Meddling

It would’ve worked, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids!

There are 617 posts filed in Meddling (this is page 13 of 62).

Raleigh quietly pulled the plug on Camp Ranoca. Why?

We met Kelly’s family at a Virginia state park for our new “Cabin Thanksgiving” tradition. Standing around the campfire Friday night, we were close to exhausting our measly repertoire of camp songs when Hallie and Travis giddily led the others through several zany camp songs they had picked up from their summers at Raleigh’s Camp Ranoca. Anything that gets both of my kids to happily cooperate gets my attention and it was obvious they both looked back fondly on their Camp Ranoca experiences.

Hallie was greatly looking forward to the chance to be a camp counselor this summer at Camp Ranoca. She is excellent with kids and loves the camp experience. Goofiness runs in the family (if you couldn’t tell). She would’ve been great. I was probably as crushed as she was when we found out at the beginning of the year that Raleigh had quietly discontinued Camp Ranoca.
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T-Mobile trips Google’s security measures

This afternoon Kelly forwarded me an alarming-looking email purportedly from Google and asked me to see if it was a phishing attempt. “Someone has your password,” warned the emails. Kelly is rightfully suspicious of any unexpected email claiming that one’s account is locked or compromised so I thought this was just another phishing attempt.

Fraud or not? Always be on guard!

Fraud or not? Always be on guard!

But then I looked carefully at the message. The headers showed it came from Google. The link included went to an actual Google server. It was legit. Yikes! Did Kelly get hacked?
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Mysterious illness that can cause hallucinations hits Coos Bay | OregonLive.com

This is X-Files-worthy.

A mysterious illness that can cause hallucinations has struck Coos Bay.It all started Tuesday afternoon when a caregiver who works with a 78-year-old woman called 911. She reported that seven or eight people were trying to take the roof off her vehicle.

A deputy who showed up found nothing amiss, said Sgt. Patrick Downing, spokesman for the Coos Bay Sheriff’s Office.

The caregiver, 52, called back early Wednesday, reporting the same thing. This time the deputy who responded figured something was wrong and arranged to have another deputy with a more suitable vehicle take the caregiver to Coos Bay Hospital on a mental health hold, Downing said.

Not long after the two deputies reported feeling nauseous, light-headed and euphoric. The elderly woman also came down with symptoms.

Source: Mysterious illness that can cause hallucinations hits Coos Bay | OregonLive.com

Speeding point proven at 2 AM

I’d spent many evenings last week going door to door along State Street, methodically collecting signatures on a city petition to reduce the State Street speed limit to 25 MPH from its current 35 MPH. The first two days garnered the lion’s share of signatures; before I knew it I was up to ten. The last four, however, have been a challenge. Some neighbors tell me they agree 100% with reducing the speed and yet they’re very reluctant to put their name on the list. Some of these neighbors are older and some are renters who are perhaps worried any more neighborhood improvements might price them right out of the home they are renting. It’s hard to know what their real reasons are but it’s frustrating that they want it done and yet don’t want to do anything to make it happen.

Sunday afternoon I was particularly bummed when some friends I thought I could count on to sign decided against it, citing the mess that the water main replacement/traffic calming on Glascock has been. Even though I stressed it was only a new set of speed limit signs I could not convince them. I felt like chucking my clipboard into the street and giving up on the whole damn process. It would be just like five years ago, when I spent hours walking up and down State only to collect just enough signatures to barely miss the threshold.
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Corroded wire led to Rachel Rosoff’s death

rachel_rosoff-facebook-profile

Wake County Inspectors released their report on what caused the pool at Heritage Point to become electrically charged, killing lifeguard and Enloe High senior Rachel Rosoff on Saturday, 3 September. I’ve perused the report [PDF] and it appears that the pool pump shorted out for some reason (age? damage? No one knows). This wouldn’t ordinarily be a problem but the grounded conductor which normally protects from such faults had become so corroded over time that it no longer completed the circuit.

There’s no telling how long ago the corroded ground wire had stopped protecting the pool equipment. Once the motor failed there was no other place for the electricity to flow but into the pool.

Was there negligence? It appears not. The pool’s electrical system was up to the 1978 NEC Electrical code it was built under. So what else might be done? Perhaps pool owners (or county inspectors) could test the grounds on other pools on a regular basis to ensure everything is working properly. I’m sure many are already considering this.

Inside The Federal Bureau Of Way Too Many Guns | GQ

Anytime a cop in any jurisdiction in America wants to connect a gun to its owner, the request for help ends up here, at the National Tracing Center, in a low, flat, boring building that belies its past as an IRS facility, just off state highway 9 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in the eastern panhandle of the state, a town of some 17,000 people, a Walmart, a JCPenney, and various dollar stores sucking the life out of a quaint redbrick downtown. On any given day, agents here are running about 1,500 traces; they do about 370,000 a year.

“It’s a shoestring budget,” says Charlie, who runs the center.
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Rosie the Seaboard Station ghost?

Does Rosie the Riveter have a doppelganger at Seaboard Station?

Does Rosie the Riveter have a doppelganger at Seaboard Station?

I needed a part to fix our broken dishwasher so I drove over to Seaboard Ace Friday morning before work. On my way out of the store, I spotted an African American woman slowly walking toward me from the north in the parking lot. I did not want to keep her waiting as I backed out of the space so I wasted no time in getting going. Sure I was out of her way, I headed towards the lot’s exit. In the time it took me to reach the stop sign in front of Logan’s Trading Company the woman had somehow made it into the next parking lot, where the Phydeaux store used to be.

I was stunned. I was sure I backed out of the space before this woman could’ve reached my car, and somehow she had beaten my car to the stop sign? How?

Not wanting to seem like I was stalking her, I continued left to Halifax Street, then turned right to go back down the little one-way alley between Phydeaux and 18 Seaboard. The woman was still in the Phydeaux parking lot, this time slowly walking west.

Just to make sure I hadn’t mistaken the woman for another one dressed similarly, I drove back down in front of the hardware store. No other similarly-dressed women were around. I turned around just past Peace China and headed back towards the woman.

This time when I reached the Phydeaux parking lot the woman was gone. I drove the counterclockwise loop from Logan’s back to the one-way alley but could not find her.

I still couldn’t believe what I had just seen. How did this slow-walking woman suddenly leap ahead of me? And where had she gone? What had just happened here!?
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Is Facebook secretly snooping on my photos to serve ads?

I’ve been taking part in an experimental drug study at the local Veterans Administration hospital. Now that the study is wrapping up, I thought it might be wise to take a photo of my medicine bottle for future reference. So, during a break in traffic on my way to my appointment the other day, I picked up my work Android phone and snapped some photos of my medicine bottle, like this one.

Until this blog post I hadn't shared this photo with anyone.

Until now I hadn’t shared this photo with anyone.

All seemed well until I logged into Facebook on the same phone yesterday. That’s when I was astonished to see this targeted ad show up in my Facebook feed.

Holy shit! What are the odds that Facebook would just happen to serve up an ad that matched a photo I took less than 24 hours earlier, a photo that I hadn’t shared with anyone? Call me paranoid but I can’t even fathom the odds that this is coincidental. I don’t post any medical stuff on Facebook, have never mentioned medicine or bottles or … anything. No keywords. There is nothing I’ve shared voluntarily on Facebook that could have summoned an ad that just happens to match a photograph I had just taken but never intended to share.
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How I almost invented Wikipedia

Wikipedia Logo

Wikipedia Logo

I sold one of my domain names this month, reliablesources.com. I had that domain longer than I’ve had kids, registering it on 17 January 2000. Two months ago the domain became old enough to drive.

I remember just where I was when I decided to register the domain. I was in my entrepreneurial phase at the time, working with some extremely talented friends at NeTraverse and while I was on a business trip to Austin I dreamed up what I thought would be an innovative website.

I was a regular reader of the Slashdot (which was recently sold) nerd news website back then and was intrigued by its “karma” system of ranking posts. I wanted to apply this karma ranking to the people in the news, giving users the ability to rank what someone in the news says based on that person’s known credibility.

It was inspired by President Bill Clinton’s time in office. The Office of the President carries a lot of built-in credibility, for instance, so right away you’re going to listen to what the President says. But what if the President is caught lying (i.e., “I did not have sexual relations…”)? That should make one skeptical of whatever that President says, knocking down his or her karma score.
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New Scandal for US: Republicans Asked Tehran to Keep US Prisoners (including Navy and Marines) in Jail Until Presidential Elections | Veterans Today

If this is true, and so far there is no independent confirmation, it would not be the first time that Republicans have tried to convince Iranians to continue holding our hostages for partisan reasons.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran’s top security official Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani disclosed on Thursday that the US Republicans had demanded Tehran to suspend the January prisoners’ swap deal with Washington until the presidential elections in the US.

“The US Republicans sent a message to Tehran, demanding us not to release the American spies until the presidential race starts in the US,” Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani said on Thursday.

“However, we did release the US prisoners in an independent decision,” he continued.

Source: New Scandal for US: Republicans Asked Tehran to Keep US Prisoners (including Navy and Marines) in Jail Until Presidential Elections | Veterans Today