<P>Well I was able to score&nbsp;a deal and get a short term membership at a Gold’s Gym 2 blocks away from my hotel and I am quite happy about it. Even though I will be putting in some serious hours being on the road without normal dad duties I can find time to hit the gym even if it is late.</P>
<P>I hate eating healthy and the food in this state is fantastic I am sure I will have to eat out a couple of times a week but at least I have a outlet to get rid of the calories after eating this fat and delicious food.</P>

<P>Well here I am at 39,000 feet on an American Airlines Flight headed for Dallas / Ft Worth and having just eaten something that I would not feed my dog I am bit disturbed. My wife is pissed my kids are mad and I’m thristy and need some water. (Dummy me forgot a water bottle) The way they are rationing it you would think it was in short supply.</P>
<P>The 2 weeks I had in Hawaii were not necessarily spent at home I was at work the majority of the time and my kids thought I was gone as they were in bed when I went to work and in bed came home. The weekend I got to spend with them went to quick and when I broke the news that I had to travel&nbsp;again the mood went from fun to reserved. My boy sulked and my daughter&nbsp;is plain mad. Not to mention how the wife feels.</P>
<P>After 5 years of traveling 250+ days per year they have&nbsp;a right to be mad. But duty calls and hopefully this trip will go off as scheduled. </P>

Well first day off in about 4 weeks and I am just relaxing. Kept the kids out of school so we could have some time together. Will take them for shaved ice here in a few minutes. God Bless 80 degree tempatures here in Hawaii.

<P>All of have our favorite magazines. One that I have been reading for about 15 years is going on-line. Hand writting has been on the wall for some time.</P>
<P>Before many of you knew anything about the Internet there was a on-line community that dialed into community Bulletin Board Systems. A little history review is needed before I go into the above headline. I initially launched my dial-up &lt;a href=”<A href=’http://www.bbsnets.com/”>BBS</a’>http://www.bbsnets.com/”&gt;BBS&lt;/a</A>&gt; in 1987 it ran on a Commodore Colt with a 8088 processor with a 47 meg RLL hard drive. It had one of the best modems of the time which maxed out at 2400 bps. At the time I was king of the hill in my community. It had one dial in line and could handle around 250 callers a day. Most called locally but may called from all over the United States. They logged in and stayed a few minutes to download mail/file’s or play a game.. My system was like thousands of other small hobby boards. We featured shareware, forums and on-line games through a text colorized ANSI interface. </P>
<P>My system grew and just prior to the revolution known as the WWW we had 14 dial-up lines running on a several 486 machines using desqview to multitask the command windows via Dos 5.0&nbsp; We had nearly 5000 users of which nearly 500 payed a monthly fee to have access to premium sections of the site. We actually made money :)</P>
<P>This is where Boardwatch magazine comes in. This publication which in it’s hay day had nearly 100 pages of color content. Kept BBS sysops all over the world connected and up to date on the latest happenings and new technologies. We all chased faster connection speeds and craved to learn the more on the latest and greatest software packages, tools, games and resources. </P>
<P>For our primitive beginnings we offered 5 minute delayed stock feeds for free as early as 1990. CNN acknowledges today that there stock feed is 15 minutes delayed isn’t technology grand. We were in effect community AOL’s as many of us offered a large number of services. I was one of the first to offer e-mail when most had no idea what e-mail was.</P>
<P>Companies such as US Robotics, Hayes, 3com owed much of there financial success to Boardwatch and BBS operators. People who dial-up today at 56k can thank BBS Sysops. They were the driving force behind faster modems. Heck the modem companies catered to the BBS Sysop and had special programs in place to entice us to purchase the latest models heavily discounted which in turn fueled our dial-up users to upgrade to the latest standard.</P>
<P>When the WWW revolution hit most small BBS systems folded or went off-line as they failed to go the next step and migrate to the web. I and a number of people I have known for nearly 15 years migrated to the web and our &lt;a href=”<A href=’http://www.bbsnets.com/”>Net’>http://www.bbsnets.com/”&gt;Net</A> based BBS&lt;/a&gt; are still thriving. There were a few bleak years but then people started looking for communities of users again that refrained from spamming and actually could have intelligent conversations in forums. So today &lt;a href=”<A href=’http://www.bbsnets.com/”>BBS’>http://www.bbsnets.com/”&gt;BBS</A> Networks&lt;/a&gt; has nearly 25,000 users.</P>
<P>Well Boardwatch changed it’s BBS focus early into the www revolution and went after the ISP crowd. The ISP owners who subscribed were not so surprisingly were in a large extent Ex-Bulletin Board Operators. The magazine was sold a number of years ago to Penton and the longtime Editor Jack Rickard quit and fell of the face of the earth. Thus the demise of the magazine began. He was the foundation to why that magazine was a success.</P>
<P>Penton changed the format and it has been downhill ever sense. The magazine has been sold again to a company I have never heard of called &lt;a href=”<A href=’http://www.lightreading.com/”>Light’>http://www.lightreading.com/”&gt;Light</A> Reading&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=”<A href=’http://www.boardwatch.com/”>Boardwatch</a’>http://www.boardwatch.com/”&gt;Boardwatch&lt;/a</A>&gt; will now cease being a published magazine and become a net based publication. We will see what happens now but the good ol days are definitely gone. I imagine my collection of Boardwatch magazines that go a long way back will probably be a collectors item someday.</P>
<P>[&lt;a href=”<A href=’http://www.boardwatch.com/”>www.boardwatch.com</a’>http://www.boardwatch.com/”&gt;www.boardwatch.com&lt;/a</A>&gt;]</P>

<P>The last 2 weeks have been very busy for me. With no relief in site I am running on pure emotional power now. Sleep has been an luxury. I am looking forward to sleeping more than 4 hours a day. Not sure when that is going to happen but that’s life I guess.</P>
<P>&nbsp;</P>

<P><STRONG>It is a sad day for America.</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>There is no words that can express my personal feelings and my heart goes out to the families. I had awoken at 5am Hawaiian time to go to work and when I jumped in the car my heart missed a couple of beats when I heard it on the news on the radio.</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>With Columbia lost NASA will have to piece to together what happened. We will be inundated with reports and speculation. I am at a loss for words so I will close with this thought.</STRONG></P>
<P><STRONG>Americans have suffered through many National Losses and we will do as we have always done is pick up and carry on.</STRONG></P>

<P>Working 12-15 hours a day can kick anyones butt and mind is pretty much kicked. I haven’t been this tired in a long time. My wife is pissed I haven’t seen the kids in awake in a month. So you can imagine the attitude at my house. After 19+ years in the US Navy you would think I would be used to it. </P>
<P>I hate to tell the junior sailors that I need them to work for the 3rd week&nbsp;straight.&nbsp;I can see it in there eyes that they need a break but they do there duty.&nbsp;I sometimes wonder if the American Public truly know what&nbsp;sacrifices these people are making.&nbsp;</P>
<P>The cause is just and we have sworn to protect and defend and that we will.&nbsp;</P>

Well folks I hope you like the new design I have some work to do to get it all setup I will be adding items as I get a chance. I was not happy with Blogger. I have some design issues on how to implement everything that was in the previous design

<P>I have decided to re-launch Todd’s Weblog and have employed a different publishing package.</P>