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[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Monday, October 16,
2000
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I have returned from Talladega,
where many are celebrating yesterday's Winston 500 as one of
the best races at this track since NASCAR started using restrictor
plates a few years back.
I remember the early days of Talladega
where the lead would change three or four times per lap and
speeds well over 200 miles per hour were common. I
think Bill Elliott may hold a qualifying record there at
somewhere near 210 MPH. Then the unthinkable
happened. Bobby Allison's car went flying into the
catch fence in front of the grandstand. Tragedy was
avoided and NASCAR acted quickly to try to keep this from
happening again.
The first thing they adopted were
restrictor plates underneath the carburetor, which
immediately limited the amount of horsepower each engine
could make. This slowed the cars down immediately, but
unfortunately took racing out of the race. With an
engine restricted too tightly, when a driver would pull out
to pass, he was headed for the back of the pack and
virtually out of contention. His engine could get any
new air and couldn't make any more power.
NASCAR continued fiddling with the
aerodynamics of the car. Added the roof flaps, which
deployed when a car started to spin and lift off the
ground. While I'm no engineer, the flaps pop up,
working much like the air brake on the wing of an airplane
to settle the car back down. A flying race car is not
a good thing.
NASCAR's latest attempt to help put
the racing back into the race was to change the size of the
restrictor plate opening and add some different air
deflectors or spoilers to the cars. The cars may look
a little funny (versus what we have been used to seeing),
but the result was better racing and hence the chest beating
from yesterday.
With the added raceability of the
cars, throughout the weekend many of the drivers were
touting the possibility of the "big one," which
never materialized. In the past, Talladega has been
the home of some of the most dramatic multi-car crashes in
the sport. While they raced very competitively, maybe
the drivers actually drove smarted in this restrictor plate
race.
The results of yesterday's Winston 500
should help make next year's Daytona 500 more
competitive. The 2000 version of the sport's Super
Bowl was a yawner and you can bet NASCAR wants to fix that
trouble spot.
We've mentioned several times that
Bob Thompson's (ok, Barbara helped, too!) new book, PC
Hardware in a Nutshell would be out sometime in
October. The time is here. You can buy the book
from Amazon
or fatBrain
through this site. We might even get a penny or
two down the road that would help with the cost of running
the site if you buy through these links.
Anyway, I know Bob and Barbara have
labored hard over this book and if I know them, the book
will be factual if nothing else and will provide immediate resources
for upgrading your existing PC or even buying a new
one. Bob's been an invaluable help to me over the
years and the one I blame for getting me so deep into the
tech world. He's added a new website to support this
new book, www.hardwareguys.com.
You can also check out Bob's TTGNET
site here.
I've always found the
"nutshell" books to be a better reference source
than those huge computers books that weigh so much you can
hardly lift them.
I've assembled all of my digital photos from our
trip to Walt Disney World last week and if I put them online
here, I would more than double the amount of space this site
currently occupies. I have some 217 shots, which at
1200 x 1600 and more than 300 k each take up better than 75
megs on //wilma's hard drive. Maybe I will post a few
in the future, just to give you a glimpse.
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[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Wednesday, OCtober
18, 2000
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How long will it be before the majority of us will be working from home rather than traveling to the office? In my business, sometimes I think I could easily work from home, but then at other times I think it would be impossible. The step that would need to be taken for me to work from home would be some sort of easy high-speed video conferencing. I have too much contact with other parties in the office. Although, working from home would eliminate some meetings, I would wager. And that would be a good thing.
The Internet Home Alliance is banking that such an idea for many more of us is not in the too distant future. The Alliance is a group of high-tech companies and retailers that hope to bring us together in one home networked community. Here’s a link to the Internet Home Alliance’s homepage.
You’ve heard it before. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. That might be what Microsoft has up its sleeve in making a major investment in
software maker Corel. Microsoft might be planning to port parts of its new ".Net" over to Linux.
I am sure many of the regular readers to this site
are expecting me to have something to say about last night's
final Presidential debate of this election season.
I really don't have a lot to say. I've already said
it before, but in watching last night's debate I even
further in George W. Bush's camp. Vice-President Gore
is such a bully. George Bush, in my opinion, connects
much better with us. When he speaks, it's like he's
talking to each one of us individually and not talking down
to us. He comes across like he's on our level.
It's too bad the election of the leader of the free world
has come down to who is a better communicator or who comes
across better from the television set or speaker's
podium. But, in this on the run society of 10
second sound bites, that's what happened.
What really matters is the people who our next President
surrounds himself with and in this area I have more
confidence in Bush. He's already won a lot of people's
confidence by selecting Dick Cheney as a running mate.
I am sure his other cabinet appointments will be equally
impressive.
I also believe that Bush will do a better job at getting
lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to compromise while
Gore would probably create more gridlock.
There were a couple of stories on the Wall Street
Journal's Editorial Page website that I enjoyed reading:
The Winston No Bull 5 races have been announced
for the 2001 season. In this unique promotion, if a
certain driver wins the race he wins $1 million, then a race
fan also wins $1 million. The races for 2001 are:
Winston paid the No Bull money three times this year,
making three lucky fans very happy.
I never think about the fact that I might run into to
someone at the races who reads these pages. An email
from Glenn Harness [harnessg@racindeals.com]
made me consider this fact recently.
If you were in the infield
media center at all on Friday, you probably saw me. Wish
I'd known you were gonna be there; would have liked to
meet you.
Anyway, as you say, it was one
of the best races at Talladega. And you all got to
give away another couple million bucks...<grin>
I did make an appearance in the infield media center
on mid-afternoon Friday. Wish I had known to look you
up. I was the grey headed guy (complete with mostly
grey beard) talking with the Associated Press reporter Mike
Harris in case you happened to lookup. Maybe I can
remember to drop you a note prior to the next race I attend.
Gary Berg and I have enjoyed an ongoing conversation on the Olympus D-490 and downloading digital photos.
I believe Sandisk makes a
parallel port CF reader.
I feel your pain about NT and
USB - I've got a notebook with a USB port which is useless
since I run NT 4.0 on the notebook...
I wonder how fast the parallel reader would be?
Why am I even asking. There won't be many occasions
like the trip to Disney where I will need to download a
large amount of photos before I return home to the safety of
my USB reader. If so, I'll live with the serial
connection.
If my notebook had an USB port I could always upgrade
to Windows 2000, but SanDisk has no W2K drivers yet. I
think I will be fine.
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[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Thursday, October
19, 2000
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I must be into doing all kinds of
different things these days.
The latest to be added to my list is
my agreeing to serve as an assistant election judge for the
general election at my precint. Hey, the hours are
long and the pay is meager. What more could you ask.
The training meeting, I would call it
more an informational meeting versus a training session, was
held today at our county's main library. I attended
the meeting. It may have been required and I get a big
$20 check for attending...hold me back. Anyway, the
main thing I learned at this meeting is that our director of
elections may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer...her
front porch light might not be buring, you get the
picture. It appears, however, there are some very
competent people who work with the elections commission, so
all is not lost.
I guess I am convincing myself this is
a good thing to do as yet another way I can serve my
community. We'll see after my first experience.
Where is this one coming
from? General
Motors is going to spend $10 million to commission a
study to find out if all of these devices we can now use in
our car while driving are a distraction. Save yourself
some money, GM. Send me $5 mil and I will tell you the
answer is definitely yes. I'm one that's been
distracted while driving down the road and talking on my
cell phone. Can't imagine what will happen when we
have computers in our cars. Imagine playing a game of
FreeCell at 80 miles per hour. Now, that might be
interesting.
If you're using the Microsoft Internet
Information Server, they say there's a
serious security hole that needs patching. This
messages seem to come very frequently from M$ these
days. Here's a direct
link to the information on the patch. Fortunately,
my web server is maintained offsite and uses FreeBSD and
Apache.
The flaw in IIS is not Microsoft's
only security problem. The latest reported security
problem comes with Internet Explorer 5.05 and Outlook
Express 5.0. Georgi Guninski, a Bulgarian computer-bug
hunter, found the flaw that allows attackers to gain
read access to remote systems by sending an e-mail
containing a java script that opens up the system.
Somehow, I missed this Al
Gore campaign speech:
| Good afternoon.
I'm Al Gore, and I'd like to tell you about myself.
I know a lot about
hardship, because I came into this world as a poor
black child in a tiny town in the backwoods of
Tennessee. I was born in a log cabin that I built
with my own hands. I taught myself to read by
candlelight and helped support my 16 brothers and
sisters by working summers as a deck hand on a
Mississippi River steamboat.
My mother taught me the value
of education, so every day, I would walk 5 miles to
a one-room schoolhouse. I was a mischievous, fun
loving scamp, thought I never dreamed that one day,
my youthful escapades would serve as the inspiration
for "Huckleberry Finn."
Back then, black folks in the
South were second-class citizens. One day, a
traveling minister came through town, and I asked
him if any one was ever going to do something to
guarantee civil rights for all Americans. Well, I
guess I made an impression. You see, the minister's
name was Martin Luther King, Jr.
My father was a United States
Senator. He once perched me on his knee and said,
"Son, if you work hard and listen to your mama,
someday you can live in a plush hotel in Washington,
D.C., and go to an exclusive prep school."
But life of privilege was not
for me. After getting my high school diploma, I took
a job in a hot, dirty textile mill. I was so
appalled at the treatment of the workers there that
I organized a union. Later, that experience inspired
a movie - which is why, to this day, my close
friends at the AFL-CIO call me "Norma
Rae."
When word got out what an 18
year old factory worker had done, Harvard called and
offered me a scholarship. I captained the hockey
team to four consecutive national championships, but
I also played football and was good enough to win
the Heisman Trophy.
During my college years, I
lived in a housing project and moonlighted playing
lead guitar for a little rock band. You may have
heard of it - the Rolling Stones. But there was a
war going on, and I felt I had to serve my country.
So I enlisted in the U. S. Army and went to Vietnam.
I was deeply opposed to the war, but I did my duty
as a soldier and came back home with the Medal of
Honor and the Croix de Guerre.
Regretfully someone from
Carthage Tennessee had to take my place.
When I got back, I took a long
journey across this great land of ours. I've crossed
the deserts bare, man, I've breathed the mountain
air, man, I've traveled, I've done my share, man,
I've been everywhere, man.
And the people I met at truck
stops and campgrounds and homeless shelters on that
journey all said the same thing: "Al, we need
you in Washington."
I knew they were right, but
first I had to take care of some other
business---building the World Trade Center, founding
the Audubon Society, doing the clinical research
that proved smoking caused cancer, and coming up
with the recipe for Mrs. Field's chocolate chip
cookies.
Finally, I deferred to the
demands of the people of Tennessee and allowed them
to elect me to the House of Representatives and the
Senate. And then one winter day nearly nine years
ago, for no particular reason, I answered the call
of the people once again and took the oath of office
as Vice President of the United States.
Since then, I've been part of
the most successful administration in American
history. Many times Bill Clinton has been pondering
some grave decision and has asked me what to do. And
when I would give him my thoughts, he would
invariable say, "Of course. That's brilliant.
Why didn't I think of that?"
During the darkest days of the
impeachment battle, the president told me he only
wished he had listened when I told him to stay away
from that dark-haired intern.
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Friday, October 20,
2000
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One of the nice things about having a CD burner is that you
can take your vast selection of music CDs and make your own
compilation CD. Put your favorite songs on several CDs
so you don't have to carry around this huge bag of CDs.
One of the downsides is the amount of space on your hard
drive these wav files take up before you burn them to a
CD-R. Enter the MP3 compression format, which crunches a
wav file to about 10 percent of its original size. I
want to rip songs from a CD and store them in MP3 and then be
able to write them to a CD without first having to make the
conversion over to wav.
The Nero CD
burning program is my CD burning program of choice and
I've had extremely good luck with this program, but I am
looking for a package that will allow you to send MP3 songs to
a CD without first having to convert them to wav files.
Music Match seems
to be just what I am looking for to accomplish this.
Actually, Music Match will do much more. It can serve as
a desktop jukebox, convert files between formats and write to
the CD-R. But all is not rosy in Mudville. Music
Match has done all that it's promised so far, but it will not
write to the CD burner.
At first I thought my problem was with the software, but
now I think the problem may not be with Music Match, but
rather with Windows 2000 Professional. After a bit of
head scratching I wanted to try to fix the problem, so I
started out by dumping the program a couple of times and
reinstalling. Heck, I even downloaded the latest version in
beta format and got the same results. The CD-R is
showing as not available in the CD-R options, while at other
places in the software package the drive does show up.
The reason I think W2K may be the problem is that I decided
to install Music Match on another machine that's running Win
98 and it had no problems writing to the CD-R. I checked
the Hewlett Packard tech support site and it claims no W2K
driver update is needed to the 8100, which is the CD burner on
the machine I'm having trouble with.
The HP 8100 works fine with Nero, but not with Music Match
or other similar programs (I tested several yesterday).
All problems now point to W2K.
I left a message on Music Match's tech support forum and
attempted to search for the problem on the
internet.
My suspicions is that Music Match might suggest that I
replace the CD burner driver, but I am leery to change the
driver, because, as I mentioned, Nero is working great and I
don't want to screw that one up.
This could be a big weekend for Bobby Labonte on the
NASCAR Winston Cup circuit.
The Winston Cup teams have just four races left this
season, including this weekend's event at Rockingham.
Bobby current enjoys
more than a 200 point lead in his chase for the Winston
Cup and he has the chance to come out of the sandhills of
North Carolina thinking about his acceptance speech in New
York City.
Rockingham has been a "good" track for Pontiacs
and Labonte (who, by the way, drives a Pontiac) qualified
second. He'll be looking to pad his points lead and stay
out of trouble on Sunday. You can bet winning will not
the be foremost thing on his mind. NASCAR's point system
rewards consistency, so Labonte wants to leave North Carolina
with his lead in tact.
On the political front it seems like all is not so
rosy with Al Gore and his boss. Bill Clinton has been
obviously missing from the campaign trail (that's a good
thing) and that maybe Gore is trying to put some distance
between the two. There's a story in today's
New York Times that sheds some light on this subject and
further infers the two hardly speak anymore.
I took a quick glance at the Presidential poll numbers
today and there's quite a difference between what Portrait
of America and the Gallup
organization are reporting. Portrait (46-41) shows
the race a bit tighter than Gallup (50-40), but both
(thankfully) have Bush in the lead and both are using rolling
averages, which some say is more accurate.
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[Sunday] [Monday] [Tuesday] [Wednesday] [Thursday]
[Friday] [Saturday]
Saturday, October
21, 2000
| I spent the morning
participating in the political process.
A group of us set out in various areas
of the city to deliver brochures to homes on the Republican
candidates that will appear on this year's
ballot.
Some brain trust within the Republican
party here in Winston-Salem had targeted the areas we should
hit and armed us with maps and street lists. We set
out, placed the packets on door knobs and then returned to
the campaign office to take the pressure off our barking
dogs.
Forsyth County is also participating
in a pilot program that will allow you to vote prior to
election day. In the past you used to have to have a
good excuse if you wanted to vote absentee, but this program
allows you to cast your vote absentee with no reason.
You can vote early just because you want to. I
personally believe this is a program that will invite
fraud. If the absentee voters aren't identified at the
local polling places on election day, then you might be able
to "vote early and vote often."
I don't want to be crow too early, but
now it seems Music Match is recognizing my CD burner.
I don't know what I did, but at least it's allowing me to
burn a test CD. I'm interested to see the
results. Heck, at least I'm further along that I was
yesterday. Just one day ago Music Match was telling me
that I didn't have a CD burner attached to this machine,
which as I have mentioned is incorrect.
Wish me luck.
Here's an interesting marketing
angle for NASCAR and its drivers. If you live in West
Virginia you soon be able to show your racing allegiance
with a special license plate. New York also sells
NASCAR themed license plates.
But it ain't cheap to bear the NASCAR
plate on your vehicle. As an example, the West
Virginia plate will cost $65, which
includes the normal registration fee, the $25 plate fee and
a one-time $10 fee. NASCAR will get about a quarter of
the $25 plate fee. The drivers included in this
program are Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon, Dale Jarrett, Ricky
Rudd and Rusty Wallace and, of course, there's also a
generic NASCAR plate.
This program was challenged
in court, but a judge recently gave the program the
green light.
This could open up a
whole new source of revenue for states. Use the
license plate as an advertising vehicle and make some money
for the state coffers. What's next?
Some NASCAR
math. If
Bobby Labonte finishes at least 10th in each of the four
remaining Winston Cup races it won't matter what his
challengers do on the track. He'll be your new Winston
Cup champ.
This story had a
local angle, so
I had to share it with you. Business Week's Amey
Stone and David Shook set
out to compare how the lustre is off of the dot.com IPOs
from a year ago and went looking for some IPO that was not
internet related for their comparison to the digital world.
This
brought them to Krespy
Kreme, a doughnut company located right here in
Winston-Salem, which has been expanding the last few
years. Krispy Kreme decided to go public earlier this
year and it's been a rocket ride ever since. The
dot.coms have been on a submarine ride during the same
period.
Here are
the numbers:
Krispy
Kreme's value has increased more than 300 percent since going
public this year while at the same time the average techno
stock has tumbled somewhere around 50 percent.
Business Week has a table
that painfully illustrates this tale.
Seems there's more than sugar in those
sweet delights.
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