Monday, June 15, 2009
A Toast to Bonnie Goodman
4:04 PM | 
Posted by
Billy Ray |
Every person in our community, who experiences the force of love, felt a quake in that force on Sunday as Bonnie Goodman left us. Bonnie and Jack Goodman were married for 67 years and had a bond so strong that no one knows what might happen to our world now that one of them is gone. If the planets suddenly stop orbiting as they always have, no one should be surprised.
My personal knowledge of Bonnie and Jack goes back well over 40 years. Growing up in the First Christian Church and knowing them both as Sunday School teachers and all around examples of how folks could actually live out the teachings of the sermon on the mount, I came to think of Bonnie and Jack as the text book definition of a perfect marriage and infinite love . . . and I was right about that.
After my formal education and my return to Glasgow, I got to experience Jack as a member of the Board of Directors of the EPB and that opened the door to a whole new understanding of the Bonnie and Jack binary star system. Each and every interaction with them left me ashamed of the vast divide between my ability to win friends and influence people when compared to them. They created their own gravity and exported kindness as a perpetual motion machine.
Just a few years ago we planned a train trip which included a stop in Glacier National Park. While I had no intention of becoming a tour guide, Bonnie and Jack heard about the trip and made their own plans to ride along. That was fine with me. We had reservations to stay for a couple of nights at Glacier Park Lodge, a famously large and rustic old lodge built of massive Douglas Fir trunks which tower over forty feet high. The lobby is huge and bustling with travelers from all over the world who have come to see the pristine Montana wilderness and the last of North America’s glaciers. After we unloaded our bags and got comfortable in the lobby, Bonnie exclaimed, “The only way to make this better would be to add a little music,” whereupon she walked up to a massive grand piano, sat down, and commenced to play. Everyone in the lobby stopped what they were doing and tuned in to the vibe being created by Bonnie. Folks from different states, countries, and continents were suddenly entranced by the combined beauty of the mountains, the lodge, and the love pouring out of Bonnie’s fingers through the piano keys. After a few songs, Bonnie excused herself from the keyboard and started dancing with Jack to reverberations of the music she had created moments before. Strangers wept.
The next day we were touring the park in the famous old buses. The mountains, glaciers, streams, waterfalls, and the sky combine at Glacier National Park in a way that makes the spirit soar as in no other place on earth. Toward the end of the day the stars began to come out to add even more glory to the sights we were beholding. But, as the trip wound down and the guides asked the crowd for questions, a young couple in behind me simply asked the guide “How soon will we be back at the lodge?” “We want to be there when that lady from Kentucky starts playing the piano!” I looked out at the visual pallette of the sky and the mountains and smiled in complete understanding of how being around Bonnie trumped seeing the last of North America’s glaciers under a billion stars. After all, there are lots of mountains and stars, but only one Bonnie and Jack.
Bonnie’s passing creates a void that will be felt far beyond the confines of our small community, just as the love they generated created a wake that trailed her and Jack always. Let’s hope those waves never dissipate.
My personal knowledge of Bonnie and Jack goes back well over 40 years. Growing up in the First Christian Church and knowing them both as Sunday School teachers and all around examples of how folks could actually live out the teachings of the sermon on the mount, I came to think of Bonnie and Jack as the text book definition of a perfect marriage and infinite love . . . and I was right about that.
After my formal education and my return to Glasgow, I got to experience Jack as a member of the Board of Directors of the EPB and that opened the door to a whole new understanding of the Bonnie and Jack binary star system. Each and every interaction with them left me ashamed of the vast divide between my ability to win friends and influence people when compared to them. They created their own gravity and exported kindness as a perpetual motion machine.
Just a few years ago we planned a train trip which included a stop in Glacier National Park. While I had no intention of becoming a tour guide, Bonnie and Jack heard about the trip and made their own plans to ride along. That was fine with me. We had reservations to stay for a couple of nights at Glacier Park Lodge, a famously large and rustic old lodge built of massive Douglas Fir trunks which tower over forty feet high. The lobby is huge and bustling with travelers from all over the world who have come to see the pristine Montana wilderness and the last of North America’s glaciers. After we unloaded our bags and got comfortable in the lobby, Bonnie exclaimed, “The only way to make this better would be to add a little music,” whereupon she walked up to a massive grand piano, sat down, and commenced to play. Everyone in the lobby stopped what they were doing and tuned in to the vibe being created by Bonnie. Folks from different states, countries, and continents were suddenly entranced by the combined beauty of the mountains, the lodge, and the love pouring out of Bonnie’s fingers through the piano keys. After a few songs, Bonnie excused herself from the keyboard and started dancing with Jack to reverberations of the music she had created moments before. Strangers wept.
The next day we were touring the park in the famous old buses. The mountains, glaciers, streams, waterfalls, and the sky combine at Glacier National Park in a way that makes the spirit soar as in no other place on earth. Toward the end of the day the stars began to come out to add even more glory to the sights we were beholding. But, as the trip wound down and the guides asked the crowd for questions, a young couple in behind me simply asked the guide “How soon will we be back at the lodge?” “We want to be there when that lady from Kentucky starts playing the piano!” I looked out at the visual pallette of the sky and the mountains and smiled in complete understanding of how being around Bonnie trumped seeing the last of North America’s glaciers under a billion stars. After all, there are lots of mountains and stars, but only one Bonnie and Jack.
Bonnie’s passing creates a void that will be felt far beyond the confines of our small community, just as the love they generated created a wake that trailed her and Jack always. Let’s hope those waves never dissipate.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Trees . . . the Final Frontier
Yes fair readers, it is time for another tree talk and, in an attempt to make it interesting and new, let’s talk about the “prime directive” of the fictional crew of the Enterprise (hey, the new Star Trek Movie is out). You will recall that the fictional crew was sent out on a mission to locate and document new worlds and civilizations, but their “prime directive” (their core orders from central command) forbade them from influencing the development of life on those worlds by telling them about things like outer space, intergalactic travel, Viagra, or iPods. You can read more about that by clicking here. Like the crew of the Enterprise, the crew of the EPB also has a prime directive, and ours is neither fictional nor romantic. Our prime directive is to provide essential services, like electric power and broadband, to Glasgow and make them as reliable as possible and as inexpensive as possible. Our prime directive, and trees located near our lines, are on a collision course, and the trees are going to be transformed as a result.
Anyone who knows the EPB team knows that we really hate to do tree trimming. Many of us, like me, are actually nearly militant environmentalists (that’s me riding my bicycle around town to reduce my carbon footprint) and wish there were more trees to capture more CO2 out of the atmosphere and give off more O2. But, nature’s laws were enacted long before any of us were born, and those laws dictate that trees conduct electricity and if they touch a power line, that power line is going to stop delivering power to our customer’s homes and that violates our prime directive mentioned above. So, trim we must.
This year our trimming methods are changing. For decades we have paid a steadily increasing amount of money to contractors to accomplish our line clearing work. Over that time we noticed that our annual cost for line clearing was rapidly increasing, yet our numbers of power outages caused by trees were not declining at all. Something was wrong with this picture, and we think we have figured it out. You see, tree trimming contractors make money by trimming trees. While utilizing modern directional trimming practices (more about that by clicking here) can yield reduced tree trimming costs, over time, and increased electric system reliability, tree trimming contractors really resist trimming this way because it reduces the likelihood of that tree needing to be trimmed again. Rather, they like to make dozens of cuts that all result in many new branch shoots emerging so that next time the tree needs to be trimmed even more. On and on it goes with the need for line clearing steadily increasing along with the cost and happiness of the tree trimming contractor. We plan on breaking that cycle.
Trimming trees directionally is best for the tree and the EPB and the customers. Since we have had little success forcing our contractors to trim this way, we have a new idea . . . we are going to have our own team do this year’s trimming. One thing is certain, our folks do not profit from trimming trees (in fact they hate it!), so it would seem to follow that they will use aggressive directional trimming methods to clear our lines such that they will remain clear for many years. That will save us money and also meet the second part of our prime directive – keeping our services inexpensive.
As this year’s work unfolds we will be doing more than ever to keep you informed of where we are and when we will be in your yard. We will do this by posting information on the crawl at the bottom of The Weather Channel on our cable system. We will also post this information on our www.glasgow-ky.com web page. Finally, we will be sending out regular updates on our activities on Twitter which is discussed in great detail elsewhere on this blog. There should be no one who is not informed about our plans and tree trimming activity so long as they are willing to read from one of these three media sources. We could mind-meld with our customers but we have no Vulcans on the team!
So, we are starting very soon in Norris Court and along South Green Street. If you live in that area, we will be there soon. Other neighborhoods in that part of town will follow throughout the summer and fall. The trees will not be prettier as a result of our visit, but your electric power and broadband services will be more reliable and the cost of delivering them will be reduced. The prime objective of the EPB will be met!
Anyone who knows the EPB team knows that we really hate to do tree trimming. Many of us, like me, are actually nearly militant environmentalists (that’s me riding my bicycle around town to reduce my carbon footprint) and wish there were more trees to capture more CO2 out of the atmosphere and give off more O2. But, nature’s laws were enacted long before any of us were born, and those laws dictate that trees conduct electricity and if they touch a power line, that power line is going to stop delivering power to our customer’s homes and that violates our prime directive mentioned above. So, trim we must.
This year our trimming methods are changing. For decades we have paid a steadily increasing amount of money to contractors to accomplish our line clearing work. Over that time we noticed that our annual cost for line clearing was rapidly increasing, yet our numbers of power outages caused by trees were not declining at all. Something was wrong with this picture, and we think we have figured it out. You see, tree trimming contractors make money by trimming trees. While utilizing modern directional trimming practices (more about that by clicking here) can yield reduced tree trimming costs, over time, and increased electric system reliability, tree trimming contractors really resist trimming this way because it reduces the likelihood of that tree needing to be trimmed again. Rather, they like to make dozens of cuts that all result in many new branch shoots emerging so that next time the tree needs to be trimmed even more. On and on it goes with the need for line clearing steadily increasing along with the cost and happiness of the tree trimming contractor. We plan on breaking that cycle.
Trimming trees directionally is best for the tree and the EPB and the customers. Since we have had little success forcing our contractors to trim this way, we have a new idea . . . we are going to have our own team do this year’s trimming. One thing is certain, our folks do not profit from trimming trees (in fact they hate it!), so it would seem to follow that they will use aggressive directional trimming methods to clear our lines such that they will remain clear for many years. That will save us money and also meet the second part of our prime directive – keeping our services inexpensive.
As this year’s work unfolds we will be doing more than ever to keep you informed of where we are and when we will be in your yard. We will do this by posting information on the crawl at the bottom of The Weather Channel on our cable system. We will also post this information on our www.glasgow-ky.com web page. Finally, we will be sending out regular updates on our activities on Twitter which is discussed in great detail elsewhere on this blog. There should be no one who is not informed about our plans and tree trimming activity so long as they are willing to read from one of these three media sources. We could mind-meld with our customers but we have no Vulcans on the team!
So, we are starting very soon in Norris Court and along South Green Street. If you live in that area, we will be there soon. Other neighborhoods in that part of town will follow throughout the summer and fall. The trees will not be prettier as a result of our visit, but your electric power and broadband services will be more reliable and the cost of delivering them will be reduced. The prime objective of the EPB will be met!
Monday, May 11, 2009
Bounty of the Barrens Market -- More than a Market
Please forgive me while we talk for a minute about something that is not directly related to the EPB – Sustainable Glasgow and the upcoming Bounty of the Barrens Market currently being planned by Sustainable Glasgow. One of our missions at the EPB has always been to act as a catalyst for economic development and the creation of a steadily improving lifestyle and standard of living in our community. We feel, with all our heart, that the mission of Sustainable Glasgow is well in line with our mission and we really hope you will prove our efforts worthwhile by supporting the market when it opens later this month on Saturday, May 30. This is an exciting time for all the volunteers and vendors involved. One thing is certain: we are not going to be short on area farmers who want to sell food to area eaters!
We are amazed that the market concept we introduced in January has already attracted more than twenty-five vendors who plan to spend their Saturday mornings in the parking lot behind BB&T Bank (which has ever so graciously provided a place for the community to come together) throughout the summer. They will bring the fresh produce that they have lovingly and laboriously planned, planted, tended, and harvested for us.
Now our focus turns toward convincing you, the local eater, to vote for the success of these local farmers by spending your food dollars with them rather than one of the big-box food retailers (you know who). Buckets of money leave our community through these corporate portals.
A visit to the Bounty of the Barrens Market will be nothing like a trip to any conventional grocery store. There will be music by local musicians and cooking demonstrations by local chefs. There will be cheese from Kenny’s Country Cheese and fruits from Jackson’s Orchard and locally grown and harvested meats, eggs, and vegetables from dozens of other residents of our region, the Barrens. But the market will be even more than a festive place to purchase fresh and healthy foods – it is a first step toward a diversified and truly sustainable local economy.
Sustainable Glasgow, Inc. has more ideas and plans. It is our intention to revitalize our local economy and reinvent our community, transforming a good community into a great place that does not have to convince folks to visit us or locate here - a place that creates its own gravity by providing a desirable lifestyle which a sustainable economy creates. The Bounty of the Barrens Market will connect grower and consumer and act as our opening gambit in the process of community reconciliation which, we hope, will ultimately lead us back to a connection with each other and our land.
We want the market to act as a community convener, a community builder and a preserver and restorer of relationships. So, please make plans to come and commune with your neighbors each Saturday throughout the summer; but please do not think of the market as simplistic, for it certainly is not. In my day job we deal with very complicated technology and often feel that we are providing Glasgow with products which are unparalleled in our republic, but deep down we know that our technology is stone-age compared to the products you will find at the market. Perhaps Paul Hawken put it all into perspective when he concluded: “We humans have yet to create anything that is as complex and well-designed as the interactions of the microorganisms in a cubic foot of rich soil.” Come see us at the Bounty of the Barrens Market and see what the natural technology of our region has wrought.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
All We Are Say-ing, Is Give Twitter a Chance...
This just in! Click on this link for a great New York Times primer on using Twitter!
It has now been about six months since we first implored everyone in Glasgow to follow the EPB on Twitter. Since then, it has become nearly impossible to watch any newscast, or just about anything for that matter, where Twitter is not mentioned. Still, we are not getting the sort of participation that we need in order for the people of Glasgow to really benefit from this technology. So, this post will be sort of a repeat of our earlier post in the hope that you are ready to respond this time. We are using Twitter, and we think it might be a real breakthrough in our ability to keep our customers posted on what is going on -- right now!
Since we provide so many services which are essential to life and business in Glasgow, there are often messages that we need to get to you immediately. Just a couple of days ago a TVA switching problem caused the whole city to go dark in the middle of the afternoon of a beautiful spring day. Within seconds, our telephone system was totally overwhelmed with calls. Mostly, people just wanted to make sure we knew of the outage and they wanted to find out what was going on. For the folks who are already following us on Twitter, they already knew the answers to both of these questions. If you are reading this online, then you too have the power and the knowledge required to participate in this "insider information." To participate in getting the very latest real-time information, just click on this link or look on the left side of this blog at the new area entitled "Twitter Updates" and click on the link at the bottom of the updates that says "Follow the EPB on Twitter." Once there, follow the instructions to sign up for an account and then click on the "Follow" button to follow GlasgowEPB on Twitter. Then each time you come back to Twitter.com and sign in, you will see the updates from us! Also, if you have a cell phone (who doesn't?) and if it can receive text messages, enter that information when you are signing up for your Twitter account and you will get the EPB updates instantly when we post them (for some strange reason, this is still not working with Bluegrass Cellular phones, but they promise they are working on it!). Even if you were sitting in the dark after a power outage, you would get the updates from us via your cell phone. We think that feature has tremendous possibilities.
Twitter is the perfect way for one person, or company, to immediately speak to thousands of friends or customers. If all of our customers were receiving our Twitter updates, we could broadcast simple instructions via Twitter that would save everyone the trouble of calling in and having us give them reports and instructions one at a time. Obviously this would really ease everyone's minds during widespread power, internet, or cable television outages. Once we realize that a group of several hundred homes are off we could Twitter the information out to all, and, even if you were sitting in the dark without the ability to check Twitter or this blog for information, you could get the information via text message to your cell phone! Further, there are a lot of other Glasgow-centric possibilities for Twitter. Already WCLU uses Twitter to send out regular updates on local news. WBKO and Bowling Green Daily News do the same. If we are lucky, we might also convince our local 911 and other emergency services to start sending out Twitter updates to tell us about emergency situations or to answer the enduring question of life in Glasgow . . . what are all those sirens about and where are they going? The more of us that use Twitter, the more likely we will be able to influence other local agencies to use it as well and keep us better informed.
Of course, it will take a while for us to get thousands of customers signed up for Twitter and receiving these updates, but, let's start this morning and see how fast we can go! Twitter is free and it dramatically increases the value of the computer, internet service and cell phone service that you already pay for. If you need help signing up and setting up your Twitter account, please call or stop by our office. Together we can become a raging community of Tweeters!
It has now been about six months since we first implored everyone in Glasgow to follow the EPB on Twitter. Since then, it has become nearly impossible to watch any newscast, or just about anything for that matter, where Twitter is not mentioned. Still, we are not getting the sort of participation that we need in order for the people of Glasgow to really benefit from this technology. So, this post will be sort of a repeat of our earlier post in the hope that you are ready to respond this time. We are using Twitter, and we think it might be a real breakthrough in our ability to keep our customers posted on what is going on -- right now!
Since we provide so many services which are essential to life and business in Glasgow, there are often messages that we need to get to you immediately. Just a couple of days ago a TVA switching problem caused the whole city to go dark in the middle of the afternoon of a beautiful spring day. Within seconds, our telephone system was totally overwhelmed with calls. Mostly, people just wanted to make sure we knew of the outage and they wanted to find out what was going on. For the folks who are already following us on Twitter, they already knew the answers to both of these questions. If you are reading this online, then you too have the power and the knowledge required to participate in this "insider information." To participate in getting the very latest real-time information, just click on this link or look on the left side of this blog at the new area entitled "Twitter Updates" and click on the link at the bottom of the updates that says "Follow the EPB on Twitter." Once there, follow the instructions to sign up for an account and then click on the "Follow" button to follow GlasgowEPB on Twitter. Then each time you come back to Twitter.com and sign in, you will see the updates from us! Also, if you have a cell phone (who doesn't?) and if it can receive text messages, enter that information when you are signing up for your Twitter account and you will get the EPB updates instantly when we post them (for some strange reason, this is still not working with Bluegrass Cellular phones, but they promise they are working on it!). Even if you were sitting in the dark after a power outage, you would get the updates from us via your cell phone. We think that feature has tremendous possibilities.
Twitter is the perfect way for one person, or company, to immediately speak to thousands of friends or customers. If all of our customers were receiving our Twitter updates, we could broadcast simple instructions via Twitter that would save everyone the trouble of calling in and having us give them reports and instructions one at a time. Obviously this would really ease everyone's minds during widespread power, internet, or cable television outages. Once we realize that a group of several hundred homes are off we could Twitter the information out to all, and, even if you were sitting in the dark without the ability to check Twitter or this blog for information, you could get the information via text message to your cell phone! Further, there are a lot of other Glasgow-centric possibilities for Twitter. Already WCLU uses Twitter to send out regular updates on local news. WBKO and Bowling Green Daily News do the same. If we are lucky, we might also convince our local 911 and other emergency services to start sending out Twitter updates to tell us about emergency situations or to answer the enduring question of life in Glasgow . . . what are all those sirens about and where are they going? The more of us that use Twitter, the more likely we will be able to influence other local agencies to use it as well and keep us better informed.
Of course, it will take a while for us to get thousands of customers signed up for Twitter and receiving these updates, but, let's start this morning and see how fast we can go! Twitter is free and it dramatically increases the value of the computer, internet service and cell phone service that you already pay for. If you need help signing up and setting up your Twitter account, please call or stop by our office. Together we can become a raging community of Tweeters!
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Monday, April 27, 2009
The Dilemma Over Coal and Electric Power
If you did not catch this exhaustive report on Sixty Minutes last night, I strongly suggest that you watch and read it by clicking here. This is not an issue that only affects folks outside of Glasgow. It will affect us all very directly. In fact, it might hit us sooner than the rest of the country because our power supplier, TVA, is already spending over a million dollars a day trying to clean up the massive spill of coal ash that occurred just before Christmas 2008. The money for that cleanup will soon find its way to our electric bills in Glasgow.
After reading and viewing this information, how about posting your comments and thoughts about it here on our blog?
After reading and viewing this information, how about posting your comments and thoughts about it here on our blog?
Thursday, April 2, 2009
While You Were Sleeping
Last night, when you were not really looking or expecting it, we added some new channels for all of our cable customers who subscribe to our digital and HD tiers. In case you haven't yet noticed them, check out channel 145 - Chiller. As the name implies, you can read more about the channel on their website by clicking here. Basically, it all horror movies. I won't be watching that, but it is there for you!
Next, watch channel 195 for WHAS 24hour weather. While WHAS is presently still working to get this on the air, it will be, as the name implies, a 24 hour a day radar and weather summary of our region from Louisville's WHAS team.
Channel 524 on our HD tier is now USA-HD. USA Channel is one of the most popular on television. Now you can watch it in HD. Finally, channel 539 is now Sci-Fi-HD. All of your favorite SciFi shows and movies coming to you in HD!
Also, QVC has moved to Ch. 20 and Bravo has moved to Ch. 26.
You just never know what we are working on while you are sleeping! Enjoy...
Next, watch channel 195 for WHAS 24hour weather. While WHAS is presently still working to get this on the air, it will be, as the name implies, a 24 hour a day radar and weather summary of our region from Louisville's WHAS team.
Channel 524 on our HD tier is now USA-HD. USA Channel is one of the most popular on television. Now you can watch it in HD. Finally, channel 539 is now Sci-Fi-HD. All of your favorite SciFi shows and movies coming to you in HD!
Also, QVC has moved to Ch. 20 and Bravo has moved to Ch. 26.
You just never know what we are working on while you are sleeping! Enjoy...
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Of the Internet and Glasgow
Way back in 1991 we discovered that our new broadband network was capable of being used as a local area network (LAN). That means we were able to establish communications between a few folks that already had home computers and the new file servers and educational software that the Glasgow schools had bought. It was very cool and novel. The technology we were using meant that we had to actually crack open the computers and install a communications card manufactured by IBM that was intended for connecting computers in a large building. Once we discovered that they would work across our network connecting thousands of buildings, things really started to happen.
In those early days one of the coolest things we could demonstrate was the ability to access Encyclopedia Britannica which Glasgow Board of Education had purchased and installed on a file server in one of their schools. Thinking back on it now, it seems pretty lame, but in 1991 it was a big deal. That demonstration drew a lot of nationwide attention. A lot of that attention came from the telecommunications giant (now deceased) MCI. After a few years of visits to Glasgow and discussions about why a city might decide to build its own broadband network, we got a very important phone call from an MCI executive named Vinton Cerf. He asked me to meet him for lunch in Reston, VA. During that lunch he asked if Glasgow had considered connecting its broadband network to the internet. I admitted that we had, but that we had no idea how to accomplish that. He offered to help us and, within a few weeks, MCI established the first connection between the internet and Glasgow’s broadband network. That was late 1994 and everything since then has been a bit of a blur.
That first connection was a T1 circuit. T1 is telecommunications jargon for a 1.5 megabit per second (Mbps) pathway between Glasgow and the internet. Today such a circuit would be suitable only for a handful of medium sized businesses, but from the beginning in 1994 through about 1996, one T1 circuit carried all of Glasgow’s internet traffic. If the internet is represented as the interstate highway system, the T1 circuit would be similar to a gravel driveway, but it was our only connection to the interstate. Glasgow has always suffered some from its geography. I-65 passed us by and so did the main line of the railroad, and, to a large extent, the internet passed us by as well. Even though today our connections to the internet are big and getting much bigger, we still are not a major node on the world wide web, and that is at the center of most of the internet service interruptions we sometimes experience here in Glasgow.
While our initial gravel driveway connection to the world has now grown from 1.5 Mbps to 150 Mbps (perhaps now the equivalent of a pretty wide two lane road with occasional passing lanes included), we still have issues with that road. For example, we had a problem with that road just Friday past. Continuing on the road metaphor, Glasgow EPB owns the broadband roads all over Glasgow and parts of Barren County, but our “interchange” with the nationwide interstate network is inside our network operations center right at our offices. There, Windstream and AT&T take ownership of the highway and transport all of our traffic to a massive toll booth in Louisville. There, all of our traffic encounters an AT&T router which examines each piece of email, gaming, news, pictures, or anything else you think of as internet traffic. That router then decides if the traffic is allowed to pass and gives it directions on where to go. The router is sort of like the gatekeeper guy in the Emerald City when Dorothy and the scarecrow and others (Toto too!) knocked on the door and asked for an audience with the Wizard. The router decides who gets to come in and who has to stay outside where that really spooky witch is cavorting about. Well, on Friday the router/gatekeeper guy got new orders from the Wizard (AT&T) that no one from Glasgow was allowed in. That is why you were unable to utilize your internet connection from about 2:30 p.m. until about 7:00 p.m. that day. Within an hour we were certain that the problem was with the instructions AT&T had given the router, but, since we neither own, nor control, AT&T, we simply had to call and beg and plead for several hours while they took their own sweet time sending new orders to the router.
Obviously, we don’t like being treated this way and we are constantly striving to provide redundancy and greater capacity on our local “roads” as well as our roadways connecting Glasgow to the world. We also want to free ourselves from the tyranny which exists when we allow one gatekeeper (AT&T) to control all of our access to the world. What we really need is multiple roads leading out of Glasgow which lead to multiple gatekeepers so that one set of bad instructions cannot render us unable to communicate with the world. For that matter, we really need the same sort of architecture for electric power as well. It might surprise you, but Glasgow has only one source of electricity today just like we have only one internet roadway to the world. Luckily, our electric power gateway, operated by TVA, is a bit more sorted out and less likely to get bad instructions than the guy operating the door at AT&T. Of course we would really like to have redundant feeds for both electric power and internet connectivity, and, that is precisely what we are working on. The only real problem with providing this redundancy is that it is expensive, and folks in Glasgow have grown accustomed to high speed, high reliability, and low cost. . .three things that are very difficult to arrange at the same time. Still, we are trying to accomplish them all.
Within the next month, we will be completing our own fiber optic circuit to Bowling Green and, in turn, to an AT&T router which is in Bowling Green. This will finally allow us nearly infinite capacity to the internet. It will be like having a new twenty lane connector from I-65 directly to the Bypass in Glasgow. As we move traffic off the old highway and onto this new one, it is possible that you may see some service interruptions. The only way I know to explain this is to compare it to construction on the interstate. All of those orange barrels and lower speed limits are frustrating during construction, but after it is over, man, the road is sooo nice! But still, initially our new road will still terminate at only one big AT&T router, so the possibility of bad instructions or other AT&T issues will still be a problem, but we have a plan for that as well.
Other major internet gateways also exist in Bowling Green, and we are working to establish redundant connections to them. Also, other cities like Hopkinsville, and Murray are building similar new roads to connect themselves to neighboring cities and we are working with them to interconnect our fiber to their’s. As that develops, we will eventually have fiber routes all the way to Nashville, and that will open the door for us to interconnect with many other competitive major internet gateways. So, the time is coming when one provider will not be able to totally cripple our internet access, but it is not coming tomorrow. There is work to do and money to be spent before we arrive in internet nirvana.
Peering a bit further over the horizon, it is possible to imagine a time when the interconnected cities might band together to establish themselves as a major internet gatekeeper on our own! If we are successful in bring that about, we may see the major internet content providers like Google, Yahoo, CNN, and others actually seek to locate some of their servers and connections on our fiber backbone. At the same time, if our infotricity idea takes hold, Glasgow might become the provider for advanced electric power metering services for all of the cities connected via the fiber backbone. All of these thing may lead to Glasgow having the most robust internet speeds and capacities in North America. All of these things are possible, but not guaranteed. Still, it is our intention to keep working on our roads and improving their capacity. This work will continue to provide benefits for you, and the occasional frustration. The former should far outweigh the latter, but don’t expect perfection. While no one works harder than we do to deliver the very best internet service possible, we are still human and we do sometimes make mistakes.
In those early days one of the coolest things we could demonstrate was the ability to access Encyclopedia Britannica which Glasgow Board of Education had purchased and installed on a file server in one of their schools. Thinking back on it now, it seems pretty lame, but in 1991 it was a big deal. That demonstration drew a lot of nationwide attention. A lot of that attention came from the telecommunications giant (now deceased) MCI. After a few years of visits to Glasgow and discussions about why a city might decide to build its own broadband network, we got a very important phone call from an MCI executive named Vinton Cerf. He asked me to meet him for lunch in Reston, VA. During that lunch he asked if Glasgow had considered connecting its broadband network to the internet. I admitted that we had, but that we had no idea how to accomplish that. He offered to help us and, within a few weeks, MCI established the first connection between the internet and Glasgow’s broadband network. That was late 1994 and everything since then has been a bit of a blur.
That first connection was a T1 circuit. T1 is telecommunications jargon for a 1.5 megabit per second (Mbps) pathway between Glasgow and the internet. Today such a circuit would be suitable only for a handful of medium sized businesses, but from the beginning in 1994 through about 1996, one T1 circuit carried all of Glasgow’s internet traffic. If the internet is represented as the interstate highway system, the T1 circuit would be similar to a gravel driveway, but it was our only connection to the interstate. Glasgow has always suffered some from its geography. I-65 passed us by and so did the main line of the railroad, and, to a large extent, the internet passed us by as well. Even though today our connections to the internet are big and getting much bigger, we still are not a major node on the world wide web, and that is at the center of most of the internet service interruptions we sometimes experience here in Glasgow.
While our initial gravel driveway connection to the world has now grown from 1.5 Mbps to 150 Mbps (perhaps now the equivalent of a pretty wide two lane road with occasional passing lanes included), we still have issues with that road. For example, we had a problem with that road just Friday past. Continuing on the road metaphor, Glasgow EPB owns the broadband roads all over Glasgow and parts of Barren County, but our “interchange” with the nationwide interstate network is inside our network operations center right at our offices. There, Windstream and AT&T take ownership of the highway and transport all of our traffic to a massive toll booth in Louisville. There, all of our traffic encounters an AT&T router which examines each piece of email, gaming, news, pictures, or anything else you think of as internet traffic. That router then decides if the traffic is allowed to pass and gives it directions on where to go. The router is sort of like the gatekeeper guy in the Emerald City when Dorothy and the scarecrow and others (Toto too!) knocked on the door and asked for an audience with the Wizard. The router decides who gets to come in and who has to stay outside where that really spooky witch is cavorting about. Well, on Friday the router/gatekeeper guy got new orders from the Wizard (AT&T) that no one from Glasgow was allowed in. That is why you were unable to utilize your internet connection from about 2:30 p.m. until about 7:00 p.m. that day. Within an hour we were certain that the problem was with the instructions AT&T had given the router, but, since we neither own, nor control, AT&T, we simply had to call and beg and plead for several hours while they took their own sweet time sending new orders to the router.
Obviously, we don’t like being treated this way and we are constantly striving to provide redundancy and greater capacity on our local “roads” as well as our roadways connecting Glasgow to the world. We also want to free ourselves from the tyranny which exists when we allow one gatekeeper (AT&T) to control all of our access to the world. What we really need is multiple roads leading out of Glasgow which lead to multiple gatekeepers so that one set of bad instructions cannot render us unable to communicate with the world. For that matter, we really need the same sort of architecture for electric power as well. It might surprise you, but Glasgow has only one source of electricity today just like we have only one internet roadway to the world. Luckily, our electric power gateway, operated by TVA, is a bit more sorted out and less likely to get bad instructions than the guy operating the door at AT&T. Of course we would really like to have redundant feeds for both electric power and internet connectivity, and, that is precisely what we are working on. The only real problem with providing this redundancy is that it is expensive, and folks in Glasgow have grown accustomed to high speed, high reliability, and low cost. . .three things that are very difficult to arrange at the same time. Still, we are trying to accomplish them all.
Within the next month, we will be completing our own fiber optic circuit to Bowling Green and, in turn, to an AT&T router which is in Bowling Green. This will finally allow us nearly infinite capacity to the internet. It will be like having a new twenty lane connector from I-65 directly to the Bypass in Glasgow. As we move traffic off the old highway and onto this new one, it is possible that you may see some service interruptions. The only way I know to explain this is to compare it to construction on the interstate. All of those orange barrels and lower speed limits are frustrating during construction, but after it is over, man, the road is sooo nice! But still, initially our new road will still terminate at only one big AT&T router, so the possibility of bad instructions or other AT&T issues will still be a problem, but we have a plan for that as well.
Other major internet gateways also exist in Bowling Green, and we are working to establish redundant connections to them. Also, other cities like Hopkinsville, and Murray are building similar new roads to connect themselves to neighboring cities and we are working with them to interconnect our fiber to their’s. As that develops, we will eventually have fiber routes all the way to Nashville, and that will open the door for us to interconnect with many other competitive major internet gateways. So, the time is coming when one provider will not be able to totally cripple our internet access, but it is not coming tomorrow. There is work to do and money to be spent before we arrive in internet nirvana.
Peering a bit further over the horizon, it is possible to imagine a time when the interconnected cities might band together to establish themselves as a major internet gatekeeper on our own! If we are successful in bring that about, we may see the major internet content providers like Google, Yahoo, CNN, and others actually seek to locate some of their servers and connections on our fiber backbone. At the same time, if our infotricity idea takes hold, Glasgow might become the provider for advanced electric power metering services for all of the cities connected via the fiber backbone. All of these thing may lead to Glasgow having the most robust internet speeds and capacities in North America. All of these things are possible, but not guaranteed. Still, it is our intention to keep working on our roads and improving their capacity. This work will continue to provide benefits for you, and the occasional frustration. The former should far outweigh the latter, but don’t expect perfection. While no one works harder than we do to deliver the very best internet service possible, we are still human and we do sometimes make mistakes.
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