Jonathan E. Smith

Email from my Boss

2012-01-16T00:22:00.000-05:00

Here’s a little peak into my life. I work for our Senior Pastor. He likes to think of himself as a savvy tech person despite being just the opposite. He emailed me recently needing a multi-function printer/copier/scanner/fax device for home. I recommended one to him and let him know that my dad and granddad bought the same model and were able to set it up without my help.

He bought one and then sent the tech team the email below. This email is equivalent to me going to a heart surgeon bursting with pride that I was able to put a Band-Aid on a cut. Enjoy.

Guys,

By now you've probably heard (I assume this was on CNN) that I successfully installed a device at my house today capable of copying, scanning, printing, and faxing. No kidding--I've been doing all of that and more all day.

2 things I want you to know:

1. Please don't hesitate to ask me any tech question if you come up against a challenge that's too hard for you. We can do it quietly--I wouldn't make a big deal out of it or anything.

2. I don't want this to be a threat to your positions. You guys are still useful for some of the less complex tech issues--so all is well.

Have a pleasant afternoon.

Sent from my iPhone

Yes, I'm Still Here

2011-12-28T04:01:00.003-05:00

I know I haven't posted much here lately, I find it easier to write in shorter, 140 character segments and only use blogging for longer posts. However with the increased limit to Facebook and the unlimited limit of Google+ the need to use a blog for longer posts is not as great.

That said I do intend to spend some more time here next year. I need to find a better way to link the longer posts of Facebook and Google+ with my blog so I'm not posting the same thing multiple places.

I have linked my blog to my Google+ profile so we will see where that takes us. I also need to figure out how to better tie this to Facebook and Twitter. Folks interact differently online so providing a seamless content approach to multiple platforms improves the interaction I can have with folks online, I just haven't figured a lot of that out in relation to my blog.

I'm also working on updating my layout using Dynamic Views and some other cool new Blogger features. It will also be interesting to see how linking my Blogger account with Google+ provides features to make the content experience richer.

See you in 2012.

Another Daylight Saving Transition

2011-11-06T00:31:00.001-04:00

Here I sit again on the eve of another Daylight Saving Time change having just wandered the house updating the clocks that aren’t smart enough to update themselves. So between now and 2am some of the clocks are already set to the non-DST time while other clocks are set to the actual real time making the next moment of consciousness completely insane.

I’m constantly amazed at the misinformation surrounding Daylight Saving and why it exists. First of all, there is no ‘s’ on the end of Saving. It is not plural. It is Daylight Saving Time, no ‘s’ but most folks, including those in the media, call it Daylight Savings Time perpetuating the misinformation.

The reasons for DST are also not cut and dry. It isn’t for the school kids nor is it for the farmers. The reasons and misguided perceptions that led us down the DST path are well defined in 2 books. Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time and Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time are both excellent reads and do a great job clearing up the mystery.

My passion against DST began years ago when our governor wanted our state to begin observing DST. I’ve lived in Indiana for most of my life and our great state for the most part didn’t bother to observe the non-sense. Some of the counties up by Chicago and some down near Cincinnati did to try to make things easier for their residents but for the most part most of Indiana stayed on the same time year round. Working in IT this made things easy, as our clocks didn’t have to be changed twice a year.

At hand was the issue of confusion, as no one knew what time it was during what part of the year in what part of our state. To make it easier our governor pushed for the entire state to be on DST so at least you knew what time it was where as it was the same year round. Our state is still split with the counties by Chicago observing Central time while the rest of the state observes Eastern Time but at least it was consistent.

I personally met with our governor and several of our local legislators to express my objections to DST however, despite my best efforts in April of 2006 DST was turned on for Indiana. This provided numerous technical challenges with scheduling systems and other calendar based databases that were not coded to observe DST so a lot of work had to be done to make things work, which is one of the key reasons I opposed it.

Then to add insult to injury the federal government extended the DST observation period by 4 weeks starting in 2007 so we had to make it all work one way in 2006 and then change it up again for the extended dates in 2007 doubling my disdain for DST.

So as we sit on this eve where I wonder what time it really is I hope you have enjoyed this reflection of how we got here. Additional posts pertaining to this crazinessare available here.

I hope you have enjoyed fooling yourselves regarding what time it is as much as I have.

Until the second Sunday of March………

iPhone 4S Battery Life

2011-10-24T19:24:00.000-04:00

A quick search of the internet reveals no shortage of people expressing dismay with the battery life of their new iPhone 4S devices running iOS 5. I too have joined the fray and expressed some frustrations with the lack of battery life of the 4S.

My iPhone 4 had tremendous battery life. My typical iPhone day starts when I take it off my bed side charger between 7 and 8am and ends around midnight. My iPhone 4 would typically be around 70% with normal usage at the end of the day. The only times I really ran my batter down to the 30% range was when traveling and off WiFi and uploading a lot of pictures using spotty 3G service. Otherwise the battery life was outstanding.

My 4S however is usually around 25% when I end a normal day - a huge drop in performance and no where near what Apple promised. If I have any variables now to my normal daily schedule my battery buffer is only 25% before I run out of power.

One of the things I've always held of my Android friends is that my iPhone battery lasted a long time and they all would agree the iPhone had the better battery, that is until the 4S.

I've invested fair bit of time trying to figure this out but have determined there isn't anything I can do. I've experimented with all sorts of configurations and with no luck. So here's what I suggest you do if you too have a 4S and the battery life is disappointing.

Stop wasting time on it. Just use the phone and stop tweaking the settings in a futile attempt to resolve the problem. There are too many variables and current evidence suggests it isn't your issue anyway. You probably have it configured fine, just like you are probably holding it fine too.
You are not alone, if you do find someone who posts their 4S has the same battery performance as their old 4 did please let me know.
For most of us the battery does last the entire day and for me that lets me get my stuff done. It is just frustrating that compared to what we had before the latest and greatest appears to be under performing.
Turning things off will eventually turn the iPhone into an iPod. I'm going to use the phone and the features I bought it for and until this gets fixed keep a charger handy.
My iPad is also running iOS 5 and while it's battery life appears affected too it is not as great. Typically I can get several hours of use out of my iPad on the previous iOS version and only drop around 15%. Now I'm dropping around 30% but the iPad holds it battery life better when in standby then the iPhone does.

While I don't like this I intend to be patient and wait this one out, with a charger close by. My guess is the engineers at Apple, who are much smarter than I am, will figure something out and resolve this problem soon enough for us all to go back to bragging to our Android friends that we again have superior battery life and superior devices. Until then welcome to the bleeding edge of technology.

iCloud Exemplifies Technology Short Comings

2011-10-22T22:19:00.000-04:00

I’m a firm believer that technology should be designed to make our lives better and easier, not more complicated. With the release if iCloud last week I’ve been working hard to figure out how it can help improve my personal use of technology but also be used in our enterprise.

Anytime I can use technology to automatically keep all my access point current then I consider it a win. For example, we have an Exchange server, which allows me to keep my email, contacts, calendar, and tasks updated and automatically synced between all my access devices. For me that is an iPhone, iPad, laptop, and desktop.

One issue has been bookmarks. I like to keep my bookmarks synced between my devices so if I need to remote into an appliance on the network I can do that easily without having to remember an IP address. I used to do this using Live Mesh however that only did my laptop and my desktop. Live Mesh also failed when we started redirecting profiles for Windows 7 users, which included Favorites. Live Mesh is not able to sync a redirected folder or any network based folder so it broke and stopped working.

I was hoping iCloud would be the solution to my problem but it isn’t, as iCloud also can’t sync to files on a network, which would include any folders you redirect.

I think this is a major failure of technology companies. The argument is probably that these features are for home users to keep things in sync and not for those of us who use technology both at home and at work. How short sighted can you get? I’m sure I’m not the only person on the planet who thinks using iCloud to keep my bookmarks in sync between multiple devices, including those on an enterprise network they may have redirected folders and network based storage is a good idea. Why cut your market share in half here when from a purely technology perspective how hard can it be?

My work around to being able to use iCloud at work was to ask our IT guy (me) to exempt my profile from redirecting the Favorites folder. That allowed iCloud to work and work beautifully – much better even than Live Mesh ever did. Live Mesh would replicate files but you lost icons and sorts. iCloud perfectly mirrors what you have including custom sorts and icons. I was able to exempt my policy through a little GPO magic which would allow me, if I was so included, to provide this same service for others who might want to sync their Favorites between their work machine, home machine, and iDevices.

I also did an extensive internet search to see if anyone else was having this issue and to my knowledge, I’m the first person to post that:

iCloud will not work with redirected folder. Period.
iCloud syncs better than Live Mesh.
GPO can be used to allow users to work around this limitation while still maintaining a backup of their Favorites using roaming profiles.

Maybe the genius’ at Microsoft or Apple will catch wind of this and figure out a way to open up their sync applications to work both on and off corporate networks thus helping even more people to enjoy their products. Why make technology harder than it has to be.

The Island of Google+

2011-10-15T15:41:00.002-04:00

Well, here we are still marooned on this island. I'm ready to take the next boat out of here. Google+ usage is plummeting and Google has even admitted unless they get some sort of integration running then time is running out on this service.

People don't want 3 platforms to manage. Facebook and Twitter at least have their own built in levels of integration and if you don't like that then there are lots of apps that can help you post to both and manage both. Google+ has none of the above relagating them to mostly uselessness.

An interesting survey was taken at a NASA HQ Tweetup I was at on Thursday. Over 75% of the room said they use Google+ but almost 100% of those who said they use it said they didn't like it because it was all by itself.

If Google doesn't get with it quickly Google+ will become the next abandoned internet playground. MySpace anyone?

HootSuite’s Achilles’ Heel

2011-10-11T09:12:00.000-04:00

At long last, I have finally figured out why I can’t post to Facebook reliably from HootSuite. It took some doing to figure that out. You can read about it here, be sure to view the comments as HootSuite responded multiple times to my post about this issue.

HootSuite is a cloud-based service meaning the software and processes happen on their servers. This is one of their selling points because you don’t have to install the software on every machine but can access the software and data through the internet. The one catch is the software doesn’t update the data. If you make a change to your streams on your iPhone, those changes are not automatically reflected in your other apps or platforms. Perhaps they will get there someday.

The issue with this approach in regards to Facebook, as pointed out in the comments from my last post on this is that all traffic goes through HootSuite’s servers and is viewed by Facebook as a single connection. As a result, if there is too much traffic going to Facebook then users are blocked.

Here is what HootSuite posted on my previous blog post:

When people communicate through HootSuite to Facebook, they're going through a centralized server that parses the API calls. If Facebook hits a certain limit (we don't know what this limit is) from a certain profile, they will hit "the wall" so to speak -- and will be unable to send messages to Facebook until a certain time.

When people install a client like TweetDeck on their computer, they're not going through a centralized server. Rather, their computer is communicating directly with Facebook's API. To be frank, they still are being ratelimited, but the results may be skewed due to not communicating through a centralized server.

The advantage of parsing through a centralized server is that, no matter where you are in the world, you can log into HootSuite and know that the same messages you have scheduled will be visible in your Publisher queue. Hence, there is no need to install HootSuite on multiple machines since HootSuite is a service that is offered "in the cloud".

That isn’t well documented anywhere that I can find on HootSuite’s support and help sites.

To me this is a major issue as my reliability of use is directly affected by how much all the other users are posting.

I can think of several programming fixes that would address this and I hope HootSuite spends some time figuring it out. Until they do, I will still have to use TweetDeck as a backup for when I’m limited in posting to Facebook through no fault of my own.

HootSuite Support Issues

2011-10-07T15:28:00.000-04:00

I recently posted a comparison of TweetDeck vs HootSuite. Here is an update to that post.

I've been having issues with posting to Facebook multiple times from HootSuite. As you know I tend to post a lot when I'm at various events. A few weeks ago I was at the launch of the GRAIL space craft at Kennedy Space Center. I was posting a lot and kept getting errors when posting to Facebook from HootSuite. I could post to Twitter fine but not to Facebook. It appeared that Facebook would only allow me to post so many times in a row and then it would block me for a certain period of time.

I only had this issue with HootSuite. From TweetDeck I was able to post to both Twitter and Facebook as many times as I wanted in as short a period of time as I wanted without issue.

I'm a HootSuite Pro user due to the number of accounts I manage so I'm paying for this service. That also means I get support. They closed my first ticket on this issue without a resolution so I opened it up again. Below is what they said. They basically repeated themselves and said it isn't there fault despite the fact that this only happens with their app.

In the mean time when I'm doing a lot of posting, as I will be doing next week at the White House, Capitol Hill and NASA HQ I will probably have to use TweetDeck so that I can post without getting blocked.

Thoughts?

Support Ranger, Oct-07 10:49 (PDT):

Hi Jonathan,
We do know that this is a result of Facebook's rate limiting. At the moment, we do not know what the exact amount of posts that triggers the rate limiting, but we do know this occurs. Do note that the rate limiting is not result of using HootSuite, but it is a result of sending a certain amount of messages to your Facebook profile.
As Facebook's API is not something HootSuite controls, we can not adjust the amount of messages you are able to send within a certain period of time.
At this time we suggest that you reduce the amount of Facebook messages you send out in a given period of time, and space out these posts in longer increments.
Thank you for using HootSuite,
IB

Jonathan Smith, Oct-05 17:21 (PDT):

Thanks for the response and confirmation that Facebook has a limit but isn't public about what triggers it. That is very helpful.
However that doesn't explain why HootSuite gets blocked but I can switch over to TweetDeck and get my messages to go through just fine. If Facebook has a limit I would think it would apply to all apps using the API and not just to HootSuite so once my account was blocked from posting via HootSuite that same block should apply to TweetDeck if it is a function of the API. I have never had an issue posting in rapid fire fashion via TweetDeck.
Again, I appreicate your response and that does help but in some ways it creates more questions than it solves. Does TweetDeck us a different API that is not limited?

Support Captain, Oct-05 16:55 (PDT):

Howdy!
Facebook does rate limit the amount of posts you are able to send during the day. At the moment, we do not know what the exact amount of posts that triggers the rate limiting, but we do know this occurs. Do note that the rate limiting is not result of using HootSuite, but it is a result of sending a certain amount of messages to your Facebook profile.
If you would like Facebook to give you further insight into this matter, please visit Facebook Help Center:
http://facebook.com/help
Do note that because HootSuite does not build Facebook's API, we can only provide service as is.
Thank for using HootSuite!

Jonathan Smith, Oct-05 16:38 (PDT):

It doesn't appear that I'm communicating effectively as I've answered all these questions before. Let me try to sum up what I've already said in the tickets.
1. I can post to Facebook, it just stops working when I post 3 or 4 times in a row and then I have to wait an unspecified amount of time before I can post again. So when I travel and am posting frequently it fails for periods of time after 3-4 posts in a row, within a minute of each other. To get around this I have to use TweetDeck which allows me to post over and over again with out issue.
2. The error message is just a red bar that says Trouble Sending to Social Network. When I send to Twitter it always works but when I send too many times in a row to Facebook I get this. After waiting for an unspecified amount of time it lets me do it again but after a few in a row it stops. The only error message is Trouble Sending to Social Network, no details or anything.
3. It seems to me as though HootSuite has a limit on the number of times you can post to Facebook within a time period and once that is violated it makes you wait for an amount of time before you can post again.
4. On a normal day I post to Facebook 8-10 times but they are not in a row. When traveling and at events i'm covering I'll post back to back to back posts and that is where the problem appears.
5. I have done everything asked of me in the tickets to try to solve this. I believe this to be a HootSuite problem that needs corrected. Resetting my account yet again or disconnecting from Facebook and reconnecting yet again won't solve this as I've done that and the problem keeps happening. Facebook states they have no limits that would cause this and I should check with my vendor.
I apologize for being so blunt but I hope you can understand my frustration - especially when the ticket is marked closed and no solution has been provided.

Support Ranger, Oct-05 12:29 (PDT):

Hi Jonathan,
Are you still unable to post to your Facebook account?
Are you seeing any error messages in your Facebook Pending stream? Are you seeing any red messages at the Past Scheduled section of Publisher? If a message has not been sent, there should an explanation in both views for why this is the case.
Thank you in advance.
IB

Jonathan Smith, Oct-05 12:18 (PDT):

This reqeust was closed but I don't see any reason why it was closed. I have not had the problem lately as I haven't been posting as much however next week I'll be traveling again and posting a lot so I need to know that my paid HootSuite app is going to work and reliably post to both Twitter and Facebook every time. Otherwise I'm going to consider cancelling my paid account and using TweetDeck. Even though it is lacking in featurs it relaibly allows me to post to both Twitter and Facebook all the time regardless of how many posts I make.
It is a bit frustrating that I did everything you reqeusted, no resolution was made available, and yet the ticket was closed.

A TSA Experiment

2011-10-06T08:17:00.000-04:00

Next week I’m going to try an experiment with the TSA at the Indianapolis International Airport. I travel frequently and as you know from reading this blog, I’ve had many unique experiences with the TSA.

I’m traveling to Washington, D.C. for 3 events. First, I’m attending a Tweetup at the White House for the arrival ceremony for the President of South Korea. South Korea is the most wired and connected country in the world. I’m looking forward to learning about how other cultures connect via Social Media. Attending the arrival ceremony on the South Lawn will also be cool.

Second, and my dad will be joining me at this part of the day, we are meeting with Senator Coat’s office from Indiana for a tour of the Capitol and gallery access to watch both the House and the Senate in action.

Finally, our day ends with a NASA Tweetup event at NASA Headquarters with the crew of STS-135, the final shuttle mission. I saw STS-135 launch and am looking forward to meeting the crew.

One of the biggest hassles with traveling is taking my pocketknife with me, especially as I rarely check a bag. I feel lost without my Leatherman Micra. I’ve even had to mail it to myself a few times but for the last 15 years I’ve been able to hold on to the same one. The Micra can’t travel on planes because it has a small knife blade.

Leatherman Style PS

The good folks at Leatherman make a TSA approved device, the Style PS. My dad, who you can follow on Twitter @4faraday found this and suggested I get one since I fly frequently.

When we found out we were going to DC together he suggested I buy one. If I can get it through the TSA then he will buy one. If it is confiscated then he will buy me another one. Deal and game on.

So, next week I will be taking this device through the TSA checkpoints at IND and then again at DCA on the way home. According to the online reviews, folks are able to get this device through as it is fully compliant with TSA requirements – to see how my luck works out be sure to subscribe to this blog.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to just put it in my bag and see if it is flagged and examined or if I’m going to put it in a bin on its own to see if the TSA is familiar with it. As a backup, I do plan to have the website printed out to show them should any issues arise. Part of me hopes I don’t have to use the print out, part of me does. Stay tuned.

Invited to the White House

2011-09-29T18:19:00.002-04:00

This is what I got in the mail today.

South Korea is the most wired country in the world. On a per capita basis they have more people connected to the web and more users of social media than any other country. Instead of a White House they have a Blue House which uses social media progressively to communicate with their people.

I'm looking forward to this unique opportunity to learn more about how another culture uses social media.

TweetDeck vs. HootSuite

2011-09-20T08:12:00.000-04:00

There is no doubt that social media is now ingrained in our lives, much in the same way that email has become as common as the telephone. The one thing that has not become common is how we interact with the various social media platforms.

With email, there are common apps that allow us to manage different email providers all through a single portal. Social media has yet to come up with a solid, single portal. Most social media providers want you to use their website or their own specific app to access their social media platform. There is little collaboration to make it easy for their end users.

I know I’m not the only one who uses both Twitter and Facebook. I enjoy using both since each provides a different way to communicate but I don’t want to have to visit multiple website or use multiple applications between multiple devices in order to manage these services. This gets more complicated when you add additional social network like Google+, Foursquare, etc.

In an attempt to be more efficient I have tried many program and for many years I settled on using TweetDeck, a free app that works with Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and more. However, TweetDeck was lacking in features that other programs were providing and making available on multiple platforms. In addition, the acquisition of TweetDeck by Twitter, which has publicly said it is trying to limit the ecosystem, meant the multi social network support in TweetDeck probably wasn’t going to continue.

As a result, I started checking around for another platform. After all, how hard should it be for a software provider to be able to create software that will allow me to reliably post to Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and any other social network that comes along and also provides the latest features so that I don’t have to bounce from one app to another and post the same things multiple times?

Surprisingly enough, it is much harder than you think. I’ve found many feature comparison posts helpful so here is my feature comparison post between TweetDeck and HootSuite. As additional points of comparisons come up, I’ll do my best to update this post. These are in no particular order.

Platform Support

TweetDeck

They have an Adobe Air app for Windows desktops and a Chrome app.

An android app.

Earlier this year they released v2.0 of their iPhone app calling it a completely new app. I believe that it is a new app however; they left out a lot of features from the old app.

They also used to have an iPad app however, it wasn’t very good, and recently TweetDeck removed any references to it from their website. Their site used to say coming soon but even that has been pulled.

One of my biggest reasons for needing a new platform was the lack of iPad support. Running the iPhone app in 2x mode stinks and in an attempt to use my laptop less and my iPad more I needed a Twitter/Facebook app built for the iPad.

TweetDeck has also had other browser-based apps in “coming soon” mode for many months. TweetDeck seems long on promises and short on delivery.

I don’t see that trend improving now that they are owned by Twitter. TweetDeck feature and upgrades have also been very slow since they were purchased by Twitter, which makes me wonder what they are doing to the program, like removing Facebook support.

HootSuite

They have a full blown browser app

An Android app

A Chrome app

A native iPhone app

A native iPad app

Updates are also fairly regular.

Sync Between Apps and Platforms

TweetDeck

Provides central account on their servers that store columns and searches. You access this by logging into the app. Changes made on one are not updated on the other.

Does not sync anything else.

You can sync read/unread tweets, application settings, etc. if you use a program like DropBox or Windows Live to copy the application settings folder between computers but it does not sync any of this on its own. It only stores columns.

HootSuite

Syncing isn’t great here either. They provide a central account that syncs columns and searches as well but it also does not update between apps. If you add a social network on your iPhone, it won’t appear on your iPad unless you add it manually.

Does not sync anything else.

Program settings do sync between some apps. For example, the Chrome app to Chrome app will sync settings between computers but changes are not replicated between an iPhone and an iPad.

Read/unread tweets do not sync and there is no ability to copy settings using DropBox, as the data folders are not stored like TweetDeck.

There is a radical way to make update changes from one device to another. If you add your Foursquare account to your desktop, you can add it to your iPhone by logging out of your iPhone and then logging back in again. This resets all your feeds by pulling them down again from the HootSuite server. Why they can’t do this live I don’t know but this does work provided you do it in the right sequence.

It is a bit baffling to me that both these programs provide the ability to replicate and store some of your settings on their servers but they don’t provide any replication of your full account. Email has evolved to the point where settings and changes, folders, read/unread all replicate between clients and platforms. I wonder how long it will be before social media apps evolve to the same point.

URL Shorteners

TweetDeck

Provides many different choices however, these choices may be narrowed down to only using the new Twitter shortener.

HootSuite

You can only use their built in shorteners.

Pictures

TweetDeck

Allows you to use many different image services including YFrog and TwitPic. This may change now that they are a part of Twitter and Twitter has recently rolled out their own image service.

Posts pictures to Facebook gallery as opposed to wall called Mobile TweetDeck uploads. This is also better than just posting the text of the shortened link which forces Facebook users to click on it to see it.

One benefit is TweetDeck can do both at the same time, which is very helpful from a mobile phone. You upload the image and select Twitter and Facebook and it does the rest however, this only works on the old version of TweetDeck for iPhone. The new version removed this feature and only posts the text of the shortened URL to the Facebook page.

HootSuite

Only allows you to post images via the HootSuite system, there are no other options available.

Post pictures to Facebook as wall images so the image is visible on your wall as part of your wall album as opposed to being in another album. Very nice for your users as they can preview the images without going away from your wall provided you post with previews turned on. If you turn them off then it only posts the text of the shortened link.

This feature works very well on all the apps and platforms.

The problem I have with this is that I have been using TwitPic for years so I have a lot of pictures there. Switching to HootSuite for pictures would mean starting over. In addition, I use the TwitPic gadget on my blog so thumbnails of my pictures appear on my website. HootSuite has no such gadget.

Downloading Tweets

TweetDeck

Desktop runs off Twitter’s live mode, which provides updates as they happen in the live stream. You can customize the settings to slow it down if you want on the desktop app.

The iPhone app updates live as well so you are always current.

HootSuite

None of the apps run in live mode. The desktop app will only update at preset intervals with the fastest being 2 minutes. You can manually force updates but it does not run live.

The iPhone app only updates manually, you have to pull down each stream to get them to update.

The iPad app updates similar to the desktop app.

Regardless of what app or platform you use HootSuite does not update automatically or provide real-time access like TweetDeck does.

Scheduling

TweetDeck

Provides the ability to schedule posts but only through the desktop apps – they keep promising it will be expanded but as of yet that is just another promise.

HootSuite

Provides the ability to schedule posts on all apps and all platforms.

Twitter Lists

TweetDeck

Provides a great integration and use of Twitter lists however, when too many lists are in use the apps all become unstable.

Only limitation is you can’t add those you follow to lists from the apps.

HootSuite

Provides a great integration and use of Twitter lists and is stable regardless of how many you use.

The organization also is better in terms of how the lists of access.

You also have the ability to add and remove people from your lists.

The only drawback, which only affects the desktop apps, is that you can’t add someone to a list unless you have the list in a stream. The iPhone and iPad apps don’t have this problem.

Cost

TweetDeck

Free, however they have stated ads are coming soon.

HootSuite

Free for up to 5 accounts. They state you will get ads but I haven’t seen any.

There is a $5.99 monthly fee if you need more than 5 accounts.

The downside is they charge you monthly; you can’t pay for a year at a time, which adds to the old paperwork.

Misc. Items

TweetDeck

Stays open all the time, never goes to sleep.

Uses more system resources.

Can delete any tweet you post.

Easy to report spam and block users.

HootSuite

Goes to sleep and has to be woke up so there aren’t any notifications when the apps goes to sleep.

Uses less system resources.

Can only delete your DM’s, can’t delete anything else from within the app.

Harder to report spam and block users.

For me and how I function, I ended up going primarily with HootSuite. I needed an app that worked well on my laptop, my desktop, my iPhone, and my iPad and provided similar features between them all. HootSuite also seems to be more forward thinking. They have already said they will incorporate Google+ while TweetDeck has said they have no plans to build in Google+.

However, I still end up using TweetDeck from time-to-time. I have an open ticket with HootSuite now regarding some issues posting to Facebook, as it appears there is a limit to how many times you can post to Facebook in a specific time period. I’ve also had some issues with the iDevice apps not working when I switch between wireless networks.

I also continue to use TweetDeck to post pictures from my iPhone so I can continue using TwitPic as I haven’t decided if I want to leave TwitPic and start over using HootSuite’s image system.

As you can see, there is no perfect solution here. I think HootSuite is better and is going to try to stay there while TweetDeck’s future will be determined by Twitter.

I look forward to the day when social media clients are as robust and universal as email clients do. For now, we have to make do.

This list was compiled over several months and parts of it may be outdated before this post can be updated.

Hummingbirds and Tweets

2011-09-13T23:44:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while a hummingbird flies into your garage and you don’t know what to do about it. Ever been there? Tonight I was there. My wife got home and left the garage door up for me. When I pulled in there was a hummingbird flying around between the lights.

Unfortunately, the bird would not fly down lower and out the doors as he was hugging the ceiling. I tried using a broom and even a wide shovel to guide the bird down but I was not able to get them over the bird as it just kept flying up against the ceiling.

So I turned to a solid source of knowledge, the Twittersphere and asked the tweeps what one does when one has a hummingbird in the garage. The first suggestion was to set a large red bowl full of sugar water on the floor of the garage near the door. An hour later, the bird was still in the garage.

The second suggestion was to close all the doors, turn off all the lights, and leave the bird in the dark for about 20 minutes. Then I opened the doors and hoped the bird would fly towards the light. At first I didn’t think it worked as I didn’t see the bird fly out but after about 5 minutes of the door being opened and me not watching from the driveway the bird fled.

So if it hadn’t been for Twitter the hummingbird might still be in my garage. What problem will I encounter next that Twitter is able to solve? Stay tuned.

NASA GRAIL Tweetup Media Release

2011-08-29T10:45:00.014-04:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: JONATHAN SMITH
jsmith@faithlafayette.org
@JonathanESmith

MEDIA RELEASE

Lafayette, IN Resident is One of 150 Selected to Attend NASA Tweetup for Launch of Twin Lunar-Bound GRAIL Spacecraft Sept. 7 - 8, 2011

NASA Twitter Followers Will Tweet from Kennedy Space Center, Fla.

Lafayette, IN August 29, 2011 - NASA will bring together 150 Twitter followers to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center for a two-day Tweetup, Sept. 7 - 8, 2011, for the launch of twin lunar-bound Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft aboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Lafayette, IN resident Jonathan Smith has been selected as one of 150 @NASA Twitter followers to attend and Tweet the event. The launch window opens at 8:37 a.m. EDT on Thursday, Sept. 8. The two GRAIL spacecraft will measure the moon’s gravity field from its crust to core and provide scientists with a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

As a NASA Tweetup attendee, Smith and the other 149 Twitter users will interact with engineers and scientists from GRAIL and other upcoming NASA missions as well as tour the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. If all goes as scheduled, participants will view the spacecraft launch. In addition, the Tweetup will allow participants to meet other tweeps and members of NASA’s social media team. Attendees were selected through a lottery system in which more than 825 @NASA Twitter followers registered.

“NASA provides a tremendous opportunity to learn about our nation’s Space Program and see a rocket launch up close and personal.” Smith said, “Very few people are allowed this level of access to NASA facilities.”

Smith is the Director of Technology at Faith Ministries in Lafayette, IN and an avid space follower. He has attended several Tweetups including STS-132 and Pilot Day 2011 at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. As a result of attending the STS-132 launch tweetup Smith traveled to Florida and saw the final 3 launches of the shuttle program. Follow his tweets at twitter.com/jonathanesmith.

NASA Tweetup participants are traveling from across the United States and the globe to attend. View the list of list of registered attendees on the NASA Tweetup Twitter account: http://twitter.com/NASATweetup/grail-launch

NASA held its first Tweetup on Jan. 21, 2009, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. NASA’s Tweetup Twitter account is http://twitter.com/NASATweetup and participants will be using #NASATweetup in their updates while tweeting. Information about NASA Tweetup can be viewed on http://www.nasa.gov/tweetup .

About the GRAIL Mission
The two GRAIL spacecraft will fly in tandem orbits around the moon for several months to measure its gravity field from crust to core. The mission will answer longstanding questions about Earth’s moon and provide scientists with a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

GRAIL's lift off is the third of four space missions launching this year under the management of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Aquarius launched June 10 to study ocean salinity; Juno will launched Aug. 5 to study the origins and interior of Jupiter; and the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity rover heads to the Red Planet no earlier than Nov. 25. Visit http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/grail for additional information about GRAIL.

The Big Bang Theory Q&A

2011-08-28T23:07:00.002-04:00

By far the most popular posts on my blog are the ones about attending a taping of The Big Bang Theory in March of 2010. I’ve received many contacts and questions from folks all over the world but I think there are a few things I need to clear up as the 2011-2012 production season gets underway.

The purpose of my blog was strictly for entertainment and information purposes.
I can’t get you tickets. It doesn’t work that way.
I can’t get you a job in the US Entertainment industry or in Hollywood.
If you are lucky enough to get tickets from http://tvtickets.com/ then follow their instructions and get there as early as you can. They provide very clear and specific instructions online.
The Big Bang Theory tapes on Tuesdays at Warner Brothers in Burbank, CA.
Don’t plan a trip just to see a TV show taped. Plan to do other things in case you don’t get in or something happens and the taping schedule is changed. Remember that guaranteed admission tickets, especially for popular shows are very difficult to get.
I can’t get you tickets.
I can’t get you a job in the US Entertainment industry or in Hollywood
The taping lasts between 4 and 5 hours. They do provide you with a bottle of water and at our taping each member of the 200 person studio audience got a single slice of pizza from Little Caesars.
There are no restrooms located at the sound stage so don’t drink a lot before you go as getting to a restroom will cause you to miss a lot of the production.
Leave your cell phone, camera, and anything else in the car as that will dramatically speed up security. Plan to be unplugged from the world for 4-5 hours.
I can’t get you tickets.
I can’t get you a job in the US Entertainment industry or in Hollywood.
There is no promise that anyone will stick around to sign autographs. The Big Bang Theory provided us with a program for the episode we saw taped and we did get a few autographs but that is by no means a sure thing.
Have fun, enjoy the process, and remember to laugh.

The Importance of Community

2011-08-27T09:17:00.002-04:00

Folks in the IT community are often stereotyped as being pocket protector wearing nerds sitting day and night in front of their computer screens and rarely interacting with other human beings. Unfortunately, this notion is often true and is more detrimental than many IT pros would care to admit.

Let’s face it, we are all busy and have enough job security to last us several lifetime’s so socializing with others who do what we do doesn’t often rise to the top of the priority list. I personally would rather spend a quiet evening at home than spend time with “friends” out on the town. That’s how I’m wired so I understand it isn’t easy to make gathering with others a priority.

Granted we are all great at being super independent and solving any problem with just our experience and a few Google searches but often times that is not efficient. How long do you spend trying to solve a problem on your own before your just call one of your numerous support contracts?

There are 2 groups that I’m a part of from which I’ve reaped numerous benefits. The first group is the CITRT, the Church Information Technology Round Table. This is a national group of IT professionals that work for churches and non-profit ministries. The second group is GLITS, the Greater Lafayette Information Technology Society. This is a local group of IT professionals that work in and around the greater Lafayette area.

These communities remind me that I’m not all alone in my struggles with technology but that there are others who are willing and able to help me. The challenge is that I’m good at taking from these communities and learning from them but I need to get better at sharing with them and giving back. That happens in person as well as electronically.

Not being a part of these groups also leads to missed opportunities. I wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to help those in the community around me because I didn’t want to spend time getting to know them so I could learn about their needs while at the same time they learn about mine. I recently had the chance to help some local organizations in their use of social media because I was available to learn about the opportunity. Synergy and not silos also applies to the Information Technology field.

So make a plan to get out and meet those around you who do what you do. Plan to invest in them and allow them to invest in you. And if you haven’t been out in the sun in a while then don’t forget the SPF 50. Oh, leave your pocket protector on your desk.

Equipment for Sale

2011-07-25T01:26:00.000-04:00

Faith Ministries is selling some of our sound equipment we no longer need through a series of upgrades. Here is a list of the equipment complete with details and our asking price as well as contact information. All equipment is available for inspection at Faith Ministries in Lafayette, IN.

For more information and any questions please contact:

Jonathan Smith
Director of Technology
Faith Ministries
5526 St. Rd. 26 E.
Lafayette, IN 47905
765-448-1986 x158
765-448-2985 fax
jsmith@faithlafayette.org
www.faithlafayette.org

Allen & Heath ML 4000 Series Mixing Console

48+2 channel console complete with 2 redundant power supplies, talk back mic, and light kit.

Asking price: $8,000.00

This console was purchased and installed at Faith Baptist Church in 2003 and has only been used in this fixed venue. It is in great shape and has recently been cleaned. In 2008 the console was serviced and several LED lights were replaced. In addition the Direct Outs on each channel were switched from post fade to pre fade.

Console has a few LED lights that are out but easily replaced. There are also 2 channels on the board that are not working however since we replaced the console we haven’t done additional troubleshooting to see if the channels are bad or there were other connection issues outside of the board.

Due to the size and weight of this console (approx. 400 pounds) we are unable to provide shipping or delivery.

ML4000 Key Features

The Allen & Heath ML4000 is a large format VCA equipped dual function live sound console providing many of the features of its larger brother the ML5000. It can be quickly configured for front-of-house (FOH) or stage monitor mixing. As one console suitable for both applications it is equally well suited to installation, rental and touring. It offers an IO capability and feature set that satisfies the latest trends in live sound engineering, in particular the growing number of inputs and outputs for multi-speaker house and monitor systems, demands of stereo in-ear monitoring, 3 speaker LCR imaging, advanced grouping and automation. The design ensures on-the-road durability, a clear layout for easy walk up and go operation, and no-compromise audio performance.

Inputs and Outputs

• 48+2 (mono + dual stereo channels)

• 48 mono mic/line inputs with inserts and direct outputs

• 2 dual stereo line inputs standard

• Main Left, Right and Centre outputs with inserts, Centre configurable as the engineers monitor

• 8 Groups, 12 Auxes: Group/Aux 1-8 and Aux 9-12 with faders and inserts, Aux 1-8 with rotaries

• 11x4 Matrix

• 2-Track monitor input and recording send

• Stereo headphones and local monitors

• Talkback mic input

• ClearCom compatible intercom interface

Groups and Automation

• 8 VCA groups with mutes and PAFL monitoring

• 8 audio groups with LCRplus™ sub grouping

• 8 mute groups

• MIDI accessible snapshot memories

• MIDI mute on/off, snapshot recall and dump in/out control

• Channels can be made safe from the automation

Processing and Control

• 4-Band full sweep mono EQ with switched Q mids, 4-band fixed frequency stereo EQ

• Sweepable high pass filter

• LCRplus™ 3 speaker imaging system

• Protected mode switching to configure the console for FOH or monitor application

• Intelligent PAFL system with all-clear, PFL/in-place AFL, priority, auto-cancel/add mode…

• Assignable talkback and intercom

• 1kHz tone and pink noise generator for system line-up and testing

• Full console monitoring and extensive metering of inputs, mix busses and outputs

Download Manual and Specs Here

http://www.loyola.com/av/products/audio/pdf/ml4000-guide.pdf

PreSonus ACP88 8-channel Compressor/Limiter/Gate

Asking Price: $675 per unit

We have 3 of these units. 1 was purchased and installed at Faith Baptist Church in 2008 and the other 2 in 2009. They have only been used in this fixed venue.

These units can be shipped and shipping costs are the responsibility of the buyer.

Classic Dynamics Control

One of our all-time most popular products, the ACP88 delivers the classic analog compression that helped establish PreSonus as a leading signal-processor manufacturer. With eight independent, full-featured compressor/limiters and gates, the ACP88 can solve a host of thorny studio and live-sound problems.

Each channel provides a fully variable compressor with a sidechain send and return to enable spectral processing and ducking. In addition to the usual attack, release, ratio, threshold, and makeup gain controls, each compressor offers selectable soft- or hard-knee compression and an Auto Attack feature that overrides the manual controls and applies preset attack and release curves. A six-segment LED meter displays the amount of gain reduction.

The compressor/limiter is followed by a full-featured gate with attack, release, and threshold controls; a gate-range switch, which determines the amount of level reduction that occurs when the gate closes; and a sidechain/key insert loop that enables the gate to be opened, or keyed, in response to a modified version of the program signal or some other external source.

Professional Features

With eight dynamics processors in one unit, you can employ tricks that aren’t possible with lesser processors. The Channel Link feature lets you lock together as many channels as you wish, so that all processors follow the setting of the master processor. Since you can create multiple simultaneous link groups, you could link a stereo pair of channels plus a group of four processors and still have two unlinked channels for other applications.

Each channel can be independently bypassed so you can audition signals with and without processing. And since the ACP88 is designed to work smoothly with a variety of professional and semipro gear, you can select +4 dBu or -10 dBV operating levels independently for each channel.

Old Skool Rules

Some people say they don’t make signal processors the way they used to. Nonsense. The ACP88 is a superb old-skool processor, with physical knobs and switches for every parameter, shoehorned into two rackspaces, and it delivers a pure analog sound that will always be in style.

Download Manual and Specs Here

http://www.presonus.com/products/Detail.aspx?ProductId=17

Google+ Needs to Grow Up Quickly

2011-07-18T12:09:00.000-04:00

On Twitter today I posted a few things griping about this Google+ thing. Since Google+ thinks it is the center of the universe I am not able to send those tweets to Google+ however if I posed to Google+ originally then I could send the post to Twitter and Facebook only if I download an app and install it into Chrome and only if I use Chrome as my browser of choice when doing said posting.

The problem here is Google+ is trying to become the core of everything while still being the new kid on the block that lacks a ton of integration features.

Right now I use TweetDeck to send posts to both Twitter and Facebook. TweetDeck said recently they had no plans to add support for Google+ meaning I'm now posting the same thing multiple places. Google has even created dissention within its own ranks as Buzz doesn't link to it and neither does Blogger. As a result I'm also manually posting this to my blog as a blog post.

Seems to me that Google has released a product that in many ways is cool and has some features superior to Twitter and Facebook but that is also lacking the ability to play nice with them. It is the immature child on the block that needs to grow up quickly and learn to get along with others or risk not being included with the rest of the gang and spending a lot of time playing by itself.

Why Are We Going Broke?

2011-07-17T13:37:00.005-04:00

I typically don’t post a lot about politics because the issue is obviously contentious, as most folks can’t separate their political views from their personal biases about individual politicians, groups, or political parties. As a result their views change based on the “who” as opposed to any strong beliefs or convictions.

I’m amazed at the current state of our great nation’s finances. Four years ago, our Legislative branch, and Executive Branch started authorizing massive spending programs to help our economy recover from a recession. Two years ago, these branches, after an election cycle, continued this practice and added even more spending to it in terms of health care reform with the tag line that these reforms were going to save us money.

Now we are broke having apparently over spent to the point that we need either to cut spending or increase our debt ceiling. Changing gears this fast in a car will strip your transmission and I’m curious what it is going to do to our government and our nation. Over spending is never an answer, even if that overspending helps me out.

Our political process has also turned the taxpayers into a pawn for re-election. Am I happy that taxes are at an all-time historical low? You bet! Am I happy that our nation is broke? Not at all.

Unfortunately, our policies swing based on the needs of our politics and what our government does now seems to be done without respect for the future. Before we couldn’t spend enough to save ourselves, now we can’t save enough to save ourselves. There has to be a better way to govern then one that lives at the edge of the extremes.

Perhaps our nation could learn from the great state of Indiana. Our state has not been governed on the extremes. Is it perfect? No, but our budgets is balanced, our taxes have not increased and we have over a billion dollars in reserve. It isn’t easy but we know it can be done.

Everyone’s an Expert

2011-07-16T12:25:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, the Casey Anthony trial ended with a not guilty verdict and immediately the internet and social media services went crazy with armchair pundits commenting as though they knew more than the jury did. What makes this more interesting is a few days after the verdict I headed to Florida for the final Space Shuttle launch and down there the locals all had an opinion.

While we may all have an opinion, we are not all experts. We may have watched the trial on TV but that doesn’t make us an expert. We don’t know exactly everything the jury knew or what evidence they were allowed or not allowed to consider. I don’t agree with how the defending counsel handled the situation with the media but I certain understand why they responded how they did.

It also fascinated me how worked up some people were about this and how many believed justice had been thwarted that day. Maybe I’m crazy but I just don’t care that much about it. Besides, someday everything, the right and the wrong, will all be judged by a much higher power than a Florida court or millions of couch potatoes. There are more important things in this life.

Why Men Should Not Carry Change Purses

2011-07-15T07:47:00.001-04:00

Last week I attended the final launch of the Space Shuttle program, the launch of Atlantis on STS-135. While packing for the trip I grabbed a change purse full of nickels and dimes to burn up on the numerous tolls around Orlando. I had no idea how problematic this change purse was going to be.

My “change purse” was actually a leather bag with a zippered top intended to keep the change organized. I really didn’t think much about throwing it in my TSA approved backpack. I have my routine down for going through security at the airport. I place my watch, wallet, and cell phone in my backpack. Then my liquids and shoes go in one of the bins. Since my bag is TSA approved, I don’t have to take my laptop out. I also keep my chargers, USB cables, and other wires in an old mic bag so they are all together. Cables strewn out inside a bag will almost always get your bag rummaged through.

This system has kept me from being searched for over 2 years, no checks, searches, explosive swabs, nothing. That is until last week. My backpack came through the x-ray and the lady told me there was a change purse in there and the x-ray couldn’t see what was behind it. I told her right where the change purse was but she couldn’t find it and in the process unpacked the entire bag.

I don’t envy the TSA folks their jobs but I told her specifically where it was as that is all they needed to x-ray but she never found it. After unpacking most of the bag, she sent everything through again and then said it was ok. She handed me my bag and I put my hand in and pulled out the change purse.

She said it would be best to put the change purse in the bin with my shoes and liquids as the x-ray can’t see through all the change. I travel frequently and this was the first time I had heard that. I asked her why it wasn’t posted anywhere and she didn’t have an answer.

I got to relive this story each time I pulled change out and paid for various tolls around Orlando but I learned something new – if you have a mess of change pull it out and send it through with your shoes. This is one of those unspoken rules you will only learn through personal experience or learning from the experience of others.

Here’s to the next 2 years and hopefully no more bag searches.

The Final Shuttle Launch STS-135

2011-07-05T15:59:00.000-04:00

The final details have come together for our STS-135 launch trip. All the spots are filled at the private location where I will be viewing the launch from. I am interested in Causeway tickets but am not willing to pay the greedy prices currently being listed on eBay. This will be a fun trip as I connect with friends from the launches of STS-132, 133 and 134. I'm also looking forward to a tour of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station - a place I have been once....secretly.

This launch is history in the making as our great nation, which just celebrated its 235^th birthday, gives up the ability to fly humans into space and instead chooses to rely on our former Space Race competitors in order to reach low earth orbit.

As we watch the last space shuttle escape Earth’s gravity I wonder how history is going to repeat itself. The last manned flight from the Apollo missions was in 1975 and the first space shuttle mission didn’t take place until 1981. Will our gap only be 6 years or will political and economic factors make the gap longer? What role will the private sector play? Will NASA be relegated to a government regulations industry overseeing private space flight or will NASA again lead the world in launching humans into space? What role does national pride play in modern space exploration? And what about the Chinese, could that be the next great Space Race?

Only time will tell but as I watch the final space shuttle mission these and other thoughts will be going through my mind.

Camping at Kennedy Space Center

2011-06-28T09:39:00.003-04:00

With the upcoming final launch Tweetup upon us, I thought I would post a few thoughts about visiting Kennedy Space Center for a Tweetup. Even though this is the last launch Tweetup, there will be more Tweetups for non-low earth orbit launches and other exciting events at KSC.

I attended the Tweetup for STS-132, which was one of the earlier launch events. For this event we were told to bring our own water however on the second day of our Tweetup NASA did provide a water cooler so we could fill our water bottles. Granted the tent is air-conditioned but with all the walking around in the heat you do, carrying water is a good idea. I’m certain future Tweetups have provided a water cooler as well.

NASA doesn’t provide any food. On the day before the launch, we were told to bring our own lunches and snacks as no food was available. Since I flew to Florida for the event, I bought a cheap Styrofoam cooler I left in my hotel room and used it for keeping my food cold. The day was so busy and exciting that I didn’t eat what I brought anyway but I was glad to have it just in case.

On launch day, I bought a hamburger and chips as NASA allows vendors to sell food to those at the press site. Obviously if your launch is delayed like STS-133 and STS-134 you will need to provide additional provisions.

Bathrooms are readily available in a concrete camp style facility as well as in the press building. On launch day, getting to either bathroom from the twent without walking through a camera shot is next to impossible but when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.

In many ways, you are at one of the most high tech places on the planet while in other ways, you are camping out in the middle of nowhere and it’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for anything.

My Power over Foursquare

2011-06-21T15:56:00.002-04:00

I’m often amazed at the power I have, whether actual or inferred by others. Lately I’ve been able to use my power over Foursquare. I use Foursquare and like to have fun with it and save money through it. Lately however it seems I have the power to kill it.

I travel a bit and the last 2 times I have flown home to the Indianapolis International Airport I’ve been unable to check into Foursquare because it has been down. Upon landing, I typically grab my phone, check my email, and check into Foursquare – if it works. I think someone at Foursquare is trying to keep me from becoming the Mayor there.

So consider yourself warned – I’m flying home again sometime after the July 8 launch of space shuttle Atlantis on STS-135. I expect Foursquare to be down shortly before I land. Good luck.

No Ordinary End to Spring

2011-06-20T23:58:00.000-04:00

Today was no ordinary last day of spring. The old adage “when it rains it pours” was true today both literally and figuratively.

I have been on the road for the past week speaking at a conference in San Antonio, Texas and then to a Tweetup Event at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. We also took a day in there to visit some friends in DC and see many of the historic sites. I hope to blog more about these events soon, provided the power stays on. That will make more sense later.

I arrived home for Monday with a full list of things to do back in the office but I knew things were off to an odd start when the western sky at 6am was bright orange as the sun reflected off the dark storm clouds.

Between 6am and noon, 4 waves of storms came through our area dropping just over 3 inches of rain. During one of these storms at least 1, probably 2 of the parking lot light trees in the parking lot at Faith were struck by lightning. The lighting took out those 2 lighting trees, the photocell that controls all our exterior lighting, the power to the panel for all exterior lighting and the power to the RTU (roof top unit) that cools our primary datacenter – to name a few things.

As a result, we eventually lost most of our network services for about an hour and had to reset several things. We also had to replace several breakers and tomorrow we have to replace several relays that were fused. While all of this was going on our team was also trying to prepare for VBS (Vacation Bible School) which started tonight. By 4pm, most things were back to normal and we were able to get the scripts, lighting cues, sound cues, and graphics all programmed for VBS just in time for the power to go out again 5 minutes before we started.

Our team is great and we had everything sound and video wise restored with a minute to spare before we started – thanks to numerous backup systems.

Here’s hoping that summer starts Tuesday with less excitement than spring ended.

STS-135 Ticket Lotteries

2011-06-10T12:55:00.000-04:00

As we get closer to the ticket lotteries for STS-135 please take note of the following:

If you are selected for NASA Causeway tickets please buy the maximum number you can purchase. Rest assured you won’t be stuck with any extras but if we band together we have a better chance of seeing the launch from the Causeway with the orange tickets from KSCVC. Even if more than one of our little group gets those tickets I assure you we will be able to sell off the extras.

Remember though, we do have a safety net. If no one gets Causeway tickets we still have the private viewing location in Titusville to watch the launch from. This is a better location than the Astronaut Hall of Fame and the KSCVC itself so if you are selected for those tickets in the lottery I suggest you pass.

Another option once the lotteries are closed is to purchase Causeway tickets from a tour bus company. You will pay more for the ticket itself but you at least get on the Causeway. I only suggest buying those tickets if your pickup and drop off point is in Port Canaveral. Otherwise you spend 5-9 hours on a bus fighting the traffic back to Orlando. If you don’t want to spend the extra money on tour bus company tickets to the Causeway that’s fine, we still have our safety net in Titusville.

Register for Tickets Now

2011-05-30T23:05:00.001-04:00

Registration is now open for STS-135 launch viewing tickets through KSC. If you would like to join our merry group please click the link below to register for tickets. If you are selected for the lottery please let me know and we can coordinate the ticket purchase.

Remember there are 3 types of tickets you can get from the lottery:

Causeway Tickets - these are the best tickets.
Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Center Tickets - these are the next best as you are 7 miles away but won't see the launch until the shuttle clears the tree line.
Astronaut Hall of Fame - these are the worst as you are 12 miles away and won't see the launch until the shuttle clears the tree line.

If you are selected for Causeway tickets then please purchase the maximum number allowed. Those who then can't view the launch from the Causeway can use my private spot in Titusville which is better then numbers 2 and 3 above.

Click this link to register. You only have until June 5. http://bit.ly/hvAARm

Good luck everyone in the lottery!

Comcast Decision

2011-05-29T16:48:00.000-04:00

As you know, if you read this blog, I’ve had a decision to make in regards to the upcoming digital transition with Comcast. In our area it starts June 25 where all channels from Comcast will be digital. You can read the full story here.

After much research, we decided to give up our wonder TiVo’s and try Comcast’s DVRs. The one feature we are giving up that we think we will miss the most is the ability to transfer a program from one DVR to another. This has come in very handy but we think we will be able to work around that limitation most of the time thanks to the On-Demand service. If there is a show we want to watch that is on the other DVR we may be able to find it and watch it from On-Demand.

I went to the local Comcast office to pick up our new DVRs however; they only had the older model in stock. They ordered me the new model, which has a touchscreen front and 100 hours more storage. It should arrive sometime next week.

Once I get it setup and working, I’ll post some reviews. I’ve read that getting these newer units up and running can be a bit slow. Should be interesting.

How to See the Last Shuttle Launch STS-135

2011-05-26T16:37:00.004-04:00

So you want to see a shuttle launch? Oh, wait. You want to see the last shuttle launch ever!? You must be crazy. Fortunately, I was blessed with a healthy dose of crazy and have attended the last 3 shuttle launches, STS 132, 133, and 134 so I might be able to provide some wisdom.

NASA is expecting a record crowd for the final launch. Upwards of 1 million people could cram the Space Coast and break the record set when Apollo 11 launched for the moon.

First, how much money you got? Launch viewing trips aren't cheap. Attending in groups can save money but you still have expenses like travel (flights, rental cars, gas), ground (hotel, food), and any costs associated with where you view the launch from.

Second, how flexible are you? NASA is very upfront that launching humans into space is risky business and there are many things that can go wrong. Only 1 of the last 3 launches has launched on schedule. Your flexibility also affects your cost. How long can you hang around for delays? I've always taken the approach that if I'm going to start something I'm going to finish it. I'm also fortunate to have a job I can do from anywhere I can get online. So I'm good with bouncing between hotels, McDonald's and Starbucks getting work done. For STS-133, I bounced around for a week in November before the launch was finally scrubbed until late February.

Third, where do you want to the launch from? There are many options:

The Press Site for Launch Complex 39 is the best spot but getting there requires press credentials or access via a NASA Tweetup event. I was fortunate to be select to the NASA Tweetup for STS-132, which at the time was the final launch of Atlantis and this is by far the best place at 3 miles away.
Almost equal to the press site is the Apollo / Saturn V Center. It is also 3 miles away facing a different side of the pad but the viewing there would be spectacular. I have not seen a launch from this site as it is reserved for specific NASA VIP's and astronaut family members.
The best public viewing location is the NASA East Causeway. Here you are 6 miles from the pad and have a mostly clear view over the water of the Banana River. Some of the trees on the islands in the river may block a bit of your view of the pad but the shuttle isn't on the pad for long. To get access here you have to be enter a ticket lottery with the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Center and then if selected spend $76 per ticket. Another way to get to the Causeway is to purchase tickets through Gray Line Tours or Florida Dolphin Tours. They take you to the same place but cost a lot more. My suggestion if you use a tour company is to select a pickup point in Melbourne, FL. Otherwise, you will spend 5-9 hours on the bus after the launch in traffic going back to your drop off point in Orlando. Here is another post I wrote how to get Causeway tickets and the differences between Green, Orange, and Purple.
You can also view a launch from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Complex itself. You can't see the shuttle on the pad but you do see it a few seconds after liftoff. They have big screen TV's around so you can see main engine start but you can't see anything until it clears the trees. To get these tickets you also have to enter a lottery and they cost about $50 each. You are 7 miles away at this location.
The Astronaut Hall of Fame provides another viewing option however, you are 12 miles away, and you still can't see the launch until it clears the tree line. Tickets for this location are also only available through the ticket lottery and cost around $50 each.
Sometimes you can find private homes, condos or other property along the Indian River in Titusville that you can watch from. These locations are between 12 and 14 miles away but many times you can see the shuttle stack sitting on the pad. Don't trespass though if you don't have permissions from the property owners. There are costs associated with these locations depending on condo rates and/or fees charged by the property owners.
There are many public viewing sites along the Indian River like Space View Park and Rotary Park. There are also some bridges in Titusville that would make for great viewing locations but are very crowded. If you are going to a public location to save money, make sure you get there early. Otherwise, parking could be a big problem. Everyone gets a good view once the shuttle gets off the ground, but if you want great pics then the earlier you get to your viewing location the better chance you will have better shots.

Of course, before you can see a launch you have to get to the launch site. I have never viewed driving as an option as it would take 20 hours or so each way. I value my time more than that so I have always flown. Here are a few tips for dealing with the airlines and shuttle launches:

Determine your flexibility first. If you have to come home on a certain day regardless of whether the launch happens or not then go ahead and purchase a round trip ticket so you can lock in the lowest possible fare. If you do change your mind after purchasing your ticket, remember that all airlines except Southwest charge a change fee plus any difference in fare. Southwest only charges you the difference in fare.
If you don't have miles but you have some flexibility then consider booking one-way tickets. Then once you are ready to leave after the launch or after it has been rescheduled, find the cheapest flight from Orlando and book it. You sometimes pay a bit more here but if it isn't more than the change fee plus any fare differences then you have come out ahead. This has never happened to me but I would hate to be there for the launch only to have it rescheduled for the day I had to fly home. So close and yet so far.

For rental cars and hotels, I use Hotwire and Priceline. If I'm traveling by myself, I get the cheapest car I can find. If I'm with a group I get a car large enough for our needs but understanding we are splitting the costs.

I also am not picky on hotels. I don't book more than one night at a time and I use Hotwire and Priceline to find the best deals. Since I don't care whether I'm in a Motel 6 or a Marriott I pretty much take whatever comes up. This does mean you are in a different hotel every night but it also means you save a lot of money. Titusville, FL has very few hotel rooms so getting a cheap one is difficult around the launch date but if the date changes you can often find great last minute deals much closer to KSC.

Despite the best planning, there are no guarantees. The key thing is how committed are you? How many days are you willing to invest and how much money are you willing to spend. Be sure to figure that out first. Even with the best planning things change and you may not see anything.

I am working on plans to take a group to a private viewing location in Titusville. This spot really works out well and provides a great view. The only downside is the sound is not nearly as impressive since you are 12 miles away but it is the best place after the press site and Causeway locations. If you are serious about attending a launch and are willing to invest some money, feel free to contact me.

You might also want to go ahead and enter the ticket lotteries with KSCVC. If you are committed to going then it doesn't matter if you go to a private viewing site or you get Causeway tickets. The number of tickets each person is limited to is 6. If multiple people can get 6 Causeway tickets in the lottery then there is a better chance more folks going can see the launch closer. The only downside is you would need to front the initial ticket purchase as you only have so many hours after being selected for tickets to make a purchase before your buying opportunity expires. If you get stuck with too many tickets there is always eBay.

These trips unravel quickly if many people express interest only to back out after being pressed to commit both time and money. Make those commitments now to make every one's planning a bit easier.

Here's to a successful final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS 135! Wait, I've heard that before at STS 132.

An Endeavor, Day 8, May 18, 2011

2011-05-23T07:57:00.002-04:00

Unfortunately, every shuttle launch viewing trip has to come to an end. Even though it was over this one was special. We got to see a very unique launch with the shadow on the clouds, we got to walk to the north barrier, and we had beautiful weather for viewing the SRB recovery ships returning to port. Plus I was able to bring my dad along to share in the fun.

We had different flights home as dad and Twitterless Ted had already booked their return flights while I waited to see if the launch happened or not. I was prepared to hang around again until it went up. I’m so glad it happened on schedule otherwise we would have spent the time waiting around instead of checking things out.

My flight left at 7:30am and this is where we parted company. The two old men were heading home to have brunch and take naps. What a life. I on the other hand landed in Indy at 11:30am, was picked up by Joe and Donnie (I knew they would work themselves into this story somehow), and then attended a VMware Users Group Meeting at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The weather didn’t allow them to run any cars while we were there but I wasn’t complaining considering all I had seen over the last few days. The only thing I did complain about was the weather. I left sunny and 85 for raining and 56.

All the planning had paid off and it’s still hard to believe the trip is over. We have now started making plans for STS-135, the final launch of the Space Shuttle program and the final launch of humans into space by the United States for the foreseeable future. This is the end of a 30-year era. I’m even toying with taking our 6 year old along, as I know he would really enjoy it. Justin and I are also talking about taking a trip to Russia to see a Soyuz launch as after STS-135 that will be the only place you can see a NASA astronaut launched into space.

The feedback I’ve received online from the STS-134 trip has been incredible so I’ll do what I can to post options and tips so others can share in the best launch viewing experience possible for STS-135.

An Endeavor, Day 7, May 17, 2011

2011-05-22T08:48:00.001-04:00

Day 7 started a good 12 hours after Day 6 ended. Exhaustion is all part of a shuttle launch trip experience but we all felt much better having gotten a good night sleep after a very crazy Sunday and Monday.

One of the many blessings of an on-time launch is the extra time you have to explore the Space Coast a bit without trying to see the next launch attempt. Unfortunately, Justin had to head home so we hung around Orlando for a bit and then took him to the airport. I took the crew to the B-52 Park I stumbled upon during my last trip, we grabbed lunch, and then we dropped off Justin. As you read the rest of this, it is important to note that Justin missed a lot.

We left the airport in Orlando to head for the Canaveral National Seashore. We had read there were some great spots for viewing Pads 39 A & B plus Pad 41 so we wanted to check them out. We also knew that you could walk the beach to the north security barrier of KSC and get some even closer views of the 2 iconic launch pads. My GPS was having a hard time routing us there, as most of the roads in the area are restricted so I looked it up on Google. Turns out that beach happens to be a popular spot with those who prefer to bath in the buff. While nude sunbathing is illegal in Brevard County there is some dispute over whether those laws apply on federal land. Now things were going to be interesting.

When we got to the guard shack, I asked the guard about the nudist population in the area. He told me to put my camera away as if we saw anything it was only going to be some beached whales with tattoos. We headed into the park and stopped at the various lookout points towards the launch pads. I have been to both pads but this was just as much fun as it required no security, no background checks, and I could stay as long as I wanted.

We arrived at the beach and prepared for the 1-mile walk down to the barrier. The tide had just gone out so it was an easy walk. When we got to the barrier, the guards let us walk up the ramp to their guardhouse so we could get some better pictures. We hung out for a bit and then headed back. It was a beautiful day as the sea was calm the breeze was cooling, and there were no nude people on the beach.

In case you’re wondering, you can’t watch a launch from the beach. The entire area is closed 3 days prior to launch and if you did somehow manage to hide out the shockwave from the launch would probably kill you or at least mess you up pretty bad.

We left the Canaveral National Seashore and headed towards Port Canaveral. We had found out on Twitter and through a reporter friend of Twitterless Ted that the SRB (Solid Rocket Boosters) were coming back into Port Canaveral that night. This is something I have always wanted to see but their arrival varies almost as much as a launch date due to many factors so I had not been able to see this on my other trips to Florida.

We arrived at Jetty Park in time to see the first recovery ship entering the channel. The view was great as we watched the first ship come in and then 45 minutes later watched the second ship come in as the sun was setting. We got a lot of pictures and video and then left the park to see if we could find another spot that would allow us to take pictures of the ships and SRBs docked for the night. They were going to continue through the locks on their way back to KSC the next morning. After a bit of driving around we found a great spot to get some shots of the ships and SRBs in their slips. Playing with some settings on my camera, I got some pretty good pictures, in my own humble and unbiased opinion.

By this time, it was close to 9pm and we had to be at the airport at 6am the next morning for our flights home. So we left Port Canaveral and headed back to Orlando to prepare for the trip home.

An Endeavor, Day 6, May 16, 2011

2011-05-21T00:17:00.000-04:00

This day began a short 3 hours after the last day ended. I was hoping for a few more hours of sleep but after some discussion agreed, we should leave at 3am to avoid any traffic issues. We grabbed our sack breakfasts, drove across the street to pick up Justin Moore, a church IT friend from northern Indiana, and headed for our Indian River viewing location.

Part of the traffic discussion was my contention that there wouldn't be any and we could sleep a bit longer. Of course, I was right and there was no traffic but I am glad we arrived when we did as we got a great spot right on the banks of the Indian River with a clear view of pad 39A and the VAB.

The view was awesome! The pad illuminated in the Xenon lights, the clear night sky, and a beautiful sunrise with the planets Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Mars clearly in view. We even got to see the helicopter that escorts the AstroVan as it flew with them to the pad. All the while, we were watching NASA TV on or iPads.

Over the next several hours, we watched the sunrise, the Shuttle Training Aircraft testing the weather doing touch and go landings, and even an inflight refueling of 2 Blackhawks helicopters. The clouds would come and the clouds would go, almost as though they were toying with the launch commit criteria and us.

About 30 minutes to launch the sky was clear and we thought we were going to see the entire ascent. However, as we got closer to launch time the clouds again moved in and were within 500 feet from violating the criteria needed to remain go for launch. The clouds stayed above 5500 feet and at 8:56am, Space Shuttle Endeavor launched on STS 134.

After 20 seconds, the shuttle slipped through the clouds and was out of sight. About 75 seconds after launch, the sound wave hit and we were able to hear the shuttle even though we could not see it.

At first, I was a bit disappointed that we didn’t get to see the entire ascent but these clouds did have a silver lining. The thin cloud cover combined with the position of the sun cast a shadow across the top of the clouds of the con trail as the shuttle ascended. This provided a unique once-in-a-lifetime view of the shuttle launch appearing as a shadow growing across the clouds. This shadow more than made up for the fact that we didn’t see more than 20 seconds of the launch. And we weren’t the only ones who didn’t see the full launch, those at the Press Site and Causeway also only saw about 20 seconds.

As the shadow dissipated, we began to pack up our stuff and head out for the rest of our day. It took us about 30 minutes to reach a McDonald’s 2 miles away so we could grab some breakfast and caffeine. Then we headed to KSCVC where we met up with a friend from the STS 132 launch and toured the Apollo / Saturn V Center, watched the IMAX movies, rode the Space Shuttle Launch Experience, walked around the Rocket Garden, and shopped a bit in the Space Store.

Even though we were pretty wiped out when the Visitor’s Center closed at 6pm we still had enough energy left for dinner at the best seafood restaurant in Titusville, Dixie Crossroads.

After dinner, we headed back to Orlando and some much needed sleep.

An Endeavor, Day 5, May 15, 2011

2011-05-16T05:43:00.001-04:00

At long last our second attempt to see STS 134 arrived. Of course the day arrived on our 12th wedding anniversary but NASA did not take that into consideration when picking the new launch date. I should take this opportunity to express my gratitude to my wife as this is the second year in a row I have been gone on our wedding anniversary for a shuttle launch. Last year I was at the NASA Tweetup for STS 132.

The day started with a full set of ministry at Faith including an unscripted moment where I had a fake cigarette on stage. Sometimes you just never know what is going to happen.

My dad, our friend Ted and I left shortly thereafter to head for the airport in Indy and begin our trip.

Compared to my last trip this trip was wonderfully uneventful. We left IND on time and arrived early into Ft. Myers. We flew to RSW as it was significantly cheaper than flying into Orlando. The rental car pickup was smooth and we were quickly on our way to a hotel near the Orlando airport.

We made excellent time as Sunday evening traffic was very light. I would say bringing my dad and Ted was a good luck charm but let's wait and see when and if we launch. As we all know getting there is only half the battle.

We checked into the hotel for 3 hours of sleep.

Comcast is Killing Me

2011-05-14T13:42:00.002-04:00

I’m a big fan of technology improving our lives however, it seems I may be in the minority with that opinion.

Comcast is the largest providers of cable TV, voice, and data services in the country. One would think a company of that size would have the latest and greatest to offer their customers. Due to the recent digital TV transition, I’m finding that not to be the case. The issue is not the digital TV transition. I’m all for that. The problem stems from their application of this new digital technology.

Up until now, I have received my basic cable channels (over-the-air networks, public access, etc.) in an analog format and then our additional premium channels (Food Network, History, NatGeo, Discovery, etc.) in a digital format. For DVR’s we use 2 Series 2 analog TiVo’s. This has worked well, even though we have a digital cable box and a TiVo we are able to record multiple channels at a time and we are able to transfer programs between TiVo’s so regardless of which TiVo records the show we can watch it anywhere. The only limitation is with the digital channels as we are limited to a single digital tuner per TiVo but since some of our channels are analog, this hasn’t been an issue. We also have full access to Comcast’s On-Demand system.

Starting June 25 all our channels will be digital, which makes our analog TiVo’s a bit of a problem. I contacted Comcast to see what our options are and was sorely disappointed. Here are the details in case this will help anyone else deal with the Comcast machine.

I could purchase new digital TiVo’s. This would allow me to keep the same TiVo software and functionality we like, provide us with dual digital tuners per DVR, and allow us to continue sharing programs regardless of where they were recorded. The downside here is we would lose On-Demand and would have to pay for the TiVo’s upfront. We would also have to rent Cablecards from Comcast in order to access the digital channels via the TiVo’s.
We could get Comcast DVR’s. This would cost us more per month as we have to rent the DVR’s and we would lose our wonder TiVo software. We would gain dual tuner DVR’s and full access to On-Demand but we would lose the ability to transfer shows between rooms. So if we records The Office in the basement but we want to watch it in the bedroom we wouldn’t be able to do that anymore. When I discussed with the Comcast Executive Office the guy I talked to has 4 DVR’s and said he would really like this feature but Comcast has no plans to offer it. Comcast uses Motorola DVR’s and according to their website the DVR’s are capable of doing this but for some absurd reason Comcast disables this function.
Comcast offers an Anyroom DVR system that allows you to record shows in one room and watch them in another, sort of. This system, costing about the same as a couple of normal DVR’s, provides you with a hub unit that you records all your shows on and then station units that allow you to watch what has been recorded on the hub unit. While this might seem like a solution, it does have a few problems. First, you only get access to On-Demand on the hub unit and not any of the stations. Second, you only have DVR capabilities on the hub unit, you can’t pause live TV on the remote stations.

Since none of these options provides what we want I contact Comcast via Twitter and was put in touch with their Executive Offices. That proved a dead end as they told me the same thing I already knew, these are the choices and we can’t do anything about it. Again, it baffles me that a company the size of Comcast can’t do any better than this.

My options are to pick one of the 3 choices above and get happy with what I’m giving up or leave Comcast and go to a satellite TV provider. If for whatever reason you have read this far what do you think? What are your experiences with Comcast? Am I the only one that thinks being able to watch a program on any DVR regardless of where you recorded it is a big deal? TiVo makes it easy by sharing between DVR’s on your home network. Why Comcast disables this is beyond me.

The clock is ticking, we have to do something by June 25th and right now, I’m not sure what that will be.

Stop Cramming HTTPS Down My Throat!

2011-05-13T17:04:00.000-04:00

I’m all for secure web browsing but before you nag me to switch to it on Twitter and Facebook why don’t you make sure it works properly. After a bit of research here’s what I know about using HTTPS for Twitter and Facebook. Both websites let you pick HTTPS as an option however, both are far from perfect in terms of what you give up in the name of security. Almost sounds like the fight against terrorism.

If you opt for HTTPS here are a few issues:

Twitter

HTTPS requires you to login every time you access Twitter after closing your web browser. This issue takes a while to pop up as cookies expire but once it starts, you can’t stop it. Anytime you load the Twitter website you have to login. If you leave your browser open and you use a sharing link on another website then it will log you in fine but if you close your browser, you will have to login again. This can be a real pain if you use the Tweet link on other websites, as you will have to login each time.
Not all Twitter clients use HTTPS anyway so while your computer browser will use that protocol other apps on your computer or smartphone might not so you are only securing one point of entry.
The Twitter mobile website requires you to manually enter HTTPS in order to access it from a mobile phone. While the HTTPS setting allows you to default from HTTP to HTTPS that only works on a computer browser, it does not work on a mobile browser.

Facebook

The same deal is true here. HTTPS does not allow you to save credentials past a cookie expiration so after a while you will have to login to Facebook each time you access the site or use a sharing link from another site.
Same deal here too, not all Facebook clients use HTTPS so you are only security one point of access.
I’m not sure about the mobile site, as I didn’t test this.
There are several features that don’t work when using HTTP:

Videos do not play.
Some pictures will not appear.
You can’t use the new picture uploader that allows you to upload an unlimited number of pictures at a time. Instead, you have to use the old updated that only allows you to upload 5 pictures at a time after you browse to individually select each one.
It won’t print coupons or event tickets.

Again, I’m all for a more secure browsing experience but I’m not willing to give up the experience itself in favor of security. That defeats the purpose. Am I worried about people snooping on my password while I’m at Starbucks and Panera? A little. I figure my iPhone’s connection with these websites is much more of a vulnerability as it is on all the time whereas my laptop connection is only when I launch the apps or browse to the websites.

If these websites want me and everyone else to use HTTPS because it is a more secure connection that will cut down on identity theft, SPAM, etc. then they have to make sure the only difference is HTTPS and not HTTPS that lacks many features of HTTP. Until then, I’m going back to HTTP so I can better enjoy the experience and use these sites to their fullest capability.

An Endeavor, May 9, 2011

2011-05-09T23:59:00.003-04:00

Today NASA announced next launch attempt of STS-134 will be Monday, May 16 at 8:56am. I started planning and am grateful I can return for this launch attempt, even if it will mean a bit of extra travel. Flying to Orlando or anywhere on the east coast of Florida was a bit pricey. So, our group will be flying into Ft. Myers. Group you say? Yes. I’m excited that I’ll be taking my dad with me this time as he has never seen a shuttle launch.

Our group is flying to Ft. Myers and then will be leaving from Orlando after the launch.

Here’s hoping for a successful launch on Monday, May 16!

Medal of Honor

2011-05-07T13:21:00.000-04:00

Friday was one of those days at work that makes me grateful I serve at Faith. I enjoy variety and Faith provides a lot of variety in ministry. Friday we were honored to host the Medal of Honor Bridge Dedication Ceremony. There was a lot about this I didn’t understand as we were planning for this event. I did know that a UH-1 Huey helicopter was going to be landing in our parking lot with the Medal of Honor recipients and figured I would want to see that. It turned out to be so much more than just a helicopter landing.

What is the Medal of Honor? According to the internet, “The Medal of Honor was established in 1862 and first presented in 1863 during the Civil War. It is the highest military decoration that the United States grants to members of its armed forces for bravery in action at the risk of his or her life, above and beyond the call of duty. It is awarded by the president in the name of Congress. The Army, Navy, and Air Force each have their own designs for the Medal of Honor. Included with the Navy are the Marine Corps and Coast Guard.”

3,475 Medal of Honor awards have been issued and only 85 recipients are alive today. 7 of them were at Faith on Friday, May 6, 2011. Now I was beginning to see the significance of the event.

Aside from the helicopter flying in the Lafayette Fire Department setup a huge American Flag, the Department of Homeland Security provided security sweeps and protection for the guests; there were soldiers, policeman and fireman in uniform all over, schoolchildren, almost all of our elected state and local officials, and a veteran’s motorcycle parade. Saying that flags were everywhere would be an understatement.

All of this to dedicate the first and only bridge in the United States to all Medal of Honor recipients. Most Medal of Honor recipients receive their awards posthumously. Having 7 of them, including the last surviving recipient from WWII dedicate this bridge was impressive. The bridge is north of Lafayette on a new stretch of road called the Hoosier Heartland Corridor. It almost seems as though we didn’t do enough once you hear these guys’ stories.

There aren’t many days you go to work and a helicopter lands in your parking lot, 10% of the surviving Medal of Honor recipients come to visit, and you have a small part in helping make a bit of history.

More information about the Medal of Honor can be found here:
Congressional Medal of Honor Society
Wikipedia entry for Medal of Honor
Local newspaper coverage of the event

Oh Canada

2011-05-02T07:38:00.001-04:00

This is a long shot but what do I have to lose? On Friday, I met two guys from Canada at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s Center for the launch of Space Shuttle Endeavor on STS-134. I needed a place to sit and eat lunch and they agreed to share their table with me. We were chatting about the launch scrub when a girl walked by selling two purple launch viewing tickets. Purple tickets are not available for purchase and can only be acquired by knowing a member of the shuttle crew. She told us the astronaut her family knew and said they couldn’t stay for the launch and wanted to sell the tickets.

My new friends were not sure so I explained to them what the purple tickets were and that they would get to view the launch from the causeway VIP section as guests of the crew. The girl wanted $100 per ticket but she would not split them up. They were going to purchase them but I cautioned them not to buy the tickets unless she had a car pass. She did so they purchased the two purple tickets and the car pass.

They got a great deal and soon after had to leave to catch their bus back to the hotel. We did not exchange information but I know they had to leave Monday so I’m not sure if they were going to be able to use the tickets or not.

I’m hoping the right people will stumble on this via Google indexing and be able to put me in touch with these guys. They were staying at the Double Tree, used Gray Line Tours for their tickets and one was from Alberta and the other from Ontario. If you know these guys please have them contact me using any of the methods on this blog. I think I have a good use for their tickets if they can’t use them. If they can use them then I hope to meet up with them again.

Common internet, work your magic. Thank you very much.

May 1 is a Deadly Day

2011-05-02T00:36:00.001-04:00

What a day this has been. Not 10 minutes after I posted Day 4 of my recent trip to see the attempted launch of STS-134 I noticed Twitter lighting up with posts about Osama Bin Laden being killed. I flipped the TV to CNN and sure enough, we got him!

Watching Twitter was much more informative and entertaining than watching any of the news networks. One of the facts that came across was that Hitler was also captured, having already killed himself, on May 1, 1945.

Twitter provided many comments on welcoming Osama to the eternal hot place, how we found him due to the iPhone tracking db, how his hacked PlayStation account led us to him, and how this event brings closure to many who lost loved ones on 9/11.

I'm glad we got him but in many ways this is the beginning and not the end. Terrorism will continue and we will still have to be vigilant against it.

We owe a huge debt to those in our armed forces who carried out not only this mission but dangerous missions every day as they protect us.

An Endeavor, Day 4, May 1, 2011

2011-05-01T22:40:00.000-04:00

Today was a day that was never supposed to happen. In the ideal world, we would have launched Friday and this story would have ended Saturday with me back home giving the kids their space presents.

This is my third launch viewing attempt and only one of the three has gone according to plan. The launch of Atlantis on STS-132 while I was at the NASA Tweetup went as scheduled. The other 2 have had major delays. These are the consequences for not inviting me back to the subsequent Tweetup events. That or human space flight is risky business and this is just how it goes.

The day started with me watching the various news feeds to see what was going to happen. There was a press conference scheduled for 10:30am but I was hoping to find out more sooner so I could make plans to get home. By 9:30am it was clear they were not launching on Monday so I put a flight on hold to head home Sunday afternoon.

By 9:4am the story changed again. The 10:30am press conference had been shifted to early afternoon and they were not going to announce another no-earlier-than launch attempt date until tomorrow. I knew I could go home as the likely hood of a launch anytime this week was slim.

I grabbed the last seat on an AirTran non-stop flight to IND and packed up to head back to the airport. One of the many gambles on a shuttle launch trip are the ground costs and as you know Thrifty car rental has been a bit screwy. I got a great rate; I paid $8.96 a day to drive a Premium car. The catch is that if you return it early they charge you a $15 fee. They don’t charge you for the days you don’t use but they do charge you a stupid $15 early return fee. While I still saved a ton of money I did return my rental car early and paid the fee. All part of the risky business of attempting to view humans launching into space on rockets.

Getting home was a milestone of sorts as it was my last flight on AirTran. Our captain welcomed us to Indianapolis, told us the current temperature was 20 degrees, Celsius, and then said he would normally invite us back on another AirTran flight however starting tomorrow AirTran becomes Southwest. AirTran has always been good to me.

I’ll be watching the news from Kennedy Space Center closely and we’ll see how things turn out.

To be continued, I’m sure……..

An Endeavor, Day 3, April 30, 2011

2011-04-30T21:45:00.000-04:00

12 hours later, I woke up. The hotel graciously provided me a late checkout so I cleaned up, repacked, and caught up on some work. I also had time to figure out my next move.

After a bit of research I decided to check out and hang in Orlando until an announcement was made about Monday’s attempt. Some insider information told me that they were going to take the APU apart today and would know in the afternoon or early evening if they were going to be able to fix the problem by swapping out some parts or if it was going to require them to replace more. If I found out by 6pm they were not going to make Monday’s launch attempt I could catch a flight home tonight. If I found out they were going to try to Monday then I would stay. I also have a friend who wants to join me should they try for Monday.

I checked out and went to a Panera Bread nearby to grab lunch, enjoy their free Wi-Fi, and wait.

4 hours and a lot of work done later, the data I was getting presented enough evidence for me to stay one additional day. Tomorrow at 10:30am they will have a press conference and should know if they can attempt Monday or not. The gamble is staying and they don’t launch in which case I’m only out for one more night’s hotel vs. going home tonight only to find out that they are going to launch on Monday. Trying to get back down here would be more hassle than staying and going home tomorrow if they can’t launch on Monday. Remember the fun I had getting here in the first place?

This of course doesn’t come without problems. Getting another hotel for tonight was no problem but extending my rental car proved a hassle. Thrifty was more than willing to allow me to keep the same car at the same rate however they charge a $10.99 fee per additional day when you make a change. It was cheaper to go online and place the same reservation again for the added days. All I had to do was go to the airport and swap my car for another one. I don’t see how they make money doing it this way but I played their game and went to the airport just to swap cars. I ended up going from a Ford Crown Victoria to a Mercury Grand Marquis with a cheaper daily rate. I wonder how these people make any money.

I grabbed dinner and checked into another hotel for one more night. I hope that tomorrow morning will bring good news. If not I’m homeward bound.

An Endeavor, Day 2, April 29, 2011

2011-04-30T18:25:00.009-04:00

Day 2 officially started 2 hours after Day 1 ended. I slept, or tried to sleep for about 2 hours. I got up, showered, and then left for Port Canaveral so I could take the bus at KSCVC.

I met the bus and enjoyed a brief nap on the 30-minute ride to Kennedy. We arrived at Kennedy at 6am. The launch wasn’t scheduled until 3:47pm so I had a lot of time to kill. After taking advantage of the empty gift shop, I decided to take the tour bus to the Apollo / Saturn V Center. It is always good to drive by the VAB, Press Site, OPF, and Landing Facility on the way there. I also enjoy the movies and attractions of the Saturn V Center including the massive Saturn V rocket itself that they have on display.

Once there I sat down to breakfast and this lady sat down beside me and started having a conversation with me. I hate it when folks do that but in this case I went along with it as I had a lot of time to kill. As our conversation progressed, she mentioned Purdue and the John Purdue Club. The short story is she and her husband live in West Lafayette and have visited Faith, where I work.

I spent the next 3 hours with them killing time at the Saturn V Center until it closed and they kicked us all out. The Saturn V Center is on the Banana River and on launch days they clear out the riff raft like me and only allow VIP’s, Congressional groups, and astronaut families in to view the launch from this location. Perhaps someday I’ll see a launch from there but not this time. We parted company as we got on different busses for the Visitor’s Center.

Once I got back to the Visitor’s Center, I still had 5 more hours to kill. I went to the IMAX movie but ended up sleeping through most of it. After the movie, I sat down next to a power outlet and while getting some more juice in my iPhone I received the tweet that the launch had been scrubbed. I still had to wait until 5pm to catch my bus so I decided to get something to eat. By this time, it was getting pretty crowded so I found some food (a massive turkey leg) and asked to share a table with 2 gentlemen. They agreed and so I sat down and found out that they were from Canada.

They had not been to a launch before and had many questions. As we were talking, this girl walks by with 2 purple tickets. Purple tickets are for causeway viewing but can only be gotten if you know a member of the crew. She was friends with one of the astronauts but her family couldn’t wait for the next attempt so she was selling 2 purple tickets for $100 each. My new Canadian friends asked me if this was a good deal and I told them to do it if she also had a car pass for the KSCVC. She went back and checked with her mom and sure enough, they had a car pass. So my Canadian friends got a great deal on a huge upgrade from the KSCVC to the purple section of the causeway. A great upgrade for them. Meanwhile I’m still watching from KSCVC unless I can come up with something else.

Shortly after this they had to leave to catch their bus. Now that the launch attempt has been moved to Monday I’m not sure if they are sticking around or not. I wish I would have gotten their phone number at least so I could check. If you are Canadian, are reading this, and know a guy from Alberta who was at the launch attempt please have him contact me. I think I have found a use for his purple tickets.

I killed the rest of the day and then took the bus back to Port Canaveral. On the bus ride I used Hotwire to again get a cheap hotel for last night. I got a decent deal and even upgraded to a 2.5 star since I had a credit from the issues with the previous night’s hotel.

The hotel I ended up at was an EconoLodge and it was by no means 2.5 stars. It wasn’t even 1 star. It probably has the higher rating due to its location on International Drive but it was not a nice place. The first room they gave me was a smoking room. I went back and they got me a non-smoking room however, it had a note from the maid saying she was sorry the bed was wet. I also couldn’t get the window to lock and since the hotel had exterior entrances having a window that doesn’t look isn’t a good thing. Not wanting stay there anyway I contact Hotwire and they were wonderful to work with, as I’m an Express member with them. They cancelled my reservation and rebooked me at a much better hotel 10 minutes away.

I arrived at the Hampton Inn; grabbed some McDonald’s and went to bed. At this point I had been going 51 hours on 7 hours sleep. Needless to say, I slept well.

An Endeavor, Day 1, April 28, 2011

2011-04-30T15:53:00.000-04:00

Since attending the NASA Tweetup event for the launch of Atlantis on STS-132 last May I have made it my new obsession to see the remaining shuttle launches as punishment for waiting until the end of the program before getting excited about humans riding rockets into space.

Back in November I came down to see Discovery launch on STS-133 and finally did see her launch in late February. This launch attempt is also turning out to be a bit more exciting than I’d like and this time I’ve decided to share the gory details with those of you brave and bored enough to read them.

This trip started Wednesday night, April 27 when I made contact with a guy in Orlando who had tickets to watch the launch from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor’s Center, which he was practically giving away. These are not ideal tickets in my mind as they are through a tour operator and require you to ride a bus to KSCVC and because you can’t actually see the launch until the stack clears the pad BUT it is better than nothing so Wednesday night I started working on the travel details.

I was surprised at how quickly and easily everything fell into place for me to fly to Orlando on Thursday so I could pick up the tickets and then be at Port Canaveral to catch the bus at 5:30am Friday morning. I got 5 hours sleep Wednesday night by the time I got packed and took care of some work things. This comes into play later.

Things went south, except for me, when I arrived at the Indy airport Thursday around noon. I was supposed to fly through La Guardia on my way to Orlando but everything was delayed due to the severe storms and deadly tornadoes that had hit the south the day before. Even if I could get to LGA, it wasn’t certain that I could many a connection to MCO. I must have been booked and on standby on 4 or 5 different flights before at the last minute, I found a flight through Memphis that would get me to Orlando at 10:20pm. As long as I could be in Port Canaveral by 5:30am, it didn’t really matter to me when the flight arrived.

I arrived in Memphis only to find my flight to Orlando delayed an hour. That gave me some time to enjoy some Memphis BBQ before the flight departed. While in the air, however we ran into a large storm cell so that added 20 minutes to our flight so we didn’t land in Orlando until after midnight.

The only thing that did go right was my rental car. I did the Wild Card option on Thrifty.com and ended up with a Crown Victoria to drive around for the cost of a compact. The bad thing was it took 45 minutes of waiting in line before I got the car.

I left the airport, picked up my ticket at a hotel near to mine and then headed to my hotel for a 2-hour nap. I arrived at the hotel only to find that Hotwire had not given them my reservation. This didn’t take long to fix and the great folks at Hotwire paid for half my room to compensate me for the trouble.

Those were the shortest 2 hours of sleep ever.

NASA Causeway Tickets, what you need to know

2011-03-02T11:38:00.001-05:00

Last week I had the opportunity to watch the final launch of space shuttle Discovery on STS-133. Since my attendance at the NASA Tweetup for STS-132, I’m determined to see all the remaining shuttle launches. I originally had tickets to watch from the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Center but as the launch date continued to slip, I realized I’d be in Florida with Donnie for a Church IT Round Table event on the rescheduled launch date.

Since we were going to be in Florida together, I got online to see if I could find tickets for us both to attend the launch either at the Visitors Center or maybe even get an upgrade to the NASA Causeway. My online efforts paid off and I found a pair of Causeway tickets from a space fan in Europe who was unable to attend due to the numerous changes in the launch date.

It is a given that regardless of the color of your Launch Transportation Ticket each person must also have a blue KSCVC admission ticket.

He was offering two green Launch Transportation Tickets. Since I already had a car pass, I was trying to find LTT as those tickets get you from the KSCVC to the Causeway. I did some research online and concluded that all we needed were the green Launch Transportation Tickets and we would be fine. It didn’t matter if they were from a tour operator or from Kennedy.

We arrived at the KSCVC on launch day to find out a different story. Turns out there are three types of Launch Transport Tickets, orange, purple, and green. Here is what you need to know. The green LTT’s are for tour operator use only. Those tickets provide you transportation from the Visitors Center but they do not provide you transportation back to KSCVC. This was a problem for us as my car was at the Visitors Center.

The tour operator explained to us that NASA security does not allow the tour operators to return to the Visitors Center from the Causeway after launch. All tour operators are required to leave the Causeway after launch and head back to their origination points. They are not able, for security reasons, to return to the KSCVC. This one little fact is not communicated well by the tour operators. Rather they just tell you that if you buy their tickets you have to use their transportation in what appears as a way to force you to spend more money with them. The reality is that they are enforcing NASA regulations that the tour operators are escorted from the Causeway off NASA property following the launch so if you don’t take their transportation you will be stranded with NASA security.

The orange and purple LTT’s provide transportation to and from the KSCVC. These are tickets issued by the Visitors Center and provide you a seat on the NASA busses to and from the Causeway. The Causeway is restricted government property. The security regulations require that everyone have a seat on a bus to and from the Causeway for launch, so NASA issues the number of tickets they have for bus seats to the Causeway and the tour operators do the same. The difference is NASA will return you to the Visitors Center while the tour operators who issue the green tickets are escorted off the space center to begin their trip back to their origination points.

We learned this the hard way. We showed up at the KSCVC ready to board a tour operator bus since we had green tickets only to find out the tour bus was going to take us to Melbourne after the launch and not back to KSCVC where my car was. This was a problem. Fortunately, the tour operator understood our predicament, put is in contact with someone with the KSCVC who graciously provided us with orange LTT’s so we could get back to the Visitors Center after the launch and pick up our car.

The moral of the story:

Green LTT’s only work if used with the tour operators which is required by NASA security. The tour operators are not trying to rip you off in this regard. The tour operators drop you off at the Visitors Center, take you to the Causeway from the KSCVC, and then return you to their pick up locations. They are not permitted to return to KSCVC.
Orange and Purple LTT’s work with car passes from the KSCVC. These tickets provide you transportation to and from the Causeway from the Visitors Center on NASA busses. You cannot combine orange and purple Launch Transportation Tickets with green ones.
The KSCVC staff are wonderful folks who were great to work with us to sort out our confusion. Based on their reaction this has probably happened before.

Hopefully this will help someone else from ending up in the same situation we were in.

Not only is the launching of humans into space complicated business the viewing of the launching of humans into space can be just as complicated.

An Open Letter to Legislators

2011-02-27T13:04:00.000-05:00

I’m having a hard time understanding legislators leaving a state to avoid debating and voting on important issues. Regardless of what side of the aisle you are from it seems to me that leaving for any reason is circumventing the democratic process which elected you and to which you are called to serve.

I’m sure there are issues here that I don’t understand but my understanding of the democratic process in our republic is that the majority rules. In the Indiana House right now there are 60 members of one party and 40 members of another. That provides a majority but not enough to form the 2/3 attendance required to vote on issues.

Abandoning your post because you are in the minority and not getting your way is using a cheap legislative tactic to enforce the will of the minority onto the will of the majority. In the elections in November our state elected a majority. If you lose your agenda and desires due to that majority then I would think you would have a fairly clear platform on which to run during the next election.

Since you have opted to leave I hope the voters in our state will remember that during the next election. Leaving because you are not getting your way is childish in any situation regardless of the reason. I know if I was going to run for office your actions would give me a clear platform.

Please return to work. While you tout that you are not taking pay while you are gone that isn’t admirable it is pathetic. Accept that you may lose and move on but don’t hold the majority of a state hostage trying to reverse the Madisonian Dilemma.

A Communistic Approach to Technology

2011-01-21T11:35:00.003-05:00

This post is to explain one of my warped views of the world that will probably get me in trouble. I have long believed that a communistic approach to technology development would be far superior to our current capitalistic model. Here’s what I mean.

Capitalism bases advancement on profits. Capitalists will use an inferior technology so long as it makes money and won’t advance to the next level of technology until they have made all the money they can on the current level. Granted competition is supposed to spur this development but as you can see by the current state of technology that doesn’t always work. If it did, Microsoft would not have released a new smartphone lacking copy and paste, as an example.

Communism was a failure as a form of government because people were involved but in principle it seems rather sound. The best for all. Greed often gets in the way and power hungry people mess this up but communism isn’t worried about making profit. Instead, they want, in principle, the best for everyone. As such we would not have iOS vs. Android, we would have the best of both worlds in the one and only smartphone OS. Instead of Verizon using CDMA and AT&T using GSM we would have one provider that was both the largest and the fastest using the latest communication protocol regardless of profitability.

Now lest you think I’m a turncoat or a pinko I’m not endorsing communism as a way of life but the core principle, without the perversion of humanity, seems to me to be a superior methodology for developing technology and technology services. Instead of competitive overhead, you would have AMD and Intel sharing ideas to provide the best for all, not just the best for one firm so they can make a pile of cash.

I don’t see Microsoft and Apple getting together anytime soon to being their new approach to business based on my blog post but I do believe that such an approach would benefit us all. Need I remind you of the VHS vs. Betamax story and how the consumer got the short end of the stick as capitalistic forces pushed us down the VHS road despite it being inferior? Blue Ray anyone?

If anyone from any major technology companies would like to discuss these radical ideas to better technology in our generation, please feel free to contact me.

OneNote comes to the iPhone

2011-01-18T23:35:00.000-05:00

One of the cool things about technology is when it makes our life easy. More often than not, numerous things seem to make technology more of a hurdle then a helpful time saver. I have often proposed a communistic approach to technology to ensure the best for everyone as opposed to needless competition based solely on profit goals that slow down development but that is another discussion for another blog post.

Today however, the stars aligned and things really started to gel. As you know last year, I took the plunge and joined the dark side in getting an iPhone. While the iPhone provides numerous integration and data synchronization tools to help keep my life in order one thing that is obviously missing are Microsoft Office tools. One tool I use all the time is OneNote. OneNote automatically stores its files in the cloud using Windows Live SkyDrive allowing it to automatically update from wherever I open it. It is very productive when you can open OneNote in the office and make some changes and then open the same program at home and see those changes and then make more knowing the next day they will automatically show up at the office. This is why God made the cloud.

I have searched many times looking for OneNote on the iPhone and today it appeared. Microsoft has released OneNote for the iPhone that functions just like the desktop client. It opens the files from the cloud allowing you to make notes and update notes via the iPhone.

It is free for the time being in the App store however, I can see Microsoft starting to charge for this soon enough. If you use OneNote, this is a must-have app. I also hope this shows Microsoft’s commitment to bringing the power and benefits of the Office desktop suite of clients to more mobile platforms like the iPhone.

Disclaimers:

Sorry Android users, nothing for you yet.
There is a bug when you login to your Windows Live account. You may get a 400 error. That’s ok, just keep trying and you will eventually get logged in. Once logged in it works great. They are working on the bug but it is easy to overcome.

SonicWall Firmware Alert!

2011-01-13T17:08:00.000-05:00

We use a SonicWall NSA E-Series appliance as our primary firewall. Due to some issues with the E-Series and our SonicPoint N radios we had to upgrade to an out-of-band firmware in order to resolve some problems with our radios dropping their connections to the clients. The firmware we were running was 5.6.1.1-11o.

We didn’t have any problems with this firmware until this past Sunday when we attempted to upgrade our DNS servers to Windows Server 2008 R2. After 5 days of working on this we narrowed our problem down to our SonicWall. It took this long because the bug in the firmware was not only causing the firewall to drop the larger DNS packets of Server 2008 R2 (EDNS and non EDNS) but also causing the appliance to fail to log that it was dropping said packets. Many articles we found online said the problem could be with the firewall and the larger UDP packets but the logging issues made confirming this with our firewall difficult. In addition our dig tests showed we were EDNS compatible as the tests were passing but not the actual DNS lookups.

SonicWall admitted it was there problem but was unable to provide a reason or answer as to why the firmware or what in the firmware was creating this problem. As such, if you are running 5.6.1.1-11o contact support to upgrade to 5.6.1.8-20o. Once we upgraded our problem instantly went away.

If you are in this predicament I hope this post and the other ones about this issue can save you at least 5 days of effort. The other info is here.

DNS trouble with Server 2008 R2

2011-01-12T16:43:00.000-05:00

We are having an odd DNS problem and I’ve been receiving a lot of good help from many wonderful folks on Twitter. However, we are trying to solve this in 140 characters and that is proving difficult so here is the whole story. If this fails the next step is to contact the friendly folks at Microsoft for only $500.

We run Active Directory Integrated DNS on Windows Server 2003. We have a single DNS server that works fine but we are migrated from our physical Server 2003 box to our virtual farm. Our virtual servers are running Server 2008 R2. The plan was, and hopefully still is, to add a Server 2008 R2 Domain Controller with DNS, allow it to replicate the DNS via Active Directory, and then point all the clients to the new DNS server. After sufficient time for that to take place then we would remove our old 2003 DNS server and just be running on the new 2008 R2 server.

I ran dcpomo on the 2008 R2 server, which added DNS, and the replication started. Everything went just as numerous articles said it would. The problem is that the new DNS server will not reliably resolve external domain names. It works fine internally but now when going upstream to our external DNS server, which is provided by our local fiber internet service.

When you run an nslookup on the new 2008 R2 DNS server you get a time-out the first try. You can then run it a second time at which point it works and will continue to work until you try a different domain. So if you nslookup yahoo.com the first response will be a time-out. The second and each subsequent time it will work fine until you switch and try google.com. Then that one will work but if you go back and try yahoo.com again it will time-out the first time.

The AD integration part is working as both the old 2003 DNS server and the new 2008 R2 DNS server are keeping each other up-to-date however for reasons we haven’t uncovered yet the 2008 R2 server is not resolving external names.

We have confirmed that our firewall is EDNS and DNSSEC compatible and passes the larger UDP packets. We have also tried disabling EDNS on the server but it has no effect. Whether on or off the time-out still occurs.

Seems we are missing something obvious but what?

I’m Still a Baby

2010-11-23T07:50:00.001-05:00

I have had to have a bit of mouth work done due to the fact that I still have some baby teeth. Apparently growing adult teeth is not a 100% guarantee as one ages. In my case, I had four baby teeth for which there was no adult tooth to replace.

To manage the situation then my dentist ensured that as the rest of my adult teeth came in that the four remaining baby teeth would still be usable. This was done with a great deal of success as I’ve had those four teeth for a long while.

Early last year one of the four teeth split into fourths. As a result, I had to have it surgically removed as a tooth that has been around for that long becomes rather attached. Once the tooth was removed, some cow bone was placed in my jaw to maintain support for my gums as well as to support an implant to replace the tooth that was extracted. This explains my cravings for grass and periodic “moos”.

Last week I started having pain in the area of one of the three remaining baby teeth. When I went in to have it checked the dentist found that it had a small chip out of the back corner and that the tooth behind it had a rather large cavity. The bad news is I had a cavity (two actually), the good news is he was able to place a filling on the baby tooth to repair the chip and hopefully increase its lifespan. I’ve been told the remaining baby teeth may last until I’m 40.

I go back in January to have the remaining cavity filled. Until then here’s hoping the remaining three pieces of original equipment last – as you probably know, dental work ain’t cheap.

Moo.

If a tree falls in the woods.....

2010-09-28T13:34:00.001-04:00

Often times the tech crew on Sundays will get involved in various discussions about sound theories and applications. I like to use these discussions to help teach the guys and help them improve as often my friends are misinformed.

This past Sunday we got on the very philosphical subject regarding if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound? I postulated that it does indeed make a sound but one of my former friends, whom I won't poke fun of here argued that it does not make a sound but rather creates a pressure wave that is not sound unless someone is there with an ear to perceive it. He said the wave does not become sound until it is heard by an ear which converts the pressure wave into sound therefore without an ear the tree only creates a pressure wave but does not create sound.

By now you are probably agreeing with me that my former friend was indeed wrong. It stands to reason that if the tree creates a pressure wave then it does indeed create sound with or without an ear. It's not as if the pressure wave is going to be perceived as light instead of sound when an ear intercepts the wave.

Needless to say my former friend and I had good time going back and forth basically arguing about the definition of the word "sound". Confident that I was right I continued with my morning. Being less sure of himself my former friend looked up the word "sound" in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Turns out "sound" is both the pressure wave by itself regardless of whether or not an ear is present to perceive it and it is also the perception of said wave by an ear. I'm so glad his confidence in his own argument was so shaken that he had to do the necessary research to prove us both right.

Of course, I could care less who was right and who was wrong. I'm merely interested in the truth prevailing and in this case we were both in the right. The question this begs is why my former friend felt the need to argue the definition of a word? Perhaps he learned from a famous politician who was accused of infidelity and based part of his defense on disputing the definition of another obvious, simple word: "is".

Windows Mobile 6.5 Twitter App Update

2010-09-17T08:18:00.000-04:00

In an earlier post, I talked about Twitter clients for Windows Mobile 6.5. Even though I have jumped ship and now have an iPhone, I don’t want to leave my Windows Mobile 6.5 friends hanging.

It would appear that the Twitter apps I reviewed before are no longer working. Neither one has been updated to comply with Twitter’s new oAuth authentication requirements. As a result neither one will allow you to login to your Twitter account.

The fact that these apps haven’t been updated can mean many things. Perhaps the developers are too busy or perhaps Windows Mobile 6.5 is dying a slow death. Another theory could be that they are putting their time into updating the apps for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform. No matter how you slice things, it would appear that there is much uncertainty ahead in terms of Windows Mobile based phones but that is another post for another time.

For now, when searching for a Windows Mobile Twitter client make sure it supports the new oAuth method that Twitter started requiring August 31, 2010. It is generally a good rule of thumb to check the update history to see how often the developer updates the program.

One I have come across and have friends using with success is moTweets. It has been recently updated, updates are free, and it appears the developer keeps the app up-to-date. It isn’t free though, it costs $3.99.

Since I don’t use the app I can’t recommend it for anything beyond the fact that is support oAuth but it does appear that the number of Windows Mobile 6.5 apps for Twitter that support oAuth are fewer and fewer.

The Story of the Beets

2010-09-15T23:46:00.001-04:00

My dad has been teaching a parenting class for the community at our church and apparently he has been telling the class the story of the beets. In fairness to him I haven’t heard him tell it but I’m pretty sure his version is wrong.

For those who know me you know I eat adventurously and I eat just about anything. There are 3 small caveats to that mantra. First, I despise beets – no matter how they are prepared. They are a terrible food that I believe you are forced to eat if you die and go to that eternal hot place. Second, I’m not a big fan of olives, either black or green but I have been known to tolerate them on occasion. Third, mushrooms are ok but if I have a preference I would prefer to pass. Other than that, I like to try new things and enjoy the variety of foods available to us on planet earth.

Growing up I was the easy child. My sister was the difficult child. I would eat whatever mom and dad put in front of me. My sister on the other hand liked and disliked certain foods based on the weather. Some days she would like broccoli, other days she only liked broccoli with cheese, and on yet other days she would swear she never liked broccoli at all. Multiply that by the number of meals a family eats together and you can see how she was the difficult child.

Despite the fact that I ate everything I was served my father was determined to make me eat beets. I had tried them and didn’t like but for some reason I will never understand he wanted me to eat a full serving a beets. There must have been 2 or 3 pounds on my plate and with great wailing and gnashing of teeth I choked down all the beets. I remember that as being the longest night ever. I would take a bite, chew, choke a bit, gag them down and then regurgitate them a little.

I thought I was a pretty good 8 or 9 year old as I would eat everything else while my sister’s tastes changed based on the day of the week. Apparently my good track record was not enough. Meanwhile my sister was allowed to continue being a persnickety eater – and she is to this day.

As for me, I love broccoli – no matter how you prepare it but my favorite is with cheese and crumbled Ritz crackers.

Hopefully this sets the record straight, not only for you today, but for my therapist tomorrow.

Labor Day and Network TV

2010-09-06T23:44:00.000-04:00

Labor Day 2010 has come and gone, but not before a pleasant surprise. Tonight was a rerun of the Big Bang Theory called “The Pants Alternative”, one of our favorite episodes. We were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves on TV again at the end of the episode as part of the vanity card.

If you missed it, the details are available here.

I know, I know. I’ve got to let it go but it is always fun for someone with as little excitement in his life as me to find himself on network TV not once, but twice. Oh, and my wife and Donnie too.

iPhone Transition

2010-08-21T00:06:00.001-04:00

You are no doubt as surprised as I am that I now have an iPhone. Not only do I have one but my wife also has one. Both these statements are hard for a lifelong Microsoft guy to type. Holding multiple certifications from said Microsoft I have always been in their corner. I’ve always said Microsoft can do anything and why learn multiple platforms if I can stick with the one I’ve known the longest.

Well, those thoughts, they be a ‘changin’. Not only have I taken the iPhone and iPad plunge but I’ve also abandoned Microsoft’s virtualization efforts through Hyper-V. That change in thinking is probably a whole other blog post so for this one I’ll try to just stick to the iPhone transition.

For my wife this is her first smartphone and she is loving it! We have already been playing around with Face Time and she is enjoying have the internet in her pocket along with all the other obvious smartphone advantageous.

For me there have been a few paradigm shifts that I have had to deal with. The first is the lack of ring profiles. On a Windows phone, you can set profiles that change ring and other notification settings based on your schedule or other rules. This is possible because in the Windows realm you have full access to the phone settings while Apple restricts such access to these settings on the iPhone. This could be one reason why the iPhone works so much better than any Windows phone I’ve ever had but I digress.

To get around this I have learned to modify how the iPhone notifies me of things and it doesn’t take that much to remember to use the silent switch. So far so good on this change.

The next shift is in the display. On a Windows phone, you can see your voicemails, emails, texts, missed calls, calendar, tasks, the weather, and much more all on a single screen just by turning the phone on. With the iPhone, you don’t get any of that until you unlock the phone. Even then, often times you have to open an app to see the total number of messages or details. The iPhone does tell you on the lock screen if you have new items but to see the full picture you have to unlock it. This is taking a bit longer to get used to but since the phone is so fast and responsive I don’t mind clicking the apps to get the information because I don’t have to wait for it nor do I have to wait to jump from one app to the other.

The final sift, at least as of now, is the lack of status lights. On Windows phones there is usually a colored LED that lets you know the phone is charging or lets you know if you have emails, texts, voicemails, missed calls, etc. So without even turning the phone on you knew something was waiting for you. The iPhone has no such lights so you have to turn it on to even find out if there is anything for you. This also isn’t that big of a deal since the iPhone responds so quickly and doesn’t require any waiting for anything – unlike my previous Windows phones.

Overall, I’m finding it easy to make the iPhone work for me, and hard as it is to admit I’m enjoying it a bit.

An Update on Eric's arm

2010-08-12T18:34:00.002-04:00

Today Eric had a follow-up appointment with a pediatric orthopedic specialist. Eric is still unable to rotate his left arm at the elbow. It has taken some time to get to this point but everyone is confident his problems are with this elbow and not his wrist.

The orthopedic doctor we saw in Lafayette last week didn’t really have any answers so I appreciate our pediatrician efforts to get us scheduled with the specialist before Eric starts Kindergarten next week.

After an exam, he ordered some more x-ray s of the elbow. I must say I’m starting to enjoy wearing lead lined aprons. Eric did not enjoy the x-ray process again but the pictures proved conclusive in determining that Eric did not break his elbow at any point. The doctor said there is no evidence of a break however there could be a broken piece of cartilage that the x-ray won’t see but that is causing the pain.

His suggestion was to remove the splints and slings and give it 2 more weeks. As Eric uses the arm it should strengthen and as is most often the case the pain will subside and go away. If that doesn’t happen the next step is an MRI to find if there is a cartilage fragment in the elbow. If there is one, it would need to be removed surgically.

We are praying that the elbow heals and there is no fragment. Giving a 5 year old an MRI requires him to be sedated, as he won’t lay still enough for the 30-minute procedure. That too would also have to be done by the pediatric imaging specialist in Indy.

Thanks for your prayers and comments, we will know more in 2 weeks.

My blog made a family wedding more fun.

2010-08-09T17:08:00.000-04:00

This past weekend my aunt got married in Ohio so, I had the opportunity to spend some time with a lot of family, some of whom I don’t see very often.

One pleasant surprise was that my 2 great aunts, my grandmother’s sisters, were also there. I haven’t seen them in many years so it was great to get to spend some time with them. How my blog made it more fun is that they have been following my blog page for a while now and reading my tweets through this page. As a result, we had a great time talking about things they had already read about. They were also up-to-date on their great, great niece and nephew.

So this one is a shout out to my 2 favorite readers, my 2 favorite great aunts, Ruth and Mary (names may or may not have been changed to protect the innocent, I’ll never tell). It was a lot of fun seeing you this past weekend and I’m glad you enjoy reading this site. I’ll try to keep it interesting. Hope you can come visit soon.

Red Rover Should be Outlawed, part 2

2010-07-26T16:47:00.000-04:00

Eric had a follow-up appointment with his pediatrician today and she was very concerned about the lack of movement in the arm. Eric is very sensitive to specific movement in the elbow so she ordered another round of x-rays. When they got to the x-ray room Eric asked if they could just x-ray his other arm instead.

After the x-rays we had an appointment setup with an orthopedic specialist. It turned out to be the same doctor who did my grandfather’s hip surgery back in January. He looked at the x-rays and was unable to see any breaks. Since Eric is only 5 his bones are not done developing so they are not hardened yet therefore it is difficult to see breaks in the cartilage. He examined the arm, with Eric screaming most of the time, and determined based on the limited range of motion that the radial head of the elbow probably has a small fracture in it that you won’t see on the x-ray. Either way the treatment is the same it is broken or not.

They immobilized his elbow and wrist this time in a splint and then put his arm in a sling to prevent any motion. We go back in 2 weeks to see how it has healed. Fortunately if there is a break it is small enough that it won’t create any alignment problems as his arm continues to grow and develop.

The saga continues.

Red Rover Should be Outlawed

2010-07-23T00:12:00.000-04:00

Today was a fairly normal day, aside from getting some bad news regarding the compatibility of our MSA 1000 series SAN and Windows Server 2008 Core. I was looking forward to a quiet evening at home when around 4:30pm my wife calls me and tells me that Eric fell at school and they think he broke his arm.

Since we are all at Faith each day, she had picked Eric up and brought him over to the building I work in. He was crying like I’ve not seen him cry before and any attention we tried to pay to his arm only made things work. We called our pediatrician and Heather and Eric headed to Urgent Care.

I went back to my office to grab a few things and then followed behind them. By the time I got to Urgent Care, they were already back seeing the doctor. Apparently, I still look a lot like Eric because when I walked in the receptionist immediately asked if I was with the little boy that had just come in. She took me back and I could hear Eric crying in the exam room. I really appreciate the quick service the staff provided us although I don’t know if they were helping us out of concern for Eric or concern for their ears. Have I mentioned I’ve never seen Eric that upset?

While they were taking his vitals, Heather explained the story details. They were playing Red Rover and Eric was trying to break through the other team but instead of breaking through, he fell backwards and tried to catch himself landing on his arm. This got my attention as I had received a tweet earlier in the day from someone saying Red Rover should be called “Get Stitches”. Yet another example of Twitter predicting the future.

They took him back to x-ray and even from the lobby I could hear Eric screaming as they tried to get his arm in position for several pictures. The doctor was concerned about the wrist, arm, and elbow areas. Based on the amount of pain I was assuming a break of some sort.

We got back to the exam room and the doctor arrived a few minutes later after reading the films. His arm was not broke. The swelling and pain were caused by contusions and over extensions of the tendons and ligaments. I was surprised to say the least but very relieved. They put his arm in a splint (through Monday’s follow-up appointment), another enjoyable process, and we were on our way.

It is pictures like this that I make public that will inevitably scar Eric for life.

Later I asked Eric how he hurt his arm and he started crying and said, “I was trying to break through the line and I couldn’t.” I’m not sure if he was upset because his arm hurt or because he lost at the game.

We want to thank everyone for the kind words we received via many technology means and their prayers for Eric.

Live from my iPad...

2010-07-21T00:33:00.004-04:00

It has been a while since I have posted here so I figured it was time to at least say something that was more than 140 characters. While I find Twitter easier due to the shortness of posts I know my loyal audience expects more on this blog.

This post is the first of its kind as I am writing and posting this entirely from my iPad. My iPad and entrance to the Apple world are posts in and of themselves but my point here is there is more to come and as always for the latest follow me on Twitter.

If there is anything wrong with this post, blame the iPad.

Are Bill & Steve fighting over me?

2010-07-11T23:46:00.002-04:00

As you probably know by now, I purchased an iPad over the weekend. I’ve been evaluating this decision for several months and trying to make a business case for the device (more on that in future posts). The full story will be told on this blog over time and what better way to start than with the relentless pursuit of Microsoft not to let me go.

The backstory here can be summarized as follows: I’m a PC person, Apple sucks. PC’s are better. So my using an Apple product is very much a paradigm game changing shift.

The fun started with the whole Apple Store experience. . It was as if they could smell my MCSE and knew I was wearing a Windows Mobile 6.5 phone. You can’t just go in there and buy something, you have to put your name on a list and wait for someone to help you. Naturally, the place was packed and after waiting an hour I found out several of the geniuses had called in sick. I thought I could just go pick an iPad off the shelf and head home

The only one they had was the 64gb 3G model. I wanted the 3G but would have been happy with the 16gb but decided the extra $200 was worth the extra space and worth not having to wait another month to get one.

Once I got home I tried to install a free app from the App Store. I have an iTunes account but hadn’t used it in years so I had to update my credit card information. I’m still not sure why a credit card is required for a free app but it is. The problem was that iTunes would not accept my credit card. It kept saying my security code was invalid. Frustrated I Googled the problem and found out that I wasn’t the only one but that the solution was to call the credit card company. I couldn’t figure out what could be wrong with my credit card, after all I had just used it at the Apple Store.

So I broke down and called the credit card company. The nice lady told me my card had been blocked due to an unauthorized purchase at the Apple Store. She said I had never used my card there before and so they blocked my card. She asked me to confirm if the purchase was valid. At this point, I’m laughing aloud. I told the lady she made my day and the charge was valid. She turned my card back on and my iTunes account was back in business so I could install that free app.

Between the long lines and the blocked credit card it is a wonder it all worked out but I have an iPad, I’m using it, I made this post with it, and will be talking a lot more about it….even though I do feel a bit dirty.

Assisting the Flight Crew

2010-06-20T19:43:00.000-04:00

I fly a lot and it seems that lately the drama seems to follow me onto the airplanes. Recently the FBI met a flight I was on; you can read about that here.

Yesterday I was on Delta Airlines flight 1534 from ATL-IND. I was traveling with my wife and Donnie Payne, yes I know, yet another story that includes Donnie. Being a good friend, I had secured all three of us seats in the exit row. One of the flight attendants approach the exit row and asked us all to provide a verbal ‘yes’ that we understood we were sitting in the exit row and willing to help the crew if needed. We all said, “Yes.” Then she asked for a verbal ‘yes’ if we were able to give and receive instructions in English. We all again said, “Yes.”

As she turned to leave I leaned over to Donnie and said, “In Spanish too.” I didn’t think she heard me. I was just being my typical self making wise cracks.

A few minutes later the flight attendant returned and pointed to me and said, “Do you really speak Spanish?” I replied that I did and she said, “Come with me.” You don’t have to fly a lot to know that you are supposed to follow the instructions of the flight crew. So I got up and followed her up to the front of the plane. She pointed to an elderly Hispanic woman and asked if I could help her understand what she was saying.

I introduced myself to the woman and offered to help. She said that her bag had been taken from her when she got on the plane and she didn’t know where it was but she wanted to find it. She said it was a black bag full of books and that since it was heavy she needed help with it. We started checking the overhead bins but couldn’t find it so I asked her if it was taken from her before she got on the plane or after. She said it was as she got on the plane. That didn’t help as I was trying to figure out if it had been gate checked or not. I also couldn’t figure out why she was so concerned about these books.

By this time, another flight attendance came up and said she had taken her bag and it was in a bin behind further back on the plane. I told her but she wanted to see the bag and make sure the books were still in it. So we go the bag down, opened it up and sure enough it was full of a bunch of books. The lady smiled in relief and said they were books for her church. I told her we would put it back and since it was heavy, someone would help her get it down when we landed. She said thanks and I sat back down. The rest of the flight was uneventful.

Thus concludes my first official task helping a flight crew. Stay tuned, subduing an unruly passenger is probably in my future.

The World of Coca Cola

2010-06-15T08:35:00.002-04:00

Yesterday my wife and I spent the morning at the World of Coke in Atlanta. We have been to the World of Coke in Las Vegas several times but this was our first trip to the one here in Atlanta.

The Las Vegas edition is basically a very large Coke store with a small tasting experience while the Atlanta edition is a full-blown museum, multi-media experience, store, bottling line (you get to take a bottle with you when you leave), and a full-blown tasting experience.

My wife has collected Coke stuff since she was in high school. We have enough memorabilia to open our own Coke diner, complete with soda fountain and the jerk to operate it (that would be me). On our first trip to the Vegas store, we had 5 boxes of stuff shipped home.

The experience was a lot of fun. They have a 4D theater, a 3D theater, and a very large entrance theater where the screen raises to reveal the entrance to the World of Coke. That was cool. As you would expect all through the museum I was tweeting and I was impressed how quickly @worldofcocacola responded to my tweets and even retweeted a few things I said. That shows they get the power of social media and are fully tapped into it.

I enjoyed the whole new Coke vs. Coke Classic fiasco of 1985 exhibit. Think how different that would have been if Twitter and Facebook had been around in those days.

My favorite part by far was the world tasting room. I really like Inca Kola from Peru and Manzana Lift from Chile. Inca Kola is like drinking cotton candy while Lift is the best tasting apple soda in the world. Asia has a few that try but they are either excessively sour for my taste or a bit bitter. Plus they are often a neon green color that makes you feel like you are drinking antifreeze.

My least favorites, first tried in Vegas and confirmed again in Atlanta are from England and Italy. Italy has a lemon soda that is not good at all, worse than drinking lemon Pledge. England has a clear soda that might as well be called Carbonated Bitterness, but instead I think the name is Beverly. Poor girl.

The A-Team, nuff said

2010-06-15T00:04:00.000-04:00

Last Friday I was able to relive my childhood as the new A-Team movie opened nationwide. As a kid, I loved the A-Team and Knight Rider. If I wasn’t a good boy, my parents wouldn’t let me watch these shows. That was great motivation to behave. For the sake of brevity I won't discuss the latest remake attempts of Knight Rider.

I don’t often do movie reviews but here’s a hacked review of the movie. Warning: spoiler alerts galore here.

As a TV show, the A-Team and its creators changed the way action shows were filmed. The whole camera-on-the-ground-with-the-car-driving-over-it effect was done first on the A-Team. The original show also provided a lot of action without a lot of gore. Watching the show now in reruns on Centric, it looks like an 80’s cheese show but in the day it was very cool stuff with a wide fan base.

The movie isn’t exactly a continuation of the TV show but rather an adaptation of the story in modern times. The movie shows how the team forms, gets court martialed, escapes, and then ends up as soldiers of fortune. It uses the Iraq and Afghanistan wars as the backdrop. From there on the story rings true to the A-Team and the cast fills the roles of the traditional characters with ease. The story is exaggerated with over the top special effects but believable within the A-Team paradigm. I was impressed with the conservative language and general modesty of the movie, especially considering the Face character.

I was surprised to learn that they shot the entire moving in Vancouver. The movie covers Mexico, Iraq, Afghanistan, Los Angeles, Germany, and more but they shot the entire thing over 5 months in one location.

My A-Team and Star Trek fandom collided together during my Star Trek days as I was able to meet Dirk Benedict (Face) and Dwight Schultz (Murdock). Dirk was in many Sci-Fi TV series and Dwight was in Star Trek: the Next Generation as well as Star Trek: Voyager. Both are also in the new A-Team movie but you have to sit through the credits to catch the cameos. Face with Face and Murdock with Murdock. Very funny.

I knew from reading a review that there was a special treat for the TV shows fans if they stayed through the end of the credits. So while watching them I saw Dwight Schultz as German Doctor #1 but I couldn’t remember having actually seen him in the film. It all made sense when I saw the ending so it was like a mini-spoiler having seen his name in the credits before he actually appeared on the screen.

All in all this is a great continuation of the story and I hope they make a sequel. If you’re not humming the theme song by now you really should be, that is if you consider yourself a true A-Team fan. And yes, I still have my action figures and A-Team van Matchbox car.

http://jonathanesmith.com

2010-06-06T20:38:00.005-04:00

I finally did it. I purchased my own name as a domain name. The millions of reading of this blog know that the address of http://jonathanesmith.blogspot.com/ is just too hard to remember. So I shortened it. My new portal on the World Wide Web is now accessible through http://jonathanesmith.com/.

Don’t worry, the old address will still work so you don’t have to update your address lists but now it will be much easier for you to share access to this blog with your friends, families, and enemies.

As you know, you can find not only these blog posts but also access to my Twitter feed, access to my TwitPics, archived blog posts, and the ability to search the posts and engage in a lively discussion about them. Literally hours of online fun.

If you thought the NASA stories were good, wait till you see what we have planned next.....

Launch Day Golden Ticket

2010-05-20T09:50:00.003-04:00

On launch day at the NASA Tweetup I got up and left a bit earlier than I did the day before anticipating some heavier than normal traffic on the way to the Kennedy Space Center. They told us they were expecting 30,000 people on site for the launch so I wanted to make sure I got to the twent in plenty of time. I also knew there would be some extra security but I wasn’t sure how much.

14 miles from Gate 2 traffic ground to a halt. It took me an hour to go the next 5 miles. Since I had left early I was doing ok for time but I didn’t know if traffic was going to be this heavy all the way to the press site or not.

The first security checkpoint was a temporary one being manned by the Florida State Police near the Astronaut Hall of Fame. I was amazed at how many vehicles were turned back. Talk about waiting in line for hours for nothing. At that checkpoint, you had to have a ticket for the KSC Visitors Center or for the Hall of Fame in order to proceed. If you didn’t have that you were turned back. I pulled up, showed my credentials, and was waved through onto the NASA Causeway, after the officer called me a ‘tweeter’. Traffic on the Causeway was normal so I was back to driving the speed limit. Yeah, I know, I know.

The next checkpoint was at the KSC Visitors Center. Again, I showed my golden ticket and kept going.

The third checkpoint was the Gate 2 badging station, there I had to show my credentials and a photo ID but was again waived through onto the Space Center.

The final checkpoint was at the press site. Here again I had to show my photo ID and my credentials but I was granted access and headed to the parking area.

I’m glad I left early, even though the traffic added an hour I still go there in time for a schedule change. In order to accommodate NASA’s Deputy Administrator coming to talk to us they moved the group photo at the countdown clock from 10am to 9:40am. Wouldn’t want to have missed that!

Does Anyone have a Leatherman?

2010-05-19T09:39:00.004-04:00

The list of security requirements for the NASA Tweetup was rather long and included not bringing knives or blades of any kind. I typically have a Leatherman Micro in my pocket and don’t know how I would live without it however for the Tweetup trip I opted to just leave it at home. It can’t go on the plane; it couldn’t go to NASA so I just left it at home.

I hadn’t been in the Twent for an hour when one of the NASA setup crew asked if any of us had a Leatherman or other pocketknife so he could fix something on the tent. We all laughed, for obvious reasons.

Long Pants and Closed Toe Shoes?

2010-05-19T07:47:00.002-04:00

One question I asked a lot at the NASA Tweetup I attended last week was regarding the requirement that on Day 1 of the Tweetup that we had to wear long pants and closed toe shoes. Coming from an Indiana winter, I was looking forward to wearing shorts in the hot Florida sun once I was accepted for the Tweetup.

All through the first day we couldn’t figure out why we had to wear such warm clothes, and believe me, it was warm.

Finally, towards the end of the day as we were heading to the launch pad to watch them retract the RSS (Rotating Service Structure) they explained the safety concerns that forced our dress code. We were able to visit the launch pad within 24 hours of launch so the SRB (Solid Rocket Boosters) had already been fueled. Do to the potential dangers for leaking gas they want anyone within a mile of the launch pad to wear long pants and closed toe shoes. The gases that may leak are heavy in nature and would fall to ground level where they can burn your skin or cause other types of irritation.

Even though it was hot and my jeans were sticking to me, it was all very well worth it. Being 200 yards from the launch pad with the shuttle on it and ready to go was incredible. I would have worn my snowsuit if that’s what they would have required.

Tweetup Group Pictures

2010-05-18T09:21:00.009-04:00

As part of attending the NASA Tweetup at the Kennedy Space Center for the final launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-132 we were told that NASA would take a group picture of the attendees at the countdown clock. I was pretty excited to even be at the countdown clock let alone get a picture taken there.

Can you find me? I'm in the second row near the clock. Maybe this will help.

As an added bonus they also took our picture while at the launch pad for the retraction of the Rotating Service Structure. We were not scheduled to have a photo there but I'm glad we did. The photographer for our group was NASA's HQ photographer. He has done things like taken the official shots for presidential administrations so he seemed to know what he was doing taking pictures of a bunch of geeks.

I'm harder to find in this one but bonus points if you can do it without scrolling down.

The photographer had one simple instruction for our group. He said, "If you can't see me, I don't care." Worked out pretty well.

Kennedy Space Center Security

2010-05-13T09:28:00.002-04:00

So getting here was fun. I got to the press Accreditation Building early and they were processing us so I was able to get my credentials before the big line formed. Then it was off to the first security checkpoint. I showed them my badge and passport and the guard was perplexed. Fortunately, he didn’t turn me around. Before I got there they had already turned around several cars. He just had me pull over to the search area.

It would appear the Tweetup folks changed the way the credentials looked and failed to notify the security checkpoints.

About 5 minutes later he came back with my badge and told me I was good to go.

Then I arrived at the press site checkpoint and was again pulled off, as my name, along with several other folks’ names, was not on the list. 5 minutes later we were cleared, provisionally until they got the official list.

I’m not fussing though, at least they let us in, and I got a great view of the VAB from the checkpoint. See the security truck?

Our Flight Was Met By Cops

2010-05-13T06:25:00.002-04:00

Rarely do I get to utter the words, “Our flight was met at the gate by cops.” As you know if you’ve been following me, although I’m not sure why you would, I was traveling yesterday on my way to attend a NASA Tweetup at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch of STS-132, which is scheduled for 2:20pm tomorrow.

This entire trip has been a series of good things consistently offset by a series of not so good things. I consider myself a seasoned road warrior so no much surprises me anymore but I still find these instances fascinating. I do want to thank all my 'friends' who automatically assumed the officers were there for me. Hopefully this will set the record straight.

Our plane landed at Orlando International Airport 45 minutes late due to weather issues at IND and ORD. I was sitting in the first row of first class at the window. During the flight a guy from coach came up to use the first class lavatory but he couldn’t get to it as the flight attendant was serving us lunch. She told him he would need to use one of the two lavatories in the back of the plane. It is kind of an unspoken rule that if you are in coach you don’t use the lavatory at the front of the plane. They don’t like you congregating near the cockpit door for obvious reasons and they really want the folks in coach to feel like second-class citizens.

Irritated he went away. About 10 minutes later, with the beverage cart still in the aisle, he came back up to try to use the lavatory again. She again told him to use the ones in the back of the plane. He said he was mad about the poor customer service and stomped off towards the back of the plane again. We didn’t see him again until the cops boarded.

While we are taxing to the gate they announced several times that we were supposed to remain seated with our seatbelts securely fashioned until the captain turned off the fasten seatbelt sign. Nothing new there. The plane came to a stop at the gate and we were all waiting for the sign to be turned off. Since it was taking so long I didn’t even know if we were at the gate yet or if they were waiting on someone to operate the jet bridge.

Since I was sitting up front, I heard the main cabin door open and could smell the fresh Florida air. While I’m wondering why the door is open and why we can’t get up I see the first of 2 heavily armed Orlando police officers board the plane. One of them gets on the PA and says, “This is the Orlando Police. Remain seated.” About 30 seconds later, our friend from earlier in the story is escorted out. 30 seconds after that they let us go.

I was the first person off the plane and walked up the jet bridge behind the lead flight attendant and one of the Orlando officers. The other one I’m guessing had taking our pal into the nether parts of the airport that normal folks never get to see.

The conversation went something like this:

Officer – Did the passenger not follow your requests and instructions?
Flight Attendant – Well, I guess. I’m not sure.
Officer – Ma’am, it’s a yes or no question. I need a yes or a no.
Flight Attendant – Yes, I’m tired of people like him, yes, he did not follow the instructions of the flight crew.
Officer – Please come with me to the FBI office so we can take a statement.

Hoping they wouldn’t see me or ask me for a statement I slowed down and once they veered off I headed for the train to baggage claim.

While waiting for my bags I got the rest of the story from the folks in coach. Apparently, after his second attempt to use the lav in the front of the plane he made a bit of scene with the flight crew in the back about not being able to use the bathroom and use the bathroom he wanted. They all made it sound like he was a moron who got what he deserved.

So, the moral of the story, and if you don’t know this already you probably shouldn’t be breathing, is that you don’t mess with a flight crew. Duh.

Never a dull moment, although anymore I would kill for one of those.

New Adventures of Old Christine Taping

2010-05-12T14:52:00.001-04:00

Season finale episodes are upon us and on a recent trip to Los Angeles (the same trip we saw The Big Bang Theory taping) we saw the season finale of The New Adventures of Old Christine taped.

To get tickets I just went online to the Audiences Unlimited website and was surprised to find tickets were available. I easily got 3 tickets for myself, my wife, and Donnie Payne. Someday I hope to be able to blog without Donnie being part of the story.

Being a long time Seinfeld fan being able to see a former Seinfeld cast member live and in person was exciting. Plus it gave me another chance to get back on the Warner Brothers lot without security trying to chase me away.

The New Adventures of Old Christine, hereafter referred to as Old Christine, tapes at Stage 5 on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, CA. Stage 5 is next to Stage 1 where they tape The Ellen Show. The masses of screaming women going in to see a taping of Ellen were lined up and walking into the sound stage when we arrived at the lot.

We arrived a bit earlier for this taping then we did for Big Bang because we did not have VIP tickets or reserved seating. We were just plain old normal folks. The weather was nice so we wandered around a bit while the Ellen folks got through the audience cue area and then we got in line after securing our cell phones, cameras, and any other form of connection to the real world in the rental car. We were numbers 4, 5, and 6 in the line. Let the cattle herding begin.

The security folks came through and checked our ID’s and stamped our hands. I’m not really sure why they stamped our hands as we were never asked to show that our hands were stamped. Regardless it made us feel important.

The VIP folks were first taken across the street to the lot and through security. Then our group of regular folks went across and through the security check point next. We lined up across the street from the sound stage to wait for folks to use the bathroom. About 15 minutes later they took us to the stage. After going through another metal detector we were ushered to our seats.

From this point forward most of my comments will be comparing the Old Christine taping to the Big Bang taping. They were so radically different that comparing them seems the best way to describe the Old Christine taping.

The audience area for Old Christine was much nicer than Big Bang's. The Big Bang bleachers were just padded seats with backs. Old Christine had bright red theater seats which were much more comfortable for the 5 hour taping. Since we were close to the front of the line we ended up with font row center seats. What I can’t figure out is the episode we saw taped is the current season finale. I would have thought there would have been more VIP’s but it worked out well for us as our seats were front row right in front of Christine’s living room set, near the kitchen bar.

The most enjoyable feature of this taping was that they didn’t block off the sets from view. During the Big Bang taping, they blocked any part of the set they weren’t using. For Old Christine they left it all open so we had lots to look at and were able to see a lot more of the setup that goes into shooting each scene and even each shot.

The warm up MC guy was also much more relaxed. He was from Fishers, IN of all places and did a great job keeping us entertained while also allowing us to enjoy the experience and the show. His resume includes shows like Designing Women and The Golden Girls so he was definitely a seasoned pro. He even gave scripts autographed by the entire cast to those in the audience whose birthday was March 10, the day of the taping.

Between shots the MC wouldn’t do anything which allowed us to watch the reset, watch the writers and producers make notes and changes, and actual hear what was going on. At Big Bang at each second of downtime, the music was blaring and they were trying to entertain us. I saw and learned much more about how TV shows are made at the Old Christine taping.

The episode we saw filmed airs tonight at 8pm on CBS. It is the season finale and had a few other actors in it that I’m fans of from other TV series.

Since our seats were right on the rail we also got to talk with the cast a bit. Hamish came up to us several times talking to friends sitting beside us. Another celebrity was in the audience that night sitting 4 seats down the row from Heather. Jennifer Gray (Dirty Dancing) and her 2 children were there. I didn’t know she was married to Clark Gregg (Richard). Donnie asked Clark and he confirmed it was his wife and children in the audience for the season finale.

There were also more bloopers. When the actors goofed up they went with it and we all had a good laugh. On Big Bang goofs were bad and something not to be enjoyed. The opening shot of the episode has Christine (Julia) getting some glasses out of a cupboard and Barb (Wanda Sykes) pouring a bag of microwave popcorn into a bowl. Julia had the giggles from the start and they ended up going through 5 or 6 bags of popcorn just to get the taping started. That set the tone and it was a lot of fun from that part forward.

Before the taping began, they showed us a previous episode. It was one we had already seen but when it was over Donnie and I noticed a buzz coming from the audience monitor speaker. Sound stages are setup to provide minimal amplification for the studio audience of the live action. They can’t turn it up too much or it will feedback but they have small speakers spread throughout the audience so we can hear the live action. These speakers are especially helpful if the action is taking place on a set away from where you are sitting.

The buzz kept getting worse as they filmed and we notice some of the audio guys coming over to check it out. They asked us if we heard the buzz and we told them we heard it, when we heard it, and that it sounded like a 60 cycle hum due to high voltage crossover. The guy told us he would check it out. After the next shot he came back and asked and we told him it was still there. A while later he came back and said we were right, it was a 60 cycle in the feed line for that speaker and that someone from Warner Bros. would be by to fix it the next day. Apparently, the union crew for the show sound can’t mess with the union crew gear for the studio sound. We offered to fix it for them but they passed.

Overall, it was a great experience. The taping lasted about 5 hours and then we headed off to dinner in Burbank, down the street from NBC Studios. As I’ve said, I like The Big Bang Theory as a show much more than Old Christine but we all agreed that we had more fun at the Old Christine taping and got so much more out of it.

So listen for us laughing tonight. I won’t be able to watch it, as I will be at the Kennedy Space Center for a NASA Tweetup. Go figure.

Author's Note: This is my first blog post from 33,000 feet on American Airlines #1872
from ORD-MCO. It may also be my last post from said location.

NASA Tweetup for STS-132 - more than you want to know

2010-05-09T00:54:00.003-04:00

Several have been asking about my schedule at the NASA Tweetup event I’m headed to on Wednesday. As you know, my sole purpose in life is to please my massive online audience and as such, I’m posting excerpts from the STS-132 NASA Launch Tweetup Agenda & Details email I received Friday.

If you are a regular follower of this blog, as I’m sure you are, you know I don’t post as often as I should. That is all about to change, at least next week as I will be posting frequently, especially while I’m at the Kennedy Space Center. Part of the deal getting to attend this event is that the attendees promote NASA through the various social media platforms. To get the most current updates please follow me on Twitter @JonathanESmith or by clicking the link on the left side of the page (scroll down). I can’t promise that my political views about the current and future states of our nation’s space program won’t seep in along the way.

For fun my 2 cent editorials are in red.

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The Tweetup will take place at the press site at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

NASA's Kennedy Space Center is a government facility. Those without proper identification will not be admitted. (I will be carrying more forms of ID for this trip then I have ever carried before in my life.)

After you check in and receive your badge, you will drive yourself to the Tweetup parking and tent at the Kennedy Space Center Press Site.

Directions to the Kennedy Space Center press site from the Press Accreditation Badging Building on SR-3:
Turn right out of the badging parking lot and proceed approximately a half mile to Gate 2. After showing your badge, proceed ahead, traveling under the overpass and go approximately 4 miles toward the Vehicle Assembly Building. Turn right at the light at Saturn Parkway, passing the OSB building on the left and the OSB II building on the right. The Press Site is on your right just past the OSB II building. You will see a sign at the entrance marked "LC-39 Press Site." Turn right into the entrance and bear left into the lower parking lot. You will need to show your Tweetup badge and photo ID to the Security Officer, who will direct you to the parking for the NASA Tweetup. Please park only in the area designated for Tweetup attendees. You will see the tent ahead of you. Please proceed to the tent and claim a spot at one of the tables. The program will begin at 10 a.m. Your credentials allow you to drive only to the press site and do not provide general access to drive around NASA's Kennedy Space Center. If you drive anywhere other than to and from the Press Site, you forfeit your credentials and attendance at the NASA Tweetup. No person will be permitted past the security gate without NASA Tweetup credentials. This means every person in your vehicle must be a Tweetup attendee.

Schedule
Thursday, May 13/L-1: Day 1
8-9 a.m. -- Registration at the Kennedy Space Center Press Accreditation Badging Building
9-10 a.m. -- Travel to the press site, set up, meet fellow participants
10 a.m. -- Welcome and introductions by @NASA team members John Yembrick and Stephanie Schierholz
10:10 a.m. -- Robert D. Braun, NASA chief technologist, NASA Headquarters
10:30 a.m. Jon Cowart (@Rocky_Sci), Orbiter Engineering manager, Space Shuttle Program, Kennedy Space Center
10:50 a.m. -- Stephanie Stilson, space shuttle Discovery processing director, Shuttle Processing Office, Kennedy Space Center
11:10 a.m. -- Astronaut Janice Voss
11:30 p.m.-12:15 p.m. -- Break for lunch
12:30 p.m.-1:15 p.m. -- Demonstration of the Advanced Crew Escape Suit (ACES)
1:20 p.m. -- Instructions for launch day, board buses
1:30-6:30 p.m. -- Tour of NASA's Kennedy Space Center, including visits to the International Space Station Center and Apollo Saturn V Center. Your tour will drive by the Orbiter Processing Facility, Vehicle Assembly Building, Mobile Launcher Platforms and Crawler-Transporter. The last stop on the tour will be Launch Pad 39A to view retraction of the Rotating Service Structure, scheduled for 5:20 p.m. and space shuttle Atlantis. We will have a short break at the press site at about 4:30 p.m. If you need to leave, you may do so at that time. For the tour, you must wear long pants and closed, low-heeled shoes. Tank tops are not permitted. (Have I mentioned it's going to be close to 90 degrees?)

Friday, May 14/Launch: Day 2
9:30 a.m. -- Arrive at Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 Press Site.
10 a.m. -- Group picture beside the countdown clock.
10:30 a.m.-2 p.m. -- Free time and visits from guest speakers, including
- Astronaut Dave Wolf
- Lt. Col. Patrick Barrett, weather officer with the Air Force's 45th Space Wing Weather Squadron
- Chris Meinert, STS-132 Closeout Crew member
- Madi Sengupta (@msengupta), Space Station Robotics instructor at NASA's Johnson Space Center
- Amiko Kauderer, @NASA_Johnson team member leading STS-132 mission Tweetup
2:20 p.m. -- Launch of space shuttle Atlantis on the STS-132 mission
~3:30 p.m. -- Post-launch news conference on NASA TV
Following the launch, you are free to depart on your own schedule. If you leave immediately, be prepared to sit in traffic for quite some time. (I don't plan to leave until they make me, when will I ever get to do this again?)

(In the event of a 24-hour delay, we will repeat the launch day schedule, but everything will begin 30 minutes earlier)

NASA Tweetup and Technology
Tweetup participants will have their own air-conditioned tent with video monitors, power outlets, WiFi and tables and chairs. We will have free Wi-Fi available both days. The SSID and WEP Encryption Key for the STS-132 NASA Tweetup will be available at registration.

No Ethernet drops will be available, but the WiFi will provide enough coverage for everyone, and the bandwidth will be about 54meg shared. Video and Skype will work, but it could be slow during heavy use. NASA Tweetup attendees should charge their electronic devices before each day's events. Power will be available only at the tent. You may need to allow your mobile phone to roam to achieve the best cell phone coverage. (54meg, that could be fun based on the lists of gear I see folks are bringing.)

Cameras, video cameras and tripods are allowed. However, if this is your first launch, we strongly suggest you put the camera down and enjoy the experience. After all, we have photographers and videographers there, too.

NASA will use UStream to broadcast the 10 a.m.-11:30 a.m. portion of the May 13 NASA Tweetup at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-television. Portions of the NASA Tweetup may be broadcast on NASA Television and online at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv. Photos will be posted online during and/or after the event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto. Your participation in the event signals your consent to appear on air and online. (Be sure to watch for me.)

The Twitter account for the Tweetup is @nasatweetup. We are following all those who are confirmed to attend. You can view the list of attendees at http://twitter.com/nasatweetup/sts-132-launch. (I'm on the official list.) If you are not already following @nasatweetup, please do so; we will post updates and reminders about the event there. Feel free to send questions you may have to that Twitter account. We will use #NASATweetup as the hashtag.

About Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39 Press Site
The STS-132 Tweetup will be conducted in an air-conditioned tent at the Launch Complex 39 Press Site, where news media from around the world are working. You may be approached by reporters requesting to interview or photograph you. If you don't wish to participate, simply decline their requests. (Yeah, like I'm going to decline any requests.) Attendees will have access to the grass area by the launch countdown clock and flag, as well as the bleachers. However, we ask that you refrain from setting up or walking directly in front of the countdown clock, where you will be in the line-of-site shots for many of the news organizations. (Now that could be embarrassing.)

You may leave the tent and roam around the press site, but you are not permitted to leave the press site without an official public affairs escort. You also are not permitted to enter the press site auditorium, where news conferences are conducted (the large yellow building with metal siding) or any private news media facilities (the trailers and buildings you see on the hill toward the front of the tent). You may enter the NASA News Center (the concrete building with the wedge-shaped roof, also on the hill), but we ask that you keep your visit short to respect the needs of the reporters who will be hard at work there. When you walk about, please be aware of equipment set up and broadcasts going on and try to stay out of their shots. (Watch for the top of my head.)

Restrooms are located in a concrete building on the hill, behind the press site auditorium.

If you fail to follow the rules and heed the instructions of NASA security and your public affairs escorts, you could lose your credential and your privileges to attend the launch.

Your STS-132 Tweetup Credential
Your badge will provide admission to the Launch Complex 39 Press Site both days. DO NOT LOSE YOUR CREDENTIAL. You must have your Tweetup badge and government-issued photo identification with you at all times. Please note: Your STS-132 Tweetup confirmation and registration does not qualify you for news media credentials at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, now or in the future.

Tickets to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex
You do not need to purchase an admission ticket for the Visitor Complex. We will provide you admission to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, including the Shuttle Launch Experience attraction, IMAX space films and exhibits and shows at the main site. Your Visitor Complex ticket will be valid May 12-14. The Visitor Complex is open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thus, your best opportunities to use this ticket will be May 12 or after launch on May 14. If you would like to pick up your ticket May 12, you may do so from the Tweetup Registration area of the Kennedy Space Center Press Accreditation Building on SR-3 between 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. and noon to 1 p.m. If you would like to upgrade your ticket, you may do so at a discounted price at the Visitor Complex. (I will be spending a bit of time here.)

Appropriate dress
For the L-1 bus tour of Kennedy Space Center on May 13, you must wear long pants and closed, low-heeled shoes. Tank tops are not permitted. (Bummer, most of my wardrboe is tank tops.)

In the event of a launch scrub on May 14
Launching humans into space is a very complex business, and the safety of the crew is NASA’s number one priority. Hundreds of different factors can cause a scheduled launch date to change numerous times. If the launch date moves or delays prior to this planned event, NASA will make every attempt to adjust the Tweetup schedule accordingly to coincide with the launch and will notify you about this change. If on the first launch attempt (L-0, currently May 14), the launch is delayed for 24 hours, NASA will provide you the opportunity to visit the press site again for the second launch attempt. In that event, the launch day schedule will begin 30 minutes earlier. (What isn't clear is what happens if they have a third or fourth scrub.)

FOLLOW THE LAUNCH: It is your responsibility to keep up with the date and time of the shuttle launch. Follow @NASA on Twitter to receive regular launch updates. You also can receive regular launch updates at http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle. Updates also are available by calling 321-867-2525. We will e-mail you if there is a major change to the agenda, such as a scrub early in the morning during fueling. You can view a schedule of the milestones to launch at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/news/132_countdown_milestones.html. A media briefing and events schedule is online at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/news/132_hours_events.html.

NASA’s Safety Statement
NASA's Kennedy Space Center is part of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. While on Kennedy Space Center you may encounter a variety of wildlife, including alligators and poisonous snakes. If you see such an animal, do not approach it or attempt to feed it. Please notify a public affairs officer or other NASA personnel.

Please be advised that hazards are inherent in launching and launch viewing of a space shuttle mission. By accepting the invitation to view the launch or landing you do so with the understanding of the potential risk. Although NASA applies stringent range safety principles and techniques to protect the general public, workforce and property for all areas of the Kennedy Space Center during launch, in the event of an inadvertent circumstance, hazards including debris, blast and toxics could occur.

It is imperative that you stay within controlled areas with your group and strictly follow all instructions provided by NASA. Although an accident during lift-off of the space shuttle is highly unlikely, some safety precautions are necessary. As is the case with the launch of a space vehicle, a potential danger exists from toxic vapors contained in any cloud formed as a result of a launch mishap. In the event of an accident, all persons at NASA's Kennedy Space Center should take shelter immediately in the nearest air-conditioned building.

NASA Tweetup for STS-132

2010-05-01T14:55:00.005-04:00

A few weeks ago I applied for the NASA Tweetup Event at the Kennedy Space Center for the May 14 launch of STS-132. I figured it was a long shot at best as the event is limited to 150 people. I also am not one of those people prone to such luck.

The registration period is limited to 72 hours. Within 12 hours of the registration period closing I received an email from NASA notifying me that I had been placed on a waiting list for the event. It didn’t tell me what number I was on the list just that I was on the waiting list. I assumed that was the end of it. The Tweetup provides access to areas off limits to the general public and since there are only 2 more shuttle flights after this one I assumed the line would be a mile long to get in. The only thing I had on my side was the schedule. Aside from our 11th wedding anniversary that weekend was clear.

Yesterday, much to my surprise, I received a confirmation email from NASA stating I had been accepted and my registration had been confirmed. Either a lot of people were unable to confirm their attendance or I was close to the top of the waiting list but either way my registration has been accepted.

Today I received a rather lengthy email from NASA with the details of the event. This is going to be so cool! I have wanted to see a shuttle flights since I was in elementary school and now I get to see one of the final flights. If you don’t catch STS-132 this month, STS-133 in September or STS-134 in November then in order to see a manned space flight in the foreseeable future you will have to go to Russia. STS-134 is the final shuttle flight and then the fleet will be retired. As of now the United States does not have another manned vehicle option ready. The politics of that can be discussed another time in another post.

Here are some highlights of the event:

We get to watch the launch from the press site, which is closed to the general public. This is where the famous countdown clock is located. NASA provides us with an air conditioned tent Wi-Fi access, tables, power, and monitors to watch and listen to all the live missions control and NASA TV feeds. This location is only 3.2 miles from the launch pad. The closest public viewing is the NASA Causeway near Titusville, FL at 6 miles away. While they specify that we will have access to this area they ask that we refrain from walking directly in front of the clock so we don’t get in the line-of-shots for the news organizations that will be setup as well. The launch is scheduled for 2:20pm EDT.

We attend a 2 hour program and interaction with NASA shuttle technicians, engineers, astronauts and managers.
A bus tour of the space center.
On launch day they will have more speakers and visitors for us but they emphasize that we will have free time prior to the launch.
Normally the tour and launch viewing access cost. As part of the Tweetup those things are free.

According to the Tweetup website, “The goal of NASA Tweetups is to allow people who regularly interact with each other via Twitter to meet in person and discuss one of their favorite subjects: NASA.” As such they mention on the things to bring list that we are to bring our laptops and favorite tweeting devices and chargers. They also point out that we should ensure our devices are fully charged for the tour portion as remote power will not be available but is available at the Tweetup tent and during the launch itself.

Aside from the dates working out well I also have amply frequent flier miles allowing me to get a variable date ticket. This should allow me to modify my departure and return dates based on the status of the shuttle launch. NASA states that in the event of a scrub we will be invited to the second launch attempt. They do not state what will happen if there is more than one launch attempt that is scrubbed. That should be interesting. Knowing my luck, well, let’s not go there.

My favorite part of the email confirmation is NASA’s Safety Statement:

Please be advised that hazards are inherent in launching and launch viewing of a space shuttle mission. By accepting the invitation to view the launch or landing you do so with the understanding of the potential risk. Although NASA applies stringent range safety principles and techniques to protect the general public, workforce and property for all areas of the Kennedy Space Center during launch, in the event of an inadvertent circumstance, hazards including debris, blast and toxics could occur.

It is imperative that you stay within controlled areas with your group and strictly follow all instructions provided by NASA. Although an accident during lift-off of the space shuttle is highly unlikely, some safety precautions are necessary. As is the case with the launch of a space vehicle, a potential danger exists from toxic vapors contained in any cloud formed as a result of a launch mishap. In the event of an accident, all persons at NASA's Kennedy Space Center should take shelter immediately in the nearest air-conditioned building.

This afternoon I submitted my request for credentials and agreed to a background check. Provided all that goes through you will be able to follow the Tweetup on Twitter @NASATweetup or @NASA. I will also be listed shortly on the official STS-132 Twitter list http://twitter.com/nasatweetup/sts-132-launch.

Another side benefit is some of the tweeps that I will get to meet at the event. One in particular that stands out is @LanceUlanoff, the editor-in-chief of PC Magazine. All tech folks know that PC Magazine is like the bible of IT.

So, in keeping with NASA’s objective you will see more blog posts, photos, and tweets about this event as it approaches. Have I mentioned how cool this is!!!

"The Spaghetti Catalyst" air date

2010-04-26T23:05:00.001-04:00

At long last, the episode of The Big Bang Theory we saw taped on March 9 is schedule to air. CBS is changing its lineup a bit for Monday, May 3. The Spaghettic Catalyst airs at 9pm as opposed to the normal 9:30pm time slot. A rerun is then scheduled to air at 9:30pm.

For more information about the episode check out this blog post.

For information about how attending this taping ended up with me on TV check out this blog post.

If you are interested in watching the episode with those who were there you are welcome to come over next Monday. We will be watching it in the theater. Then we will show it again and pause it to provide live audience commentary. Please be sure to RSVP.

My Network TV Debut

2010-03-23T23:08:00.008-04:00

On last night's episode of The Big Bang Theory my wife, Donnie Payne, and I made our network TV debut. As I mention in my previous post they shot the studio audience for the vanity card that airs at the end of each show.

Yesterday I posted some rough pictures of our admittedly brief network TV appearance on Twitter by freezing the image on my TiVo and then taking pictures of our TV with my digital camera. Today the show’s producers posted the full blown images on their website.

http://www.chucklorre.com/images/vc282big.jpg
(you can zoom in using your web browser)

This is the actual vanity card that aired. You can see us sitting in the second row on the far right of the picture. Heather is the rose between the thorns wearing the orange top.

This is our area blown up. We had a lot of fun with the guy sitting in front of me. His name is Josh. He was more VIP than we were as he got to go down on the stage itself after the taping was over.

You can tell they had to edit multiple still shots together in order to get this panoramic image. Even with that they still left the far ends of the audience out. You can see us clearly on the far right of the image in the second row. We had great seats right in front of Penny’s apartment.

It took 2 takes in order to get it right because Donnie had his eyes closed the first time, that or a lighting problem, you pick. For an autographed copy please send a self addressed stamped envelope to....

A taping of "The Big Bang Theory"

2010-03-22T20:36:00.002-04:00

Warning: This post contains some spoilers relating to the plot line of “The Big Bang Theory”. Proceed at your own risk.

A few weeks ago I was in the Los Angeles area for a conference. Knowing that I was going to be in LA I started looking around for tickets to a few of my favorite TV sitcoms. One of my favorite shows right now is The Big Bang Theory on CBS. This is a show about 4 scientists who are also major computer, Star Trek, Star Wars, and comic book geeks. I like the show because my wife says I am parts of all 4 geeks. My wife likes the show because she is married to parts of all 4 geeks.

After looking around for tickets it became apparent that due to the show’s popularity that I wasn’t going to be able to get a ticket without some inside help. You can see this blog post for where my inside help came from and how we scored VIP tickets to the taping.

We arrived at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, CA at 5pm on Tuesday, March 9. We checked in as “guests of the production” and were moved to the front of the line. At 5:15pm they escorted our group of about 20 from the parking structure to the security check point across the street at the lot entrance. They were scanning primarily for cell phones and other obvious items. It was painless primarily because we opted to leave our cell phones in the car. That’s why there aren’t any pictures of our event as cell phones and cameras were not allowed on the stage so leaving them in your car is the best bet.

From there we started walking towards the center of the lot. Big Bang tapes on Stage 25 which is close to the middle of the lot. About half way there they stopped at the restrooms so anyone who had to go had a chance to go. Once you were on the sound stage going to the bathroom meant a long walk.

From there we continued on to the stage. On each of the sound stages at Warner Bros. they have a plaque so you can see what movies and TV shows have been shot on each stage. Of note on Stage 25 were most of the Batman movies and the original V from 1985-1986. V has made a recent comeback on ABC, another show I like to watch. Across the street from Stage 25 is Stage 24. Obvious I know but Stage 24 is where Friends was filmed and is appropriately named The Friends Stage.

Upon arriving at the door to the sound stage we had to go through security again and another magnetometer. If you had your cell phone or a camera with you they required you to check it. Another good reason for leaving your phone in your car is that if you were not a VIP then you had to step out of line while they checked your phone which meant you might not get as good of a seat. Since we were VIP’s our seats were reserved.

We entered the seating area and were directed to our seats. They had written Smith, Smith, and Payne on our seats using masking tape. It sounds like a new law firm but Smith and Smith is me and my wife and Payne is Donnie Payne, a good friend of ours who attending the taping with us. It is now around 5:30pm.

We had seats in the center house left section in the second row on the aisle right in front of Penny’s apartment. They were good seats as several scenes in the episode take place in her apartment.

Donnie and I spent the next hour looking around at all the technology on the sound stage. They had partitions blocking our view of the actual sets but we could see over the partitions to the lighting, rigs, and sound gear and we could look up at the rafters and other cabling and equipment over head. We also were able to see the sound booth and lighting booths. While we waited they had some music playing but it was fairly relaxed.

Around 6pm they told us they were going to show us an episode of the show that had yet to be aired. It was still a rough edit with a few sound issues and with the time code still on all the shots but nonetheless it was an un-aired episode and we were going to be the first to see it. At that time we were not sure why they were showing us an un-aired episode. Usually they just show one that has already aired but we didn’t care. The episode they showed us was titled The Pants Alternative which airs tonight, 3/22 at 9:30/8:30pm on CBS. If you like the X-Men you will love this episode. It also shows a side of geeks that most geeks would not admit to.

At 6:30pm they started shooting The Spaghetti Catalyst, the official title of the episode. The emcee introduced him and the cast and off we went after the actress who plays Penny came out to talk to audience. She told us that in order for the episode we were about to see taped to make sense to us we had to know that Leonard and Penny breakup. This breakup happens sometime between the un-aired episode they showed us that airs tonight and the episode we saw filmed. I’m guessing that the breakup happens in the episode that will air prior to the one we saw taped.

If you have never been to a TV sitcom filming here is how it goes. They shoot each scene 2-3 times. Often times they change lines between takes based on the audience response and they obviously repeat any bloopers that may have happened. Sometimes they will shoot them another time to get additional camera angles as well.

For continuity for the audience they shoot the show in scene order. Each time they move from one set to another there is a lot of down time but they do this for the studio audience. It would be much easier to shoot all the scenes on a single set at one time rather than move around. Each time they moved from one set to another they used partitions to block the sets that were not in use. Sometimes they pre-shoot scenes as well. During our episode there is an outside scene that was pre-shot. At the proper time during the taping they played it back for us so they could record the laughter.

The emcee’s job is to keep the audience energy level up and to keep you entertained as sometime the amount of time between takes can be 20-30 minutes. He gave away candy, $20, and did a lot of contests to keep the audience entertained. It was fun for a while but as the night wore on it got a bit old. I understand what he was doing and why they wanted to keep the energy level up but after a while I was ready for some quiet. They were always playing music and while I didn’t mind the music I wondered how the folks on the set were able to get anything done due to all the noise the audience was making and with the music playing . How they rewrote lines, received instructions from the director, fixed lighting issues, etc. with all that noise is beyond me but those on the stage seemed to enjoy it. The actors were often dancing around to the music between takes.

I was expecting the taping to have more bloopers and be more relaxed however compared to other tapings I’ve been to this one was pretty rigid. The actors took goofs and flubs seriously. There was not a lot of clowning around on the set. During one scene Sheldon and Penny are coming up the stairs with Penny carrying a bag of groceries. The actress slipped on one of the steps so they had to redo the scene. Before the director yelled “action” the actress playing Penny turned to the actor playing Sheldon and said, “Don’t push me this time.” We loved it and thought it was funny but the actor playing Sheldon didn’t appear to enjoy it.

When they goofed many of the actors would apologize and we would start over again right away. They didn’t elaborate or have fun with it. Seeing as the show is so funny I would have thought that they would have messed around a bit more. Perhaps it is due to the highly technical dialogue that keeps them from playing around too much. Either way, we still had a good time despite the lack of antics on the set.

As we got down to the final scenes Chuck Lorre, one of the creators and executive producers came out to talk to the audience. He said they are often criticized for using a laugh track for the show due to the sophisticated science jokes and humor. He said in order to show that they use a live studio audience they were going to include a shot of the audience in an upcoming episode. Come to find out it is The Pant Alternative episode that airs tonight. This explains why they showed us an un-aired episode.

They brought out some lights and cameras and filmed the audience in sections to appear as part of the vanity card at the end of the show. The vanity card is normally a white screen with black text containing very funny writing by Chuck Lorre. This appears for all shows that he has created. For tonight’s episode the shots of the audience is what will appear in this spot for about a second, maybe two at the very end of the show just before CSI: Miami starts.

After our moment in front of the camera they went back to filming the final 2 scenes. Once they were done they came back and told us they needed to shoot the audience images again because they needed more light. This time they brought in a large lighting rig and really lit the audience. The camera came back and we shot it again. This time Chuck Lorre was standing a few feet away from where I was sitting really encouraging the audience for this second take.

After our second moment in front of the cameras passed they did the final curtain call and that was it. It was around 10:15pm. One of the actors stayed around and signed a few autographs but for the most part they split. Chuck Lorre was still standing near to us and Donnie got his autograph.

We hung around until they made us leave looking at various things and checking out some of the other sets we couldn’t see as well from our seats. It was around 10:45pm by the time we got back to our car and headed to the hotel.

We are not sure when The Spaghetti Catalyst airs. They film their final episode of the season on April 6 so I’m guessing it airs sometime in late April or early May. If you follow Bill Prady, one of the other creators and producers on Twitter you can find out a lot of behind the scenes info about the show.

He tweeted this week that they have been picked up for a 4th season and begin production in August.

There is more I could say and probably will in future blog posts but this gets the story started. We also attended a taping of The New Adventures of Old Christine. While I like The Big Bang Theory better I enjoyed the taping experience more for New Christine.

More to come I’m sure as this post is already quite long.

Update August 28, 2011
I've posted a Q&A list to go along with this post and hopefully answer some additional questions.

Calibration and Mall Security

2010-03-01T23:34:00.002-05:00

I’m in Memphis this week for some meeting at Shelby Systems while Donnie attends the basic Shelby training as part of his ramp up at Faith. Last night we picked up a rental car and the Memphis airport. While driving to the hotel I noticed the compass on the dash said CAL. Being a bit of a geek I knew that meant the compass in the car had not been calibrated. The upshot is that means the car is very new and I’m one of the first renters, the downside is that CAL was going to drive me nuts knowing that the car wasn’t doing something I know it could do – namely showing me what direction I’m going. I know my GPS tells me the direction but it’s the principle of the thing.

We checked into the hotel and then ran out to grab a bit to eat. On the way back from eating Donnie suggested I go ahead and calibrate the compass. To calibrate the compass in a GM model car you select calibrate on the dash board menu and then drive in circles for it to calibrate it. I’m not joking, look it up in any GM manual. On the way back to the hotel we found an empty mall parking lot and gave it a go.

So I started driving in circles, slow enough that I didn’t make Donnie sick. First I tried small circles to the left, then larger circles to the left, then small circles to the right, then larger circles to the right and finally I did some figure 8’s. All the while the dash kept reading, “Drive in Circles”.

5 minutes later I finally realized that the zone must not be set. In order for the compass to calibrate you have to know what zone you are in so the compass can calculate the magnetic north based on your longitude and latitude and let you know your direction in reference to the magnetic north. How do I know this? Like I said, I’m a bit of a geek. Because of that inherent geekness I also happened to know that Indiana is in zone 5 and that Memphis, TN is also in zone 5 as it is almost due south of Lafayette, IN. So, I set the compass zone to 5 and started driving in circles again.

By this time mall security had noticed something odd with a car driving round and round and round in their parking lot. I completed my first circle after setting the zone and the dashboard displayed those magic words, “Compass Calibrated” and the letter SE appeared in place of the CAL. Also at this time a mall security vehicle appeared next to ours.

The mall officer rolled down his window and asked what we were doing. I explained we were from out of town and our rental car compass needed calibrating and to do that we had to drive around and circles and that the empty mall parking lot behind our hotel seemed like a reasonable place to perform said calibration. His respond, “I’ve always wondered how you do that.”

He wished us a good evening and said he was glad his boss didn’t notice us and sent us on our way. I’m not sure what that meant but I’m glad our compass is calibrated. I don’t plan charge Enterprise for the services performed.

My Wife is Awesome!

2010-02-20T23:45:00.003-05:00

I know the title of this one seems obvious but let’s face it, all guys marry up.

Anyway, my wife is awesome for many reasons but here is the latest one. Next month I’m attending a church IT event in Southern California. Our schedules worked out so that Heather can come with me and take some vacation time around the event. While we are in LA we wanted to see some of our favorite TV shows being filmed. On our honeymoon we attended a taping of The Late Show with David Letterman in New York. We were able to get some tickets online to a few shows but the one I really wanted to see was The Big Bang Theory.

The Big Bang Theory is about smart geeky people. You may wonder whether I’m smart but I think the verdict is long in on my being a bit geeky. However, due to the popularity of the show the taping while we are in LA was sold out.

Heather has an uncle who is well known in Hollywood. To protect his privacy I’ll leave out the details lest you all try to get TV show tickets through him. Heather emailed said uncle asking if he could possibly score us a couple of tickets to The Big Bang Theory since that’s the one show I really wanted to see. Two days after she emailed we received confirmation of VIP tickets to the sold out taping of the show.

The VIP letter told us where to park, not to bring our cell phones, and how to check in as VIP guests of the production. Once we check in we get a private escort to Stage 25 on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank.

I’ve been doing some reading online from various sources about what to expect at a taping and it appears we are in for a good time. The tapings usually last until after 9pm and we have to be there at 5:15pm so I’m not sure how I will survive without my cell phone for so long but I know it will be worth it.

Will we get any autographs? Will we meet any of the cast or producers? Is the pizza they serve the audience any good? Will we run into anyone else on the studio lot? Stay tuned.

My next post will be My Wife’s Uncle is Awesome!

The One with Two Titles

2010-02-13T15:11:00.001-05:00

This post could have easily had two titles. Since I like them both I’m going to let you decide.

Option 1: My Father the Terrorist

Option 2: Chinese Food is Explosive

This past week was our Biblical Counseling Training Conference at our church. A lot of my immediate family is involved in serving during the BCTC and attending it. As a result we usually try to get together for a meal with everyone one night during the week. This year my wife, mom, dad, uncle, cousin, grandpa, and grandma were all involved in the conference. Our kids were there too but they were doing their normal weekly school stuff.

My uncle, from Peoria, IL found out about this new Chinese Buffet that had opened near the church. Since we all enjoy that kind of food we decided to try it out. The food was good and we were having a great time when we noticed several police cars from the city of Lafayette pulling up in front of the restaurant. Thinking nothing of it we kept eating until a third office arrived from the Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s Department. My mom, getting up to get some more food, went to the window and noticed that they were looking in my dad’s van with flashlights.

To understand why that matters you have to understand my dad’s vehicle. He drives a 1988 vintage Ford Econoline cargo van. Its original color is white but due to the amount of rust it is hard to tell these days. It has a blanket hanging behind the driver and passenger seats to keep the front warm in the winter and is full of odds and ends in the back. It has a side window and two rear windows which is what the officers were shining their lights through to see what was inside.

After getting back from getting a bowl full of ice cream dad decided to go out and see what they were looking for. As he was getting his coat on one of the office came into the restaurant and asked if anyone owned the white van. Dad and the officer went outside.

Watching from the window we noticed that dad was letting them into the van. Finding that odd my uncle and I decided to get our coats on and go out to see what was going on. In Indiana it isn’t legal to search a vehicle without a warrant so I was surprised my dad was allowing them to poke around.

When we got outside we found out that the clothing store next door had been robbed a lot lately around closing time, 9pm. The thieves would pull up in a van, similar to my dad’s, and while the store clerks were locking the door to leave they would push them aside, grab a bunch of clothes, throw them in a van and drive off. So the store clerks seeing the van parked there called the police thinking it might be waiting to rob them when they closed. When the police showed up they noticed some items they viewed as suspicious in the van leading them to want to search it.

To understand this part of the story you have to know a bit more about my dad. He is a profession pyrotechnist. He launches fireworks, designs and tests fireworks, and trains others on explosives. The mild mannered chemist from Purdue is just a cover for the pyro inside. However, dad is also legal about all this. He has more licenses and explosive permits from more levels of government than I have Microsoft certifications. He has done training sessions for the local bomb squad and even took chemicals for making explosives across the US/Canada border for a ChemEd teaching conference he was invited to in Vancouver. Last year there was a deflagrating fire in a chemistry lab at one of our public schools and the Sheriff’s Department consulted with dad during the investigation. So, the fact that he had some electric igniters, an old cardboard box with diamond shape explosive decal, and other odds and ends in his van should be no surprise. The fact that he had all the paperwork for all that in his van should also be no surprise.

The tension came from the fact that dad believed procedurally they should have asked more questions and investigated his paperwork before searching. However the officers were determined to search. While dad initially refused giving them permission to search he grudgingly then gave permission considering how long the process would drag out waiting for the bomb squad to show up and waiting for a judge to issue a warrant. So dad, with nothing to hide allowed them to poke around. They found nothing of interest although they never asked to see further paperwork; they only saw dad’s hazmat endorsement on his license.

The bigger issue here is that suspicion by someone else caused a loss of privacy and liberty for my dad. I realize this is a much more complicated issue but here is a quote from my dad’s Twitter account that I think sums it all up:

“The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”

Again, I get how complicated this can be and I understand the threats of the world we live in however a citizen with all his ducks in a row, who has trained law enforcement on these very situations was himself subjected to a loss of liberty and privacy for doing it all the right way. One of the officers suggested that dad simply hide the stuff in plastic bins so that if someone does look inside they can’t see anything. The logic here fails me as while that removes the element of suspicion it doesn’t solve the real problem.

I think I’m going to drive around town with a fake foot hanging out from under a blanket in my backseat and see how long it is before someone suspects I have a body in there and calls me in for murder.

The next day dad called the sheriff and the sheriff called back. They have a meeting setup to review the case with the Sheriff’s Department as well as officers from the Lafayette Police Department. At issue is procedure and helping those men of zeal gain some understanding.

More on this story to come I’m sure. Dad's biggest objection to all this was that his ice cream had melted by the time we got back inside.

Oh, and speaking of dad being a terrorist my grandfather (dad’s dad) actually is a terrorist. He is on the official terrorist watch list because of his name, Bob Smith. Apparently that is a common alias used by terrorist so grandpa can’t check in online for flights, gets all the extra screening, and now that he has a metal rod in his hip, well, let’s just say flying with him is fun.

New Pulpit and Monitor Stand Fever, part 2 of 3

2010-02-08T20:10:00.000-05:00

This week our church is hosting the Biblical Counseling Training Conference. We typically try to get things looking nice before our guests arrive but sometimes we do things a bit late in the game. Years ago we would do major upgrades to the auditorium sound and video system the weekend before the conference started. In those days the BCTC started on Saturday evening and often we would work from Friday evening straight through trying to get things ready. The older I get the less I like working at 3am when I started at 6pm the previous day.

Having learned a few hard lessons we haven’t done anything major like that at the last minute in several years. We try to plan ahead and schedule our upgrades with enough time for a little Beta testing before the next major event.

Back in November I posted about a fire we had in our pulpit on a Sunday morning. You can read about that here. This is part 2 of a 3 part story. In early January our worship pastor started shopping for a new pulpit. We landed on one but it was going to be close to get it installed before the BCTC. I had to get mic specs to the manufacturer so that part could be completed as well and the unit still ship in time.

Once we realized the pulpit would be here we also had to create a new stand for the LCD monitor our speakers use to see their video feeds. Before the monitor stat on a pedestal that matched the pulpit. We wanted to upgrade that so now we have a larger screen attached to a steel pole that comes up from the stage. This was custom designed by myself and a few others and built by the company of a church member that has a full scale metal shop. You should really come see it.

In a true reminder of the good ole days version 1.0 of the pulpit stand was tested on the Thursday before the conference. It had a few issues so we decided to get another version made on Thursday afternoon. Version 2.5 went into production on Thursday and we got to test it on Friday night. The pulpit also arrived on Friday night and thanks to the grace of God was all installed and working as planned by Saturday afternoon.

The next step in the process is to get the lift working again. Now that the pulpit has been updated we would still like it to lower down into the floor. Upgrading the lift will be part 3 of this story. We are hoping to make several improvements and are doing some engineering work now. Stay tuned.

The BCTC is Coming!!!

2010-02-02T21:18:00.000-05:00

The Biblical Counseling Training Conference is coming up fast at Faith. Our team is working hard to ensure an enjoyable learning experience for our guests that allow them to focus on their walk with the Lord so that they can help others who are hurting. We are blessed at Faith to have over 1550 folks from all over the world attending an event in Lafayette, IN in February to learn about the Bible’s sufficiency.

As you know the weather in Indiana in February is often less than ideal. Anyone remember the blizzard of 2007? I think that one will go down in conference history. We had radar loops showing on all the screens so folks could track the storm progress.

I’m often asked what’s new in the tech realm so here are some things we are excited about and are working on.

If our friends at UPS come through for us we will have a new pulpit and video monitor stand in the auditorium. We have been working on this for a while due to an earlier blog post I wrote about the pulpit catching on fire during a Sunday morning service. This week we are replacing the pulpit itself and the video monitor next to it. After the conference we will begin working on the whole up-and-down part.
Our wireless network coverage has been increased. We were hoping to have additional bandwidth available but construction delays have that part on hold until the week after the conference.
In the Community Center we have made some functional improvements to 2 of our sound systems.
We use 10 laptops for the various conference sessions and tracks. We typically rent those and they arrived today so our team is working hard and getting them imaged and pre-loaded with many PowerPoint files, drivers, video codec’s, and other teaching resources.
We have added another LCD announcement board in the school wing of the building and are planning to use that to communicate announcements and other upcoming events.
We go through a lot of CD’s during the conference as folks take media home with them. We have increased our duplication capacity so we can get as many orders completed before the end of the BCTC as possible.
We run 12 full audio/visual systems during the conference. While our gear inventory has increased over the years we still rent some of the equipment. That arrives Friday afternoon. We begin setup on Saturday morning and complete it Sunday afternoon after our morning services.

Another new thing I’m excited about is the use of Twitter to submit questions during the 2 Q&A sessions in Track 1. This is something new for us and if it goes well will probably be expanded. More details about this will be provided in Track 1 and I’ll be there as the Twitter moderator.

My thanks to the many of you who have inquired about my grandfather and have been praying for him. His recovery is going well and he is back to his schedule as it was before he fell. He’s excited that he will be able to participate in the BCTC as he originally planned.

As for the Super Bowl where the Indianapolis Colts are going to beat the New Orleans Saints, I know the BCTC and the Super Bowl are on the same night. That happens every so often depending on how the calendar falls but since we all know the Colts are going to win anyway it really doesn't matter if you see the first half of the game. One year I taught a session on Super Bowl night and would periodically update folks with the score from my cell phone. Even though the Saints' Drew Brees is a former Purdue QB, a fine institution of which I am an alum, I'm still rooting for the Colts.

For those coming next week I look forward to seeing/meeting you. I'm usually running around but I can be found making the announcements in the lunch room in the Community Center so be sure to stop and say 'hey'. For those who are not coming please be praying that God would be at work in all our lives.

Abuse of State Property

2010-01-29T23:57:00.000-05:00

Last weekend a friend of mine swapped out the engine in his VW Rabbit. It is from the mid 80’s sometime, has been modified to run on vegetable oil, and more information is available on his blog at www.blahblahblahabouttherabbit.com. He borrowed a barn at another friend’s house in the county and got together a crew of folks to help him with the swap. Many tweets are available about the swap as well as lots of pictures on Facebook. Being mechanically minded I was asked to document and blog about the event and just provide moral support.

The original plan was to spend the evening Friday and then the day Saturday helping, um, er…I mean watching the swap. However, as with most plans in my life, things changed.

Some other friends, and yes, I know you are shocked that I have friends, were going to be in town and wanted to have dinner with us. These are actually Heather’s friends. She was Eric’s nanny when he was first born and her husband is a state trooper. Sorry it took 3 paragraphs to get to that part. So Friday night we had dinner with them and then in a complete abuse of state property he and I went out to the engine swap.

We drove up the driveway with the light flashing, which were rather blinding in the country darkness. As soon as the confused engine swappers opened the door I came on the loud speaker saying something like, “Come out with your hands up. We have the barn surrounded as an automobile chop shop. Please bring your VIN paperwork with you and come out with your hands up.”

A good time was had by all. Then Saturday morning I was planning to go back out to the barn to check on progress however we had a major internal DNS glitch on our networks at Faith so I spent most of the day working on that instead of watching them work on the engine. I did eventually get out there in time to see them fire it up and start some testing.

I’m looking forward to serving the great people of the state of Indiana again in the future and answering questions at the inquiry.

Grandpa Update

2010-01-22T00:11:00.002-05:00

I spent some time with my grandfather yesterday and am pleased to report that he is doing well. He has been doing his therapy and is recovering and healing nicely. He has also been amazed by the outpouring of support and prayers he has received. Grandma showed me a pile of cards tonight that was 14" high and growing daily. And yes, I actually did measure it.

Grandpa is gaining more and more mobility each day. The current plan is for him to resume his normal schedule next week. Your prayers are appreciated as his schedule is hectic enough for a healthy 80 year old, let alone a healthy 80 year old recovering from a broken hip.

It is my prayer that I'm as active for the Kingdom as he is when I'm 80.

What's up with my Facebook posts?

2010-01-21T23:52:00.000-05:00

For those asking why my Facebook status updates are a bit odd here's the answer. I update my Facebook status from my Twitter feed. I prefer Twitter to Facebook because it is short and sweet however I understand there are many who prefer Facebook to Twitter. That’s why I have both so that I can reach folks who are on one or the other.

Twitter has its own language which is why my tweets on Facebook appear odd with @’s and #’s and references to other Twitter users (@4faraday is my dad by the way). That is also why they are so short since tweets are limited to 140 characters. Twitter also uses URL shorteners like bit.ly and tiny.url to shorten long links due to the 140 character limit. Those links still work on Facebook but are not as common which often confuses folks.

Being able to link Twitter and Facebook helps me as I can communicate through both forms of social media but I only need to keep one of them current. For me, that’s Twitter. I do respond to those on Facebook who comment and I find myself explaining my Tweets but I rarely if ever update my Facebook status directly. I just let Facebook pull it from Twitter. Same is true with my blog. My blog posts are also posted to my Facebook page.

My goal is to communicate with folks where they are. Even though I prefer Twitter I understand the value of Facebook and enjoy doing things on Facebook that you can’t do on Twitter, especially with pictures and tagging, so I plan to continue using both – even if my Facebook status updates seem a bit odd in that world. Just poke me, post a note on my wall, or comment and I will try to clear things up in a non-discriminatory social media kind of way.

Grandpa (Dr. Bob Smith) Story

2010-01-08T00:17:00.003-05:00

Many are asking for the full story of what happened to my grandfather, Dr. Bob Smith. Our family is humbled by your concern and grateful for your prayers. I’m sharing the story here mostly out of selfish convenience to provide everyone the same information all at once. Please don’t read this and then not ask grandpa what happened the next time you see him. I don’t want to rob him of the joy of sharing how God is using this in his life in his own words.

Here are more details then you ever wanted to know.

On Monday, January 4 grandpa left to get the newspaper at the mailbox around 11:00am. The mailbox is located about 2/10 of a mile (1056 feet) down the lane where they live. He thought about driving but grandpa likes the cold weather and with a fresh coat of light snow he wanted to take a walk. The temperature was around 11 degrees with a wind chill just below 0. So he put on a coat, hat, gloves, and a pair of rubber boots and headed down the lane. Grandpa is 80 years old.

Once he got to the mailboxes he noticed a slick spot in front of them. He carefully got the paper but when he went to head back to the house he slipped and fell. He landed hard on his right side and being a retired physician as soon as he hit the ground and felt the strong pain he knew he had broken either his hip or pelvis.

There aren’t many houses along the lane but he started to call out for help. No one was around so he tried to get up on his knees to get back to the house. He got up on his left knee but was unable to put any weight on his right knee. He said he heard crunching which he thought was bone-on-bone however we learned later that there was no bone-on-bone damage. Unable to get on his knees he rolled to his left side and started crawling back towards the house. He used his upper body to drag his legs along and whenever possible used the snow and ice so he could slide, all the while praying that God would send help.

Grandpa has been reading Gripped by the Greatness of God by James MacDonald. One of the applications in the books says, “I want to love God so much that I trust His every decision no matter how hard that may be.” As a result grandpa was determined to grow more in his love for the Lord as one of his goals for 2010. God was giving him an opportunity to begin applying his goal four days into the New Year.

As he would crawl he would pray for help and while God said no to providing help God did provide strength and energy for him to continue inching towards home. At time he said he got so tired he would think about just closing his eyes, going to sleep, and waking up in Glory. He said freezing to death wouldn’t be a bad way to go as you just go to sleep and he is not scared and is looking forward to heaven.

The conflict became his desire to continue being a good steward of what God has given him and his desire to meet his Savior. Even though God was not immediately providing aid He was still providing energy so grandpa decided that as long as he had the strength he would press on. And so he did.

About half way home, 528 feet later, the neighbor boy came out and saw grandpa. He had rolled off to the side of the road under some pine trees to rest. The neighbor boy asked if grandpa needed help and he said he needed a blanket, his wife, and an ambulance. The neighbor rushed to get grandma, some blankets, and call 9-1-1. The tried to warm him up with some blankets until the paramedics arrived 15 minutes later. By this time he had been outside for over an hour crawling on the snow and ice.

When the ambulance arrived the driver and paramedics both recognized grandpa from his days as an Arnett Urgent Care physician.

My wife notified me at work that grandpa had fallen and was being taken by ambulance to the hospital near the church. I left the church and actually beat them to the hospital. While I was waiting for them to arrive in the ER I looked out the window and saw grandma’s car come up over the bridge on the way to the hospital. A few seconds later I saw the ambulance.

Once he was checked into the ER the x-ray revealed a clean break of his right hip. He was placed on the surgery list and was third for surgery the next day, Tuesday, January 5. They did their best to keep him comfortable during the night and 26 hours later, at 2:22pm he went into surgery. They installed some material to stabilize the bone along with 2 screws. At 5:45pm he was back up in his room sleeping, but having difficulty getting comfortable. You see, grandpa likes to sleep like my son, his great-grandson, by turning every which way all over the bed.

We appreciate your continued prayers for his recovery. While the hip has been repaired there is still a bit of healing to do. He is going home from the hospital on Friday, January 8. He will have 6 weeks of physical therapy after he gets home and then he won’t be able to drive for 8-10 weeks. The surgeon said his bones were strong and since he is in good health, with the physical therapy, he should be walking without assistance in 10 weeks.

No final decisions have been made about is speaking schedule for February and March. The surgeon thought it premature to start changing any existing plans.

It has been encouraging for us all to see how grandpa is using this experience to grow closer to God. He often asks those he counsels why a sovereign God allows things, just like this, to happen in their lives. Grandpa is a great example of practicing what he preaches and showing others the glory of his Savior through this experience. He is showing us that he is growing in his love for the Lord so that no matter what God does in His life he won’t view it as bad.

Cards of encouragement can be sent via Faith Baptist Church.

Faith Baptist Church
c/o Dr. Robert Smith
5526 St. Rd. 26 E.
Lafayette, IN 47905

The Facebook plunge

2009-12-18T00:43:00.000-05:00

Well, I did it. I took the Facebook plunge. http://www.facebook.com/smithje3

Now I have a Facebook account, Twitter account, LinkedIn account and a blog. I might as well quit my job and spend all my time updating my various accounts and feeding my information starved friends, fans, and followers.

So, why did I do it? First, my wife was tired of our 'sharing' her Facebook account. Our interest online are slightly different and our friends, fans, and followers are her friends, fans, and followers for different reasons then they would be my friends, fans, and followers. Second, there is some content on Facebook that I wanted to keep up with. Faith Ministries, where I work, is getting more involved in social media and I want to keep up. Third, what better way to grow my massive online audience then to connect all my online presences. After all, if I'm going to do this I might as well go all the way.

My favorite method is Twitter. It is short, sweet, and easy. Facebook to me is often overwhelming with all the options for posting that it has. We'll see how it goes.

Yours for social media and online connectivity because I have nothing else to do.

Best Twitter App for Windows Mobile 6.5

2009-11-28T14:41:00.000-05:00

When I got my new Tilt 2 phone with Windows Mobile 6.5 on it one of the first things I had to do was get a Twitter app. A lot of folks recommended Twikini so I bought it and it didn't take me very long to realize it was lacking a few key features.

While researching I found out about TouchTwit. While Twikini and others have been around longer and seem to be more mature I have found the user interface and experience with TouchTwit to be superior. TouchTwit is only available through the Windows Marketplace for $4.99. Twikini is only $.99 however it is worth the extra cash to get the easier user experience.

I travel a lot and am often reading tweets in the car, on the plane, running between gates, and other times when I only have a single hand available. Being able to manipulate the entire program with my thumb is a huge plus. And yes, I know the dangers of walking, driving, and tweeting.

Other apps seem to still hold to the old Windows Mobile 6.1 design style where you have two menu buttons on soft keys and then need to use the stylus to access specific functions. Since I have had my Tilt 2 I have only used the stylus twice. Well designed apps won't have anything that even remotely requires you to use the stylus.

Despite all that there is still one key feature of TouchTwit that kills all other Twitter apps for Windows Mobile (at least those I have explored). TouchTwit displays the entire tweet, you don't have to click on it or tap on it to view the tweet. Twikini frustrated me because I constantly had to tap a tweet to read it all and then tab back to go back to the list of tweets. I can't figure out why - you would think it wouldn't be too much to display the entire 140 character message. TouchTwit displays the entire tweet in an easy to read fashion that has great touch feel navigational control. And did I mention it is able to show the entire tweet, all 140 characters.

So, if you want a fully developed Twitter app for Windows Mobile you will probably want to look somewhere else, at least for the time being while TouchTwit matures. However, if you are looking for a solid Twitter app that is easy to use on-the-go and can display the entire tweet in the list view then TouchTwit is a great place to start. You can try it out for 24 hours before you buy it.

Before you ask, I use TweetDeck on my PC. Until they come out with a Windows Mobile version I plan to stick with TouchTwit. If they do come out with a Windows Mobile version it will have to be as easy to navigate as TouchTwit while still bringing the TweetDeck experience to Windows Mobile.

You can follow TouchTwit on Twitter @touchtwitinfo. If you purchase it through the Marketplace on your phone then updates are easy to install.

Faith Technology Tech Team List

2009-11-15T23:12:00.000-05:00

If you want to follow the tech team at Faith then you are in luck! Thanks to the new Lists feature on Twitter there is now a list of the professional geeks at Faith that you can follow. Read our musings on many things, including a few relating to technology and technology in ministry.

http://twitter.com/JonathanESmith/faithtechnology

Right now the list contains 4 members of the team, but may grow in the future. Brian Nicholson, Donnie Payne and I are full time staff members at Faith. Joe Willis, while working in IT at a local manufacturing firm, is a volunteer who helps with both IT as well as audio/visual support. This is the best tech team in the business.

To learn more about Lists on Twitter - http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/10711/entries/76460

What is God doing?

2009-11-15T22:47:00.000-05:00

November is Stewardship month at Faith. I think a great story of stewardship is on Donnie Payne's blog. Check out his story - I know you will be encouraged that God is still in the business of helping us all grow. http://donnie-payne.blogspot.com/.

All things do work out for our good and His glory. That isn't just something trite we say, it is truth. It is the timing thing that is the hardest to understand.

Fire in the pulpit - not what you think

2009-11-11T02:57:00.000-05:00

Many have asked about some issues we had during the first service at 8am this past Sunday, Nov. 8. Here are more details then you ever wanted to know.

We have an old lift mechanism that raises and lowers our pulpit up and down. It uses a motor attached to a gear block that turns a screw that raises or lowers a platform attached to a ball nut. It was installed in 1986 and has needed more and more maintenance as of late.

On Sunday during our morning sound check we raised and lowered the pulpit as we normally do to ensure everything was working properly. That was around 7:30am. The service started with the pulpit down. At 8:20am we attempted to raise the pulpit for a testimony and nothing happened. About that same time we smelled something burning. We cut the power to the motor and the testimony continued using another mic on stage. The problem with cutting the power was that it also cut out several of the stage outlets used for various instruments.

Meanwhile the burning smell was getting stronger for those of us in the sound booth at the back of the room. Those on the stage and in the front rows, including our pastor, thought something was really on fire. Once we got into the next worship set, minus a few instruments, the pastor came back to ask us if we were safe. By this point we had got the sound room fire extinguisher out and had a few backstage ready to go. We assumed that cutting power would prevent a fire but due to the smell we wanted to make sure. The safety of those in the auditorium was our first priority.

We setup a temporary podium for the preaching portion and the service continued as normal. While pastor was preaching we started coordinating our plan of attack for resolving whatever we could between services. Everyone had an assignment as we only had about 10 minutes to get power restored and try to raise the lift, or go to plan B. We had staged tools and extension cords and were ready to tackle whatever problem we found in the lift pit.

Once the service ended we opened up the stage and found the motor burned up, the smell horrible, and the mechanism blocked by the pulpit which was still stuck lowered into the floor. Plan B went quickly into effect with musicians and everyone pitching in to run extension cables and get power restored. The next 2 services probably didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

Later Sunday afternoon we tore the whole thing apart, go the pulpit out and found that the limit switch that is supposed to shut the motor off once the switch is tripped failed to operate so the motor was continuously running from 7:30am until we finally cut power 50 minutes later. We pulled the motor out of the pit and the paint on the housing was burned, and yes, it still stunk. We removed the power and from an appearance perspective all is back to normal on the stage at Faith. The pulpit lift is locked in the up position and plans are underway to either repair what we have or to start over from scratch, lift, pulpit, and all.

I remember thinking around 8:10am that things were going well and it was an easy morning. That’ll teach me. Who says ministry can get boring?

Daylight Shifting Time

2009-11-03T23:07:00.003-05:00

Daylight Saving Time is one of the greatest scams of all time. As though we are somehow able to manipulate the amount of time it takes the earth to spin on its axis to actually provide us with additional daylight.

There are 2 books I have read in regads to the craziness that makes up Daylight Saving Time. By the way, note that it is Daylight SAVING Time and not Daylight SAVINGS Time. The word 'Saving' is singular and not plural although the vast majority get it wrong, as if we could somehow save time in the plural sense.

Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time and Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time are both great books explaining the history, myth and fact behind the instituation of fooling ourslves into thinking we have more daylight.

A more accurate name would be Daylight Shifting Time. The act of 'saving' is actual an act of shifting daylight. We shift daylight hours to be later during the summer and then we unshift them in the fall. The reasons are vast and the books explain them all but from my perspective it is all a joke. Why fall back at all?

Coming soon - my political involvement and Indiana's history with DST.

Finding Time

2009-10-20T01:34:00.000-04:00

I'm finding it harder and harder to find time to blog. There is a lot of information I would like to share as I have benefited from a lot of information that others take time to blog but so far Tweeting is much easier than blogging. Probably something to do with the 140 character limit.

The value of my SIM card

2009-10-10T21:35:00.000-04:00

This is the most obvious statement in the world but there are things in life you take for granted until you don’t have them. Like electricity, hot water, your car, internet access, and even your cell phone SIM card.

I have been doing a lot of traveling lately. I got back South Carolina on Wednesday and I leave tomorrow for Seattle. While getting ready today I noticed my phone was dropping its connection frequently. So I rebooted it and it still was losing its connection. I have a Tilt from AT&T. Yes, I’m planning to upgrade to a new Windows Mobile phone but until I can stay in one place long enough to go to the store I’m currently stuck with my Tilt. I like the phone but it is approaching 2 years of wear and tear.

After a subsequent reboot the phone told me that it could not find my SIM card. I reseated the SIM card in the slot and the problem went away – for about an hour. Then the connection dropped again and after a reboot I got the notice again.

Some internet research revealed only that the card may be loose and I needed to find a way to make it more secure against the contacts in the slot. None of my creative effort worked and now nothing I did would get the phone to work. It would reboot and say it had no SIM card and tell me I could only make emergency calls.

So, and I hate to admit this, the pain of not having my phone and data plan while traveling caused me to break down and called AT&T. They were most helpful (I have the everything plan) and said I needed a new SIM card after she tried reprogramming it over the air. Apparently mine had worn out. My wife got her SIM card at the same time and it is still working fine.

This was 8pm Saturday night. I leave Sunday afternoon. She said I could get a new card from the local AT&T store between noon and 5pm on Sunday or I could get one from Walmart tonight. Walmart to the rescue, they had a card, I bought it ($25) and called AT&T back to get it activated. AT&T also credited my account the $25 because if I had gone to the corporate store I would have been able to get the card for free.

So I now have a new appreciation for my SIM card. I asked the lady at AT&T what I would have done if the card had died while I was waiting for my connecting flight in Houston tomorrow. She said I could have called them from a pay phone and they would have arranged for me to get a new SIM card at a store at my destination. Nice of them but terribly inconvenient. Makes me wonder if I should set an outlook task to get a new SIM card every 20 months or so, the one that died only last 22 months.

Once I was up and running the normal endless flow of text messages and voicemails flooded in making me wish the phone was still dead but I guess that is the endless cycle of life in the modern age.

What do I have in common with the city of Lexington and Twitter?

2009-10-09T00:27:00.000-04:00

I have been doing some traveling this week and as with most “cool” people I have been doing some tweeting. Thinking I was cool on Wednesday I tweeted that I had been to the city of Lexington in the states of Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky all in one week, actually all in the first 4 days of this week. Later that day the Twitter user lexingtonva mentioned me in a tweet by saying, “@JonathanESmith That's pretty impressive that you've been to Lexington, VA, NC, and KY this week!”

Who is lexingtonva? That is the Twitter account for the city of Lexington, VA. Their bio on Twitter says, “Promoting Buena Vista, Lexington, and Rockbridge County, Virginia!” So how did they find little old me?

I’m not sure who runs the Lexington, VA Twitter feed but it is pretty cool that they were watching for mentions of their town and commenting on them. It worked in driving traffic to their websites as I spent some time checking out the city and county. I may never be there again but it is a great marketing tool to watch for mentions on Twitter and then respond to them. I think these guys have it figured out.

Maybe Lafayette, IN needs such a Twitter feed? Who am I kidding?

2009 Emmy Awards

2009-09-20T22:02:00.000-04:00

There was a common theme in tonight’s Emmy awards, which is still being broadcast live as I write this. Numerous times thus far in the program they have mentioned the demise of broadcast television. The producers and writers are going all out to make sure you don't change the channel so they can get their message across. Oh, and so CBS can make a killing on the ratings.

So why the demise of broadcast TV? Simple, social networking and social media have started to undo the fabric of network TV. No longer do we wait for them to feed us programming on their schedule. We can now make our own anytime, anyplace. It has been said that with social media the news doesn't come to us, we make it. The same can be said for entertainment, we don't wait for it to come to us, we make it.

Try as they might the big networks are still having trouble making all this work. They promote that you can watch their shows online anytime (a big point of contention in last year's writer's strike, remember) and yet the core of their business model is the notion that we will all sit down at 9:00 on Thursday night to watch a show. TiVo anyone?

So enjoy watching them squirm while you can. They know they are in trouble, they know folks are turning off their TV's in droves, hence all the sarcastic references and creative attempts to capture and keep our attention in tonight’s Emmy awards. Although I haven't seen a promo for any sort of official Twitter channel or hash tag - fascinating.

What can the church learn from Facebook?

2009-09-19T16:48:00.001-04:00

Facebook passed an interesting milestone this week when they announced their 300 millionth user. That's right; there are now 300 million accounts on Facebook. According to the US Census there are 307 million Americans. Facebook is growing at a rate of 800,000 new users per day - you can do the math to see it won't be too long before Facebook is larger than the population of the United States.

Facebook also announced they are finally turning a profit - which will probably lead them to an IPO sometime in the next few years. Until they were making money there was concern that someone might buy them out to ease their financial problems but soon you and I could be shareholders in Facebook. What a concept, especially considering that 70% of Facebook users are from outside the US.

You can get more info from the link below but what is Facebook doing to draw people together that the church could learn from? What would happen if your church grew by 20% in 2 months? With as much time as church folks spend using Facebook I would hope they could learn from it on how to better reach out to those around them. Think of the Kingdom impact if your church grew by 20% in 2 months, or even 20% a year.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/16/facebook.profit/index.html

Adding to the team

2009-09-11T00:00:00.000-04:00

We are looking to add a full time person to the technology team at Faith Ministries in Lafayette, IN. For the job description and more details visit our webiste at http://www.faithlafayette.org/.

If you are interested or you know of someone please have them check out the website. We run a lean IT department so it is important that in order to continue running lean that we find someone with a broad width of experience but also a great depth in knowledge. While it would be nice to hire a separate DBA, help desk technician, system administrator, etc. it is more important that we maintain our fiscal stability while still reaching the world with the message of the gospel. As a result our technology team has to be very well rounded so the load can be spread and the mission accomplished.

Getting Started

2009-08-22T23:52:00.000-04:00

I am probably the last person to join the blogging bandwaggon. I was one of the last to start tweeting so I might as well be one of the last to start blogging. I have been reading the blogs of many folks and I am starting to see how the powerful influence they can have. While I'm not sure where this will go or how it will end up I am willing to give it a go. Within a few days of my first tweet I had 18 followers on Twitter. I'm not sure yet where if anywhere I will lead them but it should be an interesting journey.