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Sunday, February 6, 200
Things are slowly coming back to life around here
with the temperatures warming up somewhat. It's a virtual heat wave
compared the last couple of weeks, with the days reaching in the
mid-40º range, but at night, it's right back to below
freezing. Therefore, we still have many remnants of the snow
of and ice. Our driveway still is about one-half covered
with an ice-slick, but at least we can navigate it enough to get
both cars into and out of the garage. When we have bad weather
we leave Suzy's car on the street. She drives a Mazda mini
van and with the incline of our driveway, her car is too light to
make it up the driveway. It will get about half-way before
the tires start to spin and then you're stuck.
One of the things that was put on hold was an
outing Katie had planned with some of her friends to Laser
Storm. I guess this is a recreation spot where the kids zap
each other with laser what-evers in 15 minute increments.
Her main objective was to remember not to wear white. I
guess the lasers can see through white and this would be a major
no-no for a 13 year old.
We have a city-county school system here in
Winston-Salem and the local school board is grappling with the
decision of how to make up the lost time. Other school
districts have decided to use some Saturdays as make up
days. Our system is trying a more diplomatic approach.
They are polling their constituents to see what kind of make up
plan would be the most popular.
You can call a special number, which they announce
will only accept one call from each number, to cast your vote on
one of five different plans. The most popular plan seems to
be adding 30 minutes to the school day for the remainder of the
year.
In the past, the local school system had the
option of eliminating up to three days from the school calendar
because of bad weather, but the state education system changed
this recently to make the make-up system more flexible. I
believe schools now have to provide not less than 1,000
hours of instruction. The systems have the flexibility of
using Saturdays, holidays and longer school days to accomplish
this state requirement.
The local school system's idea of polling the
public is more akin to allowing the inmates to run the asylum.
They should have the fortitude to make a decision. I am sure
they are opting for this method in an attempt to preempt second
guessing. At any rate, they are supposed to hand down the
new plan this week, which will take effect next Monday.
With the number of phone lines we have in our
house (when you count the various voice, data and cell numbers
available we could place seven votes) , we can cheat the system,
although we have yet to place the first call. Guess we'd
better get on the stick this afternoon.
I am going to assume the public opinion will come
down on the side of adding 30 minutes to each school day.
According to an article in today's Winston-Salem
Journal, we have the potential of living in one of the
most polluted areas in the state. Not too far away from our
home is a coal-fired electric generating plant at Belews Creek
which apparently puts out the most pollutants of any of the 14
coal fired electric plants in the entire state.
It doesn't seem like we are living in Los
Angeles. I visit southern California several times a year
and on days you can see the air you are breathing out there.
Here in North Carolina you can almost always see the mountains,
except on cloudy days and I'm talking clouds from the weather and
not smog.
Since I work in an industry that is constantly
under siege from government statistics, I have to wonder if we
aren't a victim of the same on this pollution issue. I am
sure it's all in how you chop the numbers. Pollen and rag
weed seem to me to be our worst breathing problems here.
As a frequent flier on several airlines,
here's some news
I met with great anticipation and appreciation. American
Airlines is planning to remove two rows of seats from the
coach cabin of its airplanes in an attempt to alleviate some of
the overcrowding that goes on behind the curtain (that's behind
the first class wall). I can attest the airlines have us
packed in there like sardines and can only hope that the major
carriers in our area (US Airways and Delta) will soon follow
suit. Let's hear it for listening to consumers...you
know...the ones who pay the bills.
I would bet the cover of Newsweek
this week would have some appeal to young Andrew.
Wrestling and the WWF are highlight on the front of this national
news magazine and Andrew, like many other young lads his age, will
stop in his tracks to watch the antics of these actors on the
television. Soon to be followed by trying out what he has
learned on his sister, furniture or unsuspecting target.
Vince McMahon, once a wrestler himself, has made
this entertainment big business, including, I am sure, more
licensing and television deals can you would be able to count.
It's amazing to me to see the resurgence of
wrestling. When I was growing up it was something that took
place in armories and high school gymnasiums on Saturday night,
was obviously fake, but entertaining none the less. Now it
has taken America by storm. With its prime-time and
pay-per-view shows it's even the topic of morning water cooler
gossip, much like the Monday morning quarterbacking of NFL games
at the office. Our office has several guys who come in on
Tuesday morning and replay the Monday night matches. These
guys used to be the one replaying the NFL games. Yes, I have
watched it some with Andrew, but I get bored with the antics after
about five minutes and continue my channel surfing. You've
got to love the remote.
Who invented the television remote control
device? The answer could be here
or here.
In any event, I was just a young child when this popular device
was introduced into the world.
I mentioned earlier that a bill was headed for
Congress dealing with the taxing of the internet. You can
send your message by voting
on this issue in an internet poll. This service claims
it will send the results of these votes to congress, President
Clinton and other decision makers.
And while you're at it, why don't you cast
a vote
to on the latest tobacco issue. I would hope your vote
would be that levying additional taxes on smokers would not keep
one teenager from smoking. Don't let Mr. Clinton dig any
deeper into one American's pocket. Here is an
interesting comment from this discussion area on this issue,
to which I say touché. Not that I agree with everything
that was said, but the overall point was right on.
I wonder if traditional internet service
providers are beginning to look over their shoulders at some
of the free web providers which seem to be growing? Would
you opt for free internet service in exchange for being bombarded
with advertising on your web browser? No thanks. However,
the word is these internet-for-free guys are a growing segment of
the ISP business.
Seeing the ads appear may not be the hardest thing
to stomach. You can bet these free providers are tracking
every click of your mouse and then selling the demographic
information at every turn.
I personally don't even see the ads that now
appear on most web pages and will continue to pay for my web
service so I am not tracked by big brother. I would call
this a case of cookies gone bad. While cookies make your web
navigation easier, most of us don't take the time or initiative to
follow up on just what information is being passed from our
terminal to who-ever on the net. It would probably send us
into digital shock if we really know what was going on in the
background.
Just as I was preparing the above note I received
this email from my sister MNana8199@aol.com.
Seems everyone wants to jump on the something for nothing
bandwagon.
I just registered for this service.
Check it out. This might be the solution to the slow
access we get with a modem. The message below is one the
company provides.
I just registered for
"FREE" unlimited high speed (DSL) Internet
access over my everyday phone line. With DSL you can talk on
the phone and surf the net at the same time.
With FreeDSL you are always
connected, and that means no more waiting on busy signals and no
more dropped connections. Surf the Internet at speeds up to 50
times faster than conventional dial-up.
All you have to do is click on the
link below to register with FreeDSL.com.
Use my email address in the
registration form to give me referral >> credit. If you
refer 10 people you can get a free DSL modem too.
Please tell them that I
recommended you so that I will get credit.
Just remember...nothing is
for nothing. If this service is available be prepared to
be bombarded with advertising, etc. See my note
above. I am sure this service is also dependent on the
phone company beign able to provide you with a xDSL line.
In my case BellSouth can not provide me with the service.
I am too far from the CO, a fact in which I have moaned about on
these pages frequently.
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Monday, February 7, 2000
You probably noticed that I have added a link to
Amazon on these pages. I have to confess. I received a
check from Amazon today for referrals from this site. It
wasn't anything to get excited about, but it will help defray the
expense (not my time) of running this site. The check barely
met their minimum for sending out a check.
I have been a part of their associates program
from the time this site came online and you'll see various
opportunities to access amazon.com throughout this site. I
just added a few more to make it easier.
Thanks to all of family and friends who did some
Christmas shopping at amazon.com.
We have a couple of kids who are ready for
the Birds and Bees discussion and I found this one kind of
cute. Actually the B&B thing had already happened in
this house. Thank you, Suzy.
| Morris asks his son, now aged 10, if he
knows about the birds and the bees.
"I don't want to know!" the child said,
bursting into tears. Confused, the father asked his son
what was wrong.
"Oh dad," he sobbed, "at age six I got
the 'there's no Santa' speech. At age seven I got the
'there's no Easter bunny' speech.
Then at age 8 you hit me with the 'there's no tooth
fairy' speech! If you're going to tell me now that
grown-ups don't really have sex, I've got nothing left to
live for!" |
I was having trouble accessing my.yahoo.com
from the office today. I use this site to track some stocks
and catch some headline news between meetings. I figured the
problem was either our corporate firewall being slow or that maybe
everyone else in the company was trying to check on their stock
portfolio at the same time. Our link to the outside world
can be rather slow at times, so I really didn't give it another
thought.
When I checked other sites, they loaded
normally. Still, I wasn't concerned. It wasn't until I
was in the car and headed home that I heard what was
happening. I catch a snippet of national news on the way
home each day and the news that Yahoo had been down all because of
a technical glitch made this two minute national report. The
reporter made sure to calm the public by telling them the Yahoo
site was back on line. When the news
of a site like Yahoo being down makes the national news you
know this net thing has to be for real.
I hear tonight that Yahoo is very suspicious over
the outage.
Novell is still going after Microsoft,
somewhat. Novell had the majority of the server market a
few years ago with NetWare, but Microsoft's Windows NT almost
drove them out of the market. Novell is still playing catch
up and is trying to one-up Microsoft by beating Gates' boys to the
punch. But rather than go head to head with the giant, Novell
is trying to carve out its own niche. Smart thinking
guys.
President Clinton sent his last (hooray) budget
to congress today... a love bundle that totals 1.8 Trillion
bucks. That's right, trillion with a T. I personally
hope congress is burning the midnight oil sharpening their
knives. What's the first thing that I think should go?
You guessed it, his planned windfall from tobacco, quickly
followed by any internet taxes.
The link I posted to vote.com and comments regarding
ads on web pages prompted J.H. Ricketson [culam@neteze.com]
to write:
Thanks for your link to vote.com. I
just voted against internet taxes - along with ~92% of the
voters. That is one of the more lopsided polls I have ever seen.
Hope the Pols pay attention: Don't F___ with my internet!
Cookies: I presume from your remarks
you are using some sort of ad killer. I use InterMute and highly
recommend it. As a second line of defense, I routinely (about
once a month) search all of my HDDs for cookie*.* Anything that
shows up, I check the properties, and set it to READONLY, if not
already set. If set, I check the file date. If it is recent, I
check the file to see what has happened (nothing should have).
To date, there have been no additions or changes to the READONLY
cookies files. My online bank insists that cookies be allowed
before it will grant account access, so I have configured
InterMute to pass cookies from that one site only. The bank
seems happy with that arrangement, even though it cannot
actually write a cookie to my HDD. Go figure. A couple of sites
that check your Box & connection for vulnerability haven't
been able to find much beyond my computer name, my username, one
open port, and the browser I use. Not too shabby for
field-expedient security.
Along that line, I have just
installed & activated Zone Alarm on my Box. Works like a
champ. A couple of minor glitches, and it requires one-time
configuration for everything that goes online (browser, EMail,
InterMute proxy, etc.) but it works. Already reported a couple
of probes, by IP # - on my 56K dialup! NOBODY is immune.
I found the vote.com site to be very
interesting. Don't know if the votes we cast here mean a
hill of beans to the pols, but it's fun anyway.
I currently let my browser accept cookies,
but wouldn't want to be smothered in ads, etc. by utilizing a
free service. I haven't yet gone to the extent you
described, although it brings up some very interesting point.
Bob Thompson,
as an example, has all cookies and java turned off on his
machines if I remember correctly.
I see that today's question on vote.com asks
who you think should win the New York Senate race, Hillary or
Rudy. It wasn't surprising to see when I cast my vote that
more than 90 percent of those voting had selected Rudy.
These internet type must be a bunch of Republicans or maybe it's
that they just have their head screwed on the right way.
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Tuesday, February
8, 2000
It seems like I always run out of time. It's
two days before I need to head off to Daytona, I had a meeting
tonight and another one scheduled for tomorrow night and I've
still got to pack for a two week trip. On top of that, I
always have to take both warm weather and cold weather clothes to
Daytona. It can be the coldest place on earth when the
temperatures decide to drop. Seems like we have a cold
weather snap down there almost every year.
I hope I will be able to get my pages updated
while there. If for some reason I run into a snag, please
bear with me, I'll be back soon.
David Green has lined up a last minute sponsor
for Sunday's Bud Shootout at Daytona International
Speedway. This event always kicks off the new racing season
and is usually telecast live on CBS at high noon. Check your
local listings...I've always wanted to say that!
Officials from Sunoco and Kendall Motor Oil today announced
yesterday they would be sponsoring the Joyner Kersee Roehrig
Motorsports Monte Carlo in the Bud Shootout
For Olympic superstars and team owners Jackie Joyner Kersee and
husband Bob, this race will mark their competitive debut in a
venue outside of track and field.
There has been a lot of talk on the internet
today about yesterday's attack on Yahoo. The deliberate
shutdown of the net's biggest portal shows how vulnerable we still
are when outsiders want to do bad things. Apparently,
yesterday's crippling of Yahoo was
a simple well coordianted task. I hope this doesn't
start a rash of copy cats.
And just when we're getting everything
switched from 10 MBps to 100 MBps we learn the
geeks are working on an even faster ethernet protocol.
Faster than a speeding bullet.......
Ok, I admit I am the worst at actually
using my spell checker and forget when the wrong word is used, but
it's spelled correctly. Thanks to Brian Bilbrey [bilbrey@pacbell.net]
for pointing out there is a difference between brides and
bird. You got me.
or is that birds and bees... :)
I am still laughing over that one.
Thanks.
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