Beginning another F1 Season

Finally, the short mild winter has broken and we can at begin to think about racing again. NASCAR started a few weeks ago in Daytona, fun race, what other series can you cross the finish line upside down and on fire. However, now we start the top class. Melbourne, Australia is the start to the season. Qualifying was uneventful but interesting. Kimi put Ferrari back on the pole - perhaps his car will not fail him this year and the iceman can claim the top seat in more than a few races and get what everyone thinks he should be able to accomplish - world championship. Two time world champ Alonso may have something to say about it, he qualified in P2 and it will likely be a good start to the race. As readers of this site will know, I switched personal brands last year, going from BMW to Benz. I've now got torn allegiances, I've been a BMW fan for quite some time. I'm not really into my car as much as I was my BMWs. I do like Alonso, and now that he's at MB, perhaps I should ally myself there. The BMWs are seated well, sitting well at 3 and 5. MB sitting 2 and 4. Should be an exciting start to the first race. The big 3 are still atop the list - Ferrari, MB and BMW. It cerainly seems like Renault's ride atop the standings were dependent on Alonso, and their slide seems imminent. We go green at 11PM Eastern, less than 12 hours from now!!

Crazy Drying Dog

Yesterday we gave Peanut a bath. When we do this - he must dry himself by running around the house at warp speed rubbing his face on the various rugs throughout the house.

Fun with planes

Take off out of Detroit 40 minutes late. I've got a window seat and I notice after 20 minutes of flying we're still quite low. Capt comes on - the gear won't go up. We turn around and land again. Currently at gate no idea of status. I guess give the choice of gear not up or gear not down - I'll take gear not up.

- 10:00PM Update I'm in the hotel - flying tomorrow. Hopefully will be less exciting.

Rutgers beats Louisville 28-25

Well Kristie said I had to write since I had said that the Cardinals looked better. It was certainly true for the first half, heading into the locker room 25-14, but Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano must have really been inspiring in the locker room. Rutgers defense came out swarming. They completely shut down the high-powered Louisville offense. The defense was swarming to the ball, seemed like every tackle involved 4 or 5 defenders. They were absolutely a team on a mission. Their own offense did a very good job of scoring 21 unanswered points - 14 in the second half. To quote Lou Holtz they controlled both sides of the line of scrimmage. Interestingly this is one of only a few football games I have watched from beginning to end.

The last game I really sat and watched - besides Super Bowls was Penn Trafford losing to Upper St. Clair in 1997 WPIAL AAAA finals. That game ended very similar to the Rutgers game. At the end of the PT game the kicker shanked an extra point that would have tied the game. At the end of the Rutgers the kicker shanked a field goal attemp, but lucky for Rutgers there was a defensive penalty and the kicker got another shot at it. He split the uprights and gave them the lead. The ensuing kickoff was quite exciting as the kicker needed to help out with the tackle, the students swarmed the field and had to be sent back to their seats. Fortunately the last play of the game appropriately ended with another sack of the quarterback. The final play was more impressive since Rutgers sent 6 defensive player deep to protect agains the hail-mary the fiver front guys just blew through the line and once again swarmed the QB! GAME OVER and the fans poured onto the field.


It was quite a game.

Rutgers vs. Louisville

Well I haven't ever been much of a college football fan. However, since Kristie (my daughter) is now attending Rutgers, I decided to watch the game. Currently the score is 15-7 Cardinals with only a few minutes to go in the first quarter. Louisville does appear to be the better team. Rutgers special teams don't seem to be really on top of their game. The main reason I'm writing is that the game is on ESPN-HD. For the leading sports network in the nation this is terrible coverage. The announcers are OK, however the camera angles, zoom in, zoom out, over use of the skycam is very very irritating. In fact Louisville just faked a punt, and the cameras didn't even catch the action. HD provides WIDE-SCREEN visibility - use it - don't constantly zoom all the way into a full head shot. Let me see part of the field, let me watch the play develop. I haven't watched much football but I don't remember the Superbowl coverage last year being this bad.

New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge

Yesterday we tried this. It is one of three lighthouse challenges in the area. Long Island and Maryland being the other two that are nearby. There are 11 lights open to the public in New Jersey. We managed to complete 7 of the 11 in one day. While the other 4 were possible today, poor planning left them at opposite ends of the state and would have required a minimum of 5 more hours of driving to complete the task. What we did complete involved quite a lot of driving - 375 miles to be accurate. Completed in just under 8 hours of driving, and nearly 11 hours of time including walking around and taking pictures at all of the lights. Next year we'll plan it better and see if we can complete the task. I learned enough about Fresnel lenses to peak my curiosity - now I want to go see if I can get a personal view of a First Order Lens which is greater than 7 foot tall.

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We started at the light closest to home, again in retrospect this may have not been a good starting point, Sea Girt. Sea Girt is another small town on The Jersey Shore. It was a very cute little town, with an interesting small light. Much more like a house with a light stuck on top, as opposed to the imposing structures most think of when hearing the word lighthouse. It did have a nice Forth Order Lens. That's just sunlight being reflected around the room.

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Next we drove on down to Barnegat. Barnegat is a tall lighthouse much like what you would anticipate. As you can tell from this picture it was hard from up close to get a good shot of it, there's another in the slideshow that's from a little further away . This light is way out there, a good long ride from the Garden State Parkway out across the inlet then out to the light. The line to climb was fairly long, so in the interest of time we decided not to wait and walk all the way up. We did take a few pictures, including

Kellie with a bright blue tongue.

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Next we went down to Tucker's Island Lighthouse. This is considered a replica lighthouse as the original fell into the sea in 1927. This had some of the better exhibits. Including a Third Order Fresnel Lens.

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We then headed down to Atlantic City and the Absecon lighthouse. This is another tall lighthouse. This one we walked up and down, and got some interesting shots from the top. After seeing the light we decided to drive around AC a bit and get some dinner while we were there. We determined something quick and known was good so we did Ruby Tuesdays. We wrapped up in AC and headed south again.

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Next stop - Hereford - this is one of only a few pictures from this light. We wanted to be sure to get to the next stop before 6PM and we only stayed for a few minutes.

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After a fairly long drive into a very remote area we finally reached East Point Lighthouse only 5 minutes before 6. This was a very run down lighthouse just beginning the restoration. It will be interesting to go back in a few years to see what they accomplish.

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Last for us was Cape May Lighthouse. A very tall lighthouse. We arrived just after sundown, so could not get very good pictures. From afar it looked as though some silhouettes might be possible but it was not to be.

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All in all a rather challenging day, hence the name, but we had a good time, had some free slurpees - hence the blue tongue - and all in all are looking forward to next year.

A great sporting weekend

Although I am not a *huge* sports fan. I did watch quite a lot this weekend.

Baseball -

Watched the Tigers finish off the Yankees which was great. Added bonus is that a lot of my Detroit clients should be in a good mood this week. The Mets wrapped up the sweep of the Dodgers, let's see if Tommy LaSorda will be so excited about the playoffs now that his Dodgers have been eliminated.

Formula 1 -

Final sports item of the weekend was early early Sunday (afternoon Japan time) I caught it on Tivo - when Michael Schumacher went Kerr-Blammo giving Fernando Alonso and Renault the win and a 10 point lead in the points, now all he has to do is score 1 point to take the championship. Next year he moves to West McLaren Mercedes so I can pull for him to beat Kimi who's taking first seat from Michael at Ferrari.

Coca Cola Blak

Tried this during the week for lunch. 1 Word - Nasty. To great individual drinks are fused together. Coke and Coffee - should be perfect for me - NOT!!!.

Driving to school - 1 hour and 2 minutes

Traffic in New Jersey is absolutely ridiculous. There was an accident somewhere in the vicinity of my house on Rt 33. Traffic backed up all over the area, it took me 27 minutes to drive the 8 miles to my daughter's school. When returning home I could not go the way that I wanted due to the accident and was re-routed all the way around the neighborhood. 1 hour and 2 minutes I finally arrived back at home. So much for a nice relaxing day off. RIDICULOUS.

Dover 400

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Well I'm now sitting here in the grandstands waiting for the Dover 400 to start. . Green flag is supposed to fly at 1:10PM. Currently 11:10AM and we have drizzling rain - which will not be good if it continues. We'll be here all day and night.

Travel here was a bit of a nightmare - the first 120 miles used up the first 110 minutes. The next five miles used up the next 90 minutes. What a royal disaster - we spent 40 minutes on the shoulder waiting to exit then they closed the exit ramps closest to the track were closed - lots full I guess. Finally went and parked at a commercial park with shuttle to track. We should have just gone directly to the outer lot. Would have saved at least 40-50 minutes maybe even more.

12:30PM - The sun is out. Hard shadows are evident. The sun has been playing peek-a-boo with the clouds all morning. Now with the race only 40 minutes away it makes a shining appearance. If it stays like this we'll go green on time. That's one thing I have to say about F1. Unless it is a monsoon they run.

Speaking of F1 - I'm going to have to change teams. No longer can I route for BMW-Sauber. It will have to be West McLaren Mercedes. Well at least Juan Pablo is gone (I never liked him even when he was at Williams BMW), of course Kimi will be gone soon too - no idea who the team will be next year. Pedro De La Rosa (sp?) looks to be a good driver in Montoya's spot not sure who will be riding #1 and who will be #2, or more accurately #5 and #6, as McLaren looks like a lock for P3 in constructors. It will be interesting to see how this season pans out if Michael can get his last championship or not. I've been anti-Michael since his 'world tour' in 2004 - but as much as I like Alonso I think seeing Michael go out with a world championship. I didn't like the way Ferrari handled the press for Michael's retirement at all.

Back to NASCAR - 1:45PM - 50 laps complete. 3 Yellows so far. The sun has stayed mostly out. Good racing so far. #99 made a good pass and really extended his lead before most recent yellow. Almost caught up with end of field to put them a lap down but not quite. Tony Stewart is out already - out in wreck.

4:45 - Great pass right at the end Jeff Burton passed Matt Kenseth for the win. Exciting finish. Now waiting for the bus in the pouring down rain. What a joy! Into each life a little diversity must fall. All in all a fun day.

The Dark Side

That's the word uttered by a few of my friends already in response to my new car - Mercedes C280.
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The old BMW 528i is gone! No longer am I tied to the brand. It has been 12 years and 3 models - '92 750il, '95 318i, '00 528i. The behaviour of the dealers and several other factors drove me away. The BMW had given me more than its fair share of fun and heartache, but now its gone. For those interested - I came very close to a Nissan Maxima - which was a very interesting car. This CVT thing seemed very cool - it pulled hard off the line and just kept going and going - no shifting - unsure of the reliability factor of a belt-driven transmission. However, at the second instantiation of negotiations wherein they were giving me less than 1/2 blue book for my car they came back to me and stated that the Car Fax showed that I was not the original owner of the car. This quite honestly infuriated me, as I am and the problem is I had to change the registration from PA to NJ when I moved here. I demanded my keys and stormed out.
I went to Mercedes, essentially dragged a salesman up from his desk to sell me a car - took a test drive and bought it. The C230 didn't have enough guts, and although the C280 is a Luxury Sedan instead of a Sport Sedan, it handles well enough - as I am not actually taking the thing to the track. After purchasing the car I went back to the Nissan dealer and spoke to the salesman. "I told you I was buying a car today, and I bought a car today!" It isn't totally tricked out - only a few options above base. One cool thing is the 6-CD changer in the glove box. It plays MP3s from CD-RWs. Since I don't have a huge music collection - I can essentially put everything I have in the car with me. Kind of cool. No satellite radio - I need to determine if I will mount my old unit, or get a new unit. Its definitely faster than my 5, handles a little crisper in the slower turns, but is a little more floaty on lane changes over 70 or so. And so a new adventure begins.

The Fantastic Four - Finally a decent movie on HBO - Almost

Imagine my delight when I clicked on HBO this evening, and actually saw a fairly recent movie that had the potential to be good, on at a reasonable hour. No more "Three Men and a Baby" or other 20 year old movies. I was always a Marvel comics fan, big on Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four. Unfortunately in one of the first action sequences there was a flaw. When "The Thing" was trying to rescue the man who was about to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, he stepped into the highway to protect him. One of the key scenes was when he lowered his shoulder into an oncoming truck. Well unfortunately there is no commercial traffic allowed on the Brooklyn Bridge, so this truck should have never been on the bridge to need to be stopped. Just saw the nice cameo from Stan Lee delivering the mail.

Another dank dark dreary day in Detroit

Man this place can get depressing. Woke up at 6:00 went and ran 1.5 miles. Came back to my room and tried to watch TV - too overcast killed thwe satellite signal. I threw open the curtains to see another dreary day here in Detroit. Went in to work and now getting coffee. Looked outside - I think the sun is above the horizon, but you'd never know it. What a miserable day. Well at least I am in the climate controlled biosphere. Until we moved to NJ I didn't realize how nice it was to see the sun regularly.

Hollywood Stupidity

So this evening we turned on ABC's 9/11 introspective. This rant isn't about what you'd think. In the first 10 minutes, I watched several people walking into and out of various aiports. They had playing in the background (ala Airplane) "The white zone is for the immediate loading and unloading of passengers, there is no parking in the white zone". I don't know what airport this was supposed to be as I wasn't paying strict attention to the screen, however those who know me know that I have done quite a lot of travel in the past 10 years, and I for one have never heard these words over a PA system at any airport through which I have transitted. Has anyone out there actually heard this announcement? I think it shows a lack of thinking, and a strong dose of "well everyone else has it in there it must be right" attitude.

SUV Backovers

So now Paula Zahn, along with our favorite NY Senator Clinton, has a cause - parents and grandparents backing over their children in SUVs. Now this is undeniably a tragedy, however they (CNN and Paula) are attempting to force auto makers into installing back up cameras as standard equipment on 'large SUV' type vehicles.

The story focused on one child that was killed when his grandmother dropped him off and then he ran behind the SUV and she backed over him. The child was in the 4-5 age bracket. What sense did this grandmother have allowing a small child out of the car to 'run' behind the car. Did she ever hear of holding a childs hand and making sure they were being watched by an adult who could supervise this child. Would she allow this child to cross the street alone - probably not.

Most of the kids involved in these kinds of accidents were reportedly of similar age range - i.e. SHOULD BE SUPERVISED'!!! Again - according to the report - most of these accidents involved parents.

When I am driving in a car anywhere near where any kids are located - mine included who are old enough to know better - I am very cautious that I know precisely where they are and can visually see them all or have some adult verify they are all standing clear before I move backward or forward in my car.

Let's not delve further into being a nanny state. Have parents and grandparents take responsibility for guarding these young children. Let's not blame the "evil auto manufacturers" for making killer vehicles simply because the owners were too anxious to do *whatever*, that overseeing their child's safety was a secondary issue.

Airport Security

Notice - The Transportation Security Administration has determined that the airport at Port au Prince, Haiti does not maintain adequate airline security screening measures.

This requires no comment.

Ditto Bandara Ngurah Rai in Bali Indonesia.

Early Morning Airport Adventures

Yet another exciting trip to LaGuardia. Arose at 4:40a and left the house at 5:15a for a 7:21a flight. rain was quite heavy so I knew it would be a challenging drive. Go up to and on the Driscoll Bridge on the Garden State when there was a Jeep Cherokee or whatever facing the wrong direction in the right lane, silly SUV driver. They do seem to forget that physics does still apply to them, and the ability to "go" doesn't always equate with the ability to turn and stop. Well at least they have taken away the title of arrogant overly aggressive driver from us BMW owners. Anyway, I migrated left to avoid the pretty lights, and got so tied up in traffic I missed the offramp for the outerbridge crossing. No worries, jump on NJ Turnpike up to the Goethals. Zipped across as traffic wasn't too bad over to Staten Island or onto Verrazzano into Brooklyn, then I heard the traffic report - overturned garbage truck on BQE by the Brooklyn Bridge - aaaahhhhhh. In fact it was quite bad, and I'm not too sure about othe routes so I stuck it out, fortunately the truck was going the other way so we mostly had rubber necking and residual back-ups from people exiting and finding other routes. At about 6:40 I called home to say I was likely going to miss my plane. Then once we cleared the accident traffic which subsided shortly after passing the scene - the Koskiosko Bridge (aka the vortex of driving retardation) was clear sailing and there was virtually no more traffic the rest of the way to LaGuardia. I pulled into the parking lot according to the time stamp on the parking ticket at 6:55am - 26 minutes before flight time - still an outside chance. I made a mad dash for the security line expecting the worst and hoping I could ask to be moved to the front. Not necessary - due to the no fluids, gels, pastes or other such substance rule, the lines at security are quite reduced as people are now checking more luggage. My wait time (unlike last week in Philadelphia) was zero - only the time it took to show my "papers" and clear security. I walked onto the plane at 7:02 according to my phone, seven minutes from car to plane, that has to be a record at LaGuardia. Again thanks to more luggage in the belly of the plane, I easily found overhead space for both my laptop bag and suitcase. I normally would not place both in the overhead but the plane was nearly full, and I doubted anyone else would be seeking space so I took the opportunity to have a bit more leg room.

This is about the 5th or 6th time I've flown out of LaGuardia and been seriously doubting my ability to catch my plane midway through my drive, only to have things turn around in the end and make it. Add to it the fact that I even squeezed in a bit of excercise - I'd say it was at least a 400 yard run from parking to security carrying 2x25lb bags, that had my heart pumping. All in all an interesting morning.

New Computer - A Mac Mini

Last weekend I finally went out and made the move. The home computer was a P3-900 HP. It worked but it was very slow. As with many Windows machines, quite a lot of cruft had snuck in over the years, it didn't have USB 2.0, and it just needed to go. It may ultimately turn into a linux machine but then again, maybe not.

Now to the Mac. Much like the ads it just works. We picked it up on Saturday evening, and plugged it in. Plugged in my wireless mouse and keyboard, monitor and external 160GB drive off of the PC and fired it up. Worked great, and the USB2.0 external drive was smoking fast when connected to a USB2.0 capable machine. Her iPod needed to be re-initialized and updated to work with the Mac, but after that was done, the movement of files between the iPod and the Mac was smoking fast, again USB2.0 wins. I moved all of our pictures and music over in rather short order. My younger daughter pulled in the video from her first gym meet, picked out only the pieces she wanted and burned it to DVD. It took a while to actually render and create the DVD but it worked just fine. She also took a batch of pictures of the dog and created a video of his various stages of hair.

Yesterday I burned all my old data to DVD for safe keeping. There was a slight problem copying data direct from the external drive and burning it to DVD, so I had to copy it to the internal drive before going to DVD. I didn't investigate the problem very much since when I copied to internal and burned it worked just fine. The interesting thing that surprised me a little bit was that I was able to snap the DVD into my office laptop and it worked just fine, not sure why I thought it wouldn't work but I was a bit suspicious.

One other problem it has was in setting up quicken the setup just didn't want to import the data from my old PC, and instead insisted on breaking my link to the bank for synchronization. Ultimately I had to call the bank and have them mail me a new pin. I did some reading about the Mac version of Quicken, so downloaded the PC version onto my laptop and migrated to that. Still need to wait until the new pin comes in to synchronize, but I think that will ultimately be a better solution anyway.

I took all of my mp3 files, converted them to m4a files and saved about 50MB of space. The ripping of CDs through iTunes could not be simpler. I was always a MusicMatch user, until I started using iTunes - far superior interface. I followed the directions for creating a shared folder for keeping all of the iTunes data so that I don't end up with multiple copies of the same thing and needlessly waste disk space.

As for iPhoto - (Apple likes the i) - I've done a bit of reading and the sharing of photos between users doesn't seem to be quite seemless, but that will be the next thing that I tackle.

Network file sharing seems to just work. I turned it on so that I could move files between the two machines and was again impressed that I didn't need to do anything fancy to make it work. Somewhere along the line, some security patch or somethign prevented me from mounting drives from my home machine on my laptop. Happily, I can once again save my personal files from my laptop, quickly and easily to my home machine. I need to investigate encryption, but haven't had the chance to do so yet.

A few times I've clicked the terminal application to get a window into the underlying Unix type OS. Seems to look like the real deal, but I haven't really investigated all of the details yet. All in all I am quite pleased - I'd give it 8 out of 10, the shared iPhoto, and problems with Quicken knock it down a few pegs.

New York Mets - Hope I don't jinx it

Well it is starting to look like it just might be a reality. 14 Games ahead with 41 to play. MLB Standings show the Magic Number as 28 vs. the Phillies. With all of that a comparison to the cross town rivals would put them only 1/2 game ahead. Mets @ 73-48, dreaded Yankess @ 72-48. As most who know me know I've been travelling extensively to Detroit. It would certainly be interesting if it turned out to be a Mets-Tigers series. I haven't been watching closely following the personnel movements or which facets of the team are working or not, I'm just enjoying catching the results and watching the highlights. It's been 20 years since we won the big one. The season feels a lot like 1986 - commanding lead for most of the season. Everybody talking about the team, etc. In 1986 I was in Pittsburgh and didn't get to fully enjoy it, except for the playoffs and series. This is a lot more fun this time. Let's just hope they keep it up and stay on track and keep the key guys healthy.

Spyware and other malware

I was speaking with the team this weak and once again I'm puzzled. Why is it that spyware is such an ongoing problem, and to quote some, "why do we have to load additional software simply to protect us from the inability of operating system developers to create decent software." I had to guide my mom into removing 20+ high impact nasty bits from her system. This was identified by Microsoft's Defender. Point One - To me it seems that spyware should be as simple to alleviate from our systems as viruses. Symantec, CA and McAfee along with some other niche players all do a very good job at protecting us from viruses - including from mail and web sites. There continue to be new viruses, trojans and such, and in general they respond to these fairly quickly. Much of the Spyware that I have encountered does load files onto my system, it should be rather easy to develop signatures that detect this spyware, tag it and alert when it attempts to save. If there is a financial reason for buying new elements of protection, that I can at least understand, then simply charge a fee for enabling the spyware protection, it shouldn't require different software. Point Two - There seems to be an explosion of this nasty stuff and the load that it places on the system is rather high. I am still curious as to what this software 'spies' upon, what information it collects and what is the value to the producers. Many of the warnings about this stuff warn of personal information being stolen and abused, but I for one have never read or heard of a report of this happening. All are accused to collect marketing information - what they are collecting is obviously what web sites are browsed and such which I suppose could be used by marketeers, but I don't see reputable companies looking to the likes of comet cursor for marketing data. Then again sleaze associates with sleaze and I suppose all of them simply share data amongst themselves.

Diagnosis

Turns out I have a Distal Radius Fracture. I now have a bright blue half cast as they call it. I have finger motion although limited. I can type at about 60% of normal pace. Mousing is a bit tougher. All in all not too bad an outcome. I return to the Dr. on 6/23. I've kept all of my travel arrangements and schedule, I only missed a day of work. It sometimes hurts a bit in the morning, but not enough to cause me to use anything stronger than tylenol.

Injured

Well I guess I need to learn to slow down a bit. Yesterday we went into Manhattan to walk around buy some knock-offs and basically hang out. While walking in the area of city hall my daughter started walking on some posts. She does gymnastics so she was going pretty well. I decided to try as well. I've done it before so figured it would be easy. I started to go along and Kellie decided to pause for a moment. I told her to go to the next one as I stepped, but she didn't. In an effort to not knock her down I lost my balance and fell (I am not a gymnast). I managed to not hit my head but did land rather hard on my hands and both of my wrists hurt. We walked towards Chinatown and my right wrist started hurting more and more. I started to get flushed and our neighbor went in to get some ice at McD's. Putting ice on it really helped.

After applying ice we noticed we were standing outside the Chinatown Health Clinic. Great we'll go in, get an ace bandage and I'll be fine. We went into the first floor, and this was the women's section so they sent us up to floor 2. We'd tried to explain the situation to the woman behind the counter and explained that we wanted an Ace bandage, and would be happy to pay for it. She went into the back and returned with a handful of band-aids. I guess all she heard was bandage, my daughter and her friend almost laughed out loud. We tried to explain wrapping my arm, she said they didn't have anything. We walked until we found a pharmacy. I purchased an Ace bandage, and an instant ice pak. Wrapped my wrist, popped a few advils and it felt much better.

We walked around a bit more and my arm started to hurt some more. I unwrapped and checked and there was a good sized knot on my wrist. We determined an x-ray may be in order so we headed for the ferry. On the way to the ferry we (meaning my wife and neighbor) purchased two more purses. We caught the 5:00 ferry and my arm was really starting to hurt. We drove to the emergency room, hung out for a bit, got an x-ray. Diagnosis: broken! I now have a splint, and bandage and will likely need a cast, I'm going to an orthopaedist on Tuesday. I hope no pins or anything.

More Tuesday!!

Our new dog Peanut

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Yes that's a dog. Our new dog. He is a long haired Chihuahua - very small, very cute. Click the link to see the slides. The picture with my foot also contains the plastic page divider from my Franklin Planner - he is that small. 2 Lbs, and no more than a foot long - fully extended. He is yippy, bouncy and energetic - everything you'd expect from a miniature puppy.

Charlie Sheen

Listening to commercials on HBO there was a tidbit from the upcoming Bill Mahr episode: "Don't be surprised if you marry Charlie Sheen and he turns out to be Charlie Sheen! Come on the guy paid for hookers with personal checks". Interesting that I made a similar point a few weeks ago: 9/11 Government Conspiracies

Nancy Grace

She has entered the list of people that annoy me quite a lot. I don't even really watch her all that much. When I am sitting in the hotel I click around the dial looking for stuff - and in a 'full service' Marriott this is quite limiting. Invariably I wander into her blather. All she does is scream at the screen trying to appear what annoyed, upset, sad, I can't tell what she's trying to project, her emotions all appear the same on the screen. I'm also convinced that without her war paint she would have to sneak up on a glass of water to get a drink. I think I need to find out what brand she uses and invest in this company - they have to be making a ton of money.

Take our sons and daughters to work day

I just received an email about this from my employer. I want to go on record as questioning the value of this on a few fronts.

#1 - this originally started as a way for young girls to see what opportunities are out there for women in the workplace. It has transformed into a bring any boy or girl which is admirable but I think loses some of the intent.

#2 - this is the more important point. I have 2 daughters neither of which have had the opportunity to do this due to my travel achedule and school policy that it was not an excused absence. I can not for the life if me understand why this needs to occur during the school year. Mid July or August would allow more to participate and also not be as intrusive on work as there is always less stuff happening in the summer.

Yet another fun flying day

Part I
I arrive a little early for my flight from DTW - EWR hoping to catch a standby. Good news the standby is late so I have a good chance to catch it. Bad news it is sold out. I decide to wait to see what might happen so find a seat and wait. Delay changes from 6:15 to 5:45 - it was originally scheduled for 5:00. At 5:20 they start boarding. At 5:40 they start calling names. A group of Japanese folks start hollaring into cell phones trying to get people. The gate agent starts calling an entire gaggle of names many Japanese many others. At least 5 times the gate agent asks the Japanese group if their entire group is with them. It is clear they speak no english as they do not even acknowledge that she is asking them questions. Ultimately the group of 8 finally all get to the gate from being scattered to the four corners of the airport and board the plane. After another several minutes two heavy set ladies come running and panting to the gate: "We thought it was 6:15. We were getting food, pant, pant, cough, cough". They finally catch their breath and board the plane. The calls for people continue, by name and by group. Two more stragglers wander to the gate at a leisurely pace - "Oh look its boarding", "I thought it was 6:15 its only ten to six." After several more calls the final couple meander to the gate and board. The gate agent states: "attention all standy by passengers the flight has checked in full". Now I was dissappointed but I was just completeley amazed that people would walk so far away from a delayed flight that they could not keep an eye on the time. Flights frequently change times and possibly even gates. How incredibly silly.

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Part II
I go down to my gate and plop into a chair. After about 30 minutes they start to board. I have no status so I am forced to wait for my row. They call first class, elites, exits and finally start row calling. 18-22 go on, a few minutes later 15-18 go. Then nothing. One gate agent leaves the area to go do something. The remaining gate agent starts dealing with standby passengers and time continues to tick away. Fifteen minutes later the lone gate agent is joined by the original plus another plus a pilot trying to catch a ride. The three gate agents now start to type furiously into the computer (I am truly amazed at the number of keystrokes it takes to do seemingly simple things on these computers). They call some row, in fact the same rows they've already called but 19-22, then 15 and higher. Of course nobody goes up so they return to typing their epic adventure novel on the small gate computer. After a few more minutes they finally call my row and I board the plane. I work my way to my seat and watch three people load their bags sideways so as to use up the most amount of overhead space (leaving none near my seat) and sit down. I then proceed to turn them all the correct way with roller wheel towards the back of the bin and lo and behold there's room for my bag. I slam my bag in and sit.

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Part III
I started typing this in anticipation of not being able to post before we pushed off. How naïve I was. We now have a 'minor' mechanical problem. Who knows when and if this plane will take off.

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Part IV
Well its been one hour and five minutes since Part III.

We're still here. They've swapped a few computer components and even went so far as to completely reboot the plane. They actually did a full power down - ten count - restart. No dice we're still here. No communication for the last 15 minutes. I feel like a trapped rat. Not sure what the rules are for false imprisonment. Maybe I can sue them. That might be fun. The interesting part is that people are standing in the aisles walking up and down throughout the plane. Talking and yapping, general muddling around. For goodness sake we are at Northwest's hub. Just wheel another airplane out of the damned hangar, and put us on it. It really doesn't seem like that hard of a process.

On one small note - perhaps I would have been better off not getting on the plane so soon. Had the novelists taken a bit longer I'd be sitting in my cramped little seat slightly less.

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Part V
Changing planes. Well we've finally tried everything there is to try on the first plane. Now we're finally off to plane number two. I'm typing this piece from the new gate. Which by the way - even though this is a crappy way to spend an evening - the new Midfield Terminal in Detroit - actually is a very nice facility. Very clean - nice wide open aisles - comfortable chairs and a lot of power outlets to plug in laptops and other various devices. The walkway between A, B and C concourses is underground under the runways and has a very cool soothing art display with cool music playing. It gives you a very underwater kind of feeling.

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Part VI
Well they're starting to call rows again - let's see if this process goes any better the second time around.

Newark Airport

Yet another fun travel day at Newark airport. I get to parking, no problem, for once the garage isn't full. I go up to level 5 grab a spot and head for the elevator. Go across to the AirTrain and the escalators are broken. Wait for the elevator and head up. Catch the AirTrain and shuttle off to terminal B. Yet another broken escalator. Now I realize that things break, but they really should try to have this stuff working for Monday rush.

Car finally fixed

Well my car is finally back together. There is one minor thing that needs to still be remedied - a small clip on the trunk liner was not re-attached properly. This too will be noted to the shop that did the work (see below). Here is a picture of the motor mount that was damaged in the accident. Initially the insurance company claimed that it wasn't caused in the accident and was likely just worn or pre-existing. I think had they not agreed to pay for it these photos would have certainly proved my point.


The body shop that did the work: Ryan's Auto Body in Ocean Township New Jersey was unable to detect what was making the clunking sound I had described after having the car for two full weeks. When they put it up on the lift they noticed that the drive shaft moved a little when it was put into gear and that seemed a little bit odd to them, but they didn't know what to do to investigate or repair the problem. I will be sending them a rather unfriendly letter about their stunning ineptness.

More mediocre performance - this time Continental Airlines

Contained below is a message I sent to Continental about their excellent web site and their President's club. Let's see what happens. During the last tirade I netted 2,500 miles.

Subject: More tiring experiences with your company

Message: On Monday March 13, 2006 I was anticipating an mid-morning flight and needed to avail myself of the use of the Presidents Club early the next morning. Thinking erroneously that online would be a nice fast easy way to get my membership and have a temporary card in my hand for the morning, I went to the web site to sign in. It dutifully took all of my personal information, including credit card data and One Pass number. When the process was completed it said to check my email. Great I thought, I'll go over pick up my temporary card and go into the club in the morning. Instead, I received this email:


>Thank you for purchasing a Presidents Club membership.
>Your application should be processed within 48
>hours and you may begin enjoying the benefits of
>membership at any of our Presidents Club locations.
>If you visit a Presidents Club prior to
>receiving your card, simply provide the clubroom
>representative with a copy of this e-mail and
>photo identification.


There was no warning that this process was not an instant process and that there would be delays that I should anticipate. So I did as the mail said and took the printout and my id to the club. How unfortunate for me that the system didn't know anything about me and I had to hold up the line while waiting for the people at the club to determine that I should be granted access. To this date I have not received either permanent or temporary card so while I may be able to get into a Contintental club, I can not avail myself of the services of any of your partner airlines clubs. Thank you once again for continuing to meet my ever decreasing expectations on my dealings with Continental and your wonderful hub airport of Newark NJ, which 80% of the time has broken AirTrans, and generally miserable service.

It is so nice being nearly held hostage by hub and spoke airlines.

9/11 Government Conspiracies

Have you heard the latest Charlie Sheen tirade. Charlie apparently thinks there is some conspiracy about the collapse of the third building in the 9/11 attacks. Is it just me or can someone who is a notable womanizer, both in real life and has made a fairly good career of representing this role on Spin City and Two and a Half Men, really expect to be take seriously? I'm not actually saying that he's even wrong in his accusations, for all I know there may have been some grand conspiracy to cover up whatever actually caused the collapse. It just seems to me that he lowers awareness for this issue rather than raising awareness. I mean seriously I for one thought: "this just has to be a farce if he's behind it". Yet CNN was reporting it the other day, and seeing if "Now that Sheen is behind it maybe the story will get some legs", seems like wishful thinking.

World's Largest Microsoft Error Message

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You asbolutely gotta love this, Network world had an article about one of the giant screens in Times Square displaying a Windows Error message. Not sure if this is the kind of advertising Bill Gates really wants. Additionally, a few weeks ago I was returning home from Detroit and the lane markers that tell you which security lane is open and which is closed on a 17" TV screen (why are 4:3 TV screens always odd numbers?) had a virtual memory error displayed on it. This screen simply sits there with the equivalent of a screen saver (well not really because I'm sure it will burn in) on it and yet it had a virual memory error.

Selfish Airline Passengers

So what has irritated me today? Airline passengers that feel they are sooooooooo important that they MUST USE ALL THE OVERHEADS. I have several times had to check my bags when catching a flight and being one of the later passengers to board. Today I witnessed a complete jerk that simply had to have all of his stuff in the overheads. I managed to get early boarding status for my flight - which I don't normally get primarily due to the shorter flights I take - and was on board early. I also managed to score an exit row seat (again not enough status for First class or Business Class) so I had decent leg room. I stuffed my smallish carryon in the overhead, crumpled my overcoat up and jammed it in on top of my carryon, and then threw my PC under the seat in front of me. I had plenty of leg room to be quite comfortable for a 1 hour or so flight. The guy right behind me piles his fairly large carryon (nearly the limit) into the overhead, then hoists his laptop bag also into the overhead, then tosses his coat in, and pours himself into the exit seat across the aisle from me. Now he had a slightly larger bag than me, but he fully consumed an overhead whereas I left enough room for some other soul to place their bag in should they need to do so. Why is it that so many people have to be so selfish.

Accident

Well - it happened. On Friday, I was almost into the Lincoln Tunnel. The person in front of me stopped hard and so did I. Unfortunately the person behind me did not. The result was >$2,000 of damage to my bumper and rear deck lid. At least that's what Allstate appraised the damage to be. Adding to the mess - my coffee cup decided to vent all of the contents all over the inside of the car and down my back. Fortunately the Big Green Clean Machine was up to the task and got all remnants out of the carpet, the seats and most importantly the headliner. Should be a week or so until it is back in order. Key Sera Sera

CNN Data Security - Do you want Miles O'Brien's cell phone number?

Yesterday during my morning hotel routine watching CNN with O'Brien and O'Brien, Miles was discussing the potential impending blackberry shutdown with another member of the CNN team. To show how blackberry's can send messages quickly from one place to another Miles sent a test message to his co-worker. His co-worker showed the message on his screen - including Miles' personal cell phone number. So if you want to speak directly to him - give me a call or drop me a note and I can give you the number.

New New Jersey Slogan - "New Jersey: Come See For Yourself"

A little bit stale news, but New Jersey has a new slogan. New Jersey: Come See For Yourself. I personally would have voted for: "New Jersey: You Got a Problem With That?". There were a few interesting others including: "New Jersey: Most of Our Elected Officials Have Not Been Indicted." which I'm not so sure of. There certainly seems to be a lot of corruption around. I think Monmouth county (in which I reside) went for the record and came up short to a few counties in New York and parishes in New Orleans - must be something to do with being New. It has been just about a year since we moved in to our new house. I can't say that I have totally adopted the attitude of my new home town, but it certainly exists. I almost bought my wife a T-shirt with "New Jersey - Attitude Capital of the World" on it, but decided against it. I will say this - New Jersey is not just Newark and Trenton - the area we live is quite suburban, albeit there are homes in the area that do appear to be very similar in external view to Tony Soprano's.

Newark Airport Experience - or why I hate Continental

I am currently sitting at gate 111a at Newark airport waiting to take flight 2227 to Detroit scheduled departure time 8:00PM. As I type this message it is 8:40PM. There is no gate agent, the board states that we are on time, and yet we are sitting here. I have called the reservations number twice to no avail. It sure would be nice if in fact there was a person to tell us what is happening with the flight rather than continuing to display "On Time" and a departure time of 8:00PM. I have spoken to other gate agents all who say: "It states 8:00 according to my computer", they then look further and say: "Oh wait - it is delayed - we are waiting for a flight from Dayton". Interestingly enough - none of these people took the initiative to update the board, call someone to man (or should I say person) the gate. Basically giving me the information is to them more than enough and is the end of their duties. What an absolutely miserable experience. I have been flying Northwest to Detroit for the past few weeks, and will very likely be traveling to/from Detroit and Newark for a while. It certainly looks like I will be using the services of Northwest rather than Continental in the future. I am rapidly running out of airlines.....

Driving in New York

Driving in New York is always an adventure. However, I've determined that I enjoy this challenge of the mind and reflexes. The primary goal is of course to prevent it from becoming a contact sport, while getting where you want to be. This is definitely not for the faint of heart. Driving on the side streets provides only one or two lanes, the avenues are wide providing 6 or 7 lanes depending on which one you choose. It is not uncommon to be driving down the center lane of one of the broad avenues and have the center two lanes suddenly become a construction zone. There are constantly people stepping between cars, delivery drivers stopping, starting, loading and unloading their wares. Taxi cabs are noted for being completely insane, but I have found that they behave like packs of roving dogs, and you must not show fear. If you do you will be inundated, you must simply push your way to where you want to go. Simply because you are in a traveling lane does not mean someone can't stop and call it a parking spot. All in all a good challenge and good workings for the mind. If you travel during non rush-hour times it is not insanely loaded with traffic, but even the slightest hiccup can cause insanity quickly. You must be constantly alert. Actually the city does provide a compelling reason for not using a cell phone without hands-free, looking away for a moment will cause you to miss the next obstacle.

New Photo Blog

As many people have, I have taken quite a lot of digital photos throughout the past several years. I've created a new blog to simply display a few of the more interesting ones in a separate area rather than clutter up this blog. I've also become interested in a few other photo blogs - there are links in the other blog to those. Enjoy.

Circuit City Fails Again

Once again I entered a Circuit City store to make a purchase. Once again I received less than stellar service. I decided to avail myself of 18 months same as cash (why use my money when I can use theirs). I was waiting patiently for a sales person to help me purchase a new computer. The existing one is getting a little tired. I waited and waited. I decided to find an application for the credit and fill it out. I easily found the form but couldn’t find a pen. I went to the service counter and asked for a pen to fill out the form: “Do you have a pen I can use to fill this out?” Without even looking up, he said tersely: “No”. being as I saw pens laying right next to him, I knew that he was just being a jerk, so I tossed the form in his general direction, walked out of the store, called the store manager and complained.

Dots Dots Everywhere but not a drop to drink

Frequent readers will notice a new template. I did this to get ready for the new year - Also , I got a little bored with the old one so decided to try something a little bit different. For those not familiar with blogger, try clicking the upper right Next Blog button to randomly be sent somewhere. If you're bored it can be kind of fun. If you hit a dead link just backup and try again.

Christmas fun with Dry Ice

For Christmas - my family received a gift from family packed in Dry Ice. The scientist in me couldn't resist having some fun and playing with the ice since to quote Velma: "When you put dry ice in water, you get a really spooky fog!" We started out trying to pour some water over the ice.

This worked fairly well at generating fog but it mostly stayed in the container it was in and didn't really flow. After a little bit of testing we discovered that putting hot water in a bowland throwing in a few pieces of dry ice really generated some serious fog.

It generated so much that it flowed out of the bowl and down the sides of the counter.
I then took a dime sized piece of ice, a decent swig of hot water and generated a nice cloud from out of my mouth ;-).

Lastly while shuffling around the ice with a spoon so as not to get burned we noted that it sounded quite a bit like it was being tortured when touching the spoon to the ice - check the video (if you can't get the video to play try saving it to your hard drive).
To quote Manav: "Good Fun!"

Plane connections in Cincinnati

I had a tight connection in Cincinnati. When I landed I called Delta and told them I had just landed and was trying to get from the C concourse to the B concourse. If you've been in Cincinnati you know this means riding the bus. The bus to get us was delayed by planes so I called Delta again and said I was on the bus and only a few minutes from the gate. Which I fortunately verified as it had changed from when I checked in at Newarkk. I thought I made it as I was at the gate at 4:05 for a 4:10 plane. No gate agent, no one around and door closed tight. However a plane was clearly visible and a pilot clearly watching me at the window. I called Delta. As I continued to sternly tell them how ridiculous this was I watched the jetway pull away from the plane. I knew what this meant so I increased my fervor. Several minutes passed and the jetway reattached. Gate agent came out and let myself and another passenger on. I was quite amazed. - Frank P. Bresz - Sent from my BlackBerry

The Patio is finally finished

Well they finally finished the patio. We also finally put some trees around the thing to break up the straight lines a bit. Check out the gallery for a surprise ending. There were some visitors across the street after all of the rains in NJ this week.

I am a Borg and I'm IN!

I just purchased a new Verizon Blackberry 7250. Finally - I am out of the relationship with Cingular. They have been quite abusive. Also purchased a Bluetooth wireless headphone with it. Motorola HS820 - very lightweight. I still can't help feeling like I am a Borg when I'm wearing this thing. I think next I'll have to pick up some bluetooth sunglasses.

---

I am now totally Verizon. Home phone, office phone, DSL, 4 cell phones, I am so totally IN, and right around National Coming Out Day.

Finally they are installing the patio

Well they are finally building the patio. For those of you who haven't heard the story this job was first awarded to a contractor in April for completion in May. At some point he finally completed the front landscaping, but after repeated calls, never returned to build the patio. After another round of Landscapers's Challenge we selected a new contractor. This one seems very reputable and is making good progress. Watch for more pics as they are available.

Who is Eric Rudolph and why do I care?

Its been a while since posting. I am sitting at O'Hare waiting for a flight home. I've been chatting with my colleague about random business. I've glanced over at the CNN Airport edition a few times. Each time they are talking about Eric Rudolp - the hunt continues, mysterious travel. Who is this guy and why do I care? Is he like Natalie Holloway, that everyone must know about? Do we now need 24x7 coverage of him? Bob Costas was so right to not give these kind of stories more air time.

I know there is more 'newsworthy' stuff happening. Draft Iraq constitution, Israeli pull out in Gaza, oil prices (up or down). I know I've written this rant before - during the “Runaway Bride” incident, but my goodness this is ridiculous.

Don't know for sure but I wonder if Bill Hemmer's (sp?) exodus was precipitated in part by such pop-journalisn. I know in an article I read he would like to just go through the New York Times and report about all the stories therein. No chance of that now at Fox but at least he'll get to report news as he sees it.

Proudly Honor our Military

I won't add to this, as it requires now further comment on my part. I've sent a copy to CNN and one of the anchors I respect - Lou Dobbs - we'll see if anything becomes of it.

New Blackberry 7100g

Well I have a new Blackberry Device, or I should say I had a new blackberry device. It lasted less than 72 hours - I'm sending it back. What garbage. Smaller yes, less functional - yes, irritating - yes, gone - yes.

US Grand Prix - 2005 - The Controversy Continues

Here's an article describing the track's challenges with grinding and resurfacing. After reading this I'd be inclined to say Michelin should have pushed for additional testing somehow. They knew the track had been resurfaced. They knew it was hard on tires (or at least they should have). Granted Bridgestone had the upper hand with data from the Indy 500, but I think some testing (whatever the cost) could have gotten them the data they needed to be competitive. Read Michelin's lame attempt to salvage some reputation. Too bad it is just an excuse for poor engineering.

Giant bust on the US Grand Prix

If you're not a fan of Formula One, you may have missed this news. Michelin pulled their safety certification and 7 of 10 teams did not compete in the 2005 US Grand Prix. My high hopes were dashed to bits on the jagged rocks below.

I've thought a bit about it and here is my opinion.

I blame Michelin. Bridgestone put tyres on their cars that worked. Michelin had more cars and more total track time. Even if they had brought harder compound - fully inside rules, Michelin could have run and probably still beat Mindardi and Jordan. Still a 1-2 for Ferrari but we would have had a race anyway.

What to do

Well for me anyway - I validated I am riding Yokohamas. Still need to check the wife and daughters cars. Wife's got Walmart tires and daughter has what her car came with. I will never buy Michelins again.

Hope

Maybe we'll get some money back - but I'm not counting those chickens.

Here's a few links to stories.

• Times Online
• Sports Illustrated
• Max Should be Axed
• Michelin's Stock dips - GOOD!!!

US Grand Prix - 2005

So I am going to the US Grand Prix tomorrow.

Here are a batch of pictures from today's qualifying session. I put only the better ones - which I think are fairly good. The good news is that Ferrari did not have a good showing. The bad news is neither did BMW.Williams. Let's see if we can do better in the race. Toyota finally scored a pole with Jarno Trulli - an odd individual in my book. Kimi Raikkonen had a good run but not good enough. Here's the full grid for tomorrow. I'm looking forward to a fun day.

Which Star Wars Character Are You?

I am Emperor Palpatine. This really must be a truthful exam, the last time I took it and this time resulted in the same answer, and there are quite a few questions. Not sure of the mapping (i.e. how many characters can really be represented) but it appears as though it is possible to generate 1.5M end results (35**4). If I had the time (which I don't) I'd try to reverse engineer the questions by writing some html to submit the answers a bunch of times and see what comes back. In my youth I may have tried this. Shoot - I'm still a geek - I took a very quick glance at the code, it doesn't require reverse engineering - it is right up front for all to see, and it is even somewhat elegant. The only possible answers are:

• Artoo
• Chewie
• Fett
• Han
• Jabba
• Lando
• Leia
• Luke
• Obiwan
• Palpatine
• Threepio
• Vader
• Yoda

Linked In?

I've LinkedIn to approximately 30 people. I've seen services like this in the past. For reasons that I cannont adequately explain this one seems to be getting more traction than the others I remember. In a stunning bit of foresight, I predict this will be absorbed by google or yahoo in the not too distant future.

Star Wars Episode III - No Spoilers

Well I'm sitting in the theater ready for my senses to be overwhelmed.

It is about 1 hour to showtime. Lots of noise. People in costume are here. I see an Obi Wan and a few Vaders and several Anakins. Quite a mixed crowd. Mostly younger. Doesn't seem quite as many as when I saw Episode II in Columbus.

We managed to get center seats towards the front (I'd prefer to be back a little more).

I am hopeful that much like Episode II this will be a good crowd intently watching the movie and not being noisy during the show.

I'll post afterward with my opinions of the movie. I unlike some others liked I and II. There were parts I didn't but overall I thought they were good.

We'll see what Lucas has in store for us.

Update - After writing the original I felt the need to add that some of the costumed Obi-Wan's and Anikins had a phony light saber battle in the theater. Yikes!!

Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper

Do we really need all of these flavors mixed together? Dr Pepper is already Black Cherry, so now they've added vanilla, more cherry and taken the sugar out. I think the flavoring of soda has gone completely around the bend. Well at least Coke came up with it and then Pepsi will have to copy. I am most definitely a Coke person. I did really like when Coke came out with Vanilla Coke, and I remember precisely where I was when I called them to ask them when Diet Vanilla Coke was hitting the shelves. I will admit however that Diet Vanilla Pepsi is better than Diet Vanilla Coke.

CNN, MSNBC, FOX what are you doing?

So some woman goes crazy - falsifies a report of being kidnapped - and returns unscathed. Do we really need to spend more than 13 seconds covering her return? What a royal waste of airwaves.
Hayden had it right. They will put anything on to get eyeballs.
Consipracy alert - Personally based on the numerous showers and voluminous guest list, I suspect that in fact the parents of the bride are quite rich. Upon having their daghter vanish - they pulled some strings to get phenomenal news coverage and now have a healthy heaping of crow to eat.

Why computers are hard to use for common people

Let me start by saying I have made my entire career programming, managing and in general working with computers. However, I am not a Windows Messenger user in general. However, today I was using it and I was looking at some of the options and was presented with the following screen:

I found this exceedingly odd, as I could not for the life of me determine what the heck allowing the acceptance of ink would do for me. It wasn't even something that seemed even remotely logical.
My other evidence is the following screen that I seem to get all of the time when running Windows Internet Exploder.
.
If I was a normal person, I can't imagine I would find this a reasonable error. This screen is so verbose, it makes me want to just shut off the computer every time I see it. I can't help but think of some grandmotherly type trying to look something up and getting this message simply saying: "The InterNet is down!" While computers have certainly become commonplace - I think we all need to do a better job of making them more useful and easier to use. There have been great strides, but there is still a long way to go.

Death - How will I die

Yet another silly online poll. I tried a couple today - Randy's language thing and this. Kind of silly, but the rationale makes a little bit of sense if you know me.

You scored as Poison. Your death will be by poison, probably because you are a glutton and are around so many people that it would be easy to get away with it. Posion 60% Drowning 53% Bomb 53% Disease 53% Cut Throat 53% Suffocated 47% Natural Causes 47% Disappear 40% Suicide 33% Gunshot 27% Accident 27% Eaten 27% Stabbed 13% How Will You Die?? created with QuizFarm.com

Suze Orman Irritates Me

I really don't understand why this woman is so popular. All she does is yell at people in a rather holier than thou, I'm smarter than you, why aren't you listening to me tone. I see her absolutely everywhere. I can't watch her for more than 5 minutes without wanting to throw bricks at the screen. Her advice is so much drivel I can't stand it. Today I was looking for currency conversions and was acosted by her ads. I just don't get it - can someone explain it?

Getting a New Jersey License

So today we (my wife and I) went to the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission for new licenses and new plates for our cars. It was just what you might expect from the Peoeple's Republic of New Jersey. I rather bland building with rather interesting people working there.

The fun begins upon entry when you are greeted and asked: "What services do you need?"

"Changing driver's license and registration" we state. We are handed a batch of forms in a variety of color and texture and with several colors of highlighting on it for you to enjoy filling out. Some are cards, some are paper, some are one-sided, others are double-sided. Many have surprisingly similar information both presented and requested although in subtly different ways. I can not determine if this is a test to determine if I can answer similar questions the same way, or in fact some trickery to help befuddle the masses and make it more fun for the employees to watch the people attempt to fill them out. We fill out all of the license and registration information and are told that we need titles for the cars in order to register them. Since we don't have these, we decide that this will be another trip for another day and continue on for licenses.

I find it interesting that New Jersey considers the DMV what you might expect, although I've never seen it in print: "Department of Motor Vehicles". They also at times refer to themselves as: NJMVC - New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission. I was almost tempted to ask them to fill out some of the afforementioned identification forms to see how they filled each out. I guess there is a difference between a Department and a Commission, but I surely can't determine the difference. Based upon this I think it is somehow indicative of the level of corruption within your organization.

After filling out all of the forms we step into line to have our existing documentation checked. The differences between this review of documents and a border crossing at "Checkpoint Charlie", are few: no guns thankfully, no one shouting: "papers, I must see your papers." There is an interesting point system having to do with passports, other licenses, primary and secondary documents. The people behind table A, flip through documents staring alternately between the documents and us, finally due to a preponderance of evidence (suffice to say we presented a bushel of paperwork) we exceed the criteria required to prove we are who we say. Having this documentation checked at one table isn't sufficient however, there is another table a scant six feet away at which the person at table A, must personally walk your documents over (presumable to prevent tampering during the long journey) to the person at table B, and they must be re-validated.

At this juncture we realize that we have accidentally left the checkbook at home and are cashless. This is bad for us as there is a sign written in bright green marker stating: "No Credit or Debit Cards, Cash or Check Only", interestingly there are indeed several of these, some of which also claim: "Please put your DL# and Ph# on your check", which is simply silly I think - I don't have a "DL#" until such time that you give me one now do I? This seems like an almost amazing transaction - and I will in fact participate in it a short time later as you will learn.

We leave the NJMVC, or DMV (whatever they are being called) and head for home. Fortunately for us it turns out that while there are a few of these places around, some more convenient for some than others this place is only a few miles away. So we go home, grab the checkbook and titles for the cars and head back.

We enter the door and are shuttled again to table A for validation of our "Papers". Table A gives us a clean slate, and moves us to table B. The new person at table B is puzzled that in fact the "Papers" seem to have the marks of a former occupant of her position. She inquires to this and the person from table A, fortunately, explains the checkbook scenario of 10 short minutes ago and we are allowed to pass to the next helpful person in the process.

We are now entering the photo taking stage of the adventure. The person behind the counter in line 5 (somehow lines have numbers whereas tables have letters) takes all of our information and reviews it a third time, not only to ensure that the first two have made their marks on our documents, but also to peruse the original papers (for what I have no idea but she does it). She clickity clacks on the keyboard and tells me to step back for my picture. I do so, noting that my shirt is a very similar blue to the background and I am likely to not have a torso. She fixes this problem by zooming in on my head. Giving me a DL-photo not remarkably different from a casaba melon. My wife gets her turn and has a photo more like one would expect, a bust shot, approximately 6-8 inches of shoulders and neck, and her face.

We pay our fee for our permit which permits us to walk to the other side of the office and stand in line for our test. We then proceed to get an eye test, what this test tells them about my ability to see road-hazards, cars, lights, people, dogs and wayward baby carriages I don't know. I pronounce a series of visible letter and am pronounced good-to-go. My wife actually had trouble with the eye test, but eventually passed and moved on.

After passing the ever difficult eye test we moved back to the permit location, only this time we were about to be officially licensed. We once again handed our paperwork back to the permit lady and she took the information, validated the information was correct, asked us if we were OK with our pictures (I decided even though I wasn't I would simply live with it), who really cares what they look like on a DL-photo anyway.

We now get to the fun part of taking numbers from someone, scribing them onto a piece of paper (in the form of a check) and handing them back to the person from whence they came. The young lady behind the counter handed us papers with our driver's license numbers on them, we then copied them onto our checks, as the sign said: "Please place DL# on your check", we then handed the check back to the lady behind the counter. I just couldn't shake the sense that this particular action was exceedingly odd. I couldn't tell if it was meant to be a reading test, to prove that I could read the numbers they had given me or what. This is very similar to Mr. Hayden's phrase about reading something somewhere: "I wrote it down, then I read it". I just kept thinking I've come with 6-points worth of identification (whatever it is that means exactly), and the item they want me to present to them is the number they are just gave me. Fortunately, except for now as I type this I mostly stopped thinking about it, mostly to save myself a headache.

Now we move on to the registration portion of the festivities. This is tedious but rather uneventful. The lady at line 3 I think it was takes several documents from us, plus some documents from her dear friend in line number 5, processes several more documents. Creates a few more, grabs some license plates, folds some of our documents , places them all in plastic bags, and once again asks for a check with the numbers that the lady from line 5 gave to me written on it somewhere.

We leave approximately one hour later, somehow unbloodied yet strangely changed for our encounter.

Home Audio

Well I finally installed home theater sound (Bose's Acoustimass 10) in the new house. In the old house I had my receiver plugged into my old speakers, some old Sony model that were pretty good. I had tried out a Bose VCS-10 center channel speaker but didn't really like the quality so I had returned it. Scott Hayden of Hayden's Harangues is very anti-Bose so I wasn't sure if I could risk his ire and purchase. I had been waffling on whether or not to hire someone to go fully built-in or try running some cabling myself, or try for wireless rear speakers, which are just starting to come around for installations under 100w/channel. I had been looking at orbaudio.com, and their speakers looked cool, but I really wanted to hear something before purchasing. After thinking and searching and calling people for a while we decided to take a jaunt out to see/hear some stuff. We went to Circuit City, which is now another chain I will likely NOT go to much any longer, and spent about 30 minutes or so playing in their speaker room. They had a really cool digital system that lets you switch between various setups. The problem was that it took a few minutes to switch between setups so it was hard to get a full swap completed in a timely fashion to really compare speakers. I looked at some taller Sony speakers, as they were a bit cheaper and I thought I may be able to get away without a subwoofer, as I didn't have one before and it seemed fine to me. I was flipping between Sony and Polk and Infinity, avoiding the Bose due to bias from Hayden. I asked someone to find me a sales rep and they paged to no avail, so I went back to testing on my own. At one juncture I hit a setting that put the rear Bose speakers on and they sounded much better. I tried to flip between Infinity and Bose as I had then decided on smaller rather than larger. A few more minutes of playing around with the speakers and finally some young kid arrived and I explained to him what I wanted to test. He put on all of the Bose equipment and cranked the thing up to -15db. I walked over and lowered it as I wanted to hear fidelity now loudness. I tried to switch to the Infinity speakers and completed the setup and he once again cranked it up. I once again walked over and lowered it. I explained to him that I wanted to quickly flip back and forth as the machine was designed to do. I showed him that Setup A was close to what I wanted and I wanted Setup B and A to flip back and forth. He said: "I don't know how to do that." What he didn't say was: "All I know how to do is make it loud!". I decided I had had enough tomfoolery and walked out of the store. I was somewhat please with the sound of the Bose and since there was a factory outlet close to our new house we went there. I played with the Acoustimass 6, 10, and 15 for a little while, then summoned a sales rep. I explained my setup at home and he suggested the 10. The 15 supports 6.1 as does my receiver but I don't have anyplace for the center back, so I just skipped it. Much nicer service - no attempted upcharging for "MONSTER CABLES - OH YOU GOTTA HAVE MONSTER CABLES THEY ARE JUST THE GREATEST THING EVER, OHHH, OOOOOH" - sorry I slipped into my Sam Kinison voice for a minute there. No upcharging on service programs, just gave me the stuff I wanted, offered factory renewed instead of brand new and in less than 15 minutes in a very casual way I had what I wanted. Hooking them up was a little different than I had anticipated - receiver hooks to the Acoustimaass thing, then the speakers hook to that. Kind of interesting, but generates good sound quality and I can't go above -30db without being told to turn it down. I also managed to run the cables into the basement and back up the back so I can have it on whenever I want - no more dragging cables around like I had to do back in Pittsburgh.

The House

Well, we're finally in the new house more pictures - it has now been 5 weeks since we closed. The good news is that with all of the potentials for serious debacle we ended up with a fairly nice new house built by Centex Homes, in a decent neighborhood (Howell, NJ) and things are going ok. Thankfully Kara Homes let us out of our contract when they were unable to start work on our originally planned house. The timeline of the transactions went something like this: - September 17th - Give a downpayment to Kara Homes - About a week or so later - Give a much larger amount of money to Kara - About a month or so later - Give even more money to Kara - No activity through October, November or December on a house that was originally going to be delivered by the end of January December 21st - PANIC - begin looking for something as we are selling our home in Pittsburgh and it is set to close on January 14th. We called Newhomes.com I called a number and there was no answer so I didn't leave a message. About 3 minutes later my phone rang and it was Sandy Lefkowitz from newhomes.com - he was standing in the delivery room waiting for his grandchildren (twins) to be born, and told me he would have someone call me right away. Within 2 hours Tom Burdett (not the comedian) called me back and I explained my desire to find a house as quickly as possible. He took down some of my requirements and began a search. He called me back and had found a house in Marlboro, NJ that looked to be ok. We packed up the family and on December 23rd drove from Pittsburgh to NJ to look at the house. Unfortunately it was not what we had hoped. The property was very tight and constricted, and the houses around it were on top of each other, so we headed back to Pittsburgh very unhappy. Tom had found another place for us to potentially purchase but we wereheading off to vacation to spend New Year's with Mickey in DisneyWorld (the plans had been made before we even knew we were moving). While we were in Disney Kara called and stated that they had received notice from thetownship that they could not continue building or start any new houses, ours being one of them, and they would be having a meeting to discuss all of the details with all of the homebuilders. In the meanwhile we were still in Florida and it was looking less likely that we would have a place to live come Jan 14. I decided to end vacation early and head up to New Jersey on Sunday Jan 2 to see the house. When I walked in the house looked pretty good and a took about 70 pictures and emailed them to my wife. I gave the builder some hand money and said we would buy it. Now we had to get our money back from Kara. All the while we had been speaking to Kara we had been cautious to not set a bad tone as they had essentially our life savings in their account. We called Kara and stated that we simply wanted our money back and would move on with our lives. After a few phones calls with a few different people and assurances from methat all I wanted was my money - no blood, no foul - I'd walk away with a handshake, a kiss on the cheek and that was it, they decided that it was fine and agreed to give me the money back. On Jan 13 the moving company came and packed up the house and drove away with all of our belongings. We closed on the house in Pittsburgh on Jan 14 and moved in to the Marriott Suites. A harrowing two weeks to be sure. While attempting to secure funding for this new purchase the appraisal forthe house came in below the asking price. Centex wanted to keep the price where it was and while I wasn't ecstatic at paying above appraised value, but I was stuck without a place to live. I made an offer that was above the appraisal, below the asking price and still left me money for a McDonald's happy meal at the end of the day. They accepted this offer and on Jan 23 I drove my older daughter's car to New Jersey. On Jan 27 my wife obtained a large cashier's check from the bank and headed to New Jersey with my younger daughter to live. On Jan 28 we closed on the new house in New Jersey and on Jan 29 the mover's brought all of our stuff to the new house. Whew - that felt like quite an event. Next: furnishing this thing

Comp USA has Miserable service.

I ordered a very simple item - a wireless microsoft mouse in groovy color. The Internet order system claimed it was in stock and available. Unfortunately this turned out to be false. Contained below are a few excerpts (jazzed up with bold and italics and bold-italics for effect) from a letter I just sent to their customer service department - we shall see what happens.

__________________________________________

I entered the store - there was one or two people in line. I had forgotten my sales receipt so the sales person went to the store room to check if my item had been selected. He did not find anything under my name in the stock room, so he called another person to the front to ask for assistance. This person stated - "Oh, I don't think we have that in that color". Which I immediately thought odd as the Internet listed it as in stock. This new person, wearing pants barely remaining on, walked towards the back. I watched as he turned into a particular aisle - becoming concerned that this Internet Pickup process was clearly broken - I followed him to see if what I was seeking was present. He had apparently been distracted and was doing something else entirely so I walked directly out of the store. On the way home I called the store and was routed through the voice mail system 4 times (pressing zero, waiting 6 or more rings then back to voice mail, pressing zero, etc.) before finally having a person answer the phone. I requested to speak to a manager and was placed on hold. After a few minutes someone picked up that claimed to be the sales manager. I began to explain the situation and my unhappiness with the Internet pickup process. He stated that "Well it usually helps" to which I said in an elevated tone: "AHA - usually helps, is a far cry from works!", to which he replied: "Don't raise your voice or I'll hang up on you", I beat him to the button and hung up on him after stating abruptly: "Goodbye!" I assure you I will NEVER again even remotely consider CompUSA for a purchase - which is quite unfortunate as my last computer purchase was from your store in Monroeville, PA.

The following improvements were noted - hey I'm a consultant and offer process improvement as part of my job - they're getting free service here.

Perhaps some modecum of training in proper customer service would enable you to keep customers.

Perhaps a usable inventory system - controlled by perhaps a "computer" would enable items ordered and listed as "in stock" to be "in stock".

Perhaps looking on the "computer" would have enabled the first sales person to have told me the item wasn't in stock instead of checking the store room.

The Blue Marble

While wandering the web this morning I found this site. It has a lot of very interesting images of earth from space. Haven't done a lot of looking yet.

Scientific American is a great magazine

Just wanted to compliment the folks at Scientific American for a great magazine. I was recently on a flight from MCO-EWR. I needed to do a few minutes of computer work, but each article was interesting and well written. I really like the detail that they provided even though some of it was over my head. I was sorry to have the flight end, it was an airline copy so I couldn't keep it.

Livestrong - Sure you should, but Lance Armstrong is a jerk

So USA today did a piece on tjhe pop icons of the year. One of which included the Livestrong bands from Lance Armstrong. Several reasons to hatethese little rubber bracelets.

1. Lance Armstrong is a jerk, he left hiswife when he obtained his new fame to chase Sheryl Crow.
2. So you gave$1 to cancer. Less the manufacturing cost and distribution cost they got 65 cents maybe 90, whatever - why not just spring for a whopping $10 and send it direct, oops then you wouldn't be able to say "I gave a dollar, I gave a dollar...."
3. Lance Armstrong is a self absorbed moron - oh I said that, well it warrants saying again.
4. Hey look stupid - it looks likeyou had a rubberband (gumband if your from Pittsburgh) wrapped around youhand and forgot to take it off.
5. Just to feed off Hayden's Harangues - it make you look like a lemming.

Home Building, er buying

Ok so now I need to have a meeting with the home builder I originally selected. I think he is about to tell me he can't build. I am hopeful that I get all of my money back. Stay tuned.

Amazon.com is annoying

I hate how amazon now has used stuff and auction nonsense, it irrirtates me no end. If I want used garbage I'll go to eBay. For this reason I no longer buy stuff from them.

The Boondocks

I find this comic strip amusing. While many will say that it is radically left wing, I think it does an elegant dance between left and right and pokes fun at a great many things, from DVD encryption patents to Kwanzaa, which is his current target.

Still no movement on "The House"

Well it is now Christmas - or at least 20 minutes till. We still have made no progress towards a house. The political machinery that is New Jersey has sent the sceptic and other permits (I know not what) back to the builder three times now. I think this is officially a debacle. I will continue to post as things move (or not) forward with this adventure.

A Christmas Story

Once again it is time for the annual 24 hours of "A Christmas Story". The wonderful tale which has Peter Billingsley playing Ralphie in a quest for a Red Ryder BB Gun. I am trying to find copies of the Warner Brothers cartoon which has Ralph Phillips as a daydreaming child. This movie is very similar in style to that, and I think (although I have been unable to validate) that in fact Ralph's teach in the cartoons in Ms. Shields. The same teacher's name in the movie. I think it is eminently possible that in fact they borrowed much from the cartoons. Does anyone out there have an opinion?

Why I hate Tommy Hilfiger

This is just a simple little rant. I don't hate Tommy Hilfiger for all the reasons a lot of others do. Not because he makes average clothes and sells them at higher than necessary prices. I'm sure that there's an entire rant that others can add. My main reason is buttons. What is it with Hilfiger and buttons? I have several shirts of his, both golf type and dress type. Why is it that they must make some of the button holes in a different direction. I have told my wife to not purchase any more of these.

Jury Recommends Execution for Peterson

Well this is finally over - Yahoo Story now we'll have to move on to the next big trial. Personally given the facts portrayed to the public it seems like he was the likely perpetrator. I know that Mr. Hayden will disagree with the sentence being vehemently anti-death penalty, but I think this case justifies it, as does Susan Smith (not sure how she managed her sentence downward).

Cryptography Rant

I am beginning a new debate, primarily with myself although others may and have commented. My new position is that all things crypto are fully and simply a method of Identity and Access Management. I say this because the goal of encryption is to ensure or enforce that only specific people or individuals (identity) can read or modify (access) data that is encrypted. It is therefore simply a mechanism - albeit mathematical in its basis - a mechanism to enforce access control. If we think back to the early days of encryption the goal was to protect information from being accessed by the enemy and ensure that only valid recipients received the information. One of the more famous used of encryption was The Enigma Machine the goal of which was to protect German messages from the read by the Allies. Fortunately we were able to crack the code and decipher (access) the data.

Home Building

Well I'm about to move to New Jersey. We are going to build a new house. It is currently untouched ground, it shouldn't be but is. Watch this space to see the process progress.

First Public Blog Entry

My First Blog EntryI have experience with this type of stuff although not with this technology. When I first started running the BMW 7 Series Web Site. I had Bresz Musings, a collection of random thoughts I was thinking at the time. I'm going to slowly migrate them into this form for public consumption and public management.