April 2010

There were 29 posts published in April 2010 (this is page 1 of 3).

Curbside parking at airports

RDU Airport

My usual way home from work, Interstate 40, was backed up this afternoon so I took a detour through RDU Airport. As I drove past the terminal, I watched as an airport police officer stridently whistled away a car that was being parked at the curbside.

As I passed the terminal, I got to thinking at how ludicrous it is for officers to shoo people away from the curb. I mean, if a truck bomb parks there it doesn’t really matter if it’s for five hours or five tenths of a second: the result is the same. And if someone wants to create terror of that nature there are plenty of other places with large crowds.
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So much going on

I tell you I’m running from one thing to another lately. I’ve still got to blog about the hijinks in the General Assembly with Time Warner Cable’s attempt to kill off fiber competition. I also have some bad behavior to expose from a local activist. And there’s a few bigger issues I’ve been meaning to write about.

This weekend’s going to be packed full of events, though I should have time to write tonight as Kelly’s going to kid-sit for the neighbors. Saturday starts with a bang with Hallie’s soccer game. Then we get to take our first look at the new N.C. Museum of Art. After that, our neighbors are hosting a party in advance of the World Beer Festival in Raleigh (I’m just attending the party). When we get done with that, we go to ANOTHER neighborhood party where we may spend some time.

Sunday is … uh, relatively quiet with just a neighborhood birthday party for the kids, a piano recital for Travis, and another party after that. And maybe I can get some exercise in there, and perhaps some gardening. Wow.

May need a new job soon

I got word today that my contract may not be able to be extended due to company policy. Thus I could be in need of work.

If you’re looking for a good sysadmin or (preferably) sales engineer, drop me an email. Thanks!

(Oh, and you can find more about me here).

Climate talk at UNC

I gave a talk at UNC yesterday on climate change from a national security perspective. This wasn’t an official “Operation Free” event but it came about from my association with Operation Free. I was invited by the North Carolina Conservation Council to speak to interested students on climate change. The talk was sponsored by Earth Day Revolution.

About 40 students showed up: pretty respectable considering it’s finals week! I was a panelist with three experts (I was going to say “other experts” but that would put me in their league). My ten-minute talking time was taken up with five minutes of the Pew Climate Patriots video, leaving me five minutes to tell my story. Well, it turns out five minutes isn’t enough – I had so much to say that when I returned to my seat I was kicking myself for not covering some items. Still, my speech seemed effective and I was told later that I did an outstanding job.
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Weekend spent outside

Rick Miller poses with us after the show

Wow, what a busy weekend! After a relatively-quiet Friday evening, we had an action-packed Saturday. In the morning I got to work on our garden area, staking it out and deciding how much work I wanted to put into it this year. Putting that for a bit, we ate lunch and prepared for Hallie’s soccer game at Brier Creek.

Before we left for the game, I discovered that Southern Culture on the Skids was to play in downtown Raleigh right in the middle of Hallie’s game. We went to Hallie’s game (her team got seriously outplayed, sadly) and then boogied downtown, where we were soon boogieing to SCOTS. There were only a handful of songs left in their set by the time we got there, but we found our friends and got grooving like we’d been there all day.
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Google fights Gmail hackers

Yesterday I received a strange email sent to a neighborhood list by a neighbor. The subject was “Modesty Marquita” (which sounds like a stripper name, actually) and all that was in the body of the message was a URL to a webserver in Brazil. I searched the web for any references to either of these items and didn’t turn up anything unusual, so I wrote it off.

This evening made me change my mind, however. Another friend (Let’s call her Anne) sent out four similar emails. Same M.O.: a random person’s name in the subject line and a web URL in the body. That’s when I figured out something is not right in Gmail land.

The kicker was this message below (I’ve changed account data). This message was sent from one Gmail account to another one: in other words it never left Google’s network:
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Big telcos go after municipal broadband in N.C. again

It looks like the big telcos are trying once again to block municipal broadband projects in North Carolina. Legislation is expected to be introduced in the N.C. Senate’s Revenue Laws committee next week that will seek a moratorium on municipal broadband projects, allegedly because it will “harm state tax revenue.”

Please contact the folks below and let them know this bill is harmful to North Carolina:
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McDonald’s tricky Facebook campaign

A friend just visited a McDonald’s page on Facebook which subsequently spammed all of her Facebook friends without her knowledge, she says. The message sent to her friends said this:

Jill became a fan of Official FREE McDonald’s Day! Free Big Macs on us all day! on Facebook and suggested you become a fan too.

This is just another reminder of the “information leaks” present in Facebook and other social networking sites. Never post anything that you wouldn’t want to disclose to the world.