Trip to Colorado turns into Trip to Lake George, Part 1

My family (a wife and five kids, you know) planned to be in Colorado this past weekend, for an informal memorial service for Mandy's grandmother who passed away last year. Mandy's dad organized the service, including arranging and paying for our flights. He'd be traveling with us. We'd be met in Denver by other extended family traveling from various parts of the country.

We agreed to meet at Stewart Airport, minutes from our house, between 5 AM and 5:15 for a 6 AM flight.

We arrive together. I drop off Mandy, the kids, and a pile of luggage at the curb, then find my way to Overflow Parking and back. I've flown out of Stewart a dozen times and never known Overflow even existed; its just not that busy of an airport. But a bus is waiting for me right behind my car, the driver reminds me to turn off my headlights, and speeds me back to the terminal.

Ever travel with five kids? I get the diaper backpack on Rose, age four, the toy backpack on Seth, six, the laptop and gadgets backpack on Meg, eight, and the snack backpack on Rourke, 9.9. Extend luggage handles, Meg pulls the small, Rourke the medium, I throw two toddler car seats over my shoulder by their straps and clasp large luggage. Mandy sees the plan and picks up what's left: Shane, 2.

John is waiting in line to check us all in by the time my pack and I get in. He's brought in two booster seats from our pile. Cool.

The line is huge, for Stewart: maybe thirty people at the airTran check in, and John says that they had just opened up a 2nd line and he had jumped into it, so was only four people deep.

There are four "self check-in kiosks" but I hear the attendant explain that people need to go one at a time because even though it is "self check-in" they still need to go through her. The wait is about fifteen minutes; one of the attendants called out while we were next in line: "Is the Bywater party here?" "Yes!" I called back. "Is the McLaughlin party here?" next. "Yes!" again; Mandy's maiden name. Cool, they know we're here. I'm feeling better.

So we finally get to the counter, and an attendant starts to check us in. It's now 5:30. At first she says that the flight was just closed but she can claim she was already checking us in and re-open it. But there is a problem, she doesn't have tickets for all of us. She reads off the names that she has tickets for, but doesn't have Rose or Rourke listed, and only has one Margaret (missing either Mandy or Meg, that is). I hand her back the ticket that she had just given us with Rose's name. My guess, in hindsight, is that they are in the process of giving our seats away upstairs at the gate as we are trying to get checked in downstairs.

She calls over a supervisor for assistance, and is truly trying to help us. She tells us that she is not going to be able to get us on, and even if she is they are going to close the doors ten minutes before the flight, and we still need to get through security. I ask if it's worth trying to get the kids rushed through security, the supervisor nods, so I bolt that way.

Mandy has already had the kids in line, and made it to the first security guard, who doesn't let our gang through because we don't have boarding passes. I explain that they are being printed, our flight is about to go, and the attendant had recommended I get moving through security since we have five kids in tow. The security guard bluntly states that we can't get past her without boarding passes. Grrrr. I bolt back to the check in.

Things there are over. No way we can get on the flight with eight of us, as it has been "way oversold, and closed." No way is there anyway to get us there before Saturday. Not with eight people. Ouch. John decides to bag the trip.

Regroup. Meg is crying because we aren't going on an airplane. Mandy and I put our heads together and decide to bring the brood to Perkins for breakfast while we figure out a new plan. On the way, Mandy calls Rocking Horse Ranch to see if they have rooms, but their Reservation Desk doesn't open until nine.

Ok, Lake George then.

Keeping scammers off online dating sites

Mark Brooks, my former co-worker, did an interview with Nelson Rodriguez of LoveAccess regarding keeping scammers off online dating sites. Nelson is a great guy, and from our past-discussions I consider him an expert in this area.

The idea of the online dating industry sharing resources to fight scammers was discussed at the iDate 2006 conference in Miami; Mark and I were on that panel. I publicly stated that I would support that effort, and suggested Mark be a good person to spearhead the effort. Seems like his recent interviews are a step in that direction. Kudos, Mark!

I'll include here my comments on Mark's interview with Nelson:

We talked about shared effort at iDate Miami 06. I still think it has merit -- somethings are easy to share and don't get into proprietary info.

At Cupid.com, we only advertise in the US and Canada, so we block IPs known to be from any other foreign country. We use http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/node/view/6
for this data.

Also, I have no need to allow anyone who wants IP anonymity on my site, so we also block all IPs known to be associated with TOR, The Onion Router.

Commercial anonymizing services will gladly block their members from access your web site if you send them a request.

IPs are easy to change. MAC addresses can be spoofed but that is a good idea I hadn't thought of. But as soon as you block someone, you alert them of the need to change. The only thing that seems to limit scammers is time. So when considering a scammer strategy, devise methods that let them waste time without letting them know that they've been identified. They will learn that your site doesn't convert for them, and they will be motivated to try elsewhere.

Netgear router = impossible to configure

I wasted another couple prime Friday evening hours this week at my brother's office trying to configure his Internet connection. I set it up once months back but he lost connectivity and called Verizon instead of me. The tech had him wipe out my configuration, and then couldn't help him get back online. Grrrr.

The hassle is his DSL router and his Netgear Wireless router both want to be a DHCP server, and both want to be IP 192.168.1.1. I can configure the DSL router however I want, it's got a nice interface. So I disabled its DHCP and gave it a different IP. So far so good.

The Netgear router has a "configuration wizard" that you cannot escape. After a hard reset, it redirects all requests to 192.168.1.1, and writes a route aliasing the domain "routerconfig" or whatever to that adress. Then it tries to sense the Internet connectivity. If it doesn't have a upstream link, you can't proceed any further in the wizard. Nor can you bypass the wizard, Grrrrr! If it's plugged into the DSL router, it detects that it'll get a dynamic IP and beckons you to continue. But "poof!" it doesn't work. 404 for the next screen in the wizard.

I've concluded that the best way to "solve" the problem is to replace the Netgear wireless router with a different one, form *anyone but Netgear.* I talked to Jeremy, my Senior Systems Administrator, and he said that about a year ago Netgear switched their interface around and now they are total crap spo he's stayed clear.

I recently replaced my Netgear MR814 Wireless Router at home because it no longer allowed wireless connections. Most often it wouln't broadcast anything, not even its SSID. Most I could get out of it was 5 minutes uptime wirelessly. It guess that's a "security feature" since it couldn't do WAP either.

The replacement is a Belkin Wireless G Plus router. WAP, plus an interface I can do anything with. I sense I'll be buying one in the near future for my bro. Much better than losing yet another Friday evening.

Tragic follow up: High school poets

Last Friday I blogged about listening to high school students recite poetry at Barnes & Noble; their teacher is another parent from my daughters soccer team. Our daughters played together while I listened to her students' poems.

This week when I arrived for the end of soccer practice, the eight year old girls were all gathered around a picnic table working on a group sympathy card for a team mate. I learned that, tragically, her father had died suddenly over the weekend of a heart attack. He had been at work. This was the same family who I had run into at the book store.

I was flabbergasted. I cannot imagine. This is a young family; he was not an old man. He was my peer.

It made me assess: am I doing everything I can do the keep my heart healthy? I made it to the gym this week twice, I need to go more. I've been eating healthy. What would my family do? I cannot imagine.

Highschool poets

My 7 year old daughter -- D'oh!: 8 year old daughter! -- Meg and I both had birthday money burning a whole in my pocket tonight, and it needed to get spent at Barnes and Noble. While I was paging new paperbacks Meg's soccer coach asked if I'd come over and listen to her high school students present poetry. I applaud, no: snap, their willingness to stand up in public -- the closest thing we have now to a town square -- and read their own work.

It reminded me of a poem I wrote in college, especially appropriate for the young audience of tonight. I wish them all well.

"Bite Big"

Bite big!
Grow, puppy, grow!
Don't be afraid to choke.
Show canine smile around raw red meat.
Aggressively chew, aggressively eat
and Grow!