dec We’re Back! pdf
by matthew on Mon Oct 26 11:01:45 CDT 2009
Sorry about the recent lull in posts. We took a little trip to Chicago, and given some of the off-the-wall postings that have been made lately, I wasn’t really comfortable broadcasting that we were going to be out of town.
Boring details of the trip follow:
We took Amtrak from the Normal station. It was a great journey. The leaves on the trees were changing, the odd farmer was in the field harvesting, and all the towns were taking on a real autumn feel. On the way up, we had to wait on a couple of freight trains, and ended up arriving about 20 minutes late. Two round-trip tickets cost $92 and I spent $17 on cab fare…Considering the outrageous parking rates and general craziness that is driving in Chicago, I think we got a bargain!  
My wife completed a round of Continuing Medical Education and attended a seminar/course (Doc’s have to do that every year to keep current), and I spent time doing my own bits of research, wandering the city, and working on my own software development projects. Anyone care to discuss XForms, high-performance column-oriented databases, persistence frameworks, XPath, XML document storage, transformation and manipulation? ;-) (lol – Are those crickets I hear?)
The worst part is I picked up a bit of a head-cold. Nothing major, I’m just a little stuffed-up, and red-nosed.
So, again – my apologies for being quiet these last few days!
by haydiz on Tue Oct 27 12:28:36 CDT 2009
Boy Matthew, your vacations sound even more boring than mine: walking around Chicago and thinking about high-performance column-oriented databases...;-)  The train ride sounds interesting though!  I wouldn't mind trying that someday.  The older I get, the more I hate driving on the highway.  What I really want are trains like they have in Europe and Japan - speeds at 220 mph or more.  We could spend a weekend in Florida during the Winter whever we wanted to.  Our country is way behind in rail service.  Who wants to fly on planes?  Not me!

Kris
by Sue on Thu Oct 29 06:24:06 CDT 2009
I agree Kris.   Love trains and I think high speed trains would be a big benefit especially to Central Illinois region because it would make our distances to Chicago, Indy and St Louis much shorter.  But I just cannot understand why in the world we use the same tracks as freight trains?   Doesn't that defeat the purpose?  Or am I wrong here?

Sounds like a pleasant vacation Matthew.  I bet the scenery was great.  This time of year Central Illinois really shines - even when it's rainy.

Something else I'd like to hear thoughts on is the Net Neutrality act being looked at by the FCC I think.   AT&T and Google seem to be facing off over this....

Here is one article on you but you can google it for many more

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/174296/net_neutrality_faq_whats_in_it_for_you.html

Sue
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