August 2004

Raw numbers

August 12, 2004

In the "if it only meant anything" category comes the news that Bush garnered 15,000 supporters at a rally in Phoenix. Just days ago Kerry managed to get that many people to show up in Las Vegas, a city half the size. Both are states that Electoral Vote Predictor has a marginally favoring Bush. It actually means quite a bit but the election is still too far away.

Kerry's rally was impressive. His daughter Vanessa introduced the next president and he was joined on the stage by a long string of well-known local figures and his family.

Wet 'n Wild's Strip ride coming to an end

August 12, 2004

Wet 'n Wild's 19-year ride will come to an end in less than two months. The owners of the site, Las Vegas-based Archon Crop., will use the 27-acre parcel for building a new megaresort. The owners of Wet 'n Wild are said to be considering options for a new park somewhere off The Strip.

Air hybrid vehicle study

August 12, 2004

The brilliant minds over at UCLA are investigating air hybrid technology. It is a very cool concept that works in much the same way electric hybrids do today. Instead of storing energy in batteries, however, the new breed of hybrids will store the energy in compressed air. That is a waiting list worth getting on. Will Toyota be the first to release a production car using it?

Good news for Colorado Democrats

August 11, 2004

Colorado Senate candidate Ken Salazar was one of the winners of landslide victories in the state's primary election on Tuesday. Salazar, who is unusual in having won statewide election twice in the last decade is a democrat who has a broad appeal to centrist republicans and independents alike in Colorado. He faced a dogged grassroots campaign by a political newcomer in Mike Miles. The hard-fought race saw plenty of dirty politicking from the challenger in the guise of "being the change." In the end the race ended up matching an experienced politician who communicated effectively his vision for representing the people of the state of Colorado and a new comer who tried to overcome obstacles with name calling and politics as normal.

What the M means

August 10, 2004

A note that one of the places where online publishing and traditional publishing collide is on the meaning of "M". Don Park has a comment about Windows XP SP2 in which he says downloads will be limited to 2.5M downloads/day. In the traditional publishing world that would be 2,500 not the 2,500,000 meant by the post. Ad pricing is always expressed in CPM - or cost per thousand. The world of traditional publishing is tied to M, from the Roman Numeral M, meaning 1,000.

Coloradoans look for electability in Democratic Sentate race

August 9, 2004

An article from last Friday in the Denver Post cites a poll showing Ken Salazar has a runaway lead in the race for the democratic nomination for the open US Senate seat. One can certainly hope. This race is critical to getting a change in the Senate. Of those polled 21% cited candidate qualities including electability and experience as key deciding factors. Ken Salazar, with his history of being elected by the people of the state of Colorado and a history of working for the state's people should be a shoe in on that critera.

The simple way

August 8, 2004

We're working through some DNS transitions at the office. On Friday I spent too long looking for a slick way to use record generators or something similar in BIND to create forward DNS entries for 750 addresses that I needed to create. It wasn't until too much later that i realized the simple solution.... It takes a few seconds to use Excel to create the records. Simply set up the first two records with sequential numbers in them and then copy away. It has to be done once for each subnet, but in a few seconds all 750 addresses were done.

Riding into the sunset

August 7, 2004

It was a beautiful evening for a ride tonight. We went out for an hour and a half and had a great ride. It is always great riding home after sunset with the blazing orange and red skies. This is what living in the desert is about.

Canceled Netflix

August 4, 2004

It figures that when I cancelled Netflix they don't give you any choice about saying why you're canceling. They ask a few questions but "our customer service really stinks" is not one of them and the option to even check an "other" box isn't there.

Mark Space Customer Disservice

August 4, 2004

I'm in web-order limbo. It stinks. I tried today to order Missing Sync from Mark Space. Everything goes along fine, they take my money, send me the magic code and I install the software. Well really they send the first magic code that you have to some how turn for a second code. Problem is it doesn't work. Not a big deal I head out to the page on the website they say to visit... but if doesn't have anything about the product I ordered. Several others but not the one I ordered. That is part of the problem when a shop becomes the only game in town. I guess while I'm waiting for the response I'll go ahead and cancel Netflix who just sent another disc round tripping to themselves.

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