I’m so trendy.
As we’ve noted before, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the globe-spanning spying being conducted by the NSA are have all sorts of interesting knock-on consequences. Here’s another: people are starting to worry about being tracked by online advertisers, and taking action to avoid it,
via Latest Casualty Of NSA Spying Revelations: Web Advertising Based On Tracking Users | Techdirt.
Now when I was just a little boy standin’ to my Daddy’s knee
My Poppa said “son don’t let the man get you do what he done to me
’cause he’ll get you ’cause he’ll get you now now.”
I can remember the fourth of July runnin’ through the backwood bare.
And I can still hear my old hound dog barkin’ chasin’ down a hoodoo there
Chasin’ down a hoodoo there.
Born on the bayou
Born on the bayou
Born on the bayou.
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At work the other day I was tracking down a network issue with my company’s webserver. During this process I briefly visited the website of our hosting provider, Media Temple.
At lunchtime that day I was scrolling through my Facebook feed when I found this suggested post (I mean, “ad”):
Today marks fourteen years from the day that I became the luckiest man in the world. On that beautiful September day, in front of family and friends, Kelly Swanson became Kelly Swanson Turner. Fourteen years later, she still amazes me with her grace. Recently, after we had each upped the ante on some joke, erupting into fits of laughter, I have to stop.
“You know,” I said, “there’s just not another woman like you.” I mean, I say that once I catch my breath again.
And it’s true. There’s only one Kelly Turner, and today I celebrate fourteen years of love and laughter.
My NSA job rejection letter
I was reminded I had this scrap of paper today after reading week after week about the NSA. It’s a polite job rejection letter I got from the NSA in 2001, after I offered to dust off my security clearance and help catch some bad guys. I find it amusing now, now knowing just how far off the mission the NSA has wandered since then.
Frank Eaton films Hallie
Frank is an expert videographer and a fun guy to be around. He really connected with the kids, too, making it a fun experience.
The video came out beautifully and Hallie’s climate change rally is quickly generating attention. We hope the momentum continues to build through 28th!
If you’d like to know more, check out the IMatter Youth NC website. And if you’d like to look good on camera, check out Frank’s Bully Documentary Company.
This month, the Raleigh Parks, Recreation, and Greenway Advisory Board (PRGAB) votes on a proposed ordinance prohibiting dogs from certain areas of parks. There are plenty of proponents and opponents for this new ordinance and it’s been difficult finding the right balance.
One of the PRGAB’s committees, the Greenways and Urban Trees Committee (GWUT), is recommending the ordinance be passed in its entirety. Dog owners have pleaded to continue being able to use athletic fields to exercise their dogs.
Everyone agrees that Raleigh has a shortage of dog parks. Until we can add more, I think it’s fair to make allowances for dog owners who have no other place to go. Therefore, rather than recommend restricting dogs from certain areas of all city parks, I will recommend the board allow for staff to allow dogs on fields where posted signs specifically allow it. As the city phases in more dog parks, we can move dogs to those parks and off athletic fields.
Incidentally, I had forgotten the extent of the role I played in bringing this about. A friend in the Oakwood neighborhood had a frightening encounter with an unleashed dog in Oakwood mini-park in April 2012 and it was I who brought it to the attention of Parks staff, who promptly added it to our work plan:
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I sure do wish the News and Observer would let the Raleigh City Council do its due diligence in hiring a city manager. Saturday’s front-page teaser about a closed session last week made me mad:
McFarlane holds closed City Council session
Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane presides over a non-public session that raises questions about compliance with the state’s open meetings law.
Um, no it doesn’t. It pertained to the city manager hiring process and the mayor was correct in calling for a closed session.
I’ll say it again: making job candidates public puts them in a precarious position with their current employers. Raleigh has had dozens of candidates respond to the city manager listing. Each of them might be fired from their current job if word got out that they were looking.
I’ll say another thing again: if the media expects city officials to respect the parts of Open Meetings that benefit them, they must also respect the parts of Open Meetings which allows city officials to conduct their personnel procedures in private.
Hiring a city manager is the most important decision a city council can make. The city manager is only one of two direct reports to the council. Why can’t the News and Observer leave the city council alone and let them pursue the best person for the job?
I heard an alarming story last week. A teacher was discussing recent interviews she had conducted of potential new teachers. When asked “why would you like to teach at our school,” the job candidates could only muster lame responses such as “because it’s close to my house!” The teacher was dumbfounded that these people couldn’t even come up with a useful, halfway-convincing response.
What seems to be happening is that the good teachers are heading out the door after one or two years, discovering they can get paid twice a teacher’s salary in the private sector. Taking their place are often teachers who aren’t as bright or as capable. Where does that leave the education of our children?
If our governor and legislative leaders like to harp about running government like a business, they should remember the first rule of hiring: if you want top talent you have to pay for top talent. If our state leaders want North Carolina to be competitive, we should pay our teachers a competitive wage and not have our teacher salaries near the lowest in the nation.
The future prosperity of our state rests on the education we provide to our children. The mistakes we are making now will haunt us in the years to come.
Now that our daughter’s in middle school and is involved with extra-curricular activities we needed to get her her own phone, so she inherited my smartphone as I upgraded mine. Having a new phone has provided me the opportunity to try out something I’d been meaning to do for a while: flash my phone with an open-source version of Android.
What’s the worst that can happen? Well, flashing a new ROM onto your phone can turn your sophisticated pocket computer into an expensive doorstop. Known as “bricking” your phone, a mistake in the process can make it inoperative. Fortunately, there are plenty of guides which walk you through the process as well as simple “one-click” programs which will do the dirty work for you. And even if you goof up, you can almost always fix things up again.
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