Computer User Security

This is a topic I am very interested in and do a lot of reading and podcast listening in my spare time on the topic.

This article in particular was a good summary of the problems with end-user computer security these days. The paper the article references is here if anyone REALLY wants all the details (I'd recommend just reading the article unless you're really bored :)

Oh, and did I mention I get my cast off tomorrow?!? :)

Taxes

With April 15th coming up...an interesting article:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Nearly-half-of-US-households-apf-1105567323.html?x=0&.v=

T minus 2 days...

In just under 2 days I'll be rid of my shackles...uh I mean my cast :) Before and after pictures to follow...I am really looking forward to taking a shower without having to tie a bag on my arm!

In other news....please direct prayers and good thoughts toward my friend Jeff's kitty, he has a kidney problem and currently has a feeding tube. Now that I am buddy-ed with two of my own kitties (I say buddy-ed, because you never own cats, in truth, they probably own you) I know how precious they are to their human buddies.

I found a neat program (via friend Eric - thanks!) which is probably going to fuel my geek obsession with video compression - http://handbrake.fr/. Have already compressed a whole bunch of stuff with it.

Oh...did I mention I get my cast off on Thursday? :)

What's going on

So, I'll try to keep the commentary to a minimum on all of these, but I felt the need to post them for awareness...

First, the extremely political - the Virginia governor issues a proclamation making April "Confederate History Month" in Virginia...and completely leaves out any mention of slavery or that slavery was the major issue of the war. And then, when questioned later why he left it out, said something to the effect that "that was an oversight, there were several issues that were part of the war, slavery was only one of them". And, when he finally realized the trouble he caused, backpedaled and said "yes, leaving out a mention of slavery was a huge omission, and I will add in a paragraph immediately". OK...I guess I tend to wonder how leaving out any mention of slavery is an "oversight". He did end up fixing it...I'm all for remembering history fairly and accurately, which is one of the ways we keep from repeating it, but slavery might have been THE biggest issue in our country's history. Sigh.

Next, less political but more blatantly cruel...18-year-old Constance McMillen, a senior in Fulton, MS, was told she couldn't come to prom with her girlfriend, the ACLU stepped in, and the school board canceled the prom rather than let Constance attend. They also encouraged parents and students to put on a private party prom so that they could legally not invite Constance. Most of us have heard that story from a couple weeks ago. What follows is, IMHO, a new low for humanity. Seemingly in the face of more ACLU lawsuits, Constance and 7 other students (some with learning disabilities) were invited to what they were told was "prom" at a local country club. Meanwhile, everyone else had the real prom at a secret location. Attendees posted pictures from this prom on Facebook, and created a group called "Constance quit yer cryin". Really. This is happening in 2010. And now they wonder why they're getting such a backlash. One of my favorite quotes from the principal when they originally told her she couldn't attend was that "it would cause a distraction to have her there with another girl". So...national media attention and looking like the most backward, bigoted town in America not a distraction 1000 times worse? Hmmm...

And finally, on a lighter, non-political but extremely geeky note...an article on what the release of the iPad symbolically means for Apple...basically that "the circle is now complete" - Apple was the pioneer of the personal computer, and, they are now signaling the end of the personal computer era, in favor of a suite of smart devices or "information appliances" as the article states.

Champions

Don't know how many sports fans I have reading, but hey this is my blog, you can skip what you want :)

Monday night, the Duke Blue Devils played the Butler Bulldogs for the college basketball national championship. I started watching college basketball in 1991, the year Nebraska got really good and went to the NCAA tournament. Duke beat heavily favored and undefeated UNLV in the Final 4 and went on to beat Kansas and win the championship (really the UNLV game was the championship game IMHO). As often happens, you end up picking your favorite teams based on who was good when you started paying attention. I've followed Duke ever since then, so last night's game was exciting for me for that reason alone.

But...most championship games end up being mismatches and are no fun to watch. This one wasn't. Duke and Butler "duked it out" (pardon the pun) the whole game, the most Duke ever got ahead by was 6, and Butler took them to the end and had two shots to win the game, both ever-so-close to going in. I watched the whole game and was on the edge of my seat most of the end. This, in a game that nearly everyone thought Duke would win easily.

While the game was going on (as if that wasn't enough), I finished installing my new media PC - Intel Atom processor and low-power motherboard. It is pretty neat - no fans, no power supply (runs on a standard AC power adapter) and extremely low power (~ 2 watts for the processor). Great standby/sleep /wakeup capabilities. The old media PC guts will now be a backup server, running a couple of 1.5TB WD "green" series drives, much lower power than standard drives.

Easter - got to see the nieces for awhile Sunday afternoon, "grandma" brought them and met me in Maplewood, and we went to the park, and ate dinner at Perkin. A fun time for everyone (and some much needed naps for their mom and dad).

1 week and 2 days left with my cast!

Retired

I recently decided to set up a backup machine for my server, as storage is ever so cheap now and it would get more and more difficult to replace everything that's on there. So I had to do some machine/case shuffling, ordered some new low-power parts for the media PC I have, and moved the "guts" of that one to the secondary server case I have.

In the process, I am retiring the above motherboard and video card - it was slowly dying and really wasn't useful for anything anymore. The reason this is significant is because this is the board and processor of the first computer I ever built myself. Born in 2005, an Intel D875PBZLK motherboad with Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz processor, 1 GB of memory, a beautiful easy-open Chenbro case, and Windows XP. First dubbed "Vorlon" as a desktop PC, then converted to "Sinclair" as my first server, and finally relegated back to secondary PC duty for awhile. Hardware added/replaced, OS's replaced (SUSE Linux, then Ubuntu, then back to XP) this machine was pretty much on for its entire life and just ran and ran without problems, unlike other machines I've had. It worked so well, I created another identical one, "Shadow", for my mom's machine and she's still using that one today (for you non-sci-fi people, "Vorlon" and "Shadow" are the two warring factions throughout a lot of the "Babylon 5" TV series, all my machines are named for "Babylon 5" things).

I generally do not get sentimental about electronics, but this particular one will have a special place in my machine history.

April 1

No April Fools stuff for Paul - I got in a bit of trouble a couple years ago with one and I've sworn them off for awhile (and no, that isn't an April Fools, it's true :)

So, instead, a couple of geek/religion funnies for the day.

My friend Bill posted a comment on Facebook asking if people thought that Pope Benedict looked like the Emperor (and he does) but one of the follow-on comments was:

"Soon young Skywalker will be one of us, and the Lutherans will be crushed."

I think I laugh hardest when it involves humor that crosses between two seemingly unrelated interests in my life - that one qualifies :)

Similarly, several years ago one of my friends told me a similar Star Wars/Lutheran joke (it would work for Catholics too, if you're familiar with the standard liturgies):

"How do you know if a geek is also a Lutheran?"

"When you tell them 'May the Force be with you' and they respond 'And also with you'"

You may now return to your regularly scheduled April Fools Day.