MCI Signs Five-Year Global Managed Networking Services Contract With ABN AMRO Worth EUR 500 Million

AMSTERDAM and ASHBURN, VA, USA, December 14, 2005 -- MCI (NASDAQ: MCIP) today announced that it has signed a five-year global network integration agreement with ABN AMRO to manage their global data network and firewall platforms. The value of the contract is EUR 500 million (approximately $550 million) over five years.

Cool. We pick up a $550M contract, and I work on some of the software that helps support that contract. Not customer facing stuff - but still, its always cool to support something that is being used in this kind of thing. :)

Tabs working - also VPN

I got my tabs working. Turns out I did have an extension installed, which probably didn't work with the latest version. I removed the tabs and now my previous problem is gone. Of course my tab functionality isn't nearly as good as it was before - but it is functional - which is most important. Maybe in the future I'll try and find the extension again and install the latest code.

And VPN is working. Woo Hoo. :) I got in, read irc logs and downloaded my email. After weeding through the stuff I don't really need to read - I only have 60 emails left to look at. :-S - But given its after midnight, I think it will wait till tomorrow. This is why I check email on vacation though. If I waited 3 weeks - well it just wouldn't be fun. Probably a few thousand email to wade through, with 500 or so to read. Maybe more. Yuck.

All in all things are going pretty good. A few things to blog tomorrow... but too tired now. Hmm... and Christmas shopping to do tomorrow - so maybe the blogging will have to wait till Thursday. We'll see.

Shoot me now...

I woke up at 6:00 this morning... this whole "I can sleep in because I don't have to go to work or do anything specific today" thing as not caught up with my brain yet. So - I'm up at 6:00 - what should I do? Since I still can't get into work because my VPN is down, I can surf my work email or catch up on irc logs (something that is still making me nervous or whatever) - so I might as well catch up on my personal email, read some blogs etc.

Getting a bit bored with that (I have mail ADD) - I decide I should check and see if Mozilla has an upgrade. Been a while since I've probably upgrade. It does - so I upgrade Mozzila and Chatzilla. I get the traditional Mozilla warning of "You'll have to reinstall 3rd party packages" - no biggy - I don't use many... I think.

So I've now reinstalled BlogThis - but where is the little blogger symbol? Ah, yeah, that was off the Google Toolbar... but apparently it only works for Firefox now. Sigh. OK. Well I really like it, but I can live without it, as BlogThis should work good enough and I don't use the Google Toolbar for much else.

And then I realize NONE OF MY "Open in new tab" FUNCTIONALITY IS WORKING. Sigh. I can't middle click and have a link open in a new tab, I can't right click and click on "Open Link in New Tab" or "Open Link in New Active Tab" - and I use this functionality HUNDEREDS of times a day. I'm finding out just how often I use it, not that it doesn't work.

I've messed with the preferences, and I can't get seem to get it to work. This is really annoying.

I'm off to do some googling and see if I can figure out how to fix this. Wish me luck...

Man Apologizes After Fake Wikipedia Post

"NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A man who posted false information on an online encyclopedia linking a prominent journalist to the Kennedy assassinations says he was playing a trick on a co-worker."

Study: Google users wealthier, more Net savvy | InfoWorld | News | 2005-12-06 | By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service

Study: Google users wealthier, more Net savvy | InfoWorld | News | 2005-12-06 | By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service: "The longer people have been using the Internet, the more likely it is that Google will be their search engine of choice, according to a survey of 1,000 U.S. Internet users conducted by investment banking and research firm S.G. Cowen & Co. LLC."

Makes sense. That's what I use. :)

Vacation Starts

Its Satudray and I'm "off work" for the next 23 days - no setting my alarm clock for over 3 weeks...

And I'm up before 5:00 anyway - just because, and I'm on my computer - and my VPN connection to work is not working... so no email, no code reviews, no checking irc logs.

This could be a very long 3 weeks...

southpaw: Baby Got Book

A friend sent me this link. It cracked me up. This is great. :)

Official Google Blog: A cure for the common inbox

Google integrated an RSS feed into Gmail. If you read the post, and the read the "Links to this post" at the bottom; you'll see quite a few people saying how easy it is, just a "featurette" not a feature, that it sucks, etc.

Personally I don't get it. I like it... But then I'm not a big RSS person. I do have an RSS feed integrated into Mozilla - but I don't use it much. Having DefectiveYeti's RSS feed at the top of my gmail, and perhaps some other bloggers, where I can scroll through it seems cool to me. But I like integrated stuff where I don't have to go to another window, etc.

Maybe I'll check out Google's RSS Reader - but for now, Google Clips seem like something easy to customize into my gmail window and provides me with some functionality. So again, I think it is cool...

Case researchers discover methods to find 'needles in haystack' in data

Case researchers discover methods to find 'needles in haystack' in data: "A Case Western Reserve University research team from physics and statistics has recently created innovative statistical techniques that improve the chances of detecting a signal in large data sets. The new techniques can not only search for the 'needle in the haystack' in particle physics, but also have applications in discovering a new galaxy, monitoring transactions for fraud and security risk, identifying the carrier of a virulent disease among millions of people or detecting cancerous tissues in a mammogram."

The paper that is discussed also posted, in pdf.

Very cool stuff. Especially the application to fraud and security risk detection... Have to think about that some.

ABC News: Airline Passenger Who Made Threat Killed

ABC News: Airline Passenger Who Made Threat Killed

A good reason not to mention "I have a bomb in my bag"...

evhead: Odeo version Next

Ev's post on Odeo. Interesting... I'm not much of a speaking kind of guy, but I'll have to look into it more. I have listened to a few podcasts, and the though of being able to create and share your own for free - just like Blogger/Blogging, is interesting...

Contrasts

Yesterday was the first major "its really winter now" work day.

Wind whistles mightly in the chimmny
I grab my laptop and step out into the garage
The door opens as I head toward the back of the jeep
Sun shinning, snow blowing across the driveway and swirling into the garage
I button the top two buttons of my coat, securing it around my neck to keep the warmth in
Throwing my laptop in the back of the jeep I head to the mailbox, latest Blockbuster movie in hand
Small particles of snow bite my cheeks and the neighbors gray trash bags are slowly blown down the street
Throwing the movie into the mailbox I grab the bags and push them down in the trash can to secure them from the wind
Turning back towards the garage, the snow bites again and as I shake my head I feel my frozen hair slap against my coat
I jump in the Jeep, leather cold, and turn on the seat warmers

Driving down the street, sun shining, snow blowing, seat warm, face still tingling and hair starting to thaw
I think about how much I like the first days of winter


And then I get to the intersate

Traffic backed up, everyone moving slow
The sun has not done its job yet
The road is icy with hard ruts in it
I put the Jeep in 4 wheel drive

Cars in the right lane are looking for an opening
Seeing one they shoot forward into a small space,
Causing the cars in the left to hit their brakes
Anxious and nervous, the van in the right lane carefully moves along at 25,
Causing everyone in the right to snake around them
I join the snake and am safetly past the van, continuing on, looking for other obstacles

Garden of the Gods is no better
Heavy traffic, some fast, some slow, rutted lanes and slush
Cars doing 45, cars doing 25
3 lanes of traffic - most of the time
The steet lines are covered
Two wheel drive cars nervously proceed down the street,
Attempting to cut the lane into thirds - and fail - taking their third out of the middle
The lanes go down to two and traffic backs up
Anxious four wheel drives try to make it to work
Hitting a turnoff lane, the road opens back to 3 lanes
We take our third out of the middle of the right lane and the turn off lane
Snaking around the car - we continue on
The road opens up and we proceed to work

Stepping out of the jeep at work, snow swirling, wind whislting, neck tense
I think about how much I like driving to work on the first days of winter,
Not so much

Growing pains for Wikipedia - page 2 | CNET News.com

Growing pains for Wikipedia - page 2 | CNET News.com: "Thus, to avoid future problems, Wales plans to bar anonymous users from creating new articles; only registered members will be able to do so. That change will go into effect Monday, he said, adding that anonymous users will still be able to edit existing entries."

• Drag that they have to do that - although barring anonymous users just means you have to register - which isn't hard and isn't uncalled for. At least that way your "name" is on the article.
  
• Given taht anyone can still edit - I'm not sure how it addresses anything. If I can edit it, I can replace it with whatever I want. Of course, assuming it works like MoinMoin, someone would be able to easily revert the entry and/or see what chang was made.
  

All in all, I'm not sure if this will really do anything, or is just meant to appease those who don't understand it better. Unfortunate.

Moving into vacation mode

I'm at work this week, then "off" until next year. 3 weeks off. Woo hoo. I love my job, and work most weekends and will probably work some while I'm off - but it will be cool.

Most likely I'll do some reading, watch some movies, play Xbox, learn LISP, work on my office (tidying up), work on the basement (tidying up) and do some major cooking. Jaime and Tina only have one week off, so there will be two weeks where I can just be home by myself and play "wife". Cook everyone breakfast and send them off to work, figure out what I'm going to make for dinner and have a hot meal fixed when they get home. It will be a blast. :)

And before I get my head chewed off for saying "wife" - I know a wife is much more than that and lots of wives might not even cook. Its just my June Clever role while everyone else is at work. :) It will be cool to not have to stop on the way home and pick stuff up, but go out shopping for whatever I feel like and cook something up.

At least that is the plan right now. Many times I have a similar plan, but over the course of 3 weeks I get more and more unmotivated about "working" at anything and just decline into hanging out. But I figure with 3 weeks - I should be able to get some stuff done on my "to-do" list. Cooking for sure. Xbox for sure. And hopefully some tidying up.

And I'm already moving into that mode - but I guess I still have one week left, so I should really head to work.

Teach them to think

Thinking about my final comments on the previous post, maybe enlightning was the wrong term to use... maybe evangalizing would be better. I believe in many cases it is a schools job to present many different viewpoints, to explain what is going on politically, socially, culturally, etc. (depending on the class). I think survey type courses, where you get a little info on many subjects is a good thing. I just don't like it when a particular point of view is pushed to hard as the "correct" view, etc. This applies in many classes.

Explaining why someone might think a particular programming language is ok, as long as it isn't pushed as *the* only programming language to use. And this holds especially true in many of the soft sciences, etc.

Some of my best soft science classes were a philosophy of ethics class where the instructure did not push his ethicial viewpoint, but we read many philosophers and our tests consisted of eassays where we would answer ethicial questions, saying which philosopher's viewpoint we held to in addressing the question, and why. There were no "right" and "wrong" answers, the grades were based upon how much you understood the material and how able you were to express yourself in those terms. Very fun class because it made you think. Another similar class was a political science class on current events, where again, the instructor had a particular view point and expressed it, but it was not the "correct" answer. It was just a viewpoint. We spent quite a bit of time in class discusses viewpoints, etc.

I think schools would do better to cause students to think, then to try and foster certain social, political, cultural viewpoints upon them...

Universities

I just finished reading two editorials in the Woodmen Edition, a sort of "small town" newspaper for our area of Colorado Springs. It usually has some good editorials so I always check them out. This week the two were:

• The naked truth on campus, by Suzasnne Fields, and
• From universisties to condos, by Froma Harrop.

I'm not sure the article links will last more than a week (as they seem to be relative), but if really interested they should be archived for a while...

The Suzanne Fields article discussed an event (party) at Colubmia University where all the participants must be naked. It goes on to discuss sexualism on other campuses, and basically the sorry state of affairs on many campuses.

Froma Harrop's article discusses a prediction by Peter Drucker, where he said that the modern university will disappear in a few decades; being replaced with the internet, online classes, recordings of lectures, etc.

To a certain extent - a "home school" college eduation - to use an analogy. We home schooled both our kids (or for the majority of the time they home schooled themselves). While it has many positive aspects, the major complaint I had against it, was not the quality of the education (it seems sufficient - or maybe even better than public school) or the lack of socialization (Jaime led a very active social life without it); but my major complaint was the classroom interaction. One of the things I enjoyed about college (depending on the size of the classes) was the interaction. Thinking about things and discussing them. I was 25, married and had 1 child - with a second born my senior year - so I was far less interested in social things (other than of course UofM football :)); than probably the majority of students. But I really enjoyed the class room. And when I got my master's I felt the same way. The "campus" was at MCI and consisted of the same group of students working on their mastors (starting with 12 I think and down to about 6 by the end of the class). While much smaller than most campus classes, this still allowed us to exchange ideas.

I know with things like wikis, irc, etc. - it is possible. But I still feel there is no substitute for actually sitting together and discussing, or working a problem, etc. I realize the benefits of on-line classes (you can work them when you want, you can have a full time job and still go to school, etc.) - and I haven't really participated in any - so don't know what kind of "interaction" they offer. And maybe I'm just old-fashioned. But I'd hate to see them disappear. And I don't see how they can, as not everything is "book learning" as they say.

Interesting though that one article is on how universities won't be around in the future, and another one is complaining about things that have nothing to do with learning at another. Maybe if schools got back to teaching, and aways from enlightening (at least in some areas); they'd be better off...

A lot going on lately - I think I'm in a reflective stage. :)

The Literature Page - Read classic books by famous authors online

The Literature Page - Read classic books by famous authors online:

"The Literature Page is your place to read classic books, plays, stories, poems, essays, and speeches online, brought to you by the creators of The Quotations Page. Our collection currently includes 233 works from 85 authors. We add new titles regularly."

How cool.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the day from the Google "home page":

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist

There are other great Emerson quotes on that page as well. This one is perhaps a bit ironic:

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

BICYCLE COLORADO

"The Colorado State Patrol has added an alarming new policy banning the biggest bicycle events in Colorado! Their new policy limits bicycle and triathlon events to 2,500 riders, but this limit can be lowered at any time putting every event at risk. Bicycle tours, races, charity rides, group rides, and triathlons are all affected. "

I'm not a bicylist, but I still signed it. I know plenty of people who are, and when I used to go to church at NCF - they always supported the Emily Griffith Center Road Ramble every year. Outdoor events are a big part of what makes Colorado, Colorado.

According to this post on the Bicycle Colorado site, the cap is delayed until 2007. I think it is still worthwhile to sign the petition though.

USATODAY.com - A false Wikipedia 'biography'

I had heard for weeks from teachers, journalists and historians about 'the wonderful world of Wikipedia,' where millions of people worldwide visit daily for quick reference 'facts,' composed and posted by people with no special expertise or knowledge — and sometimes by people with malice.

Comment in an article by John Seigenthaler on a Wikipedia 'biography' that claimed he was suspected of being involved in the assassination of JFK.