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Monday, May 1, 2000
Here's proof that Winston-Salem, North Carolina is
not considered a major market. Like this is a newsflash.
Time-Warner, our local cable service provider, has
been in a fight with Disney, ABC's owner, over franchise fees and
when negotiations finally reached an impasse, Time-Warner
was ordered to remove ABC from its cable lineup in the major
markets.
Well, I am assuming we still have ABC. I
turned on the idiot tube tonight and there's a movie on.
Maybe the local station is playing a movie and we don't have the
network feed after all. Who knows? Who cares?
I returned early this morning from the left coast
and the NASCAR Winston Cup NAPA 500 at California Speedway.
Traveled to and fro on the company's Gulfstream IV...it don't get
any better than that.
NASCAR is running on a phenomenal streak, having
organized 10 Winston Cup races so far this season and enjoying the
success of 10 different winners. Remember when everyone said
the sport wasn't competitive at the beginning of the year? They
were right. We may have enjoyed seeing 10 different drivers
head to victory lane so far this year, but the races still haven't
been that exciting. There were a few races that were
exciting at the end, but for the most part the racing has been
sort of dull so far in the new millennium.
You may soon be able to use your GPS to an
even tighter pin-point of your location while traveling. The
GPS satellites currently tell us civilians within about 300 feet
where we were, but the military enjoyed the more accurate 100 feet
measurements. Since we're no longer at war the White
House has decided it's going to allow us citizens to enjoy the
more accurate measurements. Must be an election year thing.
...and speaking of elections. North
Carolina holds it's Presidential year primaries on Tuesday, so if
you're in North Carolina, don't forget to exercise your
constitutional right and VOTE. Republican, of course!
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Thursday, May
4, 2000
Our office was clobbered with the I
Love You virus today.
I checked my email when I arrived at the office at
7:30 AM, answered a couple of messages, accepted a meeting and
then I suddenly could get nowhere. I closed Outlook and
tried again, but now I was getting the option to work
offline. I thought something must be wrong with my network
connection, so I rebooted my PC and tried Outlook again. No
luck.
By now the word was spreading around there was a
nasty virus out there. I somehow escaped the bug, but a
couple of people in the office were affected.
By 10:30 our information resources folks had
started using the voice mail system to issue warnings and by lunch
time had the signatures upgraded for our anti-virus program.
They out the word around lunch time that our mail system would
more than likely be down all day.
It's amazing how lost most of us in the office
felt. It was like we had been cut off from the outside
world. We had no email and no access to our Outlook
calendar. We were helpless. A common theme was,
"I know I have some meetings today, but I don't know
where." Can you sense the frustration.
When I arrived at home I carefully checked my
messages and so far I have avoided receiving the I Love You
email. Heck, I was even leery about opening emails which
contained news stories about the virus in the subject line.
I had my return visit to the doctor today
and was impressed that I had shed 16 pounds, begun an exercise
program, drastically reduced my triglycerides. My overall cholesterol
was at 215, which I understand may be a little high, but he was
happy that my HDL has increased. My HDL in the past had run
in the low 20's and today it hit 34. I think my LDL was
somewhere around 150ish. We'll do another LPID study in
about 6 months to see what's happening.
Wonder where your favirote list stacks up?
PC Magazine has just published its list of the top
100 websites.
Jan Swijsen [qjsw@oce.nl]
didn't miss an opportunity to needle me about riding around in the company's'
Gulfstream IV or about my urging everyone within earshot to vote the
other day.
>... the company's Gulfstream
IV...it don't get any better than that. Airforce One maybe :-)
>... exercise your constitutional
right and VOTE. Republican, ...As if voting for the others wouldn't
be constitutional. Oeps, I didn't see the point. (guess a lot of
people don't see the point :-)
Air Force One may be a little more luxurious, but look
at all of the crap you have to put up with to ride on that bird.
No Thanks.
Well us conservative Republicans so like to try to
convince you to see things our way. But, that's the great thing
about this country. We can stand side-by-side and express our
political differences. Thanks again to the constitution.
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Friday, May
5, 2000
Happy
Cinco De Mayo
When I arrived at the office this morning and
fired up my system I had six messages with the subject line
ILoveYou. I quickly deleted them all and my system seems to
have been spared.
I almost wasn't quite as lucky at home today, but
disaster was averted thanks to a message from fellow daynoter Matt Beland
[matt@rearviewmirror.org].
Matt very kindly forwarded this virus alert:
FYI . We have just received a new
variant of the I Love You Virus. I have not even seen this one
in the press yet. It is particularly sneaky because it claims to
be from Symantec - the company that makes Norton Anti-virus.
It looks like someone copied text
from a Symantec web page because the email talks about the I
Love You virus. It then says that they have included a fix for
the virus. The attached file - protect.vbs - is yet another
variant of the I Love You virus. It appears to be related to the
"Mother's Day" strain in that it deletes files.
While scanning my inbox I noticed I had a
message from Symantec Systems with the subject line "Don't
get bitten by the Love Bug Virus". Fortunately I had
not opened this message before I ran across Matt message with
the header "ALERT: Yet another variant".
For some reason I read Matt's first...and out of order, I might
add, and then immediately deleted the message from Symantec.
I had a similiar message from ZDNet Announce
but wasn't brave enough to open it either.
Thanks Matt for helping me avoid disaster.
Matt operates the Tales
of a SysAdmin site.
I received a note from my sister, Maryanna,
[MNana8199@aol.com] who
works for the Government at Ft. Lee, Virginia. They weren't
spared either.
I was wondering if you got hit by
this virus. You and your friend Bob are always having something
to say about the "Government." Well the virus also hit
them and we were shut down all day yesterday. I didn't get hit
but my boss did and the e-mail (ILOVEYOU) just kept pouring into
her box. Hopefully today we will be able to get back on line.
They had to shut the servers and network down. What did we ever
do before there were computers and network. I don't see how any
of us every survived. Yesterday afternoon i was wondering how
many meetings were missed. Probably alot.
Some of our computer guys looked at
the codes and said that whoever did this was pretty smart and
that it was a shame that he was wasting his knowledge on shuting
systems down and not put it to better use.
Sounds like your office was much like ours on
Thursday. We were all lost without our Outlook
lifeline. Everything seemed normal today.
Different strains of the I
Love You virus are spawning faster than tadpoles in the
spring. However, the FBI thinks there might be a chink in
the armor. Federal investigators are working with Philippine
internet service provider SKY Internet to track
down they believe might be a source of the virus.
The House of Representatives Judiciary
Committee has finally voted to recommend to the full house
that at least a five
year moratorium be placed on any plans to institute a Internet
tax. This should give us plenty of time to a) elect a
Republican President and House and b) contact our representatives
and Senators and urge this idea go away for ever.
I was a early investor in @Home and now Excite@Home
and have ridden the stock as its plunged through the toilet and
right into the sewer lately. Therefore, I wasn't too happy
to hear today that some
of the company's top executives are jumping like rats off a
sinking ship. At Home began to fall apart last summer when
some of its exclusivity with several cable operators was
challenged by America On Line and other. Of course my
perfect hindsight is telling me I should have dumped my speculation
when the news starting turning sour. Of course I was too
blind to see the signals and now am stuck for the long haul.
Suzy and Katie are off to Appalachian State
University tomorrow for a one day band competition.
Andrew and I are planning to check out one of the local bike
trails. Actually, Andrew has been there before with the
neighbors, so he'll serve as my guide.
Katie has chosen some music from the Sound
of Music for her first competition. The particular piece
she's selected is Edelweiss. Heck, I can't spell it without
looking it up, much less play it on anything other than the
radio. When I last checked Suzy was going to follow along
behind the school's activity bus in our mini van. I wasn't
if it was because she didn't want to be with a bunch of
screaming sixth graders or if it was so she could
smoke.
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Saturday, May
6, 2000
Andrew and I took the trek on the Winston-Salem
Greenway today from Marketplace Mall to Salem Lake. In total
we spent a couple of hours peddling about 11 miles along Salem
Creek here in Winston-Salem. There is another trail that circles
the lake which is Winston-Salem's water reservoir, which takes
you on another seven mile trek. We didn't make the ride
around the lake. I understand it may not be paved. We
stayed on the paved trail today, besides we didn't want to almost
double the length of our ride. It was a beautiful day for a
bike ride.
I think if we want to bike around the lake we will
need to drive to the lake and make that our starting point.
At the end of our ride, we took a few minutes for
lunch and then headed for the theater where we tool in the Flinststones
in Viva Rock Vegas. I won't add any additional comment
here, other to say I don't expect to see these folks at the
Academy Awards. Suffice it say that Andrew and I enjoyed the
flick. It was entertaining, and that is after all why we pay
the highway robbery prices for movies isn't it?
For dinner we decided to take the Bethabra Park
greenway that runs behind our house and head to Burger King.
We had another good short bike ride, but the experience at Burger
King was less than enjoyable. At BK we encountered a cashier
with a major attitude who obviously did not want to be there
working today. In fact, when I asked for something minor,
his return glare was enough to send cold chills down your
spine. My response was "excuse me for
asking." Yes, I was ticked.
I then saw someone in the back who appeared to be
"management" and I say this loosely. I was so
unimpressed that I asked if he wasn't the shift manager and he
said he was. When I mentioned something about the attitude
of the person he had on the front line he snapped back,
"we've had a long day." I mumbled something to effect
that was no excuse. What has happened to customer service
these days?
From this experience the three or four of us
customers starting sharing opinions and each of us had the same
impression. In fact, it was so bad that each of us made note
of Burger King's local customer service telephone number and vowed
to place a call on Monday morning.
You may be asking why I didn't just leave?
They already had my money and I didn't want to take a chance and
ask for my money back. All of customers had the same
feeling. They should have just closed the place if they
didn't have the help to operate the restaurant properly.
Suzy and Katie arrived home from the band
festival experiences at Appalachian State University shortly after
Andrew and I returned from BK. Katie proudly announced that
she had received a superior rating on both her solo piece,
Edelweiss, and for her part in the ensemble, where they played
Erie Canal. Yes, we made sure she knew we were very proud.
Suzy was successful at negotiating her way out of
riding the school activity bus. She and Katie followed the
school's bus, albeit at a snail's pace.
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