FedEx to Manatee

I spent a few moments this afternoon generating CD’s of the pictures I took from October 2003 to March 2004 as relates to Manatee County & the radio system I helped with this winter. Even at 12X it took some time to write 10 discs but I finally got there. Then comes the FedEx: It is easy with the site they provide to ship stuff. Just enter your account and the sending info then hit print and you are home free. I am sending packages to Manatee County and my customer. Another job well done….bfn. Charlie

Close encounter ….retnuocne esolC

100-Foot Asteroid to Make Closest Pass

By ANDREW BRIDGES, AP Science Writer

SAN DIEGO – As far as flying space rocks go, it’s as close an encounter as mankind has ever had.
A 100-foot diameter asteroid will pass within 26,500 miles of Earth on Thursday evening, the closest-ever brush on record by a space rock, NASA (news – web sites) astronomers said.

The asteroid’s close flyby, first spied late Monday, poses no risk, NASA astronomers stressed.
“It’s a guaranteed miss,” astronomer Paul Chodas, of the near-Earth object office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said Wednesday. The asteroid, 2004 FH, was expected to make its closest approach at 5:08 p.m. EST, streaking over the southern Atlantic Ocean. It should be visible through binoculars to stargazers across the southern hemisphere, as well as throughout Asia and Europe, said astronomer Steve Chesley, also of JPL. Professional astronomers around the globe scrambled Wednesday to prepare for the flyby, which could provide an unprecedented chance to get a close look at the asteroid, he added. The asteroid will pass within the moon’s orbit. Similarly sized asteroids are believed to come as close to Earth on average once every two years, but have always escaped detection.

“The important thing is not that it’s happening, but that we detected it,” Chesley said.
Astronomers found the asteroid late Monday during a routine survey carried out with a pair of telescopes in New Mexico funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Follow-up observations on Tuesday allowed them to pinpoint its orbit. “It immediately became clear it would pass very close by the Earth,” Chesley said. Astronomers have not ruled out that the asteroid and our planet could meet again sometime in the future. If the two were to collide, the asteroid likely would disintegrate in the atmosphere, Chesley said. On the Net: Near-Earth Object Program: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov

One of the answers – or is it? John C D fortells the future of virus attacks.

License Computer Users

By John C. Dvorak
August 18, 2003

Over this past weekend yet another virus/Trojan/worm/whatnot attack culminated in a lot of panic. Apparently, far too many systems were infected with this latest disease, and the Net was once again choking on the aftereffects. Probably the blackout in New York and much of the Northeast saved us because it simply took machines offline.

This new attack, which infects Microsoft Windows NT, 2000, and XP machines that have not been recently updated, goes by Lovesan and Blaster, among other names. One message it produced was “I Love You San.” Has anyone even wondered who the heck San is? Track her or him down and get to the bottom of this latest scourge.

Here’s my solution to this problem: a license to use computers. It’s time we realize that national security is at risk, as is the future of the Internet and modern business. These attacks are never going to end, that’s now obvious. Many are direct strikes against the infrastructure, such as the DNS attacks of late. Others are assaults on specific systems, such as the near ruination of the IRC network DALnet. Once in a while, a direct attack against specific Web sites takes place. Professional network administrators, who can control things to a certain extent, deal with all these sorts of attacks. When the White House site was about to be attacked, the administrators changed the IP addresses. Over this past weekend, Microsoft modified its Windows Update address just enough to foil the expected bot attack.

The problem of the future is going to be the virtual destruction of the Net and small businesses by end users, who are clueless to an extreme. These people should have their computers confiscated unless they can pass a minor proficiency test. What does it take to be a little careful without being ridiculously careful? Most users are totally out of it. For example, I know one person who will not open a JPEG, ever. This is pointless. Others see spoofed e-mail from a “friend” who writes in pidgin English and includes a weird attachment

Another nice, warm day with clear skies

It does not get better than this. The past 4 days have been in the high 60 & lower 70′s with clear skies and very low humidity – like those beautiful fall days up North that occur just before the hammer falls. I guess the hammer here is the heat to come – still….

Yesterday I took some pictures and made a collage which I posted in yesterday’s blog. I sort of shows the niceness of the environment. Unseen is the pollen that is causing much sniffing and snuffing by myself and a certain multitude of alergy sufferers. First it twas Live Oaks and now it is Macadamian Nut trees (they smell just like fresh honey).

Don & I walked the famous Bradenton Boardwalk tonight. The distance is approximately two + miles: I figure this as it takes roughly 40 minutes for me to make the round trip. As an added bonus one can walk the west bridge to Palmetto Marina & return so this adds another mile and a half or so: the bonus is an up hill walk and then a down hill with a flat space too.

I got home and had leftovers (from Martha’s hospitality to her guests of this weekend). Pretty good eats – much better than I can make for myself. My normal fare is TV dinners and those little cans of microwave meatballs or ravioli. My other specialty is to get a head of letuce and throw everything I have at had into a bowl and then smother it with Italian Dressing: It is truly mouth watering and tear jerking. Not too many people come over for dinner!

Ah well, time to go to bed and read the latest sailing book….bfn Charlie.

On the way home tonight I ……!

Ok, Marc here is the pic I promised. I defy you to compare this to 39 degrees and snow! After I previewed the pic it was skewed so I decided to upload the original collage but it is 750K so you are warned!

Foggy & Lazy Sunday AM

Here in the land of paradise it is sort of a dreary morning. I made an emergency trip to Publix for some Grade A Large White Eggs and at this very moment they are being cooked by someone other than myself.

I spent the morning RSS’g the NY Times and there were a few good articles. One called “Beached Males” was entertaining. What do you think of this article?

I smell food so it must be time to depart for now…Charlie

Should one cheer leaving heaven?

One week to go folks! By this time next week I will have taken leave of the project that has kept me occupied since October. What a great place Manatee County is & the people were good to work with too. This will go down as one of my best projects to work on.

Be that as it may, my next gig is in Michigan for URS out of Grand Rapids. The courtship was long and filled with all the elements of a romance novel. In the end the break up was mended and alliances renewed with a story book ending.

The return trip will commence a week from this Sunday and I will pack on Saturday – It may take the whole day as I tend to accumulate “stuff” during my residency, wherever I happen to light for more than a week. Then it will be up I75 to Toledo so that Sam can get the vehicle that was left there and on to home. I am hoping for a warm front so I do not have to aclimate as much. Wish me luck. BFN….Charlie

Very Lucky Guy!

GA AIRPORT PROVES AN EASY TARGET..==========================================

A Cessna 172 was stolen from its hangar about 6:30 a.m. Sunday at Brazoria County Airport, near Houston, Texas. More than a dozen hangars were broken into and at least one other airplane was taxied onto the field and abandoned. The thief finally settled into a 172 with the key in it, loaded it with … a few six-packs of cold beer (you were more concerned?) … opened up the pilot’s operating handbook, and took off into the fog. He hit power lines less than two miles from the runway. The thief left the airplane a broken heap of metal on the ground, and disappeared. Tuesday, police arrested Louis Paul Kadlecek and charged him with the theft. Police said he had been drinking for four days to celebrate his 21st birthday and had never flown an airplane before. “This guy used up all the luck he is ever going to have,” Louis Jones, county aviation director, said Monday.
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A quote from AVWEB this morning….

Blogging? Is it only 2%?

QUOTE===========================================================

Study: Blogging Still Infrequent
By Anick Jesdanun, AP Internet Writer
March 1, 2004

NEW YORK (AP) _ Despite the potential of turning every Internet user into a publisher, relatively few have created Web journals called blogs and even fewer do so with regularly, a new study finds.

Some bloggers indeed update their journals often, in some cases several times a day. But it’s clearly a minority who are taking advantage of the blog and its potential to steer the online discourse with personal musings about news events and daily life.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project, in a study released Sunday, found that somewhere between 2 percent and 7 percent of adult Internet users in the United States actually keep their own blogs.

Of those, only about 10 percent update them daily, the majority doing so only once a week or less often.

“The impression out there is that a lot of the blog activity is very feverish,” said Lee Rainie, the Pew project’s director. “That’s not the case. For most bloggers, it’s not an all-consuming, all-the-time kind of experience.”
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I have to tell you I love it! I keep family, friends and the world informed via this real cool tool.