I'm waiting for Sam The Cooking Guy to show me how to make one at home... but better! (Hint: one slice of Havarti in the middle.)

As if they needed the help...

So far, I haven't gotten Covid despite attending 4 large conferences in the last year (2 of which turned out to be super-spreader events). I attribute this good fortune to wearing a mask any time I felt uncomfortable with the crowd, washing my hands frequently, judicious use of sanitizer, keeping distance where I could, and most important, having all my jabs (I like the UK term for the boosters). I'm not in a rush to get this one, but I'll definitely be in line when it comes available.

One of my favorites. I can't listen to Right Said Fred without picturing Ernest Borgnine.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go wax my lobby, if you get my meaning.

According to the article, they're having NIST prepare the standards and controls, with a 5-year refresh. If this was the legislators coming up with standards, as they did with HIPAA, I think it would be doomed to fail. But NIST knows their stuff - the controls in Special Publication 800-53 rev 4 are pretty solid, and come with mappings for low, moderate and high security situations. Like FedRAMP for cloud providers, this will become a bar for entry into the public sector, and at this point, it has the potential for being a good one.

I've written code in PERL, Python, C (just plain C, none of your fancy C+#^ stuff, you young whippersnappers), Java, and REXX that was used to support business processes in production. But honestly, I wouldn't say I know any of those languages - if I don't have a reference available, I'm lost. I "know" those languages like someone with a pocket phrasebook "knows" a foreign language.

All roads lead to bigotry, scatological humor, and sex.

Because taken as a whole, the Internet is a 12-year-old boy who has no filters, wants to see boobies, and thinks fart jokes are hilarious.

Just like college...

Things that cause Edge to run poorly would be redundant.

This is fairly common in the US for public sector workers as well. We're paid according to a published scale, so an IT Professional, level 4, in the position 6 years, makes whatever the scale says, period. Everyone's classification, grade and step is published in the state employee directory (in the interests of open government). Hell, there's even a site that publishes our W-2 earnings information every year.

Comes in handy, though. Whenever I hear someone talking about how overpaid government workers are, I point them to that site. Shuts them up quick.

Yeah, Microsoft definitely needs to be concerned about losing market share with end users. Why, if this trend continues, they may fall below 80% of all desktops worldwide!

But in all seriousness, this is taking niche marketing to a new level. I mean, "Spring Creators Update"? What about people who create other things, like shock absorbers or U-joints? What's so special about folks who create springs, for crying out loud?

Anytime someone says they support strong encryption but want to be able to bypass whenever they have the need, my head wants to explode. Any bypass, back door or master key, no matter how well designed, perfectly implemented, or zealously protected, fundamentally weakens the encryption they claim to support. If a way around the encryption exists, someone will find and exploit it. Pure and simple.

I'm all for law enforcement being able to do their job. But I'm also all for strong encryption - my job in information security depends on it, and the sensitive information of millions of people would be at risk without it. Encryption is a tool, like a hammer: people with bad intent can use it to build harm as well as upstanding citizens can use it to build good. I'm sorry, but law enforcement needs to find another way to get to those nails, rather than make hammers defective for everyone.

I mean, really.

First of all, a UFO is nothing more than a flying object that's unidentified. That's it. Once we know what it is, it's identified, an IFO. So the list of circumstances where something is a UFO is pretty short.
"Hey, what's that flying thing?" "I dunno." - UFO
"Hey, what's that flying thing?" "A bird." - IFO
"Hey, what's that flying thing?" "A plane." - IFO
"Hey, what's that flying thing?" "Massive alien craft filled with beings bent on the destruction of human civilization." - IFO

Secondly, to quote the great Douglas Adams, "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." And most of it is empty, especially in our galactic neighborhood, being as we are on one of the outer spiral arms instead of the densely populated galactic core. So the odds of an alien civilization that's way more advanced than us (having developed interstellar space flight, presumably using some form of relativistic or FTL drive) choosing to come to this corner of the galaxy and buzzing our little blue dot are pretty slim. Not "Browns winning the Superbowl next year" slim, but real close.

So, most UFOs are likely to be mundane, Earthly objects that the observer just can't identify. Some of them look cool as they scoot around our field of vision. Some of them may actually be craft from other planets, in which case, we need to ask them "Dudes, what's with all the anal probes?"

But when it comes down to it, aren't there a lot more pressing problems we should be spending our time and energy on?

Working for a state government, it's not unusual for folks to talk openly about their retirement plans a few years in advance. I just had one of my staff retire; he provided the necessary paperwork 8 months before the date, and began training his interim replacement 2-3 months before he left. It was very orderly, which I appreciated. But it's also in state law that a permanent state employee can't be exited or summarily dismissed without going through a progressive discipline process; private sector mileage may vary.

You're the best judge of how your bosses will react to this situation. I know I would appreciate the heads up and the time to train your replacement, but that's me. Others might want to rush you out the door, or view you ask a risk to walk at any given moment. How has your management reacted to similar situations in the past? How comfortable are you talking about things like this with your boss? Or his/her boss, and on up the chain?

If you're unsure of how this will be greeted but still want to "do the right thing for the company", one thing you can do now is document the crap out of what you're doing. Put down every little trick or shortcut you've discovered, every nuance to the job, every piece of institutional knowledge you can think of. Then, talk to them, and if they decide to show you the door, you can rest easy in your retirement that you treated them better than they treated you.

If a single piece of dust can spoil your "First!" post, don't you think that's kind of a problem?