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WEEK 31 2007

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Saturday 4 August 2007

Saturday - well, Barry Bonds finally did it, tied the home run record. But the Padres won me two bits off my Dad, none the less!

You have to wonder how long his record will stand. Certainly he'll surpass 755 in the near future, but he's near the end of his career. This could be his last season. Alex Rodriguez, at 32, already has 500 hits and would surpass 755 in only five or six years at his current pace. Even if he slacks off in his late 30's he will probably limit Bond's time with the record to less than ten years.

As for the asterisk, ehhh, I don't know.

Friday 3 August 2007

Friday - on the way up I finished Book #51, Lindbergh*, by Scott Berg. It was abridged, but not in the hacked way of Outerbridge Reach, and covered the basics of his life - parents, childhood, catching the flying bug, the Atlantic crossing, fame and marriage, the kidnapping and murder of his baby, the years leading up to WWII and his purported dalliance with the Nazi's (he was actually spying on them) and his later life. Recommended.


verizon rev. A
Wireless broadband - nowhere near as fast as cable, but good enough on the road.

Thursday 2 August  2007

Thursday - a long day on the road, up to my Dad's place. I took State Route 101 from Ventura. I hadn't driven the lower portion, south of the 166, in years. It hasn't really changed that much. It was busy until well past Santa Barbara, but then was a nice drive in 65F weather until Cuesta Summit, where it instantly turned to 80F. Which really wasn't that bad.

The traffic picked up again in Gilroy and was moderate to heavy all the way up to Martinez.


A major bridge has collapsed in Minneapolis - the I-35W, a westbound interstate.  Time will tell whether it was a design, construction, or maintenance flaw. In engineering a screw-up can be deadly.

There is an old engineering adage the the effect of: "If you do your job right you'll get a mass produced certificate of appreciation in a plastic frame. If you do it wrong dozens of people will die publicly, in agony."

Wednesday 1 August 2007

Wednesday - a long, but productive, day of work.

Tuesday 31 July 2007

Tuesday - I bought the Verizon EVDO service, at a place down in Ventura. The sales clerk was a little more up on his product - the laptop worked and he was able to show me EVDO Rev. A working. He even downloaded a small video to show the speed. It wasn't cable speeds, but it's good enough for a "road warrior". And the card, the high speed PC6750 card, was free with the two year contract. So that was OK. Well, actually, it was $50 with a $50 rebate that I need to send in.

The salesman did claim that the card didn't support an external antenna, but the sign on the wall mentioned that it did, and there was a little rubber cover over a plug on the side of the card, so I guess it does. 

Yeah, I can work securely from the boat now, it's the first place I tried.

 Monday 30 July 2007

Monday - more work about the house, then back to work!

James Lilek's is going on a cruise.

Sunday 29 July 2007

Sunday - had coffee and toast on the patio in the morning, spent some time cleaning out the garage, went to lunch with friends.

On the way back we stopped at the official Verizon Wireless store. It was sort of pointless. I had questions about their service, they had answers - exactly the same answers I got from the web page.

Me: Do you have EVDO?
Clerk: Yep.
Me: Are your towers Rev. A? Here in the valley?
Clerk: Yep.
Me: I was defaulting to 1x (non-EVDO) this morning on my PDA, in Lancaster.
Clerk: How about that.
Me: Why should I get you instead of Sprint's EVDO?
Clerk: We've better coverage.
Other Clerk: It's really fast!
Me: Is there a promotion for an existing Verizon Wireless and DSL customer.
Clerk: It's only $59.99 a month!
Me: It's that for everyone.
Clerk: Well, yeah.
Me: Can I see it work on that display laptop you have bolted to the counter over there?
Clerk: It's broken. We told them, but they haven't fixed it.
Other Clerk: It's really fast!
Me: Do you have a brochure?
Clerk: No, not really.
Me: Uh...well...you've been very helpful...thanks.
Clerk: Here's my card!

Actually I did learn something - the "free" wireless card that comes with a two year contract doesn't support Rev. A, the faster network protocols. The Rev. A PCMCIA PC5750 is $197.00 with the two year contract. (Or you could buy a huge USB antenna dongle, the size of a bar of soap that you attach to your laptop via two USB cables...yeah, I imagine that's selling like hotcakes. We all need more cables and bricks in our mobile life...)

Coming next week, an exciting in depth interview with a Sprint clerk!


Classic line from Alias Smith & Jones: “What is Dolby? It’s basically a very complicated system for playing cassettes with the little green light on, or off.” [via Geekrant]

Apropos of nothing (except that my Ford Explorer cassette player stopped playing a biography of Charles Lindbergh halfway through the kidnapping last week, gotta look into that):

Picture of the Week
seagull at Cayucos
Photo Notes: A seagull in Cayucos, Ca..

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