CEDX

Help me help kids with cancer

On March 12th, 2005, I'm going to be participating in the Saint Baldrick's Day event at Napper Tandy's in Northport to get my ponytail shorn, and my head shaved.  The ponytail goes to Locks of Love, and the head shaving is in support of  The Morgan Center.  To donate online, click here, and you'll see just how much hair is coming off!  Even if its just a buck, please sponsor me, if you can.

I am blessed with two healthy, bright, loving kids, and am thankful for it, but my family has been touched by childhood cancer, and I am working with The Morgan Center, where they provide a preschool for kids undergoing chemo.  It's a hard thing to do to shave my head, my hair is kind of a personal trademark. Lots of people on Long Island know me as "The Wi-Fi guy with the hair", and my son Alec, is not too keen on it, nor Emily, my wife.  My daughter, Daniela, is cool with it, because now she'll have the longest hair in the house.

So if you're one of those old school guys that has seen me on the networking circuit and have always wanted to tell me to go get a haircut, but have bitten your tongue, now's the time to make your mark on me and drop a few bucks in the bucket for the kids.  If you've been a fan of the hair, make it worth my while to cut it off.  Mine will only take another couple of years to grow back, the kids I'm doing this for may not ever get theirs back.

Broadwater Presentation at LIMBA

The folks from Broadwater came to LIMBA this morning, and gave the standard powerpoint pitch for the LNG terminal in the sound.  Most of us had heard the stuff in the pitch in the media, so it got interesting during the Q and A.  One of the great things about LIMBA is the opportunity to put people's feet to the fire and ask your own questions of people that can make things happen.

Ernie's first question was the one on most people's minds, and that was what's the worst case scenario in a USS Cole type attack, where an explosive is delivered to the storage facility.  Yes, it would be disastrous for facility, but it was interesting to find out that it would be more of a massive burn up of the facility rather than a huge explosion.  Mr. Hritcko, the project manager, detailed some of how the terminal would be constructed.  It would be a double-hulled structure, much more difficult to damage than a Navy ship, so a much larger charge would be needed to take on the facility.  There will also be an exclusionary zone around the terminal, so a surprise attack would be much less likely, if everybody's awake.  Broadwater has hired Saint Rudy's firm to consult on security, so I'm sure he'll keep it safe...

One of the things that I find disgusting is people playing the politics of fear, claiming that this will be a terrorist target.  So because something might be a terrorist target, are we supposed to all stick our heads in the sand and implement nothing new?  Will no new bridges be built because they could be targets?  No more grand public works?  What a bunch of wusses we have here.

I learned that LNG is not stored under pressure, like propane is, and that it would cook off, rapidly and intensely, for sure, but it doesn't seem that there's a bomb sitting in the sound like most of the initial reports have given.

Also, the technology is about 40 years old, and there are 4 existing onshore terminals that  have been operating for quite a while in Boston Harbor, the western shore of Maryland, Savannah Georgia, and Lake Charles, Louisiana.  These onshore terminals represent more of a danger to their neighboring populations than this project would.

One of the things that Broadwater claims is that it will increase the gas supply available in the NY metro market by about 20-25%, theoretically depressing the cost of the fuel in the local market, and cutting bills for those that use gas.  Also, this will increase the supply of gas available for repowering the electric generators on Long Island.  Environmental groups should be enamored of this particular project, because it has the potential to reduce air pollution in the New York area.  To the claim of the industrialization of the sound, I say, too little, too late.  The sound has been industrialized for two hundred years, and there have been nuclear submarines and their weapons going to and fro for the past fifty.  Give me a break!  As the benefits and risks of the project become clearer it will be interesting to see how all the local politicians revise their opinions on this.

Coming soon to a coach seat near you

In brilliant Spectracalifragilistic color, a video primer on our Wi-RAN product for motorcoach passengers is here for your viewing pleasure. An epic tale of bandwidth and mobility for high-powered Hamptonites, it's a preview of our rollout across the thirty-five vehicle fleet of the Hampton Jitney.  Click on the logo to see our quicktime movie.  Be patient, it's packed with 10 Megabytes of talent and drama!  We'll be in full deployment over the next few weeks.  Stay tuned for updates.

The video was produced for us by Benson-Tapia productions, Cinematographer and Voice Narrator:   -  J.J. Pagano
For more information about Benson-Tapia productions, contact Brenda Benson at:  631-875-8791
For more information about Wi-RAN installations and marketing opportunities, contact Craig Plunkett of Wi-RAN at 631-262-9300

Municipal Wireless Broadband

One of my favorite places to go and authors to read is Wifinetnews, one of Glenn Fleishman's blogs.  Today he posts a most excellent parody of the BS that the incumbent wireline twisted pair plant owners are pushing these days to attempt to protect their soon to be dwindling cash flows.  Over the past couple of weeks  Glenn and a bunch of other journalists, Carol Ellison, Wayne Rash, Sascha Meinrath, Esme Vos, and Karl Bode have unmasked an ostensibly academic organization as a front for ILECs and MSOs protecting their monopoly positions.  The whole string of posts can be read here

My own personal feeling is that structural separation will occur when the ILECs field their new FTTH networks (that they are not mandated to share) and want to dump the maintenance of the aging copper plant on the public and free themselves of union labor.  A precursor of this on Long Island was the deal that created LIPA, where a private entity, Keyspan, became owner of the generators, and the public now owns the transmission and distribution network. 

Repowering Long Island

I belong to an advocacy group called LIMBA, and we have regular meetings at the ungodly hour of 8:30AM on Friday mornings at the Hilton Garden Inn near MacArthur Airport.  Every time I attend a meeting, I learn something here.  We have a wide range of speakers that come to talk on subjects that deal mostly with the infrastructure issues that face Long Island, like Energy, Transportation, and Housing.  Today we had Prof. Matthew Cordaro, of Long Island University come to give us an update on repowering Long Island by renovating the older single cycle power plants that currently exist here.  Prof. Cordaro's Center for Managment Analysis at LIU has produced a report that details the dramatic environmental benefits from going to combined cycle plants.  The emissions are reduced tremendously, the fuel efficiency is increased, and the generating capacity of the plants are substantially boosted.  Seems like a no-brainer here, but we're talking about big ticket items here, and until the question of who will own the generating assets of Long Island's electrical system is resolved, repowering probably isn't getting off the dime.

The upcoming subjects and speakers for LIMBA meetings are available at LIMBA's website, www.limba.net.  One of the more exciting subjects will be a presentation by Broadwater Energy, on their plan for a floating LNG Regasification plant in the middle of Long Island Sound.  This one's gonna be better than Fight Night at the Garden!

Ken Schachter's Column, February 11 2005

The ever observant Mr. Schachter lets his readers in on our move to Greenlawn, and the expansion of Fire Island Wireless to Long Island, in the form of our adding a hotspot to the Fire Island Ferries Bay Shore terminal complex.  Both sides of Maple Avenue will see service, the main terminal and the Ocean Bay Park and Seaview terminal also.  The Point O'Woods terminal will probably get spillover coverage too.

A Wi-Fi Smorgasbord

CEDX has settled into new offices in lovely downtown Greenlawn, just north of the intersection of Pulaski Road and Broadway, within walking distance of the LIRR station, the Tri-Village little league fields and BAE systems (nee Hazeltine, for those of us of a certain age).  As it happens, our office is on the second floor of Broadway Plaza, a retail center housing:

• Urban Coffee - a nice place to sit for a latte or ice cream in warmer weather
• Gold Mine Mexican Grill - A quick family favorite
• Stars of Tomorrow Dance Academy - Where Moms while away the time waiting for their future J. Lo's to finish class
• Subway - For those of us looking to eat skinny.
• Green Jade Chinese - Take out Chinese, 'nuff said.
• Jimmy's Pizza, yum.  Try the Ziti slice.

and across the street, receiving a great Wi-Fi signal is a brand new Dunkin' Donuts/Baskin Robbins.  So whatever your taste in food, you can get Wi-Fi with it, by setting your SSID to cedx or wi-ran, opening a browser and logging in.  Unlike hotspots in most corporate headquarters, this one is actually somplace you'd want to sit down and relax in.  We look forward to seeing you!

Rolling Wi-Fi Installation

If you like using Wi-Fi on the Hampton Jitney, CEDX is happy to announce that you can have your own rolling Wi-Fi network installed by Supersound Communications, our installation partner in the NYC metro area.  Wi-RAN, our joint venture with Best Mobile Computing, has produced a version of our rolling hotspot that can go in the trunk of your car, van, or fleet vehicle.  For pricing, call CEDX at 631-262-9300

Wi-Fi Roaming

CEDX would like to inform its users that through our roaming relationship with cafe.com, we can offer an additional spot in Manhattan to use your CEDX wi-fi account, and that's Kudo Beans, at 49 First Avenue, in the East Village of Manhattan.  Cafe.com visitors from the left coast can also use CEDX hotspots, a listing of which can be found on Jiwire

Sea Changes

Welcome to CEDX's new website, a blog.  It seemed to me that the purpose of a corporate website is to communicate with customers, and make it easier for those customers to find information about the company. I decided to dispense with the "usual" website, since it was woefully out of date, anyway, and switch to the blog format, which is becoming the vernacular of timely commuication on the internet.

Eventually, this blog will become our product and service catalog, newsfeed, and communications center, keeping our current and prospective customers up to date on our progress.  Some entries will be announcements, others requests for conversations and feedback on our company.

Thanks for being here.
-Craig