Week of June 25, 2000

Sunday, June 25, 2000

I have to get back into the swing of things now that I am using WinGate as a proxy server, which caches web pages.

I checked a few of the sites I normally visit on a frequent basis yesterday and it appeared the sites had not been updated. At first, I thought this was strange, but then considered the owners might be taking a break. The first sight I usually check is Bob Thompson’s Triad Technology Group site and you can usually count on Bob to have his daynotes pages updated in the morning. I checked the page several times during the day and there was no Saturday update. I then figured Bob might be taking a deserved day off. He might be working on some chores around the house and away from the computer. He might be working on his weekly full backup. By last night there was still no update and I thought this was really strange. I thought about sending him an email to ask him what was up. Bob has threatened to take a day off from his notes once in a while, but I think you could count on one hand the number of days he has taken off. The first step was to not use the book marked page I have for his daynotes, but rather go into his site from his opening page and then select his daynotes section. Bingo, there was his update, which I am sure had been up since the morning. That's when it hit me, WinGate caches web pages you dummy. Remember to refresh when you're going back to an often visited site. I think I have my WinGate not to reload if the page I am going to is less than two days old.

I wondered how long it was going to take for someone to start barking about International Speedway Corp and what appears to be an advantage with NASCAR. Herb Greenberg fired a shot when he wrote a column on the Street dot com's web site questioning whether NASCAR favors ISC when handing out Winston Cup dates. Naturally ISC fired back that while they may share office space within the same complex in Daytona Beach, there in no relationship. One is a public company (ISC) and the other is private. Members of the France family control both organizations. While this may be the way it is on paper, sometimes perceptions are more damaging than facts. And the last new Winston Cup dates awarded went to facilities with ISC connections, Homestead, Kansas City and Chicago. GO figure.

And if you ever questioned the popularity of NASCAR Winston Cup racing or whether race fans were cyber-literate, check this out. NASCAR's official site, NASCAR Online, recorded 614,665 unique users in one day on June 19, in salute to my birthday I am sure. Actually it was the day of the postponed race at Pocono and I am sure many who couldn't return to the race on Monday were sitting at their desks at work keeping up with the race. NASCAR's other high traffic day had come earlier this year when more than a half-million unique users hit the site on the day of the twin qualifying races for the Daytona 500, a Thursday. Lends validity to my theory that these high traffic days come when folks are wanting to be at the race, but must be at work instead.

I was ready to go into panic mode when I checked my cumulative stats for Wakeolda this afternoon and noticed that more than 11 percent of the hits this site has received came from tycho-165-227-59-39.tychonet.com. At first I thought someone may be trying to crack into my system. My first attempt at investigation didn't calm me down very much either. I first hit the site tychonet.com and found it was TychoNet, a company offering DSL service. I then pasted the entire URL into my web browser and was relieved that it was a link to FreeFind. I use FreeFind to handle my searches for Wakeolda. FreeFind spiders my site daily to update its database. I was relieved

I was curious one again about the speed of my new RoadRunner connection, so I dropped by the bandwidth site at MSN. I chose Sunday afternoon, which in my opinion would be a high usage time. My connection clocked in at better than 560 Kbps, approaching the speed of a T-1 connection and blowing away my old single channel ISDN connection of 64 Kbps on a good day.

I think it's about time to go ahead and pull the plug on my ISDN line since I am now exclusively using the cable modem connection. Saving a few bucks each month will be the motive here. The one thing that BellSouth offers is the ability to use their webmail service, which I frequently did to spy on my email when I was away from home. I haven't seen where RoadRunner offers webmail, but haven't looked that deeply into the site.

I am not sure if I will get anything posted tomorrow and if not I will be on a two week hiatus.

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Monday, June 26, 2000

Reminder:

I am going to be away from these pages until July 10. Please come back.

The state of North Carolina either has passed or is getting ready to pass a new internet law. The new rule makes it a misdemeanor to send threatening, harassing or annoying email to anyone through the internet. However, the law will be valid only in North Carolina and therefore won't have a very strong bite. Don't think many spammers will set up shop in the Tar Heel state and the one who are already spamming us from here can easily make it look like the mail is coming from somewhere far away.

In his writing, and in notes from his readers, he ponders what would happen is such a cozy relationship lived in the fast food or hotel industry, or closer to home in some professional sports leagues.

This little fun fact should shed some light on how things work here in the good ole USA.

Pythagorean theorem: 24 words.

The Lord's prayer: 66 words.

Archimedes' Principle: 67 words.

The 10 Commandments: 179 words.

The Gettysburg address: 286 words.

The Declaration of Independence: 1,300 words.

The US Government regulations on the sale of cabbage: 26,911 words.

There is no way to please a woman

A group of girlfriends is on vacation when they see a 5-story hotel with a sign that reads: "For Women Only". Since they are without their boyfriends and husbands, they decide to go in. The Bouncer, a very attractive guy, explains to them how it works.

"We have 5 floors. Go up floor by floor, and once you find what you are looking for, you can stay there. It's easy to decide since each floor has a sign telling you what's inside."

So they start going up and on the first floor the sign reads:"All the men here have it short and thin." The friends laugh and without hesitation move on to the next floor.

The sign on the second floor reads: "All the men here have it long and thin." Still, this isn't good enough so the friends continue on up.

They reach the third floor and the sign reads: "All the men here have it short and thick."

They still want to do better, and so, knowing there are still two floors left, they continued on up.

On the fourth floor, the sign is perfect: "All the men here have it long and thick." The women get all excited and are going in when they realize that there is still one floor left. Wondering what they are missing, they head on up to the fifth floor.

There they find a sign that reads: "There are no men here. This floor was built only to prove that there is no way to please a woman."

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