I added the audio player plugin to WordPress today, so of course I had to add an audio.  I picked out an audio I did some time ago when I was doing a daily podcast at BizIII.

A BizIII Podcast about Les Bain

I am pained when I watch the Presidential Campaign.  It seems as a country we move to the lowest common denominator in this process.  I am not sure what it would take to rise above the current process and make the discourse more civil.

The contest between Senator Obama and Senator Clinton was brutal, and there are hard feelings even yet.

It reminds me of the notion that we fight the hardest with those that are the closest to us.

In religion:

• In Islam, the Sunni Shiite divide seems to cause as many wars as Muslims and everyone else.
• In Christianity, and Protestants and Catholics have fought throughout history and recently in Northern Ireland.

In the animal kingdom

• Lions and others are most territorial and fight each other with gusto.
• The battles of Bighorn sheep, moose, and deer are certainly dramatic.

To outsiders, there was probably not much difference between the Hatfields and the McCoys.

And family feuds are certainly common.

So I suppose it is not that unusual.

I have this fantasy that Senator Obama and Senator McCain make a joint appearance and make some of the following statements together.

1. Senator Obama is not a Muslim, and even if he was, it should not matter.
2. Senator McCain should be judged on his policies, not his age.
3. They both believe the other to be a man of integrity, honesty, and patriotism.
4. They both believe that their spouses should not be part of the campaign.
5. They will focus on ideas, and when smear tactics come from somewhere else, they will both address it as an unfounded smear.

Would that be something? The two political nominees taking the high road, maybe even calling the media to task for getting away from the issues.

I live in the San Francisco area, East Bay.  In the summer, we get hot days and cool nights.  I understand it is because the humidity is low.  When humidity is high, it holds the heat after the sun goes down.

Yesterday during the day was in the 90’s.  Last night is was so cool I turned on the electric blanket for a while to warm up the bed.  This morning the window is open and it is cool.  I have a light jacket on while working at the desk.

The weather forecast is for the low 80’s today.

In this part of the East Bay, it is regularly hot, so there is Air Conditioning everywhere.  It is always a question of when to turn the Air Conditioning on, and when to turn it off.

And I know when I blog about the weather, it is because I am worrying about things I do not want to discuss.  I suppose it is like making conversation about the weather during ackward moments.  I hope you have pleasant weather today where ever you are.

So what did I learn while moving to a new web host.

• The HTML and PHP code was well organized on my local computer with both a local and remote backup.  It was uploaded to the new webhosting with no problem.
• The .htaccess files did not work the same on the new web hosting site, and had to be tweaked.  It was a simple change, but a significant impact.
• The most significant impact was the email accounts being down.  I should have given the email a higher priority.  But it is all working down.
• Restoring MySQL databases was smoother than I had anticipated.  I wanted to control backup and restore with PHP, but so far that has not worked.
• On the new webhosting, I moved everything to PHP 5 and MySQL 5.  That might have caused some problems.  I have one vendor PHP routine that is not working, but instead of trying to debug it, I am going to download another PHP script.
• Moving the WordPress blog took some time, because the problems were not apparent.  I finally just installed WordPress fresh, and reinstalled all of my theme and plugin changes.  That went quickly.
• The wordpress database restore worked just fine.  I lost two posts, but I remembered them and posted them again.
• Blogger blogs were very easy, I just had to republish.
• In testing everything on the new web host, I found problems that I did not know about.  I have a task list of things to fix going forward.
• Finding the right webhosting vendor is a crap shoot.  Basically, I decided to pick one with no setup and monthly fee so I could check it out and make good notes in case I had to move again, which I did.
• Bottom line was that even though there were system wide problems to start, usually one parameter fixed many problems.

I moved Webhosting provides and had to transport this WordPress blog from one Webhost server to another.  It went pretty well.  There are always wrinkles to work out, but all in all, a pretty smooth process.

The biggest problem was trying to reload the database.  The problem was too many records.  There were thousands of spam comments, once I took them out of the batch SQL file, all went well.

I did not backup over the last couple of days, so I did loose a couple of blog posts.  It is a very minor situation.

I will recreate two and the other one is better not recreated.

Opiophobia is the unreasonable fear of prescribing opiates by both the medical professions and the public.

Opiophobia is responsible for the current situation where people on pain medications suffer difficulties from medical professionals, friends, and family.

I want to know where Opiophobia got started. I am doing research which I am capturing on a blog called History of Opiophobia.

I have identied several papers and books on the history of OpioPhobia, but they are either vary expensive or behind a firewall.   I am continuing to reasearch.

There was a fire in our apartment complex.  We are fine.  It did get our attention.

Senator Obama and Senator McCain give us two different approaches to choose from.

They differ on the Iraq war, diplomacy, economics, taxes, and social issues.

I would like to add my voice to the chorus that is suggesting we look at those differences and vote according to which way we want the country to go.

We do not need to slander these men who want to lead the country. Let their positions on the issues stand or fall on their own merits.  Let the citizenry reason and decide without rancor.

The United States and Iraq are negotiating a new security agreement. Can you imagine.

Iraq insists that the agreement recognize Iraq’s sovereignty. What a concept.

If I was Mr. Maliki, which of the following would I agree to:

• The US wants contract soldiers to be able to operate outside of Iraq law.
• The US wants to be be able to arrest citizens of Iraq.
• The US wants to stay in Iraq indefinitely.
• The US wants to specify what kind of government Iraq has.

And Iraq wants their sovereignty to be recognized.

Sounds like some negotiation.

When Irag invaded Kuwait, the United States came to the rescue. We drove Iraq out of Kuwait.

Then we invaded Irag, but we are the biggest guy on the block, so there is no one to rescue Iraq.

The other day I was talking about Iraq with a colleague, and he could not understand why they did not welcome us with open arms. I suggested that if Canada did not like George Bush and invaded us, would he welcome them with open arms? He laughed and said he would learn how to make Improvised Explosive Devices if we were invaded.

But somehow it was different he said. Saddam Hussein was evil, George Bush is not. How many evil guys have we had ruling countries in this century: Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hussein, Amin, Kim Jong-il, and many others.

It is a quagmire.

I am writing PHP code for a project that I am working on. There is good news and bad news.

The good news is that I really enjoy writing the code. But, I enjoy the coding so much that I keep wanting to do the code. I keep putting off more urgent and important tasks. That will end today - today is urgent and important tasks only. The code is important but not urgent.

I wake up thinking about the code and ways to improve it. Maybe it is just an excuse to stay in bed for a few more minutes working out the next routine to be coded.

It is certainly a type of system that I have written before, but as always, things change over time. So I bring some experience, but there are always new things to learn.

OK, I will set a goal for tasks to complete. If I complete all the tasks, I will take some time to code.

I am trying some new things with CSS.

I am taking all the color parameters out and putting them into one file. ../color.css. Because of the nature of CSS, I can replicate names of course, and it is last on the list.

I want to create different files for different color sets. I am not a sophisticated color person, so I use one of the many color sites to find compatible colors. I create the file and then have a “blue” set or a “orange and red” set of colors in different files. I can quickly change color sets to change the complete color scheme of a website.

There are lots of issues of course.

• Matching Adsense code
• Matching photos and logos
• Matching graphics

But overall, I like doing it. I get tired looking at the same colors, and it is a good thing to be able to switch color schemes effortlessly.

The next thing to do is to create one for this blog. I am tired of these colors.

Whatever happened to Windows XP SP3? Did I miss the memo?

I am still on SP2 - I just checked - and I do the regular Windows updates. Perhaps I need to manually choose to install SP3.

Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system.

I apply all the updates, so perhaps I am at the equivalent of SP3. I have not heard the customary screaming about SP3, so it is either a clean update, or no one is doing it.

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And what about Firefox Version 3? I signed up for the memorable day to download and install the new version of Firefox. I am still waiting.

I have read some reviews that say it is a fine product, so I will make it a point to download if soon in the big day does not arrive.

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I just have to remember to not do them at the same time, because then if there are problems I will not know which one caused the problems.

When I find myself wondering what to blog about on a particular day, it usually means that what is on my mind is not something I want to blog about.

It is like running into an acquaintance who asks how you are doing and answering “I am doing fine”. There is no reason to speak of the fears, the failures, the problems, and the disappointments.

I sometimes think that I should start another blog - an anonymous blog - so that I can speak about what is really doing on.

One of the things that stops me is that I am not sure what makes it truly anonymous. Seems like one can penetrate the IP address of posts and identify people pretty quickly.

Maybe I can look up Mini-Microsoft and see how he or she did it.

Reading bloggers and listening to political pundits it is hard to find the “thirty thousand foot view”.

The view that:

• Does not over react to events of one day.
• Provides some historical perspective
• Has some sense of what will pass in 2 weeks or 2 months and what will be an ongoing issue.

There are two that seem to have this perspective.

• David Gergen
• Donna Brazile

It is hard to focus on work because my mind keeps going to the Aids Lifecycle.  The closing ceremonies should be going on as I write this post.  My son rode this year.

My son is a cyclist, and I thought he was riding because of pure altruistic motives - to raise money for Aids.

Eventually I found out about the demographics of the riders.

• Lots of gay men
• Lots of older straight men.
• Lots of young straight women.
• Very few young straight men.

My son is a young straight guy.  He is meeting lots of fit, young, engaged straight women.  Just another benefit of doing a good thing I suppose.

For whatever the reason he rode, I am very proud of him.

Tracy Kidder wrote a book called “The Soul of a New Machine” about a computer design team.

One engineer, Josh Rosen, who burned out fighting nanosecond-level timing bugs was seduced by the attraction of commune living and left to live in the country. His resignation note declared, “I’m going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.”

I was thinking of that quote today. I have been dealing with units of time no longer than an hour, or a least a few hours.

• Is Twitter up or down?
• Is Senator Obama or Senator Clinton or Senator McCain going to give a speech?
• What is the latest on CNN or MSNBC?
• Work on critical client updates.
• Watch a scheduled webinar.

I am going to take some time this weekend and meditate and read a book.  Think about something longer than an hour.

T h e F r e s h e s t P o l i t i c s f o r N e w s J u n k i e s

Check out newsjunk if you are a news junkie. Dave Winer and others are behind it.

http://www.newsjunk.com

There are two major political parties in the United States.

• The two parties represent 60% of the people in the United States.
• Independents and other small parties represent 40% of the people.

CNN and other news stations normally have two pundits, one from the Republican Party and one from the Democratic Party.  Today they had on Jessie Ventura, who represents the 40% who are not part of either major political party.  It is refreshing to have that voice.

The pundits are hard at work doing post analysis.

This is what makes sense to me.

• Senator Obama and his staff understood it was delegates, delegates, delegates. They organized and went after delegates. They went after small states and large, primaries and caucuses, but always with the eye to delegates.

“Between Idaho, Nebraska, Vermont, Maine, Mississippi, North Dakota, the District of Columbia, Hawaii and Alaska, Obama would amass 118 delegates to Clinton’s 57.”

• The most interesting analysis I saw for Senator Clinton and staff suggested that she would have been better served as the “passionate” candidate and not the “experienced” candidate.
• Senator Obama used the Internet.  He supposedly had a group of twenty somethings working the Internet from the start.  He used social media, websites, Twitter, Facebook.  He raised money and engaged individuals over the Internet.

Now Obama has to engage the older voters.

• The Younger voters are saying “Yes we can”.
• The Older voters are saying “Who is Obama”.

The Democratic primary raised questions of racism and sexism.

The Presidential campaign will raise issues of ageism.

Adding just a few things to my daily schedule has made my day very full.  Time seems to race by.

• Bird sitting for a couple of cute parakeets
• Watching the Aids LifeCycle news because my son is riding in the event
• Paying attention to the Democratic Party nominating process
• Voting in the California primary today.  Yes, the California primary was split and we voted for candidates early, but the other part of the primary is today.
• Along with the client and business work.

Adding just a few items seems to make the day very busy, but it could be because some of the items have an emotional charge.

I looked at a website today that I created 5 years ago.  It was a mess.

• The HTML had lots of repetitive code.
• There was no CSS.
• The website used FrontPage extensions which I would never use today.
• The website loaded slowly.

There were some simple changes that I had to make but they were difficult to make.  I suppose I will have to retool the website.  FrontPage extensions will be obsolete soon.

If I had the time, I would welcome the opportunity, because I like to take messy code and create more elegant code.

Today is the start of the Aids LifeCycle. It is a bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles to raise money for Aids.

My son is riding along with 2500 other riders. I am a typical parent and I am both very proud and a little concerned.

Aids LifeCycle Blog

The 2500 riders will raise more than 11 million dollars for Aids. It is quite a story and quite an adventure.

It feels a little strange sitting at my desk today while my son rides 80 miles on a bicycle. Maybe I will do a walk today.

Today, I am watching the Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Committee.

Some observations:

• I am so happy I am not a Democrat (I am not a Republican either).
• Will Rogers was right when he said, “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”
• Supposedly, the Republicans are taping angry members of the Democratic party saying they will vote for Senator McCain before they will vote for the “other” Democrat. It will be a coming attraction on YouTube.
• DNC Meeting Protest “DissNfranChise?” is already up on YouTube. The background music is Linda Ronstadt’s “When Will I Be Loved”.
  • I’ve been cheated
  • Been mistreated
  • When will I be loved

There will be no party unity after this meeting. Bet on McCain.

Content is king on the Internet. So they say.

Nontent is lack of content. Nontent.com is for sale. Maybe nontent is the court jester to the king.

There is a certain amount of real content. That content is then re-used, re-purposed, and re-blogged.

Yahoo kills a billion pieces of spam a day. Content killers.

How much of content is someone (like me) expressing their opinions of the content of the day.

Father Michael Pfleger gave a sermon making fun of Senator Clinton. He was criticized and censured.

One of the comments usually heard is that is was very inappropriate for church.

Hmmm. Maybe so.

But it was funny, and would have been very appropriate in a comedy club. Take down the church sign, put up a comedy club sign, and all would be well.

Scott McCellan wrote a book about his time in the Bush administration.

The central thesis is that the United States government is immersed in a campaign culture. Scott says that everyone, including himself, is so involved in partisan politics that they were short sighted about everything else.

• It was more important to spin an issue toward the Republican side than to tell the truth.
• It was more important to be loyal to the Republicans than to tell the truth.
• It was all consuming to be caught up in the partisan fighting.

When asked why he did not protest or quit, Scott says that he was in a partisan fight and was so focused on that that he had to leave government to see the ramifications.

It sounds like the campaign culture to me. Can anyone discuss the situation between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama rationally these days? There are advocates on both sides with known talking points.

I am convinced that the TV news casts could use one pundit with two hats to comment on any of the stories.

• Put on the red hat and do the Republican talking points.
• Put on the blue hat and do the Democratic talking points.

And the for the Democratic primary

• Put on the Hillary hat for those talking points
• Put on the Barack hat for those talking points.

Then at least we would not have people talking over each other.

Another Reverent has been taped giving a shocking sermon.

What is it like to be one of those ministers?

You are a prominent religious leader in the community. You have built a large church with thousands of members. You are respected in the community. You sit on advisory boards.

You are invited to the White House.  Here is Reverent Wright at a White House breakfast.

You stand in front of an adoring congregation preaching, your congregation is responding positively, the ‘Amens’ are loud, and the adulations are sure to follow. At the end of the sermon people shake your hand, tell you it was a great sermon, and say ‘God to bless you’.

Then the sermon shows up on CNN. You are roundly criticized. Pundits are shocked. The congregation is criticized. If a politician has attended the church or been endorsed by you, the politician is vilified.

What a disconnect that must be.

As I was finishing my work day yesterday, the movie Curse of the Golden Flower came on TV. I watched it from start to finish.

It was a visual feast. A stunning collage of colors, ritual, martial arts, family intrigue and grand opera themes.

I do not normally check to see what reviewers write about movies, but I did read a sampling of reviews about this movie. It was so magnificent visually that I wanted to read other’s reactions.

Almost every review remarked on the incredible visuals.

And every review discussed the plot that was a stew of intrigue, betrayal, murder, poisoning, and stepmother-stepson, and stepbrother-stepsister passion.

It was a remarkable movie.

Twitter has been a great source of amusement and amazement.

• Some blog posts discuss why the writer will not go on Twitter
• Others bloggers post reasons why they cannot live without Twitter
• When Twitter goes down, some people act like the Internet is down.
• The Gillmor gang would have to shut down without Twitter to discuss.
• Dave Winer uses Twitter as an example of how to develop software which is fascinating
• Twitter will be the poster child for scaling issues for many months.
• Twitter is used as an lesson for centralization vs. decentralization.
• One comment about Twitter: Twitter is Facebook for those that do not have Facebook.
• Some want Twitter to charge super users to raise money to fix it.

And Twitter is free.

Today is Memorial Day - the last Monday of May. Today we remember those that died while in the military service of the United States in any war or military action.

It was originally called Decoration Day, because on this day the dead were honored by decorating their graves.

I remember as a young man getting dressed up and going to the cemetery at this day. There were flowers everywhere. People decorated graves of relatives whether they had died in the military or not.

When you went to the cemetery, there were veterans in uniform giving out poppies and requesting donations for some veterans fund. Usually, we all got a poppy.

It was an obligation of the day, and people dealt with it in the normal way

• Some got up early and took care of the obligation early.
• Some procrastinated and went later in the day.

Our family went early in the day. We had moved a good deal, so there were no relatives buried in the vicinity, so we paid our respects to the relatives of friends of the family.

The decorating of graves seems out of step with life today.

• First, we are rarely in the same place as the graves of our family members that have passed.
• Second, we acknowledge the family members that died by addressing their spirits or memories.

I will take a moment today to remember my Mother and Father. Their graves are too far away to decorate, so I will remember them and smile.

The next function I am going to learn about my new Treo is all the sounds, beeps, rings, alerts, and alarms.

I learned about

• how to set different ring tones
• how to turn off the phone
• how to turn down the phone ringer

but ….

I still get alerts, etc. Some of them go off early in the morning.

I need to find the way to turn off all sounds so

• my sleep is not interrupted
• and it is not beeping during a meeting.

That is the advice given to aspiring writers. Write every day.

I am blogging every day. It is starting to effect my writing. I am starting to think more about word choice and sentence structure.

I did not start blogging that way. I started by just trying to get some thoughts into sentences and hitting the “publish” button. Check. That task done.

I was an English major and an aspiring writer at one time. I discovered it was not for me. But I certainly would like to be able to write better.

I read some blogs that are written well. They are captivating and engaging. When I read good writing I find myself reading more intently and staying with the writing longer.

I would not mind if my readers had the same experience.

Senator Clinton continues to say she got the most popular votes. Good for her, but the candidate that gets the most delegates is the one that wins.

• It is like a basketball team saying the other team scored more points, but they got the most rebounds.
• It is like a football team saying the other team scored more points, but they had a much higher time of possession.
• It is like a baseball team saying the other team scored more runs, but they had more hits.

I understand that there are super delegates that have not decided and Senator Clinton is trying to convince them.

But how they keep score is delegates. The one with the most delegates wins.

I try and blog every day.  Blogging is therapeutic.  It is like motivation and hygiene.  It needs to be done every day to be effective.

There are times when blogging comes easily.  There are times blogging is difficult.

When blogging is difficult, it is usually because what is on my mind is not something I want to discuss.

• Sometimes it is too personal.
• Sometimes it is just embarrassing.
• Sometimes it is not clear.

I am going back to reading about the Law of Attraction.  Get my mind right.

I added Google Adsense ads to this blog. I was interested in the results.

• Lots of ads for computer backups. Yep. I investigated, changed, and monitored new backup systems. That makes sense.
• Ads for blogs and blogging software. Yep. I talk about blogging in this blog.
• Ads for UPS systems. Hmmmm. I guess so. Backups are part of disaster preparedness.

It is like an instant summary of what I have been blogging.

Potential website clients will call and ask how much it would cost to make a small change to their website.  Boy is that tricky.

I cringe as I wonder if the previous webmaster used any sort of technique for common code.

• Will there be a dynamic template from Expression Web, Dreamweaver or Frontpage.
• Will there be server side includes for the common code.
• Will the code be standard enough for a website scan and replace.

I wonder if the client can find their Web hosting user id and password, or whether that disappeared with their last webmaster.  Of course it can be retrieved.  It usually takes a conference call with the web hosting site, the owner, and myself.

I wonder if there is any unusual pattern of redirects that must be followed.  I started to look at one website where the redirects were 4 deep.  A went to B went to C went to D.  I have no idea why.

And I wonder if the previous webmaster has two duplicate sites depending on where the visitor is coming from.  It must have been an analysis to see if one worked better than the other, but I changed the website, then discovered there was a duplicate site in another subdirectory.

I have discovered these and other traps waiting for me as I look at a new website.  Sometimes it takes a few minutes to make sure the there are no traps.

The California Supreme Court ruled that the law prohibiting same sex marriage is unconstitutional.  Same sex marriages will probably begin in California 30 days from the ruling.  There will be a constitutional amendment on the ballet in November so the people can vote to change the constitution if they wish.

The entire issue resolves around the fact that the state gave special considerations to married couples.  If the state gives special rights to one group, it cannot withhold those rights from another group.

Let us step back and consider.  What if the state did not consider marriage in any of the laws, taxes, or benefits.

People could create civil unions to protect jointly shared property and share benefits.  The IRS could give special consideration to civil unions if that is the law.  Social Security benefits could be defined by civil union.

It is not a far stretch to go from corporations to civil unions.  We form groups that are treated as entities by the state.  This would be another one of those entities.

Marriage should just be a issue for the church.  The state should be prohibited from even asking about one’s marital status.  It should be as unimportant to the state as someone’s baptismal or communion status.

If marriage is a religious institution, it would take place in the church as do baptisms, communion, confirmations, and other religions rites.

I do not have a problem if the Muslims have up to 4 wifes.  I do not have a problem if the Latter Day Saints have multiple wives.  I do not care if churches practice infant or adult baptisms.  I do not care who prays to what God.  Those are matters left in the Church.

There would be no marriage license, unless the church issues one.

The state can provide another kind of legal entity called a civil union with tax and benefit laws.  The state should get out of the marriage business entirely.

I am writing some PHP code. It is for a project that I am have been working on. It is the most elaborate code that I have written for a good while. Just about everything that I am coding is something I have not coded before.

The coding process, however, is most familiar. I use a combination of “top down development” and “step wise progression”. We used to have signs that said “programmers do it top down”. That was before we were engineers.

But the system could have great promise.

I will see.

Sometimes I start to blog about something, and it seems I have blogged on the same topic before.  It is not a problem to blog on the same topic of course, but I do not want to write the same blog post more than once.

On the other hand, I am not sure anyone including myself, would notice … or care.  If the thought comes up again, perhaps the best thing to do is just to write it down again.

I could do a search and try and discover if it is in the archives, but I am not sure I want to do that.  Perhaps it will be different enough this time not to matter.  If it is what is on my mind today, why not just write it.

So that is what I am going to do.

If you have a Monday to Friday work or school week, Saturday and Sunday are the weekend.

Sunday is the classic touchstone for optimism versus pessimism. It is either a wonderful full day of no work or school, or a depressing end to the weekend.

Now some of us work every day, so it is a moot point, but it is fascinating to see how people react.

I work on Sunday, but I get very few client calls or emails that need to be answered, so it is a different sort of day. I schedule a project each weekend to take advantage of the uninterrupted time.

It is the weekend. It feels wonderful.

• I am watching the Tweets as my son rides 100 miles today getting ready for the Aids Lifecycle.  The last tweet was at 80 miles.
• I am helping my family move Ethernet wire around the apartment so they can find the coolest spot to work.  I will go out later to get a switch and some more Ethernet to make it all work smoother.
• I am watching Book TV and it is always good to watch people discuss ideas.  I remember the adage that little minds discuss people, average minds discuss things, and big minds discuss ideas.  On book TV, at least some of the time they discuss ideas.
• I consolidated my task lists so there are fewer tasks and a clearer priority.

All is well.

I continue to unsubscribe from all email newsletters and ezines. I want to move all subscriptions to RSS so that they are under my control.

The process has been most interesting.

I received this email:

If you are receiving this email, it means you are NOT signed up to receive our weekly … newsletter. Don’t miss an opportunity of wealth as we will make the website only available to subscribers soon. Subscription is free.

The spam was so blatant it took me a minute to understand.

I have also had to do this process a number of times.

• An email newsletter arrives. One that I subscribed to some time ago.
• I click the unsubscribe link in order to stop the newsletter.
• I am taken to the website where I am asked to login, but I do not remember my password.
• I follow the instructions to reset my password, which means I get another email.
• I read the email, follow the instructions to retrieve my password, logon on and unsubscribe.
• I receive an email notifying me that I changed my password.
• I receive an email notifying me that I unsubscribed.

That totals 4 unwanted emails to stop the newsletter, but at least it worked.

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I have also had this process.

• I receive an email newsletter to a specific email account.
• I follow the unsubscribe link to a website.
• The website asks me to logon to change my subscription, but I do not remember my password.
• I follow the link to retrieve my password, but the website says I do not have an account.

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Here is another one. I received one today that said:

If you want to unsubscribe to this email, simply block the following email - xxx.domain.com

I want to block it before it gets to my computer of course.

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I should have kept a log of my adventures, but I did not think it was going to be so interesting.

I was up late last night coding PHP to add functionality to my website.  If the functionality works well, I will use it on other websites.  It is so consuming to program.

Today, I am doing all the other business with the understanding that when all my business tasks are done, then I am rewarded by being able to code.  You would think that after being a programmer for 40 years, it would get old, but it does not.

I was a manager for part of that time, but I always seemed to find some code to write.

We are having our first heat wave of the year.  It was over 100 degrees today.  It is not a major problem to survive, it gets hot in the afternoon and then cools off.  It is pleasant now.

There is air conditioning in our apartment, so it is pleasant.

However, my computers have apparently been overheating today.

• My laptop is sitting on two cold packs now, and it is running consistently for the first time today.
• My external hard drive has a fan pointed directly at it, and it is running consistently for the first time today.

Yes I do worry about moisture with the cold packs, but I wrap them in paper towels and do my best to keep them dry.

My son is getting ready to ride in the Aids Lifecycle. It is a bike ride that will take place June 1-7, 2008, as cyclists and volunteers will travel 545 miles through beautiful California from San Francisco to Los Angeles. My son will be one of 2500 cyclists riding in the event.

It is the official cycling event of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center.

The event will raise close to 11 million dollars.

We are enormously proud of him of course. It is a wonderful event for a good cause.

When my children were young, we did not restrict their Internet access. We talked about the dangers openly, asked them what they knew about the dangers from their readings, and asked them what rules they followed. We agreed on the rules.

• Do not give out your name or address
• Do not agree to meet anyone

When they were in elementary school, the computers were in a public area of the house.

That was just about it.

I am not saying that was wise, it is just our style. Having a frank talk about the dangers allowed them to set their own limits. I knew they were going to visit porn sites and other sites, but I was much happier that they did it without having to try and hide it.

When my son was a Freshman in high school, he told me if I ever wanted to go to a porn site, he had account and password hacks.

When I set up computers for parents now, I am often instructed to put on the parental controls. I of course do it, and I always think back about how it was when my children were small.

I do not have any regrets. I still think we were right. But it is definitely worse now on the Internet, so I do wonder if I would put on parental controls now. Probably not.

I use Outlook for Email.

I have been working to reduce Spam and undesired email.  The results are starting to show.

The Junk email folder is now full everyday.  I review it but I will not be doing that much longer.  I will change the rules to delete the spam without checking.  I am just using the Outlook processing for now, and it seems to be working ok.

I make a distinction between mail boxes and mail folders.

• Mail folders is where I store email I want to save
• Mail boxes is where I receive email.  Email is sorted into a dozen or so mail boxes.
• Everything that does not get sorted into a mail box ends up in the Inbox.

When all works well, there are very few if any emails in my inbox.

If email shows up in my inbox, one of the following happens:

• If it is spam, the keystrokes Alt-A-J-B send it to the junk email folder.
• If it is mail that I expect to get more off, I create a rule and sort it into a mail box.
• If it is a subscription, I cancel the subscription.  No email subscriptions; only RSS.
• If it is a one-off email, I process it or store it in a mail folder.

My overall time on email is being greatly reduced.  I am trying to use that time looking at my RSS feeds without flying through them.  More considered reading.

I am enjoying both the process and the results.

Listing to the Gillmor Gang discuss the Microsoft - Yahoo deal that fell through. There is the standard list of pundits on the call. They do not agree.

I cannot help but think of the political pundit shows. There we know what position pundits are going to take depending on their party and the candidate they support. They are spinners.

With this crowd, you never really know who is going to take what position, but there are certain perspectives that are predictable.

• Robert Scoble will talk about the employees at the companies involved.
• If Jason Calacanis was on the call, he would say the deal can be understood by looking how much the deal would add to search & online advertising.
• Mike Arrington will call out someone else on the phone call.
• Dan Farber will have the broadest industry view, and include in the analysis companies that are not directly affected.
• Doc Searls adds the humor.  Are you on Twitter, or “some other drug”.
• Steve Gillmor makes it happen - enough said.

I try to learn a new Treo feature each day.  There is a lot to learn.  I have had Palms for years so I know the Palm OS, and thought I knew many of the applications.

Here is one example.  I looked at the calculator.  It looked like the standard Palm calculator.  Nothing to learn.  Then I hit the menu and looked at the options.  There is an option for an advanced calculator.  After you get to advanced calculator, you have the choice of

• Math
• Trig
• Finance
• Logic
• Statistics
• Weight / Tmp
• Length
• Area
• Volume

The only point is that each little application has multiple layers to be investigated.

It is fun.

Today was shut down day. Time to turn off the computer for a day. I did not do it. I worked on the computer all day.

There were financial reports to do, client websites to tweak, email to answer, and now, a blog post. There were things to look up on the Internet, blog posts to read, and IM’s to answer.

But there was no Twitter to respond to: I am not doing Twitter.

And there was no FriendFeed to read: I am not doing FriendFeed either.

And I found out that

• My son biked 70 miles including a climb of Mt. Diablo
• Microsoft is not buying Yahoo
• My new Treo has many more features than I first imagined

I needed to upgrade WordPress. Today is the day.

I decided to download and try the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin.

It worked very well. I downloaded it, installed the plugin, and ran it to get a successful upgrade. I am now at the latest version of WordPress.

I ran the plugin in automatic mode, and it went through the steps quickly and successfully. I am most pleased.

Can you turn off your computer for 24 hours? Do you want to? Do you care?

I have not decided yet. Perhaps.

Today is RSS Awareness Day

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Visit my RSS Tutorial

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We moved from a fax machine to online fax.  It was more difficult than I had imagined it was going to be.

I used to do online fax years ago, but I forgot that was the time we accessed online using a modem.  Fax was built in.

It is not possible to just move to email with attachments.  Most government, health insurance, and businesses want actual faxes.  That is the way they are used to doing business.  It required an online to fax machine process.

I picked out a fax service that is available both online and with a client frontend.

• Faxit Nice is the Web Service
• Faxtastic is the client piece

The difficult part was to get the scan process working effectively. We have an HP All-in-One machine and it is only a few years old, but the drivers had to be downloaded and upgraded.  Some of the software would not work with IE 7 of all things.

At the end of the process I scanned in 14 pages, tweaked them so they looked sharp, and prepared them to be sent off using a nice client package.

That means we get rid of the land line.

Progress.

I am watching the situation with Jeremiah Wright and the presidential campaign with interest as are many Americans. I thought Jeremiah Wright’s performance in front of the Press Club was incredible theater.

In all the talk about Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama there is one thing that amuses me, and that is the assumption that Senator Obama had to have known about the fiery sermons in question even though he was not there, because people would have discussed them.

What? People would have discussed a sermon or even remembered it 5 minutes after it was over. How unusual.

My father was a minister, he was fond of asking people during the week if they could remember any of the points of last Sunday’s sermon. People could not. Even if it was incendiary.

I listened to my father’s sermons for many years, and the only part I remember clearly is when he was telling sons to respect their fathers and turned around to the choir where I was sitting and pointed directly at me.  That got my attention.  But I did not discuss it with anyone even though I worked with people who were there that day.  No one that I knew discussed sermons.

I am working on reducing my email. I am unsubscribing from any email that I can. I am doing all I can to enhance my spam filter.

It is interesting to see the varied processes to unsubscribe from an email subscription.

• Some of them are an easy one-click process that takes you to a screen that says you are now unsubscribed. Terrific.
• Some take you to a screen that asks if you are sure, and asks why. Usually that is a check box and a submit. That is ok.
• Some want you to log on using your member name and password and update your subscriptions. At this point, I have usually forgotten my password, so that is another step. Then I log on, change the password, update my profile to cancel subscriptions and leave. Then I get another email that thanks me for visiting. Hmmmmm.

When I am asked the reason, I say I am moving to RSS which puts me in control.

My external hard drive has failed several times now. It does not give any errors, it is just no longer available.

It started when I moved it to the new desktop. It happened several times right away. I had it tucked between two other items, so I moved it because I thought it might be getting hot. It went several days without a failure.

Yesterday when it failed, I lost my Outlook pst file completely. It was just gone. I had a backup, but I lost the email of the day.

Today I am trying on a different USB port. It is an external drive holder, so the next thing is to take out the hard drive and install it into the computer. I did not want to do that because now I can move it to the laptop with little effort.

I will wait and see.

I do not care for computer games that required a high degree of eye-hand coordination. That is just not me.

But I do like the strategy games. I like most of the card games. I like FreeCell and Spider Solitaire.

My favorite is Reversi or Othello. It has strategy. It goes quickly. There is little eye-hand coordination.

My favorite strategy game on the Nintendo was Lolo. After I wrote that I looked it up and found an online version of the game. I tried it of course. It is still challenging and interesting, but it certainly takes longer to play than I remembered. And it requires a bit more eye-hand coordination than I remembered. But it is just as addictive.

That will be a reward when certain tasks get finished.

I heard a story about Lance Armstrong, the famous cyclist.  I have no way of knowing whether it is true.  Lance was asked how he was able to bike up the alps.  Lance responded that to think about biking up the alps was too much, that what he did was look ahead and see a tree or bush and focus on biking to that tree or bush.  Then he found another target and biked to that target.

That is what we should all do when things get difficult.  Find a milestone, and get to that milestone.  Then pick another milestone and get to that milestone.  Do not worry about biking up the alps, it is just too much sometimes.  Just get to the next milestone.

It is a lesson that I need to learn and re-learn.  I am focusing on that lesson again, trying to focus on one set of objectives and not getting distracted by all the things on the horizon.  So far so good.

I am unsubscribing from all my ezines and email newsletters. I am only going to subscribe to RSS feeds from now on. If they ask for a reason, the comment is “RSS or nothing”.

There might be a newsletter that I enjoy so much that I will not unsubscribe, but so far I have unsubscribed as each one has arrived. Sometimes I have immediately subscribed to the same material using RSS.

People think differently about clicking on the unsubscribe link in a newsletter.

• One school of thought assumes that if there is a unsubscribe link, then the sender is following the rules and the email is probably not spam.
• Another school of thought says that it is just another way to encourage one to click on a link that either downloads malware or validates the email.

I am examining the ezine, going to the site, signing in, and unsubscribing to avoid any danger. It will take weeks to get through them all because many are monthly, but each time I unsubscribe I feel better.

Then I suppose I will have to go through my RSS feeds and trim them.

My son got mugged yesterday. He was knocked to the ground by four males who demanded money. He was on the ground with one attacker drawing back his fist over this face.

A plain clothes officer happened to be driving by. The officer stopped his car in the center lane, jumped out of his car, left the door open blocking traffic, and drove off the attackers. The officer arrived in time to prevent any robbery or battery from taking place.

Of course the attackers threw my son down on his right shoulder where he had broken his collar bone several weeks ago. He was on his way to the Doctors to have his collarbone X-rayed and checked. The X-rays showed no new damage.

As is often the case, it was good news and bad news. The good news

• The police officer foiled the robbery before any serious damage was done
• It happened on the way to the Doctor so the collar bone could be checked right away.

And for me, the good news was that we were going to meet that day anyway so I was there to offer whatever moral support I could.

I got a Treo™ 700p smartphone. It is used. It was a gift. Thank You.

I have always used Palm products and I like the Palm OS. This is probably the last gasp of that OS, but that is ok with me.

It is part of the process of sharpening the ax this month.

• Upgraded Desktop
• Recently formatted Laptop
• New Treo that replaces both my cell phone and my palm pilot.

Now I just need to get busy chopping wood.

I am watching Book TV today as I work.  Chinua Achebe is the featured author now.  He wrote a novel called  “Things Fall Apart”  about British colonialism in Nigeria.  According to Wikipedia it is “the most widely-read book in modern African literature”.

Mr. Achebe was announced as the novelist who had a great influence on all the literature of Africa.  He influenced a whole continent.  I had not heard of him.

Mr. Achebe tells a moving story about being raised in a rich oral tradition, but reading a book about Africa where the longest sentence uttered by an African was 8 words long.  He decided to write novels about Africa in part to counteract that.

The new desktop and the revitalized laptop are all set up. It is wonderful to have it done. I feel like I have “sharpened my ax” to quote Steven Covey. I already feel more productive.

Part of the process is getting rid of many of the programs that clogged up the old computer. I try out different programs, and I do not do a good job of getting rid of them after I evaluate them. I resolve to do that better.

I also did not load many of the little utilities that did one small thing. I am going to wait and see how much I miss them. If I miss them, then I will load them.

This is an ongoing issue, and there are lots of options.

1. Do everything online, using SalesForce.com, Google gmail and docs, and online blogs. Then it does not make any difference what computer is being used.
2. Use various sync software to align data on both machines. This is a cottage industry of products and services.
3. Use storage devices like flash drives to store data and just plug the device into the computer that is being used.
4. Put all the data on the laptop (with the assumption that the laptop is always with you) and then network the two and use the desktop against the laptop data.

I use another technique. I get everything set on the desktop, and use remote control software to access the desktop over the internet.

The laptop becomes an internet machine, and the desktop is just another internet server to access. When I take the laptop to the patio to work, I access the desktop over the Internet using my wireless router along with any other site I want to access.

I spent many years in Information Technology. One part of that career was running large data centers with big mainframe computers. I am fond of saying than anyone with a desktop computer has the same issues we had running large data centers. It is just a matter of scale.

I have upgraded my data center this month, which for me means one desktop and one laptop. But all the issues of UPS (uninterrupted power supply), backups, security, naming conventions, and procedures are the same as a major data center.

• UPS means a trip to radio shack, and not a kerosene powered generator.
• Off site storage is backup to an Internet server, not carrying tapes to an off site vault.
• Security is firewall, password management, and anti malware products, not site security (although I do lock the door to our home)
• Regularly procedures mean recurring tasks in Outlook, and not individual responsibilities and task signoff.

But the issues are the same.  And as I set up my desktop and laptop I think about those big data centers.

One of the techniques I like to us is to make sure I understand the top 3 or 4 priority items for the day.

• Write them down the night before,
• and work to that priority.

Today I had a day long meeting with a client that was canceled, so I do not have a list.  It was like waking up to a holiday.  I had to take a deep breath, look at the outstanding work, and then create my list.  But the initial feeling was wonderful.

I am not being rigid about it, but I am trying to blog every day. It gives me a chance to reflect on the day, the accomplishments, the objectives, and the problems.

Then I blog about something that happened during the day. It is therapeutic.

I find myself blogging about the thorniest tech issue I had during the day. I suppose because that is where the intense energy goes.

Setting up a new computer gives plenty of thorny tech issues. As much as I work to keep all downloads saved in an organized way, there always seems to be utilities that I cannot find.

Today it was installing on the Financial systems including Quickbooks. That worked very well.

Tomorrow will have its own challenges I am sure.

I have been working on my to do lists.  I am exploring some new directions, and the plans have generated a number of tasks.  I also want to clear up some outstanding personal business.

Sometimes at the end of the day, I am like everyone else and wonder where the day went.  When I am working on the task list, I can go and see what tasks were completed for the day.

It also gives me the opportunity to go to the task list, select the priority task, and focus on that task.  It is always a helpful productivity technique.

I worked recently with a group that was having their “content” stolen.  The email from the group was being captured and put on a Splog (Spam Blog).  They spent a good deal of time tracking down the perpetrator.  I helped them discover how it was being done.

I talked about that in an earlier post, and it is not the topic here.

It made me wonder about content and stealing content.  This is a group that is moderated, but I am sure it is accepting new members.  The posts are not public, but anyone can see them for a free sign up.  The group asks and answers technical questions.

The posts of the Splog were captured right from the emails, so it contained references to where the posts originated.

But they were very protective of the posts in their group.  I wonder why that is sometimes.  It is a fine line on the Internet between wanting to be well known and being upset when you are well known enough to attract that sort of attention.

The original Mozy backups are complete!

To review:

1. I had Carbonite first and went through the long original backup. But Carbonite did not permit External Drives, so I had to consider other options.
2. I switched to Mozy and started to backup my laptop and external drive. Most of the data was on the external drive.
3. I started the backups on my laptop before I got my new desktop. When I set up the desktop, I checked with Mozy and had to start over, but Mozy recognized the existing backups so all was not lost.
4. The desktop is much faster, so I gave Mozy more cycles and it finished quickly.

So now the original backups are complete, the incremental schedule is set, and all is well.

I will test the restore later this week.

It has been a bit of a rough time, so I took a humor break today.
One of my favorites is Blaugh, the unofficial comic of the Blogosphere.

I have a new computer.  It is not actually a new retail computer, but I installed a new mother board and power supply from someone who upgraded.  It is much faster and newer than what I was using.

It is always so nice to have a faster computer.  It feels so productive.

But like many people, I am a program collector.  I am going to try and work with fewer programs so I can keep this computer cleaner, but swearing off all the little utilities that make my life easier or more fun will be difficult.

I am also going to consider using more server products and fewer client products.

But for now, I am just enjoying the speed of this new computer.

A colleague reported that content was being stolen from a Yahoo Group and placed on a Blogger blog. I did some research.

Blogger has a function that allows posting to the blog by sending email to a certain email address. The email address has the @blogger.com domain.

The person had subscribed to the Yahoo Group using the Blogger email. Any time an email went out to the Yahoo group, it ended up on the blog. The blog of course had lots of Adsense and other ads.

It took a while to sort it out, but once we figured out how it happened, the Yahoo Group moderator looked through the member list until they found a email with @blogger.com. To make sure they had the culprit, they sent an email and it popped up on the blog.

At this point, it is always a question of what to do. Of course, the person was dropped from the Yahoo Group. If it was me, I would crank up a script and send a whole bunch of messages to the blog. The messages would not be complementary. I would try and make them clever. But of course, if it is too clever, it might go viral and the guy would make money for a large number of ad impressions.

But I am done. I did the research. The Yahoo Group moderator will decide.

I am considering creating a Directory of RSS Resources to support the RSS Tutorial. I have looked at various products and decided to test out phpLD - the PHP Link Directory.  It looks like a reasonable product to me.  I like PHP / MySQL products and it fits that bill.  There is a free version to start with.  There is a paid version if it checks out.

I am going to try and seed the directory by doing some extracts and loads.  Extract from DMOZ and other sources and load into the Directory of RSS Resources.   The issue is what to use for title and description.  I would like to extract title and description from the HTML so that there is no copyright issue.

Then to maintain the Directory of RSS Resources, I will open the directory for submissions.  I expect it to take a while to get it set up, but it will be a nice complement to the RSS Tutorial.

Paperwork - a fine word that means dealing with the paper that we all still get. All the paperless office did was add email, rss, and IMs to all the paper we deal with. Today it is dealing with paper.

• Look at each piece of paper
• If I am lucky, throw it away
• If it is for reference, file it
• But usually, it means considering, deciding, and spending more time than seems reasonable.

Paperwork these days usually means bills or taxes, so it is not fun.

Email is sounding good today.

Mozy is running with the message Reticulating Splines.

I just had to look it up. I led me on a merry surf. It is supposedly a joke originally done on Sim City that has been picked up by other products. It is a bogus status message that Sim City showed when it was loading. Software products now show it as a status message. Here is the story.

I am still working through the first time Mozy backups. I have had some downtime, so it has not been a consistent effort to get through the backups, but I am still working to get the first backup complete. I am backing up about 40G, so I knew it was going to be a while.

I know after the initial backup it will run quickly, so I am not worried, but I am getting concerned about getting through the initial backup. I went through the same process with Carbonite, so I am used to it, but I think I will stay with one service for a while.

Part o