Don't Back Down

Back around the dawn of time - which is to say, nearly twenty years ago, in the web world - the World Wide Web came into existence. Technically, for those keeping track, this was in 1989. According to legend, the first web server was named nxoc01.cern.ch - indicating definitively that servers do not require a preceding www in order to function correctly.

In fact, if you're reading this, it is quite apparent as well, because it comes from jayseae.cxliv.org - and if you put a www in front of that, it will fail, again demonstrating this principle. So where did we get those pesky three characters? They come from a fairly long-standing tradition of naming servers in networks all over for the services which they provide. Thus, a web (www) server is named, simply "www". An ftp server is named (wait for it) "ftp". When the server name is added to the domain name - for instance, cxliv.org, you would get www.cxliv.org and ftp.cxliv.org, respectively.

Read "Do You (or Your Server) WWW?" »

Every few minutes, I receive an email telling me how I'm about to miss out on the latest stock market darling if I don't act fast enough. I think that many of us do. But I also get something really similar in the mail every couple of weeks. One of these that I received earlier this year was Scott S. Fraser's Elite Stock Market Advisory. Dated "3rd Week - January 2007", I figured I'd hang onto it, and see just how well old Scott did with his picks. I mean if he did well, maybe I ought to pay a little more attention not only to him, but to those email messages as well.

So now it's a little more than six months after I received this letter, and I figured that it's worth checking back in to see how things have fared over time. Sure, it's possible that a short-term ride would have done well, but I'm more of a buy-and-hold investor anyway, as I never have time to check in every few minutes. While it's definitely possible that we may need to check back in after an even longer waiting period, as six months may not be a good measuring stick, it's a decent estimate, just to see what's happening. Ready? Here we go!

Read "Scams Can Come in Snail Mail Too" »

When I was a kid, my dad worked in the airline industry, which meant that we were able to fly for free with some frequency - in reality it meant that at least once a year we flew back to the East Coast (where I now live) to visit family. It also meant that I was one of the early birds when it came to having a frequent flyer number. I think the first was probably in the Delta Sky Miles program. This was so long ago that I actually have a place on my statement where I have miles from the original program that won't expire (not a lot of miles, but miles nonetheless).

These days, it seems like everyone has an affiliation program of some sort. Airlines have had them for years (probably decades), and car rental companies have them, though they usually just award airline miles. Hotels give you airline miles or points towards free stays (some even give you both). One of the more recent entrants into this arena is for frequent movie goers. Some of you might realize that I watch movies, so this holds some interest to me, even if I don't always go to the movies to see them. So which is better - AMC's MovieWatcher or Regal's Crown Club? Let's try to find out!

Read "AMC MovieWatcher versus Regal Crown Club" »

On July 14th, 1789, seven prisoners (yes, just seven!) were freed from the French prison called The Bastille. I'm sure it was La Bastille or Le Bastille or something - I'm not trying to offend anyone here. Anyway, this event marked the beginning of the French Revolution, and the prison was a symbol of the power of Louis XVI, so each year on this day, the French celebrate the day, much as Americans celebrate July 4th.

In Charlotte, the French-American Chamber of Commerce puts on a festival celebrating this event. Previously - or at least last year - this event was held in the Wachovia Plaza uptown, which is certainly a nice place, but you have to wonder what happened, as this year's event (the 7th, from what I can find, it moved to a small enclosed space in the North Davidson Arts District. Not a good choice.

Read "Bastille Day Festival" »

There are times - which occur all too frequently - that it seems like perhaps everyone ought to just take a really deep breath and relax a bit. The latest example of this is our illustrious leader Pat McCrory, who has been catching a huge amount of flak for the comments he made last week about the Fourth of July festivities uptown.

On July 5th, McCrory wrote in a letter to the city manager that they should be congratulated for their efforts in containing things (you may recall that prior years have not gone so smoothly). This, despite the fact that 169 people were arrested uptown. At least there wasn't a riot, right? Anyway, McCrory also made the unfortunate choice of saying that (quote) "too many of our youth, primarily African American, are imitating and/or participating in a gangster type of dress, attitude, behavior and action." Some people, including the NAACP, quickly demanded an apology. To throw fuel on the fire, McCrory insisted that he wouldn't.

Read "Should Pat McCrory Apologize?" »

Obviously, there is a segment of our world that is offended right now, in particular by the words of Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory. This isn't an unusual happening - nearly four years ago (wow, that was a long time ago!), I wrote about Rush Limbaugh, and while he may have said some offensive things, other issues brought up in the same article may or may not offend you (the use of the word niggardly, for instance, which has nothing to do whatsoever with that other n-word).

Both of these things focus on the African American population, and that isn't intentional - it was just the only other item I could think of off the top of my head that had written about. I also didn't realize it had been four years since that other entry. But it can also be something religious that bothers us, or perhaps something lascivious (preferably not something lascivious and religious - that's a little over-the-top, even for me). Let's look at a few things that can offend, just so I'm not painted into a corner.

Read "What Do You Consider Offensive?" »

I'm not always a fan of the cliche, but every once in a while, they do come in handy. For instance, I was in Office Depot one Sunday morning, picking up something, when suddenly a lady simply explodes on the cashier about how she absolutely has to get the item in her basket for the price on the shelf. It seems that since someone neglected to remove last week's sale price from the item in question, not only does she want to get the discount from last week's sale, she also wants to get the "buy two, get one free" from this week's sale.

Now don't get me wrong here - I'm not against taking advantage of an opportunity when one arises. That isn't the point, so please don't let me give you the wrong idea. If the price is still up from last week on the item in question, and the riser has this week's new sale on it, the lady is likely entitled to the pricing, and I'm all for it.It's the fact that she's saving a grand total of fifty cents and she didn't even have to raise her voice to to it that really has me confused.

Read "Attracting More Bees with Honey" »

Recently, based on an article in the paper, our family decided to take another look at Geocaching. I had already decided that this would be one of those things that I pursued one day, but it was just "added to the list", and I figured that I would get to it when I could get to it. There was no date attached or anything. But with summer dragging on, and looking for something to fill the last couple weeks before school picks up, the article seemed to be almost an omen. So that meant that we needed the one essential ingredient for the task: A handheld GPS device.

In order to become a family who risks life and limb - or preferably, does not, we needed to be able to determine not only where we were, but where we wanted to go. Enter the GPS. Using coordinates that we could obtain at the Geocaching web site, we get a nice path to the destination. So it's fairly critical that we had one. You see, most caches aren't just laid out on the roadway for people to find - they are typically stored in tree stumps and under piles of rocks and things. So we started searching, so that we could go searching.

Read "Garmin eTrex Vista CX Handheld GPS Navigator" »

After we purchased our first GPS, we quickly set out to try to find our first cache. It turns out that the Geocaching web site has quite a few listed in the Charlotte area. It's not a terrible surprise, really, but it's always nice to find something happening here. It's not like Charlotte is a small town, exactly, but we always seem to be just on the outside of things.

I'm sure that there are some places that have thousands of Geocaches in their area, and that's okay, but we were pleasantly surprised to find that there are 850 of them within 50 miles of our zip code (which is within the Charlotte city limits). This is something that could go either way. Someplace like New York City, which has millions of people, may not have many caches, because it may not have as much wilderness - though there are certainly interesting places to hid things all over the city. And a remote place with lots of wilderness may not have the people. So maybe Charlotte is just in the sweet spot.

Read "Finding Our First Geocaches" »

Now that we had been able to find some caches with the Garmin eTrex Vista CX Handheld GPS Navigator, we had determined that we didn't really like it all that much. There wasn't anything exactly wrong with the unit, it just didn't seem to work as well as it could. After doing a bit more reading, I determined that I'd like to see if I could find something a bit better.

I had originally been looking for something that was small and easy to carry about. Of course, the problem with this is that the antenna is internal. That alone may have been part of the problem, so I crossed of that requirement, and looked again. That's when I noticed that the Vista, though it lists a "high performance" chip, did not have an "extremely accurate SiRF" chip, which is apparently the latest and greatest. Does it make a difference? Heck, I don't know, but if I'm going through the trouble of upgrading, I might as well check it out to see. Inquiring minds want to know.

Read "Garmin GPSMap 60CSx Handheld GPS Navigator" »

One year ago today (technically, one year ago tomorrow, but it's close enough), I added the first advertising to Don't Back Down. I probably should have done so earlier, as at the very worst, it brings in a trickle of money, which can pay for hosting and the like. I'm not making John Chow money or anywhere near it, that's for sure. But it can certainly help pay the bills, which is nice.

Had I done so two years earlier, when I started the blog, it may have grown a bit faster. Had I done so even a couple months faster, when there was a bunch of traffic for the Treasure Hunters, then I may have been able to make some really fun money. But that's okay. It's been an interesting learning experience, to say the least.

Read "One Year of Advertising on Don't Back Down" »