The Gamble Family (.Net)

As another birthday rolls around, I decided to treat myself with a ride to Deal’s Gap and the Cherohala Skyway. Deal’s Gap (aka Tail of the Dragon) is a phenominal piece of US 129 between Maryville, TN and Robbinsville, NC. The section of roadway known as The Dragon is a favorite among motorcyclists because if its “318 curves in 11 miles”. The Cherohala Skyway is popular because of its 40 miles of sweeping curves that snake across the top of the Cherokee National Forest at altitudes that reach 5,400 feet above sea level. The Skyway connects Robbinsville, NC and Tellico Plains, TN.

Since my wife, Cheryl could not come along with me due to work requirements, I decided to invite Stephen and his wife, Joelle, along for the trip. Stephen and I met up in Mt. Juliet, TN on Wednesday afternoon. We left Mt. Juliet around 5 PM, headed east on I-40 towards Alcoa, TN, where we planned on spending the night. We made a stop in Crossville, TN and ate supper at Cracker Barrel. We were fortunate to arrive at our hotel in Alcoa at 9:00, just before sunset.

Thursday morning, we left the hotel at 8:30, headed for the Dragon. US 129 is a very twisty road even before you get to the Dragon, so the ride provided me with an opportunity to get prepared for my runs through the Dragon. As you get to within about five miles of the north end of the Dragon, the road begins to parallel the Little Tennessee River. The view of the river this morning was breathtaking. The water was glassy smooth and the Smokie Mountains in the background provided a beautiful view. With each mile that I rode along the river, my attitude begin to get more and more serious. I have been to the Dragon before, and even though I dearly love that road, it is a very dangerous section of highway. There are accidents on it just about each and every day as sport bike riders attempt to ride beyond their limits. 18-wheelers often use US-129 as a shortcut into North Carolina, so their presence provides an even greater risk to motorcyclists. At the entrance to the Dragon, the highway makes a sharp left turn away from the river. This is my signal that it’s time to “put on my game face” for the next 11 miles.

There is a scenic overlook about 2 miles into the Dragon. The overlook gives riders an opportunity for a fantastic view of the valley and the Calderwood Dam. It also provides a place to pull over and regroup before proceding into the teeth of the Dragon. When Stephen and I left the overlook, I told him to go ahead. Stephen rides a sport bike, and I know from experience that there is no way that I will be able to keep up with him on my big Venture.

The ride through the Dragon was fabulous. I managed to scrape my floorboards several times, both on right and left hand turns. We safely made three passes, with smiles on our faces all the way through each time. We stopped at Deal’s Gap (the Crossroads in Time resort) at the south end of the Dragon. The resort is actually just a gas station and souvenire shop. I bought a Dragon shot glass and a couple of chrome Dragon stickers for the bike.

After leaving the Deal’s Gap, we continued south on US 129 towards Robbinsville. We made brief stop at Wheeler’s to pick up T-shirts. The Deal’s Gap resort has T-shirts, but their’s aren’t nearly as cool as the ones at Wheeler’s. After getting a new Dragon T-shirt, we rode on to the turnoff for the Cherohala Skyway.

As I’ve already mentioned, the Skyway runs for 40 miles along the top of the Cherokee National Forest. All along the way, we had spectacular views on either side of the valleys and mountains that make up the eastern edge of the Great Smoky Mountains. The Skyway starts out about 2,500 feet above sea level, and begins its climb to almost 5,400 feet above sea level. As you ascend, you pass signs that indicate your altitude: 3,000 ft, 4,000 ft, and 5,000 feet. With each jump in altitude, the temperature drops. At the bottom, the temperature was a comfortable 80 degrees, but when we reached the top, the temperature had dropped to 60 degrees.

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We made a brief stop at the Big Junction overlook (5240 feet above sea level). From the overlook, you can see for miles and miles in all directions. The view from the top is absolutely breath-taking. Pictures simply don’t do it justice.

After stopping at the overlook, we continued on towards Tellico Plains, where we had lunch at “The TelliCafe”. After lunch, we gassed up and started on long ride back home. We took the backroads for about 50 miles until we got to Kingston. Once we reached Kingston, we hit the interstate for the final leg of our 475-mile, two-day journey.

This was a completely fabulous trip for me. I had been looking forward to this trip since earlier this Spring. The temperature for Wednesday and Thursday was around 80 during the day and the skies were blue and clear. The Dragon and the Cherohala Skyway are (at least to this point), the two most favorite roads that I have ever ridden on. I had never been on the Skyway before today, but I had read and heard a lot about it. No matter what people tell you, or no matter how many photographics you see of the Skyway, you have to experience it for yourself to get the full effect. To ride across the top of the Smoky Mountains, with nothing on either side but a mile deep valley is totally awe-inspiring. Words can not describe the beauty nor the feeling of standing on top of a mile-high mountain with nothing around to make even the slightest sound.

This is definitely a birthday that I will remember for a long, long time.

It has been over a year since Tennessee Titan’s quarterback, Steve NcNair, was arrested for DUI in Nashville, TN. The information provided below was taken out of several articles that appeared in The Tennessean.

McNair was arrested on May 22, 2003 in downtown Nashville and charged with driving under the influence and possession of a handgun while intoxicated. His blood alcohol content was 0.18%, almost twice Tennessee’s legal intoxication threshold of .10% at that time. The threshold is now 0.08%. The two charges are class A misdemeanors.

On May 23, 2003, the Tennessee Titans quarterback faced the media and apologized for his arrest. McNair stated, “This is something that I didn’t think would ever happen, but this is something that we’ll just have to deal with, and I will, with the support of my teammates, coaches, family and friends. I apologize, especially to my fans and the kids that look up to me. This is something that you don’t usually see out of me, but I put myself in this situation. I will bounce back from this.”

In May, McNair’s attorney, Roger May, filed numerous motions for dismissal of the case. Among the issues in the case is whether the arresting officer, Shawn Taylor, made a lawful stop of McNair’s SUV the night of the arrest. Also included in the motions filed in May: an affidavit by limousine driver Eddie E. Brown Jr., who said he overheard Taylor tell another officer he was going to “get” McNair just before he stopped him. Other motions to suppress evidence and to suppress the blood alcohol test results were also filed in May, along with a motion to suppress evidence in the firearms case because “the search and seizure of the handgun was unreasonable, illegal and in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.”

With all of the legal maneuverings being attempted by McNair and his attorney, one has to ask, “Do any of these alleged circumstances change the fact that Steve McNair was driving a vehicle while his blood alcohol content was almost two times the legal limit - with a gun?” Certainly not! McNair openly admitted his guilt on May 23, 2003, when he publicly apologized for his actions. He and his attorneys have wasted enough of the taxpayer’s time and money stringing us along trying to nickel and dime the legal system with minutia. Why doesn’t McNair give us all a break and just step up to the plate and accept the penalty for the crime(s) that he obviously commited? His celebrity status has nothing to do with his guilt or innocence, and neither do those “technicalities” that he and his attorney keep trying to force down our throats. Face it, he broke the law. Now, he should do his part and let the legal system do its job so that it can move on to more important cases. We all know that Nashville has its share of accused felons just waiting for their day in court too.

I have to admit that I’m a Microsoft fan. I am a software engineer who uses Microsoft’s RAD tools (VB, C#, SQL Server, etc.) to put food on my table and to support my “big boy toys” habits. About four years back, just after Java had gained significant momentum and acceptance in the development community, I took a serious look at Java. I even took (and passed) the Sun Certification test and became a Sun Certified Java Programmer. Oooooh, ahhhhh. This all took place at one of those career crossroads (actually, it was more like an epiphany) that we all come to at one point or another.

My programming epiphany took place back in the summer of 2000. My manager had just been replaced with someone who came from a Java/Oracle/Unix shop. As managers often do, he brought along some of his star (Java) programmers. For the next three months, we all sat in meetings and were berated with how great Java was and how fast “they” could build systems. So, I thought to myself, if I’m going to survive, I might as well kick the tires and see what’s under the hood.

As it turned out, the more I looked at Java IDEs and application servers, the more I was convinced that Microsoft really had their act together. There were no, and I mean NO IDEs that could hold a candle to the VB6 IDE. As far as application servers were concerned, each vendor (Bea and WebLogic just to name the big two) has their own proprietary implementation of J2EE. Each one did things their own way - so much for standardization. I guess that’s one of the drawbacks to open source, everyone gets to do their own thing. The problem with that is that nobody bothers to sit down and adhere to standards. At least with Microsoft’s products, you get some comfort in knowing that if you use “their stuff”, that you at least have a decent chance of the parts playing together.

So, back to the reason for this post. In addition to being a Microsoft fan, I’ve always favored Internet Explorer. IE has always been very stable for my applications. I like ActiveX. I like being able to exploit DHTML in my web applications. IE has always provided me with a rich client on which I could build robust browser-based business aplications.

Did I mention ActiveX? Well, that seems to be the culprit these days. ActiveX is a technology in which small applications can be developed and downloaded to a Microsoft client. The web page then uses these ActiveX applications to provide even most robust application solutions. Sounds good, right? Enter the malicious hacker community. You see, an application is one of those things that, as they say in comic book world, can be used for good or for evil.

The most recent attack on the vulnerability of IE is the Download.Ject virus, which exploited a number of holes in Microsoft’s IIS Web server and Internet Explorer. The virus installed a password-stealing trojan horse on Web surfers’ computers. This virus prompted the U.S. government’s Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, to publish a warning strongly suggesting that users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer should switch to another Web browser, due to “significant vulnerabilities” in technologies included in IE. On the day the CERT warning was issued, downloads of Mozilla and Firefox — an advanced version of Mozilla — spiked, and demand has continued to grow. According to Chris Hofmann, engineering director at the Mozilla Foundation, formed last July to promote the development, distribution and adoption of Mozilla Web applications, downloads of the browsers hit an all-time high on Thursday, from the usual 100,000 or so downloads on a normal day to more than 200,000.

With all of the hooplah surrounding FireFox, I decided to give it a try. I’ve used Netscape in the past. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I have cursed Netscape in the past. Some things that work in IE don’t in Netscape. Or, for some of the things that do work in both browsers, you have to program differently to accomodate different object models. I hated that with a passion. I used to always cry, “Why can’t both parties do things the same way.” I didn’t care which way they did it, I simply wanted it done the same way, with the same feature support across both platforms. Sorry, I degressed. Let’s get back to FireFox.

The installation of FireFox is straightforward. The install even asks you if you want to import your IE favorites, cookies, and history. Hmmm, that’s interesting (and so non-Netscapish). Next, I went to some of my favorite sites. Hey, they all seem to work just fine (with the exception of those that use ActiveX). No biggy, I expected that. Now, let’s look at some of the cool features of FireFox: Tabbed browsing, Popup blocker, Annoyance eliminators, Themes, and the much bragged about better security. More details can be found in the following article, Why You Should Switch to Firefox by Ben Goodger. Of all the articles available, the most interestingly titled is one that I found on MSN’s on Slate site entitled “Are the Browser Wars Back? How Mozilla’s Firefox trumps Internet Explorer.” by Paul Boutin.

The browser wars will continue as long as there are more than one to choose from. Choice one of the driving forces of creativity. I’ll still use IE for most of my browsing, but I will also trade off to FireFox, just to keep myself honest. And, in the interest of my clients, I will also do my best to insure that all of my websites support both browsers.