An Open Letter to Legislators

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

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

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:

1. Sorry Android users, nothing for you yet. 
2. 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!

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

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

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.....

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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...

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?

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

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

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

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.