07/16/95 09:04 AM (Tue) General Dynamics Electric Boat (Groton, CT)

Drove down at 05:00 -- only two hours to get here. Copped some Z's at the Super 8 Motel ($43 a night). Got through the security checkpoints with no problem. Attending --

Phil (Sandia)

Curt (NIST)

Alan (DISA)

Burt (EB)

Aleta (EB)

Greg (EB)

Ed (Cat)

09:04 AM - Introductions & social agenda done

Presenting the figure stuff first.

09:04 AM - We went outside to the line of lunch-mobiles for vittles and brought them back to the conference room to eat.

09:04 AM - Went to the EB gift shop on the break -- slim pickins -- nothing for the G.W. Carver except the patch, which I already have. I got a small Los Angeles patch, a few post cards, and a Sea Wolf t-shirt for Mom.

Production Issues --

(1) "Virtual" Gaylen as a resource -- the current "manual" archiving system needs to be identified, perhaps by SCCS or a good manual tracking system. Phil really needs to look over her shoulder when she does the next printing. Looks like Jul-Aug before we can have the final draft & review for publication.

09:04 AM -- Done for the day ... supper & movie.

07/16/95 09:04 AM (Wed) Groton, CT

Didn't get to a movie, but supper was fine. Met Phil & Curt Parks for breakfast at the IHOP across from my hotel.

WWW - Curt, Phil, & Me

IGES has been registered as a MIME type.

Curt is preparing a "IGES Tools" Home Page. One of the things that he wants is a Public Domain IGES Viewer -- basicly, he wants a 2D ("Forest Gump") version of IGESDRAW that he can give away. I have the action item to prepare the RFP for his SBIR.

Phil has declared that he will not be continuing as IGES Editor after publication of IGES Version 5.3. Greg's funding expires at the endo of the year, too.

09:04 AM - Return from break -- Ballot comments resolution.

Gary Conkol seems to be Quite Pissed that the revised Chapter 1 went out for ballot without having been reviewed by the IGES Project Committee, and appears to have over-reacted -- Greg got blind-sided at the last Steering Committee meeting.

09:04 AM - We've been thrashing for hours over the beaucoup comments on the conformance issues of Chapter 1 -- bottom line is that Ed needs language in 5.3 to whip Parametric Design into shape, which many of us feel belongs in contracts, not the spec. However, there's much that we'd like to try to "squeeze in".

09:04 AM - Alan to Ed - "I didn't realize that you tried to boil the ocean ..."07/16/95 09:04 AM (Thu) Groton, CT

Had a delightful supper with Burt & his wife Janet last night, then we all convoyed up to Greg & Barbara's new place - I gave her some prints of the Forever Knight Web pages.

We're zipping through the comments on Chapter 2 from the RFC ballot.

09:04 AM - We've slowed down.

"left blank" == "rive gauche" (in JAMA-IS == "reft brank")

Mantra -- "Editorial - Persuasive - Amend"

09:04 AM - Finished the Chapter 2 comments!! RFC 586 will be ECO 653. ON TO THE NAUTILUS!!

My action items ...

- send x-files to Curt Parks

- send LaTeX and IGES archives to Alan & Ed@Cat

07/16/95 09:04 AM (Sat) Concord, MA

When I entered the Friendly's and asked for a booth in the smoking section, I was told that the entire store is now smoke-free. I told them that it would be the last meal that I eat here. <sigh!>

Let's see, after the meeting on Thursday, we all made our way to the U.S.S. Nautilus Museum a few miles up Route 12 from the EB shipyard. We crawled around inside, took some pictures, then Ed had to didi mau for the Hartford airport, while Curt headed to catch a flight out of Providence -- both an hour's drive away.

Alan & I stopped at a Mickey Dee's to wait out the rush-hour traffic, and to talk about IGESGUMP™, which we agreed should be a MIL-D-28000 conformant viewer. Yesterday, I talked to Curt@NIST and Bill@IDA about offering a shareware, two stage viewer to stimulate interest in a more robust viewer, or getting the source for cross-platform compiling. Bill's willing to subcontract the port (for X-windows), but only if its for executable only, and no source is included.

Didn't get half of the things done yesterday that I wanted to do, and I still have to go to Nashua for some more Color InkJet paper from Sears.

Mom's pictures from Uncle LeRoy's funeral were waiting in my mailbox when I got back Thursday evening. About an hour later, Brian & Linda from down the street came by to feed FurFace -- I was in the computer romm, and they didn't know that I had returned. We crawled the Web for a while, and I gave them some of the MREs I couldn't eat.

Well, the waitress sez that the smoke-ban was only for today's lunch-hour rush, and that I can smoke as soon as the last family with toddlers leaves!*************************************************

07/16/95 09:04 AM (Wed) Marlboro, MA

Another afternoon dealing with the Totally Clueless -- today's batch was really out of it, and I learned a valuable lesson about "volunteering" information. Fortunately, Chriss had been down the same rat-hole with that customer before, so he cut me some slack.

Spent last night moving the 366th Infantry WWW files into their own subdirectory, and created one for "Beth". Chris sez that the 366th qualifies for a free $20 account, so I'll do the paperwork this week, and start the application for a domain name.

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07/16/95 09:04 AM (Wed) Lowell, MA

Sitting at Towne Line Tire waiting for Bill to get me checked in for the tune-up and transmission work on the Adm Gracie ... I overslept this morning, but Phynque called to give me her new 800 number and seecurity code so it will be like calling her collect. (Maybe she can get the folks to get that MCI plan, too.)

Yesterday was a real bust - I just couldn't get my act together to get up in time to find my way down to that hearing on the accident, even though I had pictures of the bad brake shoe enlarged. <sigh!> Then I got hung-up on changing a batch of HTML pages, and was Very Late punching in. UltraNet hired a new manager for Customer Service, a woman named Tonya Wright (?). I missed the staff meeting on Monday from taking the Adm Gracie to 3 different places -- I made the appointment at Towne Line for today's work, I had to get a State Inspection (the Viet Namese CITGO station), and Car-risma to get the air-horn fixed and to make an appointment for tomorrow to geet a security system installed.

My fears of making a bad first-impression were aleviated by her having to leave before 5:00 pm, and i completely missed her yesterday. I see betty Case at 3:00 today, so it'll be tight as to seeing Tonya today, and her next chance won't come until July 5th. Oh, yeah, I got my first paycheck, and discovered that my rate is $10 an hour, not $12. :-( That difference of $200 a month (assuming 25 hours per week) means that the HMO Blue is not a viable option at this time.

As we feared, my "outside" work is getting in the way of my hours at UltraNet, but that's really only for this week, with the trip coming up on Friday. I've got some price lists for people doing HTML authoring, and they're getting Money For Nothing -- $75 per page, and $20 per link!! Ah, well, they've set the Prevailing Market Price, so I think I'll grab some of that sucker money before the rubes get wise to the scam.

I talked to Bill Upham on the phone the other evening -- we'll try to do lunch the week after July 4th, with him, Wendy Swanbeck, and other former CV and former ADRA people. I have to get some things FTP'd to Curt@NIST for the IGES MIME "viewing" tools -- I already sent him the x-files, but he doen't have the full suite of 143 IGES files yet.

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07/16/95 09:04 AM (Sat) Drum Hill Bickford's

Well, I didn't get the Adm. Gracie loaded before I went to bed last night, and when I called Pop at 09:30, he suggested that I blow-off today and get a fresh start in the morning, drop the stuff off at Varnum Street, spend the week in the hotel, and then take the boxes down to Kenyon Street next weekend.

Soooo ... I picked up my mail in Concord, then came here to sort it because people were standing in line for tables at Friendly's. There was a letter from Dalmar in response to my post card from Groton last week, and I had just put his package in the mail last night. The Commonwealth was quick to inform me that I missed the hearing on Tuesday, and that my appeal was rejected. <sigh!>

This morning, I finally figured out a "GUMP" acronym that works --"Generic Unsupported MIME Plotter". WiZ WORX will offer two freeware GUMPs, HPGLGUMP and IGESGUMP™. Needless to say, the latter requires use of the former to "view" IGES files. What does need to be said is that HPGLGUMP will only work on Windows in 256 mode regardless of the resolution. (So what do you want for free??)

Well, I'll put up new Web Pages from DC.

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07/16/95 09:04 AM (Sun) Durm Hill Bickford's

All ready to hit the road as soon as I've had some toast & O.J. Called home about 20 minutes ago and told Mom I'd be on the road as soon as I ate, and that I'd call from the Jearsey Pike. Stopped to say "good-bye" to Alice & Bill, gave her the Radio Shack weather radio for use while I'm gone, and reminded her about the kitty litter -- had to hit the all-night convenience store at zero-dark-thirty last night because I'd forgotten to get some while I was out during the day. :-(

Next stop - somewhere one the other side of the Tappen Zee bridge.

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09:30 AM - Stopped at the first Connecticut Visitor Information Center to dispose of the extra cup of coffee I should have decilined. Called the folks to let them know that I had reset the odometer at 08:00 after topping off the tank (five bucks).

NPR was talking about the Seawolf launch at Electric Boat yesterday. I've been carrying my SSN-21 ball cap on the dashboard of the Adm. Gracie since I bought it last week, so I put it on and had another motorist take a snapshot - she turned out to be a photographer!

I was all set to "engage docking thrustors", when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a chartruse micro-bus, so I had to take a snapshot of the family beside it. When I said, "There's something you don't see every day!" the driver pointed to the highway and said, "Well, there goes another one, but it's got the split windshield." Turns out that they were on their way to some kind of VW antique convention, which explains why I've seen more "beetles" on the road this morning (some quite splashy in their paint jobs) than I've seen in the past year. (I always used to think of Chic when I saw a green one, because that's the one she bought around the time we split up, and we still lived in the same neighborhood for a couple of years.)

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09:04 AM - Garden State Parkway (first exit West of the Tapen Zee Bridge)

Stopped at my regular watering hole, a tradition on this trip. Another tradition is Vivaldi's The Four Seasons while crossing. Today's passage was rainy and foggy - wipers on max (front & rear), with trucks throwing up clouds of spray even at 45 mph - you could not see the water, and the only sign of being in the Hudson River Gourge was that it was a bit lighter (though still only a few car-lengths visibility) because of having left the deeply cut road bed and the darkness of the trees on either side.

Called the folks for a secon time to say that I was running an hour behinde schedule (partly because of the unscheduled half-hour rest stop at 09:30), so the ETA is for around 17:00.

Now, if memory serves me correctly, I can make it all the way to the other end of the New Jersey Turnpike without having to stop for gas, so long as my bladder is empty. :-) My map shows another scheduled stop just south of the Deleware River Bridge, between the river and the Maryland state line.

Hmmm ... looks like the homeboy bikers I passed an hour ago have decided to make a pit stop here as well. (And there's this drop-dead read-head at the next picnic table wearing a dress that's almost exactly the same color as her hair!)

Sound byte from the Steeleye Span CD --

"Oh, since you've had your way

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17:30 - first rest stop after crossing Drlaware River - 360 miles, 16.9 gallons of gas. (I pulled in on the fumes!) Called Pop to say that I was stuck in traffic a mile from the toll booth -- 2000 feet by the time we finished talking. The bridge was painless, but I'm really (Most Sincerely) glad that I stopped for a half hour, because a few miles after I got back on the Delaware Pike, it turned into a parking lot again, although I didn't have to come to a Full Stop like I was when I called Pop.

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18:54 - crossed the Susquehana

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19:57 - Bel Air, MD - Pulled off I-95 at Exit 77 (Rt 24) about 25 miles north of Baltimore because of a cramp in my right leg. Figuring this was Fate, I called Linda, who said she'd get dressed and meet me ASAP at this shopping mall. :-)

I called Pop and told him that I'd be delayed about 2 hours. :-(

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