Running Events Calendar

I have published a new calendar today to remind myself of the running events in the area.  I have placed 26 events that will occur after today.  At an average $15 per event, I had better start pushing for a raise.  Let's see that figure in writing: $390. Actually, that's not as much as I thought I spent every year.  Anyway, get over to benrehberg.com/running to see the events I've put on there.  If there is an event you want put on the calendar (because I can't ever find them all), get me the details.  Some folks rely on a single source for their information; I suffered from that last year.  If you want to participate in a run every Saturday and holiday, you should look around for more events and probably venture further.  That's why I made this calendar public.

Enjoy!
                

New Year, New Rant (Actually, Old Rant)

I got a card in the mail the week after Christmas inviting me to the Adel/Cook County Chamber of Commerce Annual Dinner.  I've never been, but it's every January, it's $25/head, and it's usually pretty lame.  This year it's in the High School Cafeteria.  That about says it.

I got another card last week telling me that the deadline for RSVP to this event was extended to the 8th of January.  The date doesn't matter, it's the fact that they can't find anyone to attend.  The reason for the extension was that the Chamber couldn't get their shit together in time to send the original invites out.

I learned later that the President of the Chamber of Commerce, after holding the position for less than one year, had resigned.  I knew instantly why she did such a thing.

The board sucks.  I'm sorry if you're on the board at the Chamber of Commerce in Adel, but the board sucks.  For several reasons.  However, I can only name two.

1.  The board is slow at making decisions.  I know this because I, along with a few other businesses in Adel, submitted a quote for a website redesign in JUNE 2009.  Nothing has been changed as of yet.  Last word is that they have formed a committee to look in to it.

2.  The president of the chamber has no power.  I offered backup services (badly needed) for about $17 per month, and the president simply said she'd have to get approval from the board.  WHAT THE HELL?  What exactly does the President of the Chamber of Commerce get to do?

That's not my decision to make.

Anyway, I'm not going to the dinner.  Mostly because I don't have the $50 to pay for myself and my wife, and I don't want to leave the kids with anyone else.  And because I don't like anything that happens in a high school cafeteria.

I just wanted to express my opinion on a local issue.  Also, the local "legal organ," A.K.A. the newspaper, or the Adel Tribune, is garbage.  There is no progressive news in there.  Just police reports, forclosures, and poorly-written reports and op-eds.  Don't waste your money.  I could get so much more done passing a letter-size piece of paper around every week.

Can you believe they wanted me to pay to put a computer help column in?   Well, I didn't have to pay, but I would have to get the column sponsored.  How about "your paying subscribers sponsor the column?"  No.  Maybe I'll publish my own newsletter, then.

[Disclaimer: Ben has been drinking. Ignore errors in type.  There are no errors in judgment.]


                

2000 to 2010 - from WiFi to Who Cares

I just looked down at the time on my computer and noticed that 2010 looks a whole lot different from the number 2009.  It kinda sticks out.

I began to think about how I was living in 2000.  I was in the barracks on Fort Carson until July that year, then I got married and we got a crappy little apartment.  I was setting up the only computer I had at the time with Windows 2000, and I was loving the new (to me) operating system.  Wireless networks didn't exist.  802.11 was completely unknown to me.  In fact, I had never had broadband access, and didn't until sometime in 2001.

I had a 17" CRT monitor and a 350MHz Athlon processor.  It was fast enough.  It wasn't just something I had, though - no computer was back then.  It was installed.  It had its own room.  Not like the huge mainframes you see in black and white pictures, but back in '00 my computer deserved a desk with speakers, printer, and a scanner.  Plus a telephone cord leading to it all.

Jump to 2003, when I got my first laptop.  This new wireless thing was catching on, and I paid $120 for an 802.11g router from Dell with my computer order.  The laptop had a PC card for the WiFi (it was just before they began building it in) and I was amazed at it.  Finally - no wires.  I remember running outside the apartment to put my computer on the hood of my truck to test the range.  What a night!

Jump to 2010, and I find myself standing at the kitchen counter in my slippers, blogging away.  There is no desktop or laptop plugged in to the network.  We simply don't need it.  WiFi has become so prevalent that we don't even wonder about it anymore.  Where was I going with this?

That's it - I'm on one of two computers in the house (besides the Windows Home Server) and neither one of them are installed.  This notebook I'm on now goes with me everywhere, and I don't ever think about my connection anymore.  I'm just in the kitchen at the moment.

That statement is to remind me of where I was at the beginning of 2010, so I can look it up in the beginning of 2020 for comparison.  I really do wonder where computing is headed.  I think it starts somewhere around here.
                

More Infrastructure Ignorance

Here we are.  Twenty-ten.  No flying cars yet.1 Nothing special to mention.  I am, however, writing to fuss again about the contractors at work.

Disclaimer: I am about to go on a rant about something I am only assuming, but my hunch tells me it's real.  That's why I'm here.

So this company that is responsible for uptime and such on our servers isn't very efficient.  Today I got word that one of our servers was down.  That wouldn't be so bad today except for the fact that this was about the fifth time in two months that service had been interrupted.  The server got back up within about three hours or so, and all the while I have no idea why it even went down in the first place.  I am definitely a concerned party, yet IBM doesn't have any way to let me in on the conversation.  That's for another rant.

This server in question has been down a lot lately.  I understand that one of the outages was a critical hard drive failure, and those things happen.  Five times in eight weeks is not a good record.  My question is whether IBM is tracking this server and noticing any trends.  I also want to know why they depend on my users calling the help desk to know when something's wrong.  I believe that a good directory services implementation should be able to monitor its servers.  Someone should be banging away at a terminal on the server before someone on-site calls the help desk.

But it's only 2010.  We can't expect ourselves to employ all the technology available yet, can we?

1. I know we have flying cars, but they're not exactly as prolific as the Civic, are they?