Saturday, May 27, 2007, was the day of the 500 Festival Parade in Indianapolis. The parade is the culmination of the various celebrations which take place during the month of May prior to the Memorial Day 500 Mile Race. My wife decided that we hadn’t been to the parade since the 1970’s, so we were going to be there. My lack of enthusiasm was based on the fact that during the late 60’s and early 70’s I was deeply involved in the operation of the parade. The Commander of the Indiana National Guard at that time was a member and former President of the 500 Festival Committee and I’m that was why we were so involved. My job at first had top do with the parade security since at that time the parade was at night and the local protestors loved to roam the parade route trying to stir up trouble. Our solution to the problem of the protestors was to line the parade route with “Cherry-Pickers” armed with a Guardsman and a “Walky-Talky “radio which enabled us to quickly alert the police and a platoon of Guardsman for response. Later I manned the Command Post while other Guardsmen controlled the start of the parade and the marshalling and deployment of floats and other units. It was a big job and one I was glad to be rid of eventually. However, I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed being an observer this year. I even enjoyed the city bus ride downtown and the return home by bus. I got to see quite a bit of the city more carefully, avoided the parking headaches and saved gas.

It was raining and misting all morning, and since one had to get there early to avoid the rush, we sat in the rain under our umbrellas for about an hour, but just as the parade started, the rain stopped and the sun came out. The parade has really gotten to be a national, and quite an exciting event. It started out with the Indianapolis Police Motorcycle Drill Team and have received national recognition and deserve it. They were followed by a Color Guard made up of all the services. The parade is basically divided into ten divisions, each made up of one 3-car row of the race car drivers riding on the back of 2007 Corvette convertibles, various celebrities riding on the back of antique convertibles ( I can’t imagine where they get all of those good-looking antique cars), followed by bands, giant parade balloons, floats, hose patrols, and clowns. It is a very professional and efficient operation. All 33 drivers were present. Of particular note was Governor Mitch Daniels on his motorcycle leading his motorcycle club. Also Peyton Manning was the Grand Marshall and he looked as if he was really enjoying his role. I was surprised regarding the floats in that they were quite nice, all of them were made of styrofoam and none of them were made of flowers. Although they’ve had them for several years, the giant balloons were new to me. It was a great experience and I have to admit that once again my wife knew what was best for me.

ON INSTALLING DSL

For some time I have been debating myself regarding installing DSL as my internet server. I’m currently on cable and have been happy with it for seven or eight years, except for the price. The DSL I’ve been looking at would cost about $18.00 less each month which would be considerable per year. Last week I decided to make the move to DSL and took the first step which was to purchase the modem and contact the provider to make the switchover. I was told it was easy to make the switchover and could do the installation myself. I had one complication and that was that I use a router to direct my internet to a laptop as well as my desktop. I was assured that it was not a problem.

The first step was to insert line filters into all my telephone hook-ups in the house which would enable my phones to work at the same time as I use the internet. This was simple to do and they furnished the filters for my phones (all seven of them). The day of the installation, a telephone lineman arrived bright and early to check our lines inside and assure they were OK for DSL. I spent the rest of the day trying to get the modem and associated cables hooked up just as the diagram described. At the end of the day the internet didn’t work. After dinner that evening, I decided to call for help from their support technicians. My call was directed to a lady at their Support Center in Texas. She was diligent in trying to help me and we may have been making progress, however, our conversation was cut off and I lost contact with her. I dialed the support center back and this time I got the Support Center in California and was connected to a man. I had to go through all that had taken place with the woman and then after he had me trying several possible fixes, our phone conversation was again cut off. But by this time I decided to eliminate hooking up the laptop/router portion of my installation in order to simplify things. Then, upon trying to reestablish contact I got the Texas Support Center again, but the woman I talked to previously was tied up with another customer. I insisted on talking to a supervisor and demanded they send someone out to my house to help me. After much more conversation, they agreed.

The next afternoon I got a phone call that said my telephone would be disconnected for an hour or so and then a technician would come to the house. When he got there he explained that our area phone lines had been installed sixty or so years ago and at that time the phone company, by necessity, had installed amplifiers on the lines. This was no longer necessary on current installations and that he had fixed the line. It seems the amplifiers and DSL just didn’t mix. He checked the inside installation of my modem and cables and got it working. He said he didn’t know anything about routers so I was resigned to omitting the laptop from my hookup. After he left, I proceeded to notify my list of addresses of my new E-Mail address and send out a few messages. However I preferred that my E-Mail be on Outlook Express and since the DSL literature said that was possible, I called the Support Center for help.

The technician led me through the switch from Yahoo E-Mail to Outlook Express and now my E-Mail doesn’t work on Outlook Express or Yahoo. Conveniently, at this moment my phone contact was again cutoff and I tried to call back quickly in hopes of getting the same Technician. This time the Support Center was in India. I hung up and dialed the Support Center again. I don’t know where the Support Center was this time but I asked to speak to a supervisor. After again repeating all that had transpired to date the supervisor informed me that this was an Outlook Express problem for Microsoft and that I should contact the Router manufacturer for help in hooking up my laptop. At this point I said “to hell with it, I’m going to see if I can get back on my cable server and return the DSL to where it was purchased”.

To make a long story shorter, I’m back on cable, I’m using Outlook Express, and “lo and behold”, I found out that cable offers internet at a slower speed which is comparable to DSL’s speed and price (but not advertised). Also, I’m so tired of screwing with this whole thing; I’m now paying a local kid to hook up my laptop through the router. Unfortunately, that about covers my attempt to switch to DSL. For the two days I was able to get on DSL, I did find the speed was about the same as cable, although I didn’t get a chance to try downloading anything. The use of my telephones, while using the internet on telephones lines, wasn’t completely clean of feedback on the telephones. Also, I’ve come to the conclusion that when the going gets a little tough for these help experts, hanging up the phone is a pretty simple way of eliminating “help” problems.