Satellite Photos of Start and End Locations!

La Jolla Shores, Ca. -- Start

Sandy Point State Park, Md. -- Finish

Send-off dinner

C2C Team,

We are meeting at Tahou's Monday night for a garbage plate send-off party. It will be good to link the run with something distinctively Rochester, and Krackle will hopefully get some good publicity shots. We're thinking sometime after 6 so everyone has time to get their last final in. Also, someone should call Tahou's that afternoon to make sure they have enough burgers ready.

Sanford

Comments restored

Jon Booth and Adam Cross worked and late during this finals week to dig deep into the code and restore the comments feature, and the ability to post to the blog. It's great that it's working, but especially great that they spent time working on this during week 10.

comments broken

We're working on restoring the ability to comment on the blog.

Sorry,

Todd

Open thread - everyone else

This open thread is for everyone and any one.

Comment away.

-Todd

Open thread - 1979 veterans

Mark "Hoser" Kulzer, RIT Track and X-Country, class of 1985 requested a thread for RIT Cross Country / Track alumni, specificically the 1979 veterans to put their two cents in.

Alums, this one's for you. Post away!

Coast to Coast Planning - a technical perspective

The Coast-to-Coast run is more than just a run. It's about representing what RIT means to us as students, and a celebration of RIT's 175th Anniversary. It's required countless hours of planning, in addition to training for the event.

Since I am not a runner on this endeavor and I am officially relegated to the role of driver, I have taken it upon myself to help plan and design the technical operations of our two-week trip. Here's an idea of the technical scope of this trip:

• Voice Communications: We're spoiled here in the east coast with blanketed cellular service most everywhere. I've discovered that this is very untrue for much of the country, particularly New Mexico, northwest Texas, western Oklahoma, and much of Kansas. Verizon is great on the east and west coasts, but not in the middle. Hopefully we'll have multiple services, so we can take advantage of "service diversity." There is a chance that we'll have a Globalstar phone connection (satellite phone), for emergency use.
  
• Internet Access: Put this problem on top of voice. We are technical students, representing a very technical institution. We want to run internet services. For instance, we want the ability to be in contact via email, post to this blog, and upload photos in nearly real-time so RIT University News could disseminate the photos to the rest of the world!
  
• Wireless (IP-based) Vehicular Network: Definitely a dream for a computer geek like me. I had this vision that all three vehicles could be networked together via wireless links. If internet access (cellular) is available, all 3 vehicles, and thus all participants will have access to the internet. Even if no internet connection is available, we could have instant message capability, or any other network. RIT's Information Technology department is providing us support to develop this network. In addition, Microwave Data Systems, based here in Rochester has provided us encouragement, as we will be using their gear for inter-vehicle network communication.
  
• GPS/routing: Integration of GPS and our mapping software. Perhaps have somewhat real-time tracking capabilities for visitors to our web site to use. This web tracking is dependent upon our internet connection... It has also been a challenge to create our route. We've had to attempted to steer around mountains, and limited access highways.
  
• Research - Coast-to-Coast Wardrive: With the assistance and guidance of Bruce Hartpence, Professor in RIT's Information Technology Department, we will be engaging in a cross-country wardrive, mapping the locations of wireless networks that we stumble upon as we drive across the country. We'll have a laptop, running Netstumbler, with an 802.11b card (with external high gain antenna), connected to a GPS device. The location/network data will be input into a database, and the database will be published upon completion of our run.
  

I'll keep this blog posted to our progress.

-Todd Spivak