Post Con Crud

I was in California for the past week attending Pantheacon.  I now have one of the worst colds I’ve had in a long time.  Which is one of the reasons I hate to fly.  Flying is basically agreeing to sit in a huge hollow petri dish with wings for 5 hours.   

Tags: cold, flying, pantheacon

Why I Love My Employees

I’m a small business owner.  I’m the CEO of Purple Squirrel Group.  We use a number of Wikis internally to collaborate on various projects, capture our collective knowledge and since we’re small and don’t have an operations manual, to document company policies and procedures.  (By the way, we use Trac for this.  It’s open source and a great tool!)  On one of the internal Wiki pages, everyone in the company has a personal page with a little bio, notes, etc.  Today I was looking at the Wiki and noticed that my page had been edited.  Here’s what it says now:

Julian

CEO: Noun meaning a very lifelike robot. British. Generally an unfeeling bastard but usually friendly enough.

I love my employees.  They’re so creative. 

Tags: entrepreneurship, purple squirrel group, small business

Creepy Ads: Is It Just Me?

Is it just me or is anyone else completely creeped out by the weird little dancing figures in the lowermybills.com ads on sites like weather.com?  It’s almost made weather.com unusable for me because they’re distracting and well…just plain creepy.  The one in particular has curved legs that just looks like something from a horror movie.  Awful!

Tags: , creepy ads, dancing ads

Paypal Sent Me the Mark of the Beast

I’ve had a Paypal premium account for many years now. In fact, I signed up for Paypal when they were so new that if you signed up on a referral you and your friend got $5. I have a premium account because I sell online. One of the features of the Paypal premium account is that you can get a debit card. This debit card can be used to spend your Paypal balance. Recently, they added a bank account as a “back-up fund” for the debit card. I decided to use this feature and occassionally use the Paypal debit card for small purchases.

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Tags: business requirements, credit card security code, itunes, paypal

Pseudo-science and “Disinformation”

Recently on an email list focused on New Age spirituality, someone posted a link to this article about the “dangers” of sunscreen.  Before I get into this too much, let me say that it’s obvious that just by the fact that I read New Age spirituality lists I don’t require scientific proof of everything.  Especially when it comes to religion or spirituality, I’m open-minded because science can’t really provide proof either way.  What I’m constantly amazed about though is people who have it in their heads that the medical profession is involved in some kind of conspiracy to kill each and every one of us while bleeding us dry financially (that last half may be true, at least in the US anyway).  No amount of legitimate scientific study or proof will convince them otherwise. 

So back to this sunscreen thing.  This article states that the benefit of sunscreen is a myth manufactured by the companies that sell sunscreens to create a demand for their products. 

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Tags: cancer, debunking pseudo-science, irresponsible reporting

If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Sue ‘Em

This morning Groklaw reported that Barracuda Networks was asking for the assistance of the FOSS community in finding prior art to challenge a patent held by Trend Micro.  It seems that Trend Micro has filed suit against Barracuda claiming that their use of an open source package, ClamAV, violates one of Trend Micro’s patents. 

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Tags: barracuda networks, clamav, Open Source, patent litigation, Software Patents, trend micro

Those Who Cannot Do, Teach

About 2 years ago, I got the brilliant idea that I should go back to school and finish my Bachelor’s degree.  At the time, I decided that a degree in some area of IT was warranted.  After looking around, I settled on Franklin University, a local school with online classes.

I lasted a semester before I withdrew.  I found the classes to be overly simplistic.  I was also infuriated that every major was required to take a class called Global Cultures.  The catalog for Franklin described this class as discussing issues relevant to increasing globalization and a growing global economy.  What I got for my almost $1,000 (the cost of a single class at Franklin) was at best an 8th grade level social studies class.  Disgusted, I gave up on Franklin.  I wanted a degree sure but for the kind of money it would take, I actually wanted to learn something too. 

Well, as it turns out, my adventures with Franklin don’t stop there. (more…)

Tags: data breaches, franklin university, information security, it security