Three Perfect Days With Slim

My father, who I nicknamed Slim in 1976, and I took the perfect three day mini vacation together this past week.  First, why I call my father Slim.  The nickname Slim came about because I was working for Fairfax County Park Authority (FCPA) my senior year in high school.   During that time period the generic term in the gym was not "hey buddy", but "Slim" when you wanted to talk to someone you did not know.  Everyone called everyone Slim in the gym.    I started calling my father Slim and it stuck :-)

Last fall my perfect wife, Julie, says to me, "Dave it has been ten years since you got your Corvette, isn't  it time for a new Corvette?"  That is just one reason why she is perfect.  As luck would have it I was taking my 1998 Corvette into Tony's Corvette Shop for some minor work the next day, so I told Tony what Julie told me.   Tony then said, "you know Dave, Julie is right."  Tony then goes on to say that it is starting to get harder and more expensive to get parts for my 1998 Corvette.   GM only has to carry parts for ten years.   He then told that as someone who drives the hell out of their Corvette, that I should think about a newer one.  He then told me about the other costs of parts rising on the C5s (1997-2004).  The EBCM Electronic Brake Control Module was no longer being made by GM for the C5s and he had to have them rebuilt - not a cheap proposition.  Something to think about...

After a week or so thinking about it, I decide Julie and Tony are right.  I start looking around for a used Grand Sport.   After a couple of months of scouring the US for the exact one, I decided I was going to order a brand new Corvette, take the museum delivery and bring my father along if his health was up to it.   The museum delivery is a $495 option known as R8C.  Corvette owners refer a lot to the order codes.  Everyone who I talked to said it was well worth it and a once in a lifetime experience.  I decided to first go to Pohanka Chevrolet because that is where my buddy John Meyer purchased his new Corvette and had a great experience there.   I went in the day after Thanksgiving with a printout of
the best internet price I could find on a similar model of Grand Sport I wanted.  The salesman David Coggin went and ran the numbers and they beat it by $3,000.  I just looked at the numbers and said let's do it.   The schedule I was told would be early to mid March for the actual pickup.  That was a good schedule because my father's chemo would be finishing up by then and it the weather should be less of a factor between here and Bowling Green, Kentucky where they have the GM Assembly Plant for Corvette and the National Corvette Museum (NCM).  First, I was going to get one way flights to Nashville, then drive in from there.  With my father's health, sitting in a germ filled airport and germ filled plane did not seem like a good idea.  I decided for a one way rental to Nashville airport and then the NCM had a special one-way rental to the NCM from Enterprise.

The driving factor on why and how I decided to time this new purchase of a brand new Corvette Grand Sport was the one year anniversary of my separation package from Sun/Oracle.  HUGE thanks Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Andy Bechtolsheim and Vinod Khosla for having the foresight to have a change in control package for Directors and VPs!     Besides buying a new large screen Sony, I did not spend any of that large check.   So, I decided that part of that check would be used to purchase new Corvette Grand Sport with the museum delivery option.  I timed it almost to the exact day of Sun being purchased by Oracle.


The National Corvette Museum is located in Bowling Green, Kentucky.   The plan was that my father and I would be getting a personal factory tour of the Corvette plant, a personal tour of the National Corvette Museum and a personal Corvette Grand Sport overview.  That was the plan.

As luck would have it, I got a call that my Grand Sport would be ready to be picked up on February 3rd.   This was great providing my father's health (finished four rounds of chemo for his CLL and is getting treatments currently to get the good white blood cells back up where they should be) was up to it and the weather was not an issue.  Driving a new Corvette back through the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia is not anyone's idea of fun.   We obviously had to play it by ear.   The week before, my father told me that he felt he would be fine.  Great!   However, the weather was looking to be a real disaster.   It was literally looking like the perfect winter storm.   There was a huge arctic cold front coming deep into the south that would meet with a gulf front to create the mother of all winter storms.     I was monitoring the weather and thought I saw a window on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday early where we could get out in an SUV and deal with any light snow that might hit.  The weather was just north of us on Tuesday and Wednesday.   Returning, it looked like Thursday would provide a window if we drove the 750 miles back in one day.   I called the NCM and they said I should reschedule.  I said I would make a game time decision at 2pm on February 1st.   Slim and I looked at the weather forecast and thought there would be a small window we could hit - if we were really, really lucky....

Above was the first day of driving from 2pm on.  We put in almost 400 hundred miles that included a nice long dinner with my two oldest sons.  I knew my father was looking forward to spending all of this quality son/father bonding time when the first thing he does is pull out his audiobook

We had dinner with John and Michael at Sal's in Blacksburg before continuing on to Bristol to spend the night.

It was about 750 miles door to door.

Pulling into the National Corvette Museum with our one-way rental from Enterprise.  It was actually 11:48 Central time.

Above is one of the photoshop pictures you can buy when you go through the tour.

These were just two of the many welcome screens they had with our names on them.

The sign in front of my new Grand Sport Corvette.

My new Grand Sport in front of the NCM Delivery Offices.  They can do about 8 deliveries a day.  Mine was the only that day with weather and the slow sales for Corvette right now.  Normally 35,000 Corvettes are sold a year and it is down to 12,000 in the current economy.

Below is from the 2011 Corvette brochure on the Grand Sport:

The best combination of all-out performance and efficiency . Grand Sport coupe beat

every other production car with the exception of the Corvette ZR1 (very limited availability)

and a special $460,000 Lamborghini Murcielago in the 2010 edition of the Car and Driver

Lightning Lap at Virginia International Raceway. It lapped the circuit with a time of 2:58.8,

faster than the Audi R8 V10 and the Porsche 911 Carrera S. On the test track, Grand Sport

coupe delivers 1g of lateral acceleration and goes from 0 to 60 mph in less than four

seconds. Yet it does all this with an EPA estimated 26 MPG highway 1 and without a gas-guzzler tax. That’s what engineers call bandwidth.

What makes a Grand Sport?  Start with a wider track, wider tires as well as wider fenders and

quarters. Add a high rear spoiler and special five-spoke Grand Sport wheels. Under the skin

add aggressive dampers and springs, large stabilizer bars, performance gear ratios, additional cooling, and six-piston front and four-piston rear brake calipers engaging cross-drilled rotors.

Slim in front of my Grand Sport at the NCM Delivery area.

Me sitting in the Grand Sport for the first time and getting ready to get an overview on the car's features from Ron.  I watched the C6 Owners Video three times to get ready for the trip.   There is o substitute for hands-on learning.  The NCM has cameras so we sent text messages for family and fellow Corvette owners so they could watch on the NCM cameras.

Back view of the Grand Sport that looks down the hall of the National Corvette Museum.

 We had the world's best NCM Tour Guide in Ron Barton.   Ron worked for GM making Corvettes 35 years before he started working at NCM ten years ago.   Here you can see that Ron is answering one of my countless questions that I had.  I thought I knew a lot about Corvettes until I talked with Ron.  He spent five hours with us the first day at the museum and the four days the second at the factory tour.  My father and I took countless photos.  Slim took the best photos.  His new camera worked great.

 

Above is Wendell Strode, the Executive Director of the National Corvette Museum standing with my father.  Both served in the Vietnam War with Wendell being awarded a Purple Heart.

I can not recommend the Museum Delivery Option highly enough.  It is the best investment you will ever make for your new Corvette!


  Wendell, Gary Cockriel, Lori Bieschke and Ron Barton were absolutely fantastic.  They made us feel at home and very welcome.  It was fantastic!

This is me in front of a 1963 Z06 serial number 1.    This was part of the special back stage tour that you get as part of the NCM Delivery Option for a new Corvette.






Above is Slim lifting an all aluminum Z06 frame at the NCM.

Above is just one example of the exhibits in the NCM.

Above is a 74 Stingray that has 1,350 hp.

The Road to Remorses, The Road to Divorces - Our Fiberglass Boulevardier

Car and Driver Magazine editors drive 968 miles along one of the far north's God-awfulest highways, almost to the Artic Ocean-in a Corvette.

Above is the only 1983 Corvette left on planet earth.  Chevy made 55 1983 Corvettes.  The quality was terrible.  Chevy decided to squash the 1983 year and go right to 1984.  There were no 1983 Corvettes ever sold.  They ordered all 55 to be crushed.  Someone pulled one out and hid it.  That one is the white one above that sits at the NCM.  Great trivia question for your Corvette buddies.

This another of the paid for photoshop photos you can get.

Me and Slim after the five hour NCM tour and the detailed Grand Sport features demonstration on Wednesday night.   After that photo, we left my Grand Sport at the museum and had a nice dinner in Bowling Green.  When we drove the Grand Sport out of the museum for the final time all the museum employees were there clapping in a long line which was pretty cool.

Above is the 2nd brick that I purchased for my garage.  Below is the brick that will be forever placed inside the National Corvette Museum to mark that day Slim and I picked up my new 2011 Grand Sport Corvette.

Above is me on November 11th, 2016 pointing out my and my father's Grand Sport brick when I was with John Meyer for his delivery of his 2017 Grand Sport.

 Above is me in front of the GM Corvette Assembly Plant Tour Entrance.  It was pretty cool having your name up in big letters on the entrance.  The tour is fantastic.  Three hours watching new Corvettes start off on a 7 mile journey through the 1.5 million square foot plant.   The only car they make here are Corvettes.  We saw everything with our VIP Museum Delivery Tour by Ron.   Having someone like Ron who had worked at Corvette Assembly Plants for 35 years was fantastic.    I was also given the opportunity to "birth a new Corvette" by being the first person to start one up after it was completely assembled and ready for final testing.  They also showed us a Carbon Edition Z06 that was extremely cool.  No pictures are allowed inside of course.

Our NCM Tour Guide Ron Barton giving me the FOB for the new Grand Sport before we drove the 750 miles back home to beat the snow coming up behind us as we head through the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.

On of the things included with the purchase (if you took delivery in January through mid February) was two full days at either the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving  or the Spring Mountain Advanced Driving School.

Failure was not an option.  Slim and I took turns driving the Grand Sport.  We used OnStar to get weather and traffic reports on the way back as well as messing with the Navigation system and XM.    After dinner, I asked my father if he heard any news on Egypt and the protests going on there.  He responded, "How the HELL would I know, we have been listening to 70s on 7 XM Satellite Radio for the past 486 miles!"   My plan for father and son bonding had worked!  :-)

The weather was not a factor for us but a nightmare for others.  The picture above of the US and Canada gives you some idea.  Chicago had two feet of snow and 50mph winds.  Chicago Schools were closed for the 2nd time in 12 years.   Dallas had one inch of ice.  The south and midwest were nightmares.  Ice storms and massive snows everyplace.  The road between St. Lois and Kansas City (rt. 70) was closed for the first time EVER.   New York City Schools were closed for the first time in 30 years.  We REALLY had to find the right window and the right path to drive both there and back.  Going there I had an SUV.  Coming back we were in a Corvette - not exactly known for its winter driving :-)   Check out these amazing photos of the winter storm of 2011 here.

 We made great time heading back and got very lucky.  I dropped my father off at about 11:15 pm and then got home around midnight.  Julie and Tim got up to check it out.  It was good to be home and not have to worry about any weather issues. 

Back at home with the snow still on the ground.  I now have the "Steve Ferry Problem", which is "Which Corvette Do I Want To Take Today?"  :-)

With my two Corvettes and my wife's Mini Cooper S, we have over 1,000hp of sports cars in our garage.

I stated it earlier, and I can not recommend the Museum Delivery Option highly enough.  It is the best investment you will ever make for your new Corvette!

With the weather, my father's health, it could have been a real disaster, but instead it turned out to be like one of the MasterCard commercials:

• Price of new Corvette Grand Sport after discounts - $55,000
• Price of three days of rental cars, hotels, meals, and Corvette souvenirs - $1,500
• Spending three days with my father who is beating cancer - PRICELESS

That is why I called this blog entry:  Three Perfect Days With Slim.

Office of Strategic Innovation Roundtable Format and Logistics

Below is information on the format and the logistics for The Office of Strategic Innovation Roundtable (OSI/R).

 Just as a reminder, the OSI/R is a joint effort with AMT - The Association for Manufacturing Technology and Virtual Photons Electrons.  The OSI/R will be a regularly scheduled (likely weekly) webcast interviewing thought leaders in manufacturing, the computer industry, science and technology.


The basic format of the OSI/R will be:

• The podcast will be an interview with thought leaders.
• The length will be 15 to 30 minutes depending on topic.  Likely 30 minutes.
• This will be captured as an audio only interview using Skype. 
• In other words, this will not have live video with the thought leader, but will be voice ONLY recording with graphics added after the fact.  
• I could add video after the fact as well.
• I am going to use Skype on my MacBook Pro with AudioHijack Pro to record the OSI/R audio.
• The thought leader will use Skype as well. 
• The format will be dedicated (90%) on a topic that educates folks.
• Tell me about yourself.
• What is topic we will be discussing today?
• Why is this topic important?
• Who should know about this topic?
• What are the business issues to be aware of?
• What are the technical issues to be aware of?
• How might this topic change over time?
• When and how should someone embrace this topic?
• Finally, tell me about your company or organization?
• The last 10% of the interview, the thought leader can take the time to talk discuss they want about anything they want related to their company's/agency's product's and/or services.
• The thought leader should send me some slides if they want that I will add to the podcast.
• The thought leader and I will work out the topic with a list of areas to discuss.  This will be a combination Q&A and discussion.
• The OSI/R will be used for MTConnect, MTInsight and Office of Strategic Innovation purposes.
• The overall intent is to create a robust library of topics.
• One advantage will be that when someone asks a basic question, we can point them at a podcast/webinar which is typically much better than a white paper or an email.
• We can do this dirt cheap - which is important. 
• Speakers do not need a lot of prep which is key.
• I can edit stuff after the interview.
• It should be fun and informative or why do it at all  :-)

Below is the opening I will use for Office of Strategic Innovation Roundtable's webcasts:





Please contact me if you would like to participate.  Stay tuned for more details.

Washington DC 2011 Auto Show

Below is a video I took on the amazing Chevy Volt.  I spoke to the Volt Product Specialist for about 45 minutes which was very interesting.




Below is $183,000 for the Mercedes SLS Gull Wing.



Below is the Nissan Leaf, which is the first 100% electric vehicle in mass production.

Announcing OSI/R - Office of Strategic Innovation Roundtable

Today, I am very pleased and proud to announce The Office of Strategic Innovation Roundtable (OSI/R).

 The OSI/R is a joint effort with AMT - The Association for Manufacturing Technology and Virtual Photons Electrons.  The OSI/R will be a regularly scheduled (likely weekly) webcast interviewing thought leaders in manufacturing, the computer industry, science and technology.

Below is the opening I will use for Office of Strategic Innovation Roundtable's webcasts:



Stay tuned for the first guest!

Great Article on Chevy Volt

The Washington Post's Gene Weingarten writes a great article on the Chevy Volt.

The Volt is the exact right architecture for an electric.  Below is what I mean as Gene Weingarten writes:

"The Volt is an all-electric car, with an asterisk. You can plug it in overnight -- even to the same sort of dinky wall outlet that runs your coffee maker -- and by morning, the car's battery is fully charged. It's ready to power the Volt's two electric motors, which will carry you 30 or 40 miles on that wall juice alone. If your life is circumscribed by a daily commute of 40 miles or less -- this applies to about three-quarters of Americans -- you can run this car without ever using even a teaspoon of gas, at the cost of about a buck fifty a day in electricity. But if you really, really want that cheese steak, you can get it, too.

The Volt's dainty gasoline engine doesn't usually power the car directly; it acts primarily as a generator to recharge the battery, which keeps the electric motors going another 300 miles or so after that initial charge is exhausted. Running on gas only, albeit premium, the Volt's motors still generate power at a respectable 37 miles to the gallon."

My Parents Canon PowerShot SX130 IS Tutorial Video

My sister and I purchased for our parents a Canon PowerShot SX130 IS.   We bought this for my father's 77th birthday.

I did a lot of research on this and really think that this is a great camera for very, very, old, elderly, old people or those who simply want an easy to use camera with great features.  Below is a short video I shot with my iPhone 4 so my parents will not bother me with dumb questions.  They can also call  Best Buy's Geek Squad with questions since we bought the 3 year accident






Below is from Canon's website:

Overview

Creative Memory Making.
Smart, sleek and creative, the PowerShot SX130 IS is the perfect companion to all your good times. Now you can capture every detail of special moments in crisp, stunning 720p HD - even while using the high-powered 12x Wide-Angle Optical Zoom! You'll record in stereo sound, then play back your videos instantly on you computer. The SX130 IS is all about creativity, with fun new scene modes like Miniature Effect for Movies, and Fisheye Effect for artistically distorted stills. While you're having fun creating, the camera's Smart Flash Exposure and advanced Smart AUTO systems are ensuring that every image is the best it can be. Add the DIGIC 4 Image Processor, 12.1 Megapixels and Canon's Optical Image Stabilizer, and you’ve got the ideal camera for making the good times last.

An End User's View of MTConnect

This is a 28 minute presentation that I (Dave Edstrom) created as the President and Chairman of the Board for the MTConnect Institute explaining MTConnect in non-technical business terms for end users.

What is MTConnect?   

MTConnect is an easy way for manufacturing technology (machine tools for example) to speak to the rest of the world.  Think of MTConnect as the "Bluetooth for manufacturing technology"  In more technical speak, MTConnect is a lightweight, open, and extensible protocol designed for the exchange of data between shop floor equipment and software applications used for monitoring and data analysis.

Let me know what you think by providing comments!

Anniversary of Oracle's Official Takeover of Sun Microsystems

Today is the one year anniversary of Oracle officially taking over Sun Microsystems.  

On this date a year ago, Oracle and I went in our separate directions.   It was a bitter sweet day.  Bitter in that it was the classic, "of all sad songs of tongue and pen, the saddest are these, what might have been."  Scott McNealy sent out a very heart felt email last year at this time to all of Sun.   Below are my favorite parts of Scott's long email.  Everyone loved Scott McNealy.

"First and foremost, Sun innovated like crazy. We took it to the limit (see Eagles). And though we did not monetize our inventions as well as we could have, few companies have the track record in R&D that we had over the last 28 years. This made working at Sun really cool. Thanks to all of you inventors and risk takers who changed how we live.

Sun cared about its customers. Even more than we cared about our own company at times. We looked at our customer’s mission as more important than ours. Maybe we should have asked for more revenue in return, but our employees were always ready to help first. I love this about Sun which I guess makes me a good capitalist if not a great capitalist.

Sun did not cheat, lie, or break the rule of law or decency. While we enjoyed breaking the rules of conventional wisdom and archaic business practice and for sure loved to win in the market, we did so with a solid reputation for integrity. Nearly three decades of competing without a notable incident of our folks going off course morally or legally. Not all executives and big companies are bad. Really. There are good companies out there. Special thanks to all of my employees for this. I never had to hide the newspaper in shame from my children.

Sun was a financial success. We paid billions in taxes, salaries, purchases, leases, training, and even lawyers and accountants for devastatingly cumbersome SOX and legal compliance (oops, more classic digression). Long term and smart investors made billions in SUNW. And our customers generated revenue and savings using our equipment in countless ways. Many employees started families, bought homes and put them through school while working at Sun. Our revenues over 28 years exceeded $200B. Few companies make it to the F200. We did. Nice."

 It was also bitter that I would no longer be working for James Hollingshead.  James was/is a great leader and a long time friend.   The sweet part was an opportunity for a fresh start after 23 years of working at Sun Microsystems.  The other sweet part was the foresight and generosity of Sun Microsystems with their Director Change In Control provision (if Sun was ever purchased).  The feeling was much like the one I had when I sold half my SUNW stock in the late summer of 2000 near its all time peak :-)
Specifically, that feeling was I was being proactive in my decision making and following Warren Buffet's timeless financial advice of, "bulls and bears do fine and hogs get slaughtered."

The plan was for me to take off until fall 2010.   That plan changed two weeks later after having lunch with Doug Woods, the President for the Association of Manufacturing Technology (AMT).  Just like Vito Corleone in the movie The Godfather, Doug made me an offer I could not refuse :-)  After a week Doug and I agreed that AMT would create The Office of Strategic Innovation where I would be the Director and report directly to him as a consultant.   A few weeks after that I started part time consulting for AMT and currently I worked full time in 2010 for Doug.    2010 was a great year and I hope 2011 will be as well.

The West Isn't Working CNBC Video

This is a little below three minutes in length and if this short video on the future of the west does not get your attention, then nothing will...

Kiss Cam -- A First at a Wizards Game for Us

We have seasons tickets and last night my wife and I took Tim and his friend Will.  I bought two fifth row tickets for $50 each - normally $110 for those seats.  Season ticket holders get special deals, which is very nice.  Tim and Will sat in the lower seats for the first half.  Julie and I sat there the second half.

At every Wizards game they run the Kiss Cam in the 3rd quarter.  It is always the same deal, the find young and old couples, put their faces up on the Kiss Cam inside a large heart and then you have to kiss before they move on to the next couple.   Everyone in the crowd stares at that the huge screens to see if they are selected and to see what goofy things the couples might do.   Last night, they zoomed in on Julie and me.   






When I jumped on here and started kissing her John Wall jersey she was wearing, the crowd that it was pretty funny.  Julie was naturally embarrased.  To our surprise they came back to us a second time, so this time I gave her the mother of all kiseses.   I thought it was great - as did Tim and Will sitting up in our seats and watching in on the big screen at the Verizon Center.  My wife, not so much :-)

Ashburn #1! - But Not Something We Will Advertise :-)

I was sent this link by a former Ashburn neighbor.  At first I thought it was a joke, but it is not.  What
is Ashburn, VA number one in?

Obscenities.

A report is run every year and this year Ashburn, VA is number one.  As the report states:

"Ashburn, Va. is the most obscene place in America, as determined by analyzing data from Google.

To find the most obscene cities in America, we plugged the "seven dirty words you can never say on television" -- made popular by George Carlin -- into Google Trends.  We gave each city a score for each of the seven words, assigning more points to cities ranking higher up on each list."

Now, as a resident of multiple cities in my life, I find this hard to believe.   Considering that there is more bandwidth that comes into Ashburn, VA than any other city that I can think of (a three letter government agency in Maryland likely is ahead of Ashburn :-)  - Verizon's World Headquarters, AOL's Headquarters and many massive data centers for Amazon,  Google, Sony, Electronic Arts, insert company here, I just have to believe this is a function of massive bandwidth and not the foul mouthed Ashburn residents.  As I like to point out to friends and family, the internet ends just outside of my neighborhood at Verizon's massive campus.   I watched them pull countless fiber bundles into the old WorldComm Headquarters before it become Verizon.  We have countless data centers the size of multiple football fields spread through out Ashburn.

Of course, I have been known to contribute once or twice to that category of language, so maybe it is true :-)

Open Source For USA Report Card

The Open Source For America Organization came out with this very interesting report on the US government and its use of open source software.  Below is from the report:

"The Report Card assigned a percentage grade to the 15 Cabinet-level departments and agencies use of open source technologies, open formats, and technology tools for citizen engagement. Agencies that ranked highest based on the open source technology and open government criteria include:

Department of Defense (82 percent)

Department of Energy (72 percent)

Department of Health and Human Services (55 percent)

Department of Homeland Security (55 percent)

Department of Transportation (53 percent)

The latter agencies include the Departments of Veterans Affairs (49 percent); Agriculture (47 percent); Housing and Urban Development (45 percent); State (44 percent); Treasury (44 percent); Labor (44 percent); Justice (43 percent); Commerce (40 percent); Education (40 percent); and the Interior (37 percent)."

My Favorite Neurosurgeon - Dr. Donlin Long

My all time favorite neurosurgeon is Dr. Donlin Long of Johns Hopkins.    Dr. Long is a legend in neurosurgery and just a great guy.  He was also the mentor for Dr. Ben Carson. 

Below comes from a page at Johns Hopkins:

DONLIN M. LONG served as director of the Department of Neurosurgery from 1973 through 2000, when he stepped down to devote all his time to research, education, and patient care. He holds a joint appointment at the Applied Physics Laboratory and is a founder of the Laboratory for Technology Transfer.

Dr. Long, who also holds a Ph.D. in neuroanatomy, focuses his treatment and research on tumors of the skull, complex spinal problems, and problems of chronic pain. As director, he led his department to become one of the best of its kind, responsible for major contributions to the understanding of brain systems, brain tumor therapy, and pain treatment. Twenty-three of his trainees have gone on to head neurosurgery departments or divisions in hospitals and medical schools all over the world. In 2001, Dr. Long was appointed a Distinguished Service Professor.

Net Neutrality in a Nutshell

Dave Edstrom’s December 5^th, IMTS Insider Article

Net Neutrality in a Nutshell

The internet might be the most important invention the human race has ever come up with, and anything that could radically change the way the internet operates needs to be taken very seriously.  Most Americans are against net neutrality for the internet.  Most Americans do not know what net neutrality really is.

There are reasonable people who have differing views on net neutrality for perfectly logical reasons. The two individuals who had more to do with the creation of the internet than anyone else are Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn.  Cerf and Kahn designed the protocol (rules of the road) that the internet still uses to this day. They also disagree on the topic of net neutrality. If these two brilliant individuals disagree, then it is worth taking the time to discuss what net neutrality is and why the manufacturing sector should care about this topic.

What is net neutrality?  In a nutshell, when you pay for a level of service with your internet provider (2 megabits per second or 25 megabits per second as examples), that provider should treat every packet of information the same and not discriminate.  For example, your internet provider should not be looking at:

·      What type of content are you requesting or sending?

·      Where you are going on the internet or where did you come from?

·      What type of device are you using to access the internet — PC, Mac, cell phone, internet TV, Blu-Ray player, something else?

·      What type of packets you are sending or receiving?  For example, Skype, (using the internet as a video phone service), Netflix (watching movies over the internet), bit-torrent (moving lots of files on the internet), or any other type of service that can be identified.

This is where the term “neutrality” comes from in the term net neutrality.  Everything should be treated “neutral” or the same. 

This really requires an example to drive home this point.  Let’s not use the internet, but let’s use something we are all familiar with — a toll road. When you get on the toll road, you might pay more if you are going a farther distance. You might pay more if you are in a large tractor-trailer versus on a motorcycle. You might pay more if there is a fast lane that you want to use, vs. the standard traffic lanes.  That is how the internet operates today.

Here is a sign that you would not see on a toll road:

All Cars Going to McDonald’s Can Take Fast Lane #5

All Corvettes Can Take Fast Lane #11

All Trucks Carrying Home Depot Deliveries Can Take Fast Lane #16

Right now the question you are likely asking is, “Wait a second, if all cars pay the same fee, then why should those cars going to McDonald’s or all Corvettes get in the fast lane?”  You are also likely asking the question, “Why should it matter what is inside my truck? Why aren’t all trucks treated the same if they pay the same fee?”

The answer to those questions would simply be that the toll road operator has a business agreement with McDonald’s, GM or Home Depot.  If you feel that this is perfectly OK because it encourages business to be creative and you want government out of business, then you would be against net neutrality.  If you feel that this is simply not fair and you want internet providers to treat all cars and trucks the same, then you would be for net neutrality.  Reasonable people can and do disagree on this topic.

Those who are against net neutrality typically say, “Hey, it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  That is a perfectly logical statement. Those who are for net neutrality will say, “The reason the internet is not broken is because it has treated all packets the same and this will do nothing but create a caste system on the internet that will stifle creativity of small startups.”

What is my opinion?  I agree with Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the web) that net neutrality is extremely important.  While I don’t trust government when it comes to providing simple and clear regulation, I trust big business less when there is this much money at stake on the most important invention that man has ever created.

In the classic film “All the President’s Men”, the character Deep Throat tells Bob Woodward to “follow the money”. Those three words of advice are timeless when it comes to analyzing anything from simple to complex situations.  This advice certainly applies here.

While I believe it should be painfully obvious that this is critical to all aspects of business and society, it is important for manufacturing because the primary way to increase productivity in manufacturing will be with open protocols, such as MTConnect, that share information globally over the internet. Bottom line, It will be interesting to watch how net neutrality plays out.

Congratulations To Mark Albert For 30 Years Of Excellence

Huge congratulations to Mark Albert for 30 years of excellence at Gardner Publications!

Mark is a fantastic writer and has been a tremendous friend of MTConnect.   Here's to another 30 years Mark!

Scott McNealy Interview With Andrew Warner of Mixergy

I really enjoyed this interview with Scott McNealy.  Thanks to my oldest son for sending me this link.  There are commercials (I imagine that is why Mixergy provides the embedded code)  at the beginning, but after that it is commercial free.    This is only the second interview that Scott has done in the past five years.  I will always be a Scott McNealy fanboy.

CentOS - The Free Enterprise-Class Linux Distro

It has been rumored that Facebook uses CentOS.  It may or may not be true.  What is true is that CentOS has and is making a great number of inroads in the enterprise.  If Ubuntu is the free Linux desktop OS, then CentOS is the free Linux enterprise OS. 

Below is from the CentOS homepage:

"CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.  CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendors redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.)  CentOS is free.

CentOS is developed by a small but growing team of core developers.  In turn the core developers are supported by an active user community including system administrators, network administrators, enterprise users, managers, core Linux contributors and Linux enthusiasts from around the world."

This one hour overview on (FLOSS Weekly) of CentOS does a very nice job of laying out the the history, business and technical aspects of CentOS:

The Most Beautiful Experiment of All Time

Thought I would start 2011 off with:

The Double Slit Experiment which is well known as The Most Beautiful Experiment of All Time.




As is stated at Wikipedia:

"The most baffling part of this experiment comes when only one photon at a time is fired at the barrier with both slits open. The pattern of interference remains the same, as can be seen if many photons are emitted one at a time and recorded on the same sheet of photographic film.    The clear implication is that something with a wavelike nature passes simultaneously through both slits and interferes with itself — even though there is only one photon present."

The Importance of Off Site and Automatic Backups

The importance of having an off site backup was realized during this past week when my oldest son, John,  came home from VT and his Lenovo went dead.   John had his backup drive back at VT, but he has been using Carbonite for some time now and that saved him.  He could easily pull down any files that needed.   My middle son uses Carbonite and I do as well.  This is not an advertisement for Carbonite because there are a number of quality remote backup services out there.  I have had to use their support line once and I was impressed.    For Mac's, Time Machine works great.  But Time Machine only works great if you have the backup drive with you all the time.   This is why I tell my sons to ALWAYS have AT LEAST  two backups:

1. Local backup
2. Remote backup

Francis Ford Coppola lost 15 years of work when his computer AND backup drives were stolen by armed thieves.

I have Carbonite on my MacBook Pro and our our local iMac and we love it.  My middle son, Michael, has Carbonite on his MacBook Pro.

Update on Monday October 1st, 2012.  My youngest son Tim went to college this year and wanted a PC instead of a Mac.  I set him up with Carbonite.  I looked around for a Time Machine like backup for his PC.  Time Machine is great because you never have to actively tell it to backup - it does it automatically in the background much like Carbonite.  What we ended up going with was rebit and Tim is very happy with it.  I checked out a bunch of reviews and it is simple to use and just works.

A big question regarding Carbonite is around security.  Here is from Carbonite's website:

Safe and Secure

Rest easy knowing your files are encrypted and stored at one of our highly secure data centers.

Bank-Level Security

While still on your computer, your files are encrypted with 128-bit Blowfish encryption. Then, we transmit them to one of our state-of-the-art data centers using Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology. That’s the same technology used in online banking and ecommerce transactions. So, the only one who sees your files, is you.

Here is a link to Carbonite's security white paper that provides further answers on there network and data storage security.

Update on 12/26/2012:  I noticed that Carbonite has a mobile app for the iPhone, Android and Blackberry.  With the computing and display power of smartphones these days, having the ability to pull down the presentation I forgot to pull off my notebook before I left for the meeting might be a nice capability to have.

As I like to remind my sons, computers are cheap and data is expensive.

All Time Favorite Edstrom Christmas Ornament - Tim's Gingerbread Man

My youngest son, Tim, was four years old when he created the Christmas Gingerbread Man Ornament below.  He was at Sterling Community Center when the preschoolers were given a paper gingerbread man with a bunch of supplies.  The supplies were crayons, macaroni of various colors and miscellaneous pieces that could be used to attach to their gingerbread man.  Tim decided that only four pieces were necessary for his gingerbread man.    Tim's was the only gingerbread man that was deemed anatomically correct :-)  You can see where Tim signed his name right below the green bow tie.  Tim's Gingerbread Man always has the prime spot on our Christmas tree every year.

Open Source Mistakes That Killed Sun Microsystems

I really enjoyed this article on Sun Microsystems in The Register. Below is a snippet:

"Is there, then, a teachable moment here? A moment that McNealy can impart to Ellison, given that McNealy is a career-long fan of marrying open source with commerce since he picked up BSD and ran with it in SunOS, and then teamed up with Unix's then-owner AT&T to sink SunOS into Unix System V Release 4 in 1990?

McNealy, after all, likes to boast how Sun donated an "enormous" amount of its R&D to the community, and he identifies Sun as the Red Hat of Berkeley Unix. Any lessons the old dog of open systems can teach the brash database king?

Sure, McNealy tells us: put your shareholders first.

Wait — what? That's the language of Ellison [10]!

"We probably got a little too aggressive near the end and probably open sourced too much and tried too hard to appease the community and tried too hard to share," McNealy said. "You gotta take care of your shareholders or you end up very vulnerable like we got. We were a wonderful acquisition — we got stolen for a song at the bottom of the Dow."

"That's the message," McNealy tells us. "You gotta strike a proper balance between sharing and building the community and then monetizing the work that you do... I think we got the donate part right, I don't think we got the monetize part right.'"

 I remember personally asking Scott when would Sun have a DB.  He agreed with me that we needed a DB to compete in the market place.  Below is his recent discussion on this topic from the same article at The Register:

History lessons

History might have been different had Sun open sourced Solaris sooner and delivered its own x86 servers rather than rely on a set of compromised Microsoft partners. It might also have been different had Sun ventured away from hardware sooner and into that other great moneyspinner, the database. Not having a database was Sun's "Achilles leg," McNealy said. "Oracle sucked an enormous amount of life blood out of [Sun] customers because we didn't have a database to compete."

Great Article on Additive Technology

theENGINEER has a great article on additive technology.

This is a long article that has a couple of videos of EOS Executives discussing their technologies.  Below is from theENGINEER:

"Able to build models of mind-boggling geometrical complexity from scratch, they dispense with tooling costs. Plus, there’s very little waste. While traditional ’subtractive’ manufacturing processes often remove up to 95 per cent of the raw material to arrive at a finished component, additive machines only use the material they need to make the part.

“This technology is almost as close to Nirvana as you’re ever going to get.” Prof Richard Hague, AMRG

But most compelling of all, Hague explained, is the almost limitless freedom the technology gives to designers. ’It frees you from the constraints of traditional manufacturing processes. It changes the kind of products you can make and the way you design things. You can make very, very complicated geometries. It’s almost as close to Nirvana as you’re ever going to get.’ Critically, this unprecedented design freedom enables the production of lightweight optimised components that are impossible to make with traditional techniques. Hague is effusive on the possibilities and potential of the technology, and in particular the UK’s expertise in the field. ’We talk a lot about new industry and new jobs, high-value manufacturing and advanced manufacturing - it fits any of those definitions,’ he said."

Repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell

About damn time....

I discussed this in detail back in May of this year.

It is FREAKING insane that we are kicking valuable service people out of military service because they HAPPEN to be gay.   As of May 26th, 2010 there have been 13,389 men and women officially discharged from the military who happen to be gay. 

To think that we have men and women putting their lives on the line for the United States of America and we have some IDIOTS in congress who likely NEVER served in the military that believe these patriots should be kicked out is absolutely nuts.   Just one example of this is that we are losing Amercian soldiers lives because we are losing Mideast translators who, again, just happen to be gay.  John McCain's flip flop view on this is the ultimate example of what he will do in order to be elected...

As the popular t-shirts state, "You Don't Have To Be Straight To Shoot Straight."

Bob Gates and Admiral McMullen are exactly right in their views.

John McCain will be on the same side of history as those politicians who wanted to keep blacks out of the military.

27 March 1950 Secretary of the Army Gray ordered the service to open its recruiting without regard to race. He did so after winning President Truman’s agreement to a proviso that the Army could reinstitute a racial quota if the new policy resulted in "a disproportionate balance of racial strengths."

In September 1977, men and women began training in the same basic training units at Fort McClellan and Fort Jackson and in October 1978 at Fort Dix and Fort Leonard Wood. Enlistment qualifications became the same for men and women by order of the Secretary of the Army on 1 October 1979. An act of Congress passed in October 1975 directing the Academy to accept women into its training program in 1976. The first women cadets graduated form the United States Military Academy, West Point New York in 1980. Since then, women have continued to enter every class at the United States Military Academy. In August 1982, the Secretary of Defense ordered the increase in Army enlisted women’s strength from 65,000 to 70,000 and officers from 9,000 to 13,000, including medical personnel. 

The Edstrom Annual Christmas Deer

Above is the deer that was in my next door neighbor, Rick Allen's trash about ten years ago.  I pulled it out of his trash and mounted it to my oldest son's 1994 Ford Taurus (below) before school and put the red duct tape on its nose since it was Christmas.  John did not think it was funny.  I thought it was hilarious :-)

That weekend I decided to build a deer around the head.  It has now been declared an Ashburn historical landmark.  It is not unusual to have 200 to 300 cars come by every hour from sundown to sunrise to look at the Edstrom deer during the Christmas holiday.  The neighbors have gone from complaining about that "damn deer" to "hey, when's the deer coming out Dave?"

Shocking! Fixed Noise Viewers Are MOST Misinformed!

This is absolutely shocking to me that regular viewers of Fixed Noise (Fox News) are the MOST misinformed of any viewer! :-)   Friends don't let friends watch Fixed Noise.   Parents should keep their kids away from Fixed Noise as well unless raising misinformed idiots is the mom or dad's goal.  If you have watch Fox News, watch Shepard Smith.  He seems to be at least close to fair and balanced.  Below is from World Public Opinion on the UMD report.

"Those who watched Fox News almost daily were significantly more likely than those who never watched it to believe that:

• most economists estimate the stimulus caused job losses (12 points more likely), 
• most economists have estimated the health care law will worsen the deficit (31 points), 
• the economy is getting worse (26 points), 
• most scientists do not agree that climate change is occurring (30 points), 
• the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts (14 points), 
• their own income taxes have gone up (14 points),
• the auto bailout only occurred under Obama (13 points), 
• when TARP came up for a vote most Republicans opposed it (12 points) 
• and that it is not clear that Obama was born in the United States (31 points). 

The effect was also not simply a function of partisan bias, as people who voted Democratic and watched Fox News were also more likely to have such misinformation than those who did not watch it--though by a lesser margin than those who voted Republican."

So,  how does Fixed Noise react to this?  Fixed Noise attacks University of Maryland - ALL of UMD.   There you go Fox, attack the messenger who brings you the truth....

Get The HELL Out of Afghanistan!

Richard Holbrooke's last dying words were:

“You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.” 

The complete idiots in the Obama administration stated it was a joke.   It was not a joke.   Young solders are dying for no freaking reason whatsoever.  After ten years, what in the hell have we accomplished?   Not a damn thing.   Why are we still there?  

1. Money.  Lots of people make lots of money off war.
2. None of the Senators or Representatives kids are dying. 
3. It is a good campaign sound bite for Republicans. 

It is no more complicated than those three reasons. 

Below is from Politics Daily:

"Sixty percent now believe the war hasn't been worth fighting "considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States," while 34 percent believe it has been. Forty-three percent say they "strongly" believe the war wasn't worth fighting, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted Dec. 9-12.

That compares to the Post/ABC News poll in July when 53 percent said the war wasn't worth fighting compared to 43 percent who said it was. The last time a majority believed in the war was in December 2009. "