Digital Choke Daynotes

"Daynotes" are popularized by a Internet Web site called the "Daynotes Gang" (www.daynotes.com or www.daynotes.org), a collection of the daily technical and personal observations from the famous and others. That group started on September 29, 1999, and has grown to an interesting collection of individuals. Readers are invited and encouraged to visit those sites for other interesting daily journals.

Rather than be a couch potato until the grandkids come (there's that 'grandfather' word again), I decided to goof around with the decorations around these pages. How does it look on your end? Your comments are appreciated.

The design is based on the "Digital Choke" story (available here), but without the frames. The story itself is about what led up to a massive crash of the Internet, who was behind it, and how 'our hero' found out about it and fixed it. It may be fictional, but there is some basis in fact. Witness the problems the Internet had with the "Slammer/Sapphire" worm a couple of weeks ago. We all think of the Internet as being fairly resilient, but that particular worm did some major damage to connections, both public and private. The "Digital Choke" story takes those events, along with other Internet problems, and weaves a somewhat plausible story about the results.

It was an interesting journey to write, and you might find it a bit interesting to read. Just remember that it is a first fictional attempt, so there may be a few narrative holes in the story. Comments from those who have already read the story are mostly positive. And there is a way for you, the reader, to 'participate' in the story. All of this is explained in the story's site; your comments, as always, are appreciated.

The news about the space shuttle is sad, of course. These pioneers are brave men and women. One would hope that space exploration will continue. Jerry Pournelle, noted science fiction author, has many thoughts on space exploration, all are worth a reading. (Look for his entries starting 2-1-03.)

Today is bright and sunny, about 60(F), with just a bit of a breeze. Visibility is probably near 100 miles. Not like the weather of other Daynoters, some of whom have probably shoveled a bit of snow this weekend. Of course, some of the Daynoters are in different hemispheres, and Dan Seto is in Hawaii, where the weather is always pleasant. So, I think that I'll take a short walk and enjoy the nice day, and then enjoy the grandkids when they arrive.

Under the weather ... no post today.

"Back in the saddle again"....

I have a condition called 'lone atrial fibrillation', which means that occasionally my heart starts beating erratically, sometimes at a very fast rate (fibrillates), and sometimes at a slower rate. I've had this for a number of years, and take a Beta Blocker and Digoxin daily to help keep the ticker ticking at a normal rate.

Yesterday was one of those days. This one was just the irregular beat: beats skip, or are not evenly spaced. The result is that you get a bit tired during the episode. And it takes about 8-12 hours for the heart to decide to get back into a normal rhythm. In the meantime, you don't feel like doing anything.

There are several potential causes for this: an enlarged heart, thyroid problems, heart valve problems, electrical problems with the 'heartbeat generator'. Diagnosis steps include EKG's, echo-cardiograms (a 'sonar' image of the heart beating), and various blood tests. I had all those when this first started several years ago, and there was no specific cause found. So, I've been taking the meds daily, and patiently waiting for each episode to finish.

In the past, these episodes have happened about every 3-4 months. Lately, it's been every 4-6 weeks. So, as it was time for a physical anyway, I headed to the doctor today.

We decided it was time for the above tests again to see if anything has changed since the last time. And, the next time it happens, I get to zip on down to the ER to get an EKG. I might also get a monitor thing -- you strap the device to your belt, and you wear it for a while, and it records your heart information.

In the meantime, it's no fun. It does have a tendency to get you worried about your mortality, although the condition is not normally life-threatening. And there are some other meds you can take, but they have some side-effects problems, and are usually prescribed for people older than me.

And, along with the other tests and 'skin inspection' (for bad moles and stuff), I got to have a check of the old prostate. A really fun task, and that's all that I need to say about that. The doctor also said that it might be time for a PSA test, and even a more visual (camera-probing) look at that area. What fun.

On to another subject: today was our second teleworking committee meeting. We still hashing out the details of the new corporate policy. But we hope to have a first working draft in two meetings. This is all assuming that there is some high-level support for the new changes that will have to be made. And some parts of the new policy will require the teleworker's department to cough up some money for a computer dedicated to business use.

Some think that it might be OK for a person to use their home computer to access the company's network. Although we require a VPN connection, it's not too secure if you have the home computer connected to your corporate network. Lots of vulnerabilities there. My feeling is that if the dept thinks that the person needs to work at home, the dept needs to provide them with the appropriate tools, just as they do at the work office. If that includes a computer and firewall, then so be it. We don't allow people to bring their home computer to work and plug it into the network. That's too scary. And if you connect from home through a VPN connection, that's essentially what you are doing. Not a good practice. Lots of issues to fix up, but we are making progress.

Still tweaking the anti-spam server settings. It's still in a passive mode, looking at every message and seeing if a blocking rule would be applied to that message, but delivering the message anyway. In the meantime, I get a blind carbon copy of all potentially offensive messages, and get to look at them to see if there are some that should have been let through the rule. A few of them are false positive, but perhaps only 1-2% of the total. So, I look at those, and decide how to tweak the rule to let the good ones through, while still blocking the bad ones.

Some of the stuff is very personal, or very graphic (but not as much graphic stuff as you would think). But there are some people in the company that use the company's email system to send very private and descriptive messages to their close friends (of the opposite sex, or even the same sex). People don't realize how public email messages can be. My rule is that if it's a message my boss (or spouse or mother) wouldn't want to see (or I wouldn't want them to see), it's not appropriate to send via email.

My lovely spouse just returned from the bookstore, where she picked up a copy of the "2600" magazine I haven't read yet. So, I think I'll glance through that until '24' starts. New episode tonight. Good show, I'm hooked on it.

"There is nothing to see here." Zork I

"There is nothing to see here." Zork I

"There is nothing to see here." Zork I

Digital Choke Daynotes