. I always have to stop and pour a handful of items into a dog bowl at security as carry a pager, cell telephone, sunglasses, loose change, etc. Made it through security with no problem. Of course they had to pick my briefcase to administer the powder residue test on today, but it doesn't take long and I am quickly off the escalator which takes me to the subway system they call the transportation mall.

It's off the train at the B concourse and up the escalator. When I originally checked my bag the skycap had told me my gate was B-11, so I made my way towards that end of the concourse as I departed the escalator. Since I travel rather frequently I make it a habit if scanning the departure monitors to ensure I am headed towards the correct gate. I stopped in my tracks and I did the same today and noticed that as I was approaching my intended gate the flight departure had been moved to gate B-33. You guessed it; gate B-33 was at the complete other end of the terminal. I quickly reversed course and hustled to gate B-33. When I arrived there, not many people were sitting in the "gatehouse" and there was no agent. I assumed the agent was on the plane attending to some paperwork with the crew. She appeared in a few minutes, but was just staring to get the departure gate ready for passengers. This was not a good sign. My intuition told me it was not going to go well. Call it experience maybe.

Airlines have a way a backing up departure times in 15 and 30 minute increments instead of going ahead and telling you that are really probably going to cancel the flight. I can't tell you how many times I have experienced this little trick.

The first change was to delay the departure to 8:30. I could still make it. Then when a 9:00 departure was posted. Now I was starting to get concerned. They made an announcement that this aircraft had a maintenance "write-up" that had not been fixed. I looked out the window and saw the flaps on our intended plane fully extended and the captain out on the tarmac having and extended discussion with about three maintenance men. There didn't seem to bee anything happening. I was guestimating that our flight would eventually be cancelled.

It was then time to check for alternatives. At this point I had resolved that I would probably not make it to my meeting. I saw the next flight was at 9:40. If everything worked perfectly, I could make it to about the last half of the meeting. My first line of defense was to ask the gate agent to check this flight to see if there were any available seats. Fortunately, there were seats, but I didn't change yet. I was still giving them a chance, but not for much longer. In another 10 minutes I made my decision. I went back to the gate agent and asked to be rebooked on the later flight. Good move. About the time he finished my rebooking they finally made the announcement that this flight was going to be cancelled and that as many people as possible were being rebooked on the flight I had chosen. I was ahead of the curve.

Of course this new flight was departing from the other end of the concourse yet again. At least I didn't have to change terminal buildings. I now headed for gate B-7. That means to catch this one flight I had been from gate B-11 to B-33 and now back to B-7. I know how the Keystone Cops must have felt.

And when I arrived at the new gate I noticed the departure time was now 10:10 and not the scheduled 9:40 I had hoped for.

We boarded the flight and we all boarded and ready to go at approximately 10:03. So why can't we go? The loading bridge has been pulled away from the plane, but then I noticed the bridge heading back our way and then there was a knock on the forward door. Yet another maintenance man appeared. This was really not a good sign.

I had the fortune or misfortune of occupying an aisle bulkhead seat in first class and could see the co-pilot fiddling with a couple of switches and pointing to a gauge. This was not a good sign. The maintenance dude was on the knees gazing up at the location where the pilot was pointing. I assumed we were going to cancelled again.

At this point it's getting kind of comical. I have disregarded any hope of making it to my meeting.

After a few minutes the captain comes on with yet another apology and the announcement their auxiliary power unit was not operating. I halfway expected him to say this was something that would ground the plane and our flight was cancelled. Instead he announced they had called for an electric cart and we should be on our way very shortly. Meanwhile, the big yellow air conditioning tube had been re-connected to the plane. Yet another sign this isn't going to be quick.

Another 10 or 15 minutes goes by and then the announcement that the electric cart that arrived was not functioning and another one had been called for. All we could do was laugh.

The new cart finally arrived. We heard the engines start up and then plane was pushed back about 10 feet and then stopped. We sat in this position another 10 minutes or so and the captain finally sheepishly came over the PA system to announce that we had started to push back from the gate, but there now were other planes blocking our path. We had to wait as another 10 minutes before we could be pushed into position to taxi to the runway.

I observed to my fellow passengers that when we got to the taxiway that we would probably be about No. 15 for takeoff. That brought out a few snarls. When we reached the taxiway the captain announced we were No. 14 for takeoff. I hadn't missed it very far.

We slowly taxied along to our takeoff position and I did what I quite often do at this point on a flight. I dozed off. It was startled awake about 20 minutes out of Greensboro when I feared I had been snoring. However, none of the passengers were staring at me viciously as I sat up, so I figured my snore must have been imagined, but was probably just beginning to turn into a cabin rattling snore as I awoke.

We finally landed in Greensboro some three hours late to the applause from many in the cabin. There were several people on this flight who were coming home from a Hawaiian vacation. That means they had left Hawaii yesterday. I three-plus hour delay in Atlanta was just what they wanted to suffer.

However, I glanced at my watch and it was about 12:15. The meeting I was trying to attend was over by now. I retrieved my car from the parking deck, grabbed my lone bag, which I was surprised to learn that it had actually made this flight, and headed to Winston-Salem, arriving at about 1 PM.

I decided my best plan would be an afternoon, which except for a couple of telephone interruptions, I thoroughly enjoyed.

I am confident that if I wasn't on a tight time schedule to make this meeting the darn flight would have departed and landed in Greensboro either early or right on time.

Oh, the trials and tribulations of traveling for a living.

Monday,

Tuesday

Wednesday, November 24, 1999

I have been taking some time off this week.  I am glad the racing season is finally over.  It looks like I have been taking some time off from this site as well.  Actually, I have spent quite  a bit of time screwing around with Linux once again and continuing to be frustrated by my lack of knowledge of this Unix operating system.  I need some major league hand holding.

I think I want to use Linux as a firewall and proxy server.  This will allow me to get a jump on the time when either cable modems, ADSL or so other yet to be thought of  broadband access is available to me.  With broadband all around me, I beginning to think I have taken a turn on the digital dirt road.  Forget the digital highway in the part of Winston-Salem.

Should I install the proxy server now to get a jump on broadband?   Should I have the cable modem installed on just one machine, not connected to my home network, and then install the proxy server, etc. later?

I have spent most of this week installing and reinstalling Linux.   Here's what's been happening.

I have an older Digital Starion machine that I want to use as a Linux box for the firewall, proxy server, etc.  This machine originally had a NE2000 compatible network card installed and  it worked fine.  I knew I would have to have two NICs in this machine to use it for the intended purpose.  I recently purchased some no name PCI autosensing 10/100 megabit NICs, so I thought I would install one of these in this machine.  Connect to the internet with a 10 megabit card and to my home network with the 100 megabit card.

I gathered the I/O and IRQ for both cards (0x300 and 10 for the 10 megabit and 0x320 and 2/9 for the 100) and then started the Linux Red Hat 6.0 install.  When it came to the networking section of the install I could easily install the "10" card, but had no success with the 10/100.  I tried the install several times, searched the net for some help, but quickly figured out I don't know what I am doing and need some help.

After several frustrating hours I thought I would pull the 10/100 out and put a matching 10 into the machine.  I had the 10 laying around from when I started moving my network to 100 megabit.  I pulled to cover off, installed the card, ran the config program which recognized that I had two Addtron cards installed, set the addresses and cockily covered the machine back up.

Back to the Linux install.  Still failing.  I even went into the Linuxconf program and manually inserted the info on the card, but a weird thing happened.   When I went to activate the changes Linux listed the same I/O for both cards.

Another install, but still recognizing only one of the two cards.  I suppose that this card may have quit working when I pulled it out of the old machine, but I don't think so.  I submit it more that I don't know what I am doing.

So I am going soliciting.  I am at the end of the road for my knowledge of Linux, but know that I should somehow learn Linux, especially the networking angle.

Suggestions are welcome.

Thursday, November 25, 1999

Happy Thanksgiving.

For the first time since we have been a family we enjoyed a nice leisurely Thanksgiving at home with just our immediate family, i.e., the four of us.  Usually we head off to one one of my sister' home for the Thanksgiving feast, but this year have decided to travel to visit with my mother on Friday through the weekend.

I had promised the kids that we would go out for our Thanksgiving feast at a restaurant, which appears to be the same thing many other families in Winston-Salem decided to do as well.  Earlier in the week we had said we would go to the local cafeteria, but then a day or so later I suggested that we go to Cracker Barrell.   Cracker Barrell seemed like a good choice for a country Thanksgiving Feast.

It was about two o'clock this afternoon when we headed off the "Barrell", but the front of the restaurant was a close as we got.  The front porch at Cracker Barrell was filled with folks waiting to be seated.  Our experience at this restaurant tells you this means at least a 45 minute and probably an hour wait.  We didn't even get out of the car.

Now it was back to the local cafeteria.  On the way there we passed about a dozen or so restaurants which were closed, so I jokingly asked Suzy what our game plan was if the cafeteria was closed.  Katie was reminding us all the way from the back seat that she was hungry.  However, our fears of this restaurant being closed were quickly erased when turned down the street where the restaurant was located.   Their parking lot was filled as well.  In fact, we had to park in a part of the lot that I didn't know existed until today.

When we arrived at the front door we were met by a cafeteria line that was almost out the door.  Without hesitation we joined the line and began inching towards the food.  I was smart and did not look at my watch when we entered the line, but I would assume were slowly marched in line for about 45 minutes.  The good thing about this line Vs. the wait at Cracker Barrel is that we knew we would be near the food at the end of our wait.  At Cracker Barrell we would have waited an equal amount of time just to give our order.

There were plenty of choices for everyone's taste and Suzy and I wonder how many turkeys they must have cooked.  They were dishing out a plate of turkey, dressing, gravy and cranberry sauce every few seconds.  The take out window was just as busy.

The wait in line allowed some socializing with some complete strangers.   One older lady was apologizing, rather justifying to herself to anyone within earshot that this was the first time she had not cooked a Thanksgiving dinner.   Another gentleman and I commented that it looked like everyone had the same idea:   Come later and miss the long lines.  Not.

ANOTHER DOSE OF THE MELISSA VIRUS is promising to rear its ugly head as your Christmas gift on December 25.  This strain, called W97M.Prilissa.A, infects Microsoft Word 97 documents and spreads itself by sending an infected document as an e-mail attachment using Microsoft Outlook to the first 50 addresses in each address book.  Beware.

GOT THIS MESSAGE AS A pep talk to some of my recent Linux trials and tribulations from [mcdonell35@earthlink.net]

Linus Thorwald was interviewed on ZD Net the other day and he seemed to be a nice man. What with the MS settlement now in the works, an alternative to MS should be welcomed but it should work as well.

I am struggling with justification for Win98. Also, IE 5 seems to be in a death struggle with my E-mail program (Eudora 3.0.5). Eudora no longer offers upgrade rebates to those of us who lust for Version 4.x but the latter costs $49 less some promo rebate. I paid $69 for Ver 3.0 about 2 years ago.

Regardless of who issues what, the connection is still crucial. A local ISP could not provide a line that would not interrupt an on line tutorial. Somehow, Earthlink, using the same telco, managed to find a line that never fails to dial up and hold the line open as long as "transactions" continue.

Things are getting less expensive but there are more things with which to deal.

How does one keep up, let alone get anything done?

Thanksgiving regards to you and yours.

...from the trailing edge...

I am going to conquer this Linux thing yet (with help from friends, of course).  Now the telco situation here on the digital dirt road, well, that's another question entirely.

And Dan Bowman enjoyed my experience trying to get back home on Sunday.

It's stories like your Sunday experience that make me realize:

1) why I enjoy following the Daynotes circuit,

2) why I do not enjoy flying.

Thankfully there are not many days like this one.  However, traveling for a living is NOT what's it's cracked up to be.  In many instances I think I could have driven in about the same amount of time it took to board the big bird.  A lot of our air travel is via US Airways, so we have this saying:  "If you have time to spare...take U S Air."

You may have heard about a nifty little utility that would allow you to copy a DVD to your hard drive for archival purposes.  Seems like the motion picture boys didn't fancy this idea.  He's a message I received from the C|NET Download listserv.  Looks like the picture folks think they may have learned a lesson from MP3's and the music industry.

SOME OF YOU MAY HAVE BEEN following my trails and tribulations with Linux lately, at least what I am trying to do with Linux.  Some of you even offered some help.  So this would go into the Murphy's Law column.  Since Linux claims to run on almost anything, so I was planning to use an old Pentium 100 box I had laying around.  I have been installing and reinstalling Linux on this machine the past several days.  No More.  I guess this machine got tired of me making so many installs and has decided to take a crap.

The first thing to go was the mouse port.  I thought maybe I had a bad mouse, so I tried several mice.  And then shortly thereafter the PS/2 keyboard port flaked out.  I tried several other keyboards on this machine, but the Digital must have some weird pin-outs because the machine would not even boot with another kind of keyboard attached. 

The next step was to try this keyboard and mouse on another machine.   I selected a working Win NT machine and the keyboard and mouse worked just fine. Actually, it was a much older Digital box.  This led me to believe the old motherboard was flaking out.  I considered putting the drives into this older Digital box, but it only had a single IDE channel, so I  stripped the box of drives, power supply, etc. and tossed it, including the motherboard with 60 MHZ Pentium attached.   If you want an antique you better dig through my trash quickly!

I really want to do this Linux thing, so now I am at a crossroad.  Do I build a new box for Linux or rearrange my network and steal one of the slower 166 Pentiums to become my Linux box.  The quicker route would be to build a new box.   Although this may be the most expensive, I'll bet I could find some inexpensive motherboards and older processors for this task.  Have plenty of floppy and CD-ROMs for the job, so all I really need is a ATX case, motherboard and processor.  I can make do with the smaller hard drives I have in my possession, but if I really want to stretch it out I could also get one large capacity hard drive, say something from 4 to 10 gigs.  I was planning on a Linux box with about 1.5 gigs across two drives since I really just want to build a router, firewall, proxy server, mail server.  I think Win NT will continue to be my main network.

Friday

Saturday