August 2009

There were 48 posts published in August 2009 (this is page 4 of 5).

Back from Boone

We had a wonderful time in Boone the past few days. The weather was great, especially knowing how hot it’s been in Raleigh.

Grandfather Mountain was a fun diversion Monday. I was a little worried the kids would not handle the (0.4 mile) hike up the mountain but they did very well. We even tiptoed across the bridge and rocks to the other end for some photographs. The kids didn’t flinch a moment.

We stopped by a Boone burger joint for dinner before heading back home. On the way back up our mountain I got carsick and took a nap upon returning, which seemed to help me feel better.
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First two days in Boone

We arrived in Boone Saturday afternoon after a leisurely trip west along I-40. Our friends Craig and Lisa are sharing the vacation home with us, and we divided our group by gender between each minivan.

We stopped for a picnic at an outdoor playground outside of Wilkesboro, where the kids got to stretch their legs. It was a welcome break, and quite pleasant – just the kind of place we were looking for.
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In Boone

We’re spending a long weekend in Boone, which is nice. It’s good to get away from the near-100 degree heat in Raleigh today. Our weather is cool and breezy, with a high of 84.

We’re in a house up the hill from the Boone Mall. Not only is there no Internet access, but there’s no cellphone signal nor telephone in the house. I’m in the Boone Mall’s Panera now typing this before I head over to the grocery store.

I forget how quiet it is in the mountains. Quite peaceful and very relaxing. Wish I had a phone connection at the very least, though!

We’ve not no specific plans here other than to have fun. Maybe we’ll get out on a hike later today, as getting deeper into the woods really appeals to me.

Check in with you later.

Net10 fails me

Looks like my love affair with Net10 has taken a turn for the worse.

I decided to upgrade my Motorola V171 Net10 phone to a newer Motorola W377g. I’ve entered quite a few numbers into the ancient V171 and rather than punching in all of these numbers into my new phone I was looking forward to uploading my contacts into it using the phone’s USB port.

Imagine my disappointment when I found mention on various Internet forums that Net10 has deliberately crippled this functionality. I found it to be the case myself when my connection software timed out when connecting to the phone.
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Kim Jong-il: an Internet expert

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Remember how I was laughing at the thought of North Korea launching a cyber-attack? That was before I found out reclusive leader Kim Jong-il is an Internet expert. Maybe the North Korean equivalent to Vint Cerf or something, for all I know.

Anyway, could today’s brief denial of service attack on Twitter be the work of Dear Leader? Makes me wonder. A denial of service attack doesn’t need much initial bandwidth to get started, provided there’s a large farm of zombie hosts from which to attack.

Cronkiters

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On the heels of the bogus Einstein Bees quote and the bogus Thomas Jefferson Deflation quote comes news that the claim that newscasters in Sweden are named “cronkiters” after legendary newsman Walter Cronkite is also bogus.

David Halberstam gets the dubious honor of first reporting this untruth, having mentioned it in an Atlantic Weekly piece in 1976:

In the spring of 1962 Cronkite became the CBS anchorman. He was rooted in a certain tradition and he was the best of that tradition. He set standards by which others were judged. In Sweden, anchormen came to be known as Cronkiters….

Cronkite himself repeated the claim in his 1996 autobiography A Reporter’s Life:

I remember hearing Paul [Levitan, CBS producer] first explain the term [“anchorman”] as referring to the person on a relay team who runs the key last lap, and then Sig said it referred to the steady anchor that holds a boat in place. In any case, the meaning had been changed forever, and I was the first bearer of it. Sweden was a little slow to adopt the term. There, for some years, anchormen were called “cronkiters.”

Amazingly, no one bothered to fact-check it until after Cronkite’s death. It illustrates the level of Cronkite’s credibility that he could (innocently) repeat this falsehood and people would take him at his word.

If Walter said it, then that’s the way it was!

Netflix’s corporate culture

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Yesterday the Hacking Netflix website featured a publicly-posted set of presentation slides that describes Netflix’s corporate culture. It is a smart, eye-opening way to run a business: eschewing rules in favor of empowering people to do the right thing. This large, publicly-traded company can be nimble as the startup it once was because it doesn’t have bureaucracy tying everyone down.

If only other companies did this.