Month: December 2002

When installing RightSite 4.3 on IIS running on Win2K SP3, you must verify that the IUSR_<host name> account matches the hostname exactly, otherwise you have to correct the account name and reinstall.

Aggregator not stable

Why does my News Aggregator wig out every now and then? I was just deleting some stories and all of a sudden all of my stories are gone. Also, when I tried to post a story to my blog I got a strange macro error. Something’s fishy.

635 is the Devil’s Highway

635 is the Devil’s Highway. I’ve only been run into twice on the highway and both times have been on 635. This morning’s incident was classic. Rush hour. Bumper-to-bumper. Minding my own business, listening to a little Jay Ferrar when wham! I didn’t even see him coming. Ah, the joys of the indefinite trip to the body shop and budget rental car that await!

Loving AA self-service

American Airlines’ self-service check-in has got to be one of the greatest improvements made available to the flying public in recent history. I’d even put it above the “more legroom in coach” improvement and I’m a tall guy. Flying Public, why do you continue to wait in line at the checkout counter? You can check bags, sign up for stand-by, pick out seats, get boarding passes, and get a receipt all by simply tapping a few choices on the self-service kiosk. And because you continue to shun this incredible timesaver, I never have to wait in line–a benefit previously only known to the uppity First Class types. So, on second thought, please do not use self-service check-in. It sucks.

So long D.C.

Ah, the last night in good ole D.C. Or should I say good ole Vienna/Tysons Corner/McLean? When I travel I like to get out and experience what the locals experience. This trip, that hasn’t been too enriching. Taco Bell. Panera Bread. Corner Bakery. Galleria. My training is in the back room of a CompUSA for crying out loud.

Me and a few classmates drove down to an Italian place for lunch. I was hoping it was a local whole-in-the-wall but it turned out to be a chain called Aledo’s or something like that. Calzone was good. Also, they gave a two-pack of Oreos for each person with the check which I found both strange and satisfying.

T Mobile at Starbuck’s

The T Mobile hotspot at Starbucks works well. I’m working in Washington, D.C. this week but my hotel doesn’t have in-room DSL and my dial-up is whacked. I checked on free community wireless access points but D.C. isn’t a hotbed of wi-fi activity apparently. Lucky for me the local Starbucks had a T Mobile hotspot. So, I went in, fired up the laptop, and signed up for a free 24-hour trial. After that, the account turns in to a pay-as-you-go deal ($2.99 for the first 15 minutes and $0.25 per minute after that). They also have monthly plans but I’m not going to use it that much.

The signal and transfer rate were better than I get at home on my setup. Pretty cool.

For me, Starbucks is kind of a weird scene. I’m not a coffee drinker so I rarely go there. But it worked. I snagged a Grande hot chocolate and proceeded to get some serious transactions done while listening to retro Christmas tunes and watching the hip crowd enjoy their mochafrappawhathaveyous.

Back into blogging a year later

I’m back. A year ago I gave this a shot and decided it would be cool to investigate for personal as well as corporate use as a knowledge management tool. My thirty day license expired and my attention span turned elsewhere.

But then I saw Ray Ozzie’s weblog. And I noticed several other technology leaders were getting into it. The straw that broke the back was a group on Yahoo dedicated to blogging as a Knowledge Management tool. That cinched it. I persuaded my co-worker Tom Pierce to download a copy of Radio and now we’re both ready to see if we can get a critical mass of folks at the firm using it.

Will my interest wane as it did a year ago? Or is this the beginning of a substantial change in how we communicate at the company? We’ll see.