Off to move heavy antique furniture from one side of Louisville to another, then clean it up and re-assemble it at Casa de Oso. Once that’s all done, I plan to sit down with an adult beverage, watch football, and see if there’s any energy left to blog.
In the meantime, enjoy this earworm:
Posted by daddybear71 on October 2, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/10/02/radio-silence/
Gentlemen, telling your lovely wife that if she wanted a quiet and delicate child, then she shouldn’t have mated with Sasquatch, while funny, does not go a long way in promoting marital bliss.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 2, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/10/02/a-warning/
I don’t want to give the impression that the entire conference was an excuse for negative blogging. I actually learned quite a bit, and a lot of good people were there exchanging ideas. One bright spot was a presentation by Johnny Long.
Mr. Long is a security professional from when gods walked the Earth. He’s written many articles on IT security and been the author or co-author on a lot of seminal books that I’ve read and used.
A few years ago, he decided that even though he was at the top of his industry, he needed more. He and his wife decided to relocate to Africa and try to make a difference in the lives of the poorest of the poor there. And he’s made a go of it.
The fruit of his labor is Hackers for Charity. This NGO provides IT support, equipment, and training to schools, relief agencies, and everyday people in Uganda and other African countries. It’s a worthy cause, and even with all of the frustrations of trying to do business in the third world, you could hear how much Long cares about his personal mission in his voice.
His speech amounted to a history of himself and the organization, a status update on the organization, and a big thank you to the security community. You see, almost all of the funding, equipment, and talent in the organization is donated from the ‘hacker’ community. For example, he asked for donations to a training center he had set up in Uganda, and through small donations from members of the community, he got enough to run the center for 14 months without charging the students a penny. He gave many examples of people or organizations donating their time or equipment so that those who live in poverty might have a chance to have a better life.
HFC also works with another organization to help provide food to famine victims in Kenya, both in giving direct food aid, and in helping them learn the skills to grow their own food so that they can provide for themselves.
One aspect that never would have occurred to me was his work to provide IT support to relief agencies so that their systems were better protected from malware and hacking. The amount of money lost in these organizations due to computer problems boggles the mind.
In addition to his work in Africa, Mr. Long mentioned plans to start doing work in the United States. Hopefully he is at least as successful in that as he has been in Africa.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 1, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/10/01/hackers-for-charity/
Posted by daddybear71 on October 1, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/10/01/thoughts-on-the-day-20/
Many thanks to Scott Adams for the chuckle. My 401k statement arrived the other day. I’m going to just file that one away. No sense in looking at it. It’s going to be a very long time before I can think about retirement.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 1, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/10/01/thought-for-the-day-62/
October is Puppet History Awareness Month. Let’s all take this opportunity to reach out to our neighbors, the puppets, or as they like to be called, Fabricated-Americans.
We should take this time to remember the words of Dr. Aben Mitchell:
…we must all learn to tolerate and even celebrate our differences. Whether you’re flesh, fleece, purple, plaid or even Chinese.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 1, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/10/01/happy-puppet-history-awareness-month/
Maybe your golf buddies are soft, and your union thugs are soft, and your legion of academics that have never held a real job are soft, and the societal leeches that depend on the democrat’s perpetual welfare state are soft, but most Americans are not soft. — Larry Correia, commenting on President Obama’s assertion that all our problems are due to the fact that we’ve gone ‘soft’.
BTW, Larry seems to be closer to the Mormons I knew when we lived in Utah than Mitt Romney seems to be.
Posted by daddybear71 on October 1, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/10/01/quote-of-the-day-45/
This little fellow is a detail at the bottom of a bronze column on what Irish Woman tells me used to be the main passenger train terminal in Louisville. The verdigris on him is bright green, but I adjusted the saturation a bit to bring out all of the details on him. This isn’t an integral part of the structure, it’s a minor part of decoration that had a lot of time and effort put into it. You don’t see craftsmanship like this on a steel and glass tower.
Posted by daddybear71 on September 30, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/09/30/eagle-picture/
Posted by daddybear71 on September 30, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/09/30/the-four-rules-of-it-security/
Posted by daddybear71 on September 30, 2011
https://daddybearsden.com/2011/09/30/thoughts-on-the-day-21/
