Cobb on the Trail-er: Hauling butt and taking names

Here's one name to start with, an eating place by called O'Charley's, specifically, the one just off Interstate 40 at 110 Coley Davis Court in Nashville. A great place to stop for a real meal and friendly service should you be passing through the Nashville area. I met up with friends there and had a very relaxing and enjoyable lunch. I was surprised to learn later that O'Charley's is chain, with locations in the Eastern half of the U.S. I would definitely look for one if I was driving in that region again.

Speaking of chains, I was very pleasantly surprised by U-Haul, from whom I rented the trailer for this trip (as trailer towing road warriors know, chains are used as a backup to the trailer hitch). So here's my review of U-Haul customer service.

At first I was not happy with the trailer. There seemed to be some shimmying when I picked it up, but I put that down to lack of LOAD weight. There was also a lack of any obvious way to lock the trailer to the hitch on my Jeep, so I used a pair of padlocks on the safety chains.

Unfortunately, the more miles I drove with the trailer fully loaded, the worse the shimmying became. How bad was it? People were flagging me down, honking horns, following me into rest areas. Apparently it looked a lot worse when you were following me than it did when I was looking in my sideview mirror. So, to all of those Knights of the Road who expressed concern, I say: Thank You!

While such concern from my fellow man was quite uplifting, a major breakdown seemed more and more like a major possibility, which would put a major crimp in my timed-to-the-hour travel plans. So I pushed on but cut my speed, taking heart in the diagnostic opinion of a farmer who checked out the trailer after following me into a rest area. He thought it was the rim and not the axle, because the hub was not hot. By the end of that day I was in Forrest City, Arkansas, staying at a surprisingly comfortable Hampton Inn just a block from a delightful Mexican restaurant.   

After a robust repast of Chile Rellenos at Done Jose, I began to consider my trailer options. My biggest concern should have been breaking down but it was the thought of unpacking and repacking that really bothered me, should the trailer need to be replaced. That and the time involved, which involved, in my mind, a ton of paperwork and sitting around, even if I did manage to find a U-Haul dealer. In the morning caution won out and, bracing for the inevitable hassles, I called the 800 number on my U-Haul contract from the hotel parking lot.

And wow! U-Haul was great! I felt the agent really understood what I was going through. Not only that, they had an authorized garage right there in town, White Motor Company, just a few blocks away. I hauled the trailer over to White Motor and some very cheerful chaps changed out the wheel in a matter of minutes.

I was on my way with no more than 30 minutes of time lost and zero cost or hassle. Shortly after I hit the Interstate the U-Haul agent called to confirm that everything was okay. I am definitely getting a U-Haul next time I need to shift stuff across the country!

Update: The fix worked fine. Made the 3,000 mile trip right on schedule, pulling into San Diego on August 31, with time to unload the trailer and return before heading to the DoubleTree for the night. 

Leaked AT&T Letter Demolishes Case For T-Mobile Merger

Interesting stuff when you compare it to what the AT&T ad campaigns say about the benefits of the deal for rural America.



"Data in the letter undermines AT&T's primary justification for the massive deal, while highlighting how AT&T is willing to pay a huge premium simply to reduce competition and keep T-Mobile out of Sprint's hands."



"AT&T, who has fewer customers and more spectrum than Verizon (or any other company for that matter), has all the resources and spectrum they need for uniform LTE coverage without this deal."



From: Leaked AT&T Letter Demolishes Case For T-Mobile Merger - Lawyer Accidentally Decimates AT&T's #1 Talking Point, as reported on DSLReports.com

Even Stephen Asks: What's in a name?

Saint Stephen (as depicted by Giacomo Cavedone)

Starting in September, 2011, I will be working for ESET, which has it's North American headquarters in San Diego. But I'm sure I won't be the only Stephen Cobb in San Diego. 

So, when my soon-to-be-employer asked how I wanted my name to appear on my business cards I took a moment to think about it. My equivocation brought to mind a recent blog post by my friend and fellow serial entrepreneur, Lucinda Bromwyn Duncalfe. 

Some people might know Lucinda as Lucinda Holt or Lucinda Duncalfe-Holt but in this blog post she explains why she recently decided to be Lucinda Bromwyn Duncalfe (which I think has a nice ring to it). 

I can relate to name changing, not because I'm a married woman and have wrestled with male surname adoption, but because I'm a guy who changed his name for a while, not legally, but in practice. That's right, for nearly 20 years I liked to be called Steve, even though it clearly says Stephen on my birth certificate (FYI, I was not christened or baptized "Stephen" because I've never been subjected to those rituals, but that's another story).

In packing for the move to San Diego I came across my well-worn copy of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience which I received when I won the King Henry VIII School prize for English in 1970. Inside was a label that I put in all the books that I took with me to university, first Leeds in England, then McMaster in Canada. The label said: Property of Steve T. Cobb.

I blame Steve McQueen and then my school friend Steve Richardson, my college roommate Steve Donnelly, plus Steve Martin and several other Steves who seemed cooler than Stephens. It was only in the 1980s, when I first moved to California, that I decided to go back to the original Stephen. And that's how my name got recorded as an author at the Library of Congress when I started writing books about computing. Since then I have noticed a proliferation of Stephen Cobbs which frankly surprises me. I grew up in a city of more than 250,000 people and my family were the only Cobbs. Until I was 11 years old there were no other Stephens in the schools I attended.

Another surprise in recent years has been the number of people who see my name written down as Stephen and pronounce it Steffen. This often happens when I check into a hotel. I say "I have a reservation, last name Cobb" and the receptionist says something like "Yes, for one night, Steffen Cobb." I started correcting people by pointing out "My name is Stephen, like in the Bible" assuming people would know the story of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, as described in the New Testament (Acts 6-7).

That strategy really didn't gain much traction and I decided that comparing myself to a saintly martyr seemed a bit presumptuous. So I developed what I thought would be a more amusing way for people to get it right, by referring to what I thought was a well-known Christmas carol: Good King Wenceslas. The opening verse of this carol, which was sung religiously, pun intended, every year in church and school when I was growing up in England, goes as follows:

Good King Wenceslas looked out,
On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep and crisp and even.

I would then point out that if you pronounce Stephen as Steffen, then change "even" so that it rhymes with Steffen, then the outcome of this verse is quite different, and not very religious (the snow being deep and crisp and effin'). Sadly, this got just as many blank faces as the more direct reference to the martyr. I found myself explaining that the day after Christmas is the feast of Saint Stephen, also known as Boxing Day in England, and that King Wenceslas who was actually a Duke, would himself go on to be a saint, revered in both Bohemia, of which he was Duke, and England, which is where I, Stephen, learned to sing the words you see below. Altogether now, let's hear it G G G A G G D...

Staying in Downtown San Diego? The Bristol Hotel could be your best bet

I recently had the pleasure of traveling to San Diego for meetings at a downtown office. My host for this trip booked me into The Bristol Hotel.

Being unfamiliar with this particular establishment, and a trifle miffed that I would not be earning points with one of the 2 hotel brands I normally choose (Hyatt and Marriott), I decided to check out the hotel online.

Nice website, nice pictures, and this view from Google Street View was reassuring (it's so cool that one can now wander the neighborhood around a destination using Street View). The locale was within a couple of blocks of the shops and movie theaters at Horton Plaza. In the other direction is Little Italy and the office I was visiting. All very promising, but the room rates at the Bristol seemed a tad low for an upmarket downtown hotel, so I was still a little wary.

Well, shame on me for doubting my host's taste, The Bristol is an excellent hotel, starting with the friendly staff in the very relaxing lobby. This is equipped with a basic PC workstation and a laser printer, handy for printing out things like boarding passes and last minute reading materials for meetings. BTW, I am not a fan of vast stretches of showy marble and huge shiny chandeliers in hotel lobbies. So when I say relaxing I mean things like comfy seating. Give me the soft and casual touch so I can feel at home.

On the way to my room I started to get a very good feeling--the corridor was wonderfully wide. This boosted my hopes that the room itself would offer what I call "business hotel gold." I'm talking, in hushed tones, about silence, which most frequent business travelers consider truly golden. The main thing I need from a hotel when I'm traveling on business, the thing that beats all manner of other amenities, is a good night's sleep.

Entering the room itself was a revelation: There was a lot of room! A lot more than in a typical cookie-cutter business hotel. This was tastefully decorated space and plenty of it. All behind a solid, sound-deadening door, with a number of nice touches: robes, slippers, lighted magnifying mirror in the well-appointed bathroom, flat-screen TV, big bay windows, and a desk with a proper writing chair (i.e. one that adjusted high enough for me to type in without hunching over).

A great night's sleep was followed by a fine breakfast (one of the best breakfast burritos ever--I confess I could only eat half of it and the staff happily packed the other half to go, which made for an inexpensive supper that evening).

So, I can definitely recommend the Bristol Hotel. Only later did I realize that the Bristol is part of a group of independent hotels, the Greystone Hotels. They have properties in San Diego, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, and Bend, Oregon. I look forward to staying at the Bristol again, and trying some of the other Greystone Hotels.

Road Trip Tip Number 17: "Holding Onto the Night"

Tired of the morning sun waking you up too early when you're staying in a hotel? Annoyed that you went to the trouble, before retiring for the night, of pulling the thick curtains together so that you wouldn't be woken up by the sun, only to find that the drapes didn't overlap enough to block that tall strip of morning glory now slanting across your face?

Welcome to my world, at least until I started making a habit of carrying a few binder clips in my travel bag. They work great for holding the drapes in a fully-overlapped, light-blocking configuration.

But recently I switched to an even simpler solution. Finding myself on the road without my trusty binder clips, I rotated one of the hotel's trouser/pant coat-hangers by ninety degrees: Problem solved. The clips on these hangers are usually padded in some way so that they don't damage your clothes, or the drapes. And I always make sure I take the hanger off the drapes and return it to the closet when I get up, that is: when I am ready to get up.

WARNING: This is a safe "use" of a hotel coat hanger. Do NOT hang any kind of anything from a hotel room sprinkler head. The consequences can be VERY costly. I saw this first hand recently when checking into one of the hotels I had been using for my visits to the new Monetate offices in Conshohocken, just north of Philadelphia, the Spring Hill Suites in Plymouth Meeting. This is a dependable hotel for the business traveler but sadly it is sometimes frequented by young--and occasionally foolish--persons; like the kids who hung up their swimming trunks to dry on a sprinkler head in a third floor room above the lobby, causing it to discharge a bunch of water that pretty much ruined the lobby. I arrived late on a Sunday evening to see carpets and wall coverings and ceilings, torn up, peeled back and generally in a mess.

In other travel news: At the end of August I'm embarking on a major road trip: 2,900 miles across our great land, from top right to lower left, towing a small U-Haul trailer. The Jeep is being prepped and I am packing in my spare time. I hope to share some more tips from the road.

My destination is San Diego, to take up a new position: Security Evangelist for ESET, the anti-virus, anti-cybercrime company.

One of the many things that appealed to me about this opportunity was the fact that ESET is truly a global company. Not only are ESET's information security products sold in more than 180 countries, the company itself is based in Bratislava, Slovakia, with offices in Buenos Aires, Prague, Krakow and Singapore, as well as the distribution center for the Americas in San Diego. Call me a traveling fool but I'm hoping to visit them all. Until then, this old trainspotter will always have the San Diego trolley to ride.

The Apartment With Everything, Now Available Everywhere (Irony Included)

So here's something way more ironic than anything in the Alanis Morissette song of the same name. My wife found a gorgeous apartment to rent in San Diego, for only $1,000 a month (I will explain why she was looking in a moment). The place looked great in the photos and it sounded great in the description on Craigslist:

"2 Bedroom, 2 Bath, fully furnished, modern kitchen and bath, cable TV, Internet wi-fi, electricity, water, local phone included. Nestled in a quiet, almost suburban-like setting, you're just a few minutes away from world-class dining, shopping and the verve of theaters, clubs and nightlife. Great location, great features. All at a location that's exactly right, exactly where you want to be."

All that for $1,000 in San Diego, California? Sounds fantastic, but hardly ironic. So let me add the most interesting thing about this place, something not immediately apparent: it is also for rent in Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, and many other cities in America. But even that's not ironic, that's just another sick cyber-scam.

Let me add some more data points. My wife and I have spent many years working in the field of information security--where uncovering online scams and other cyber-crime was part of the job--and we are planning to move to San Diego next month, for my new job as Security Evangelist for ESET, a software company dedicated to fighting cyber-crime. We don't need a furnished apartment, but this place looked inviting (and it could lead one to think rent in downtown San Diego is very affordable).

So here's the irony: The apartment that I wanted to rent in order to facilitate my move to a new job fighting cyber-crime turned out to be a cyber-scam!

I was going to provide links to the scam pages (they were mainly on Craigslist) so you could check them out--they were quite professional with fewer typos than your average scam --but after my wife sent Craigslist a description of the scam they pulled it from all the cities mentioned above.

Of course, there may have been other complaints but my wife actually got the scammer to send her an email, which provided further details of the scam that she passed along to Craigslist. Apparently the scammer claims to be out of the country and seeks to get the prospective renter to send her a deposit, presumably before they find out that the whole thing is a fraud.

Notes: I say "her" only because the name most often associated with these fake apartment listings is Amanda Dawson (although I'm pretty sure that is not the scammer's real name). Also note that I think Alanis Morissette is a very good actor and singer, I just don't like the song  "Ironic" because most of it isn't. I don't know why I have a problem with errors in works of art, but I do. For example, the great big hole in Lord of the Flies--you can't use a short-sighted person's glasses to make fire--spoils that book for me (maybe it's because I've been myopic since I was 11 and tried using my glasses to burn paper on several occasions until my father sat me down and told me the facts of light).

My 2001 Jeep Turns 111111

Just a quick post to pay my respects to the vehicle that has faithfully carried me down the road for the past 5 years, the 6 cylinder 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4x4 that I bought at CarMax. I missed the odometer turn over 100K, but somehow 111,111 miles looks even cooler.

White space rural broadband moves one step closer

"The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the organisation that helped ignite the Wi-Fi revolution nearly a decade ago, has published a new wireless standard that promises to bring broadband access to under-served rural areas.

Called IEEE 802.22, the new specification has been designed to take advantage of those portions of the radio frequency spectrum that are increasingly available as digital television switchover schemes make progress around the world.

With support for both VHF (very-high frequency) and UHF (ultra-high frequency) TV bands, sites as far as 100 kilometres away from a single transmitter could enjoy broadband speeds typical of more densely populated areas.

According to the IEEE, each transmitter will be capable of delivering up to 22 Mbit/s per channel “without interfering with reception of existing TV broadcast stations, using the so-called white spaces between the occupied TV channels”."

White space rural broadband moves one step closer

Blood Money: The economics of America's most common deadly genetic disorder

Blood costs money and I know where to get a lot of it, blood that is. Now that might sound callous but it's true and it could save a lot of lives as well as pump more than a billion dollars into the American economy. Please bear with me as I explain, and please pardon the pumping pun.

For several decades now, the supply of fresh human blood in America has been getting tighter, pushing the cost of blood-consuming medical procedures higher and higher. Expanding the nation's blood supply would not only reduce pain and suffering, it would have a positive economic impact. Taking a cold, hard, economic look at anything related to the health and well-being of our fellow beings is bound to bother some people, but the path to sustainable caring-giving within the boundaries of economic reality requires us to acknowledge that things like blood cost money.

While most of the blood supply in America is freely donated, the logistics of blood taking and storage are not free, indeed they are quite expensive. So the cost of a unit of blood is something like $150 or more. Why is that number so vague? Because the cost varies according to supply and demand and those vary by location. In the heartland of America, the supply is high relative to demand but the reverse tends to be true on the coasts. A fairly recent number quoted by a medical facility on the East coast is $175 per unit. That number goes down when supply goes up, but not all the way down since there are fixed costs like testing the blood (there's more detail here).

The extent to which an increase in the supply of blood would reduce the cost to those that need it is hard to determine and I have not yet found any research on that. So let's run with 20% of the $175 number ($35) and find out where the nation can save/make a whole bunch of money. There are probably at least 13 million Americans that have the potential for homozygous or compound heterozygous variations of the HFE gene. In English that means they are at risk of developing toxic levels of iron in their bodies due to "iron overloading" caused by something called hemochromatosis, the most common, potentially-fatal, genetic disorder in America.

The best defense against hemochromatosis is to give blood regularly. Let's say 6 times per year. Suppose that 45% of those 13 million people would become regular blood donors if they found out they had hemochromatosis (that's adjusting down from 100% for those that already know, those that already give blood, and those who have a hard time giving blood). According to my spreadsheet that comes out to $1.25 billion per year, $12.5 billion over the next decade. I can't resist saying that's quite a shot in the arm for our economy.

But that is just the beginning...encouraging more people to give blood in general could have a fantastic prophylactic effect IF blood banks would routinely run an iron panel on donors to screen for iron overload, the most telling sign of possible hemochromatosis. People found to have high iron levels could check in with their doctors and might also elect to get a genetic test to detect hereditary hemochromatosis ($99* from 23andMe). The iron panel is a relatively inexpensive blood test and before 1996 it was fairly routine.

(Don't get me started on the slimy corporate frauds whose greed caused iron to be dropped from the standard blood panel, leading to a significant drop in the rate of hemochromatosis detection and thus a tragically avoidable rise in human suffering.)

The fact is, early detection of hemochromatosis would save our economy billions in avoidable health care costs, disability costs, lost productivity and tax revenues. On top of that, early detection, combined with affordable genetic testing, awareness and counseling, could lead to the eventual disappearance of this condition.

The genetic form of iron overload probably occurred as a natural defense against a diet low in iron and the shift from a nomadic, hunting-based culture to city life made possible by the agrarian-revolution. Now, in a world of iron-rich diets and lifespans that extend past menopause, genetic hemochromatosis has become a life-threatening metabolic disorder. Let's get rid of it and save a lot of money, and a lot of human suffering.

Note:  Due to ignorance, many blood banks throw away blood from hemochromatosis patients or even charge them for “filtering.” This is infuriating, immoral, and should be illegal. The FDA is quite clear that the blood is good, and so is the NIH Clinical Center.

Broadband needs rural boost: Tennessee News

"Job opportunities will elude millions of mostly rural Americans because they lack access to high-speed Internet, according to a new report by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In Tennessee, more than 489,000 residents lack that access."

Broadband needs rural boost on NWTNTODAY.COM