[NCLUG] Local Chapter of the Internet Society?

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 12:47:21PM -0600, Michael Dwyer wrote:
>C'mon, if /Omaha/ is forming a chapter of ISOC, why doesn't Colorado
>already have one?

Actually, Omaha is heavily connected because of the railroads hubbing in
there.  Recently, when running railroads they've also run a lot of fiber,
which gives them gobs of bandwidth.  I seem to recall that the SP in Sprint
stood for Southern Pacific -- the railroad guys.

At a distance, it may seem like Omaha is a weird place to have tech, but
there is a pretty high concentration of bandwidth there.  The railroads
provided the bandwidth which made Omaha become the telemarketing capitol
(not only calling you at dinner time, but chances are that if you make a
hotel reservation (for example) you're talking to somone in Omaha).  Then
there's the Strategic Air Command, which was also there and had some
bandwidth and diversity requirements.

QWest also has a huge presence in Omaha.  In fact, they've been mostly
turning down the data-centers here in Colorado last I knew, in preference
to the ones in Omaha, Minneapolis, and Seattle.

Omaha is a weird place.  When efm and I were there from 94 through 97, it
was kind of amazing the amount of tech stuff there, but it wasn't until
fairly late in our stay that we could actually get much in the way of
technical books.  In '94 we were mostly ordering books from the Tattered
Cover (pre amazon, eh).

Sean
-- 
 "Isn't having a smoking section in a restaurant kind of like having a
 peeing section in a swimming pool?"  -- David Broadfoot
Sean Reifschneider, Inimitably Superfluous <jafo at tummy.com>
tummy.com - Linux Consulting since 1995. Qmail, KRUD, Firewalls, Python