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Showing posts from August 27, 2006

Road Trip

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I am back from my most recent roadtrip. I loaded up the Tesla and started letting the hands-off Full Self Drive (FSD) supervised take me to to points North. First stopping in a campground in Tennesee and up to Pittsburgh for the CIDM Convex Conference (which was the bast conference in years). There was a celebration of the 20 years of DITA XML. I was an earlier adopter. My presentation went well and I semi-stealth launched wisdomino. I demo'd some extra cool software we developed and will be selling in weeks to come. It's truely game changing. Of course, there will be much more than that to come. After that it was on to Franklin, PA. to meet with some colleagues in the mining division and onto the farm stopping in Olean NY for the night. I am pretty sure it was the first time I had driven across the entire Allegany National Forest. I ended up driving through the very dark forest expanse during a night time thunderstorm. Although I normally trust the Tesla FSD on the Inters...
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We are working through mounds of paper work to be able to deploy. Most of it is pretty clear but it is voluminous. I am still unsure at this point if I can keep my wisdom teeth. The dentist will set my fate. There is just a lot to do in a short time to get PQ'd to get to work in Antarctica. The following photo is from an accident about 2 1/2 hours plane ride from McMurdo in 1998. The c-130 hit a crevasse and twisted the craft into the chasm. I don't think anyone was hurt. Used without permission from http://www.gmra.org/n0nhj/ice99/p14.htm
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Bonnie and I ran down to Washington DC for the Toastmasters International World Championship of Public Speaking. We had a good time. We caught up with Jim Thompson for the event. We both noticed the overall quality of the speeches was even higher than last year. One of the rules is to have 2 minutes of silence in between speakers. This year I noticed that two minutes is not enough to get the last speaker out of your head. The speeches are all that good. Everyone of them moves you. Often times the speaker has you taking an emotional roller coaster with some unexpected twists. The guy who won second place has been trying to win, I think he said, for 28 years. This is as close as he got so far. After that we got right back to Berkshire. There is a lot to be done before winter. As part of the trip I had some more good conversation with someone that has been to the ice. I also got a book that was published this month on "How to Survive Antarctica". It was a super quick read. Thi...