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.

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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.
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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.