Pittsburgh Follies

I got back from Pittsburg Thursday evening. It was a wasted trip, as for whatever reason the client had a conflicting meeting and didn’t see us. I wasn’t thrilled in the first place about making a trip when a simple online conference would do the trick. Looks like I was right to be skeptical.

I got back to the airport in time to catch an earlier flight to Philadelphia, though only by luck. I had to fly standby and hope I could do the same for the last leg back to RDU. It turns out the plane from Philly to RDU was oversold, thus most of Thursday was spent in Airport Terminal Hell waiting for my original flight.

Travel is tough enough when things go as planned. When they don’t its twice as bad. I wasted a huge chunk of the company’s money, not to mention a huge amount of my time away from work and the family. Idiotic.

Incredible Rain!

I mentioned that almost eight inches of rain fell on Raleigh yesterday due to Tropical Storm Alberto. This morning I get the results of my home weather station:

Rain Rate: 0.00 in/h Yesterday: 7.24 in Total:19.41 in since 1/ 3 14:40
Barometer: Steady at 29.74 in 30.05 in sea; 12-24hr forecast: Sunny

See that? We got 7.24 inches of rain in 24 hours. Unbelievable.

Pittsburgh

I’m in Pittsburgh tonight for an early business meeting. It was a much longer trip than expected. My flight took me through Philadelphia and was on schedule, despite the bumpy ride that Tropical Storm Alberto supplied. My initial connecting flight wasn’t scheduled to leave Philadelphia until late so I did a little surfing at RDU airport before my flight took off. Thanks to my work I was able to discover a flight leaving a mere twenty minutes after my flight arrived. It was a close window but perhaps I could make it and save hours of travel.

I disembarked from the plane only to see the connecting jet at the gate all cranked up and ready to depart. Fortunately, a few minutes of observation showed the plane was just arriving! I had time to go through airport security again before checking in at the earlier flight. With a ticket in hand, I was thinking I was pretty slick.

Except I wasn’t. The plane was halfway to the runway when we heard the pilot cut the engines. A ground stop had been initiated “due to the weather,” we were told, and we weren’t going anywhere. A few fits and starts here and there had us wondering if we’d soon be airborne but it was not to be. The 50 minute flight turned into a 2:30 minute flight. At least it wasn’t just us: there were fifty or so planes surrounding us on the tarmac, each just as screwed as we were.

Air travel. It just doesn’t get any better than this.

Alberto Soak-A-Thon

We got a serious soaking today from the remnants of Alberto. Its been years since I’ve seen the type of flooding we had today. WRAL-TV claims almost eight inches of rain fell today. Insane.

It showed, too. The old building in the Waters Edge office park in West Raleigh was in danger of flooding, just like it was way back when. Southbound Capital Boulevard was brought to a standstill midday today as a lake developed at the U-Haul place near Brentwood road. Three lanes were reduced to one as floodwaters were up to the guardrail. The Cheviot Hills Golf Course had an especially large water hazard eat the front nine near Capital Boulevard. I couldn’t resist snapping a few pics of both of these flood events.

Late last summer I was really concerned about the drought, considering it to be the biggest issue facing the city. I was feeling pessamistic, thinking we’d be parched by now with no end in sight. Instead, Alberto has put us in the black in one fell swoop! Man, am I glad to have been so wrong!

Now let’s give the rain thing a break long enough to celebrate the upcoming Hurricanes Stanley Cup victory!

CarolinaCon: 733+ h4X0Rz

I found out a week too late that CarolinaCon just took place in Raleigh. CarolinaCon is the annual meeting of local 2600 members and/or fans. Interesting topics included ARP spoofing, DNS flaws, and other interesting stuff.

I think there’s a place for this kind of info since it affects us all and the vendors would rather not tell you about flaws that may jepordize your security. Also I consider these events to be good places to interview knowledgeable, naturally curious geeks for potential jobs.

In spite of its slick website, word about CarolinaCon didn’t get out to the geek circles I run in. I guess I’m not 733+ enough. Should there be a CarolinaCon 2007, though, I’m there.

On a related note, BarCamp has done filled up with participants. BarCamp should be along the lines of CarolinaCon, only without the undercover federal agents. As of now I’ve got a conflicting appointment on the day of BarCamp but I’m holding on to my spot in the hopes that I can still make it. It should be interesting!

in Uncategorized | 174 Words | Comment

No Fun! Doctor Fun Is Done

I just found out that my favorite Internet-only comic strip, the legendary Doctor Fun is no more. Dave Farley has drawn a comic strip nearly every day since 1993, before most people knew what the Internet was. He has decided to pull the plug after thirteen years of humor.

Who will supply me with my yearly peeps fix now that Doctor Fun is gone?

Abu Zarqawi

Remember how Bill Clinton conveniently bombed Kosovo on the eve of his impeachment proceedings? Pure coincidence, right? For some reason the bombing of Abu Zarqawi brings that previous incident to mind. Right as the massacre at Haditha is blowing up in the face of the U.S. military, we bag a big terrorist.

I think we can all agree that Zarqawi was a murderous scumbag who deserved to catch a 500 pound bomb. That’s not the issue, here. The issue is timing – Zarqawi gets picked off right when we desperately needed good news about Iraq. Pure coindicence, right?

Maybe not. Some military officals are now claiming we could have gotten Zarqawi long ago:

“Here we had targets, we had opportunities, we had a country willing to support casualties, or risk casualties after 9/11 and we still didn’t do it,� said Michael O’Hanlon, military analyst with the Brookings Institution.

[ … ]

Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

So, if we’ve had this thug in our sights for four years now – four years in which he carried out more terrorist attacks – why did we wait until now to nail him? Could it be we let him continue his killing spree to prop up our justification for war?

Nah. It must be coincidence.