Scott's Personal Blog

Spam Arrest: Why It's About Time He Should Die

Is the Death Penalty a Severe Penalty for Sending Spam?

Maybe the death penalty is too strong for just sending junk Email. Then again, in a way spammers have taken the lives of others. In reports of the recent arrest of 27 year old "Spam King" Robert Alan Soloway, it's revealed that he may be responsible for as many as billions of junk messages over just several days. (Information Week * C|Net News) Information Week says spam went down about 8% over the next several days post arrest; though of course it's hard to say if that's directly causal.

In any case, he may face multiple charges of fraud of various types earning him up to 75 years in prison. But is that enough? Think it thorough. Lets say he's responsible for 5% of spam over several years, that's over $450 million in lost costs per year. (According to collated statistics at the Spam Filter Review, the combined cost to private and public is in excess of US $9 BILLION.)

So? Why Kill Him?

According to the Economic Statistics Briefing Room of the White House, (based on census data), the U.S. Median Income in 2006 was $46,326. Depending on how you count, there's about 2,000 work hours in a year. So that's an average wage of about $23.16 an hour. (Yes, I realize minimum wage is much lower. But it's an an average calculation based on a median income number.) Anyway, that works out to in excess of 19 Million person hours of wasted time. Wikipedia's Longevity article puts current first world human lifespan at 77-83 years. Lets call it 80. Rounding down a bit, that's about 700 thousand hours per human life.

In other words, our nemesis Robert Alan is directly responsible for sucking the equivalent of almost 28 full human lifetimes of value from the planet. (Yes, I'm assuming any spam handling related activities provide no value to any of the victims.)

28 Counts of Murder

Outside the context of a legal war, anyone who took 28 lives would very likely be put to death. (Well, they'd be put interminably on death row anyway.)

So I'm just saying that maybe the death penalty is not too strong.

More Realistically: No Smokes

Obviously, we're not going to kill someone for sending junk Email. (Though to be sure, plenty of people have been killed for less.) But perhaps this sort of perspective lends good argument as to why a 75 year sentence, (essentially life for a 27 year old), may be warranted. Spam Email is not merely an insidious annoyance. It's something that can drastically erode a great deal of value from the lives of others. Whatever funds this guy has generated ought to be seized and offered to whatever agencies prosecute cyber crimes. This has a dual benefit. Appropriate use of seized funds, and he won't be able to afford enough cigarettes to trade for a private shower.

Enjoy prison Robert!

Lite-Brite Terrorism: Paranoia Amuses Terrorists

Dateline: 1/31/2006, Location: Anywhere Terrorists Have Access to Television.

Terrorists enjoyed a great laugh on Wednesday as several major cities panicked over an apparent possible attack from some wanna be Lite-Brite marketing creations. Most will recall from childhood the fun Lite-Brite toy allowing you to put colored plastic pegs in holes and these would light up from the background light. You can make your own online Lite-Brite creation at Hasbro at their Lite-Brite tool.)

Well, apparently the Cartoon Network was promoting a TV show called "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and decided to do some viral marketing involving some blinking electronics signs they'd put on various bridges and other spots in several United States cities. Even though some of these were in place for weeks, one day apparently someone noticed one and made the call, "possible terrorist device on bridge." All manner of mayhem then occurred, for which a basic web search can find you a variety of stories.

Let's summarize some of the more ridiculous aspects of this whole situation.

• These devices blink. They call attention to themselves. They weren't hiding.
• These devices had a circuit board, a large blinking display and a small battery pack. The most cursory look at the thing would show... what? No place to hide even the smallest amount of explosives. (Yes, I'm sure experts could argue this point.)
• These things were apparently in place for one to several weeks. Basically unnoticed. For devices intended to get attention, they sure didn't work very well. (That is, of course, until they were interpreted as being bombs or something.)

Let's summarize why the advertising/marketing people were foolish.

• As utterly odd and improbable  these things would be interpreted as threats might be, such a consideration is within the realm of "foreseeable." I suppose when your head is all the way up your butt though, you can't really think clearly about implications of what you're doing. They were thinking, "wow, we're doing some seriously out of the box marketing thinking. We're like, viral. You know... if you're not doing viral, I mean, like your not modern marketing, you know?"
  
• The character on the device looks like it's holding up a middle finger. At risk of seeming puritanical about such things; this is really just inappropriate to be dumping all over public places. Yeah, I know. They're just so cool and it's just like... free speech dude.
• Bottom line: The myopia of the marketing folks was such that they didn't see any implications of their little effort beyond their own "coolness" and just Being Viral in their marketing.

So the effect of all this?

• The two people arrested for placing the devices, Peter Berdovsky, 27, of and Sean Stevens, 28, are probably now considered folk heroes. They were charged with one count of placing a hoax device and one count of disorderly conduct. (Alice's Restaurant and the Group W Bench come to mind.)
• Terrorists now clearly know that with minimal effort, they can cause amazingly disruptive events without needing any explosives or biochemical weapons of any sort. A few boxes with some wires sticking out will be enough to close down whole cities' transportation systems. Our societal paranoia will take care of the rest. (I'm aware of the fact that "you're not paranoid if it's true," but... come on now. Really.)

Regarding Law Enforcement and public behavior...

• No question. These folks are overburdened. The last thing they need to be spending their time on is stupid hoaxes. Though this wasn't a hoax; just a ill-conceived marketing plan, a lot of unnecessary effort was expended that would have been better put towards other efforts.
• Any time an emergency services worker has to go out into the field and deal with just about anything at all, there's some risk. Just getting up on ladders or whatever it took to retrieve these things entailed some risk to them. So as over the top officials' reactions might be, the guys in the street that have to deal with this were put at some degree of increased risk - however small - due to some morons' idea of a cute marketing campaign.
• We're already screwed when it comes to this sort of thing. That is, if intelligence agencies don't catch terrorist plots early, it's highly unlikely that local eyes are going to. Most emergency systems are basically not equipped to really deal with this stuff. New equipment and training notwithstanding, as a society, we're just not going to be able to defend that well against small efforts to cause problems. Our main defense is to do the best we can, but at the same time not let anything interrupt our day-to-day way of life. We ARE VERY LIKELY going to take more hits. They'll hurt. Some maybe terribly, horrifically. And we'll painfully deal with such things. In the meantime, there's little benefit to walking around paranoid all the time. It's not likely to help. It is likely to hurt.

Bottom Line? Really stupid situation. All the way around.

9/11 Lung - Who's Responsible?

City and Federal agencies may have borne some responsibility or at least culpability for protecting the health of Ground Zero Workers. But certainly not all of it. Our ability to learn from this incident and get better at a response will in no small degree depend on some brutal honesty about shared responsibility. Nonetheless, there's no excuse for government to not take care of Workers now.

Workers were told repeatedly how important it was to wear breathing protection equipment. Obviously, neither I nor anyone else can say for sure that all agencies and departments properly impressed this upon their personnel. And in the first few days, it might be true that not enough quality respirator equipment was available. Though days later, there were boxes full of serviceable equipment available for anyone who wanted to draw from it. (At least there were at a Chelsea Piers staging area.) And down at the so-called Pile, many workers simply were not wearing their gear even though they had it. Watch  footage from almost any news source. You'll even see large numbers of Workers with gear hung around their necks; but not over their faces.

There's some good reasons why. Those reasons seem to pale in comparison to the consequences though. The filters can clog, (though if this happens, one would think that's a clear sign as to how necessary the units are), they're uncomfortable for extended periods and most workers are not used to wearing such gear for extended periods, they make it difficult to communicate, and possibly other reasons. Obviously, non Fire/EMS personnel were likely wholly unfamiliar with such equipment.

In any case, it's going to be all but pointless for any reason other than lawsuits to try to pin some kind of general blame on a particular agency or individual. There were plenty of mistakes to go around and a lot of them had to do with what's been called "failure of imagination" which might less colorfully just be called lack of reasonable insight. Which is always easy to say in hindsight. The blame game as it's playing out now, however, is radically non-productive. It risks making people revert to defensive form rather than confront hard issues to craft better policies and procedures.

So Could Official Agencies Have Done More?

Of course. Clearly. And some did. The Sunday, September 10th 2006 episode of 60 minutes pointed out that at the Pentagon site, Workers were required to wear some form of respirator or they were pulled from the site. While this may or may not have been adhered to 100%, again look at historical news footage. What do you see? In New York City no such discipline was imposed.

Still, as to blame for such a thing it's hard to point a definitive finger. Volunteers were streaming in from every angle, a good chunk of the New York Fire Department's elite and sepcial rescue unit teams had been wiped out and a proper primary concern was to protect against additional events. And while the largest event of its type ever to be seen in world history unfolded, the day-to-day needs of emergency services in one of the world's largest cities still needed service. The following is an arguable point, and is the crux of a great many ongoing arguments, but can any individual or agency really be held responsible for a sub-standard response to an event no one, NO ONE had ever fully anticipated or planned for? Personally I don't think so. Now things are different. Should something of this sort happen again - and this is not at all unlikely given what we know now - we collectively should have every expectation that the same errors won't be made.

But What About Now... Who Should Pay?

However it came to pass, Government and agencies which have gathered funds in support of 9/11 survivors need to take care of medical costs of all such Workers. Any High School statistics student can tell you that there's no question the 9/11 Workers' illnesses are linked to the event. That same basic level of understanding can tell you that some percentage of those 9/11 workers suffering from certain illnesses may have developed them anyway. We need to ignore that. The complexities of sorting out who in particular suffers due to 9/11 versus other causes would be all but impossible.

The bottom line is that there's a lot of people who've gotten sick or are still getting sick as a direct result of their having honorably heeded a call to duty. That in some cases they weren't trained or informed as well as they otherwise might have been has to be thought of as irrelevant. If the general public expects professionals and volunteers to put themselves at risk for the sake of the collective good, that that public - though its government - must reciprocate when necessary. And right now, it's necessary.

I'm among the lucky ones. My time there was short. And the team I went with was fully briefed and equipped. We wore our respirator equipment when down in the bad areas. So far, no problems. The ones that weren't so lucky, or even made mistakes in terms of equipment usage, need to be taken care of. It doesn't matter specifically how this has all come to pass at this point. Just that these folks are properly taken care of. It's a very simple moral responsibility.

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The author of this post, Scott Germaise, is your average everyday businessperson. Who also happens to be a New York State EMT who has worked in volunteer emergency services for over 20 years. He is a former President of a community volunteer rescue squad and participated in Rockland County's support response to the New York City's needs during the 9/11 World Trade Center destruction. The opinions offered here, such as they are - agree or disagree - are based on this perspective.

Home Care Patients & EMS

How Not to Kill Your Loved Ones

Families are putting their home care patient family members at increased risk of both general difficulties and even death due to poor planning and decision making. At least regarding how they're managing home care in relation to Emergency Medical Services (EMS) workers, be they paid or volunteer EMTs or Paramedics. As a 20 plus year volunteer EMS worker, there's a variety of common difficulties that I've seen consistently over the years as issues that are easily solvable with relatively little forethought. The bad home care choices being made fall at least under the following categories and I'll discuss each one in detail after the list.

• Poor access to bedroom from household entry points, (doors/garages)
• Not being prepared for visits from Emergency Medical Services
• Thoughtless vehicle placement
• Calling family members for help prior to EMS
• NOT HAVING HOUSE NUMBER CLEARLY MARKED

Poor Access

Whether fully bed-ridden or not, it's most often that case that when EMS is called to the home of a home care patient, that patient - if needing transport to the hospital - will need to be moved from their environment on some sort of patient carrying device. In cases where a sudden illness or injury is severe, it should be easy enough to see how and why adding minutes to transport time and complicating care is risky.

The most obvious patient moving device is the ambulance's stretcher/cot. It is perhaps undestandable that architecture is not typically made to accomodate this unit. Such events are an afterthought, if considered at all, for typically day-to-day living. (Actually, it's not always understandable. For example, it's astounding to me when nursing homes or other care facilities do not have elevators sized with this in mind. Though somehow this happens. But that's another rant.) In spite of existing home layout, there's plenty of times when simply converting a family room or den area - located near a garage door exit - would save several minutes in patient transport.

When a patient is, for example, in an upstairs bedroom inaccessible by stretcher, EMS personnel must choose from several devices for the first leg of the journey. If the patient is conscious and can be seated, a collapsible device called a stair chair may be used to bring the patient down stairs to a stretcher. While it can be an uncomfortable and possibly unsettling ride, it's safe enough if handled competently. Though nontheless causes strain on EMS workers and in any case will take some time.

In other cases, and depending on the nature of the illness or injury - including if the patient is in respiratory or cardiac arrest - other moving devices must be used. A Reeves stretcher is a common option. Basically, it's a flexible full body length device into which the patient may be strapped and moved about. The unit can be steeply tilted to get around tight areas. As you might imagine, obese patients create all manner or transport problems and even using this unit can be a problem. (Side note: NO ONE is more aware of the growing obesity problem in America then workers in EMS and health care who on occasion physically must move such patients. For morbidly obese patients, you're best served by making sure you describe the patient's size/weight when you call for help as otherwise there may be a delay when a crew needs to call for a lift assist.)

What You Can Do:

• Re-locate bed-ridden or otherwise invalid home care patients to rooms more accessible to outside access.
• Make sure bathrooms have wide enough doors to allow for access. For a variety of reasons, patients can end up in distress while bathing or going go the bathroom. (Consider width of bedroom door frame as well.)
• Without compromising child safety, consider changes to bannisters or railings such that there's room for a stretcher.
• Consider ramps to driveways/pathways if at all feasible.
• Take even more special care than you otherwise might to clear debris, snow, ice from outside porch stairs and driveways.

Unprepared for EMS Visits

Those kind souls who choose to care for homebound patients and often do a great deal of planning in order to accomodate them, fail to take some very basic steps. Knowing that an individual likely to eventually be in need of emergency care will be home, there's some things you can do beyond the basic Doctor's instructions.

• Keep several copies of an updated medications and past medical problems list handy. The list should have any drug and food allergies prominently indicated. List any ongoing medical problems, diabetes, heart, etc. as well as any major past medical issues and their dates. Also, both Doctors and other family or friend emergency contact numbers.
• If you have insurance, make sure you have up to date insurance cards.
• Keep a hospital kit packed and ready to go; slippers, books/magazines, any other comfort items that you feel are necessary.
• Know the way to your hospital of choice. Ambulance driver's should certainly know this, and many have GPS units. But EMS crews may be new to the area or just may not have happened to have been to your street before; even if they've worked in the area for a long time.
• If your homebound patient has extreme needs, (that is, might be ventilator dependent or have a similar situation), be prepared to understand that EMTs and even Paramedics may not be wholly familiar with such equipment. If you're in this situation, you're probably already aware you will need to personally assist.

Poor Vehicle Placement

If the most likely egress point for a patient from your home is the garage, take care to position vehicles such that an ambulance crew can still get a stretcher by.

Call those Who Can Really Help FIRST

It's not uncommon for family members to reach a stricken patient's home before an EMS crew. This is because family members are sometimes called several minutes or even hours before EMS is called. Unless the family member racing - probably unsafely - to the scene are medically trained and carry their own equipment, chances are calling EMS first makes more sense. True enough, you shouldn't unnecessarily bother EMS, taking a crew out of service from helping others, but we'd much rather show up and not be needed than show up to deal with a critical condition which would have been only emergent minutes or hours earlier.

Unreadable House Numbers

Some cities and towns actually have laws about this. Some have even gone through expensive re-numbering. Still, in many places, this just isn't the case. Even with GPS and good instructions from dispatch, crews may end up slowly trolling down a street with spotlights trying to determine just where your house is. Spend the $5.00 or whatever to get some clear house numbers. Paint the number on the curb if you can. If your mailbox is out on the street, make sure it's there as well.

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Author Bio: While this Blog's author is just your typical everyday businessperson, he also is a long time community volunteer worker with over 20 years experience as a New York State EMT. He's been a Red Cross CPR/First Aid Instructor and President of a suburban Volunteer Ambulance Corps/Rescue Squad.

Aruba SCUBA Excitement

Always Bring the Snorkel!

I'm sure Venezuela is a very nice country, but I wouldn't want to swim there. Not even from Aruba, which is only about 15 miles away. Luckily, the current wasn't too strong, so even though our dive boat was beached on a reef 200 - 300 yards away when we came up from our second dive of the morning; we were able to get back to it. (Besides, I'm somewhat sure the current generally would have taken us back to the Island, not out to sea; I just couldn't resist the "wouldn't want to swim there" line.) Unluckily, high tide wasn't for a bunch more hours, so a careful swim over some shallow coral to a waiting police boat was the next item on the activity list. This swim was just with dive skins/fins/snorkel/mask, and everything else had to stay on the boat to be retrieved the next day. I suppose seeing the dive boat and police Zodiac on the front page of the Aruba newspaper on 6/6/06 will just be a clipping I'll have to add to the scrapbook for the trip. (A scan of the pic is actually on the bottom of this page.)

The whole situation was not all that dramatic really. The boat's throttle cable had broken. Though why the Captain didn't throw the anchor before ending up on the reef in 1.5 feet of water I don't know. The seas on the south side of the island are not as docile as those up by the resort areas, but still only maybe 2' - 3'. True, swimming near the sharp, shallow coral is potentially dangerous. But basically, our situation, (with 5 advanced divers plus the divemaster), was mostly a non-event. Though it did have the potential to be serious if the current were more extreme. Fortunately, having run out of reef we all come up with plenty of air. So after a quick compass bearing on the boat, we submerged to do the swim underwater. It was just choppy enough that it'd have been a fair amount of effort if we'd had to surface swim it. (At least without dumping weights, etc.)

Given the quick response of the Aruba police Zodiac and another rescue boat, the availability of helicopters and the clear weather day, I'm confident we'd have been sought and found fairly quickly even if we had been swept a ways out to sea. Everybody involved in our little incident was very quick and professional about it and I feel perfectly comfortable diving there again and with the same operator. So though the whole thing made the paper and yes, there was potential for further trouble, the whole thing was really just not a big deal at all. (I know, I could probably bump up the whole story pretty good; maybe start out with "The sea was angry that day my friends," but that would just be ridiculous.)  Still, the event  gave me pause and cause to think about some what ifs... and what I should consider for the future.

Lessons Learned

• Always bring the snorkel - I've mostly found I don't use it. And since it's annoying and gets in the way I've been leaving it behind. I've been meaning to get a little collapsible one to keep in a BC pocket, but haven't gotten to it. Unfortunately though; when you pop up from a dive and your dive boat isn't nearby - for whatever reason -  not having a snorkel can be a problem. From now on, a snorkel comes along.
• Bring water or juice or salt water dealinization kit - My left side BC pocket is for emergencies only. It doesn't get opened during a dive. It's got...
  
  • inflatable bright red safety tube.
  • light stick
  • mini-blinking strobe
  • whistle
  What it's missing is the one thing really needed for survival; fresh drinking water. True, hypothermia may get you first, even in a tropical ocean environment. But there's not much you can do about that. You've got whatever exposure projection you've got. Without something to drink though, you're constraining your survial capabilities and what level of exertion you may be able to maintain. I think the only option here may be a packet or two of emergency water rations. As far as I've found so far, there are no small-sized desalinization filter products, (like freshwater filter straws or pumps typically used by hikers and such), that wouldn't be overly prohibitive in their bulkiness. (Especially when just trying to account for an extremely rare type of emergency.) There are some desalinization kits that might pack up very small and work, but I'll have to keep looking.
• Wear the Wetsuit Even if it's warm - For a tropical dive, I sure didn't need to bring my 7/5 northeast wetsuit with me. And I didn't. But I did have my 3mm shorty with me. On the boat anyway. So why did I dive only in my dive skin? Because it was soooo nice out. And the water was perfectly comfortable. The shorty wouldn't have made me too hot though. And if I'd needed a more extended stay in the water, it would have provided a little bit more buoyancy and certainly more warmth. There's those that argue that even on tropical dives, it's good to wear your wetsuit anyway as if you're doing multiple dives you could be inviting a higher liklihood of hypothermia. If  a wetsuit was good enough for the divemaster, it sure would have been good enough for me.

So as is often the case, "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." In this case, what I wanted was to simply climb aboard a following dive boat and motor home after a morning of diving. What I got were some lessons in being better prepared. As a rescue certified diver, I have little or no excuse in not making these few simple changes to my dive preparation.

Anyway, here's a link to all the pics from the four dives over two days during this particular trip: Aruba Scuba - Antilla Wreck, some reefs and Renaissance Airplanes

And here's a clip from the front page of an Aruban newspaper the day after our three hour tour... three hour tour. The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship... well, the ship was ok actually.

Professional vs. Personal Online Personna

Is it possible to separate a personal, (though not private), persona from your business or professional persona online? It had better be. At least for today's younger generation, given the kind of online artifacts they're - sometimes foolishly - leaving behind. Much is being written about this lately from at least two perspectives; the obvious safety issue of  children divulging personally identifiable information and young adults laying out some of their more foolish antics for future employers to see. But the question being asked now isn't which of these or other aspects may be right or wrong in and of themselves. It's whether these aspects of self can be taken in the proper context, both situationaly and in terms of an individual's life time line.

Why Does it Matter at All?

Reputation matters. We all know that. Credibility matters. Who you are matters. And it matters to different people for different reasons in different contexts. Any stock prospectus says, "Past performance is no guarantee of future results," yet a whole industry analyzes these things in an attempt to determine those future results. Clearly we do the same with resumes. And now it is also done - on a personal level - with the things we leave online. Perhaps some things we'd thought we'd left behind.

Is it possible to segment ourselves online?

It should be possible. However, the ability to do this will depend as much on how we as a society collectively choose to interpret context as much as what we each individually choose to divulge online. (Or what shows up that we didn't personally choose to show.) In real life, we all play different roles. And though the core of our identity may remain the same, we certainly and obviously act differently in these roles. A stoic business person known for cool demeanor in the boardroom may hoot and holler at a child's little league game. With hardly a moments thought, you'll easily come up with many of your own equally obvious examples.

Typically, there's a tacit understanding about this. Eveybody gets it. We have our family, social and work lives and perhaps other social circles as well. A bad joke in the locker room is maybe OK, whereas you'd never do that, (OK, some of us would; and might pay for it), in a business setting. Sometimes these "worlds collide." Most often, we can choose when and how and to what extent our worlds overlap.

But what happens when a name search online may reveal multiple aspects of your online self; likely out of context?

My Perspective, Then Some Ideas for the Future

From my perspective, having been online and having worked in the online industry for over 17 years, I've personally left a fairly long trail of online artifacts. (Yes, there was an online industry 17 years ago.) While some of my historical postings or web pages  findable in archives reveal immaturity, (or even some not so historical items), I'm thankful that even back then I was fully aware of the potential future impact. And I didn't say or do anything in public online environments that - I think - would drastically damage a future reputation. (Such as it is and whatever that may be.) Like anyone, I may have made a variety mistakes in life, but those are between me, my family and friends. In any case, while my personal online activities go back to the early days of online and web, they didn't extend back to my teen years. The teens and early 20-somethings today are online. En masse. Will the things they say come back to haunt them? Clearly, sometimes the answer will be yes. The thing is though, they're not really making an informed choice when they're putting up their homemade videos and such. Maybe someone coming across this content may take it in context. Even then, some stuff may be seen by some as going too far in any context. Would they still choose to post such things if they really thought how it could come back at them?

My personal choice to have a home page, place information on it and so forth, is my own. People may judge me based on some of what I have to say. I've intentionally set up two separate blogs. One business/professionally oriented, the other personal. Since my full name doesn't appear on either, ideally anyone who'd seek out my personal web page to see who's talking would at least see that attempt at context. There's other things that I didn't choose. A search for my name will reveal - for example and among other things - that I used to be a whitewater kayaking instructor for an outdoor club. This is trivial. But the thing is, I didn't ask for this to be online nor was I asked if it was OK. While I couldn't care less about this snippet, what if instead of something 'neutral' such as a former hobby there was a membership list of a political organization I belonged to? So sometimes we can't even choose what goes up that has to do with us. Though we may have recourse to get it down, once the genie's out of the bottle, it's out.

Just How is Context Interpreted?

There's already a ton of societal norms here. Though just what they are will vary from culture to culture. If a couple is arguing in a closed room somewhere and we happen to open the door and walk in to this, most would likely say, "Oh, Sorry," and bow out. That same couple in a crowded theater might be met with, "Hey, could you two just take it outside please?" (Or perhaps some slightly stronger suggestions.)

But we don't have these tools and rules for online personas. Not as they might relate to varying contexts we might find ourselves in online and offline. Though computer mediated communications from bulletin boards/forums to chat and so on have been around for decades now, it's really only been since maybe the late 90's they've become truly mainstream. There are ideas of so-called "netiquette" for online behavior in chatrooms and so forth, regardless of how poorly followed. But there doesn't seem to be clarity on how to separate online from offline when it comes to a visceral feel for the varying context.

Personal web page publishing only came about in the late 90's. More recently, some easy to use form-based "About You" pages have been available on a variety of services. Along the way, everyone - and especially the so-called Gen Y'ers and after - have become more sophisticated. And now we have the easy to use blog world, which - ease of syndication aside - is purely an interface invention. The technology to create a serialized journal-like web page publishing system existed as long as there have been online forms. But it took until the mid zips, (or whatever the 00's are called), for this idea to find its time.

End result? There's a whole lot more personal expression going on then ever before. Some it is professional, some corporate. Some someplace in between. How can we tell which is which? And does it even matter?

So What's Next and What Should We Do?

These are just my opinions on how maybe we can collectively get to a balance that allows for online self-expression with an understanding that traditional social boundaries still exist. Though for better or worse they more easily collide online, so the road to that balance requires both those who create and those who view to take some small steps.

• Accept that We Own Our Words
  Even the younger generation that's spewing all manner of brilliance and creativity, but also trash need to fully understand free speech has two sides. We can say what we want, but understand that others will make judgments and perhaps take actions based on what's said. Understand that while you have a right to self expression, and maybe there should be a privilege to be accepted in context, some extreme things may just break through that wall. Consider this before publicly exposing such things in non-anonymous online environments.

• Try to Accept the Context
  Just as we would offline, we need to try to understand the context in which things are being said. (This is likely especially for those beyond the 20-something years. Consider your antics as a young adult. Should the few worst things you may have done at a party have kept you from the high end job you do so well today? If they'd been captured by a cell phone camera - with or without your knowledge or consent - should that have been the thing you'd want a hiring manager to weight beyond the skills you chose to put on your resume?)
  
  
• Don't Crash the wrong online worlds together
  As a manager at a company I once worked for, I once got a somewhat decent resume from a candidate. Unfortunately, the Email address was at an Email provider called slacker.com. I trashed the resume. It wasn't so much that the 20-something "kid" had that as an Email. Had I found that on a web search, I'd not have cared. That's his personal life. I might have thought him a bit more of a moron, but in the context of "ok, he was being a kid," and he'd of at least gotten to an interview stage. In the end though, it was the poor judgement he used in applying for a serious job with that Email which was more than I could look past. Moral? Don't do things where you force the wrong context on people. It doesn't usually work out in real life, nor will it online.

There's probably more. If anyone has any ideas, let me know.

Upgrade to Beechcraft Debonair

Time to upgrade the skills some more! My flying club has gone and purchased another Beechcraft Bonanza. Which means the Westchester Flying Club now has another "hotter" plane. (That is, faster. Which means you just have to get used to the speed at which things happen and keep ahead of the plane.) Fortunately, we're doing a fairly good job of keeping our fleet well maintained and upgraded. Everything makes it's way up to a standard set of Garmin avionics, so mostly aircraft changes are about feel, minor control differences and airspeeds.

Learning the Debonair

The skys were cloudy that day my friends. (No, not kidding. HPN was barely VFR and even if cleared, I'd not go up that close to IFR in a new craft without a trusted instructor.) There's a school of thought that says it may have been wiser to wait for a severe clear day for this task. But I've been flying Arrows for a little while now, this is my home field and my instructor knows me well. So we're going with the other school of thought. Task immersion at high speeds. Oh goodie. Luckily, there's still regional jet traffic going on today and it's a slick runway as well.

We do the usual ground talk, (I'd already gotten hold of the POH and checked out my new airspeeds, emergency procedures including gear failure, etc.), and it was almost time to fly.  During the cockpit check, I notice an inch-round knob like thing poking out of the center console near my right knee. "What's this I ask?" Larry leans over to look and says, "Ah, most people don't notice that right off. It's the master circuit breaker." "Really," I say, "It doesn't look much like a circuit breaker." Larry replies, "Yeah, I think a lot of people don't even know just where it is." Which is disturbing. As my obvious next question is, "What do they do in full Insturment (IFR) conditions when they lose all electrical and want to see about trying to get things going again?" "I suppose they're screwed," is the answer.

First Snag

Someone left something on. The battery's run down to where initial cranking isn't quite doing it. Instead of straining the starter motor or trashing the battery, (an expensive propostion), we decide to charge the battery a bit. It's actually good when things go wrong like this and an instructor is there. Though it hopefully won't happen to me again, I'll know how to do this should it happen.

First Takeoff

Wow. This thing's got more power. Keeping this damn thing on the centerline for departure proves to be a challenge. I can sense my instructor is very much at the ready here. Over the past several years, including through IFR training, that's generally not had to happen since the first few times I took off in primary training. That is, my training has been for recurrance and proficiency. Not basic skills. So it's generally more relaxed. (OK, there were moments in IFR training that were hardly relaxed, but still, this is atypical.) Sure, it's part the crosswind, but there's more torque going on here as well. And much faster acceleration than I'm used to. This is a heavier craft, yet I'm letting it get away from me a bit. Not unsafely, just not as clean as I'd like. Off we go with a climb rate I'm not used to. Positive rate of climb and gear up. It's surprisingly easy to maintain airspeed and heading. (Though a bit of trim is really useful here.) By the time I clean up the airplane, I'm practically at pattern altitude and just below the just legal to fly VFR cloud deck. The pattern happens fast and furious and unfortunately, it's a right pattern today. Not sure if that's for inbound traffic or noise abatement, but it's just generally eaier and more standard for pilots, (sitting left seat), to fly a lefthand traffic pattern. Ceiling's at 1600' and there's plenty of traffic here so we have to extend downwind a bit for a regional jet. That's ok, gives me more time to get all the power settings right and so forth.

First Landing

Ahhhh. Great deal on the first one! There may have been some skill involved, but I think this one was a gift similar to how a first time gambler most often wins. Keeps ya' coming back for more.  My first landing in this thing was like a dream. The roundout and flare were perfect and the crosswind a non-issue. Touchdown was as smooth as... (sorry, all the metaphors I'm coming up with are too cheesy. It was just smooth.) Gee, I hope my instructor enjoyed it. As it would be the last of the day like that! The next couple weren't too bad, but not nearly as perfect. The most difficult aspect of the touch are go's are maintaining the centerline as speed builds on the departure roll, and getting the flaps back up. I'm told this is typical and it'll get easier with time. (The flaps aren't a serious problem per se, it's just that Archers/Arrows use manual flaps. You  put the lever down and you're done. You don't have to worry about whether an elecrically operating thing is progressing as expected or spend more than a second checking for the very rare, but potentially deadly failure of asymmetric flap deployement.)

Bottom line: This thing lands very similar to an Arrow. Approach speed of about 100kts is about the same. The difference is you round out maybe just a slight tad later.

Lessons from the First Flight

• Have to get used to the vernier controls. Smooth knob is power, Rough Right knob is Prop, bottom is Mixture.
• Use the vernier knobs rather than the "shove" for most adjustments, unless good reason/time not to.
• On short final, just use whole palm to shove the prop full foward, not the vernier twist.
• On the go for touch and go, whole palm SMOOTHLY on the power to open the throttle.
• Gear first, flaps second. If you hear the warning horn, this is one possible reason why. If you're below Vle, you'll be below Vfe.
• On the downwid, adjust the 10 degree approach flaps visually, then set switch to the detent.
• Maintain strong positive control on the takeoff roll. Be right on the rudder pedals and make sure ailerons are where they need to be for wind.
• Same as any aircraft, don't round out too soon on approach. Look DOWN the runway and use proprioception/peripheral vision to judge the flare about 5' up.

Time to schedule another lesson! Just a few more hours to go and then it's time to try out the Bonanza's!

NYC Transit Strike: Fun & Games in NYC

Maybe it's just physics. Perhaps all things, even bad ideas, have their own sort of momentum. The December, 2005 NYC Transit Strike may be one such idea. I part think a lot of people wanted it to happen just to see what would happen. Is it pessimistic to believe that we're collectively even more twisted in terms of desire for spectacle than some of us are individually? Of course, it could just be me who thinks that a lot of people actually wanted to see what would happen. No doubt there's been loss and inconvenience. Economic and perhaps otherwise. Still, I think watching this unfold involved the same kind of proverbial morbid object fixation that slows down traffic to see a car accident.

So what did happen? I don't think we all really know yet. Now that it's over, in spite of the fallout it seems like almost a non-event. A brief adventure in collective struggle. Even as a bargain is reached on Wednesday, 12/28, there's only the briefest of news coverage. And hardly any recap of what went on. Where are the lessons learned? What kind of things happened during this event? Really now. How did government handle it? (Personally I give Mayor Mike a thumbs up on this one.) By the way, how is the fireman who was hit by a car while riding his bike to work? How many other people, if any, were hurt or suffered loss due to slowed EMS response, inability to get medications or who shouldn't have been exerting themselves to the degree they did?

There's probably some good, bad and ugly that went on during the whole thing. And some things I just don't really understand. I'm going to list just a few and maybe others can comment as well.

Stuff I Don't Understand

• Where were the T-shirt guys? It wasn't even that cold. This is NYC. Why weren't the "I Survived Strike '05" T-shirts  on sale by mid-AM on day one??? Is the simple answer that those guys would have all needed to use transit to get to their street corners???
• How/why did some people manage to drive into town with under 4 people in the car? I'm not a big fan of mass media myself, but you had to have your head really firmly all the way up your a#$ to miss the word on that requirement.

The Good

• NYCers did show the world, yet again, that the people that live and work here just aren't all that evil. In fact, people's patience in this case is even more impressive considering just what happened. That is, I think NYers are generally fairly tolerant in lot of ways, but for the one real sin you can commit in NY. And that's "Don't Get In The Way." Don't get in the way of business. Don't hesitate at the green light. Don't get between me and... whatever. DON'T SLOW ME DOWN. Maybe everyone was happy for the excuse to kick it down a notch.
• Bicycle shops apparently stepped up their business. Though I'm not quite sure this is all good. I saw one newscast with a woman who hadn't been on a bike in years weaving her way out of the bike shop. She ended up taking a cab home, but I wonder... is she now a) thinking she wasted some money, b) going to go get herself killed trying to actually use the thing in traffic. (Maybe this should have been in the bad category.)
• Will there be a Transit Strike Marriage/Baby Effect? Like blackout babies and other storm events, this one put people together in new and interesting ways. Cab sharing that otherwise wouldn't have occurred, drivers picking up people they didn't know who got into cars with drivers they didn't know. Had to have been some relationships formed out of all this. (The cynical might also think a carjacking or two, but I guess we can add to the good section that this didn't seem to happen.)

The Bad

• A not fully earned sense of self-satisfaction on the part of all those who think they handled themselves so well. This may just be pessimism on my part, but I really wonder how good a job we all would have been doing with it had things gone on another week or so.
• In a lot of ways, for a lot of people, it was almost like losing a whole bunch of quality out of their lives. Maybe just a few days, but still... hours more spent in traffic or on foot meant that much more time away from home or family or friends or personal time. There was no way to plan doing much of anything in the evening, etc. This happens occasionally as a matter of course due to occasional extreme weather events and such, but this thing was clearly of people's own doing. An inability to reach an agreement, (which was subsequently reached just fine while people were working), resulted in a very small group disproportionately affecting MILLIONS of people's lives.

The Ugly

• People were injured as a direct result of this situation.
• People were economically hit, some very hard. Those at the lower end of the economic spectrum can ill afford several days - or in the case of the MTA workers themselves - a week or more worth of missing paycheck.

The Amusing

• While commuting with some co-workers, we came across a hithhiker. He had a sign. But this wasn't some vagabond hippie with a knapsack and the sign didn't say "Anywhere West" or anything like that. The guy had what appeared to be a decent overcoat and I think a suit underneath. And the cardboard sign said, "Wall Street." You kind of had to be there, but it was pretty funny. Sadly, we didn't have room to help him out and we weren't going all the way downtown anyway. If I'd thought of it sooner, I'd have tossed him a quarter though.

The End

Like the stories from the nyc blackout of 2003 and the occasional massive snowstorm, the Transit Strike of 2005 adds itself to those special slices of life that only a city like New York can really provide. I wonder what's going to happen next?

I Am Frogger

It's true that I'm an adult and a businessperson. Yet, at the same time, it seems I have a fair amount in common with a frog.  Unfortunately, it's not the one that gets kissed by a hot princess and turns into a prince. (At least, not yet anyway.) No, I'm talking about the frog of videogame fame. Frogger. Someone's actually put up an online version of Frogger if you don't remember the game well or do and really want to play. As you may recall, Frogger spends his time trying to cross a busy set of streets and rivers. Why we're not quite sure. I suppose the game inventor was fond of that age old Chicken crossing the road question and just wanted to be different in terms of animal selection. Sadly, we may never know, though a Frogger Wikipedia entry is quite fortunately available for those who just need to know more. In spite of the unknowns, what is certain is that Frogger has a high likelihood of dying or at least getting fairly well mangled during every attempt to get home. And I'd assume by corollary in each attempt to get to the side of the road he's on in the first place. Since he's headed to Froggie Home, I'm going to assume he's at work. And commuting. Hence, my empathy towards him.

How did this come to be? For whatever reasons, it's come to pass that I work in an NYC neighborhood that's exceptionally difficult for me to commute to via public transportation. So I'm currently driving into a spot a bit below east side mid-town Manhattan. This is time consuming, expensive and probably foolish. In the not too distant future I'm going to have to change my living situation, my work situation or my attitude. 'Cause this just will not do. Based on my experiences I've developed some tips for those that commute into Manhattan via automobile.

Best Suggestions

1. Don't.
2. Move into the city or change jobs.
3. Move closer to public transportation.
4. Just put a target on yourself and run around downrange at a terrorist training camp. It'll be faster and less painful.
5. Get a bunch of CD's with educational stuff on them. It's amazing what you can learn in hours of traffic! Try The Teaching Company. They've got some good stuff.

A Bit More Real

1. Know how to drive. Really. If you don't belong behind the wheel of 2,500 pounds of steel, aluminum and plastic hurtling itself through throngs of humanity, bike messengers who know longer care about lights, etc. you really don't belong here. C'mon. You just have to know who you are, don't you?
2. Seriously, if you don't know about NYC, you should understand that for some reason over the past few years humans and especially a lot of folks on bikes just couldn't care less about signage or lights or where they cross or looking for you. Thing is, you're still not supposed to run them over.
3. Make sure you have plenty of gas. There's a bunch of stations, (expensive), scattered throughout NYC. But the thing is, if you don't know just where they are and you're running low, you've got a real problem. Worse, you could - just by being a moron - singlehandedly hold up traffic for tens of thousands and cost hundreds of thousands in lost productivity. Traffic, sometimes BAD traffic, happens. Be ready. While you're at it, maintain your vehicle. Yeah, crap breaks down. But if you end up breaking down and holding up a million people because you just never check your tire pressure, well you probably deserve it if some guy behinds you sends your trunk into your back seat.
4. Before you honk your horn, take a peek ahead. Think to yourself, "If that guy's own life depended on it, could he even move if he wanted to?" If the answer is "no," chances are honking won't help. And it could get you an expensive ticket in some places.
5. Have a clue where you're going. With online maps, etc. there's just no excuse for not having a clue anymore.

I have zero expectation that anyone who desperately needs to read this will do so. But maybe, just maybe if even a couple of new drivers or new to the area folks manage to take any of this to heart, that'll be one less person in MY way everyday.

Oh No. Here Comes Another One

Yes, that's right kids. Yet another monkey that somehow got access to a keyboard that happens to be attached to the Internet has found a place to post a blog.

But... why?

That's a fine question. My goal is to use this space to capture some experiences that are otherwise the stuff of word of mouth. The little helpful snippets usually shared by friends that help with success or help stop loss. Thing is, I've personally got a ton of interests and hobbies. And I've had the benefit of a lot of great teachers. (Quite a few of whom didn't know they were teaching at the time; often serving as really, really bad examples.) So as a result, I've got some strage and possibly wholly unwarranted belief that I may have some things of value to say here.

In fairness, to myself that is, I've done a bit of web creation in the past that seems to have been of some value. Besides having designed or project managed some of the first commercial online products in the world, my little personal web site garners a fair amount of hits in some of its topic categories. And I even get the occasional feedback note. Mostly postive even. So we'll see what develops here. This post here... well it's just a big "Howdy, I'm here" and a require first bunch of words so I can see a good design preview.

I'll have to check back myself in a year and see if I actually got motivated in this space to create anything of value here.