I got goosebumps watching this video

Some of you know that I've been flying a lot recently, especially between Trenton and Boston. When I came across this YouTube video, it sent shivers up my spine. It shows what happens when a jet engine consumes a bird upon takeoff.

Hats off to the cockpit crew for keeping so calm. I realize their aircraft, a Boeing 757, is fully capable of flying on one engine for extended time (180 minutes) if the other engine fails. But it still must be an unsettling experience to have half your power (and a good deal of your stopping capability without reverse thrusters on one engine) knocked out.

If you are an aviation enthusiast or somebody who flies a lot, enjoy the video here or here. The videographer, Simon Lowe, does an excellent job documenting the entire event.

Support my fundraising efforts for the MS 150!

Please take a moment to consider supporting my involvement in the upcoming MS 150 bike tour. See the MS Web site for additional information.

It's that time of year again... time for me to start training really hard for the MS 150. As team captain for the Thermo Fisher Scientific Informatics team, I made the executive decision that we'd head back to Delaware for the "Bike to the Bay" instead of the tour we've done the last two years "City to Shore" in New Jersey. This year both tours are on the same weekend, so it's impossible to participate in both.

It was a tough decision between NJ and DE, but the smaller nature of the Delaware tour eventually won me over. There are about 1500 riders on the Delaware tour compared to 7000 on the NJ tour. From my memory, the rest areas on the Delaware route were better stocked and the event volunteers seemed genuinely friendlier. But then again, perhaps it was my perception as a rookie rider.

Our team is larger than it's been in the last couple years. With four of us signed up, it's 25% larger than 2006's showing. We'll be sporting newly designed jerseys with the Thermo Fisher logo.



I've set my fund raising target at $1000 for this event. Every little bit helps, so please donate what you can. Your donation is tax-deductible, and goes towards multiple sclerosis research and programs to help the patients who have the devastating disease.

The Comcast story continues...

It took three phone calls to Comcast for me to actually get the upgraded cable modem connection they promised. I was actually thrilled on my most recent call to get somebody in technical support who:

1. Understood the problem.
2. Could fix the problem.
3. Followed-up when she said she would to ensure the problem was actually fixed.

Hats off to Comcast's Heather at extension v58 for such an outstanding job.

Now the ugly details of the problem for those of you who are curious:

1. My D-Link DCM-202 cable modem is now stuck on the Comcast firmware. Apparently Comcast struck a deal with D-Link to make a firmware version that (among other things) disables the telnet server on the modem. That means that once you flash the firmware to the Comcast version, there's no going back since you can no longer get to the interface to flash it again. I found the following post on DSL Reports too late, but hopefully it will help somebody else avoid the same fate.
2. I'm told that the profile on my cable modem hadn't been updated from the Comcast servers, which is why I couldn't see the higher speeds. Heather referred to it having the "silver file." She pushed an updated profile, which took about 15 minutes.
3. My old SMC7004ABR "Barricade" router apparently doesn't like uplink speeds on the WAN port greater than 4.2 Mbps. My download connection speed consistently topped out at that pathetic level. It makes no sense unless the upload port is only 10 Mbps. The switched ports on the router are 10/100 Mbps, so it would follow that the WAN port would be the same. But when the router was manufactured in 2001, it's possible that nobody envisioned that a broadband connection from a cable modem or DSL modem could actually exceed 10 Mbps (including overhead). The Barricade has been replaced with a Linksys BEFSR81, which supports QoS. The QoS should make Vonage VoIP calls slightly more reliable, but we really have not seen many problems with bandwidth and VoIP within the past few months.
4. I now get over 8Mbps download speed, which isn't quite the 16 Mbps they mentioned in the ad, but it's certainly more than the 3-4 Mbps I was seeing before.
   

Canon Comes Through!

For those of you who regularly read my not-so-regularly published blog, you may recall that my Canon PowerShot S400 was sent back for a factory repair after it had repeated problems accessing the CompactFlash card. I apologizing for not updating you sooner.

The little camera made its way back to me in record time. In about a week I had the camera back and fixed -- for free! All shipping was paid for by Canon. I've taken a dozen pictures and have not yet seen a memory card error message. I'm calling it "fixed" and putting Canon in the "good guys" file.