Issue 24
Publisher: Jack Burlin Editor: Patti Hammonds
June 4, 2007
IN THIS ISSUE
Your success story
Monthly product special
Kevinisms
Trivia
Articles of Interest:
Newest Products from Middle Atlantic
The American School Gets A
Color TV
Here is a short, but very succinct testimonial from one of our clients.
"Jack Burlin of ISC was able to work with me to customize a rack solution which helped me save my company hundreds of dollars over the proprietary setup provided by our vendors."
Jerry R. Jones
Systems Administrator
Technical Support Team
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This month, Information Support Concepts (ISC) does not have a product special, per se, but a special offer for all our clients and vendors. 
 Over our 20 year history, ISC has been the target of hackers and denial of service (DOS) attacks. Although we are very pro-active when it comes to securing our network and databases, the "bad guys" are always coming out with new ways to intrude into areas where they do not belong. With the type of presence we have on the internet, any successful attack could be devastating. Being a small company (or SME) is not insulation or protection from hackers. If the Fortune 500 companies are paying millions of dollars to protect themselves, the bad guys simply start to focus on more lightly protected targets. Many industry experts are saying that if you have never been hacked, just wait a little while. At ISC we feel very strongly that an affordable, robust, and upgradeable intrusion prevention system is a must. We have been using one for nearly a year and are very happy with it. To help clients and vendors who have similar vulnerabilities to the ones that we experience, we are offering the following service: A free, one-on-one webinar with an industry expert. This webinar lasts about 20 minutes, but could extend if you have a lot of questions. All you need to do is call ISC and answer a couple of basic questions about your network and your presence on the internet. Then we will schedule the webinar at a time that is convenient to both you and our expert. That is all there is to it.
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Q: What are the names of the two moons that orbit the planet Mars?
All correct answers will be placed into a pool for a
random drawing at the end of the month. The winner will receive a
free virtually indestructible USB mouse (part number VIMOUSE) plus free ground shipping. Send your answers to:
Jack Burlin
See next month's newsletter for the winner and the
correct answer.
Answer from May's Newsletter.
Q: What is a blue moon, and
when will we experience the next one?
A: A blue moon is the second full moon in a calendar month.
Since there are 12 to 13 full moons each calendar year, on average,
there is one blue moon every two years. The next blue moon is on
June 30, 2007 which is this month!
The winner was Antoine Durr. Congratulations!
A Kevinism is a funny or intriguing statement or idea from our Vice President of Sales, Kevin Hunt. Kevin is a big fan of Sandra Bullock, Pizza Inn black olive pizza, and Dr. Pepper (not necessarily in that order). He is not a big fan of Chinese food, seafood, or other types of "dead" stuff.
As most readers of this column know, Kevin usually orders a veggie burger whenever he gets the chance. At Bennigan's and Chili's they have essentially the same black bean burger. The veggie burger he used to like at Friday's was discontinued, so we no longer eat at Friday's. When Bennigan's sold the Boca Burger, Kevin was known as the Boca Boy. Since their shift to the black bean burger, he has become known as the Vegginator.
The whole concept of a veggie burger escapes me. Why would vegetarians want something that tastes like a burger, but yet is not really a burger? The companies that make them strive to have them be similar to real meat, yet vegetarians, supposedly, don't like real meat. Whenever Kevin is asked how the veggie burger was, the typical answer is "not bad." This seems to be the best that can ever be said about a veggie burger. I think most products would lose their marketability if the public characterized them consistently as being "not bad."
Kevin likes to joke with the servers when he orders a veggie burger. He likes it well done, "with no pink" inside. Usually this comment just baffles the poor servers. On a recent occasion, Kevin was complaining that some new place had very thin, wafer like patties, so he asked the server for a nice "meaty" veggie burger. Since that time Kevin has been doing everything he can to backtrack. He says he meant meaty as in substantive, not as in made from meat. He says there is a "good" kind of meaty and a "bad" kind. The good is not made from meat, but is in fact thick, juicy, tasty, rib-sticking, mouth watering, etc. However, according to Kevin, an actual piece of meat that has all these qualities naturally is in fact the bad kind of meat.
I think it was just a Freudian slip, and is indicative of Kevin's desire to experience a real burger. Though for appearances sake he will have to continue to order veggie burgers. Veggie burgers that are "not bad."
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The American School Gets a Color TV |
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The American School of Doha, Qatar was established in 1988 by then Ambassador Joseph Ghougassian. There is an entire Wikipedia article about it available at this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_School_of_Doha
At the time, not very many people visited Doha, and the country of Qatar was relatively unknown. Today, Qatar hosts a variety of US military installations and thousands of US military personnel. Where it once had only a single international hotel of consequence, it now has quite a few, and there are plans to build five or six new ones.
When I worked for General Dynamics, I was involved in the effort to sell F-16 aircraft to the Qatar Air Force. This meant I had the opportunity to visit Doha two or three times. My last visit was in July 1988. At this time, Ambassador Ghougassian was aggressively promoting the establishment of the school, and was looking for donations to help get the school going.
The purpose of this particular visit was to hold some briefings for the Ambassador so he could understand the status of our effort in Qatar. We had a very nice meeting with the Ambassador on July 2, and were invited to the Ambassador's residence for the Independence Day celebration he had scheduled for the 4th of July. Things were looking promising as we checked into the Sheraton Hotel.
Adjacent to the hotel was the Doha Convention Center. As a guest at the hotel, we had access to the trade show that was going on at the time. This was a large car show, with models from all the major manufacturers on display. There were cars from Germany, Japan, and the US being shown, but it was the Honda display that caught my eye. They were having a contest, and the grand prize was a 32" color TV.
The contest was fairly simple. They had a rudimentary video game set up which pitted two opponents against each other in real time. The game was a race car game, and although not on the same level as Pong, was quite archaic as compared with what is currently available. They were taking sign-ups for competition between players. You could race against an opponent, and if you won you would move on to the next round. Not having anything else to do that was not work related, I signed up for the contest.
The next day a tragic event occurred. The US guided missile cruiser Vincennes shot down an Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf. The Vincennes mistook the airliner for an F-14 that appeared to be attacking. All 290 passengers and crew were killed. Due to this international incident, our meetings at the Embassy and at the Qatar Air Force were cancelled. Also, the Ambassador cancelled the Fourth of July celebration. We were left with nothing to do and no way to leave for a few days. Having nothing but time on my hands, I resolved to win the Honda contest and the TV. So I went down to the Honda display and tried to learn about the race car video game.
The game turned out to be very straight forward. You used a hand controller to drive your car around an oval track. The person who finished three laps first was the winner. However, they had the setting for tire wear at a very high level, so most players blew a tire before finishing a single lap. If you could complete one lap you could pull into the pit area and change your tires.
The competition was very interesting. Players would gun their cars as soon as they got a green flag, and they would usually blow a tire and be out of the contest within about 15 seconds. The strategy became one of outlasting your opponent rather than trying to beat him to the finish line.
The people entered into the contest were mostly children between 10 and 16. There were some visiting businessmen like myself, and a few of the local men. Mostly though it was the expatriate kids.
By simply driving very slowly and being careful not to blow a tire, I successfully worked my way up through the rounds until I made the finals. My competitor in the final match turned out to be an 11 year old Pakistani boy. When we got the green flag we both started our cars forward, verrrry sloooowly. I was carefully monitoring the condition of my tires, and was not concerned that he was slightly ahead of me. We both made it through the first lap (which was something no one had done to this point). We both pulled into the pit area and changed tires. Being a little slower probably helped, although I was trying to get into the lead. Whether the game settings changed on the second lap or not, I will never know for sure, but it did seem like the tires started to wear out much more quickly. Just as I feared I was going to blow a tire, my opponent's tire blew first. Three seconds later my own tire blew, but I had won!
It was a satisfying victory. That 11 year old Pakistani boy never knew what hit him! However, I had not considered the dilemma of trying to bring a 32" color TV that weighed about 150 pounds back from Qatar. If I was successful in getting it home, I was not sure it would work. I think it was SECAM, not NTSC, and it was probably 230VAC as well. The best alternative seemed to be leaving it behind.
It did not take too long to conceive the idea of donating the TV to the Ambassador. I did this in the name of General Dynamics. So about a month later Stanley Pace, our CEO, got a nice letter from the US Ambassador in Qatar, thanking him for the generous donation to his pet project, the American School of Doha.
As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the newsletter this month.
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