Month: November 2003

  • Five Nines

    The original Bell Telephone system was required to provide 99.999% (or five nines of) relability.  This level of reliablilty equals 5 minutes of downtime per year.  In contrast to 97% reliability which is equivalent to 263 hours of downtime per year.

  • Redneck Neighbor

    In case you’re wondering, this Web page is about my next-door neighbors.  Since my neighbors have been driving me crazy and no amount of civilized reasoning and/or negotiations have worked – I have decided to dedicate a small corner of cyber-space to them.My family and friends are constantly asking me to tell them the “latest”…

  • A message from the great beyond

    A couple from Minneapolis decided to go to Florida for a long weekend to thaw out during one particularly icy winter.  They planned to stay at the very same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years ago.Because both had jobs, they found it difficult coordinating their travel schedules.  It was decided that the husband…

  • I’ve been Googled!

    Sometime between Tuesday, 11 November, 2003 10:12:40 -500 UTC and Monday, 17 November, 2003 14:14:19 -500 UTC Google found this site and added it to the search database.  The site originally went up 30-31 October, 2003; so the indexing engine did a pretty good job of finding a brand new site with no external links…

  • The Bug

    Ellen Ullman, the author of Close to the Machine has written a new book, The Bug.  If it is even ¼ as good as the first book, it will be well, well worth reading.  The review in the IEEE Spectrum, November issue was positive.  I will follow-up at a later time when I have read…

  • Name calling

    via email from Martha Clark, Fri, 7 Nov 2003 11:07:31 -0500

  • Handwritten sign found on the wall of Mother Teresa’s room:

    People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered – forgive them anywayIf you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies – be successful anywayIf you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives – be kind anywayIf you are honest and frank, people may cheat you – be…