Backdoor Tech          

Your daily helping of technology

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

 

Hurricane Isabel knocks me offline

I was without electrcity and Internet access at home for about three days following the passage of the hurricane through the Washington, DC area. By Sunday evening, I was back online, but treated connectivity as if it were a fragile state. With two unscheduled days off from work, I felt like I should have been putting that time to good use, so it was frustrating. Instead, I caught up on some reading, did whatever necessary to clean up after the storm, and waited. Saturday evening, we hooked up a portable TV to the car battery so that we could watch the evening news.

Having lived in Peru under pretty severe power rationing (electricity only 12 hours a day) for long stretches and frequently blackouts due to terrorist sabotage, I should have felt nostalgic being pushed back into darkenss. During the day, I used to do my reporting, phonecalls, interviewing, notetaking and then drafting my stories by hand , and then sit down at the computer at 8:00 PM and work through until I was finished, sometimes at 3 or 4 AM. I begged that the power did not go off unexpectedly. Luckily, I had a small UPS for my computer.

But now I am addicted to being online, both for communication and information. There are still people in the area who are living without electricity, and there's talk that some may not get it back until next week. In Norfolk, VA, it will take them another two weeks to get power on for all users.

Sunday, September 07, 2003

 

Menu Problems with Mozilla browser

I just spent a good part of the evening trying to figure out why my navigation sidebar is not working in Mozilla. The offset submenus are not showing up and only the home button works when in the subfolders. The most bewildering thing is that everything works fine when in Network subfolder. Mozilla is also not picking up the CSS formating for the menu either.

For those visitors using Mozilla 1.5b (and perhaps other versions), I apologize for this shortcoming. I am trying to get to the bottom of it. It's really frustrating because I'd rather devote time to new content or a redesign of my sites, not staring at pages and trying to spot the flaw.

Tuesday, September 02, 2003

 

Another knotch in the belt for IP telephony

More Companies Are Routing Calls via Internet: "Even though the traditional phone companies have billions of dollars invested in their older technology, they are likely to move toward offering some form of Internet services. But they will probably be collecting significant revenues from their local and long-distance services for some time to come. For one, a company must make a considerable investment to switch to Internet telephony. And calls to parties outside the company often must still use the conventional public network for at least part of the call." NY Times Registration required (free).


Where We're Coming From

In October 2001, I was a member of a group of 17 IT professionals that took their first tentative steps together towards a graduate degree in information technology. Over this period, we learned together, we griped together and we ate stirred-fried vegetales together for lunch until fast food started looking good. Our classes took place at the Shady Grove campus of the Maryland University System.

In April 2003, we finished our course work and we graduated on May 17. But our professional journey does not end with that ceremony. This site is meant to be a landmark for the classmates who shared 18 months. I also intend to use this site as a learning area. It's part of my mental makeup to register things on the Web as part of my continuing learning process. After all, the technologies that we studied are in constant evolution and flux.

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