Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Riding the Rails

I bought our tickets for NY yesterday at amtrak.com this will be the fourth time of taking the train to New York. Last year we flew back and we'll do that again. The decision for me is do blog here during the trip, via email and the BlackBerry or do I look at something like Jaiku and microblog the trip. I may end up doing a little of both.

Shout out for good customer service
In this day and age finding good customer service can be a chore. But today I had a good experience. The battery in the laptop stopped taking a charge a while ago and earlier this month I finally decided to replace it. After checking prices online I decided to go to a local BatteriesPlus and see if they had any in stock. They didn't but the price at the store was better than their website price and good enough compared to purely online shops. I like to buy hardware locally if I can, so I ordered the battery. They said "5 to 7 business days." Well I hadn't heard anything by the end of last week so I stopped in on Sunday, 2 weeks after the order had been placed, no information. But a suggestion that I call during the week and speak to Kevin. Well today I went over at lunch time and spoke to Kevin who found out that even though he had placed the order and his clearing house had pushed it to the vendor it fell through a crack somewhere and hadn't made it into the vendor's system. Kevin made three phone calls while I was standing there, updating me in between calls. He got the information to the vendor and even got them to drop ship it to the house. So hopefully I have it in a few days. It's nice sometimes to go in expecting the worst and walk away having had a good experience. Bravo, Kevin!

Monday, September 17, 2007

On Burn Out...

No not mine. This past week saw two high profile retirement announcements. One is in sports, the other is in politics. Last Thursday, Twins General Manager Terry Ryan announced he would be stepping down at the end of the season. Ryan isn't leaving the Twins just stepping away from being the top dog. He'll remain with the club doing talent evaluation. Basically he joins former manager Tom Kelly as one of the team's super scouts. Ryan's main reason, its just not fun anymore.

Tonight's news included the announcement of Rep. Jim Ramstad. When I first moved here the 3rd District seat was held by Bill Frenzel. I remember the billboards at election time. Simply the name Frenzel in sloping letters. The Congressman's first name squeezed in at the top and the words "for Congress" or similar at the bottom. When Frenzel retired Jim Ramstad ran for the seat, cut from the same moderate Republican cloth as Frenzel, he was an easy choice for that district for 9 terms. He even adopted Frenzel's billboard style. His announcement included mention of burnout.

So good luck gentleman. You'll be missed. Minnesota is a better place because of your work.

Thank you.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Accepting the Obvious

Disclaimer: I didn't listen to the President's speech last night or the Democratic response by Senator Jack Reed. I'm reacting to how it was reported on "liberally biased" NPR this morning.

The lead on the President's speech was, "I have decided to accept the recommendation of General Petraeus..." Most reports earlier this week, during analysis and "wait time" for the Petraeus/Crocker testimony before Congress noted that the troops that will be pulled out next year aren't being replaced because they can't be. The only way to keep the troop levels up is to have them stay in Iraq longer, or institute a draft. Which of course they'd have to do now in order to have soldiers drafted and trained in time. Between that and "the more successful we are the more troops we can bring home." The speech sounds like not much more than hot air and wasted time.

What I would have hoped to be the lead off the Democratic response was what you see in the above paragraph. The fact that more troops aren't coming home isn't what's important. They knew that going in. Reed should have simply left it at there was nothing new here and this isn't really a force reduction. Its the result of the tour extensions running their course.

So instead of anything enlightening the airtime was wasted stating the obvious and beating injured if not dead political horses. And people wonder why American elections have some of the lowest turnout levels in the world.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Crying Wolf?

When I find myself heading to Bloomington my route almost always takes me past the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport. Since 2002 I have been greeted with these messages on a flashing electronic sign:

Suspicious Activity? Call 9-1-1
Threat Level: Orange

I've often wondered if a sign asking me to call and report suspicious activity was itself a suspicious activity. In a sort of Orwellian way. But thing that gets me is that I don't remember the threat level ever being anything but orange. So either they don't know and want everyone to expect the worst or they do know but they don't want us to know. I just wonder what it would be like if the National Weather Service took the same approach.

In Minnesota we can get severe thunderstorms and/or tornadoes from Mid-May to Mid September. Imagine if they decided that every year on June 1st they would issue a Severe Weather Watch for all of Minnesota. It would stay in effect until August 31st no matter what the actual weather and threat was. For the Winter we would run from November 1st to March 31st with a standing winter weather warning. After all we've gotten lots of snow in early November and March used to be our snowiest month.

If NOAA did that people would never know when to be really concerned about a weather event. Isn't it the same with terror threats? If we don't have a specific threat should the level be Blue, A general risk of terror attacks? But what do I know? Only what they tell me.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Symbiotic Computing

Or how an old project comes back to life...

A couple of years ago I was approached by a gentleman with an idea. That idea was to come up with some way to get "personal computing" into the hands of kids who wouldn't otherwise have anything. (Rich if you see this send me an email.)

One idea we tossed around was loading up portable apps or something like that on a flash drive. At the time the U3 technology was new and the flash drives that support it expensive. Well that's not true anymore. This weekend I picked up a 2GB flash drive, with U3 support, for less than $20. It now is the home of a QEMU-Puppy installation. Once I figure out how to get it to autorun under Windows I'll have a "computer" that runs Linux that only needs Windows system as a "host". Its a little slow depending on the host configuration but its better than nothing.

More as I get a chance to play with it.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Hosting History

I promise that I'm going to do more blogging in the next year. Its Labor Day weekend, and in Minnesota that means the end of summer with the end of the State Fair. But next year it will be something all together different. Next year September 1-4 will be the Republican National Convention, right here in the Twin Cities. The Main Event will take place about 2 miles from the house at the Xcel Energy Center.

This convention will be historic for several reasons. First, it is one of the few times in the nation's history that neither the sitting President nor Vice President is seeking the nomination. (The last time was probably 1928.) Second, regardless of your political views, it is safe to say that the current administration will go down as one of the most controversial in history. The convention will signal the changing of the guard with respect to Republican leadership.

My personal goal is learn more about the history of my adopted state and home town. I want to be able to answer people's questions if they ask me. So don't be surprised to see comments on what I've learned. It doesn't hurt that 2008 is also the State of Minnesota's sesquicentennial. That should make state history a popular topic next year.