Oh my! What the heck are they talking about? Here is the article from the Washington Post dated 11/18/2009, “File-sharing software ban sought in House.” Are we proposing a ban on file sharing in government facilities and/or private residences occupied by federal employees? I thing that the former is mandatory and enforceable and the latter should not be not in the purview of the employer.
Government sites should ban access to file sharing and social networks on their networks…as should any responsible business. There is no need for that access on the computer of a government employee. The security risks are significant, as we have seen. Information of almost any nature should be kept in government facilities and on government networks. Remote access to that information should be restricted to only those who really need it and should be over secure, encrypted communication lines. Users should be able to access a remote desktop environment (Citrix, Windows Terminal Server, VMWare, etc) and be restricted from downloading anything from the private network to their home PC/network.
I would like to shout out and say thanks to all those who serve, have served, and especially those who have served and died for our country and our ideals, twisted though they may be at times. I offer a special thanks and cheers to all the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines I worked and shared time with in my tens years in the U.S. Navy, seven great years of which I spent in the Republic of Korea.
Maybe one of these days the U.S. will make Veterans Day a real holiday by giving those of us who served a paid day off!
I headed off to see my sister Kim and her husband Don who live in Suffolk, VA, on Friday, 23 October, 2009. For once, in recent trips down there, the travel time was reasonable. I stopped near Hog Island WMA off of Route 10 on the way down to paddle. Hog Island was closed but an adjacent area was open via a public boat landing. That is were I hoped to put in anyhow so I was okay. I assume that Hog Island WMA was closed because of nesting and/or transient fowl.
I tried to find some new places to put my kayak in the water near Kim’s but was stymied by a seeming lack of boat landings. I thought I had a good option on Lake Burnt Mills but the landing was closed for construction…. I ended up driving around western Suffolk for 80 minutes to no avail. Since we planned on going to Driver Days (is that something you get when you’ve been on the interstate for too long?) and it was nearly 11:00 AM, I decided to check back in at Kim’s to see what was up.
After Kim and Don got ready, we headed off to Driver for the festival. Driver is a town just about a mile from Kim’s which, from my experience, has a jaded history. I once went there to get the BBQ propane tank filled up at the general store, which is not there anymore, and another story. These Mayberry, RFD, guys are sitting out on the porch of the store smoking and joking. One of them tells me that the propane tank filling guy isn’t there but maybe he can help me. He seems fairly competent but after he starts trying to fill the tank the obviously not well attached hose pops of the tank and starts flailing around like an unmanned fire hose except for the fact that it is spewing out a flammable gas not far from a bunch of cigarette smoking yokels! I grabbed the tank and got the eff out!
A tornado ripped through there last August hopping and skipping it’s way across the Suffolk area. It took out one of my sister’s friend’s house near the hospital, wiped out the general store in Driver, missed the trailerhome complex, also in Driver, missed Kim’s neighborhood and missed her office complex which is about ten minutes away from her home. Bad luck not withstanding, the town put on a pretty good fair with a classic car display, military robot demonstrations, tons of food, and lots of arts and crafts. And it was a beautiful day.
On Sunday, while Kim and Don were at church, I fell back on my old faithful paddle, Bennett’s Creek, not five minutes from Kim’s. Afterward, I took off a bit before midday on Route 58 en route Staunton River State Park where I intended to paddle and camp. The drive was pretty good and I’d never been in Virginia between Tidewater and the southwestern part of the state so it was a new experience. For what ever reason, time and/or the very low water level, down four or five feet maybe, I did not paddle. The campsite was great as long as you could avoid the dropping acorns. I never realized how loud those things were. At night in my tent, the dropping acorns sounded like small branches falling out of the trees. I love the late season camping though. Only two other sites were in use.
On Monday I headed off to White Rocks campsite in the Jefferson National Forest. I continued west on Route 58 until I reached Stuart just a bit west of Martinsville where NASCAR raced the previous weekend. From Stuart, I took Route 8 to Christiansburg. That was a seriously curvy, fun road! I can’t wait to pack up the scooter for some camping and head back down that way next year! More on that theme later.
From Christiansburg I sought out 460 west to Pembroke where I hoped to head north on Route 635 to Route 613 to White Rocks. On the way, after looking at the map, I thought I found a short cut via Route 700 off of 460 to 613. I took it but obviously hadn’t worked it out right because when I got to 613, I went the wrong way and wound back up on Route 460. Come to find out, if I had gone the right way, I would have backdoored into White Rocks. Nonetheless, that was another awesomely beautiful and curvaceous road. It is begging for me take the scooter to it! Next year or I am queer!
When I finally got to White Rocks, it was totally deserted. The bathrooms and washing facilities were shut down but there were two Porta Potties. I really didn’t need any of that but if you are car camping, a sit down crapper is a bonus. The leaves were past peak and it was desolate. I could hear coyotes howling up in the mountains. I hiked around a bit before eating dinner then I hung out reading and writing by lamplight until it got down to about 45 degrees at which time I decided, without a campfire, that it was time to get into my tent and sleeping bag. I read for a couple of hours more before shutting it down for the night.
I woke up to intermittent rain sometime in the wee hours and that continued until I finally decided to break camp and head out for home at about 9:00 AM. I headed NNE on Route 635 which turned in to County Road 17 which turned into Route 600 which turned into Route 18 which dropped me into Covington after about 45 miles where I got on Interstate 64 to Interstate 81 to Interstate 66 which took me home. The trip from White Rocks to Covington was another awesomely curvy road which calls to me and my Kawasaki ZRX-1200. Next year for sure!
…plenty of money to ruin them. As I am sure I have mentioned at some time, I like to take a walk on a paved path through a nearby park. The park is a narrow strip of forest with a stream meandering through it and house on one side and office buildings on the other. The path exits the park after a while and briefly follows a power line which parallels a road. While this is hardly wilderness, it is pretty good for me in metro D.C., since it is only a five minute walk from my home.
I have noted for a months now that there has been little effort to maintain the path by clearing back brush and cleaning up trash. Today I found that they cleared all the brush back for about 10 to 20 feet on either side of the path on the power line. Woe am I and the fauna that used to inhabit and/or frequent that flora! I like a bit of trimming of the bush but they wiped out a large quantity of wild berry bushes that certainly provided forage for the birds if nothing else.
The area today seemed devoid of life. I usually see all kinds of birds and frequently deer, raccoons, and woodchucks. I don’t know if those bushes can grow back and, if so, how quickly but clearing them all out was a crime against nature. To make matters worse, now all the trash that has been and will be thrown from cars going down the road is and will be blatantly obvious. It is bad enough around when the foliage thins out. Our brown and gray winter landscapes are decorated with the detritus of our throw away society.
I did not expect quite the overwhelming win. I did expect the win though. Deed’s campaign was weak and neither he, President Obama, nor the DNC really helped the case. It just goes to say that your platform is less of an issue than your image. McDonnell is a player…Deeds is a hick. Unfortunately neither of them had an apparent platform.
The results across the board, huge Republican inroads in VA, and in other regional races less northern NY State, just show how fickle the voters are. God forbid we should stick with an elected representative or party, stay the course, and find a plan that works. Let’s just keep bouncing from one to another and hope that something works….
I still haven’t seen how McDonnell (native of PA by the way) plans to improve the transportation situation in VA. From what I have read, less than a million dollars is available in the highway fund. We’ve raised no money for improvements for 25 years. We need to spend one billion a year for the next 10 years to maintain our roads
One example of what has been done can be found here http://www.28freeway.com/. Route 28 is a major thoroughfare right near me that runs through the “tech corridor.” I used it to commute back and forth to work. It was supposed to be a four year, 200 million dollar project starting in 2002. They just finished it about two days ago. So it was three years overdue…and who knows how much over budget it was.
In the Washington Post Outlook section article, Joseph Rocha — ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Didn’t Protect Me From Abuse in the Navy , dated October 11, 2009, Mr. Rocha tells a tale of how the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for gays in the military not only did not work for him but worked against him. Rocha joined the U.S. Navy in 2005 and was sent to the Bahrain, perhaps in Shore Patrol unit.
After qualifying and training for a spot in a dog handling unit, he joined a unit of 24 individuals responsible for 32 dogs. The dogs were used to search for and detect explosives, drugs, contraband, bound from Bahrain to Iraq and Afghanistan. Joe’s description of how he was treated vies with notoriety for stories of Abu Graib:
“– the chief had decided that I would be down on my hands and knees, simulating oral sex. A kennel support staff member and I were supposed to pretend that we were in our bedroom and that the dogs were catching us having sex. Over and over, with each of the 32 dogs, I was forced to enact this scenario.”
To make matters worse, the only person that stood up for Joseph, was the unit second in command, a 1st Class Petty Officer, who was named “Sailor of the Year” when she was 27, was blamed for not reigning in her boss, a Chief Petty Officer. WTF? This woman, with orders to return to the States, was charged with negligence, had her orders rescinded and had to stay in Bahrain. She killed herself.
The story continues. Please read the whole article and write to your elected representatives and ask them to support gays in the military…or anywhere.
I hadn’t had the time, or energy, to publish this entry before I read in the Washington Post on October 21, 2009, that the Chief Petty Officer responsible for the dog handing unit was under investigation for “years-old allegations of hazing and sexual harassment against a gay sailor and others.” Read more here…”Navy petty officer to face punishment in hazing.”
Disclaimer: I am not gay. I spent 10 enjoyable years in the Navy. I worked for five years as an equal opportunity coordinator while I was in the Navy. I have written, planned, coordinated, and conducted numerous classes/seminars on equal rights/opportunities, sexual harassment, and discrimination and briefed the Chief of Staff, Chief of Naval Operations, Korea, on said topics.
I was listening to the Worst of Airplane some days ago in commemoration of having just read, for the second (not seconal) time, “The Electric Koolaid Acid Test” by Tom Wolfe. A non-fiction work of art, “true” as it were, the book records the antics of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters as they trip and grok through the “LSD is not yet illegal” world of the 1960’s.
Most of the action takes place in the San Francisco Bay area and Mexico but includes a noted bus trip (no pun intended) to the East Coast and back. The thread of the book runs around the Kesey rapper, tripper, grokker persona, and his role as a polarizer or a freak. He definitely drew people to him who wallowed in his “our existence really means nothing until we can go beyond acid” attitude.
Items, bands, persona, and thoughts referenced in the book are randomly listed below. If you have any interest in the diverse history of the USA as relates to the 1960’s, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” is a must read.
Freedom of expression w/o criticism
The bus
The music and the recordings
“The Movie”
Getting the police involved in “The Movie”
Owlsey Blues
Beatles concert
Stones concert
The Grateful Dead
The Hell’s Angels
Writer and Poet Jack Kerouac who wrote “On the Road,” “Big Sur, and “Dharma Bums”
Ken Kesey who wrote “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
Allen Ginsberg who wrote the poem “Howl,” not to be confused with the painting “Scream,” by Evard Munch
Hunter S. Thompson who wrote “Hell’s Angels” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”
In this Washington Post article, “Environmentalists divided over wind turbines, endangered bats, ” dated October 22, 2009, the merits of a wind turbine farm planned near Greenbriar, WV, are compared to the threat the farm might pose to the endangered Indiana bat.
According to one self-proclaimed caving fanatic and animal rights activist, “…if the turbines kill one Indiana bat, that ought to end it. That ought to shut it down.” I am all for animal rights but maybe we should stop driving cars too…fool!
Someone wrote to the Washington Post Jobs section asking “Who Do You Call When Your Boss Bans Cellphones?” Apparently the boss had not only outlawed personal cellphone usage at all times including getting alerts silently and during break times but also forbade using company landlines for personal use. That is a bit excessive in my estimation. I believe that an organization has a responsibility to make it’s employees available to their friends and families in emergencies.
I do believe in banning cell phone usage, not during break time though, and allowing use of company landlines for personal use in emergency situations. I can’t think of any reason that phone usage should be verboten in personal/family emergencies. Were cellphones used only in emergencies, I wouldn’t ban them either. We all know however that cellphone use in the workplace is rampant and flagrant. I bet most organizations could realize a 5 to 10 percent increase in productivity were cell phone usage to be banned.
Growing up as a child (oxymoron or impossibility???), I cannot remember a time that my mother called my dad at work or that my dad called home from work. I am sure it happened but those occurrences could in no way mirror the frequent instances of frivolous cell phone usage that I have seen in the work place. On top of cell phone usage, corporate email is also blatantly abused for personal use. At least, for the employee, that is not as visible to management and coworkers.
Fortunately, company landlines and corporate email can be monitored, abuse documented, and disciplinary action taken when warranted. I know from personal experience in the workplace that too much time is wasted on personal business using cellphones, landlines, and email. In an effort to trim telecom costs at a previous company, I found company cellphone users who were nighttime supervisors who racked up three times the amount of minutes per month the site VP racked up. Please reconcile for me why a night supervisor should need to spend an average of 100 minutes per shift on the telephone. Really, you don’t need to. I know from viewing the call records that those minutes were not used for business…
Disclaimer, I am in no way commenting on policies of any company I ever worked for. Also, I am single, have no exes, and no children, so my experiences having to keep in touch with people are extremely limited compared to many others. Nonetheless, we have done without the current modes of instantaneous and constant communications for thousands of years. What makes us sure that we have to have them now?
My cat, Hamlet, turns 19 next month. I have had him since he was six months old. For 10 or 12 years he has had problems with constipation and weak muscles in his colorectal area. He’s been to the vets for enemas, eats special food, and takes medications for the constipation. He has bad arthritis in his lower spine which makes getting around, including getting in and out of the cat box, and getting in position to do his business painful.
As a result, especially if there is anything in the cat box, he leaves me surprises on the carpet outside of his bathroom. He is also, very deaf and runs around the house screaming his head off, which is very disconcerting. I often say that I won’t miss all these things when he passes away and wonder if he hasn’t lived too long already. But I love the little booger!
Here is from more than ten years ago hanging out at the sliding glass doors of my friend Dave Schleusener’s house when I was renting a room there.
