Articles by mgedwards

The end of D.C. baseball?

My wife passed her Korean exam with flying colors!  She passed 2/2 in Korean in just 24 weeks (level 2 speaking, level 2 reading).  Congratulations!  She is a language learning star.  It’s extremely rare for someone to reach that level in such a short period of time.  Me, I’m stuck at the 1+ level with over 1 1/2 months left to go in training.  She definitely leveraged her mastery of Chinese and might not have been so lucky in a completely unrelated language like Pashto or Finnish, but it’s still an amazing accomplishment.  Hats off to her.  I can only hope to be at about 2/1 in Korean by February.  Maybe next time I can study German!

Is this the end of professional baseball in Washington, D.C.?  I even went out and bought my new Washington Nationals baseball cap to support bringing back to D.C. after the announcement was made in late November that the Montreal Expos were moving to the Nation’s Capitol.  Last night though the D.C. Council approved funding for a stadium with the condition that about half of it would be paid for by Major League Baseball.  Three months ago D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams had negotiated a deal with MLB to pay for a new stadium for the Nationals, but now MLB will re-open the deal and possibly cancel it unless the D.C. Council agrees to pay for funding.  I would really like to see baseball in D.C.  I love baseball and miss watching the Mariners at Safeco.  Rooting for the Nationals would let me jump on the bandwagon early while they’re still terrible.  I’m personally critical of public funding for ballparks, but in this case if Williams had been given the authority to make a deal to bring the Expos to D.C. the issue of funding should have been sounded out months ago.  If the Council was opposed to public funding then Williams could have changed the terms of the deal during negotiations.  A deal breaker after the team move has been announced is a lousy way of doing business and gives the city a huge black eye.  The 2004 election changed the Council’s composition, but the main instigator Linda Cropp is a holdover from the previous council and has been pulling strings behind the scenes to change the terms of the deal.  Now it looks as if the team will remain the Expos and could move elsewhere.  Oh well, I guess that Nationals’ hat will be a collector item.

I dropped off some food and clothing today for the marine guards and families of Foreign Service nationals at the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Consulate.  A few of us worked together to put together a care package to send to them in the wake of the recent bombings.  It’s the least we can do sitting here thousands of miles away from the Consulate.  It should arrive before Christmas.

Will the library become obsolete?

Google (of which I own shares) announced today that it will make available online the book collections of five major universities and library systems.  The institutions are Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, Oxford University, and the New York Public Library system.  All I can say is, “Wow!”  If they can pull it off that would be a major coup for the upstart technology company.  In recent months following Google’s IPO it has faced a number of challenges from its two largest competitors, Yahoo and Microsoft (MSN).  It has met these challenges well so far.  When MSN announced its new beta search engine, Google announced that it had doubled the number of indexed, searchable web pages on Google.com–twice as many as are available on MSN.  It was the first to release a new Desktop Search Tool ahead of Yahoo and MSN, both of which recently release versions of their own.  Google is taking on Yahoo and Hotmail/MSN head on by offering Gmail, a free E-mail service.  When Google announced it was giving away free 1GB E-mail accounts, both Yahoo and MSN upped storage capacity for all users.  Google is the only one of the three to allow free POP access to E-mail through clients such as Outlook.  Accoona.com is a new Google copycat search engine backed by President Clinton, among others.  It will be the exclusive provider of China Daily content online.  Today’s announcement is akin to Google responding with, “So what?”

Anyway, I digress.  Google’s recent announcement of Google Scholar and the new library initiative may foreshadow its rise to rareified air.  If it can successfully make these collections available online, Google will no doubt be the elite search tool for the next decade.  It will probably not render physical libraries obsolete, but it may do to library usage what E-mail did to snail mail–decrease the volume of usage.  I hope this initiative is successful.  It will substantially increase the value of the World Wide Web by having offline and out-of-print resources available online.  This could be the start of a new paradigm shift.  For years people have wonder when, if ever, books in print would be replaced by digital e-books.  This could provide an inkling of that potential future.

Today when I came home I again saw a murder of crows hovering around our building.  It was a scene out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.  The sky was dim, well past sunset.  The trees are skeletal, and the landscape was quite murky.  The crows flew about so that they were nearly indistinguishable from bats.  Tonight would have been a perfect setting for Halloween.

I also put together an English-Korean song put to the tune of “The 12 Days of Christmas.”  Once I’m finished I’ll post it here.

Computer trouble

Have you ever had problems with your computer?  I’m sure you have had some at some point.  Trouble with viruses?  The possibility of picking of a virus, worm, or spybot has increased exponentially over the past few years.  My computer is now having trouble again.  It started last week when I was moving some photo files.  My computer has been sluggish for quiet some time, but now Windows itself appears to have a problem.  I can’t open Windows Explorer or any of the Windows management programs.  It could be a virus, but more likely Windows is now corrupted.  My solution is to rebuilding my computer.  I’ve decided that my 30GB hard drive is no longer big enough, and I’m going to install a new 160GB master hard drive.  I need as much space as I can get for video editing.  Each DVD-quality 30-minute video file can run as much as 25-30GB.  If I upgrade the hard drive, reinstall Windows, add more RAM (1GB+) and buy a more powerful power supply that should do the trick (I hope).  I never know, though.  My computer has never run right.  I’m tempted to go buy a Dell or another off-the-shelf computer, but I’m already invested in this home-built unit.  Maybe in 5 years I’ll order a Dell.

The problem with rebuilding the hard drive and reinstalling Windows is that you have to reinstall every program you have on your computer.  I have many programs installed.  I plan to catalog each one, including installation instructions, before rebuilding.  That way I know I didn’t miss anything crucial.  I also invested in a backup unit from Maxtor (the OneTouch II) to do seamless backups.  That way I won’t lose any files.

I also want to make sure that I am not hacked and do not pick up any viruses or other nasties.  That’s why I recommend the following security precautions at home:

  1. If you run Windows XP, make sure you have installed Microsoft‘s service pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP.  It includes many important new security management features.  If your computer automatically runs Microsoft updates then it should have already been installed on your computer.
  2. Invest in a good anti-virus program such as Norton or McAfee.  Set these to auto-update or do an update at least once a week.
  3. Scan your hard drive for viruses and worms once a week.  Most anti-virus programs offer this feature.
  4. Use strong passwords when logging in.  The easiest way to hack a computer is a weak or non-existent password.
  5. Invest in an anti-spyware program.  Ad-Aware by Lavasoft is a great free tool for eliminating spyware.
  6. Secure your home network.  If you have a home network and use Linksys or another router, be sure to set up a strong WEP key to secure your network from outside access.  Consult the router manufacturer’s instructions on setting up a security home network.
  7. Use a strong firewall program.  Zone Alarm is a great free firewall program.  Unfortunately, at the time Microsoft released SP2 it appeared to conflict with Zone Alarm because both provide firewall features.  Zone Alarm is much stronger.
  8. Make sure that your E-mail program is able to scan and isolate attachments before they execute.  For example, Yahoo.com scans attachments before download, and Outlook will isolate suspected files.  If you receive an attachment from an unknown person, it’s safest not to open the E-mail.  If an E-mail asks for personal information such as a credit card number do not click through to the web site and enter it.
  9. Power down your computer frequently if you have a broadband connection.  Shutting off your computer is a good defense against receiving unwanted viruses or hackers.
  10. Secure personal information.  Invest in a vault program such as Cryptainer with strong encryption will better secure your personal information.

It’s no guarantee that you’ll be problem-free, but if you do these steps your computer(s) will be much more secure against hackers and viruses.