A while back I mentioned that K, some associates and I had started up a new non-profit. Things are going reasonably well. People have been more supportive than I had thought. We’ve had about 70 patients so far and we’ve got the systems set up so that patients entered into the database post up to Twitter, along with any Facebook updates. One thing that I have noticed in working with the others on the non-profit is that learning styles and communication styles seem to be closely related. You can divide learning styles (among other ways) into verbal vs visual learners. Verbal learners prefer to hear things explained to them. whereas visual learners prefer things to be written down. Based on some of our recent experiences, I think that this plays into communication styles. And it’s communication styles which are (occasionally) biting us. ...

I’m not a big baseball fan. For that matter, there are few ball sports that interest me. But, this is important. If you recall, a few years ago (2004), there was a big furor over steroids in baseball. The government searched BALCO and found evidence of rampant steroid use by baseball players. Now I hadn’t been paying attention to this, but there has been an ongoing legal dispute over that search and how it was conducted. ...

In computer security, one of the most difficult and annoying problems is the distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). The idea behind a DDoS attack is straight forward: the attacker tries to prevent legitimate use of the service by using a large number of other computers. Usually these other computers have been compromised (hacked) and are following the commands of the attacker. Such computers are usually called “zombies.” There are a number of ways to conduct a DDoS attack, but they are typically variations on the following theme. The attacker instructs the zombies to request access to the service. But the zombies have no intention of actually using the service, instead, they often forge network traffic so that it’s impossible to tell who is making the request. Because the zombies don’t want to use the service, they can make thousands of requests without slowing down. The poor computer hosting the service then sees tens of thousands of requests for access, tries to fulfill the requests and eventually becomes overloaded and dies. The zombies win. ...

if i ever do get around to filking the Pilgrim’s Progress, there’s a good chance it’ll feature a “Slough of Sake” and a “Carnival of Sangria.”

:-( also, I’m glad I’m not the only one who went there

I’ve mentioned before that this is the first year that we’ve had a garden, and it’s been going great. In the early spring we had lots of spinach, arugula, turnips, lettuce, etc. Now that we’re in the summer, it’s time for a whole new type of produce. Last night, I went out to the garden and picked a bunch of tomatoes (yes, I prefer the cherry tomatoes), banana peppers and green beans. Later this week, I’ll pick some of the eggplant and we’ll do eggplant croquettes. Hopefully, we’ll also get some regular peppers, zucchini and maybe even a small watermelon or two. ...

or Adventures in Home Repair; or How I Spent My Sunday. For reasons best left unspecified, I found myself in need of a new exterior door - a replacement for the one that keeps my utility room from being a part of the outdoors. Last weekend, I went out to the local home improvement store and after spending two hours, I realized that I couldn’t simply replace the door, but instead, had to replace the entire door, prehung in its frame. ...

I haven’t paid much attention to Sarah Palin in the year since I first heard of her. Okay, periodically I’ve laughed at her. And Palin As President was pretty funny. But last night I was commenting to K that this line from her resignation speech was pure Zen: “In the winter time it’s the frozen road that is competing with the view of ice fogged frigid beauty, the cold though, doesn’t it split the Cheechakos from the Sourdoughs?” ...

I was using my personal laptop at a meeting yesterday and grabbed about a gig of files from someone’s usb key. While I was taking minutes, I noticed a lovely new icon that popped up… your hard disk drive is failing. Eeek! Not cool. So, last night I got home and started backing up my files. A few of the new files and a couple unimportant old files didn’t transfer properly. Fine, I could live without them. ...

Yes, because I’m a mighty industrialist (aka Ubermensch) and the world will fall down if I stop writing. ;-) Okay, enough picking on the Randians. Sorry for the radio silence. A quick update: I got back from Des Moines last month and the next day had a board meeting for the non-profit I work with. As treasurer, I went to review the financial situation based on the projections we finally received. Sure enough, the detailed projections were in line with the back-of-a-napkin ones that I had presented earlier, i.e., dire. The only real solution was to close a significant portion of our operations, which we did. Unfortunately, that was also the part of operations that K cares most about. ...