… one giant leap for mankind.
35 years ago today Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.
NASA has a very nice portal with pictures and video.
I was 6 years old at the time … and my parents let me stay up far past my bed time so we could watch the news specials.
To be honest … I strongly suspect that this is what started me on the path to technology.
Found another link on Mike Wills site about promoting the switch from IE to Firefox .
After IE crashed on me a few times while trying to actually write blog entries … I decided to give Mozilla Firefox a try.
So far I’m convinced … it hasn’t crashed once, and I really like the extensions that are available.
I had started using Mozillia Thunderbird for my email some time ago … it’s nice, but there are a few things I’d like to see in it.
Right now I’m using Firefox at both home and work without any problems. I only have run into a few sites that don’t work quite right, and one site that outright blocks anything but IE (which I think is incredibly stupid … but it takes all kinds).
Well maybe I am going to get the video capture card that I ordered a few days ago.
Turns out the vendor “lost” the items … and recently found them (sounds like a song).
I got a call a few days ago from the vendor telling me that they did have the cards and I could get one if I still wanted it.
Considering their lack of communication and general bad business practices, I said no and hung up.
After thinking about it for a while, I decided to get it. So I sent them an email asking them to re-activate my order. They informed me that the original order was canceled and I would have to call to give them my credit card, or order another one on Pricegrabber.
I ordered another one on Pricegrabber this morning … and I got an email this afternoon indicating that it had shipped via UPS. I should have it on Tuesday (oops, sorry Ginny, TARsday).
Not really enough time to properly record The Amazing Race … but maybe for the following weeks episode.
Hmmm … I’ll probably have to get a bigger hard drive for mordor.
When using the Lotus Domino Java API Database.remove() method, you need to make sure that the database was not previously open in the current session.
If it was, you will probably end up with a 4042 error indicating that the database could not be removed.
The best way to do the remove is create a database object and just hang on to it. When you are ready to remove the database, invoke the remove() method on the original database object instead of trying to create a new one.
Although the Database class has open() and isOpen() methods, it does not have a close() method.
Ok, this is getting silly … Secunia is reporting that four more vulnerabilities have been found in IE.
Will it never end?
Note: I tried to post this on Friday, but IE crashed while I was in the middle of posting it … I’ve switched to Firefox at both work and home.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is running a very interesting article on Free vs. Pay WiFi in Seattle’s coffee shops.
Personally, I refuse to pay for WiFi at commercial establishments … it’s just far too cheap for the vendor … and the price that gets charged is far beyond what I would consider even marginally reasonable.
In Boulder, while we were on our road trip we found a cute little coffee house that advertised WiFi internet access. Both Ginny and I were kind of starved for a ‘net fix, so we wandered down there. I asked how much it cost to connect, and the owner said it was free as long as we were customers. So, we got a couple of iced teas, some turkey wraps, and some yummy cookies, stat down at a table and started munching and surfing.
In fact, while we were on the road trip, most of the places we stayed did have (or were going to have soon) WiFi access. Even the Alps had wired and wireless access available for free. It kind of surprised me that they would provide such access, as they are a pretty romantic place, but it kind of makes sense … they also cater to the business meeting and retreat business.
The only place we actually paid for WiFi access was the Homestead Suites in Salt Lake … and that fee was only token ($5 for the entire stay). I think they charge the fee simply to justify requiring a userid & password. Since they are very near a popular pedestrian mall, it makes sense. They want to provide the service for their customers, not everyone who is walking by. Of course, the userid & password were quite trivial… and I’m sure they don’t get changed much if ever. My ownly gripe with that place was they told us about the WiFi, but didn’t indicate there was a charge for it. When Ginny called the front desk she was informed of the charge … and we just had them put it on our bill.
Even the Holiday Inn in Grand Island Nebraska had WiFi … unforunately, it wasn’t working in our section of the hotel. Not sure why. I asked the front desk if they could have someone reset the access point, but nobody knew how to do it.
Of course, since I have gobs of internet access at home and work, I really don’t need it at coffee houses … but it’s nice to know that it’s there.
I really like the Penera Bread Company in Schaumburg … they have good soup, sandwiches, and coffee… plus they have WiFi for free. I only used it once, but it was nice.
It would be nice if I could get WiFi access at work … then I could use my PDA to access resources while in meetings… but they have legitimate security concerns. I also think that I’m the only person who would use it.
I received a rather interesting email from an IBM Business Consultant the other day.
Elizabeth said …
I wanted to touch base with someone in your organization who is responsible for your technology purchases for your end user needs (i.e. xSeries, Intel servers, Rational software, services etc.) I’m newly assigned to your account for your end user purposes, hoping to better explain my role and the value I can add to your account.
Now, the interesting thing about this is … I don’t have an IBM account … and I am certianly not an IBM partner (not in the official sense, anyway) … and I also do not use any of the systems or services mentioned (not from IBM at least). So I’m not sure where she would have gotten my contact information.
The even more interesting bit of information is this: Her title is “IBM Business Consultant, Metro New York/New Jersey”.
Now why would a business consulting in the NY/NJ area, be contacting me? I’m in the Chicago area. If you do a whois lookup on midrange.com, you will find that the zone contact listed is register.com … and they are in New York.
Could it be that some IBM’ers are farming the whois database’s for email addresses?
Internet attacks can hit your pocketbook
Jim Carroll was stunned when Rogers Cable told him it had received a complaint that a hacker was using his Internet address.
Must be a mistake, he told Rogers, his Internet provider. Then a tech helper at the company walked him through his setup and discovered that indeed, he had inadvertently left his business Web server unprotected. It was what is called an “open relay. Someone found it, posted Mr. Carroll’s address on more than 100 Russian bulletin boards, and soon hundreds of people were using Mr. Carroll’s machine to surf anonymously.
Sorry, but I have no sympathy for so called ‘noted high-tech authority’ who leaves his mail server relay function open.
Ordinary users who inadvertatly get infected with spam bots I understand … but people who understand technology should know better.
I was working on my current project at work today and ran into an odd problem … a host name (that existed) could not be resolved.
The only different thing about the host name is that it was retrieved from an iSeries using JDBC.
I could ping the host without a problem … so I knew it was valid, but the “InetAddress.getByName()” method couldn’t resolve it.
After a while I noticed that the ending quote for the host name field wasn’t showing up in the variable debug window (of WDSC). So I added a “String.trim()” to the end of the “ResultSet.getString()” and getByName() was able to resolve the name.
I would have thought that getByName() would be able to deal with blanks on the end of a host name.
Techworld.com – IBM slams ‘grandiose’ SCO, asks for whole farce to be called off
’bout bloody time.
Of course, I fully expect the lawyers for SCO to file some counter motion, appeal, or some such garbage to further obscure and cloud the whole affair.
First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
–William Shakespeare.(except Gloria 🙂 )