It’s A Scary World…Or Is It?

Update: I wrote this post a week ago and set it to publish this morning. Last night I saw a video someone posted on Facebook that was a news clip about exactly what I’m talking about below. So I decided to add the clip to the post so that y’all would know I’m not just paranoid.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Technology these days is absolutely amazing. Sure, there are things from old movies that, were you to go back and watch them now, you’d say “HEY! We don’t have that yet! When are we going to get it???” Things like hover boards, flying cars, space ships for intergalactic travel, and so on.

But look what we DO have.

We have phones that we carry around with us everywhere. We have headsets for these phones that don’t need wires so we don’t even have to hold the phones up to our heads. We can use these phones to chat by voice, or by text, or by picture, or by video! We can update our Twitter or Facebook status from virtually anywhere.

That’s all fantastic! But…

I find it a little unsettling what comes bundled with all this technology. A GPS chip in your phone can (if you allow it) geo-tag your comments and photos. Even if we’re not geo-tagging, we’re checking in! Facebook places, Foursquare, all kinds of programs out there to let everyone know where you are at any given time. Just for grins one day, I opened up Twitter on my iPhone and did a search for tweets that happened near me. I have no idea just how accurate the locations are, but bear with me here. So Twitter will tell me what people are saying around me. I pull up a tweet, and I can get a location. I take that location and I open it in maps. I then take that location in maps and get directions to it. I can get directions from wherever I am and follow someone who is posting geo-tagged tweets! And with Google’s street-view, you can even look at the house they’re tweeting from.

It’s a little unnerving.

So I can’t help but ask myself, “how safe are we?”

It seems like this technology can be bittersweet. I mean, sure, it makes a stalker’s job easy, right? But could it make the jobs of the police easy, too? If someone regularly “checks in” with technology and is always telling people where they are…even if something happens to them, it’d be easy to pin-point where they were last seen. Since the person may very well have taken their own photo and put it online, it would be easy not only to show a picture of the person, but a picture of what they looked like when they were there!

I have avoided the whole “checking in” functions online. I like to at least keep some illusion that I have some anonymity left. But I often wonder who I’m kidding. Big brother is watching. I’m not sure there’s anywhere you can go online these days that you’re not being tracked. Even if you regularly clear your Internet cache and cookies (tracking is often done through cookies if you didn’t know), there are hardware specs of your computer that could be read…tie those to IP addresses and there are people who can follow you (technologically) wherever you go.

Sounds like I’m paranoid, right? I don’t know…maybe a little. But really…how safe are we? Is it better to embrace the technology and surf the wave of the world wide web? Or is it better to try to stay off the grid as much is reasonable? Is it even worth the effort to try to maintain anonymity?

Oh yeah, and as far as geo-tagging your photos, check out the news clip below. I actually tried to do this (before seeing this video) on a picture my wife posted on Facebook (just to see if it could be done). I was not successful, but obviously I had not downloaded the appropriate tools. I did not put much effort into it and now I kind of wish I had just for the sake of being able to tell you that I knew how easy it was.

Well, anyway, watch the clip…paranoid or truly disturbing?

Wow…too deep a thought process for my blog. I have to go do something funny now. If I figure out what…I’ll post about it later.

The Dangers of Salt

Disclaimer: Normally, I would tone down the language for public posting, but the story loses its tone if I change it…so readers beware if you’re easily offended by language…don’t worry…it’s not TOO, too bad…

So I was watching TV with Leo and Cara (the not-real names of the same two friends from my previous post) when a commercial for Wendy’s came on. They were advertising their new “Natural-Cut Fries” with sea salt. I commented and said, “Interesting. Sounds good.”

Cara said, “What?”

Leo said, “Fries with sea salt.”

Cara said, “What’s sea salt?”

In unison, Leo and I said “Salt…from the sea…”

Cara said, “OK, SMART-ASSES.”

Leo and I laughed and incredulously I said, “WHAT? That’s what it is!”

Cara responded with, “You can’t take salt from the sea on put it on potatoes! You’ll die if you eat that shit!”

The laughter…yeah…it got louder…

Honestly…she’s smarter than she sounds in these last two posts! LOL

Your Website Needs A Bigger Ego

In the earlier months of my new employment, I was staying with a couple of friends who were gracious enough to lend me their spare bedroom while I commuted to the new city for the new job and went home to the old city on the weekends.

A few months ago, I was out to dinner with these friends (we’ll call them Leo an Cara…not their real names). I can’t remember what it was that brought up this conversation, but we started talking about the security of websites.

We were talking about how to ensure (if you’re entering sensitive data into a site) that the site you’re on is secure and has a valid security certificate. Leo was following what I was telling him just fine, because he works with computers on a regular basis. Cara, on the other hand, is pretty much completely computer illiterate. She doesn’t touch computers. She’ll tell you that too…she pretty much has no use for them.

Upon hearing Leo and I talk about how to validate a website is secure, Cara says, “I don’t have to worry about that crap…I don’t access websites so I don’t care if they’re insecure.”

Needless to say…I told her I would be posting that on the web… 🙂

A Country In Peril Remains Calm?

Japan. You’ve seen the country’s name in headlines all over the news for days now. It’s devastating. Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, nuclear power plant disasters…the list goes on and on. And, unfortunately, so does the death-toll.

Originally, I was not going to blog today. Heck, I haven’t blogged in nearly a year. I had a couple of posts scheduled to roll out every couple of days over the next week…

BUT – I read an article today that made me pause in my tracks. If you’re interested, you can read this article here at the Washington Post.  What made me stop and think was the following excerpt:

One Fukushima City supermarket was set to open on Monday at 10 a.m. The first customers showed up at 7. Soon, several hundred were waiting to buy rice, instant noodles and other goods. The store manager, Hidenori Chonan, said the store didn’t have many supplies left — and electricity had already cut out.

“We don’t know when the next supply would come,” Chonan said. “We are selling all products at [discounted prices] and losing money. But at a time like this we help each other.”

“We have security to avoid confusion, but there is no sign of people trying to break into our store, or anything like that,” Chonan said. “Of course some complain about lining up or having limits on how much they can buy, but we all know what the situation is and we all feel each other’s pain.”

Indeed, while Japan in recent days has lost much of its infrastructure and refined lifestyle — and far too many of its people — the country has retained its decorum.

And then this other excerpt:

Twitter users retold stories of where the stranded and homeless shared rice balls. Travelers heading north reported 10-hour car rides — with no honking. At a convenience store in one battered coastal prefecture, a store manager turned to a private electrical generator. When the generator stopped working and the cash register could no longer open, customers who had been waiting in line quietly returned their items to the shelves.

Why did these statements give me pause? Because I am not convinced, were a similar catastrophe to strike in the US, that US citizens would remain quite so civilized. Maybe I’m just jaded by the crap I see on the news…maybe I’ve heard too many rumors of people doing stupid stupid things…but I have SEEN that there is a large part of our population that cares only for themselves.

I get so sick and tired of the sense of entitlement that so many in our country seem to have. Serve ME. Give ME. Help ME.

ME, ME, ME.

Ten hour car rides with no honking? Putting items back on the shelf because the register could no longer open? Stores giving items away at discounted prices and taking a loss so that others could have the things they need? Ok, there might be some of those stories over here, but what stands out in my mind are the stories of looting; the gas station owners that hiked the price of gas when hurricanes threatened Houston and Galveston and people were forced to evacuate; the people stuck in traffic who honk and honk and honk at each other like the person at the front of the line just forgot to go. I get so frustrated when I’m on a highway and there’s an accident so lanes merge, but people in the lanes behind me as I’m merging feel entitled enough to swerve around me and get as close the the front of the merging lanes as they can.

WAIT YOUR TURN YOU IGNORANT IMBECILE!

Am I cynical? Maybe. But it’s my observation and it makes me sick.

Do I wish the US was like Japan? Probably not…the article also made mention of how the systems that cause such serenity in their society also prevent self-expression and that bloggers and social media users often remain anonymous.

Freedom of expression is one of the many values I am glad our country has. I just find myself so disappointed that, to so many, self-expression turns into self-serving entitlement.

I guess I’ll have to step off my soap-box for now…I don’t yet have the funds to start my own country.

A Late Update

Here we are, nearing the end of 2010 and, before this post, I have only made Here we are, 3 months into 2011 and I only made TWO posts all year last year…TWO. I actually started the draft of this post back at the end of November last year…so now I have to go through and make some changes and finally publish it.

I’m a bad, bad blogger…

In my defense, I’ve been pretty busy. I’m hoping, now that some things have changed in my life, that I will find more time to write. I do enjoy writing…more importantly, I enjoy being a source of entertainment (or in some cases, information).

While this post won’t be particularly entertaining, I thought I would announce on my blog a couple of things that most people who know me already know, but explain at least SOME of the scarcity of my posts.

I guess the first thing is my job…or rather my old job. After pretty much 8 years with the same company, I decided it was time to move on. That job kept me so busy so much of the time that when I DID have down time, I didn’t feel like writing.

In October last year, I started a new job. A new job with a less demanding schedule. So far, I absolutely love my new job. It’s good work…it’s challenging work…it’s fun work. I put my time in during the day, and when I leave work, I leave work. I am on an on-call rotation where 1 out of every 5 weeks I could get called if disaster strikes. Other than that, at the end of the day, I don’t worry about work anymore. I spent a few months commuting because we were getting ready to move (oh yeah, my job is in a new city). We’re now in a tiny apartment until we can sell our old house and build/buy a new one. But, the good news is, my family is with me and I have more personal time.

Speaking of personal time…I probably won’t have that much time to myself…but in a good way. In September, my wife and I finally ended our 2.5 year journey in trying to adopt when we finally adopted our son. Now, instead of an adoption journey, we have embarked on a parenthood journey. He is now 6-and-a-half months old and we’ll be finalizing the adoption in just a couple of weeks. My son is an amazing little boy and I am so blessed be able to call myself his dad.

I hope to give my blog a face-lift soon…and after that, I hope to start posting on some kind of regular schedule. In the mean time, the 10 of you who are still subscribed to my blog…thanks for not giving up on me! I’m also gonna try to make use of the WordPress app on my phone to post here and there when I have a quip I feel like sharing instead of thinking I’ll remember to do it later…cuz I never do.

Thanks for reading. I hope to hear from me soon!