Georgetown Hospital blocks MT.Net, gives Facebook a pass

I’m connected to Georgetown University Hospital’s MedStarGuest network and trying to keep from being bored between tests. I was about to do some blogging this morning when I was greeted with a WebSense notification that my blog has been blocked:

No MT.Net for you!

No MT.Net for you!

What makes this particularly amusing is that Facebook is not blocked by the hospital’s WebSense nanny filter. It seems that MarkTurner.Net is considered “Social Networking” but Facebook, the granddaddy of all social networking sites, is not blocked for being “Social Networking.” What’s even more amusing is that other sites I host on the very same site using the very same software (like LigonPTA.com) are not blocked. Somehow I’ve earned inclusion onto WebSense’s no-no list.

This is yet another example of how idiotic these Internet nanny filters can be. Attention fellow IT people: there is no substitution for monitoring your own network. Don’t delegate your network monitoring to stupid products like WebSense.

And aren’t “guest” networks supposed to be safe for guests? Protect your important infrastructure with a secure network but your visitors shouldn’t need nanny filters.

Fortunately my VPN has not been blocked so that I could bring you this important message.

If it’s Monday, this must be DC

Update 2017 Nov 11: Dr. Baraniuk’s paper has been published.

At the top of the “Exorcist” Steps in Georgetown. I climbed these steps to and from my appointment today.

At the top of the “Exorcist” Steps in Georgetown. I climbed these steps to and from my appointment today.


I’ve been on the road for a little while. Last week I was in Seattle for a work trip, spending most of my time in a windowless datacenter. My colleagues and I did get out to visit the Museum of Flight as well as the Living Computer Museum, both which were fascinating to us geeks!

I got home Friday night to spend the weekend with my family before hopping a train north to DC. I’ll be here for the next two days participating in a DoD-funded research study on Gulf War Illness (GWI). The research study involves a bunch of repetitive vital sign measurements, some MRI time, and intense exercise tests. I got through most of the medical forms, vital sign measurements, and interview today but the real fun starts tomorrow when I pedal my ass off on a stationary bike while wearing a SCUBA breather and an EKG harness, then spend an hour cooped up in an MRI while they look at my brain. Then I do it again on Wednesday and celebrate afterward with a lumbar puncture (aka, spinal tap). Yay?

After I had a long interview with the doctor in charge of the research study, he doesn’t seem convinced that I have traditional GWI (or it’s cousin, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, CFS). He does find my symptoms curious, though, and wants to get me some answers. I don’t know what I’ll find out here, if anything, but I seem to be in the realm of experts. At least I know that my vitals are good and EKG looks “stellar,” in their words.

Being away from my family for two weeks in a row isn’t something I’ve done since my 2006 business trip to Australia, I believe. Can’t say I’m a fan of this much travel. My health is important, though, so I want to find out whatever I can so that I can keep up with my very active family.

One plus of being in DC now is that I had a great view of tonight’s Antares rocket launch which launched from Wallops Island, VA. I saw it from the grounds of the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial with the Potomac River in the foreground and excited kids and dads all around me. Made me wish my excited kids (and my wife) were here with me!

USS Mason Fired 3 Missiles to Defend From Yemen Cruise Missiles Attack

What the heck is happening in the Red Sea? The U.S. Navy shot down two incoming cruise missiles? This is serious stuff!

The crew of a guided-missile destroyer fired three missiles to defend themselves and another ship after being attacked on Sunday in the Red Sea by two presumed cruise missiles fired by Iran-backed Houthi-forces, USNI News has learned.During the attack against USS Mason (DDG-87), the ship’s crew fired the missiles to defend the guided-missile destroyer and nearby USS Ponce (AFSB(I)-15) from two suspected cruise missiles fired from the Yemini shore, two defense officials told USNI News.

Source: USS Mason Fired 3 Missiles to Defend From Yemen Cruise Missiles Attack

Homesick in Seattle

Baggage Carousel 10 at Seattle-Tacoma (SEATAC) Airport

Baggage Carousel 10 at eattle-Tacoma (SEATAC) Airport


I’m traveling this week for business to Seattle, arriving at SEATAC airport this afternoon. As I’m walking up to the Southwest baggage carousel, I turn instinctively around to my family to joyously announce that our vacation has finally started.

Only my family’s not there. My colleagues Ken and Cameron don’t notice as my face falls and I get really quiet, looking around the room and imagining what fun I might be having there with my family. I spend the shuttle ride to the rental car place looking down at my hands as tears well up in my eyes.

What fun we’ve had here as a family. What precious memories we’ve built. What amazing adventures have begun first with a trip to the baggage carousel.

I return to my hotel room after a few hours of work, alone with my memories, laptop, and the feeling that I am blessed far beyond any man could hope to be.

Biting the government hand that feeds you

Does this man work in government?

Does this man work in government?

Back when I felt compelled to enter political debates on Facebook, one of my conservative friends chimed in on a post I had regarding something about the government (probably me expressing my wistfulness for a health care public option). My good friend comes from the Ronald Reagan “government is the problem” line of thinking and commented something to the effect that the government can’t do anything right.

Even though we don’t see eye to eye on many political points he’s still a friend and I do respect him. It was all that I could do, though, to keep from pointing out that as a first-responder he actually works for the government. Not only does he work for the government, for all practical purposes he is the government. He is the public face of government to the people he serves.

That’s not to demean the work he does, of course. It’s important work. I just have a hard time understanding how conservative individuals who work for the taxpayers belittle the very government that they, themselves, make up. What accounts for this self-loathing?
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Expanded horizons

Cruising Resurrection Bay in Alaska, August 2015

Cruising Resurrection Bay in Alaska, August 2015

I got an unexpected invitation from friends yesterday for Kelly and me to join them for a week of sailing around the Caribbean. Of course I’ve been a sailor since 1988 and I finally made it to the Caribbean with our family trip to Jamaica and Puerto Rico. For some crazy reason, though, it never occurred to me that this was a possibility – that we could go ride the waves for a week in an exotic place. This was a dream of mine in my 20s but I didn’t have the means, or at least it didn’t seem like I did at the time. You either have all of the time and none of the money or all of the money and none of the time.

Back when I was in high school, my dad and his best friend Carl offered me the opportunity to spend the summer working as a deckhand on Carl’s tourist boat in Florida. I opted not to take the offer for some forgotten reason but looking back now it would’ve been a hell of a lot of fun, I’m sure. I love being out on the water, testing oneself against Mother Nature. Facing the great unknown. Humans have been doing it for millennia.
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Facebook filtering

facebook
Earlier this week I saw a funny post on Facebook that appeared briefly in my feed when a friend commented on it. I know of no way to track down these kinds of feed items once you scroll past them because don’t tend to stay in the feed and you can’t simply visit your friend’s page to see them because they aren’t actually my friend’s posts, they’re just her comments on posts.

I decided to wade once again into Facebook’s search feature, or what has passed for a search feature. As long as I’ve used Facebook I’ve hated its abysmal search ability. To my amazement, Facebook has done quite a bit to improve its search functionality. I was able to zero in on my friend’s posts, narrow them down by time, and search for a string. It used to be that this was not possible (as least, as far as I know).
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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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N&O quoted my letter to City Council in 2013

I was doing a vanity search on the N&O website, looking for a story I linked to once but apparently no longer exists (the N&O has never fixed its linkrot problem), when I found a 2013 story in which Colin Campbell quoted me and I didn’t even know it. In 2013, after musing about two-way streets here, I had written City Council and urged them to consider getting rid of the one-way streets in East Raleigh:

From: Mark Turner
Date: 06/25/2013 07:57 PM
Subject: Please consider making New Bern and Edenton two-way

Dear Madame Mayor and City Councilors,

I would like to respectfully request that you consider devoting a portion of transportation funds towards converting New Bern Avenue and Edenton Streets from one-way streets into two-way streets east of the Capitol. I strongly feel nothing would provide an economic boost to the east side of town as much as making these streets friendlier to local traffic and pedestrians and making them less like miniature freeways.

Thank you for all that you do for our city!

Respectfully yours,

Mark Turner

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Google to Google routing could be better

fiber_houseLike many Triangle residents, I’ve been eagerly awaiting Google Fiber service, ready to ditch my indentured servitude to Time Warner Cable. I’m a fairly advanced geek, too, hosting this site and others on Amazon Web Services. I want my website to be as speedy as possible to me and my web visitors, so low network latency is very important. For those who aren’t advanced geeks, network latency is how long it takes for a packet to travel between two points on a network, usually measured in milliseconds. Networking often hits upon the limitation of the speed of light (or radio propagation, depending on the medium), meaning a server located far away (like Singapore) will have a noticeable delay for visitors in America.

My Amazon virtual server is physically located in Ashburn, Virginia but due to some favorable network routing it responds very quickly in the Triangle area, almost as if it were right across town. I have found it very hard to find a server that’s any closer, network-wise.
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