zach.e53.org - work in progress

How many United Airlines employees does it take to assist in the deplaning? (No jetway, using stairs, small plane with plane side luggage check.) Answer: 7

2 unloading baggage, 1 to hold a green plane side luggage check tag to inform people who checked luggage at the plane to stop and wait for the other two to unload the luggage, 4 to direct people into the terminal.

How many United Airlines employees does it take to operate a concourse to concourse shuttle? Answer: 9

Starting Point: 1 person at the gate, 1 person at stairway landing, 2 people by the door, 1 person driving the shuttle.

Ending Point: 3 people by the door, 1 person at the gate.

How many United Airlines employees does it take to operate a ticket counter during heavy delays? Answer: 3 or less (total 6 possible stations to be manned.)

I’m at the Cedar Rapids airport (CID) and there is one UA flight to Chicago and its delayed 80 minutes or so. There is one lady helping a ‘vip’/first class person and 2 others helping the rest of the crowd at a time where most of them will have to visit the ticket counter to rebook flights due to delays.

What a mess. We see headline after headline about how airlines are hemorrhaging money. The same thing is happening in Detroit. Companies are being forced to keep staffing levels at an unnecessary level based on threats from Unions. I mean seriously; it doesnt take nine (9) people to operate a damn shuttle.

If you are using VMware Enterprise Converter to do Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) machine conversions you will probably run into this issue at some point. When you boot a recently converted machine and attempt to modify the TCP/IP settings on the new VMware NIC you may receive an error stating that there is an existing NIC with the same IP settings.

Basically this is the ghost of NIC’s past. You need to reveal the hidden NIC and remove it. While this is not absolutly required it is most certainly recommended. Here’s what you need to do:

Step 1: Open up a command prompt

Step 2: Type - “SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1″ and hit <Enter>

Step 3: Type - “START DEVMGMT.MSC” and hit <Enter>

Step 4: Once the Device Manger opens to the “View” menu and select “Show Hidden Devices”. Expand the Network Interface portion of the device tree and you should be able to remove the phantom NIC.

This should also give you a chance to remove any other non-existent hardware that is left over from the physical server.

IMG_2195, originally uploaded by e53.

I was scrolling through some photos looking for an image to use in the header of this new template and I came across this photo from the e53:immortal in NYC trip last summer. I can’t believe its coming up on a year since we took that trip. Hands down one of the greatest times I’ve ever had.

In this photo you can see a bit of Zeman (also taking a photo of something), a semi-posing Torin, Emily, and Brandon. With any luck maybe some of us will be heading off on another epic journey in 2009. *crosses fingers*

I wrote here regarding the current attempt in Des Moines to move the SILO tax into the state sales tax and the lack of guarantees for where the money will be used as well as the destruction of the ‘local option.’ It appears that Iowa Senate GOP members have come up with an alternative which would provide the people a voice in the sales tax as well as a constitutional amendment which would specifically state that the money was to be spent on schools.

The Senate GOP alternative would seek to place a floor of $575 per student and a rolling average to be recalculated annually in distributing tax proceeds. It also would encourage a constitutional amendment to protect the school infrastructure and property tax relief money from being “scooped” for other purposes and preserve the current system of allowing voters to reaffirm the local option tax every 10 years.

This alternative is built on something that is very hard to find in Des Moines this session.. Common Sense. There is no reason there shouldn’t guarantees put on the money and the citizens of Iowa have every right to vote on local option sales taxation. Apparently these concepts escape some folks..

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said he was “disappointed” Senate Republicans are choosing to abandon the bipartisan path taken in the House to do what’s right for students and property taxpayers in favor of “election-year posturing” and “pandering” to special-interest groups like Iowans for Tax Relief.

First of all, Sentor Gronstal, “bipartisanship” should be broken off when something this atrocious comes along. Second of all the Iowans for Tax Relief is a group that works to lower the tax burden Des Moines places on the citizens of this great state. Would that not then be “pandering” to the citizens?

I believe that Senator Gronstal is just a bit worried that the Democrats in Des Moines might get schooled come November. After all, who wants to keep a party in power that has increased spending more in the first two years of their run than the GOP did for their entire eight year run.

[via Gazette Online]

Not to long ago we went through the annoying process of voting for a local option sales tax known as the SILO tax which was meant to be used for school infrastructure funding. Linn and Johnson counties were the last two in the state to pass this new tax after it was generally approved by the state. Funny thing is now that everyone has passed it the yokels at the statehouse in Des Moines want to pull it all back in. Afterall, if everyone said yes to it.. why not just have it at the state level? Take a drive on an Iowa road and you’ll know why.

Majority Leader Michael Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said he won’t allow debate on the measure, which would increase the statewide sales tax by one cent to replace local option sales taxes approved in all Iowa counties that benefit school districts.

There are number of problems with this idea. First of all the whole idea of a LOCAL OPTION sales tax is that we have the OPTION… LOCALLY to regulate our taxation. If this power gets moved to Des Moines thats just another government power grab. Second of all we know how well the state manages money. They cant seem to figure out how to do anythign without raising some sort of fee or tax. So, how do we know that the money from this sales tax increase will be guaranteed to go to schools? ALL OF IT.

Republicans said they won’t support the measure without assurances the money raised won’t be used for purposes other than school repairs and property tax relief. So far, they said they haven’t received such guarantees.

“There are a lot of concerns about the money not being properly protected,” said Senate Minority Leader Ron Wieck, R-Sioux City. “I think the attitude in our caucus could be changed if there was some constitutional protection for the money.”

The measure would do away with current elections that are needed to renew the local option taxes.

If those local elections are no longer held, Republicans questioned whether use of the money would change in future years.

“The concern is we could move forward and in a year, or two years, or three years, the money could be scooped and used for other purposes,” said Wieck.

Uh.. Yeah! There’s no way they will keep that money secured for school use only. Why can’t these guarantees be made? We need this power on the local level and thats the bottom line. Des Moines… BUG OFF!

[via - QCTimes]

Gas took a flying leap today here in Cedar Rapids with prices ending up between $3.41-$3.55 per gallon. An article I was reading regarding one gas station having an influx of customers right before the spike had an interesting little chart generator for gas/oil price data. I created a chart that shows 60-months with of gas (per gallon) and oil (per bbl) in relation to each other.

In the statistical world the chart above shows a that the price of gas has been almost directly linked the price of crude oil. I have added combined the above chart with a straight line chart below which should help emphasize the relationship and point out an interesting variance.

Notice that in April of 2007 the price of crude and the price of gasoline went off on two different paths. The price of gasoline has remained relatively flat from April 2007 to now while the price of crude oil has continued on an upward path. Another interesting item that is shown in these graphs is that there has been a growing separation in the price of gas compared to the price of oil. Back in 2003 the price of each product was very nearly 1 to 1 and you can see that over the last 60 months there has been a growing gap between the cost of the two products.

Bottom line: Yes, it hurts to pay $50 to fill up your tank but the answers to the problems aren’t as easy as some may think. You can’t attack a problem like this with your feelings you have to attack it with your mind and common sense. Also keep in mind how much of the price of a gallon of gas is made up of taxes. There’s Federal, State, and Local taxes to add to the mix. John McCain is suggesting a Federal Gas Tax Holiday this summer. That one thing could do more for the economy in the long run that any other idea being floated. Then again you could opt for the redistribution of wealth mentality and tax the hell out of the oil companies but you wouldn’t want to steal Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton’s ides now would you?

I finally picked up my new bike this afternoon. It’s a Cannondale F4 mountain bike. I doubt it will ever make it to an actual mountain.. then again anything is possible. I took it for a short test ride when I got it home and I can only say that I severely underestimated the level to which I am out of shape.

The bike has all sorts of gears and stuff that I’m not used to. Just to note.. I haven’t been on a bike for more than a minute or two in roughly 10 years. The last time I was really on a bike I was jumping ditches in a Huffy outside Milligan, NE population 308.

Good things should come from this. Despite the fact that I know my legs will probably hurt in the morning after the shortest of rides I am still looking forward to getting out and riding a bunch this summer. The one thing that I have to do before I go for any lengthy rides is get a new seat … preferably one that fits my big ass. Anyway, I know Zeman and Putz will probably go for some rides but the more the merrier.

Didnt feel like moving over any of the stuff from my old wordpress installation. So, its all new from here on.