Note:<888> 5/20/98 Wednesday 6:20 P.M. EST: I updated Scott's Index www.mikescott.net/scopor01.htm . Let's go with ABC news at 6:30 P.M.. I hear thunder on the horizon, possible heavy downpours on the way, not sure but possible. CIO

Note:<888> 5/20/98 Wednesday 4:30 P.M. EST: I went out at 2:30 A.M. yesterday and had my coffee out of my trusty thrermos. I walked around downtown and chatted with a group of people out of Brooklyn who were waiting in line for PowerBall. I also chatted with a local policeman. Apparently yesterday the local traffic pattern in town had three strikes against it. The previous mentioned sewer repairs downtown, the truck wreck on I95 and all the thousands of PowerBall users lining up to purchase their lottery tickets. I walk around downtown until 6:30 A.M. and then went to the Grand Union. Also the Greenwich Policeman told me they were getting $45 an hour overtime. Three days ago at the Grand Union I bought 2 half gallons Florida Natural Orange Juice $1.99 apiece, 2% half gallon milk $1.55, five boxes GU frozen vegtables .65 each, two 20 ounce Stauffer frozen lasagna for $2.99 each, Stauffers Chicken Fetticinni $2.50, two ears corn .25 each, 13 bags Ramen noodles from .16 to .29, 2 I C'ant believe it's not butter at .99, Skippy peanut butter $1.79, two Tony's Four Cheese Pizzas for $3.00 each and $1.74 worth of squash at .99 a pound for a total order of $32.50. This morning I bought 24@ 6 for a $1 bags of Ramen noodles for $4, 2 I Can't Believe It's Not Butter @ .99, half gallon Florida natural orange juice $1.99, and two 1 pound packages of Oscar Meyer Bacon for $1.99 for a total of $11.95 on that order. I noticed in reading the British Press, everyone is attending the Chelsea Flower Show this week. I noticed in todays news PanAM Sats of Greenwich sattilite network is down and allmost all pagers in America don't work along with media feeds. I believe this problem like my recent computer problems might be caused be Solar Flare activity on the sun recently which can disrupt all communications of any type and electronic activity. I also notice I believe the new Greenwich police cars have 6 antennas on the roof. I also chatted with the U.S. Military academy at West Point today and Secretary of Defense Cohen will be speaking at Graduation on Saturday May 30 this year which I might attend if the weather is descent and I have the money to drive up there. So remember if something electronic has malfunctioned recently it might be because of solar flair activity. I also have to report that one of our retired locals who taught Physics at Columbia University and had a PHD in physics from Harvard and volonteered here at the astronomy club where this whole operation started passed away two years ago. I had not seen John out at night in a while, now I know why, we will all miss him. Well time for www.dailybriefing.com and off to make breakfast. Apartment is cooled down to 70 degrees, but it is a little noisy with the air conditioner going. I suppose lots of people will be lined up for PowerBall again today for the last day. CIO

Note:<888> 5/20/98 Wednesday 2:05 A.M. EST: Well this evening after checking my email. I had a system malfunction. I thought I had lost the whole system. Before I made the backup earlier, I had saved my system.ini, user.dat, and system.dat files in a seperate folder. When I had the malfunction I eventually restored the three files, after saving the current versions. The system almost worked with the earlier system.dat and user.dat files, but I had to keep the current system.ini. However I got a memory error message on Safe Boot. About 8 P.M. I thought I would run up to CompUSA and get a new 32 meg DIMM? chip for about $79, however it turned out that is the price for 32 meg SIMM, thus I could not afford a new chip. I have two 8 meg 72 pin Simms. I encountered wall to wall slow traffic going up to Norwalk, and I exited and drove through Darien to get to CompUSA before closing. The store was empty. I returned to Greenwich empty handed and noticed all the gas stations with lottery machines and stationary stores like Zyns were inundated with hundreds of people at each location waiting to buy Powerball Lottery tickets. Thus it was nearly impossible to buy gasoline because of the long lines. I returned home dejected about the computer and had dinner. I went out about 11 P.M. and filled up the car at the Shell Station where the local attendants were exhausted from selling PowerBall $150 million lottery tickets. I went for a short walk downtown and the police officer on duty at the sewer construction project at the bottom of the Avenue, told me it would be at least a week before the $1.2 million dollar project was finished. I sat out in front of the senior center where lots of the potted plants have been set out for sun. I noticed the ever efficient Greenwich Public Works Department was efficiently cleaning up the downtown area after all the garbage and bottles left by the lottery purchasing lines all day. Today is the last day, so it should be even worse. I was told the lottery machines open at 6 A.M., so early risers might avoid lines at Zyns or the Shell Station then. When I returned home I opened up my computer case and switched the two memory simms around and reset them firmly but carefully. I also changed my CMOS setup to 60 Nanosecond memory instead of 70 Nanosecond memory. Yes I have 60 Nanosecond memory, it says so right on the chips in small print. I then booted the machine and it started right up with the restored files, I mentioned earlier. Perhaps with the warmer apartment 76 degrees recently, my machine might be running a little bit warmer; so I turned on the air conditioner. In the old days computer engineers use to always keep computer rooms cool at least 68 degrees or cooler, I don't know if that still applies. I also reinstalled the JAVA for MS Internet Explorer 4.01 which I obtained from the software updated icon in the help file. I think when I installed the MS IE 4.01 the JAVA did not completely install. I have had this problem before. Right now the system seems to be running great, but I have not really put it through it paces yet. I might surf a bit and got out for coffee in about a hour after I also clean up. CIO

Note:<888> 5/19/98 Tuesday 4:50 P.M. EST: Well after about three weeks work, I finally have my new system installed with all the Microsoft Programs and upgrades. I had problems with Plug and Play installing the Win95 Operating system, and I had to remove the sound card and modem when I installed it, and then add the sound card and let plug and play recognized it, and then the same for the modem. I also had to set up my modem on a different IRQ than the automatic IRQ9. I put it on IRQ3 by letting it be on Com Port 2. I have my Colorado T1000E tape drive going with Colorado HP Cheyenne 3.11 backup going. I have made two backups of the new setup. I put the CMOS setup for the LPT port on EPP 378, and I set the Colorado Tape LPT IRQ to IRQ7 3C. Thus the tape backup works fine. I have over half my 1 G. hard drive free. I also have all the MS updates stored on my hard drive along with a few other programs. I also updated all the MS software update downloads. I put the latest version of DirectX also on. I did not install any Netscape programs or my copy of Wordperfect 6.0. The only major non MS programs I have on the system is the Cheyanne backup, RealAudio, and a few small programs. Thus hopefully I won't have any out of date or incompatable files in my Windows directory. I restored all my data files. The system all seems to be running fine and fast. I was getting 6.5 kbyte download speeds last night. It has been a lot of work, so I plan to get out in the daylight this evening. I also updated Scott's Index www.mikescott.net/scopor01.htm . Have a good evening. CIO

Note:<888> 5/16/98 Saturday 4:25 A.M. EST: I went back to bed last evening until 8 P.M.. I got up and listened to Frank Sinatra music on my CD player after watching some television programs on him. The link to the Frank Music page is www.mikescott.net/frank1.htm . I went out about 9:30 P.M. and walked around at the bottom of Greenwich Avenue. The sewer project is still underway. It will cost $1.2 million to make the repair. They have a semi truck trailer full of 24 inch iron sewer pipes and have installed a temporary repair above the surface on the roadway. The usual Friday night pedestrian traffic was out coming and going from the cafes, movies, ice cream parlors and coffee shop. I chatted with one local about the internet. About 11:30 P.M., I came back home and did a little news reading on the internet from my page at www.mikescott.net/scotwork.htm . The British press is most informative on world affairs and I enjoy reading quick summaries including the Court Circular in the Times of London. I guess the Royals keep quite busy which the American press never covers. I had dinner of reheated chicken breast in wine and garlic, steamed corn, and baked onion with Ramen noodles. I wrote Mom a letter and went out at 2 A.M. to mail it. I parked on the Avenue and walked down towards the bottom, and the police were out diverting traffic, but it did not look like much night construction was going on. I walked up to the top of the Avenue and east on Putnam Avenue and studied the shops. Horseneck Liquors has a picture of Walter Cronkite in the window. I noticed a shop with Japanese antiques which has a very tasteful appearence. On the south side of Putnam Avenue between Greenwich Avenue and Mason street are a number of speciality shops for designing tasteful homes including Sotheby's real estate if one wants to purchase one. There is one shop that specializes in library paneling which I am sure is used for their resources. I noticed another antique flooring shop. I walked on down the Avenue and noticed the ski shop has Norwegian flag backpacks and the Kayache shop is in Mike's old barber shop part of Outdoor Traders now. I continued on down the Avenue and noticed the patrons exiting the Dome restaurant had left a number of Colt 45 quart beer bottles on the street where they parked. I guess they did not want to carry open containers while driving. I entered the car and drove down Arch street and noticed the Arts Festival is today Saturday and Sunday at the Bruce Museum, and they have all their tents up for displaying the art work. I noticed a couple of lights on at the houses on the harbor. It was a warm evening and quite enjoyable walking and getting the fresh air. Steamboat Road remains closed between Arch Street and Railroad Avenue for the Sewer repairs. I suppose today while I sleep it will be a busy day for the weekenders in Greenwich. I read a story and recieved email about all the smoke in Texas from the Mexican and Latin American fires caused by drought, so a few Texans should come up here for a dose of New York City smog before it gets worse on the hotter days. I am about to have another serving of Ramen noodles for my last meal of the day and a diet Coke. Well you day time people have a good day. CIO

Note:<888> 5/15/98 Friday 5:55 P.M. EST: I was up at 4 P.M. and had breakfast. I tweaked my system a bit earlier this morning before going to bed. I am going to post Scott's Index www.mikescott.net/scopor01.htm just at the end of the week now. I also updated www.mikescott.net/scottpc01.htm about Scott's computer setup. Well it is nice out, so after I shower, I will probably go outside for a while. CIO

Note:<888> 5/15/98 Friday 5:55 A.M. EST: I updated the MS fonts, MS type clearer, MS IE toy, and I also downloaded and installed Outlook 98, which I think is great. With my new system it is all working great. I can run about three programs and have about 50% resources free which once I update memory, I won't have to think about that. I went out this past evening about 10 P.M. and returned $1.60 in aluminum soda cans. The big disaster story in town this week has been the sewer pipe that broke at the bottom of Greenwich Avenue by the train station. They have been working on it with a big hole for the last several days. One local night walker said he found a $100 bill in front of the train station. Greenwich was very quiet yesterday afternoon. I made my usual appointment. The Hospital Thrift Shop has a Canon Bubble Jet Printer for sale at "Make an Offer" price. My viewpoint of my overall system with a new restored setup on the new system is that it is all running great. Once I upgrade memory and try the onboard video with four megs memory, I might even have a better system. Of course when Win98 is released, it will probably be even better. Maybe mailto:billg@microsoft.com will send me a free copy. I chatted with young Chinese fellow on Friday night who claimed his family bought Microsoft stock when it was first offered for 28 cents a share. I think the original offering price about ten years ago or more was around $22 a share. I have been munching on Ramen noodles recently which are a light snack food for losing weight. I put them in a cup of water in a rubbermaid container and microwave them on high for five minutes. My respects to the Sinatra family during their time of grief. See www.mikescott.net/frank.htm . Have a good day. CIO