First of all, sorry for the delay in posts. My last post covering my weekend Delhi sightseeing trip took longer than I thought. Today I thought I would share some pictures of my new apartment. Although I lived the life of luxury during the first week, E&Y demonstrated it’s true commitment to “smart spending” by putting me up in the Unitech Apartment. The apartment is part of a huge complex of maybe six 11-story buildings. Our apartment, on the second floor, has four rooms with separate bathrooms, a family room, kitchen, and dining area. I’m currently sharing the apartment with one other TSRS rotator from the national office who is scheduled to leave next week. However, since we both head straight to our rooms after getting home it’s really not an issue. Oh, we also have a caretaker – Shivla – that lives in the apartment and cooks, cleans, and takes care of the place. Although we’ve only eaten at home once, it is kind of nice to have someone make my bed in the morning and give me a bottle of cold water when I walk in the door at night.
Last Monday morning at 6:30am I went to the hospital to have my foot rebuilt. The doctors had a plan to fix the main problem, a Tarsal Coalition, as well as a number of other problems that I had or would have as a result of the surgery. The surgery lasted 4 hours but it took me another 3 hours to come out of the anesthesia-induced coma I was in, so I missed the de-brief the doctor gave my wife. He did eventually give me a few of the details, mentioning that they made a few incisions and threw in some screws, but it wasn’t until today that I realized what had actually happened.
Today was my first post-operative appointment with my doctor to check on the healing of the incisions and to make sure my foot hadn’t become infected and fallen off. The cast technician removed the temporary plaster cast that was put on immediately after surgery and I was shocked at what I saw… Frankenfoot. The doctors made two long incisions on each side of my foot in order to place two screws and some wire to fuse some bones, cut off pieces of a few bones, and place a piece of bone into another like a shunt. They also made a small incision in my heel where they places a large screw through most of my ankle to help stabilize it. And finally they made a medium-sized incision at the back of my foot where they cut some of the tendon to try and improve my flexibility and mobility.
So yesterday I was innocently walking around with a swollen foot, but today I learned the truth about… Frankenfoot! Since there was no infection in the incision, they replaced the heavy plaster open-faced cast for a pink fiberglass one (so I could match Kendall’s last cast). We’ll wait until next week to take out the two dozen staples and re-cast… something I’m really looking forward to!
I’ll admit it – the Internet scares me. But not in the way it scares other people.
Most other people afraid of the Internet are afraid for one of the following reasons:
It’s new and unfamiliar (where’s the send button again??)
There is too much violence, pornography, etc.
Big Brother is spying on me
Hackers are stealing my information as we speak
None of that scares me. In fact, I believe with the right parenting, my kids will grow up to be “Internet experts” and be able to avoid the Internet slums, sidestep Phishing schemes, and find the truth among the millions of splogs.
Nope, none of that scares me. The people behind the Internet scare me.
And I’m not talking about the tinfoil hat wearers who claim that there’s a secret society of rich oil tycoons who run the Internet only to spy and steal from you. I’m not even talking about the ISPs who throttle your bandwidth and refuse to let you use Bittorrent or even stream IP TV at an acceptable speed.
I’m talking about the normal people behind personal websites, blogs, Usenet groups, and forums. These are scary people. They’re scary for a number of reasons:
1. The Internet feeds their anonymity – If nobody has to see your face, or even know who you are, you’re more likely to say things you wouldn’t normally say. Your local forum member battlestargalacticafreak can say whatever he wants online because he’s sitting at home safe and sound in his Lazy-Boy eating a hot pocket. If you don’t like what he has to say you can send a nasty email, but in the end he doesn’t care because you don’t know who he is, where he lives, and can never do anything about it. This power of anonymity makes people inconsiderate, rude, mean, and scary – when they might normally be very nice people. battlestargalacticafreak might even be the nice 15 year-old boy who mows your lawns on Saturday… but online he can throw out rude comments, profanities, or even threats and never care.
2. Your information isn’t as secure as you’d like – It’s always a little unnerving to receive an email with the subject “WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE NOW!” I made a decision a long time ago not to hide my identity online. When I blog or post to forums, it’s with my real name. And anyone with some decent Google skills could probably find out more information about me.
3. Law enforcement is unprepared – My favorite example of this is one of my own. After writing a blog post about a local MLM company and warning my readers about the dangers of MLMs, I began to receive threats. At first the threats were mildly funny, with mention of my mental retardation and obvious lack of intelligence. However, when the threats started to involve my life and the life of my family, I decided to get the local police involved. I presented them with printouts of the emails containing the death threats, and even provided them IP addresses of those that had written the emails and commented on the site. What did they do? Nothing.
At first I was upset that the police weren’t doing anything to help me out. But after thinking about the situation, I can’t really blame them – they’re just uneducated and unprepared to deal with Internet “crime.” We read stories every day about cyber-bullying or cyber-stalking, but those stories usually only emerge after someone has been hurt or after a physical altercation has taken place. There’s usually no action taken on the threat because “it’s just an email.” And even with the right information (like IP addresses) the Police often have no idea what to do with it. Sure, if someone really wanted to keep their identity a secret they could (enter TOR), but most people making online threats are doing so from their home computer. And a quick phone call to Comcast could provide them with a home address. The police need to be informed and trained in how to deal with Internet crimes, before they become “real crimes.” It would be interesting to see some statistics on how many “real” crimes began with online threats or other online actions.
I believe the longer you spend online the more you realize what kind of “power” the people behind the internet have. And when you begin contributing or participating in a specific niche of people, such as I do through my blogging, you begin to tap a very passionate group of users. And for some unknown reason (at least to me) their passion knows no bounds. With some twisted belief that the internet will keep them safe people believe they can say whatever they want without recourse, and without a thought as to what that does to actual people.
I believe it was Dvorak (John C. that is) who told a story about a rude commenter on his blog. The person had written some rude or nasty comments with the belief that nobody would do anything. However, John sent a quick email to the person introducing himself and asking him why he was so rude… and the person’s tone changed completely. He was so surprised that John had called him on his rude behavior that he was immediately apologetic and took back everything he had said.
After hearing that story I often wonder what would happen if I tracked down all the people who track me down and showed up at their door and explained to their mom that their 27 year-old son living in the basement spent all day saying things he wouldn’t ever say to another person face to face. Hmmm…
You’d think it would be easy to maintain a personal blog right? You just write about, well, personal stuff. How hard can it be?
My problem is that I like to compartmentalize my life too much. I like to keep my work life separate from my family life, and keep my tech/blogging life separate from it all. This is why I own a dozen different sites, and try and keep them all updated with different facets of my life. My family site houses mostly family pictures for friends and relatives to see, my blog contains posts about my financial and accounting interests, and a few other random sites are maintained as experiments or just for fun. I also keep up a journal for my personal stuff – so what’s left for the personal blog?
I don’t want to get too personal because anyone could read it, including friends, family, or even potential employers. I don’t want to post too much family-related content because that’s what the family site is for. And I don’t want to write about personal finance because that’s what the blog is for.
Are you starting to see the picture? Is this the place I write about the latest episode of Lost? Or maybe my thoughts on politics and why I’m disappointed in California voters? Maybe I’ve spread myself too thin. One part of me thinks maybe everything should be a branch of one large site – a sort of Jason media conglomerate. But then the other part of myself laughs at the fact that I’m even having this conversation with myself. Who else but the nerdiest of the nerds has this problem? It’s definitely time for bed…
Any other parent who reads this blog will understand my reasons behind throwing together KinderQuotes.com. My kids, like most, say the funniest, cutest, or most embarrassing things throughout the day. Sometimes it’s funny because they’re learning to master this silly language we call English. Sometimes they try to mimic my wife and I and spout off adult-like language from their little three year-old mouths. But many times my wife and I have turned to each other and said, “we should write that down.”
Enter KinderQuotes.com. We created the blog to help us jot down those funny, cute, and embarrassing quotes in a way we can share with friends, family, and the web in general. However, we’ve also set up a contact form that anyone can use to submit their favorite quote.
So if you’re looking for a daily dose of childish humor, check out KinderQuotes.com, and be sure to tell us your favorite quotes!
I’ve always thought that the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) is a joke. Nothing makes me more upset that being strip-searched by an overweight, underpaid, and rude TSA “officer” who believes by tube of toothpaste is an elaborate scheme to blow up a plane. (Yes, I do realize that the last sentence will put me on the watch list)
I wasn’t surprised then, that a man allegedly circumvented security Friday at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina.
And by “circumventing security” I mean that he walked past security. The official word from the TSA is:
It’s too soon to say whether there was malicious intent or whether it was someone who was confused.
The incident, of course, caused problems for passengers as planes were searched and passengers de-boarded. The man was never found, but my guess is that he got on his plane, flew to Minnesota (or wherever he was going) then drove home and went to bed.
But it doesn’t really matter, does it? I mean, a guy walks past the crack-pot squad of security and they’re worried about me talking off my shoes! In my opinion, there’s a much better way to spend the billions of dollars that go into the TSA…
I wasn’t able to catch Maxed Out in theaters, but you can be certain that I’ll be buying this one on DVD. After all of the trailers I’ve watched and reviews I’ve read, every person in America should be watching this documentary.
It was only a few months ago that I changed the design of JasonGuthrie.net, but I am already tired of it – so it’s time for a new outfit!
Not only is this a new look and feel for the site, but the main focus is going to be this blog. Although I am still actively blogging at BeancounterBlog.com as well as The Apple Blog, I’ve needed a place lately where I can put my “random” thoughts down.
So now I’ll be able to write about everything from my thoughts on politics to my feelings about this week’s episode of The Office. But the best part about this new blog is the fact that I’m writing it for myself, so I don’t really care about who reads it. I don’t have to worry about search-engine optimization (SEO) or advertising, because this blog is for me. I’ll be able to practice my writing skills and talk about things that I really want to – and at the same time avoid studying for the CPA exam
Last Monday morning at 6:30am I went to the hospital to have my foot rebuilt. The doctors had a plan to fix the main problem, a Tarsal Coalition, as well as a number of other problems that I had or would have as a result of the surgery. The surgery lasted 4 hours but it took me another 3 hours to come out of the anesthesia-induced coma I was in, so I missed the de-brief the doctor gave my wife. He did eventually give me a few of the details, mentioning that they made a few incisions and threw in some screws, but it wasn’t until today that I realized what had actually happened.
