Saturday, September 05, 2009
Charleston Police Department and Community service
How many times do we call the police or have a need for their service? I would submit that our dealings with the police are relatively infrequent and most of the time when we call them it is because we need their protection or a crime has been committed against ourselves, our families, neighbor or property. No matter what the situation there is usually a need to call for the men and women of our local police department. The same goes for the fire fighters and so on and so forth.
This morning at approximately 2:30 am my son and I stopped at the Shell station at Maybank Highway and Main road to stop and use the restroom and get a drink before we headed out to my office so I could take care of some backup tasks. On the weekends we have stopped at this Shell gas station on several occasions and it is usually in the late night hours or early morning hours. Since this is one of the few establishments open on Johns Island at this time of night there is usually a patrol car there from the Charleston Police Dept. Personally I like the police presence because I feel their being there deters some wanna be knuckle heads from being stupid or causing problems. I spent 10 years in law enforcement back in Texas and I know for a fact that the business owners and store employees appreciate the "men and women of law enforcement" to hang around when they can.
When we entered the store so my son could use the restroom I noticed the officer was leaning up against the counter reading a newspaper and keeping a watchful eye on the patrons which was cool by me. For whatever reasons I did not engage the officer and maybe it was because I was tired and just wanted to get my stuff and get out of there so we could hit the road. When we left the store and got into the vehicle my son looked at me and said , " that guy was a jerk". I looked at my son and said " why do you say that son". My son said, when I walked up to the front counter to ask about using the restroom I looked at the officer and said hello. My son said his response was to ignore his effort at being courteous and to continue reading his paper. My son said that the officer also made a point to watch his every move which made him feel a little bit creeped out. My son thought that the officer just did not like teenagers and was overtly suspicious of him period. I took the time to explain to my son that the officer might be having a bad day and that typically he is probably not used to citizens being overtly nice to him.
My only concern is that the experience my son had was negative and now he may be a little bit leary of being nice to a law enforcement officer the next time. I can not tell you how many times I have been in uniform in public and have had a parent admonish their child in front of me and tell them that if they do not behave they will " tell the big bad police man standing over there " come get you. When I would see this happen I would make it a point to try and defuse the situation by saying something nice to the parent and to assure the child that people in uniform are their friends. We should want our children and young adults to seek out the services of law enforcement or any other public servant when they are in trouble. We do not want them to be running away from them or to be afraid to say them because we have instilled in them some preconceived notion that people in uniform are there to do bad things to us.
I am thinking that the officer in question would have just said howdy and acknowledged my sons attempt at being courteus and friendly that it would have gone a long way with his experience with law enforcement. Now my son thinks the guy was a jerk and he may lump everyone into the same category when he should not. As a parent who has been on both sides of the badge I will do my part to mold and shape that view point but hopefully the men and women in uniform will realize that even the smallest things they say and do can and will affect those that they serve and protect.
IMG00482.jpg
Jasper sitting on my study table next to chair
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Testing my pictures on Posterous
| While getting gas at Walmart several weeks ago I saw this dog sitting in a side compartment of a bike. He was so cute with his own goggles. | |||
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I want to illustrate my thoughts here with words and pictures
Friday was a very typical Friday for me at work. I am not sure why but Friday's are sort of like Monday's and they are both busier than I would like for them to be. Support requests seem to ebb and flow and I some times wonder if the moon cycles have anything to do with how feverish the requests become.
This last couple of months has been brutal thanks to an ongoing project to redesign and optimize our network services in such a way to provide optimal performance for all our users. So I get to juggle regular support requests along with the demands of the many redesign tasks and keeping those changes as invisible as possible to the folks that use it. Oh, and lest I forget I am also juggling 12 credits worth of studying this semester at Trident Technical College via online courses. There is no way I could work all day and then drive for an hour to get to the campus in North Charleston. That means I can study and participate online via the Internet. I am a virtual student who is fortunate enough to have 20 years of experience in the same technology I am studying about. This semester is going to be easier than the next one because most of the classes are a review of things I have already been exposed to or have studied about before on my own through self help study materials over the years.
One of the things that I love to do to unwind is to write or play Texas Holdem. I play Texas Holdem online via Facebook and I also go play at a real game with real people. I have been going to this particular place with the same group of people for the last year or so. I take my son with me because it is something that we can do together and we both enjoy it. I spend 20.00 and we both get about 5 to 6 hours of enjoyment and frustration. Justin has become quite the poker star prodigy. Justin has more free time on his hands being 14 so he plays Texas Holdem online at different websites and gets lots and lots of practice at it. He has become a student of the game while I just dabble in it to have fun. Justin says that he wants to be one of the players in the World Poker Tour or whatever it is called. I told him he needs to get a good education so he can get into a good career path where he can make lots of money so he can come up with the 10,000.00 buy in that it will take to get him into that level of play.
Yes, I know, playing a game with dice or playing cards is illegal in South Carolina. My pastor told me that he would not come bail me out of jail if I get busted because I have not shared any of my poker winnings with him. My pastor knows that I play Texas Holdem because he follows my posts on Facebook so I guess you could say that he is keeping a watchful eye on my activities. The role of the pastor keeping a watchful eye on the sheep has become a little bit easier now that the sheep do not mind blathering about their life activities on Facebook. How convenient is that pastors of America ? If you want to know what your congregations are doing in their spare time just sign up on their Facebook pages, MySpace pages or follow them in Twitter. You will know more about your church members than you really want to know and then some. Oh, and if you have members in your congregation who are not as forthcoming with their daily lives online then that should throw up a red flag for you and those people are the ones that you really need to be concerned about. They are probably the ones who are involved in all manner or shady and illegal activities. LOL.... Ok, I know that my editors from days gone by are going to wag their finger at me for using Internet Chat acronyms in my writing but guess what. This is MY BLOG and I am really not concerned about every single rule of grammar. This is my literary playground where I can blather and have fun and not worry about the 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration rule of writing. I can just write and write and write and let the words leak out of my fingers at any ole format that I want them to and just have fun doing it.
Speaking of writing , I am taking English composition 100 this semester. Most of this stuff is review because I took this same class about 29 years ago back at Henderson Junior College in Terrell Texas. It has been intersting to me to read the many responses of my much younger fellow classmates as they are reading the same articles I am and having to provide substantive repsonses for the teacher to read and critique. At first I was appalled at the fact that many of my fellow classmates struggle with basic spelling and grammar. My wife who is taking graduate courses tells me that a lot of her classmates online that participate in online discussions have no clue how to use spell check nor do they know how to formulate simple sentences or how to write susbstative responses that flow or make sense. I have always told my children that they must get the basics mastered. The basics are reading, writing and math. If you do not get the basics down at a very early age then you are missing some very critical building blocks for the rest of your education and you will struggle from there on out. Despite the fact that some of my classmates struggle with spelling and simple sentences it has been interesting to see how different people who read the same articles come up with different and varying ideas and responses to the article. It is also interesting to watch all of us writing and responding to one another in the online discussion forums. I guess it is all part of the learning experience.
On a final note this morning before I jump outta here is this. How in the world do you insert an image , picture or clip art into an article on Posterous. If there is a way or you know how to do it please reply via comments or write to me at jcmoffittatgmaildotcom (have at that you spiders) and let me in on the secret. I would like to have the ability to insert some graphics so I can illustrate my ideas and thoughts along with the words.
Have a restful, peaceful and blessed Labor Day weekend folks.
Friday, September 04, 2009
Happy Friday
Thank God it is Friday and the Labor Day weekend is here. I try to thank God every day for life and for all of the wonderful things he has put in my life and around me for my pleasure. I thank God for my health, for my family, for my job, for the things that I have. I pray for my friends who I know that struggle with depression in hopes that God will allow them to enjoy some rays of sunshine in their lives. I sometimes struggle with situational depression in which I go through moments of time where external circumstances or stupidity on my part causes me to get depressed or upset. Luckily for me I have the ability to pull myself out of the slump and try to focus on the future instead of the past. I thank God that he is in control of the bigger picture and I am not. If you think life or the world around you is messed up now, you have no clue how messed up it would be if I had the controls. I am reminded of the young lady that won American Idle not too long ago who wrote the song Jesus take the wheel. Like most of us we do not cry out to God until our lives are like the young woman in the car who is spinning out of control. That is when we are more likely to call out to God and ask him to make everything right.
I am looking forward to three days off away from work. I am very thankful that I am employed full time and I have medical benefits for my family and we live in a very nice place. One of the things that I am not to fond of about my job is the symbiotic relationship that I have with it. In other words most of you when you leave your job do not have to think about it again until you arrive again for work on Tuesday morning. I on the other hand am on call 24x7 and I can get an sms text message or an e-mail or phone call that will snap me out of my personal time back to the computer network that I manage. Luckily for me our business is not 24x7 and our locations shut down sometime between 6 pm and 8 pm for the night. That means that once I go to sleep around midnight or 1 am that I probably wont be disturbed until 7:30 am or later. This also motivates me to make sure that all of the systems I am responsible for stay well maintained and that I have monitoring in place that will notify me at the first hint of trouble so I can log in from remote and fix things quickly before anyone else is even aware of it.
Later on in September or early October we are planning to take an extended weekend and fly out to Denver Colorado to visit friends of ours. I have known these particular friends since the early 90's and I speak to them online almost every day or several times per week. My friend James has worked his way through the process of getting his private pilots license and is now able to do solo flights which means that he will be coming to visit us here in the Charleston area some time soon by flying here. How awesome is that people?
I need to pull my head out of the blogosphere and stick it back into the computer network that I am supposed to be managing and get back to work. It has been nice to drivel in here for a little bit. I love to write and to share this and that with the rest of you. I hope that you have a restful, safe and blessed weekend over the Labor Day weekend.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Tick Tock
I have four minutes, go!! Hiding in lunch room eating food and surfing Facebook and my many other social networking sites. Today has been very busy but not more so than most. I have a 1 hour project conference call at 2 pm and I am hoping that some technical wizzards that are brighter than myself can help me solve a couple of very irritating issues I am having with network latency and an application server. I am getting ready to pull out the OSI layer chart and my magnifying chart. I am looking forward to the three day weekend. I am hoping to spend some time in the great out doors and away from technology. Is that even possible for me? I can stay away from the Internet for all of 2 or 3 hours but then I start to twitching because of my desire to connect to the Net and see what all of my netcitizen friends are up to. Ok, that is my four mintues, need to close this laptop up and get back to work. See you later aligator!!
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
This and that
How fast is your propeller turning today? Mine is at about 50% today. I am staying busy but nothing I am doing is really forcing me to put my brain into afterburner. Yesterday was a difficult day for me mentally in that I found it hard to focus. Last week was the first week back to school and it was pretty brutal. I already have a job where I have to go to work all day and solve problems. When I have to go sit down and focus and think about things that I dont necessarily want to focus on it makes it harder. No matter how hard it is to focus my secondary job is to increase my knowledge and become more educated. Yes, they will teach me things that I probably will never ever use for the rest of my natural life however they will teach me things that will make me a more rounded person. Considering my physique I am not sure that I need to be more rounded but you get my drift.
I think that old age is creeping up on me because I am having the hardest time remembering "Posterous". I keep remembering it as "Proteus". I think that must be because of the movie Matrix. One of their ships was named that wasn't it ? Anyway, good thing there are bookmarks or I would never find my way back in here. I was speaking to my wife the other day and she told me that 60 is not considered old by her anymore. I looked at her and laughed and said that is because you are in your fifties yourself. Of course 60 does not appear to be old from that stand point. I guess age is relative and you are only as old as you feel. With my joints acting up like they have in the last couple of weeks I have felt like I was 70. Thanks to the marvel of modern medicine I am walking again without a lot of pain.
Currently I am scanning the network computers and servers for missing Microsoft Security patches and critical updates. I am migrating users off of one Terminal Services server onto another server that has been configured for Terminal Services. I am gearing up for an application vendor to arrive here tomorrow so we can all three put our heads together and find out why the HECK their application is running like a locomotive that fell off the tracks. I have spent considerable time over the last 2 months agonizing over this and that trying to figure out why this application runs so slowly. I have been up and down the "Please dont take my pizza away" OSI network layer trying to figure out why it is so slow. The Pizza saying is the word picture that I memorized so that I can remember each of the OSI layers. Physical, Data, Transport, Media, application. I think I have Media wrong. Oh well, it is something close to that. When data leaves one computer and travels across the network media it stars at the bottom of the layer and works its way to the top and then when it arrives at the receiving computer it works its way from top to bottom. One huge cycle that goes around and around all day long millions of times per day as data packets are thrown around on the network. Pretty amazing stuff when you think about the complexities of it all.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Happy Tuesday
It is now 12:19 am and I am still awake. I am sitting here watching Conan Obrian and wrapping up school work. I just checked one of the discussion boards and one of our students in one of our computer classes has been waiting for the book store to get some more text books. I went online and searched Ebay, Textbooks.com and Amazon and could only find the older versions of this book. How crazy is that? I tried to help this chap find the book he needs but maybe he will have more luck. Hopefully the book store will have some on back order. I am glad that I went to the bookstore when I did and got all my books. I had something weird happen tonight while doing school work. Somehow I managed to get a week ahead in two out of four classes. How the heck did I do that? I also found out that I need to pay 197.00 to register Smartdraw which is an application for drawing network designs. That price is 30 percent off of the regular price of 300.00. Oh well, I guess I know where that much will be coming out of student loan money. I better get to bed and get some sleep since I have another full day ahead of me in about 7 hours. Nite Nite
Sunday, August 30, 2009
SoundClick artist: Bob Doyle - Bob Doyle creates ambient, new age, orchestral, soundtrack, and other electronic music.
Most of the time I listen to gospel and contemporary christian music. During my exploration of Posterous I found this artist who has some awesome instrumental music.
Technology, Theology, and Anything In Between
Here are some ideas as a technology business that I’ve used in order to keep my fixed costs and expenses low. Maybe some of these will be helpful to those that read this blog.
1. If you use a dedicated server, consider a VPS or shared hosting. I was using a dedicated server, but soon found out that a VPS would work just as well for the number and kinds of customers that I have. The virtual private server allows me the same control as a dedicated server, but at a much lower cost. Some VPS packages also can be faster than a low-end dedicated server, simply because the VPS has to use much better hardware if it is split up between 4-10 users. One thing to watch out for: Make sure that page load times and database stuff doesn’t bog down.
2. VOIP. One of my recent posts covered this. The specifics here was buying a decent VOIP phone (Aastra 480i to be exact), and then using a SIP-to-Skype bridge (SIPtheeSkype). This combination allows me to use my Skype subscription for unlimited US calling, plus a inbound telephone number, for $54/year. This is much better than paying the phone company $40+/month, and with some companies, a contract is involved. DISADVANTAGE: You won’t be listed in the phone book. Considering the kinds of people that contact my business, this isn’t a problem. Who looks for a software developer in the phone book? Other VOIP providers worth looking at are Gizmo5 and RingCentral.
3. Business finance. I know the debt-averse attitudes many Christians have, but I can’t say I completely agree with them. Certainly, this economic climate which we are in is causing us to rethink our ideas about debt and savings, but debt still remains a tool for businesses to use, especially to float through hard times. My suggestion here is to find a local bank that has money to lend, and use a line of credit. Currently, my bank offered me a line of credit at 4% + prime rate, which last I checked made my interest rate 7.25%. Contrast this with Chase Manahattan, a business credit card that hiked my rates up to 14.24%. Most of my views on debt and credit are based on things I read from Gary Moore. He runs this website, Financial Seminary. My best advice with this point is look to get away from credit cards, and use bank loans and lines of credit. The APR is much better, and usually, the bank line of credit forces more payment of principal every month, so you won’t be in a debt for years.
4. Credit cards. I’m going to be accepting credit cards this year, to hopefully bring in more customers that will make small purchases. I’m going to use PayPal, which will give me better control over my costs. While the transaction and discount rates won’t be as good as a merchant account, there are no monthly minimums to worry about. Also, they have a money market account that earns 0.5% now, which isn’t great, but better than 0% in my bank checking account.
Hopefully some of these ideas will be helpful to you. We will get through this year and turn a profit!
This is an excellent article from a friend of mine that I speak with on IRC. He said it was ok to share it here.
The difference between the North and the South
A friend of mine at work shared this with me. This is one of those things that is being passed around from one mail server to the next. I thought it was good enough to share here. Enjoy!!
The difference between the North and the South - at last, clearly explained.....
The North has Bloomingdale's , the South has Dollar General . The North has coffee houses, the South has Waffle Houses . The North has dating services, the South has family reunions. The North has switchblade knives; the South has .45's The North has double last names; the South has double first names. The North has Indy car races; The South has stock car races . North has Cream of Wheat , the South has grits. The North has green salads, the South has collard greens . The North has lobsters, the South has crawfish . The North has the rust belt; the South has the Bible Belt . FOR NORTHERNERS MOVING SOUTH . . .... In the South : --If you run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a tow chain will be along shortly. Don't try to help them, just stay out of their way. This is what they live for. Don't be surprised to find movie rentals and bait in the same store.... Do not buy food at this store. Remember, 'Yall' is singular, 'all yall' is plural, and 'all yall's' is plural possessive. (NO apostrophies ( ' ) either) Get used to hearing 'You ain't from round here, are ya?' Save all manner of bacon grease. You will be instructed later on how to use it. Don't be worried at not understanding what people are saying. They can't understand you either. The first Southern statement to creep into a transplanted Northerner's vocabulary is the adjective 'big'ol,' truck or 'big'ol' boy. Most Northerners begin their Sou thern-influenced dialect this way. All of them are in denial about it. The proper pronunciation you learned in school is no longer proper . Be advised that 'He needed killin..' is a valid defense here. If you hear a Southerner exclaim, 'Hey, yall watch this,' you should stay out of the way. These are likely to be the last words he'll ever say. If there is the prediction of the slightest chance of even the smallest accumulation of snow, your presence is required at the local grocery store. It doesn't matter whether you need anything or not. You just have to go there. Do not be surprised to find that 10-year olds own their own shotguns, they are proficient marksmen, and their mammas taught them how to aim. In the South, we have found that the best way to grow a lush green lawn is to pour gravel on it and call it a driveway. AND REMEMBER: If you do settle in the South and bear children, don't think we will accept them as Southerners. After all, if the cat had kittens in the oven, we ain't gonna call 'em biscuits. Send this to four people that ain't related to you, and I reckon your life will turn into a country music song 'fore you know it. Your kin would get a kick out of it too!
Good morning Lowcountry
I am happy to announce that my sleep cycle seems to have magically repaired itself. I stayed up until 2 am this morning watching Sons of Anarchy and talking with my IRC friends. I was able to go to sleep and get some sleep for about 7 hours. It feels nice to be awake and not all dopey feeling. It is important that I recharge my batteries with work and school putting a huge demand on my ability to think correctly.
Week one of school is over and for that I am thankful. I am also thankful that I was able to find some semblance of organization and I did not get stuck studying for 7 days straight. Everything seems to be due on Sundays and this last week most of my assignments were done by Friday morning. That means that on the weekend I will have a little bit of free time to do something fun.
This week will be another busy week at work as I work with our software vendor to fix the network latency our users are experiencing when using their software. I am in the midst of slowly and methodically making changes to optimize how well the network runs. When I say network I mean that we making changes at different layers. At the physical layer we moved one of the servers over to a 1 GB pipe when it was at 10/100. We offloaded DNS services off of the application server and we completely disabled WINS on the network since we do not have any Win9x boxes that require it. We off loaded Terminal Services off of the application server and moved that over to a different server. We have Net Observer running on the application server trying to determine where the bottleneck is. The application in question uses a flat file database and does not require SQL or Oracle to run which is sort of maddening since there are no transactional issues to look at.
Moving back to the home front my wife and I must be over the hill if we are sitting here drinking coffee and comparing the size of our horse pills that we have to take to manage certain health related issues such as blood pressure or mental equillibrium. Better living through chemicals is better than not living at all I guess.
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