Halloween war zone

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air, americans, banner, bed, bomb, brave, bravery, celebrated, celebrating, creation, creep, dawn, destroy, encompass, endure, evil, fight, firecrackers, fireworks, flag, fourth of july, free, freedom, gallantly, gleaming, halloween, human, july, kid, light, lives, meaning, money, neighbourhood, night, noise, people, perilous, ramparts, rocket, rooftop, screen, shooting star, sky, society, sounds, spangled banner, star, star-spangled, states, streaming, strength, stripes, substance, thinking, twilight, warzone, world

It was Halloween last night and we were once again having to endure the sounds of a war zone late into the night. It is hard to believe that people have so much money to spend on such a vast display of celebrating evil. These are no small puffs of firecrackers such as I had when I was a kid, but bursting bombs that shake the ground and then light up the sky like stars just above the rooftops. I can’t imagine the cost of that momentary delight. Like so much in our society and world, nothing has meaning or substance to last longer than a shooting star. What is the worth of the short-lived disposable creations of humans, of thoughts and words that evaporate into the mist of noise on a brightly lit screen?

So I went to bed last night thinking about how the neighbourhood fireworks remind me of The Star Spangled Banner:

Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

(Note: This is only the first verse. There are several more.)

I could remember most of it from when I was living in the States as a kid. The parts that really stuck-out in my mind where the ‘rockets,’ ‘bombs bursting,’ ‘Gave proof… flag was still there’ and ‘…land of the free… home of the brave.’ It is a song of great strength. This is why Americans have fireworks on the Fourth of July. I suppose what fireworks could mean on Halloween is freedom from the evils celebrated on that particular night and throughout the year, along with bravery to endure and stand up against all evil.

We are in a war zone where evil seeks to encompass our lives and to eventually destroy us. We can turn the tables on evil by altering the meanings of that which seeks to creep into every aspect of our lives, spreading and celebrating evil. A good example is to consider the fireworks as a celebration of freedom and bravery over evil, just as the Americans do on the Fourth of July.

An update that is long overdue

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I was sitting in my car waiting for my wifey and got playing around with my iPhone camera.

I shall take a moment to explain why I have not been posting much on my blogs for quite some time. I use a program on my Mac called MacJournal to do writing every morning—actually four days a week. It is just free writing to keep the writing juices flowing. When I was trying to write my book and not finding the time to move it along, I found that an hour a day of just writing at the same time of day in the same place got the book done. I would sit down and write. Sometimes I would look at my book chapters and get into working on one. I found that I could comfortably write between 700 and 1300 words in one hour. If I did not finish it, I would do it the next day. It made for good short chapters in the book. I also gained a lot of writing that I want to eventually get on my blogs and in another book. I take portions of my free writing and repurpose them for articles that can be put on my blogs.

So what happened? One day realized that I needed to make sure all my blog material has tags. Tags are used to make searching for topics easier and for search engines to find articles. I had not been diligent in tagging everything. I began to go through all my WordPress entries on myBobLog to fill in all the tags. I am still working on that in my spare time. I have posts on myBobLog that I want to transfer to my Technojungle Project blog. I will get to that one day. What really caused a halt to my posting on the blogs is that, for some reason, the tags I was entering in MacJournal were no longer transferring to my WordPress blogs. I tried to copy and paste them manually to the Tags field in WordPress, but that did not work.

So began a long and arduous trek working with the folks at WordPress and particularly with Dan the developer of MacJournal. He has me on his beta testing program and we have been working on my issue for months. Then Jeremey at WordPress posted a screencast of how he was doing his tags. Dan also asked a couple of key questions. Last night, I tried something that I noticed in the screencast and something that Dan’s questions twigged in my mind. I actually tried clicking or tabbing or hitting return to exit the Tags field in MacJournal. I discovered that all three of those tiny steps will make the tags transfer successful. Now I am ready to go again and have plenty of material already written or ready to write about. The problem now is that, many other projects in my life are also on the move, so my time is limited. I’ll get to it all in good time. There is no rush. It is nice to know that a huge problem was solved with a tiny solution. Now isn’t that an amazing thought.

Sometimes our huge problems and issues in life can be resolved with a tiny solution that may well be right under our nose. It’s that tiny thing that has the huge impact. This is important to keep in mind when we start to fret, get anxious, or become frustrated over an obstacle in our life. It might just take a tiny action to resolve. So calm down and look around, you just might find a tiny action that might have a huge and significant impact on your issue or problem.

In the coming weeks and months, watch for new content on my blogs. I will also have more regular news about my upcoming book that is now going through rigorous editing processes; more photography (as I find time to get better organized); news about my new writing, photography, graphics and publishing business called inFocus; and I’ll share about my musical adventures. Whew, that is a lot going on. Right now, I must move on to editing my book today, that is, as soon as I enter tags for this initially short bit of writing.

At the Apple Store again

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apple, apple store, busy, chaotic, common sense, company, customization, decision, device, environment, free, machine, mall, math, price point, product, profit, profitable, retail, service, shopping, square footage, training, transfer, troubleshoot, upgrade, younger generation

I was at the Apple Store again today so my son could buy a new computer for his first year of university. Don’t get me wrong, I have been using Apple computers for going on 25 years, but, I hate the Apple Store. Again I stood there and said to myself, for a company that builds and sells such elegant devices and has such elegant simple stores, the experience of shopping can only be described as chaotic. At least that is how it looks and feels to me. Yet somehow, they do provide pretty good service in such a situation. To me, it defies common sense, but, it is not the sort of experience I enjoy. Perhaps this is the way of the younger generation.

It was not long before I had to leave because it was just too ‘busy.’ I went out in the mall and looked back. It seemed to me that there were almost as many blue-shirted Apple employees in the store as there were customers and they were providing a lot of services, many free. They will show you the products, help you make a decision, then sell the product to you, fulfill your order, make upgrades and customizations as ordered, help you set up and transfer your files from and older machine, provide training and troubleshoot problems that you may be experiencing. All this for products that usually don’t have the profit price point that other types of products do. Yes, one pays more, however, Apple set the bar high in terms of quality.

I can remember when Apple was planning to open their first store. Some folks were doing a bit of math and wondered how it could be profitable to pay the square footage for the location and the employees. Somehow, Apple has been able to pull it off and do more than many retail outlets in the services they can provide.

Shopping at an Apple Store is an experience, however, if I knew little about computers or the Apple products, I would find it difficult to learn in such an environment. The experience perplexes me. Perhaps I just getting old.

Security Issues

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I think I will pass on trying to win the iPhone. It is another sign-up gimmick to get information about me, if only an E-mail address. Even without trying, I seem to get subscribed to lists, almost as fast as I can unsubscribe. It is hard to know how I get on all these lists. Not only is it annoying, but eventually, more personal information gets out and soon one can face identity theft. iPhone apps that ask you to establish an account on some fly-by-night company server, are notorious. I delete those sorts of apps.

Someone I know sent me a notification about an iPhone contest through Facebook. When I clicked on the link in the E-mail message, I was asked to login to my FB account. When I tried, I received a notification of suspected unauthorized activity on my account. Someone was trying to login from somewhere in the U.S. So, I had to go through a verification and had to reset my password. I did this and then went back to the link in the E-mail. I got the same notice and had to do the reset again. Finally, I got everything sorted out and then had to spend a lot of time making my account more secure. If I still have problems, I am going to get rid of my Facebook account. I don’t use it much, find it annoying and it is simply not very elegant, in my opinion.

You may think that I am being a bit paranoid, but, recently, someone did send a message to most of my few Facebook friends with a link in it. It was a harmless link to a Google page. It could have been a link to anything, including a script that might be destructive.

There are few contests where something is given away for nothing. They want a contact and you can be sure they are going to do something with it. One does not have to look hard to find instances of people’s personal information being compromised. Most of the major instances, such as with cyber bank theft, seldom get publicized. Society would lose confidence in the financial system and that would never do. There is simply too much at stake, too much money involved.

Even when I try to keep a low profile, I still have to deal with a few compromises each year–MasterCard, Facebook… It is happening more often and I know, most of the time, I never hear about the compromise or know what is really happening.

As kids, we used to run about the neighborhood as we pleased, mostly. Today, parents are very careful about this. Kids do not run free. We need to be just as careful with our personal information and identity. Anyone who has lost valuable items in a break-in robbery knows the feeling of violation and loss. The cherished items are gone for good. Just consider how it would feel to have all your money and or your identity stolen. How about the time lost dealing with unwanted E-mails, securing your information and other annoyments of various sorts. Isn’t this some sort of personal attack?

I could go on about digital packet sniffing software that can monitor and sift all your digital transactions, from E-mails to websites, sending that information to a stranger. For $50 one can purchase a small scanning device that, when passed in close proximity, can scan the chip cards in your wallet. Where is the security in all this new technology? Whether we surrender it through a gimmick contest, or other means that interests us, or are scanned, or by any other method, there are people out there who want your personal information. For sure, they will do anything to get it.

There is an old saying, “trust everyone, but, always cut the cards.”