KC8DNE.com

The following by Rick Cousins appeared in the Galveston Daily News.

One elderly lady endured Hurricane Ike’s wrath. She was sitting in her modest home located near the San Luis hotel ­ alone in the dark. Her husband was hundreds of miles away in Utah, worried and unable to reach her as landline and cell phone links went offline one by one. Ike ruthlessly destroyed telephone lines and damaged numerous cell towers, and left many others without operating power. The result: a nearly complete communications blackout rarely experienced by 21st century America.

Who could she call? It turned about that her neighbors, Kevin and Sharon Briscoe, solved her problem in just three minutes. Thanks to their “secret identities” as amateur radio operators with the call signs KE5CDE and KE5CFF, respectively.

Despite Hurricane Ike javelining with a tree through their porch roof, 7 inches of water in their garage, and a complete lack of power, gas or phones, the Briscoes were ready and eager to help.

(Read more)

Richard Garriott’s father, Owen Garriott, W5LFL made history as the first ham radio operator to communicate with radio amateurs from space on the STS-9 Space Shuttle mission almost twenty-five years ago. Richard is the programmer/developer of the Ultima series of computer games.

Through multiple agreements with NASA, the Russian Space Agency, RSC Energia, Space Adventures Ltd, and ARISS (Amateur Radio on the International Space Station), Richard Garriott will fly to ISS and will communicate with students, ham radio operators, friends, and family world-wide using the ARISS amateur radio station on-board the ISS.

Richard Garriott, with the amateur radio callsign, W5KWQ is the sixth private citizen to be flown by the Russian space agency to the ISS.  A legendary video game programmer and designer, Garriott will be traveling to orbit this October and will speak with hundreds of students while thousands more listen in during a series of ten-minute ham radio contacts.  His on-orbit stay on Soyuz and ISS is planned for October 12 – 22, 2008.

(Read more)

This article by Patrick Thibodeau and Todd R. Weiss in Computerworld, subtitled From IT to edge funds and back again, is quite interesting.

The collapse of Wall Street may help make computer science and IT careers attractive to students who abandoned these fields in droves after the POP of the last big bubble, the dot-com bust of 2001.

William Dally, chairman of the computer science department at Stanford University, said that for the last several years, he has watched some students interested in technology go into banking and finance because those fields could be more lucrative.

"Many thought they could make more money in hedge funds," Dally said. He said students are returning to computer science because they like the field and not because it can necessarily make them rich.

John Gallaugher, associate professor of information systems in the Carroll School of Management at Boston College, said he’s already seeing a shift in student interest. (Read more)

SOURCE: Computerworld

As Hurricane Kyle brushed its way across Eastern New England region on its way to the Canadian Maritimes, hams in the area were prepared for impact. Heavy rain associated with a stalled out boundary, as well as some influence from Kyle, caused heavy rainfall and flooding in the region.

  "We were lucky to have a 12-18 hour lull in rainfall between the rain on Friday and what came on Saturday," said Director of Operations for the VoIP Hurricane Net and SKYWARN Coordinator Rob Macedo, KD1CY. "We were also lucky that most of the direct influence from Kyle remained offshore, or this situation would’ve been much worse." Over the 3 day period, 3 to 6 inches of rain fell over much of Eastern New England, Connecticut and parts of Central Massachusetts and Eastern New Hampshire. Some areas, Macedo said, received more than 8 inches, resulting in pockets of flooding with a few brooks going out of their banks.

(Read more)

Poor Sarah Palin. She was thrown into the political deep water without her waterwings.

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, novelist (1821-1881)

OK, so here is what happened to cause the site to be off-line for so long. It suffered a severe system crash while I was attempting to upgrade the Content Management System (CMS) that I use to create this blog.

The needed repair proved to be more extensive that I originally anticipated. Naturally, this happened in the midst of way too many projects-in-progress. Thus, I had to wait until I had the free time to fix what broke.

The bottom line is that the system now seems to be back to normal. In the not too distant future I hope to re-vamp the site to better serve your information needs. I maintain the site so that my friends (both met and un-met) can get information that they might not otherwise see.

I am Sorry for any inconvenience caused by the site being dark. If you missed it, click on Comments below and tell me about it. That is how I will decide whether it will be worth the effort to bring it back up next time.

Holy Wah! This thing must whine like a kid that just dropped his ice cream cone. The rumor has been around for a while, but it still is worth noting.

Several industry sources have said that Western Digital is working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor hard drive.

According to several sources close to the hard drive industry, Western Digital is working on a 20,000 RPM Raptor hard drive to combat the increasing pressure from SSD manufacturers.
We have spoken to a lot of people out here in Taipei about this industry’s direction and one thing is becoming clear: SSDs are going to be affordable in the next 12 to 18 months.
Because of this, hard drive manufacturers are starting to get a little worried about what marketshare SSDs might eventually take away from them—especially where performance is more of a concern than storage capacity. And that’s exactly what Western Digital’s Raptor line is all about.

The new drive will be very similar to the recently-released VelociRaptor, in that it’ll be a 2.5in drive with a custom 3.5in housing built around it. Details are incredibly light at this stage, given that the product is still in development, and we don’t even have a release timeframe at the moment. (Read more)

SOURCE: Bit-Tech.net

The Flint, (MI) Police Department has posted some good information about the proper use of the 9-1-1 system. Some of this sounds pretty obvious, but there is a good reason for them wanting to be sure we are clear on it. For example, Genesee County Central Dispatch has answered over 84,000 non-emergency calls SO FAR this year.

What’s an Emergency?

• An emergency is when immediate police, fire department, or medical assistance is necessary to protect life or property.

• If an emergency situation arises — a crime, a fire, a serious injury or illness — ask yourself whether police, fire department, or medical assistance is needed right now to protect life or property. if YES, then immediately call 9-1-1 and advise the dispatcher what has happened or is happening.

• Call 9-1-1 whenever you believe there is an emergency. If you are not sure it’s a real emergency, call 9-1-1 and the dispatcher will make the final determination.

  (Read more)

The National Weather Service Office in White Lake, MI recently made this announcement.

A live CoCoRaHS Training session has been scheduled for Tuesday August 26, 2008. The session will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 PM at the National Weather Service Office in White Lake. The session will include a brief tour of our forecast office and a weather balloon release (weather permitting).

Space is limited. Please contact Heather Orow by email (preferred) at Heather.Orow@noaa.gov, or by phone at 248-625-3309 to reserve your seat. Please include your name, email address, station number, and whether or not a helper will be attending with you (not required). Reservations will be limited to those who have already joined the CoCoRaHS network, whether they are submitting observations yet or not.

For more information on the CoCoRaHS program, or to become an observer, please go to: http://www.crh.noaa.gov/dtx/?n=coco

SOURCE: NWS (Detroit/Pontiac, MI)