Caught a forward from a friend in Public Safety and thought I’d pass it along. You know how we get all this cool info on Hurricanes when they’re spinning around out there? Ever think of the folks who fly out and GET some of that data? Here’s a link to an amazing video shot on a hurricane hunting mission from the back of a C-130 cockpit. Awesome!

I’m not a timid flyer, but if its alright with you I’m going to add “hurricane hunter” to that list of occupations I’m glad some folks are drawn to, but “none for me, thanks”.

Enjoy.

Duh!

I can’t believe that Christmas is barely over and we’re just sliding into the New Year’s Holiday, and so many drivers are already trying to kill either themselves or others.  Here are a couple of examples, just from today…

1) Speeding in a parking lot.  Perhaps contrary to popular belief and despite any resemblance, the parking lot at Staples is not, in fact, Daytona International Speedway.  No, you don’t get points for the fastest quarter mile, and the tire smoke resulting from your close-call with the lady backing out of the handicap space was not cool.

2) Beating the traffic signal.  Lets refresh our memories here… Green means go, Red means stop, and Yellow means Caution.  Please note – Yellow does not in fact mean “speed up hoping to slip through the light under either Yellow or Pink”.  And to reinforce the message, Red means stop, not “shit, did anyone see me just totally blow through this light because I don’t want to wait another cycle”, nor “hey, they can’t really go on their Green since I’m turning in front of them on my Red”.

3) Good old fashioned road rage.  I was tempted to write this point about the general agressive driving and proportionate lack of courtesy or defensive driving, but two drivers around a mile from my home spared us all from that – I’m writing about them instead.  Here’s a picture… elderly driver is paying no attention to the traffic in front of him, who has started their turn with the green arrow.  Waking up from his sugarplum dreams to see 5 clear car lengths ahead of him and green turning yellow he makes the sprint toward the light, followed bumper-to-bumper by a VLP (very large pickup), and I mean right on his ass.  Well, as yellow turned to red, Driver #1 decides today is actually NOT a good day to die, so he locks them up, forcing the VLP to act in similar fashion, but to crash/bounce up over the curb and partially into the median.  I don’t think the truck was hurt, but judging by the way its driver flung his door open and started screaming at the elderly driver, he must have been pretty embarassed.  The last thing I saw as I passed was the elderly driver unloading what looked like an arthitic, double-fisted middle finger salute and the young guy steaming back to his truck.  Lovely!

Here’s a newsflash, folks… its the holidays.  There are more drivers and more traffic of all kinds on the road.  People are driving in places unfamiliar to them.  Other drivers are going to screw up.  In these conditions, a small mistake on your part you can get hurt or killed, so PLEASE, unless you want to meet these guys in an official capacity, relax, slow down, offer a little extra courtesy and drive defensively.

Not sure how I missed it, but I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and only today, while preparing another post, did I realize I never posted it!

Today (10 December) was a great day – got to do something we did last year for work, which was deliver Santa Claus to the second annual Big Brothers Big Sisters of Martin County Big and Little Christmas Party, an extension of the BBBS Santa Claus Open golf tournament.  What a hoot!

You see, last year we got a call from Santa Claus that his sleigh was in the shop for its annual pre-Christmas tune up, but that he had this committment to drop by this very special Christmas Party, and that the Martin County Sheriff’s Office Aviation Unit could bring him by, but their helicopter is green and white, and with ours matching Santa’s red, white and gold color scheme perfectly, would we consider helping him out.  Are you kidding… pass on a chance to help Santa and Big Brothers Big Sisters at the same time… NO WAY!

Santa arrived at the base around 11:30, posed for a few photos with Capt. Blank and Flight Medics Sorrells and Gordils (a great team, by the way), checked in on the radio and then was off for a quick aerial tour of Martin County while we staged the kids and prepped the landing zone at The Grace Place on Salerno Road (big thank-you to Grace Place, who for two years now has been kind enough to let BBBS use their facility for the party, which drew around a hundred folks this year).

With the Bigs and Littles all outside, “Santa One” made a couple of recon/vanity orbits around the site, called inbound, and then landed, delivering their precious cargo.  Seeing the kids’ excitement and reaction was awesome, and the adults loved it too (who wouldn’t?).  Santa visited outside in a sea of kids of all ages, then posed for a few photos and headed back to the north pole.

Besides helping out Big Brothers Big Sisters (disclosure: I’m on the board), this kind of community event has to be the most fun and one of the most rewarding aspect of associating with LifeStar and Martin County Fire Rescue.  Providing positive exposure to public safety personnel and careers helps everyone and the community at large, but putting a smile on a child’s face is so easy, but something we don’t always have the opportunity (or take the time) to do. 

Thanks to Fred, Jim, and Chuck from LifeStar, Bill and Ed Bee and Gigi Suntum and all the other staff and volunteers from Big Brothers Big Sisters, but most of all our Bigs, who really make the rubber meet the road in BBBS by mentoring Littles that are all the better for it.

Great way to start off the holiday season, if you ask me…

Seen on my fortune cookie yesterday:

The respect of influential people will soon be yours
.

Like Bill Murray said in Caddyshack, "So I’ve got that goin’ for me".  I’ll let you know how that works out!

This is the first of three posts about the very weird day I had today. Not that you much care, but I thought it was all pretty amusing, so I thought I’d write it down.

Weird Day Part 1 - Elton John Has Crappy Taste in Christmas Music

If you frequent Starbucks, you know they’re selling music in their stores. Some general commercial stuff, some special mixes on their Hear Music label. I’ve impulse-bought a few in the past and liked them, so this morning, while waiting in line behind perhaps the slowest woman in the world trying to decide between the Peppermint Mocha and the Eggnog Latte, I gave in and snatched up what I thought might be an interesting selection - Elton John’s Christmas Party. Not thinking the CD would be a freak show from the artists and songs listed, I thought "its Christmas, what the hell".

Warning - "what the hell" is pretty much what caused all three of the strange occurrences today. Be careful thinking this.

So, I buy my million-dollar coffee and a bunch of Elton John’s favorite Christmas tunes (one of which is a St. Patrick’s Day song - go figure), bop back out the truck and drive off, fumbling the coffee in one hand and the CD in the other. I start playing the first tune, and after a while, I’m thinking "that doesn’t really do it for me", so I forward ahead the next, which was worse, and then through the next couple before it dawns on me.

Elton John has crappy taste in Christmas music.  REALLY crappy taste.

Here’s an excerpt from the album press release:

"Music plays a more important part at Christmas than at any other time of the year. It is the only season that has its own genre of music," explained Elton John. "Recently it has become de rigueur to do a Christmas album. But I do not want to do one. I would rather compile this album of my favorite Christmas songs by my favorite artists."

No, I’m not a music critic and yes, I know I should have known better than to buy a CD that has a cartoon of Elton John in a Christmas cap with the big funky star glasses and a red bowtie and think I was buying something I’d like.  Sir Elton’s instinct was right… you shouldn’t have done a Christmas album, dude!  I don’t think I kept the receipt, but tomorrow morning I’m off to my local Starbucks, crappy CD in hand and looking to trade it for something. If they don’t want to credit me, they can keep it - maybe they can use it as a coaster or to temporarily repair some trouble with their restroom or something, but its never going in my CD player again.

Weird. Never been disappointed with a Starbucks product or experience before, but maybe I should just stick with what I know there - assorted coffee drinks and the killer crumb/coffee cake they have, and stay away from the music. You think?

Of course, there’s a silver lining to every cloud – at least this is a CD the music companies don’t have to worry about missing a gazillion sales because some 12 year old has uploaded the music to the Internet and its being illegally downloaded for free everywhere.  Pretty safe on that front, I methinks.

Onward to Weird Day Part 2 - "Welcome to El Salvador, Sort Of".

[UPDATE - I took the CD back to the Starbucks at Colonial Drive and Maguire in Orlando.  The manager there did some checking and came back a few minutes later with "well, we’re not supposed to take these back, but how about if we give you gift card for the amount of the purchase?"  Great customer service, and I’ll keep visiting that same store - they certainly earned my business!]

ARGGGGH!  I just logged onto my webmail and guess what I found.  No, not a whopping pile of Spam, as you might have guessed, but a mix of spam (20%) and legitimate messages (80%) all sitting in the Spam Filtering folder.  One hundred and fifty six of them, to be exact.

I’d like to say a couple of things.  First, if you’re a spammer, stop.  You’re sucking the life out of the Internet.  Second, if you buy stuff from Spammers, stop.  You’re encouraging them, and even with that miniscule return of one little genius in the million unsolicited GeTYourV!Agr@ HEAr message its worth it for them to keep crapping directly into our inboxes, so resist the urge.  Third, if you’re an ISP, TELL YOUR CLIENTS BEFORE YOU START SPAM FILTERING FOR THEM!  Fourth, if you’re writing Spam filters, please get better at it.  Grabbing a hundred or so legitimate messages to grab the 50 or so that are truly crap isn’t even remotely effective.

Sheesh.

Thanks for the effort [ISP name inserted here], but do YOU want to return all the missing messages?

Learned tonight, courtesy of Halley, that Geoffrey Moore has a blog (more than one, perhaps?).  In his “Dealing with Darwin” blog, Moore has a smattering of posts on topics pointing at the evolution of innovation, technology, and the technology industry.  The blog is named after Moore’s upcoming book of the same name… can’t wait to read it.  Moore also has a Dealing with Darwin website – funny, the site and blog don’t seem to be linked.

To me, Moore is a giant.  He certainly pioneered and advanced a variety of views on the tech industry that helped some separate the wheat from chaff particularly in software companies before, during and after the bubble.

I’ve written about Moore before.  I’m also about 20 minutes into a 40 minute video tonight where Moore describes what he thinks the evolution of the tech marketplace may look like for the remainder of this decade, and perhaps the next.  Funny thing – he spoke on the topic at Sand Hill Group’s Software 2004 conference and guess what… some of the industry shift he spoke of then is coming to bear today.  For Moore’s read on Microsoft’s recent strategy shift, and in particular Ray Ozzie’s role in it, see his post entitled “Microsoft Meet Darwin: Again”.

Geoff, if you need someone to read galleys, do some part-time environmental scanning, or create an online community and blogs to support the cases and materials in, and readers of, the book, I could probably find the time and we could probably work something out… (grin)

Hey, in closing, if you’re not reading Halley’s Comment, which I refer to often here at blahgKarma, you should be.  Its a load of fun, the topics vary greatly, and I love the writing style.  Try it, you’ll like it!

Thanks again to Scoble, I see that Ray Ozzie is blogging.  You can see Ray’s blog here.

I’m subscribed – even if he doesn’t have much to say, the initial post indicates he’ll be writing and interacting with readers a bit on the new Microsoft strategy.  It will be worth much more than an ocassional read, I’ll bet!

Not sure who’s reading that this might help, but what the heck…

At work, I have two separate wireless networks in adjacent buildings.  For seemingly no reason, reliability problems began popping up on both networks – intermittent client connections, inability for clients to obtain IP numbers via DHCP, the appearance of the router(s) not being able to route upstream…

I nearly replaced one of the access points, and then had a thought… since the (physically) adjacent networks used the same network numbering range (which is allowable), and since they shared the same WEP key (which is also allowable in theory), what if the networks were interfering with each other in some way.  BINGO!

Turns out both Linksys routers were using the same default WiFi channel, and with all that similar info between the networks, something was screwing up somewhere.  Changed the default channel on one of the networks and everything automagically seems to be working again.

A better solution for what I was originally trying to accomplish would have been to simply extend the initial network for additional geographic coverage.  Tried that, had trouble making one of the Linksys boxes act as a repeater, and then next thing you know the short term fix of  “just set up another network” turns into “your networks are screwed up”.  Easy to fix, good lesson to learn.