Steve's Current Notes

Jump to Most Recent Update

[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday]

Sunday, March 19, 2000

Were you surprised that President Clinton didn’t jump and put a quick fix on the oil situation for his political buddy Al Gore? To be honest I was. I thought he would dish Gore some political points, but as I think about it, he’s probably waiting to play that card during the summer driving season where it has the potential of doing more for Gore’s, hopefully fledging by that time, campaign will offer more help.

Now, I don’t like the fact that gas prices have risen more than 50 percent since Christmas. Here in Winston-Salem regular unleaded was selling for less than a buck a gallon and now the same gallon of gas is costing us almost $1.50. I won’t even mention the cost of the middle or premium grades. I’m cheap. I run regular.

When I went to fill up last week I noticed the yellow mittens over the regular nozzle saying the pump was out of order. I thought back to the last gas crunch and the accusation that dealers were claiming their regular pumps were out of order so they could sell more of the high dollar stuff. However, as I think about it today, it’s probably that more of the plus and premium buyers and downgrading by 10 and 20 cents per gallon.

As I write this I have to wonder what has happened to our relationship with that little mid-eastern country of Kuwait we flew in to defend 10 years ago? They’ve got plenty of oil and you think they would be just a little grateful for what we did for them. I guess the pressure from the other OPEC countries is just a little too tough.

I have another theory. What has happened is that the Clinton Administration has no foreign policy and they have not paid any attention to this part of the world and we are now paying for it dearly.

And then to think he wants to start talking to Iran again? What gives? If we are going to be friends with Iran we should be trading something like oil…not oriental rugs or caviar. Come on, Billy.

 There was a story in today’s Winston-Salem Journal citing a congressional committee that says it is close to recommending extending the moratorium on new internet taxes and may even be repealing the telephone excise tax which dates back 100 years or so. One of the concerns mentioned in this article was how such a bill might affect state sales tax. In its income tax forms this year North Carolina sent a nasty message. They asked how much you spent online and of course wanted to collect sales tax on this amount. I wonder how many people filled in this box with $0.00. North Carolina’s trick sounds a lot like taxation without representation

On the eve of Spring, it was another eye opener here in Winston-Salem. It was down right chilly!  As Spring dawns in the morning I hope it will bring with it a day with more spring-like temperatures.  Pretty soon we will be moaning about how hot it is and then before you know it the cries will be about the cold.  There's no pleasing.

I finally got around to checking on the monitor on the computer we have in the kitchen.  It looks like the monitor has gone bad after all.  So I went to my store room and resurrected an old fuzzy 15 incher for the test and viola, there were graphics.  I rebooted and readjusted the screen size to something this old monitor will handle and now I have to make sure to get some kind of replacement.  When the kids saw this monitor they questioned, "where did this small computer come from" like it was some insult to have a smaller screen there than was previously connected to this computer.  Suzy quickly reminded them that a small screen was better than no screen.

Suzy, for one, is glad to have her workstation back.  She does a fair amount of word processing and prefers the convenience of this machine sitting beside the kitchen table so she use it as time permits.   In the past she has like to play a few games of solitaire.  I wonder if the missed the convenience of Word or solitaire the most.  Five years ago I would have said solitaire, but today I'll bet it was Word.

[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday]

Monday, March 20, 2000

For some reason I was thinking today was the first day of Spring.  I know Spring arrives on the 21st every year and for some reason the calendar in my head had gotten off by one day.  Won't seem to matter much, tomorrow around here promises to be another chilly and wet day.  The weather will be more spring-like by the end of the week and that will mean cutting the grass twice-a-week for a while.  I never seem to remember not to fertilize.  If I did, I am sure I wouldn't have this problem.

This could be a nifty feature if you surfing the internet while tying up the only phone line in your home.  Buzzme.com claims to offer a service that works on your exiting phone and pops up a message when you get an incoming call.  The photo of the pop-up on their website appears to furnish caller id info on the incoming call and then allow you to take the call or send it to their free voicemail service.  It claims to work whether you are online at the time of the incoming call or not.  It looks like if you don't take the free voicemail service that you have to pay for the incoming call feature.  Have fun.

If you live in one of America's largest cities and can't wait for Amazon to deliver that new book you just ordered, then today's news may be just what you've looking for.  Amazon is hooking up with Kozmo.com to offer a one hour delivery service in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles.  I didn't see Winston-Salem on that list.  Guess I'll continue to wait for the USPS to arrive at my door.

This could be good news if your principal place of work is an office in your home.  According to a story on the CNBC website by Fred Dechowitz, CPA, a Partner at Richard A. Eisner & Co., the IRS began to "loosen" it interperation on the home office deduction for 1999.  There seem to be a couple of qualifying points that stick out.  First, you can't have a real brick and mortar office to go to and second you need to do administrative work from this office, like billing customers, ordering supplies or, the best one, writing reports.  I think we could all qualifying under the writing reports loophole, especially my friends on the net who are currently publishing books or reports for internet pages.  Unfortunately, well fortunately, RJR provides me with a  very nice space to work in downtown Winston-Salem, so this break is not for me.  However, I know several folks who'll be able to take advantage of the friendlier IRS deduction who were maybe reluctant to test the waters in the past.

Researchers at IBM may have found the path to the next giga drives.  This report on C|net says IBM  has discovered chemical reactions that may lead to the development of data-storage drives that hold 100 times more information than devices today.

[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday]

Tuesday, March 21, 2000

There was big news in my camp today. The Supreme Court in their infinite wisdom agreed with our industry that the FDA has NO jurisdiction over the tobacco. The Clinton Administration had bullied the American Public and willing congressmen and Senators into believing the FDA could run roughshod over the industry. It was a split decision of all split decisions, with the vote coming up 5 to 4.

"We believe that Congress has clearly precluded the FDA from asserting jurisdiction to regulate tobacco products," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the author of majority opinion wrote.

This decision was really not about the tobacco industry, although this particular case was. What is more important is sending a message to the current administration they can not just make up rules as they go along. A practice that been common now for nearly eight years.

Here’s joke a photo that came through the email system at work today. Being a frequent flier, I got a chuckle out of this one.

As of January 1,2000, on any flight over 2 hours duration the FAA is instituting a new regulation. Every 15 minutes a camera mounted in the cockpit will automatically take a picture of the flight deck. This will insure that the pilots are awake, alert, and in their places. 

This photo is one of the first to be made public.

Smile????

It looks like the congressional advisory committee can’t agree on a proposal to send to Congress after all. Looks like this one may die because of non consensus. 

When Ward Burton won the Mall.com 400 in Darlington last Sunday he knocked Sterling Marlin and Geoff Bodine out of the The Winston. The Winston is the NASCAR Winston Cup All-Star race set for May 20 at Lowe’s Motor Speedway.

The drivers currently qualified for The Winston are Jeff Gordon, Mark Martin, Jeff Burton, Terry Labonte, Rusty Wallace, John Andretti, Dale Earnhardt, Dale Jarrett, Bobby Labonte, Tony Stewart, Joe Nemechek, Ward Burton, Ricky Rudd, Bobby Hamiltion, Jeremy Mayfield, Kenny Irwin, Bill Elliott, Darrell Waltrip and Michael Watrtip. If my calculations are correct, Ricky Rudd is now on the bubble.  If there is another new winner before May he would be out of The Winston.

Microsoft thinks some secret future code may have been leaked out via the Internet. Microsoft is evidently working on a new consumer operating system, code named Whistler, and evidently the early code has already appeared on the internet.

Do you think they may be working on a new consumer OS because we have not raced to the store to buy the beefed up version of Win NT known as Windows 2000? Maybe.

Do you think it was leaked or was Microsoft the victim of security flaws in their own networking software?

Don Armstrong [darmst@yahoo.com.au] has written a couple of times and pointed out that I keep forgetting to change the page title when I post a new week’s notes.

I probably distracted you - your current HTML page

title didn't get its week tagged on, so it just reads

"Week of".

Regards, Don Armstrong

I have to manually change the page title and keep forgetting. I promise I will try to do better in the future :-).  I have a template page with the page title "Week of" in the template. Maybe I should take the "Week of" out of the template, so when I forget it will not be so obvious.

Thanks again for pointing out the error of my ways. I never look at the page online, so I would never see that I forgot the page title. :-(

Maynard Savery [msavery@sfu.ca] from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada seems to be having some of the same problems I did with an embeded network interface card.

I was interested in you dissertation on the sage re the davicom9102. I have been trying to get my win95, win98, and my win95 486 with a lasermaster win1000 primter all networked.

But no such luck, so it was good to shed a tear or two with you. I had the win95 and win98 working at one point in time then I blew the win95 operating system trying to upgrade to win98. Since then the win98 will not ping the win95 system and I have to set up paths to get to shared devices on the win98 system. What a nightmare. The win98 and win95 systems have the imbedded davicoms, the 486 has a ne2000. They just don't talk. I have been up nights trying every combination in the world. 

Will soon give up and try a direct connect between the win systems and print with the 486/winprinter offline. I may also convert to non imbedded nic's on the win systems. Did you finally get to the outside???????

I struggled with a board with the davicom imbedded NIC for the better part of a weekend. I wanted to build a Linux box and needed a board with 2 PCI slots. Unfortunately the board I had with the davicom imbedded NIC only had one slot, so I tossed it for a "real" board. I ended up with an Intel motherboard.

Before I tossed the old board I did some testing. I installed a generic NIC and the machine instantly saw my network. Therefore, my deduction is this. If you are going to use a motherboard with an imbedded NIC, use a name brand board, like Intel. And make sure you are using a board that has a spare PCI slot so when the imbedded NIC goes south you’ll have a slot to drop in a NIC that you know will work.

I wasted most of a weekend to learn this lesson. Hopefully it will not take you as long to learn this lesson. I was too bull headed. I just knew I could make it work. I was wrong.

Buy books, videos and more online from:	TOP
	[Wakeolda Home]      [Email Steve]

---

[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday]

Thursday, April 23, 2000

I goofed up on Tuesday.  I added to my notes (this page), saved the file, but then somehow must have gotten distracted and never published the page.  So today you get a double bonus.  Actually, I think Suzy wanted to use the machine that I have Front Page 2000 loaded on, so I deferred to her, but never came back and published.  That's my story and I am sticking to it.

Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first President of the United States whose name contained all of the letter necessary to spell criminal.  There was another President with the same distinction.  Can you name that President?

Final Answer:  William Jefferson Clinton

I have gotten a new monitor for the system in the kitchen.  In fact, my cup runneth over.  After testing the system on Saturday and determining I had a bad monitor I entered a bid for a refurbished IBM P70 at Ubid.  The bid was fairly low for refurbished monitor and therefore I didn't think I would be successful.  I subsequently entered another low bid for a refurbed Dell 17 incher.  Didn't think I would get either.

On Sunday I got two emails from Ubid exclaiming that I had been successful in my bid.  Therefore, my cup runneth over.  The IBM arrived yesterday and I pressed it into service right away.  The Dell arrived today.  I haven't unpacked it yet.  Will probably do so over the weekend.

And speaking of the weekend.  Katie and Suzy are going on a retreat this weekend at the Laurel Ridge camp in the Blue Ridge mountains.  That leaves Andrew and myself in town as bachelors.  I think we are planning to ride up to Virginia to see my mother for the weekend.   Haven't had a chance to visit there since the Christmas holidays and she will be enjoying her 79th birthday in a couple of weeks.  IT will good to see her.  She'll also enjoy spoiling Andrew for a day or so.  We also have some baby things here we can leave there for my niece's baby.

Paul Thurrott informs us there is already a service pack out there for the mighty Office 2000 package.

Mike Mulhern makes an interesting observation in his NASCAR Notebook in our local paper, the Winston-Salem Journal, regarding the media now following the NASCAR Winston Cup circuit.  Mulhern says the boys are girls covering the races today are not the "let's get a good crowd out to the race" bunch of NASCAR's infancy, but rather cover the sport as thirsty journalists, always searching for exclusive, "you saw it here first" story.  I think NASCAR got to witness this changing of the guard first hand at the beginning of the season when the big controversy regarding press credentials was played out in the press.

NASCAR has routinely floated ideas like common templates to judge reaction before decreeing a major rule change.  However, this easy pass many no longer be available.

And speaking of a rule change.  The idea of common templates keeps heating up and cooling down.  You can imagine that Detroit is against such a thing and I would also be in that camp.

NASCAR has long attracted fans who "pulled" for a particular car type.  And car manufacturers have said, "win on Sunday, sell on Monday."

And we relate to the cars on the track.  We drive a Monte Carlo and the one on the track sort of resembles a Monte Carlo.  Please don't take this away.

Buy books, videos and more online from:	TOP
	[Wakeolda Home]      [Email Steve]

---

[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday]

Friday, March 24, 2000

With Katie and Suzy headed off to Laurel Ridge for the weekend I call my mother to see if she was going to be around.  She has no plans for the weekend, so Andrew and I will depart for a quick weekend trip to visit with grandmother.  There was another option, but never I never tempted Andrew.  Wake Forest is playing California is their third round NIT basketball tournament game tonight in Greensboro.  I thought about asking Andrew if he wanted to go to the basketball game or head off the see grandmother.  I am sure he would have chosen the basketball game, but he never got the choice.  There will be plenty of basketball games in his life.  His grandmother turns 79 in a couple of weeks.  He made the right choice.

You've heard of the smart house before.  Mostly when I think of the smart house I think of one where you can turn lights on and off from any point in the home and maybe have the air conditioning cool the house down before you get home from work.  If you're really out there you might have everything in your house controlled from a computer workstation.  You might dial in and change the home controls from your workstation at the office.

In this computer age, it's time to think Dick Tracy.  When I was a kid it seemed unimaginable to think we would ever see a phone small enough to wear on your wrist or fit in your shirt pocket.  Small cell phones are common place today.

So, what will be the technology of tomorrow?  C|net has done the thinking for us.  Here is a link that provides some insight to what we might be seeing in the near future.

When it comes to trends here in the United States, most thing start on the west and migrate east.  California had salad bars in restaurants long before they became popular on the east coast.  Seattle has the first coffee houses.  Who would have thought we would be paying five bucks for a cup of coffee and loving life doing so?

However, when it comes to electronics, we look East and to Japan.  Electronic gadgets almost always hit the market there first.  Again, looking to C|net, here are some toys that are commonplace in Japan, but probably a few years away from washing up on the shores of the USA.

In-dash CD players are just now getting to common in cars in America.  My Ford Explorer still has only a cassette tape option along with the radio.  To see a video in an American vehicle is very rare, probably only on those bulky conversion vans.  However, in Japan you can get a DVD player in your vehicle.  Now, that ought to make for some safe driving.  The use of the DVD originally started as part of the GPS system, but the electronics wizards soon found a different use.

How about carrying around a document scanner in your pocket?  The mini disk is hot in Japan and it's used for more than recording music.

And here's one Andrew would love.  We chose the route of the Sony PlayStation for entertainment at our house and often hear how great it would be to have a Nintendo 64 or a Dreamcast.  Now, Sony has introduced the latest PlayStation in Japan, naturally, not available in the USA yet.

And how about a pocket cell phone that includes a small color screen for surfing the web.  Not a dream in Japan.

I am sure it will not take these products, or maybe some even better to appear on the shelves of your favorite gadget store.  Maybe even in time for the Christmas buying season.  Have fun.

Buy books, videos and more online from:	TOP
	[Wakeolda Home]      [Email Steve]

---

[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday] [Friday] [Saturday]

Saturday, 

 

 

Buy books, videos and more online from:	TOP
	[Wakeolda Home]      [Email Steve]

---