Twas The Night After Christmas . . .

When throughout the whole Linode house, all was peaceful and nothing stirred, not even a disk overflow alarm . . .

When suddenly there was a big blizzard of bits flowing in from all directions of the universe!

With a loud clatter and a loud hiss!

The massive shower of bits and bytes, like the Niagra falls, fell upon the little Linode House! And the NOC awoke with a shatter!

"Gandy! Rudolf! Silence the alarms! What is going on!": Santa, the NOC lead engineer cried.

And then a soft melody could be faintly heard through the clatter. A choir of carolers singing outside the Linode data center's massive security gates . . .

Silent Night
Traffic is Light
We don't see any thing here but blowing snowflakes
To us, all this Internet data is about as worthless as the snowflakes on Christmas Eve!
We the great Choir of Anonymous must sing to all the children of the Inernet!

Put down your mice and drop your tablets! Come and sing with us on this Christmas Eve!

Will we end up with the same issues regarding finances, hosting, and sponsorships? Will we end up with cities and states shelling out big bucks for empty promises and artists being sued for using anything closely resembling the logos in their artwork?

Folks; I've had it with the hype. Lets all wait until it gets to the dollar houses. Here in Portland, Oregon, it will most likely arrive at the Laurelhurst Theater sometime in February/March for $4.00 and no 1/2 hour of commercials :)

Maybe certificate wallpaper, but fabric wallpaper? No way! I saw some silk wall covering that was north of $150.00 per square yard :)

Folks: Maine has been doing this since 1976. The Central Maine Medical Center, Saint Marys Hospital, Maine General, and Eastern Main Medical Center got connected together via a terrestrial microwave network that was developed by a Maine television visionary named Robert Cowen. Bob worked with both the University of Maine television network as well as by boss at the time (WCBB TV's chief engineer Roland Disjardins. I was one of the transmission engineers who had helped put this together at the WCBB TV transmitter site in Litchfield, Maine.

It's interesting that just about all of us who worked on this project were also amateur radio operators and much of the technology was born from our skills we gained through the hobby of amateur radio. By the way, I am WA1SEY. If any of you went to WPI, I was active in their ham radio club W1YK.

All this long before the Internet was even a faint dream in our eyes.

Goodwill here in Portland gave me a clear plastic slipcover for a sofa for free. I transformed it into a full length hooded clear plastic raincoat that lets my beauty shine in the rain! Clear Plastic Slipcover For A Man Hardware Hack

May I ask that you please leave your phone locked up at home before you leave for the event? I personally find that this saves from a lot of grief. Being monitoried is only one of them.

The biggest for me is losing my darn phone. About 50 percent of the time I take my phone from home, I either lose it or nearly lose it.

And I 'HATE' having my phone ring when I am on my bicycle or in the bus. Let the darn thing ring at home and then take the message.

Yes. I am old fashioned. 62 Years old, but enjoying it!

Sorry folks, but prototype and laboratory work has to be done on the premises.

You don't want to be responsible for x * $1000 dollars worth of company equipment at home.

Let me tell you a story. I had to work home my mom's home for two weeks because she needed care. The company let me bring one lab prototype home so I can get a critical patch written and tested on a device driver. All was fine and dandy until the cat nearly got tangled in the wires. Fortunately, I had to be very watchful when I had that prototype out. I ended up unplugging everything and putting the prototype into a cat-proof cabinet when I was not actually sitting at the table. This slowed down progress.

Also, what about dangers? What if my prototype used high voltages and the cat gets zapped or worse. My mom had some memory problems at the time. What if she accidently touched the prototype while I was tested and she gets zapped.

No. Please do you lab work at the company lab. Too many things can go crazy at home!

As you know, these engines are jettisoned to the sea to be picked up by specially equipped ships.

In this case, just let it be jettisoned into the sea.

The mermaids and the Rhine Maidens will use the rocket to rocket around in their oceanic world!

Heck, my sexual fetishes don't have to be hacked from the Great And Powerful SF86. They are right there on clearplastic.com

Well they did do something quite well. They put on glitzy press conferences. That is the one thing.

The SKYWARN network that is involved with tracking storms, I was told, is also largelyl volunteer driven. It uses a network of amateur radio operators as storm spotters.

This friend speaks my words. My mother (who did not have dementia) was in hospice in a nursing home. There was a woman who had dementia down the hall about 10 rooms away from my mother's room. We heard her angry outbursts throughout the entire L shaped floor.

Folks:

Please let me for a moment play devils advocate.

I know that many of you will respectfully disagree, but I must . . .

These 'evil' corporations you see are required to maximize the return for their shareholders. A corporation is for its shareholders. Not the employees. Not the customers. Not the public.

The shareholders elect the board of directors. The board of directors know that if they do not put the interests of the shareholders up front (by legal means), then they will suffer the consequences. Board members can be sued. Of particular ugliness is the so-called derivitive lawsuit whereupon a shareholder can act on behalf of the corporation and sue the board because they feel that the corporation is injured by the director's actions.

I came close to being a defendant of a derivitive lawsuit once. It was at a non-profit. It was thrown out, but it got very scary!

The structure of the corporation where the shareholders are of the ultimate authority forces them to maximize profits by using all legal means. If that means using H1B workers, then so be it.