Greg's Horrible Waste of Internet Bandwidth

You may be aware that I was a member of the Super Touring Advisory Committee for the Sports Car Club of America. The STAC's responsibility is make recommendations to the Club for regulations for that category. It requires a lot of thought, not only what you want people to do, but what you don't want them to do. I wrote the following on a racing forum some years ago, and I thought it bore repeating, with some minor updating... How to write a rule We seem to get into a lot of arguments about various rules. “This rule says this” or “this rule says that” or whatever. Typically the basis of this argument is "different strokes, different folks"; one person's read is another person’s cheat. I see the root cause for all these arguments coming down to one thing: poorly-written rules. Yep, sorry if it pisses off the rulesmakers, but I think I can credibly argue that most disagreements center around either people reading into the rule what wasn’t intended (maybe based on a f...

Within the aviation community there's a spirited debate about the term conventional landing gear . Traditionally, the term refers to taildragger airplanes, those that have a tailwheel, like a Piper Cub, the Boeing B-17, and the Douglas DC-3. But since around the time of World War Two most aircraft have been manufactured with " tricycle landing gear " or a nose gear. Almost every airplane you see today is a tricycle with a nose gear; short of Homebuilt or other purpose-built aircraft (e.g., agricultural, aerobatics) you would be hard-pressed to find many airplanes with a tail wheel. Yet despite the fact that most aircraft manufactured within the last half-century use tricycle/nose gear, the term "conventional landing gear" continues to apply to the tail wheel. This is confusing to people new to aviation; to them "conventional" is what they see out at the local airport every day like the Cessnas and Cirrus, or every airliner they'll board, all of...

So I've got an opportunity to do some data acquisition for a pro team, guys that I consider personal friends. Problem is, with a 13-race schedule and a lot of testing, I'd need to devote more time off work than I've got available in vacation time (not to mention needing to keep some for my wife and otherwise-personal life). So I've been trying to find some good guys to suggest to the team for a full season of data engineering. No one to be found. As you are no doubt aware, data is big in motorsports, one of those former "unfair advantages" that, as they all do, has moved into "absolutely necessary". I was told by one data guy that I called that 2012 is going to be one of the largest Grand-Am fields in a long time, if not in history, and teams from the Continental series, Rolex GT, and DP are all looking for data guys (and this ignores all other series!) And there's just few good ones to be had. This guy I mentioned has been getting...

I've noticed this three times in the last two weeks: something I've ordered online was shipped from the seller with a UPS shipper number. Then, as the item arrived within the UPS system to my local hub area, it was "transferred" and delivered by USPS, the Postal Service. I think this is a FANTASTIC idea. I'd like to shake the hand of the person that came up with it. Think of it: UPS has the worldwide infrastructure to efficiently move large amounts of bulk cargo all over the place. But, their Achilles Hell is the lack of a widespread infrastructure at the end delivery point, especially to homes (which is why they charge more for single-box deliveries to homes versus bulk to commercial locations). By the same token, the Postal Service has the kick-ass infrastructure for delivery of small bulk to individual homes/locations (and, I believe it's mandated by law?) yet their Achilles Hell is the lack of a solid infrastructure for transfer of bulk carg...

9/11, ten years later. Seems like forever ago. There are literally billions of stories about "where were you on that day?" I recently watched a NatGeo story about George W. Bush's story and found it compelling; I simply couldn't have imagined being in his position of responsibility on that day. But he said something that struck me interesting: paraphrased, he said that "some day 9/11 will be a date on the calendar like Pearl Harbor, but for us that lived through it there's our memories of that day". Here's mine. On Monday September 10, 2001 I was in Albany NY on a business trip as a Novell IT consultant, having flown myself there in my Grumman Tiger . I was supposed to be working with a downtown state government agency all week but there was a problem with the contract when I arrived that morning; either the statement of work was wrong, or there was disagreement on the scope of work, or something like that. We tried to come to an agreement but by ear...

If you've been around on the "Interwebz" as long as I have (from the beginning...hell, I was on CompuServ in the early 80's) then you no doubt have a large collection of bookmarked pages that you've been carrying forward over the years. You probably saved them from prior computers, and you definitely kept them as you upgraded to later versions of Internet Explorer. And, if you switched to Firefox like I did, probably the first thing you did after installing it was accept the "yes" when it asked you if you wanted to transfer over those bookmarks. And those bookmarks are probably all organized in separate folders under separate topics, all ready for you just "in case" you ever needed them again. But have you ever really needed them again? Go back and take a look at some of those bookmarks; do you even remember them? I'd wager a good quarter of them may not even be valid any more (do a search in there for GeoCities...) and when it comes righ...

The Nürburgring Trip, 2011 As related on Go Ahead, Take the Wheel   Did reading Nürburgring just make you shiver? Yep, me too! I spent several days at this racetrack and thought you might find my musings interesting, maybe interesting enough so you make that jump, too (while you still can; more later). And you want to, trust me. If you’ve ever thought or even just fantasized about driving the Nürburgring,this story is for you. I went to the Nürburgring with a group of racer friends, some were there before, one actually races there in the VLN series. Going with a group improves the social aspect which can make a big difference. Had I gone there solo, I would not have had nearly as much fun. Yeah, I would have come home knowing I had driven the Nürburgring, but who would I brag to each time I got off the track? Having friends there so we could swap lies was pretty cool…plus you get to give each other rides increasing your track time for the same money. So, don’t forg...