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Sunday,
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[Friday] [Saturday]
Monday, August
28, 2000
I made it back from Bristol in time to hear Katie
play her flute in her first solo performance. She's been
playing the flute for one year now and mustered up the courage to
play the benediction at church yesterday. She's played in
other public performances before, but this was her first
solo. Although she claimed her hands and knees were shaking,
she gave a marvelous performance and most people could not believe
she had been playing the flute for only one year and that at 12
years old (she'll quickly tell you that she's almost 13) she had
the courage to get up in front of a big group like this and
play. Yep, you're listening to a proud papa drone on.
Mike Mulhern had an interesting story from Bristol
in this morning's Winston-Salem
Journal about a tire problem creeping back into the
Winston Cup racing world. This time it's pointing to a piece
of the tire that's almost taken for granted, the
safety inner liner.
C|Net has complied a list of their top-5
Palm applications. I am currently only using their
editor's choice, AvantGo,
while letting the Palm's interface with outlook handle the
swapping of my email. I suppose if I were using the Palm VII
with wireless communications these applications might have more
appeal. I mostly use the Palm Pilot as a glorified scheduler
and contact book, realizing I am not reaching anywhere near the
hand-held's potential, but it works for me. Of course, I
have a couple of games loaded to help kill some time on airplanes.
Quicken
and Microsoft
Money are slamming out another new version for 2001.
I the past I have religiously upgraded to the new version of Quicken,
but haven't seen enough improvements over the last couple of
editions to make me want to consider another upgrade this
year. The current version of Quicken does all I need it to
do, so for once I plan to not fit it when it ain't broke.
Actually, I was close to adapting this strategy last year, but
Quicken suckered me in with a promise of better handling of stock
options. It handles company issued options fine, but was
weak in its handling of options, like covered calls, you might
purchase on the open market. C|Net's
editors lean towards Money, but I'll bet there's little
difference between the two
In my continuing quest to clean up the
office/computer room, I stopped by the local library to check on
the possibility of making some magazine and book donations.
Naturally, the librarian said she would welcome the donations, but
quickly added that computer magazines over a year old were not
fast movers for them. She suggested I might think of
recycling any computer magazines over one year old. I guess
this means that a magazine with a review of a 486sx-33 would just
take up space at the local branch. I can't believe someone
wouldn't grab that copy as soon as it hit the table.
I also mentioned that I had some other computer
books that I wanted to donation, which was a different
story. She welcomes these books and said they might even get
added to their collection versus being made available on the
"sale" table.
The account I have a pair
for this website offers me 60 megabytes of storage
space. I got an email from pair the other day alerting me
that I now have more than 60 megs stored there. I need to
make a decision. Do I upgrade to the next account level or
should I go in and start to clean up this site some, deleting some
of my older files. I am leaning towards upgrading
accounts. For some reason I hate to delete pages, but I know
that would be the smart thing to do. Decisions.....
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Tuesday, August
29, 2000
This may be just a sign of the time to come for
the cell phone industry. Industry leaders Motorola,
Nokia and Erricson will soon be labeling their phones with
information on the specific radiation absorption rates (SAR) of
the phones. If we can take a tip from my industry, labels
will be only the tip of the iceberg. I can easily see this
industry taking Big Tobacco's place in the court room 20 years
from now.
We're off the first PTA meeting of the year
at Andrew's school tonight. This meeting is always jam
packed. It disguised as an open house and people want a
chance to see their kids' room after they had a couple weeks under
their belts. We're no different. We head out to the
school and join the masses.
Here was an interesting form of direct
marketing I received today via email.
Dear Steve,
I was just taking a look at your
website and I noticed that you had links to different search
engines. We launched a search engine and it is the largest,
fastest and most relevant on the entire web. I was just
wondering if you could add our link to your site. If you would
like to add our search bar, this link will send you the html
code:
http://home.allthesites.com/signup.asp?refid=3283.
I have to believe this is an attempt to get their
hit count up so they can generate more advertising revenue.
But what I really wonder is how they identify potential targets?
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Wednesday, August
30, 2000
I had a
message from Suzy on my voicemail at the office yesterday that
there was a homeowner’s matter that needed my attention. My
first thoughts were that something catastrophic had happened and
there was a foot of water in the basement or that the ceiling in
one of the bedrooms had fallen through.
Turns out it
was the garage door. One of the springs that allows you to easily
raise and lower your garage door snapped and the door was too
heavy for the small motor that normally raises and lowers the door
to lift.
Neighbor to
the rescue. Luckily our neighbor is a stay at home dad and helped
her raise the door so she could get back into the house. He placed
a ladder under the door to keep it safely raised until I got home.
He’s also somewhat of a handy person and said I could probably
replace the spring myself, but that it could be quite a chore. I
opted out. After all, the guys who install and repair garage doors
need to eat too, don’t they? I could just see this mammoth
spring hurling me halfway into the next county.
The first call
for service I made was to the company who installed the door and
its remote controlled opener. They said they would be happy to
come out, but the first available opening was more than a week
away. My response: "you’re kidding, right?" They
weren’t, but did recommend another company that offered service
within 24 hours. I chose the alternate repair source, although I
am sure it was probably more expensive, but in this case, worth
it. They promised to be here between 8 AM and 10 AM and that
when the service guy showed up, between those two times, arriving
here around 9 AM. He was done in about an hour, replacing
both springs, the hubs on each end of the shaft and the bearing
plates in which the shaft resides. I had asked him to give
our system a once over while he was here, making sure that
everything that was wearing was replaced. He proudly
displayed the worn parts and explained his rationale for replacing
each one. No argument here.
He commented
that the hardware used on our door was inexpensive and I admitted
that I wasn't surprised. This was a contractor's spec house
when we moved in some 12 years ago and I am sure the contractor
took every short cut he could. The technician claimed our
hardware was rated to 10,000 cycles (that something like MTBF) and
he had replaced it with springs and such rated for 100,000
cycles. The new stuff is guaranteed for 10 years, parts and
labor, which says something about the replacement parts, I
suppose. The ordeal was painless, unless you consider the
$500 he lifted out of my pocket as he drove away.
Here’s a download
I am sure Andrew
would like for me to grab, but I am going to pretend I never saw
this one. You can grab a demo version of the latest Tony Hawk’s
Pro Skater 2 and host your own version of the X Games right from
your computer. Andrew’s a typical eight year old boy, into
roller blades, skateboards, bike riding, video games and watching
ESPN’s X Games on television every chance he gets. The drill
goes like this: He watches an X Games episodes and then heads
outside in an attempt to recreate what he just saw on the tube.
Comes complete with scrapes and bruises.
Reacting to
recent on-track fatalities
Lowe’s Motor Speedway tested a new
form of soft walls yesterday. In the past soft walls at race
tracks have consisted of huge blocks of Styrofoam. The version
tested at Lowe’s Speedway were still huge blocks of Styrofoam,
but the Styrofoam was covered with a tough plastic. It’s my
assumption that the plastic covering would contain the Styrofoam
on impact and make cleanup of an accident scene easier and
quicker. You know what it’s like when our cooler breaks and
dumps those little Styrofoam balls all over the place. Image a huge
block of the stuff at a speedway when a race car, running better
than 150 MPH, plows into the wall. It would look like a winter
blizzard and take a while to clean up and get back to
racing.
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Thursday, August
31, 2000
I have mentioned the bandwidth test at MSN in the
past, so I'll also mention that C|Net now offers the same
utility. While MSN's is a simple test, C|Net goes a step
further, serving as a portal for ISP's. After it display's
your speed it offers links to help you upgrade to a faster ISP.
Naturally I had to compare the two services and
naturally the results posted were quite different. C|Net
show my cable modem connection weighing in just under dual band
ISDN at 113.3 KBps while the the MSN test said I was much faster
at 177 kbps. I made the test during prime time when the
cable modem is likely to be at peak capacity. The MSN
test is here and the C|Net
test is here.
One of the convenient things about word
processing suites today is the number of templates available to
continue to make our lives easier and more productive. If
you are using Word and can't find just the document template
needed for a project, then you might want to check out Microsoft's
document
template gallery.
Looks like some of the racing community may have
found me. Better watch what I say :-)! Glen
Harness [harnessg@racindeals.com]
writes:
Hello there. I just found your site
last week and find it pretty interesting, especially the fact
that you're involved in a business that's under attack by the
government (and a lot of high class ambulance chasers).
Wil you be going to Talladega this
October for the race? If so, perhaps we could get together.
Heck, it's even possible I've met you before anyway. I've been
to the last couple of No Bull 5 parties you all have thrown in
Oxford (or is that Anniston? I always get those two mixed up).
Got a nice heavy shirt last year and a nice set of glasses the
year before at the track...
Anyway, keep up the good work.
Thanks for your kind words about this hobby
site. I plan to check out racingdeals and who knows, may
even link you here from time to time if you don't object. I
think Talladega is on my schedule and if so, I'll try to look you
up. I'll ask our PR guys to put us together. Yes, the
tobacco industry is interesting as is the motorsports
industry. I'm in the unique position of having some
inside knowledge of the sport and trying not to put anything on
this site that would compromise the trust I have with those inside
the sport.
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Friday, September 1,
2000
I'm off to
Cleveland, Ohio this weekend
We'll return on Tuesday
I can't remember if I have mentioned here the
trouble I was having with my HP 7200i CD-RW drive on bambam.
When I started using Nero it suggested that it wasn't such a good
idea to have both CD ROMs on the same IDE channel. The first
machine I addressed this problem on was wilma, which has an HP
8100 CD-Writer plus. She liked the new setup and it worked
like a charm. Then I moved the bambam, where the 7200i lives
and attempted the same operation. This CD-RW drive did not
like this new set-up at all and I could not use the drive to burn
a CD. The drive tests in HP's toolbox would even fail.
The first thing I checked was to make sure I had a
good connection on the cable. No problem there. I then
scratched my head for a couple days and thought about posting a
message to HP's tech support area. There was nothing
remotely like my problem, but there was a link to contact HP tech
support. However, it dies when you attempt to go
there. Heck, they probably don't even know it's broken.
My next line of defense was to post a message on
the alt.cd-rom newsgroup. Should have tried this
earlier. I made the post on Wednesday evening and on
Thursday I had a couple of responses back.
Here's my original post:
I have a HP 72001 CD-RW and all of a
sudden it will not write to a CD-R. When I got to burn a CD it
returns the error message "The current destination CD does
not have enough free space."
At first I thought I had messed up
and was trying to burn on a full CD, but received the same
message when using a CD that I new was new and blank. Does the
same thing with NERO and Adaptec CD Creator Plus.
This started to happen after I moved
the drive on the IDE chain, so I checked to make sure I did not
have have the cable on wrong. Nope, everything is ok. drive is
set up as a slave and my second CD is on the other IDE channel.
Anyone have any suggestions>
Thanks
The first response back was a good suggestion, but
was not the problem. Here's that suggestion:
The primary drive on the same cable
isn't trying to use DMA or anything is it? And when you moved
it, the control panel doesn't say use DMA for that CD, right?
Also, if auto insert notification is
on, that can cause some weird problems when you try to swap to
record.
The payoff came from 'dr@gon.com':
I have the exact same burner and
even though I was told to make it my slave, it wouldn't work. So
it is now my master and my normal cd is the slave. I just can't
run any sound from it unless I use the jack in the front, but
who cares.. it's for burning anyway
Bingo, you did it. I separated the CD
drives on the IDE chain, made the 7200i a master and the #2 CD-Rom
a slave, put both hard drives on one channel, and presto, I was
back in business, Thanks.
[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Saturday,
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