Stock Price Manipulation in action

I've been getting spams all weekend for the OTC stock TTTP.OB.  They've been trading at around $0.08.  This morning they've spiked to $0.12.  Someone's making a killing on that spam...

How many bugs did you fix before breakfast?

We're in full-fledged beta mode now.  It's quite gratifying to churn through a list of bugs and knock each one off the list...  But maybe that's just me.

Pyrotechnics

Cool, I was building a PC out of spare parts, and it blew up.  It was sitting there at the Windows 2003 Server setup screen (some people might argue that was my problem) and all of a sudden there was a loud bang and crackling noise.  The circuit breaker tripped, and the room filled up with smoke.

I still haven't plugged anything back in yet, so I don't know if it was the monitor or the power supply on the PC.  My guess is the monitor; I haven't used it in a few years, and it's been sitting on the floor of a damp basement...

Fundraising Ride

I signed up for the Mass Reb Ribbon Ride in August.  I have been a supporter of Community Servings in the past, and this seemed like a good way to support them again.  We'll be riding 225 miles across Massachusetts in 3 days, which will be my longest ride yet.  Help support me!

Pocket Tunes 3.0 Beta

The Pocket Tunes 3.0 beta program is finally underway.  We've got a good number of users signed up, and we're getting some great feedback so far.  Everyone's been excited about the new features, particularly the tag-based song browser and the Windows Media Player interface.  There have been some good bug reports, but we'll get those ironed out.  Hope I can keep up with the beta emails!!  I'm a bit worn out, now.

The things people will do...

to get support.  I just got an email from a customer who claims that he invested $100,000 in our company to get it founded.  (As I believe I've mentioned previously in my blog, NormSoft is completely self-funded.)  What will they think of next?

Another Time Trial

I raced another time trial (my third so far) last night.  I did pretty well; I shaved 18 seconds off my time, bringing me just about to an average 23mph for the 9.75 miles.  As I crossed the finish line, I passed my 30-second man, who was using aerobars, so I felt pretty good about that. :)  The ride was tough; I was really struggling to keep going, particularly on the flat sections, where I couldn't get aero enough.  I took one hill too quickly, and my lungs were burning for a few minutes afterwards.  On the last hill, I gave it everything and easily caught my 30-second man.  He caught me on the downhill, and then I passed him again right on the finish line, as I sprinted up the small incline.  Overall, I felt good.  Today I'm off to the bike shop to get a set of aerobars!

Stupid me, I forgot my helmet at the race.  Doh!  I went back later, and it was gone.  I emailed the race organizers, but no word yet.  Might be time to get a new helmet today...

My first Time Trial

Okay, I'll post something that should be a little more interesting...

A few weeks ago, I did my first bicycle race - a time trial in Dover, MA.  A time trial is a race against the clock; each rider sets out at 30 second intervals and tries to finish the course as fast as possible.  You're not allowed to draft (ride close behind) other riders because that gives you an advantage in a race that's supposed to be all about your own effort.

I started off at a little under my maximum effort; I needed to save some energy for the upcoming hills. The race starts going up a few stair-step hills, and I was feeling like I was having a little trouble. Just ahead of me was a girl on a bike. When I started to pass her, she suddenly swerved to the left, struggling up the hill. I yelled, "Look out!" and gave her plenty of room. That got my adrenaline going, and I picked up the pace.

I reached the top of the hill, surprised thinking that it was not as tall as I'd remembered. There's a nice steep downhill section afterwards, and I got down as aerodynamic as I could and got close to 40mph; it felt great! At the bottom of the hill is a hairpin turn; I looked around and there was no traffic, so I took the whole lane to get a good line around the corner to keep up my speed, just tapping my brakes a little.

After that is a less-steep climb. I started grinding away, and I heard the whir of wheels to my left. The guy who started 30 seconds behind me was passing. You can't draft in a time trial, but the mental advantage of having someone to chase (your "carrot") is big. I picked up the pace again and tried to keep him in sight.

After that hill is a short descent with a blind 30 degree right-hand turn. It always makes me nervous. I saw the rider in front of me speed around the corner and briefly thought about slowing down for the turn. But I looked around - no traffic - so I moved left and took the turn wide. Still no traffic, so I was still making good speed.

I saw the rider in front of me hit the last big hill. I used to commute on these roads, so I know this hill quite well. I knew that I could climb it quickly because it's short, and it's the last hill. So I gave it everything I've got and sailed past the guy who just passed me. I looked down at my speedometer: 19.5mph UP HILL. I was smoking. :)

At the top of the hill is a flat section. I was feeling pretty beat at this point, but still going strong. Then I heard the whir of wheels again. Another rider zoomed by me with his special time trial bike with disc wheels and aerobars. He was out of sight while I was thinking, "That's not right". :)

On the last downhill section, I was fighting the wind a bit. The rider whom I'd just passed had aerobars (I don't) and was able to catch me again and got about 5-10 seconds ahead. There's one last short, but steep, hill before the finishing line, and I made up a few seconds there, using up the last bit of energy, then I yelled my rider number as I crossed the finish line and sat up and tried to catch my breath.

22.48mph was my average speed. My previous maximum speed for any ride was 21.2mph. All the riding on the trainer this winter (and down in Florida) is paying off. :)

That's it. It was exciting. Can't wait for the next one!

Here are the results.  Scroll to the bottom for the most recent.

 

Message from TJIC

Tim,

Remember back when you used to have a blog, and you'd post things in it?

Those were great days!

TJIC

Bike Racing

Well, I was going to try to enter a few bike races this year, so I went to go watch a criterium this morning.  It's supposed to be one of the safest criteriums around, so I figured that I should be okay to race in it.  (Don't want to get hurt and miss my trip to France!)  Well, there was a nasty crash midway through the race; someone flew into a telephone pole.  No one was hurt too bad, but I think that's too much excitement for me! :)  The race director told me they should call it a crashterium.  I'll probably do some time trials, though.

Back in Business

Well I just wasted the past 2 days re-installing all the software on my laptop.  For some reason, it was just rotting away.  My sound output was really low through the built-in speaker, and the hard disk access was painfully slow.  Perhaps there was some driver I installed that caused these problems, but they're all fixed now.

On the plus side, I got to update all my applications with the new MSDN subscripiton we just got.  Outlook 2003 is quite nice; I think I could get used to it. :)

Back to work!

CLIE TH-55

So if you can't get your TH55 to connect to your WiFi access point, check the access point's channel.  Apparently the TH55 doesn't work with channels of 7 or higher.  Nice...

Baaba Maal

I went to see Baaba Maal at the Sommerville theater last night.  It was absolutely incredible.  I first heard his music on Napster 2, but I had no idea what the live performance would be like.  It was extremely up-beat; I think I worked off 1,000 calories just watching it!  They did some amazing dances and dueling (between a drummer and vocalist), and they really got the audience involved in the music.  It was quite improvisational, and a few audience members joined them on stage for a short bit of dancing and music-making.  Overall, I enjoyed it immensely, and I highly recommend seeing his band if they're playing locally.

 

Stolen Credit Card Verification

So apparently someone decided that my web site would be a good place to verify their stolen credit card list.  He placed about a dozen orders with obviously false information.  Since my shopping cart is automated, it can't tell that "khkljhl" is any different from "john" for someone's name, so it just processes the orders.

I ended up blocking the entire C class of IP addresses where he was coming from (somewhere in .ae United Arab Emirates), and I'll have to keep an eye out for crap like this in the future.

I'd like to limit orders to 1 or 2 per day for each IP address, but that would mess up people behind big firewalls.  I could store their last order in a cookie, but that's easily circumvented by deleting the cookie between each order.

Can't think of a great solution except to keep blocking addresses when people do this kind of thing...

 

Breaking Away Bicycle Tours

Okay, I found a replacement for my bike tour: Breaking Away Bicycle Tours.  I talked to Greg Hogan, its directory, on the phone, and he was very accomodating and managed to squeeze me into their almost-full tour.  The dates are almost the same, so I can keep my flight.  Sweet, I'm going to France afterall. :)

 

Discover Card

Someone allegedly from Discover card just called me (the caller ID said "Unknown number") asking me to fax them a "proof of address" like a bill or something, plus my Discover merchant account number.  We've been a Discover merchant for about 8 months now.  Yeah, that sounds legitimate...

 

La Corsa Tours

Well, La Corsa Tours just cancelled my bike tour on me.  Great!  Time to go searching for another tour at the last minute.  I called them up, and spoke with Lori, and at first she was a bit rude and defensive, which really put me off.  But I insisted that she help me find another tour to go on that matched what they were offering, and she became much more friendly and gave me some good advice.

Trek 5200

Test rode a Trek 5200 at Wheelworks today.  Man, that thing rides smooth!  Also looking at the Specialized Roubaix Comp, but I'm not sure about those gimmicky inserts.  Rides nice, though.

Gotta have a nice bike for my trip to France this summer!!

 

ARGH!

What the hell!  Microsoft's new SP3 for Outlook XP now has even stricter blocking of access to the address book.  This breaks all kinds of things, like SpamNet.  This is getting ridiculous!

 

USB Hell

I'm in USB Hell right now.  I bought a USB hard disk (it also has a Firewire interface, but the stupid makers of Firewire decided to have two cable standards, so I have to wait for the right cable to arrive).  I can't unmount the hard disk for some unknown reason (Windows says to "try again later".  Thanks!).  So out of desperation, I unplugged it, and now I can't use that USB port for anything else.

Add to the fact that I just bought a D-Link 7-port USB hub, which ocassionally (5-10 times per day) flakes out and needs to be unplugged and plugged in again, and it's USB Hell.  How many USB devices do I have?  Let's see.  A mouse, hard disk, 2 card readers, USB->serial cable adapter, and numerous Palms.  Argh!