Adler was not foiled by a test administrator noticing that the person taking the test was not the person pictured on Adler’s driver’s license. Nor was he done in by the Educational Testing Service’s analysis of his test scores for irregularities. Instead, Adler was thwarted by the one factor he should have had the most control over: himself.

If they had just kept the scheme to themselves, only Adler and co-conspirator Donald Farmer (who took the test for Adler) would have known how easy it was to bypass one of ETS’s most stringent security protocols. Instead, Adler revealed his plan to classmates, and one of them apparently alerted ETS. This tip, coupled with a question from a college admissions officer about a discrepancy between Adler’s test results and grades, ultimately led ETS to challenge his scores.

The lesson of how easy it could have been to cheat on the SAT has not been lost on college-bound and scholarship-seeking students, who know that the stakes are enormous — and they extend beyond the obvious influence on whether a student gets into a particular college. For student-athletes, NCAA rules require a minimum SAT score of 700 in order to play collegiate sports. For other students, there are millions of dollars in academic scholarships on the line as well.

To be sure, few find it necessary to craft elaborate ruses like Adler’s, but some area high school students say they have discovered how to take advantage of ETS security loopholes without getting caught. There are, in short, many ways to cheat without really trying.

In their last years of high school, students come in contact with four types of ETS examinations: the SAT; the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT), a scaled-down practice version of the SAT; the Achievements, which test mastery of specific subjects on a high school level; and the Advanced Placement (AP) exams, which test mastery of specific subjects on a college level.

One method of beating the system on SATs and PSATs is to confer during the break between the math and verbal sections. Then, test-takers can go to the bathroom or get something to eat. Often, anxious students will gather in the halls and compare answers. Although students are not permitted to work on an earlier section once time has been called, a single additional correct answer can result in a 20- to 30-point increase in a score. For many, the temptation proves too great.

"People go out into the halls during the break and talk about the answers," said Sidwell Friends School senior Peter Wallace. "They go back in, and when there is no proctor around, they make changes."

For the Achievement tests, the problem of comparing answers is even worse. The one-hour Achievements can be taken in a myriad of subjects, ranging from biology to modern Hebrew. During the testing period, students can take up to three tests in almost any order they choose. In between, there is also a break in which students may leave the test room.

Thus, it is possible for students to get answers to tests that they have yet to take.

"You could arrange with a friend . . . that if you were taking, say, two Achievements and you were going to screw up the math Achievement really badly, you could have your friend take his math Achievement first. Then, he could tell you about the problems," Sidwell senior Greg Humphreys said. "I have even heard of people writing down answer lists and trading during the break."

Probably the most common form of cheating is violating the time limits by quickly finishing sections where you’re strong and going back where you’re weak, says Sidwell senior Christian Hicks. Referring to the TSWE (Test of Standard Written English, one of six SAT sections), Hicks said, "Although I have never done it . . . you can complete the TSWE in 10 minutes and use the rest of the time to finish other sections. Nobody really cares about it, and it’s downright sensible to sacrifice your performance there and improve your performance on other parts of the test."

Some tactics are more innovative.

"I know one person who had one of those little electronic dictionaries and brought it into the test room," said Sidwell’s Wallace. "He must have hidden it in his coat."

Humphreys said, "On the physics AP, you are allowed to use any kind of calculator you want, including my calculator in which I can program every single physics formula, type pages of notes or type definitions of words. I can do whatever I want. The proctors are like ‘Now clear your calculator’s memory.’ What are they going to do, go around and check it?"

So it’s easy to cheat on the most important tests of high school? ETS Division Director for College Board Programs Irving Broudy says no. Existing security measures should prevent students from such methods of cheating, he said — if proctors enforce ETS rules.

"Two million students take the SAT every year. Less than two in a thousand cases are ever questioned in any way," Broudy said. "Most students — the huge majority — take the test seriously, are honest, and follow instructions."

Broudy also said, "When we have reason to believe that there is a problem of copying, we have a way of comparing wrong answers or comparing answers in general. If one finds a pattern of responses — especially wrong answers — then there’s an indicator that something improper may have occurred. So there are lots of built-in checks."

Broudy would not say, however, whether these checks were done at random, to all students’ answer sheets or only to those whose scores had been questioned.

"We prefer not to give out specific information on procedures that might essentially provide a means by which students might want to subvert them," he said.

With two million students being tested, Broudy added, "I wouldn’t be surprised if there were rare cases where problems occurred that might not be detected. But we think that overall, the system works, and works pretty well."

Among the cases that have apparently gone undetected are those of students comparing answers.

"I have not heard that one before, to tell you the truth — I mean the use of the break," said Broudy. "But part of my job — and our job in general — when we hear comments like this is to review them and look at them and if there is sufficient evidence to reconsider our procedures."

ETS President Gregory Anrig said, however, that current security measures are reasonable because cheating is not widespread.

"If there were widespread cheating on the SAT, then one would say, ‘Well, over time the effect of this would be that the correlation between SAT scores and freshman grades would change.’ The colleges regularly do validity studies to check that. In fact, the correlation has not changed over time," he said.

"I’m not denying that there’s cheating," Anrig added. "I do say that we have procedures in place to guard against cheating and we pursue them vigorously."

Charles Deacon, dean of admissions at Georgetown University, also thinks current safeguards are adequate. "Given that . . . [cheating] can happen, there are a lot of ways that it can be identified through the admissions process. I don’t think that we would be particularly interested in them creating a Gestapo-like environment. I think that would be going overboard."

But available data — and the testimony of students themselves — paint a less optimistic picture. According to recent surveys done by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Joseph and Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina Del Rey, Calif., three out of five high school students and one in three college students admitted to cheating at least once on an exam — though the survey does not single out the College Boards. As reported by The Washington Post’s Richard Morin, "American kids are lying, cheating and stealing in what some researchers fear are unprecedented numbers."

"I can tell you from experience at Churchill," said Churchill senior Ivan Snyder, "it’s all over the place. Not hard-core cheating, substituting, Larry Adler-type cheating, but going back in sections and talking about it during the break. Even when I took the exam, I heard people talking about the test, telling people what was coming up . . . . Both times I took the SAT, I saw it. I was sort of shocked because I thought, ‘You know, this is the SAT. This doesn’t happen.’"

Many scholarship competitions, such as the National Merit Scholarship Competition, rely heavily upon a student’s standardized test scores. In the National Merit competition, for instance, semifinalists are selected solely upon their PSAT scores. While they may not actually receive a scholarship from the competition, semifinalist status helps students in many other ways.

"That is a very valuable scholarship and is one of the most prestigious scholarships in the country," said Cinthia Schuman, executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest). "It opens up many doors — both financially and in terms of the schools that you can choose from — in terms of educational opportunities. The fact is that it is wrong to place so much emphasis on the PSAT, with all of its flaws. Students recognize that there is a game-like aura to the test because it doesn’t reflect the kind of skills they actually need in college, like reading, research and writing."

A National Merit Scholarship Corporation spokeswoman declined to comment, referring all questions about test security to ETS.

Because of standardized tests’ tremendous importance, some students argue that ETS should take a more active role in combating cheating. "What they should do is they should have two separate sheets, one for math and one for verbal, and pick up the verbal one in between breaks," suggested Sidwell senior Paul Hodgdon. "That way you can’t go back and change your answers. Or have more proctors, because Sidwell has two during the PSATs. For 100 people, that just doesn’t work."

Anrig warns, however, that while such measures might crack down on cheating, they would punish honest test-takers as well.

"I don’t believe you should treat all 1.6 million kids that take some form of the admission testing program as if they’re wrong-doers," Anrig said. "One could have procedures that would be sure to guard against any possible eventuality," he said, but that would mean treating the test-taker "not as a student who deserves to be treated properly, but as a prisoner in a correctional facility."

Bernard Noe, Sidwell’s Upper School principal, said, "If in fact — and there really is no hard evidence . . .cheating is widespread, that’s a sad statement about our students’ culture. It’s sad for the future that if you are willing to cheat on your SATs, you’re probably willing to cheat on your taxes or anything else that can be justified as beating the system. I hope to God that we are not teaching young values this way."

Now a growing number of "community" or "civic" computer networks are springing up around the country to tie local people together and hook them into the Internet for free.

Last week, Maryland’s planned state-wide "Sailor" system, which makes the Internet’s so-called gopher services available at no cost, began limited operation in the Baltimore area. Officials hope to start making it available in Washington’s Maryland suburbs in September.

Sailor also will offer subsidized rates — $ 100 per year — for full access to the Internet, which is used by an estimated 20 million people worldwide. Commercial Internet services often charge three times that.

Sailor will join a more established Washington area community network, CapAccess, which in a year and a half has attracted more than 9,000 users by offering electronic-mail connections, limited access to the Internet and other services.

Since 1986 when Case Western Reserve University launched the Cleveland FreeNet, community networks have sprung up in many North American cities. The goal is to foster local communications and make sure that the poor and public service groups aren’t priced out of the electronic future.

They are free in the sense that public television is. People can sign up for nothing, but once aboard they are typically urged to donate money or time. Some services, such as Maryland’s Sailor, receive tax dollars.

"The whole idea of a civic network is new to everybody, including those who think they understand what it means," said Mark Bolgiano, a Greater Washington Board of Trade vice president who is studying a partnership with CapAccess.

"The number of people among our members who know what Internet is is still pretty low," he said. "CapAccess is even harder to understand."

Any area resident with a computer, modem device and communications software can reach CapAccess with a local telephone call. The number is 202-785-1523. Newcomers can log in under the name "guest", using "visitor" as the password.

People who already have Internet connections can reach CapAccess by using the telnet command to reach the address cap.gwu.edu.

Based at George Washington University, the service is geared toward helping users new to "the Net" get up to speed quickly. Instead of grappling with confusing typed commands, they can move around the service by picking numbered options from a menu or by typing shortcuts, such as "go post" to read e-mail.

There are on-line guides to appropriate Net conduct — dubbed "netiquette" — and other hints, such as how to select a good password. For users who would prefer face-to-face help, volunteers conduct free weekend training sessions.

CapAccess has targeted local schools, libraries, governments and social service groups by letting them use the service to promote their activities and collaborate with similar groups. Volunteers will help any such group post information or set up on-line "discussion groups" in which people carry on electronic dialogues.

Arlington County, for instance, has put a government information center on the system. The Montgomery County Public Library put its card catalogue on-line, and the Kennedy Center added performance schedules.

Several local schools put PTA minutes on-line and some churches have started posting sermons. Virginia Sen. Charles S. Robb set up a "virtual office," believed to be the first of its kind, which allows constituents to skim his voting record and official policy statements.

"It’s a good forum for people to look at what Senator Robb has been saying and doing," said Matt McGowan, Robb’s office manager.

The CapAccess experiment has created "new cross-community connections" between governments and community service groups, said CapAccess Executive Director Taylor Walsh.

"If there’s an information resource in Montgomery County that helps people who are homeless, there’s no reason for Arlington or Prince George’s to replicate that database and pay for its implementation if they can get access to it through the network," he said. "We’re already beginning to see that kind of thing happening."

Unlike many computer services, which tend to be used overwhelmingly by white males, the CapAccess user base is a fairly representative sampling of the region. At a recent membership meeting, half of the people attending were women, and almost a third were black. Overall, about 35 percent of CapAccess users are female, Walsh said. Only 10 percent to 15 percent of CompuServe and America Online users are women.

To provide true public access to the system, CapAccess has started a "recycling" campaign to refurbish old computers from corporations and governments and redistribute them to libraries, schools and community centers across the region.

"We need to put access points in the hands of the disadvantaged so [CapAccess] can be a tool for the many, not the few," said attorney Jack Young, a CapAccess volunteer.

Funded initially by grants from the Annenberg/Corporation for Public Broadcasting Projects with technical assistance from George Washington University, CapAccess now relies entirely on donations and volunteers such as Young to cover its $ 300,000 in annual costs.

This collaboration could serve as a model for national networks, users say.

"We are doing exactly what the government wants to do," said the Rev. Fred Williams, a board member. "Our ‘family’ is building a better community through technology. What we’re doing is replicable and exportable throughout the whole country."

You can’t call him at Esquire magazine, though. He doesn’t work there and never has, according to the company. Try some of his other 17 e-mail addresses, including "hertz.com" and "trump.com," and you’ll get the same result. He doesn’t work for those companies either, spokesmen said.

But Cashel does own the words they might want to use in their cyberspace addresses.

Cashel — a Kalorama resident who works at the government-funded Eurasia Foundation here — declined to be interviewed for this article. He is among a growing number of people and companies that have registered hundreds of Internet addresses mimicking some of corporate America’s most fiercely guarded trademarks.

Only with an address can a company send and receive e-mail on "the Net." Just as street signs provide directions to buildings, Internet addresses direct information to the right individual. If your name is Mike and you work at XYZ Corp., your Internet address might be mike@xyz.com. Unless, of course, somebody else had already registered @xyz.com. Then you would have to be mike@elsewhere.com.

The unique addresses are handed out on a first-come, first-served basis by an administrative body called InterNIC. Anyone can register any address for free. The only restrictions are Internet naming guidelines, which limit the number of characters and require that a descriptive suffix be included. All business addresses, for instance, must include the suffix ".com," short for "commercial."

The rush by Cashel and others to register potentially valuable names may cost businesses millions. As more companies venture on-line, they may find their name of choice already has been registered by a speculator, a competitor, an employee or even a company in a different industry with a similar name. At stake is corporate identity in the information age.

Companies whose potential names have been registered by others will have three choices: Pick another name, buy the rights to the original one or sue.

"There are big corporate names being registered, and it appears that it is individuals and not companies who are responsible," said Mike Walsh, the president of Internet Info, a Falls Church market research firm that tracks corporate use of the Net.

Already, 17,000 ".com" names have been registered, and that number may swell to 50,000 a year from now, Walsh said.

A search of InterNIC’s public registry of names reveals several Fortune 500 companies whose names or products have been registered by someone else. Besides Cashel’s names, already taken are "coke.com," "startrek.com," "nasdaq.com," "cosmo.com" and "windows.com." Some companies have reserved scores of addresses that might be valuable someday, such as "pizza.com," "sex.com," "god.com" and "money.com."

Spokesmen for Hertz Corp., the Nasdaq stock market, Viacom Inc., Coca-Cola Co. and other companies and organizations contacted said they were unaware that the names had been registered. Several said the companies would investigate possible legal action to claim the names.

Like many legal issues in cyberspace, there is no clear precedent on whether traditional trademark law protection extends to Internet addresses.

"Addresses are problematic. The trademarks statute forbids the registration of geographic addresses, but computer addresses may not fall within those limitations," said Lynne Beresford, the trademark legal administrator at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

"It’s very much like getting a vanity plate," said Jonathan Groves, manager of information services at the Internet Co., a Cambridge, Mass., Internet provider that registered the Nasdaq and Windows addresses for clients.

Several intellectual property and trademark lawyers said that companies whose names are taken may have pretty strong cases.

"Trademark rights are based upon use. If you make any other use of a name that could confuse the public, that’s trademark infringement," said John Hornick, an attorney who specializes in such matters.

"If you take an Internet address, you’re saying, ‘I’m going to take someone else’s name and register it,’ " he said. "You can certainly argue that might confuse the public, and could probably sue and win."

Merely registering a company’s name could prompt legal action, said Bruce Teller, outside counsel for the International Trademark Association. While not trademark infringement, registering a name could be considered trademark dilution because the commercial value in a name is diminished, he said.

Two cases are in the courts. In one, the MTV cable channel is suing Adam Curry, a former MTV host, over his use of the address "mtv.com." Curry originally offered to set up the address for MTV, but the network declined.

With MTV’s knowledge, Curry registered the name for himself and helped the network incorporate it into MTV programming. Only after Curry tried to stage an on-air resignation in April did MTV file suit to claim the name.

While the matter is in litigation, Curry has agreed to direct to another site users who try to address mtv.com.

Lawyers said the case probably will focus on MTV’s initial decision not to register the name, and not on trademark issues.

In the other case, the Princeton Review test preparation company registered the address "kaplan.com" in reference to its largest competitor, the Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center. Although Princeton Review President John Katzman says the registration was a joke, the company activated the address with on-line advertisements for Princeton Review.

Kaplan, which is a unit of The Washington Post Co., filed suit. Kaplan President Jonathan Glayer said the company has since registered "about 20" variations on the Kaplan name and its products. The two companies have agreed to arbitration later in the year; in the meantime, Princeton Review has deactivated kaplan.com.

Princeton Review’s "joke" was certainly an expensive one. Katzman estimates his legal bills will run between $ 10,000 and $ 20,000.

Undeterred, he says he may have another joke in store for Kaplan. He’s considering registering the address "kraplan.com" and promoting it instead.

To avoid ending up in Kaplan’s position, companies can take preventive measures. Katzman himself urges, "Everybody should go out and register their company’s domain name right now."

Other suggestions from lawyers include trademarking an un-stylized company logo — because Internet addresses are plain text, a company’s stylized logo may not be admissible in an infringement case — and collecting evidence that a similar name causes public confusion. Misdelivered e-mail might be one way of documentation, attorney Hornick said.

Most of all, companies should not count on Internet providers to protect a name when someone else tries to register it — because most won’t.

"We can’t act as an arbiter," Internet Co. President Robert Raisch explains. "We would be placed in a position of qualifying every domain name for every country around the world."

Rose, a 34-year-old homeless man, will appear in court today on armed robbery charges. Police say Rose took $19.31 from a Raleigh lawyer at a South Blount Street gas station on the night of May 24.

The weapon?

Not a gun. Not a knife. Not even a broken beer bottle.

Out of either extraordinary gumption or extraordinary stupidity, Rose is alleged to have sneaked behind the 65-year-old man and held him up with a beige office stapler.

The tactic ultimately failed when an off-duty Highway Patrol officer who happened to be filling his own tank chased Rose down. Rose now faces charges for "robbery with a dangerous weapon."

That’s what you get for committing a crime with office supplies.

It happens more often than you might think. A surprising amount of crime is committed each year with office supplies. And as in Rose’s case, not just the white-collar variety either.

Across the nation, staplers have been used in at least one murder, one attempted murder, three armed robberies, a police beating of a suspect and a prison uprising since 1981.

They have also been used at least once in self-defense. A Pittsburgh woman foiled a robber at her dry-cleaning store in 1988 by repeatedly beating him over the head with a stapler.

In many respects, office supplies are the perfect tools of crime. There are no licenses required and no waiting periods. They’re readily available and nearly impossible to trace. Office supplies are cheap and, in many cases, free: Everything you need is probably available at your workplace. And there are so many different office supplies for criminals to choose from.

The cliched weapon is the letter opener, of course. When it comes to crime, letter openers are pretty flexible; you can use them to slash, slice, maim or murder. Maybe that’s what accounts for their use in at least five attacks nationally since 1989. Two were robberies, the other three disputes among business partners whose deals had gone sour. One was fatal.

A less-conventional criminal murdered the mayor of Clearwater, Fla., in 1989 by strangling him and then hitting him over the head with a hole punch. The suspect’s attorney explained that his client had downed two pitchers of beer and two glasses of wine the night of the murder. But when the case came to court, the jury decided his punch-drunk defense was, well, full of holes. It recommended a life sentence.

But the up-and-coming criminal office supply is the stapler. Unlike the others, it can be used as a blunt object close up or fired from a distance. Staplers are easy to conceal and, with the wide variety of colors available, easy to accessorize. Criminals, you just don’t have to clash any more.

Staplers clearly have a versatility that other office supplies lack. Maybe that’s why they are used more often in crimes than letter openers, hole punches or any other office supply.

In a January plea bargain agreement, Baton Rouge, La., prosecutors dropped armed robbery charges against 35-year-old Gerald James Joubert for robbing a hotel by holding a stapler to an employee’s neck. In return, he pleaded guilty to robbing a motel and an inn of a combined $428 by putting his finger in his pocket and pretending to have a gun. Joubert claimed he needed the money to pay a court-ordered fine for a previous drug conviction.

A Dallas 18-year-old was convicted in 1993 on charges that he murdered his grandmother with a stapler, a steering wheel "club" security device and a bottle of hot sauce. The motive? He wanted his grandmother’s Cadillac and feared he had been left out of her will.

In New York City, which GQ magazine suggests the Triangle emulate, government agencies have had orders not to leave staplers on desks or countertops for fear that angry citizens might use them to attack bureaucrats.

Well, we’re doing our best to catch up. Just think of Rose’s alleged attack as an act of civic pride.

"Here it is. I want it," the 3-year-old girl announced in delight.

"Maybe we’ll get it when it is closer to your birthday," her father said.

"But I want it now!" insisted Sarah, who will turn 4 on Friday, the same day that "Pocahontas," Walt Disney’s latest animated movie, opens nationwide.

Like Sarah, children across the Triangle have discovered the Pocahontas merchandise that has been flowing into stores since the beginning of this month. Like David Chappell, weary parents have discovered how hard it is to withstand movie studios’ big-budget marketing campaigns as their children clamor for the Next Big Thing.

This summer, parents will have a particularly difficult time as Disney’s "Pocahontas" and Warner Bros.’ "Batman Forever" compete for their children’s hearts, minds and purchasing power.

The studios have thrown the full brunt of their marketing muscle behind the movies. Both are hawking merchandise through their in-house stores. Warner Bros. signed up McDonald’s for a "Batman Forever" promotion; Disney has a similar arrangement with Burger King.

While Batman merchandise is targeted primarily at boys and Pocahontas at girls, the two are competing for shelf and display space at toy stores, book stores, department stores and music stores.

In connection with "Batman Forever," which opened June 16, toy companies are selling five different lines of Batman action figures. For those of you keeping score at home, there’s "Batman Forever," "Batman" the animated series, "Batman Returns," "Legends of Batman" and "Mask of the Phantasm" from the animated movie.

From the new "Batman Forever" line alone, there’s "Manta Ray Batman," "Night Hunter Batman," "Transforming Bruce Wayne Batman," and… well, you get the idea. You can also buy the Batmobile, the Batcopter, the Batcycle and the Batplane. As always, kids are encouraged to collect them all.

The action figures start at $5.99; figures with vehicles at $14.99.

But while Batman may be forever, Pocahontas is a girl’s best friend.

If you thought your child’s craving for "Lion King" paraphernalia was bad, brace yourself. You haven’t seen anything yet. Here’s a small sample of what’s already in stores:

Pocahontas storybooks, songbooks, coloring books, coffee table books. Posters for kids to color and posters that have already been colored. Rubber stamp kits, sand art kits, stationary kits. Dresses, jackets, bracelets, backpacks. Necklaces, nightgowns, mugs and moccasins. The items range in price from a few dollars to $28.

The priciest Pocahontas item is a $248 pigskin leather jacket for adults at The Disney Store. But the hottest-selling is the $16.99 "Sun Colors Pocahontas" doll, which some stores say they have had trouble keeping in stock.

"I’m carrying similar stuff to what I did for ‘Lion King,’ " said Katherine Glascock, the manager of Toy Terminal in Raleigh. "If that’s any forecast, the Pocahontas mugs, stamps and stuffed animals will be real popular."

Their popularity will be no accident. Friday’s opening is the culmination of Disney’s carefully crafted marketing campaign.

Two weekends ago, Disney held a free "Pocahontas" premiere for 100,000 people in New York City’s Central Park. The company has also dispatched Pocahontas animators and an interactive exhibit on a 24-city tour. Disney Stores crank out songs from the soundtrack several times an hour. In addition, every copy of the "Lion King" video included a "Pocahontas" preview.

"Everybody in the world probably has the ‘Lion King’ video," said John Lamiell, a self-described Disney-ite from Sacramento visiting the Triangle. Yes, he owns one of the 26 million copies of the "Lion King" sold so far.

Since last year Disney has aggressively licensed rights to produce Pocahontas merchandise. Burger King alone will distribute 55 million Pocahontas figurines. Stores of all kinds have set up Pocahontas displays, all hoping for a piece of the Disney marketing magic.

"I think it’s great that kids have this to look forward to," David Chappell said. "What I don’t appreciate is how a lot of stores put these advertising displays out in the open, at kid level."

Analysts say Disney could make between $700 million and $900 million in profits from the movie.

Disney has done its marketing so well that other toy companies are seeking to cash in on the Pocahontas craze too.

There’s "Li’l Indian Princess," a palm-sized doll. Or the larger "Native American Doll." Or the "Native American Princess Play Wear Dress and Fun Set," which includes barrette, bracelet and shoulder pouch.

Even Mattel, one of the largest producers of Pocahontas toys, is cross marketing. Prominently displayed in some Triangle stores is its "Native American Barbie." For a mere $149.99, you can purchase a version of the doll that’s almost as tall as your child.

At least that’s an easy one for a parent to say no to. Birthday parties are much harder. Just ask David Chappell whether Sarah will have a Pocahontas birthday party. He pauses and then smiles.

"Probably," he admitted.

But while they’re lowering their prices, some Triangle store owners aren’t even sure whether they will survive the competition.

Consumer electronics chain Best Buy opened its first Triangle store in Raleigh’s Pleasant Valley

Promenade on June 16 and will open its second in Durham’s New Hope Commons in October. It will sell CDs at or below cost as a way of luring shoppers into its store. Circuit City will match the promotion, as it has in other markets where the two compete.

The archrivals hope that a discount of a few dollars on CDs will lure customers and spur sales of stereos, televisions and VCRs.

Consumers across the Triangle are already seeing a savings of about $3 a disc at the electronics chains and at some record stores that are slashing prices to stay competitive.

Nationally, while chains like Sam Goody/Musicland and Blockbuster Music have survived the Best Buy blow, the competition has claimed a number of casualties among regional chains and independent stores.

"It’s big business putting little business out of business," said Don Kulak, executive director of the Independent Music Retailers Association.

In markets where it competes with Circuit City, Best Buy is charging $10.99 for new releases and best-sellers and no more than $12.99 on most other CDs, according to a Billboard magazine survey.

Even before the Minneapolis-based Best Buy opened its Raleigh store, Triangle stores had started to react.

The Schoolkids Records chain in Raleigh and Cary lowered prices on its top 25 best-selling albums to $10.99 about two months ago. Current titles at that price include Hootie and the Blowfish’s "Cracked Rear View," "Encomium: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin," and Fugazi’s "Big Red Medicine."

"We would have sold the same titles for $13.99 before," said John Hornaday, manager of the Hillsborough Street store. "That was kind of brought on by Best Buy."

At Durham’s CD Superstore, manager Jeff Hill says his store will match or beat Best Buy’s prices for its discount savings club members. But he expects shoppers who are already in the club to stay in it.

"I just don’t see it affecting us too much because we already have a clientele," Hill said. "We beat the mall prices already."

While managers at other area stores said they were still

discussing an appropriate response, awaiting word from a corporate parent or unaware of Best Buy’s prices, most said their stores’ selection, service and

distance from Best Buy would determine how much they are affected.

"I’m quite sure I’m going to lose customers but I’ll gain some too," said Ronald Winslow, manager of Willies Records and Tapes in Raleigh, who is counting on his store’s strength in harder-to-find music. "We’re more into urban music than they are. I welcome the competition."

Waves Music in the Cary Towne Center has no plans to change

its prices, even though they are $2 to $3 higher than Best Buy’s, assistant manager Craig Hilton said.

"We’re in the mall here, and we get a different crowd then they do," Hilton said. "It was a big deal at first, but we’re not really worried about it."

Jack Campbell, owner of Poindexter’s Records in Durham, said he will not change his prices but will count on his special selection of independent rock to counter the competition. He says the Triangle’s more traditional record stores will duke it out with Best Buy.

"It’s really going to affect CD Superstore, Camelot, Blockbuster and the other mass merchandisers," Campbell says. "We really cater to a different customer.

We try to concentrate on carrying labels that no one else carries."

At $10.99 a CD, he says, "I know enough about the music business that for CD Superstore and Blockbuster Music, it’s not enough profit to keep going."

For those mass merchandisers, there is not much room to maneuver. The price you pay for your favorite disc is largely determined by six major distributors that supply almost all CDs sold across the country. Owned by or affiliated with major record labels, distributors sell CDs to retailers for about $10.75 and typically suggest that stores sell them for about $18.

Since Best Buy started cutting prices in 1989, profit margins have been too narrow for some retailers in other cities who have tried to compete.

The competition from Best Buy’s first North Carolina store in Charlotte was enough to force independent store Sounds Familiar into bankruptcy last year.

Last month the CD discount war claimed its largest casualty yet in Kemp Mill Music, a 25-store chain based in the Washington, D.C., area, which declared bankruptcy.

"It’s the dark side of capitalism," said Leslie Robbins, manager of Raleigh’s Nice Price Books. "It’s great to have cheap CDs but it [hurts] independent stores. I hope it will make people realize it’s worth that extra $2 to shop at those stores."

Medical insiders say the problem has existed for years, but the doctors’ admission at the American Medical Association convention in Chicago is still hard to believe.

Reminding doctors to wash their hands should be like reminding lawyers to bill their clients. A no-brainer. If they can’t master basic hand washing, then they probably didn’t get much else out of medical school.

After all, experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the Mayo Clinic call hand washing the single most important way to stop infectious diseases from spreading.

But the "Ten Dirty Digits" resolution the AMA adopted June 22 says doctors simply aren’t washing their hands between patients. There’s only a 14 to 59 percent hand washing rate among doctors and a 25 to 45 percent rate among nurses. The resolution suggests the problem is so serious that cameras should be installed in hospital wards to check.

Doctors are not just derelict in their hand washing at hospitals. During a 1993 convention of the Infectious Diseases Society of America - doctors and other specialists who study germs and the transmission of disease - medical students staked out restrooms to see whether those who knew all the reasons to wash their hands actually did. Of the 493 experts they counted, only 56 percent of men, and 87 percent of women, washed up before walking out.

"This isn’t a new problem," said Theresa Klimko, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the state Department of Environment, Health and Natural Resources. "These kinds of studies have been going on for several years."

One hundred forty eight years, to be exact. In 1847, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss reported that doctors who washed their hands spread fewer germs. His colleagues responded by declaring Semmelweiss insane and committing him to an asylum for the remainder of his life.

The current hand-wringing over hand-washing comes on the heels of a 1994 study suggesting that as many as 1 in 20 hospital patients is infected by doctors or nurses who fail to wash their hands.

Doctors also say that rubber gloves are no substitute for a good scrub.

"As gloves are used, especially around teeth and body cavities, it’s hard on the thin latex, and tiny holes can develop," said Dr. James Crawford, a microbiologist and infection control coordinator for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Dentistry.

Before gloves, dentists had to wash up to 60 times a day, he said. And those weren’t flick-on-the-faucet-and-twirl-your-hands-around-for-a-few-seconds washes. Those were 60 thorough washes.

"A thorough wash, if you lather and rinse twice, takes about 15 seconds to accomplish what you’re going to accomplish," Crawford explained. "To do anything more, you would need to wash for 30 seconds to a minute."

At 15 seconds per wash, that works out to 65 hours of hand washing per year.

Doctors aren’t the only ones who aren’t scrubbing up when they should.

As the head of the state Department of Environmental Health’s Food, Lodging and Institutional Sanitation branch, Susan Grayson makes her living making sure that food professionals, day care workers and others required by law to wash their hands actually do.

"I’m one of those strange people who goes into ladies rooms to watch if people wash their hands," she said. "From personal observation, I can tell you only 50 percent of women wash their hands."

While many of the people required by law to wash their hands fall under Grayson’s jurisdiction, others are forced to wash by higher authorities.

In Judaism, for instance, observant Jews must ritually wash their hands upon waking up, leaving a bathroom, before praying, before eating meals and sometimes even before preparing them, says Rabbi Pinchas Herman of Raleigh’s Congregation Sha’Arei Israel-Lubavitch. "Our custom is to pour water three times on the left hand and three times on the right hand," Herman explained. "Some do it twice, some do it once. There are different customs."

So how frequently does the rabbi wash his hands?

"Well, it depends on how often I go to the bathroom," Herman said, laughing. He says he probably washes 10 times a day.

And, he says, because ritual hand washing is done for spiritual and not hygienic reasons, hands must be clean before they’re washed. Which means washing twice.

Then there are the people who have to wash their hands not because of any law but because they simply can’t stop.

People suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder often have an abnormal fear of contamination that leads to constant hand washing, says clinical psychologist Dr. Mark Lefebvre, who sees two to three patients per week for compulsive hand washing.

"It’s common that people are afraid of contamination not because it would hurt them but because they might inadvertently hurt someone else," he said. "They hit upon hand washing as a way of alleviating that anxiety of contamination. A vicious cycle is set up."

The disorder can be treated with medications such as Prozac and behavior modification therapy. Treatment usually takes 10 sessions, Lefebvre said.

Unfortunately, the treatment might not work in reverse. Which means those who suffer from lapses in their hand washing hygiene will just have to remember to wash on their own. Or maybe they could take the AMA’s advice and do what the doctors ordered.

Then we could all wash our hands of this matter.

Hands act as carriers for germs, which flourish thanks to their warmth, moisture and oils. While you generally can’t get sick simply from having germs on your hands, you can whenever you touch those hands to your mouth, eyes or nose.

"Hate your boss?" asks Susan Grayson, head of the state Department of Environmental Health’s Food, Lodging and Institutional Sanitation branch. "Get a bad cold, cough in your hand and shake his. You can pass lots of germs along like that."

Experts recommend that you wash your hands for at least 20 to 30 seconds whenever you come into contact with something that could have been contaminated by germs, human or animal feces, urine and hazardous materials.

"The most important thing is to do a thorough job," Grayson says. "Be sure to get in between the fingers, around the cuticles and under your nails. And don’t forget your wrists."

You should wash your hands whenever you do the following:

Prepare food.

Clean bathrooms or mop the floor.

Feed your pets or clean their cages.

Blow your nose.

Change a diaper.

Touch lead paint.

Use a public restroom (Remember that faucet handles in the restrooms can get germs on them, too. And if others don’t wash their hands, everything from doorknobs to bowls of mints may be contaminated.).

Decades ago and thousands of miles away, Sgt. Chuck Boyd flew the UH-1 over the jungles of Vietnam for the Army. These days he flies over the woods and forests of North Carolina for the Highway Patrol, searching for a very different enemy: marijuana.

During these summer months, the height of "drug season," Boyd and three other pilots will each spend roughly three days a week scouring the state for patches of marijuana that have been tucked away in the middle of corn fields, bean fields and just about anywhere else that water flows.

While aerial drug searches may seem to have little to do with patrolling highways, bureaucracies work in strange ways: The helicopters Boyd flies were given to the Highway Patrol. And the drug searches don’t cost North Carolina taxpayers a penny.

Because, in a curious way, they are North Carolina’s own peace dividend.

For 18 years, the Highway Patrol had a single helicopter, a blue-and-white Bell Jet Ranger that flew all the manhunts, all the high-speed chases, all the state fairs, all the stock car races and all the other events where 200,000 people or more were expected to take to the highways. Until 1986, the Highway Patrol even had to share the Jet Ranger with the state Department of Commerce.

But thanks to a great bureaucratic giveaway, it now has an entire fleet.

In the midst of base closings and budget cutbacks, the Pentagon decided it had too many helicopters. So in 1991 it decided to give away the ones it didn’t need anymore.

The surplus helicopters were awarded to law enforcement agencies across the country that promised to use them to fight drugs. The agencies were provided with federal grant money and permission to use the proceeds from the sale of drug dealers’ property to pay for the helicopters’ operation.

Over the past three years, the Highway Patrol got 10 working choppers, plus plenty of spare parts.

From as far away as Texas and from as close as Fort Bragg, the Highway Patrol assembled a new fleet of two UH-1 Hueys and eight OH-58s, the military version of its trusty old Jet Ranger. Two more UH-1s and another OH-58 were salvaged for parts.

The helicopters have been gradually repaired, refurbished and repainted. The machine guns and missiles were taken off. New landing skids, flight range-extenders and special radios that can reach any sheriff and police department in the state were added.

A flight team was culled from the Highway Patrol’s ranks to staff the additional flights.

The missions over Eastern North Carolina were given to Boyd, who had already been flying the Jet Ranger out of Raleigh. Another pilot, Sgt. Al Paterno, was chosen to fly the missions west of Greensboro from his base in Salisbury. During drug season, two part-time pilots join them.

Last year, their first year with two full-time pilots, the patrol captured 1,911 pounds of marijuana.

On days he’s flying drug missions, Boyd arrives at 7:30 a.m. at the Department of Commerce’s heliport, where the Raleigh-based helicopters are stationed until construction on the Highway Patrol’s hangar is completed.

He fills out some paperwork, checks the weather and inspects the aircraft.

These choppers are military issue, and the amenities are sparse. There’s no autopilot, no padded seats, no soundproofing. It gets so loud during flights that the pilot and the passengers have to talk over an intercom to hear each other. Some helicopters still sport military green and U.S. Army insignias. Five of the OH-58s from Fort Bragg even flew in the Persian Gulf War.

What they may lack in luxury, they make up for in precision. In the hands of a skilled pilot, Boyd says, these helicopters can land in the same tracks they took off from.

As he walks around the helicopters, Boyd checks for fuel leaks, engine burns, "foreign matter" in the intakes, and any sign that the helicopter is not fit to fly. Boyd is on call 24 hours a day, so the helicopters must always be ready.

He points to the Huey to demonstrate. It’s fully fueled. On the passenger’s seat rests his form-fitting, white flight helmet; his radio headset is nestled inside. The keys are in the ignition. From the time a call comes in, he can be in the air in less than two minutes.

When Boyd completes his inspection, he’s ready for takeoff. He’s usually in the air by 9.

He claims not to have a favorite helicopter, and when a mechanic asks on a recent day, "Which one you gonna run?" he selects the Jet Ranger.

As the mechanic lowers the hangar door, Boyd straps in and slips his flight helmet over his short crop of graying hair. He punches a few buttons along the console, flicks some switches along the ceiling.

"Clear!" he barks as he starts the rotors.

The helicopter begins to rock back and forth, with the rotors spinning so fast that it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. The scent of burning fuel wafts through the cabin.

Takeoff is soft. The nose dips and the helicopter accelerates upward across Tryon Road, soaring over the barbed wire fence, past the trees and emerging in the clear sky above the Highway Patrol’s training center. The engine’s whine and the rotors’ steady thumping are quickly forgotten.

"This is a helicopter," Boyd announces over the intercom.

The search for marijuana has begun.

Marijuana. Pot. Weed. Grass.

No matter what you call it, the Highway Patrol sure finds a lot of it. Over $1 million worth of plants this year alone, says Col. Robert Barefoot, the head of the Highway Patrol. Last year the Highway Patrol captured 11.1 percent of all marijuana seized in North Carolina - more than doubling the 5 percent it captured five years ago.

In his office on the second floor of the Archdale Building in downtown Raleigh, Barefoot has a framed photograph of the Huey, with $12,000 worth of marijuana draped over the tail.

When asked about the picture, he calls the helicopter "beautiful" and speaks about the machine in much the same way a fawning father would about a son or a daughter.

And why not? He has largely overseen the formation of the helicopter fleet. He hopes to eventually have enough helicopters deployed so that the Highway Patrol can reach any part of the state in less than 45 minutes.

For Barefoot, the decision to accept the helicopters was not a difficult one.

There was the cost, for one thing. While non-drug missions in the helicopters are paid for out of the Highway Patrol’s budget, just as they were when the patrol had only the Jet Ranger, the drug flights are essentially free.

"We have all these helicopters in operation at zero cost. Not a penny," he says. "We take great pride in that."

Then there are the other benefits.

Helicopters are used in searches for missing children, Alzheimer’s patients and fugitives.

They dramatically simplify high-speed highway pursuits. No automobile can outrun a Huey cruising at its top speed of 140 mph.

They ease the pressure on the National Guard, which also maintains a helicopter squad to assist in drug busts, such as the two in Durham County last week.

They improve the Highway Patrol’s relationship with sheriffs and police departments, who get to share in the glory of helicopter-led arrests.

But most importantly, they terrify North Carolina’s criminals.

"When they see this helicopter overhead, they are afraid to come out. They hunker down," Barefoot says.

"And if they do, we catch them."

The Jet Ranger has reached a cruising altitude of 300 feet and a speed of 20 to 30 mph. As Boyd turns it in a lazy loop around downtown Raleigh, you can see the depth markings on pools, the words on highway signs, the "street people’s" cabin in the woods of Tryon Hills.

From this height, a trained pilot can spot a single marijuana plant standing 14 inches or higher. The green of marijuana is a fairly distinct color. If you know what you’re looking for, that is.

Boyd has seen plants as tall as 20 feet and found fields of thousands of plants. He doesn’t like to talk about past drug busts though. Nor does Sgt. Paterno, the other full-time pilot.

Paterno explains that he’s often harassed by those he busts. Bragging about his adventures would just make it worse.

He’s already gotten so many nasty calls at home that he’s had to change his number. Someone damaged his car’s paint job with a key. Bags of trash have been thrown into his yard. His mail box has been blown up repeatedly.

It takes a certain resiliency to be a helicopter pilot.

Like the helicopters he flies, Boyd spent considerable time in the military before joining the Highway Patrol.

When the Vietnam War broke out, Boyd enlisted in the Army and signed up for the Warrant Officer Flight Program. It was the only way he could fly in the war without a college degree.

Boyd flew Hueys and other helicopters during two tours of duty in Vietnam and served as a flight instructor at the Army’s helicopter school in between.

When his enlistment in the Army was up in 1971, he decided to follow in the footsteps of his father, who had served on the Highway Patrol for 39 years and had retired the previous year.

Boyd spent the first 15 years working the road, the last nine in the air. Although he had occasionally flown Hueys in the National Guard, he never expected to fly them day in and day out again.

"It was like putting on an old glove. It felt like I had never been out of it," he said. "Once you get enough flight time, the aircraft becomes part of you."

And he gets plenty of flight time. He searches for drugs for six to eight hours a day, stopping every two hours to refuel. He has a computer on board that uses satellites to calculate his position and then gives him a list of the 15 closest airports.

He pays for the fuel with credit cards.

In a clump of woods between the Farmers Market and N.C. State’s Centennial Campus, Boyd spots a few plants of marijuana, hidden by some trees. He pulls the Jet Ranger into a tight circle, craning for a better look.

Like most of his finds, it appears to be a personal stash.

"This is what flying for marijuana is about," Boyd says. "You can find it anywhere, the middle of town, someone’s back yard. Just about everywhere I go, I’m looking at the ground."

When he spots marijuana, he punches a button on his computer that records the coordinates. Sometimes, if there’s a place to land, he or another patrolman will go down and retrieve the marijuana. If there’s not, like today, he will call the land owner and have it destroyed. If they find a lot, planning for a bust begins.

"No one plants it on their own land," he explains. "They always go on someone else’s land and plant it."

Boyd circles a few more times, trying to discern a path in the trees that leads to the marijuana. He can’t make one out. He decides to return home.

When he sets the helicopter down, Boyd indeed lands within five inches of the tracks he had taken off from. He could have landed in the tracks, he insists, but chose not to.

"I meant to do that," he says. "Otherwise, it kills the grass.

From the moment the baseball leaves the pitcher’s hand, its red stitches spinning frantically, until gravity slams it down with a thump into the glove of the catcher kneeling before him, Shaw watches it.

In a split second, he’ll decide whether the ball came in too high, too low, too far to the inside or too far to the outside to be a strike.

At the same time, Shaw eyes the runner on third, watching to see if he’ll take one step too many toward home plate. If the runner goes, Shaw will make that call, too. Safe or out.

For Shaw, calling bases and balls is all in a night’s work. He’s an umpire for the Raleigh Parks and Recreation Department’s summer youth leagues.

But unlike most of his colleagues, Shaw’s barely older than the kids playing. He’s a 21-year-old college student. And umpiring is his summer job.

This night he’s working a tournament game between all-star teams from Raleigh and Cary. He’s dressed in his uniform of a light blue shirt, gray slacks and black shoes, just like the umpires in the major leagues. Because he’s behind the plate, he wears a chest protector under his shirt, a face mask and a black baseball cap worn backward.

At first, the game looked like it would be competitive. But Raleigh has been on a tear since the second inning and is threatening to run away with the game. If at any point the Raleigh team can score 10 more runs than Cary, the game ends.

Raleigh’s ahead 12-3. One run to go. The bases are loaded.

Shaw scrubs at the plate with his foot, trying to clear away the dirt that has accumulated. Sweat streams steadily down his face and dust swirls around his feet. He points to the mound, his signal for the pitcher to throw. Then he crouches behind the catcher, kneeling on his left knee and waiting for the pitch.

It’s a familiar feeling, this waiting. He’s spent three summers as an umpire waiting for pitches. And a lifetime before that.

Shaw’s father played catcher for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. So Shaw played catcher too, first in the Parks and Rec youth leagues and later for the Broughton High School squad.

He would have played at Appalachian State University, where he will be a senior this fall, but he cut a 2-inch

gash in his catching hand on his grandmother’s tobacco farm the summer before his freshman year. The wound healed, but when he tried to play ball, it ripped back open.

Because he couldn’t bear to be away from the game, he turned to umpiring.

He took a class in sports officiating and worked some intramural games at Appalachian State. When he came home, he sought summer employment as an umpire. He was young, but Parks and Rec agreed to give him a shot. Three summers later, Shaw still spends many of his evenings on Raleigh playing fields.

"It started as a summer job, and now I just do it because I love it," he said.

He prefers to work games like this one, a Pony League game, because the level of play is so high. In games with older kids, the 14- to 18-year-olds, he can feel the heat of a pitcher’s fastball and have "at least a little fear for my life" if the catcher doesn’t catch the pitch. Younger kids, he says, "can barely get the ball over the plate."

While the older players have trouble getting the ball over the plate, too - pitchers from both Raleigh and Cary have sent pitches soaring above his head several times - they also throw some of their pitches very fast and very much on target. Shaw has called quite a few batters out on strikes tonight.

But being an umpire is more than just calling balls and strikes.

When a new catcher enters the game, Shaw checks to see that he’s wearing all the necessary safety equipment.

"Do you have your cup?" he asks, a little too loudly.

The catcher nods, and the crowd laughs. Shaw turns and deadpans, "Gotta make sure."

In between innings, Shaw talks with the players and sometimes offers advice. Even the older players have lots to learn, and when he can, Shaw tries to help them improve their games. "Especially the catchers," Shaw says.

He’ll show a catcher how to properly send his signals and help him with his throws. Shaw thinks he might want to try coaching one of these days.

These are the things he loves about umpiring. It’s having to deal with the people off the field that he hates.

Kids get angry at you, coaches get angry at you, and, worst of all, parents get angry at you.

"It’s the parents that give us the most trouble," Shaw said. "They rant and rave when their kids get a bad call."

The parents of the Cary team certainly have given him trouble. As the Cary team’s chances on the field dwindle, its fans have increased their heckling of Shaw.

"He just ain’t going to call a strike," screams one parent.

"We should show him the rulebook, show him where the strike zone is," a coach mutters, watching his team collapse.

Sometimes the spectators move beyond muttering and into violence. Trouble can erupt quickly.

At a game Shaw was working a few weeks back, one team’s shortstop was intentionally walked. As the shortstop made his way around the bases, he said something to the other team’s coach. The coach responded in kind. And before Shaw knew what was happening, the shortstop’s father had grabbed a baseball bat, run onto the field and attacked the coach.

"You gotta relax. You gotta relax," Shaw kept telling the father as he broke up the fight. "You don’t need to do this."

While fights don’t happen often, they can be quite serious. During a game in Chapel Hill last year, a coach attacked an umpire, beating him up so badly that the umpire’s chiropractor compared his injuries to those from a 75 mph head-on car crash.

Parents who are out of control on the field set bad examples for the kids who are playing, Shaw says. He makes it his job to keep that from happening.

"As an umpire, you’ve got to take control," he says simply.

Shaw does not take challenges to his authority lightly.

"People need to realize that if you make the umpire mad, no matter how impartial he is supposed to be, you can’t win," Shaw said.

In his three summers of umpiring, Shaw says he’s made only one mistake that haunts him. He called a runner out on a force play when the fielder should have had to tag him. Shaw did run that play over, because he was clearly in error. But on judgment situations, he always sticks by his call.

"You cannot ever let them question your call," Shaw said. "If you do, they’ll eat you up."

He knows the rulebook inside and out from all his years as a player, so he’s pretty confident making rules-based calls. He does have one little problem, though.

"The only thing that really plagues me is that sometimes I forget the count," Shaw admits.

On the nights when he’s not calling a game, Shaw works as a shucker at the 42nd Street Oyster Bar. One day a man who had umpired games that Shaw had played in recognized him there.

"He told me that I should go to umpiring school," Shaw said.

He appreciates the advice but is unlikely to follow it. Although Shaw went through a stage where he thought he wanted to be a professional umpire, he’s wary of all the traveling they have to do. He may change his mind again, but for now, he’s just having a good time.

"When it stops being fun, I’ll quit. Just like [Michael] Jordan," Shaw said. "If it ever gets to the point where I’m saying, ‘I wish it will rain,’ I’ll stop."

So for now, umpiring is only a part-time job. And his full attention is focused on the three Raleigh baserunners and the Cary pitcher, who has already thrown three balls. Shaw points to the pitcher and then waits.

The pitcher winds up and throws.

The batter doesn’t swing and all eyes turn to Shaw, who makes the call.

It’s a ball. The pitcher has walked in the winning run.

The game is over.

Just another night on the job.

You’ve seen everything that’s playing at the movie theaters. There’s nothing good on TV. The clubs are too crowded, the bars too boring.

So you go bowling Friday night.

Over on lane four of the Western Lanes Bowling Center, Terence Harding and T.C. Thomas are preparing for the latest installment of a competition that’s been going on since 1986. The stakes are bragging rights and an occasional "beer frame." They come to the bowling alley about twice a month.

"All of the bowling alleys are full on Friday nights," Harding says. "This is probably the only one you can get into."

It’s 10 p.m., and about 40 people are still bowling on nine of the 24 lanes.

As the night advances, those with the youngest kids have departed. The only sounds in the alley are the satisfying thunk of ricocheting pins, the whirring of the automatic pin resetters and the occasional outburst at a bowling ball gone awry. There’s no wailing about the difficulty of fitting five fingers into three holes tonight.

Instead the alley is packed with twentysomethings, college students, teenagers, even a few families with older children. Most have stopped by after dinner, attracted by the alley’s location on Hillsborough Street, the cheap games and even cheaper beer, and the ready availability of lanes. There are no leagues at this time of night.

"We’ll usually go to a movie or a bar," Graham Donaldson, 27, says. "This is something different."

Bowling is a different way to spend a Friday night. But there’s a lot more going on here than just bowling.

Along one wall, a television shows children’s videotapes. Scattered throughout the alley are three pool tables, two pinball machines and seven video games. For the Nintendo generation who might find real bowling too, well, real, there’s even a video bowling game. It’s the one with the words "Bowling is Fun" in red and yellow letters. At the far end is the Cloud and Fire Express, also known as the C.A.F.E., a place for kids to hang out with no alcohol and no smoking allowed.

In the center of it all is Bill Goodwin, the self-described "Counter Man," who keeps an eye on the bustle. He collects fees, hands out score sheets (Western is one of the rare places where computerized scoring hasn’t taken over) and painstakingly explains the rules of bowling to a few foreign students. The change machine is broken and he’s kept busy supplying quarters for the game machines.

Goodwin works the late shift on Friday nights, from about 5 until midnight. He knows most of the regulars who come in the fall, but tonight he doesn’t see any familiar faces.

No, tonight the alley is full of people like 18-year-old Rama Moori and his friends.

"This is my first time bowling," Moori said. "And I’m leading!"

Bowl, baby, bowl.

Actually, there are few other sports where it’s possible to do so well your first time out.

There are 10 pins. One ball. Ten frames. Three hundred possible points.

Bowling is an ordinary person’s game. You don’t have to be an athlete to be good at it, although a little hand-eye coordination goes a long way.

It’s a sport unlikely to bring fame and even less likely to bring fortune. Quick, try to name a famous bowler. Hard, isn’t it?

The best-known bowlers are probably Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble who, when they weren’t hiding from Wilma and Betty at the Water Buffalo Lodge, spent their free time bowling.

For those of us who can’t manage a 90 mph fastball, dunk a basketball or throw a football in a perfect spiral, there’s something deeply satisfying about hurling a heavy object some 60 feet and watching the pins just scatter.

And there’s so much style involved.

Beginning bowlers tend to bowl in straight lines, with a sling-shot motion. But the more experienced bowlers, like Harding and Thomas, can make the ball hook and weave as they desire. It’s skill, not luck. And it shows.

Harding is brash, a showman. He’ll bowl, turn around with his arms outstretched, and smile impishly. Behind him, the ball crashes into the pins. Strike.

Thomas bowls strikes, too. But he is a graceful bowler, with a long looping motion. He bowls like he talks, with a quiet elegance. He’s Barney to Harding’s Fred.

But the best part of bowling isn’t even the bowling.

It’s the shoes.

There are precious few places where it’s acceptable, even encouraged, to wear shoes that don’t match. Short of moonlighting as a clown, bowling is probably the only chance you get to slip on such delightfully garish footwear. The red left shoe doesn’t come close to matching the tan right one and never will.

Sadly, the design of the shoes has less to do with freedom from fashion than it does with keeping the shoes from walking. So to speak.

"You’d be surprised, for college kids it’s a big hoot to walk out of here with rental shoes," Goodwin says.

The real sign of a serious bowler isn’t someone who brings his own ball. You can tell someone is in for the long run when he brings his own shoes.

Thomas has his own bowling shoes, but they haven’t done a lot to help his game, Harding teases.

Thomas does not protest. Instead he asks Harding, "How bad are you going to beat me tonight?"

Harding doesn’t answer. He just bowls.

Both are excellent bowlers and the strikes pile up. Harding finishes with 200, Thomas with 175. Harding has carried the night, as usual.

He wins at bowling and basketball and just about everything else. With one exception.

"Usually I win at horseshoes," Thomas says. "But he’s blessed with good luck."

It’s the shoes. It’s gotta be the shoes.

A coalition of long-distance telephone carriers has sent the popular board game to every member of Congress and to newspaper editors across the country in a last-minute lobbying effort.

Much more than Monopoly money is at stake. The long-distance carriers are trying to keep federal telecommunications reform legislation from passing "Go."

The reform bill had cleared the U.S. House Commerce Committee May 25 by a 38-5 vote, with the long-distance companies’ whole-hearted support. Then on July 13, they learned that House leaders slipped in a provision that would simplify the entrance of the seven regional Bell operating companies, commonly known as the Baby Bells, into the long-distance market.

Although President Clinton said Tuesday he would veto the legislation in its current form, a vote could come as early as today.

So the nation’s roughly 500 long-distance carriers scrambled to strike back.

The three largest carriers, AT&T, MCI, and Sprint, each organized employee rallies around the country last week.

Last week, AT&T, which had been running advertisements in favor of the legislation, sent 3,000 employees to Washington on chartered buses and trains for a rally against the bill. It was the first political rally in the company’s 119-year history.

MCI organized a second round of rallies in Raleigh and eight other cities Tuesday. About 45 of MCI’s 1,000 Triangle employees braved the blistering midday heat to gather outside the office of Republican Rep. Fred Heineman in North Raleigh.

Heineman, who was targeted because he has not announced support for either side, probably will make up his mind today, spokeswoman Kay M. Ryon said.

"These bills are evolving, even as we speak," she said.

The legislation will provide substantive change to the regulatory framework that is still based on the 1934 Communications Act. The bill would deregulate much of the cable and phone industries.

For the Baby Bells, the bill represents a chance to enter the long-distance market while lowering costs and prices for consumers, BellSouth spokesman John Schneidawind said.

The bill also would allow long-distance carriers to enter the local phone market. The Baby Bells contend that the bill is fair because the long-distance companies can pick and choose the customers they serve while the Baby Bells are required to serve entire regions.

But it takes much longer to be able to compete locally than in long distance, said MCI senior policy adviser Liz Hogan.

Hence, the legislation’s label as the "Monopoly bill." And the mailing of the Monopoly board game.

The Baby Bells think it’s funny, but have no plans to respond in kind.

But it may become one of the most important tools in your kitchen.

Long before there was cyberspace or the information superhighway, computer makers had food fans in mind.

The makers of the first personal computers thought people would use them to store recipes. Very quickly, they found out otherwise: Pencil and paper did just fine for most folks.

But with the emergence of the Internet, the global link of computer networks, people have started talking about computers and cooking again.

Food lovers are flocking to the Internet. There are sites devoted to favorite foods, newsgroups to exchange restaurant reviews and recipes, and real-life meals shared by people who met online.

"This is the same thing as a cookbook or a neighborhood discussion group, just on a worldwide scale," says Eileen Kupstas of Chapel Hill, a fan of rec.food.

cooking, with recipes and tips.

While it’s impossible to tell just how many people use these resources, the number of users and the number of sites have grown exponentially in the past year.

Kate Heyhoe of Crestline, Calif., sensed the growing link between cooking and computers when she left the movie industry to start an on-line cooking magazine.

"Food and cooking have always been my true passion," she says. "We saw an opportunity on the Internet early on."

So she launched eGG: the electronic Gourmet Guide last December. The site features regular columns, interviews and recipes. Last month, it even had a live feed from the Aspen Food & Wine Festival. The site is aimed at the "dedicated amateur and the professional," she says.

Another site that has been around for a while, and is perhaps the most useful food site on the Internet, is the archives of the rec.food.recipes newsgroup. Hundreds of recipes that have been posted are listed by category. It includes everything from soup to nuts, plus a list of other food sites.

When recipes alone are not enough, there are a number of Internet sites that include information about preparing specific foods, like how to roll your own sushi.

"From the cooking groups, I certainly find a number of recipes and a number of ideas," Kupstas says. "I’m interested in food allergies, and it’s a good place to get and spread information about foods."

If you’ve wanted to learn how to cook like a French chef but can’t afford the air fare to Paris, try Restaurant Le Cordon Bleu’s site. It has a full week’s worth of menus, complete with pictures, translations and detailed cooking instructions, all from the famous cooking school.

While intended to whet your appetite for the "Le Cordon Bleu at Home" cookbook, the site has links within recipes to explain cooking techniques and provide definitions. With one click of your computer’s mouse, from the recipe for Pommes de Terre Sautees a Cru, you can read about the fine art of sauteing and then return to the recipe. It’s better than flipping through a cookbook - you’ll never lose your place.

If you get hungry while looking at those dishes but don’t feel like cooking, check out the databases for restaurants - from those that feature chiles in their dishes to those that accommodate cigar-smokers.

Dining Out on the Web and the rec.food.restaurants newsgroup are good places to start.

Because the Internet can be accessed from all over the world, people sometimes request restaurant recommendations for a foreign country and get replies within a few hours.

"The Internet is a great resource if you’re traveling," says Dilip Barman of Durham, president of the Triangle Vegetarian Society.

When an Australian recently asked, "OK, from somebody on the other side of the world, can you explain what barbecue is?" he probably had no idea what he was getting himself into. After all, there’s barbecue and then there’s that stuff they serve in Texas.

If you want Triangle restaurant reviews, check out the triangle.dining newsgroup.

The Triangle Vegetarian Society page also lists reviews of vegetarian cuisine and plans to put its newsletter online. Barman also has a list of vegetarian resources that’s quite popular.

"A lot of people know me from my home page," he says.

The newsgroups and mailing lists are good places to find people who share favorite foods. Group visits to restaurants and potluck dinners are frequently arranged online.

You can also shop for all sorts of specialty food over the Internet. Many stores have their catalogs online, and some allow you to place orders electronically.

If you’re a hot food fan, you’ll want to make your way to Lotsa Hotsa, a Ramona, Calif., company that sells products with names like Hellfire and Damnation Hot Sauce. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of this site.

"The Internet needs products that are unique, that you can’t go down the street and buy," says Jack Alexander, the president of Starving Artists, a company that suggested the idea to Lotsa Hotsa and later designed the site. "We’re big hot sauce connoisseurs ourselves."

In the same vein, there’s Wing Wan II, a Boca Raton, Fla., based restaurant that promises to ship Kosher chinese food anywhere in the world.

Or try Fromagerie Belchevre, a Quebec cheese maker. The cheese looks great, but loses something in the translation. The page boasts that "Fromagerie Belchevre is the home of high quality 100 percent goat’s cheese. All our cheese is made from fresh goat’s milk."

Before you wrap up, make one last stop at the Chocolate Lover’s Page, a site that will melt in your mouth, not in your mouse. It has links to Hershey’s Chocolate Town U.S.A, Godiva Online, and every other chocolate site imaginable.

On second thought, maybe you should start there. Who said dessert always has to come at the end of the meal?

One great thing about grazing among food sites (besides it being non-fattening) is that even if you never get Restaurant Le Cordon Bleu’s Feuilletes de Saumon aux Asperges (puff pastry shells with salmon and asparagus with a lemon butter sauce) just right, you can console yourself by seeing how it should look:

Virtually good enough to eat.

Some sites are lovingly crafted tributes to favorite foods that are rich in description but short on information. Others are simply online advertisements.

Keep in mind that the Internet is global and that most of the world measures their recipes on the metric system. Even the definition of a pint varies from country to country. So be careful when converting recipes.

Be wary of any online site that asks you to send your credit card number by e-mail. A savvy computer hacker can pick off your account number.

Also, don’t change your eating habits based solely on what you may read online. Having a computer, modem and opinion on eating doesn’t make someone an expert.

Mailing lists, essentially an ongoing conversation by electronic mail. You need to sign up for these, and messages are delivered directly to you via e-mail.

Newsgroups, the equivalent of a global bulletin board where anyone interested can post or read messages without registering.

Sites on the World Wide Web, which link Internet resources. The Web allows you to follow highlighted links to other resources .

Here are some sites that may whet your appetite. You can use searching tools like Yahoo and WebCrawler to find food resources elsewhere.

World Wide Web

• Chocolate Lover’s Page, a guide to all the cocoa-based sites online:
  http://www.iia.org/chocolate/
• Dilip Barman’s Vegetarian Resources:
  http://www.cs.unc.edu/~barman/vegetarian.html
• Dining Out on the Web, a searchable database of restaurants:
  http://www.ird.net/diningout.html
• eGG: the electronic Gourmet Guide, a cooking magazine:
  http://www.2way.com/food/egg/index.html
• Fromagerie Belchvre, a specialty cheese maker:
  http://www.roblyn.com/chevhome.htm
• Lotsa Hotsa, a site that sells spicy foods:
  http://www.nbn.com/starving_artists/lotsa-hotsa/
• Recipe Archives from rec.food.recipes, a listing of previously posted recipes:
  http://www.vuw.ac.nz/who/Amy.Gale/recipes/recipe-archive.html
• Restaurant Le Cordon Bleu, cooking tips from the restaurant at the famous French cooking school:
  http://sunsite.unc.edu/expo/restaurant/restaurant.html
• Rolling Your Own Sushi, instructions on the art of Japanese cuisine:
  http://www.rain.org/~hutch/sushi.html
• The Triangle Vegetarian Society, reviews of vegetarian-friendly restaurants:
  http://www.trinet.com/tonc/tvspage.html
• WebCrawler:
  http://www.webcrawler.com
• Wing Wan II, a kosher Chinese restaurant in Boca Raton, Fla.:
  http://www.dive.com/wingwan/
• Yahoo:
  http://www.yahoo.com/

Entertainment/Food/Newsgroups

• triangle.dining
• rec.food.cooking
• rec.food.recipes
• rec.food.restaurants

The packaging of the buoyant water toy says it’s from Tennessee, but the Funnoodle is really made right here in the Triangle.

So are Nerf arrows, parts of Seeley mattresses, and even the protective padding at those playgrounds McDonald’s provides for french fry-fueled youngsters.

"Those are applications that many consumers in the Triangle use and don’t know that it’s made here," said Marc Noel, the president of Nomaco Inc., a low-profile, privately held company that makes thermoplastic foam products.

With 460 employees and annual revenue approaching $55 million, Nomaco has quietly carved out a specialty niche as a leader in the "foam profile" industry.

At its plants in Zebulon and Youngsville, Nomaco melts plastic pellets, mixes in additives and coloring, and forces the concoction through a shaping device called an extruder.

What emerges are foam gardening pads, stadium cushion seats, hair curlers, race car roll-cage pads, pipe insulation, tree wraps and packing materials.

And, of course, the Funnoodle.

For those of you without young, aquatic-minded kids, the Funnoodle is a foam cylinder six feet in length and three inches in diameter that can support up to 200 pounds in water.

Typically selling for $2.99, the Funnoodle is the top-ranked non-video toy this summer, according to the NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y., market-research firm. And toy stores across the country are having trouble keeping it in stock.

"It’s one of those items that just took off," said Pam Kelly, a buyer for Toys ‘R’ Us. "It’s kind of like the pet rock thing. It’s a phenomenon."

But for all the hoopla surrounding the Funnoodle, none of it has filtered down to Nomaco.

In large part, that’s by choice. Nomaco’s name never appears on its products.

The company made a strategic decision in 1987 to stop selling products directly to the public. Instead, it concentrates on its technological advantages. So it signed alliances with companies like toy maker Kid Power in Brentwood, Tenn., to market and distribute products that Nomaco makes.

"When you’re so diversified, you cannot, or we cannot, distribute directly," Noel said. "That’s why our name does not appear on the product."

Unlike many distribution agreements, there’s also a fair amount of collaboration on product development between Nomaco and its partners.

"For a manufacturer, they are very market-oriented," Kid Power President Jamie O’Rourke said.

So far, the strategy seems to be working.

When Nomaco was wooed away from Ansonia, Conn., six years ago, the company started its North Carolina operations with 30 employees in Zebulon.

Since then, it has built its Youngsville plant and now employs 350 people in the Triangle. The company has another 110 employees and two plants in an Atlanta-based decorative products division.

Nomaco’s foam sells so fast that the inventory of its 85,000-square-foot warehouse in Zebulon turns over every two weeks.

And there aren’t many competitors on the horizon.

"We find ourselves more and more in a specialty niche," Noel said.

When Kid Power approached Nomaco about manufacturing the Funnoodle, the company had first researched the different foam producers.

"In North America, there are only 10 companies that could make one of them or a number of them," O’Rourke said. "But, in my opinion, Nomaco is the only one that could make them in the volume we needed."

Still, Kid Power originally split the order between Nomaco and Toronto-based Industrial Thermo Polymer Ltd.

But once production started, the company changed its mind.

"The difference between them was night and day," O’Rourke said. "We put all our eggs in Nomaco’s basket."

Not that Noel expected any less.

"Extrusion is our forte," he said.

Or it could be a treacherous and deadly landscape, swallowing up trailblazers and setting in motion costly financial flops.

Welcome to the world of cyberbusiness.

It’s easy to get caught up in the hype of the Internet as companies in the Triangle rush to go on-line. But, so far, success stories are few and far between as companies tentatively explore the intricacies of Internet commerce.

In fact, many companies have found they are more likely to use the Internet to save money rather than to make money.

"I don’t know of many nontechnology companies that are doing much revenue through the Internet in the area right now," said Cliff Allen, who advises companies on their on-line efforts as president of the Allen Marketing Group in Raleigh.

In the extraordinarily brief commercial life of the Internet, the people who have made money are Internet access providers, World Wide Web page designers and the cottage industry of consultants and speakers.

That’s about to change.

As the Internet moves from the playground of scientists and hackers to a robust business community, this could be the year that real fortunes are made and lost on the Internet.

"More and more people are going to be sitting in their living rooms browsing the Net," said Sarah Gray Lamm, manager of the Home Team Properties Inc., a Chapel Hill real estate company that launched a Web site with property listings last month.

Like most aspects of Internet commerce, market research is an emerging field, and no figures are available for measuring Triangle business activity on the Internet. But total sales on the Internet worldwide from September through July were $118 million, according to a survey of more than 650 Web sites by ActivMedia, Inc., a Peterborough, N.H., research firm. That figure is expected to skyrocket for the next few years.

"There is a novelty feature to ordering flowers or nontechnology merchandise over the Net," Allen said. "But there’s also no competition."

If the Internet has been a rough-and-tumble world so far, a semblance of order is about to arrive, in the form of big business.

Visa and MasterCard have teamed up to develop secure transaction software to prevent hackers from picking off credit card numbers. Several banks are exploring creating cyberbanking divisions. Wall Street has started to pour capital into technology companies.

With these developments comes a new critical mass of users. All the major commercial on-line services have pledged to offer full access to the Web by the end of the year. The newest online service, the much-touted Microsoft Network, could add another 9 million users to the Internet’s estimated population of 30 million users worldwide.

While electronic mail addresses pop up routinely on business cards from Research Triangle Park, more nontechnology companies in the Triangle are now considering establishing a presence online.

"It’s those merchants that are trying to decide whether they need to be up or not," Allen said.

Those Triangle companies that have ventured on-line have found a variety of ways to integrate the Internet into traditional business strategies. And some of them have learned something that Internet business evangelists don’t share very often: Most companies on the Internet aren’t trying to make money - they’re trying to cut costs.

Web sites can save staff and processing time, mailing and printing costs, and even long-distance phone bills, especially for calls overseas.

For instance, American Airlines, which launched its site May 18, has placed flight schedules on-line and plans to allow frequent fliers to check account information by the end of the year.

Initially, the airline hopes to speed up the reservation process at its five reservation centers, including its 1,400-employee operation in Cary.

"The concept is really to reduce the cost of business as much as possible," said Joe Crawley, the site’s webmaster.

Far more important are American’s plans to offer electronic booking of flights early next year.

In an industry where commissions to travel agents are the third-highest cost after labor and fuel, electronic booking could increase the number of tickets issued directly by the airlines, now just 20 percent. One day electronic booking could supplant reservation centers and travel agencies entirely.

Not to be outdone, a number of travel agencies have taken to the Web as well. PCTravel, a service of Raleigh’s American Travel Corp., has perhaps the most sophisticated system. Consumers can search for the cheapest flight and can reserve and buy tickets. PCTravel expects to do $2 million worth of bookings per month for this year, said David Lea, American Travel vice president for marketing.

But a major problem for PCTravel and other Triangle companies that sell goods and services on-line has been the continuing concern over the security of information transmitted over the Internet.

Technological advances in security have been unable to dispel a public distrust fueled, in large part, by the February arrest of hacker Kevin Mitnick in a North Raleigh apartment on charges of stealing 20,000 credit card numbers from the nation’s largest Internet access provider. PCTravel, the Durham Bulls and a number of Triangle businesses have turned to a new cyberbanking unit of First Union Corp. in Charlotte for help.

First Union is providing help for on-line transactions such as credit card verification and transaction security. The company also plans to tackle business-to-business transactions and soon will announce new cash management software that will enable corporate customers to check account information over the Internet.

"We want to be where our customers are," said Tom Kitrick, First Union vice president for strategic planning and Internet marketing. "What’s driving this industry is, how can businesses use the Internet to make their transactions easier?"

Another industry being driven by the Internet is marketing.

The Internet is a marketer’s dream tool. Precise files on individual users can be kept easily. The demographics are to die for. Web users are well off, with an average income of $69,000, and highly educated, with nearly 35 percent having completed college and almost 32 percent more earning an advanced degree, according to a University of Michigan-Georgia Tech study.

At WRAL-FM 101.5, a promotion to give away tickets to the movie "The Net" demonstrated just how powerful a marketing tool the Internet could be.

Listeners were asked to go to its Web site, leave a mailing address, and to fill out an optional survey. The station mentioned the offer on the air just three times in 30 hours.

"We were going to leave it up for a week, figuring we would get 20 responses," said Ned Attayek, an announcer who designed and maintains the page. "We put it up at Monday lunch and by Tuesday suppertime, the tickets were gone."

The station gave away 211 tickets and collected valuable demographic data in the process. And WRAL did it all without devoting staff time or hiring a marketing company to conduct the research.

"We were amazed. We’re trying to figure out how to make some money off this page," Attayek said. "It’s obvious that it’s an incredible marketing and promotion research tool."

It’s also an incredible tool for entrepreneurs like Gary Storr and two co-workers who launched a Web service called America’s Help Wanted to assist companies in their recruiting efforts a month ago. They expect to charge companies to post job openings and to buy resumes of qualified candidates from a searchable database.

"We’re hopeful that we’ll be able to get to a point where we can support this on a full-time basis," Storr said.

Venture capitalists are quite interested in the activities of Storr and entrepreneurs like him.

Internet start-ups received $47 million in venture capital financing in the first quarter of this year, $5 million more than all of 1994, according to a study by Venture One, a San Francisco research company.

Venture capital investments in Internet-related companies are growing about three times as fast as biotech investments did in the late 1980s, said Venture One spokeswoman Caren Cadile.

But before entrepreneurs or established businesses order business cards to go with a new Web site, they should take the time to do some old-fashioned research by spending some time on-line, posting messages and answering questions, Allen cautioned.

"When you get an e-mail asking for your catalog, you’ve found a market. When you get e-mail asking for your Web site, then it’s time to get a Web site," Allen said. "It’s the simplest market research you can do."

He doesn’t have to worry about what his co-workers might think. Since July, he’s worked by himself, in an office above his garage.

When Jones agreed to leave his job at a Raleigh law firm to join a Columbia, S.C., company as vice president for business development, he insisted that he be allowed to remain in the Triangle.

"I didn’t want to move to Columbia," Jones says. "I can make an argument that, with the type of work I do, I’m more productive here than in an office with the distractions."

So he added a few phone lines to his garage and joined the burgeoning ranks of telecommuters, people who use technology to work from home or away from their traditional offices.

For employees, telecommuting offers the chance to bypass rush-hour traffic, to spend time with their families and to work at their own pace without managers hovering over them.

For employers, telecommuting cuts down on office overhead and costly corporate real estate.

Some 9.1 million employees worked at home during business hours for at least one day per month last year, up from 7.6 million the year before, according to FIND/SVP, an Ithaca, N.Y., research firm.

Work-at-home arrangements aren’t for everyone, employers and workplace consultants warn. An employee, of course, has to maintain a good supply of self-discipline. And for employers, telecommuting loses its appeal as a productivity booster if managers don’t trust home-workers or refuse to offer the necessary support to make it work.

Although the Triangle does not have the same traffic pressures inspiring telecommuting as cities like Los Angeles, it is slowly taking hold here nonetheless.

Some big employers such as IBM Corp. are giving increasing numbers of employees the chance to work at home. Computer retailers say their fastest-growing segment is the "soho," or small office/home office market. And even phone companies and office furniture retailers are beginning to capitalize on the trend.

Within a few months, GTE South, which has run local advertisements encouraging people to telecommute, will offer new service options for telecommuters, including connectivity, consulting and support. The local phone provider serves Durham and Research Triangle Park.

"GTE is trying to put together a complete package for working at home," says David Bryant, senior network engineer.

As part of the package, GTE will promote high-speed, high-capacity phone lines called ISDN, for integrated services digital network. One ISDN line can support two phone lines, making it ideal for home workers who want one line for voice and one line for a fax machine or modem. Prices range from $50 to $75 month, with a surcharge for data usage.

Triangle office supply stores say they are seeing more orders for home office equipment. Those computers, printers, and fax machines require furniture.

"We have more and more people coming in here saying they are working at home," says Angie Lebitz, showroom manager for Alfred Williams and Co., a Raleigh office supplier. "That’s been happening for at least the past year. We’ve noticed a significant increase."

A typical home office configuration might cost between $2,500 and $3,000, Lebitz said.

But employees who work at home don’t have to bear the full cost of a home office. Some Triangle companies are starting to pick up portions of the tab.

IBM Corp.’s Research Triangle Park operation now pays for phone lines for nearly half of its employees who do some sort of work at home, spokesman Jay Cadmus says.

For employees like Gary Brown, the company sometimes supplies computers, too.

Brown, who provides on-line customer support, has worked out of his home in Cary off and on for 10 years and full time since October.

What he may lose in office camaraderie, he says, he makes up for in productivity. "I’m relaxed, I’ve got music going," Brown says. "There’s no office chit-chat, no telephone ringing, no background noise. It allows you to write more politely.

Keep people in stitches. Laugh all the way to the bank.

No, she’s not a comedienne. She’s a seamstress. Evans owns Sew Well Learning Center & Manufacturing, a North Raleigh company that teaches people how to sew.

"Sewing is like typing," Evans said. "If you can type, you can get a job anywhere. If you can sew, you can always make money. People always need alterations."

So a year ago, she left her job working with mentally handicapped patients to try her hand at teaching sewing full time.

Evans rented office space on Wake Forest Road, bought a van, stockpiled sewing machines and purchased bolts and bolts of fabric.

By word of mouth and some innovative publicity, she signed up 33 students at $400 apiece for her 60-hour course. After a year of teaching classes six days a week, she’s finally starting to turn a profit.

Evans began by persuading fabric stores to display her brochures. In return, she refers her students to the stores.

"I keep people sewing and they keep people coming to my classes," she said.

She built up a mailing list from people who had seen her ads and called for sewing advice. She used her 14-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter to model her clothes at events.

"My kids are a very intricate part of this business," she said, laughing. "The pay’s cheap - an ice cream cone, a soda."

It’s no coincidence that her children are involved.

As a single mother, she’s found that sewing is one of the few ways for women to make a living while staying at home with their children. She’s working on a proposal for social service agencies to train mothers on welfare and put them into jobs sewing. So far, all her students have been women, usually 25 to 40 years old, many with children.

Evans says she customizes each class, so students learn what they want to learn. She takes students on field trips to wool mills and shows them how to buy fabric.

"I teach them how to make sewing cost-effective," Evans said.

She also teaches them how to make sewing profitable.

Evans uses the course’s graduates to do contract sewing for Triangle businesses.

"There aren’t that many manufacturers here. It’s a good industry to get into," she said. "I don’t think anyone is really filling that need for church groups and small organizations."

Because the students work out of their homes, she has lower costs. She has no minimum order and promises that no job is too small- Sew Well has made everything from day care workers’ smocks and nurses uniforms to doll dresses.

In part to gain her customers’ confidence, she makes just about everything she wears.

"Your business card is what you sew. Your advertisement is what you wear," she said.

With her business only a year old and already covering its expenses, she expects her manufacturing revenue to grow as more students complete her course.

She’s even thinking about expanding into other cities in a few years.

"I have visions of Sew Wells all over, not just in Raleigh," she said. "I feel fast growth.

Microsoft Windows 95, possibly the most heavily promoted computer product ever, officially went on sale throughout the Triangle at midnight.

The newest version of Microsoft’s highly successful operating system should make personal computers easier to set up and use. Windows 95 will include better audio and video capabilities, and offer easy access to the Internet through the Microsoft Network, the company’s new online service.

Seven to nine million copies are expected to be sold this week alone, according to market research firm Dataquest Inc. Another 20 million copies should be sold by the end of the year.

And those figures may be dwarfed next year. Concerned about possible bugs in the system, many users are expected to wait for a later version of Windows 95 before plunking down $90 for a copy. Also, sellers of computer systems and hardware are expected to see a sales spurt as users realize they need new, or at least upgraded, systems to run the new program.

But Microsoft isn’t leaving things to chance. It is spending $200 million on the launch, which has riveted the world’s attention. The purchase of the first copy — by a student in Auckland, New Zealand, seventeen hours before copies went on sale in the United States — drew extensive news coverage. More than 70,000 people are expected to attend launch events in 43 cities today. Microsoft paid a reported $4 million to license the rights to the Rolling Stones song "Start Me Up" for Windows 95 commercials.

Windows 95, like all operating systems, is the software that determines how files are stored and different programs interact. The Microsoft empire was built on MS-DOS, the operating system that became the industry standard when IBM selected it in 1981 for its first personal computer. The two partners went their separate ways in 1985 when Microsoft introduced the original version of Windows, while IBM bet on an operating system known as OS/2 as a successor to DOS.

Windows found a following, but sales of OS/2 have languished. Nearly 80 percent of the world’s personal computers now run Microsoft operating software.

OS/2 may not be the only casualty. For many months, Windows 95 was known to the computer world only by its code name, "Chicago." But it might have better been named "William Tell," for Windows 95 could be an Apple-killer.

Windows 95 is supposed to make your PC more like a Macintosh. And some industry experts predict it may put the Macintosh out of business. With new features like longer file names and "plug-and-play" technology, a PC for the first time approaches the ease of use that made Macintoshes famous — but at a far lower cost.

Retailers such as Egghead Software in Cary started selling the software as soon as their clocks struck — or, in this digital age, beeped — midnight.

Tim Brown, an automation specialist at the Wake County Public Safety department, has paid $10 at Babbages in Cary Towne Center to reserve his copy.

"I’ll probably go pick it up in the afternoon," he said. "When people ask me whether it’s worth it, at least I’ll have some firsthand experience."

Egghead opened at 11 p.m. Wednesday to give customers a chance to browse. Then at midnight, copies went on sale. With Microsoft’s estimated installation time of 45 to 60 minutes, Triangle computer users could have had the software up and running by 1 a.m.

"We’ve had midnight madness events before and had very good turnout," Egghead manager Joe Mauk said Wednesday. "I really expect the store will be bursting at the seams. There may even be a line to get in."

More than 500 people have