Last week I spent a day at the eGov 2003 conference in Washington, where I did a story on how technology is being used to protect the U.S. border. Pretty interesting stuff. The conference was at the brand-new, still-under-construction Washington Convention Center, which is a couple of blocks away from the old one. The day ended about a half-hour early when the fire alarm went off and they asked us to evacuate the building. Not sure if the threat was real, but since it bought me some extra nap time, I'm not complaining too loudly.
Coincidentally, two of my colleagues were also in DC covering conferences, and another was passing through on vacation. We hooked up with our former project manager and had dinner on the Potomac.
June 6: Back from the Supercomm conference in Atlanta. Overall, it was a good conference despite the fact(because I don't write about telecom all that much) that a few things soared way over my head. But I got to see races at Lanier Speedway (about 50 miles north of Atlanta), scarfed down a burger at the Varsity and hiked up Stone Mountain again, so it was a neat trip.
May 27: Email is back working again after I changed hosting providers. It was strange (and somewhat unsettling) to see a notable lack of messages hitting my inbox. But it looks like everything's OK now.
In other news, Chris and I spent a somewhat damp Memorial Day weekend camping at Harper's Ferry, WV. It was a nice trip, despite getting rain every night. Once I've waded through the picture files, I'll post some of the nicer ones.
April 30: If you're gonna rob a bank, it might be a good idea to make sure a cop isn't banking at the drive-through window.
April 29: A London-based Arabic newspaper is reporting that former Iraqi information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf would like to surrender to coalition forces, but is being turned away because he's not on the 55 most wanted list. In other al-Sahhaf news, he has a standing job offer with the Al-Arabiya channel in Dubai. He couldn't be worse than Geraldo.
April 3: Connecticut's kielbasa crusade continues! While there's no response from McDonald's yet from a local petition campaign to add it to the menu, undaunted kielbasa fans are now
calling on Burger King to offer the tubular delight. Hey, they already offer an Italian-themed chicken sandwich. I'm sure the folks at Wendy's can expect a call shortly.
April 1: Without public hearings or input, the mayor of Chicago ordered the runway at Miegs Field to be ripped apart by bulldozers in the middle of Sunday night, closing the airport and stranding more than a dozen planes at the former facility. While the move was supposedly made in the name of homeland security, the possibility of developing waterfront property might have crossed the mayor's mind as well. On a lesser scale, the move is sad for fans of Microsoft's Flight Simulator game, which used the field at a default airport. On my PC, I've taken off and kinda landed from that field hundreds of times.
Here's some Tribune coverage and photos.
March 29: Saturday’s NY Times introduced us to Sgt. Eric Schrumpf, 28, a sharpshooter with the Fifth Marine Regiment:
March 26: The U.S. FTC's nationwide "Do Not Call" list is going to start taking online registrations on July 1. We have a similiar law in Connecticut, and it really made a difference in the number of people harassing me for alarm systems and replacement siding. A few pollsters still ring through, but you can get rid of them right quick by asking if they intend to compensate you for your time and opinions.
March 21: It's not every day when you get to read this in a news story: "A registered nurse from Wantagh was convicted by a jury Thursday of public lewdness for engaging in three-way sex with relatives on a moving Long Island Rail Road train last September."
Here's the rest.
March 20: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia received a Citadel of Free Speech award from Cleveland's City Club. Proving his merit for the honor, he insisted that broadcast journalists be banned from his acceptance ceremony.
Watching the bombs fall on Iraq reminded me of the UB40 song Burden of Shame.
Feb. 28: The New London Day has a short article about waterfront bars and restaurants with a nifty headline: I Can Hit That Water With A Bottle From Here
So Iraq says it's going to start destroying its Al Samoud 2 missles on Saturday. At this point, Iraq could probably disarm itself down to the shotgun Sadaam waves around at parades, and it wouldn't help much.
Feb. 25: Some people in Connecticut are lobbying McDonalds to offer kielbasa sandwiches. You gotta shudder thinking about the grams of fat the Golden Arches gang can cram into a kielbasa sandwich.
Feb. 18: Pictures of the neighborhood after the blizzard.
Feb. 1: It's tough to say anything about how sad the Columbia disaster is that doesn't sound like a cliche or self-serving. (Like the graphic saying how 'CNN remembers the Columbia crew'). One of the aspects making it a little sadder for me is that we saw Columbia on the launch pad when we toured Kennedy Space Center on Dec. 9. Turns out they had rolled it from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the pad that morning, and we were able to see the fuel tanks, through some rain and mist, from an observation tower.
Jan. 30: Just got back from covering the COMNET conference in Washington. Some interesting stuff, but like most tech conferences these days, you hear a lot of people nostagically looking at the blue fabric screening off half of the exhibit hall and remembering the glory days of the bubble when the room was packed.
Added a few words to my tech jargon collection, including VoIP (pronounced "voyp,") which stands for the Voice Over Internet Protocol used to turn phone calls into digital packets so they can travel over digitial networks, and the "telecom space" gives us Revenue per User ("arpoo").
A few other highlights from the trip: drinks and crabcakes with Larry, who's doing well; the homeless guy blocking the down escalator at the DuPont Circle Metro station and singing "you're in a fucking hurry" over and over; the confusion when the Metro maps point to the new convention center that's not open yet; coming home on Acela (sorry, Amtrak, but the Metroliner is just as fast and probably more comfortable); and stumbling across Sonny Bono memorial park near DuPont Circle.
Jan. 21: Next-to-last Civil War widow (and the last widow from a Union Army veteran) passed away in Tennessee. Here's the story from the BBC.
Jan. 16: President Bush wants to impose a nationwide limit on the amount of money patients can recover in malpractice litigation. Perhaps it would be more effective to get doctors to stop leaving surgical tools and supplies inside patients.
Jan. 14: In England, you can bet on corporate takeover battles. So far, Wal-Mart and J. Sainsbury are the front-runners in the fight for Safeway.
Jan. 13: The new Who album: The Kids are Alright (Wink, Wink, Nudge Nudge)
Jan. 11: Remember that Christmas movie where the kid freezes his tongue against the flagpole? Well a guy in Russia who urinated against a bus stop (on his way home from a bar) can relate all too well.
Finished the day with a butter-soaked trip to Lenny and Joe's Fish Tale, home of delightful lobster rolls.
Jan. 6: A Verizon Wireless ad in
today's NY Times has a small corner banner encouraging the Giants (great timing) and reminding us that Verizon Wireless is the offical wireless provider of the Giants. A fitting choice, considering the dropped calls.
Meanwhile, up north in Connecticut, a nasty snow/sleet/freezing rain storm has hit the region, making the roads more suitable for skating than driving.
Dec. 15: Back from a week-long trip to Disney World and the Kennedy Space Center. Disney was its usual hoot, although we noticed the parks and restrooms weren't quite as immaculate as they've been on other visits. But Mickey's Christmas Party was a ton of fun, and just about all of the rides (except for Test Track and Tower of Terror) were either walk-on or had waits of less than 5 minutes. Great for visitors, not so great for my Disney stock.
But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, he faced a different choice: one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down.
"I'm sorry," the sergeant said. "But the chick was in the way."
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