Well the NEES Meeting at RPI has started. We have a few demos this afternoon but things should go smoothly. RPI is pretty cool – we have good networking and the local folks are great.
In a way, we might just miss all this – this is the last big meeting for this project where we will do demos, etc. The last time that we all meet for breakfast to make sure that all is working – the last time that we celebrate after they all work :)
There will be lots of work, lots of software developed and released, but this is the last big – stand-up-in-front-of-people and make it all make sense and make it go.

Here we are hanging out at RPI getting ready for the NEES meeting. All is good – found parking, found coffee. This is a picture of Sridhar working away in Chris Dupre’s office.

Free Internet – wireless – good signal strength – immediate DHCP addresses. Can’t lose.
From the Albany, NY Hilton Garden…

Sometimes when I plug in my modem to the Mac, and open internet connect it does not recognize it right away. Here are the workaround steps:
Go to System preferences
Select Network
Select Modem
Select PPP
Change the name of the connection adding or deleting one character
Press Apply Now
Press Dial Now – Opening Internet Connect
Press Connect
Somehow the apply now wakes it up. Better than rebooting – I say.

I am posting this entry using my tMobile wireless modem on the train in the UK.
Dude – how cool is that.
This just in: It seems as though I have not been charged at all for my international data use. I don’t know if it is my free pictures or my unlimited data – but that is cool. It works with internet2.voicestream.com at about 1/2 the locations in the UK – but no charge…

Today (2/29) checked into United Airlines online and zoomed off to the airport. As I walked up to security and the guy said that my boarding pass was for March 1 not February 29. Yikes!
People who know me know that this is a very likely occurance – screwing up my own reservations and getting the wrong day. Sometime I will have to tell you about the worst travel screw-ups.
I went to the counter and she quickly reissued my pass for today (2/29) and apologized. Whew! A programmer bug – kind of neat.
By the way if you look at the URL of the image, my cell phone camera has no such problems.

This rocks. Free wireless Arialink sponsored by Smart Office Systems (SOS) – no entry fee.
This absolutely rocks. I will start flying out of Lansing more often and start coming to the airport really early rather than waiting until the last minute.
This is very cool.

I went to the Miracle movie about the 1980 Olympic hockey team starring Kurt Russell. I am of course a hockey player and hockey fan so I should have liked the movie. I lies Mighty Ducks, Slap Shot, and even Mighty Ducks II. But something about Miracle kept me from engaging.
First the good stuff. Kurt Russell is superb in the role of Herb Brooks – clearly an actor who has absolutely polished his craft. The acting was good in the supporting roles as well. it was nicely shot for the most part.
There were three things that bugged me: (1) There was just oo much Kurt Russell – it was as if this were a vehicle for him to scowl a lot – it got tiring just watching him do the scowl thing one more time. (2) There was not enough footage of the time period between the selection of the team and the Olympics – I can imagine that there could have an a number of ways that we could have watched the team growing closer and more confident. (3) The hockey sequences were pretty badly choreographed – they felt repetitive and not at all engaging.
On my scale, it gets a 3 out of 5 – worth a rental at the $2.50 level as sson as it hits the video stores.
Chuck’s Rating System: 1 – Worthless, 2 – Worth a $1 rental on the budget shelves, 3 – Worth a one night $2.50 rental, 4 – Worth seeing in a movie theater once, 5 – worth going to at least 2 times in the theater. Unlike most rating system – this tells you what to do with the rating.

I will add a picture once I have a faster connection.
I made it to Scottland – slept overnight on planes twice once SFO->DTW and once DTW->EDI – a shower and bed looks really nice after that.
tMobile rocks here – I am using the wireless internet (internet2.voicestream.com – my US configuration works perfectly in Einburgh). I have not yet made phone calls but sent a lot of Picture SMS – just fine – take a look at for the pictures.

Well I got to fly the A330 again – wonderful. But it has a problem where too many people are trying to press their keys at the same time and the response gets really slow.
My guess is that there is a slow network that keystrokes are sent across. In a steady state there are probably only 10-20 keys per second. But when the whole plane is trying to fire up their screens unsuccessfully and pounding on the keys – it probably gets to 200-300 keypresses per second – the whole thing slows down – the keystrokes seem to queue so perhaps TCP/IP is involved.
This is interesting because game usage creates a LOT of keypresses. This may limit the number of games which work effectively on the A330 – a whole plant full of kids doing FPS will be very unsatisfactory…
I talked to a friend David Tomanek and he said that he was on a A330 flight when they first came out and they had some technical problem and the Linux logo came up on the screens – pretty cool.