Some friends and I are going to see the Space Shuttle Launch. Good information about seeing a launch is hard to find, so I think I might post these links to sites that I found useful.

I just noticed, a bit to my surprise, that different versions of Google give different results.

I played with the reservation system on the Georgia Aquarium’s web site today and saw some useful patterns.

My initial purpose was to determine when the least busy times were for people to visit so that they could avoid the large crowds I have heard about.

As expected, weekends are very busy. In fact, the Aquarium has no tickets available for the next two weekends and is half sold for the weekend after that. Rush hour is a good time to go. Pretty much anytime during the week after 3pm is decent since all the kids are back at school.

At PhreakNIC, there seemed to be a lot of computers running Microsoft® Windowd® XP®. This is a group that, two or three years ago, expounded on how evil Microsoft was and how crappy Windows was. Apple and Linux laptops were all over, but this year I kept hearing the Windows reboot sound.

I’m testing Gallery 2.0. The biggest thing that bugs me is the “Unpossible” link at the bottom of every page that links to an MP3 clip from the Simpsons. It’s a cute quote and I like that episode, but it’s not very professional. I also don’t know if we’re cleared to use that clip or if Fox is going to sue everyone.

I had about 4GB of data to upload today for several projects. My DSL at home, while reliable, is only 256k upstream. After hours of waiting, I loaded the files onto my laptop and went to Borders Books. I guessed that T-mobile had installed an actual T1 line and I was right. Full 1.5Mbps uplink, so I was able to finish all of my uploads in about 2.5 hours.

I just got off the phone with T-mobile, my cellphone carrier. I had a small problem with my phone and was calling for tips to resolve it (which they did). On the call, the customer service rep said that I had to provide T-mobile with a “physical address” not just a PO Box. She said that they would continue to send the bill to my PO Box, but that their policy now required a physical address. I declined to give them one and the operator could not tell me why it was needed or what would happen if I didn’t provide one. We tried entering the street address of the Post Office, but it would not take it.

I feel sorry for older people who are having a hard time adapting to new technologies. This is a growing trend. It used to be that not-technologically-savvy people simply couldn’t use high-technology. Today, the technology is penetrating everywhere. In five or ten years, I think that the knowledge gap is going to become a serious handicap to a lot of people.

I wonder how we can catch people up. One would think a book that explains the basics would be in order. Not a book about how the technology works, but how to work the technology. You can’t build a web site, or e-book. Those would be as silly as a DVD telling you how to hook up your DVD player. If you could play the DVD, you would not need to.

We need to figure this problem out. I think it would drastically cut down on technical support issues, and some day I might be one of these “swamped by technology” people who need help.

I’m thinking about buying a Flickr account to post photos to. I’m up in the air about it. My giant photo site, which has more than 2000 photos, is hardly trafficked. It gets an average of only two or three visitors a day. I would like to extend that some. Flickr’s community would allow that to happen, but it doesn’t have a very good way to track statistics. I’m also a little annoyed with Gallery, which I’m using to run my current photo site. It’s a nice product and has a good API for things like Galllery Remote, but the package itself is bloated. I really don’t have time to write my own gallery software right now.

I used some expired marine flares just to dispose of them. I thought they were very well designed and very safe. This article talks about my experience with them.