Easy Pass Privacy
Jan 15th
I was listening to the radio the other day and they were talking about the Easy Pass system you see on most modern highways. The speaker was talking about some of the common things everyone knows about the easy pass system. Some of these things included it’s ease of use, how much time it can save, and the financial advantages it can provide with volume discounts. An additional topic came up which I had never thought of before: privacy.
The interviewer asked the speaker to discuss some of the privacy concerns people have with the Easy Pass system. I personally had never thought about the subject, and was very interested to hear more. The speaker explained that the Easy Pass system tracks data as it relates to each person who uses the system. Every time a user drives through an Easy Pass toll, their Easy Pass account is deducted by the appropriate amount and a record of their driving through that particular toll and that particular lane is tracked.
While I don’t personally care of ‘Big Brother’ knows where I’ve been traveling, I can see the reason for some people to be concerned. The speaker, who may have been an Easy Pass representative, said that the data is generally used to catch people who go through Easy Pass lanes with a delinquent account. Easy Pass tracks the name on the account as well as the license plate to make it easy for authorities to find toll violators. These people are then charged with passing through the toll without payment.
Personally, I am not so sure that is all Easy Pass would use the data only to find toll violators. I would say that if law enforcement went to easy pass to request toll data on a particular individual, Easy Pass would not hesitate to gather information for them.
What are your thoughts?
Distracted Driver Laws – Are They Effective?
Nov 23rd
According to this article posted on USA Today’s website, 38 states have or are in the process of enacting distracted driver laws. For the most part, the laws seem to target texting while driving. Some sates completely ban cell phone use while driving; others require the use of a hands-free device such as a Bluetooth headset while driving. There are a handful of states, too, which ban the use of cell phones by minors only while driving.
For the most part, these laws are difficult to enforce. In order to prove that a person was texting or talking on the phone while driving, the law enforcement involved (probably just town officer), would need to subpoena phone records from the driver’s cellular phone company. It is unlikely phone companies would want to give such information to law enforcement, as they would risk the customer switching to a different company out of irritation. Phone companies might also face privacy criticisms.
For the states that have an outright ban on the use of cell phones while driving, I must say that I do not agree. I believe these states are making a mistake when they ban cell phone use while driving because the phone can be used in emergency situations. What if you are driving and you see a vehicle swerving all over the road? Wouldn’t you feel safer living in a state which allowed you to pick up the phone and call for law enforcement? I know I would! While I agree that the intention is good, I believe that the difference in using voice activated commands to call someone and talking to a passenger are slim to none.
As mentioned, a handful of states ban cell phone use by minors while driving. I cannot allow myself to agree with this as it is discrimination. What if your 17 year old daughter were to be driving home from her fast food job late at night with an unidentified vehicle following her? Would you feel more comfortable if she were legally allowed to pick up the phone and call you, the parent, or law enforcement? I know that if I had a daughter, I would!
The reality is the greatest danger in cell phone usage while driving is the tapping of the keys. This does not only apply to texting but also to calling. Most people must take their eyes off the road to dial a number or send a text message, myself included. This really is a very dangerous activity and should be avoided when necessary and done with care in emergency situations.
The states which have enacted distracted driver laws have generally targeted activities which involve the use of cell phones. This is only half the story, considering that this article on drivers.com concludes that eating may be the top driving distraction. 58% of respondents admitted to driving while talking on the cell phone, whereas 65% admitted to driving and talking on the cell phone. Drivers assigned these tasks a danger rating of 3.8 and 4.0 out of 5 respectively.
Consider too, that police officers do all sorts of things while driving. Many modern patrol vehicles have a laptop mounted in the vehicle and facing the driver seat. This way, the driver can quickly and easily use his or her laptop to run a registration check, license check, communicate with dispatch, log events, and a myriad of other things. Police officers are often trying to find vehicles which are not registered or inspected, and also trying to catch speeding motorists. The officer will often look at the plate sticker and inspection sticker of every passing car in hopes to find one to catch. The instant on technology of radar units is also becoming increasingly popular. To use instant on, the officer would visually determine the speed of an oncoming car. If the officer feels the car is speeding, a button is pressed and his radar unit is activated to determine the speed of the car. The officer then checks the speed by looking on the control panel of his radar equipment. Is this not also distracted driving?
I believe that to combat distracted drivers, the answer is not to create silly laws which are difficult to enforce, but to truly show people the dangers of it. Brittan has already aired a public service announcement showing the dangers of texting while driving. Fox News Chicago aired a news story about the video, highlighting that the Secretary of State Jesse White wants the video to air in Chicago too. This, more than the enactment of laws, is the way to combat this danger. Many activists say that the video is too gory to show on TV, and You Tube has restricted viewing of the video to those over 18 years of age. The truth is that we must stop shielding our youth from this grave reality.
Dodge Ball Vs. Corning 10/11/2009
Oct 11th
Tonight Target Practice played dodge ball against Corning, a team we had played twice in the past. They put the first point on the scoreboard decimating our team on the first round. Next, we took a point to tie it up 1-1. They went on to score three additional points to make the score 1-4. With only about 5 minutes left in the game, it appeared we would not have a chance to win. With just four seconds left on the clock, we scored again to make the final score 2-4. We had 7 confirmed players, however only 5 were able to make it. Corning had 6 of their 12 member team in attendance. Had more of our players been able to make it, I believe we might have had a shot at winning. Perhaps next week will bring us more success!
Dodge Ball Vs. Staff Infection 10/05/2009
Oct 10th
On Monday October 5th, 2009 Target Practice played dodge ball at the Keene Recreational Center against Staff Infection. Unfortunately, only three members of their team showed up so they had to forfeit. We decided to still play out the game and have Nichole, one of our 5 players in attendance, play for the other team.
The game started off well, initially it was 0-1, then 1-1, then 2-1. We were thrilled! For the first time in 19 games we were the team ahead. Sadly though, that was soon erased as the other team went on to score 8 additional points to end the game at 2-9. There were some excellent catches made by our team, most notably one by Raj where he fell and caught the ball one handed. Nichole and I talked after the game and we think it might be best to just start catching instead of throwing.
Our next game is Sunday October 11th against Bunch Of Tools at 6:45PM.
DataStage Dates – An Easy Solution
Oct 10th
After spending several hours yesterday in the Transformer Stage of IBM’s DataStage 8.1, I was incredibly frustrated with the date functions. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to get the StringToDate function to work on my input file. The data was coming in a format of YYYYMMDD, but when I tried to use StringToDate([FieldName],”%yy%mm%dd”) it kept complaining of the data being in an invalid format. I was tasked with modifying three jobs in an hour and a half. It’s not a difficult task when you find something that works, but DataStage 8.1 seems to behave in a different manner than DataStage 7.5 and the old way was not allowing the job to run.
I went for a walk, picked my brain, and finally came up with a solution. Instead of using any date related functions in the stage variable portion of the transformer stage, I’d treat the data like a string. Since the data could be either a valid date (20091011) or 0, I used an if then else statement to handle the 0. If the record had a date of 0, it was set to 9999-12-31, otherwise I took the various pieces of the input string and concatenated the -’s in the date. The code for each staging variable date ended up being:
IF Len(FieldName) <> 8
THEN ‘9999-12-31′
ELSE FieldName[1,4]:’-':FieldName[5,2]:’-':FieldName[7,2]
Using DataStage’s concatenation character (:), I was able to pick apart the input string and convert it into a format of YYYY-MM-DD. At this point the data is still in string format. The len() function checks to see what the length of the input data is. Since we are dealing with data in YYYYMMDD format, any data having a length not matching 8 characters can be rejected as invalid. In the output link column, I then used the following code:
IF NOT(IsValid(”Date”,StageVariable))
THEN ‘9999-12-31′
ELSE StageVariable
This code seems to work perfectly. Say that ABCD1122 is passed. Going through the staging variable code would result in ABCD-11-22 which is an invalid date. The NOT(IsValid()) function takes care of that. Since ABCD-11-22 is not a valid date, it is converted to the default (9999-12-31) and loaded.
As you can see from the above method, we have a way to easily take the date and convert it to a proper format (YYYY-MM-DD). This can be done with any uniform input format. If the input is not uniform, it will be much more difficult if not impossible to validate the date. It is my very strong belief that you should ALWAYS be able to expect the same format for each row in the input file. If you have a record with a date in format YYYY-MM-DD, YYYYMMDD and YYMMDD, you need to go back to the developer of the input file and asked that it be cleaned up. There is no reason to pass a variety of different formats in the same column and doing so is only going to result in disaster.
Having said that, implementing this technique is rather easy. First, consult with the source file developer or take a look at the file yourself. Determine the possible values for the input and identify which format it is in. Next, validate the data and construct the input into the ideal format (YYYY-MM-DD). The IsValid function for dates ONLY accepts YYYY-MM-DD, therefore this is critical. Finally, implement the validation function in the output link. This ensures that you trap any garbage that might have been passed along.
Remote Controlled Tarantula Spider
Aug 13th
This has got to be one of the first times I’ve ever clicked on an ad on a wesbite. I was on some site on MSN when I realized that the advertising to the right hand side was showing… yes, a remote controlled SPIDER for sale. I’ve never seen anything like it! I think I’d have all kinds of fun with this sort of thing, especially at a nursing home, work, a restaurant, or my grandmother’s house.
Paddle Power 2005 Shirts – Grantham Goonies
Jun 27th
LOL. Call Tom for computer repair?
The front of the shirt, our team name for Paddle Power 2005.
I was going through some old CDs today and I found these pictures from Paddlepower 2005. These are the images I used for the T-shirt transfer. I get a real kick out of the fake sponsors, the middle initials, and the stars. Paddle Power is a 36 mile paddle down the Connecticut River to raise money for West Central Behavioral Health, with a focus on suicide prevention. It was a lot of fun in 2005 and I plan to do it again. Take a look at their website for more information about the event. In the video on the main page, you can see me paddling at 9:06.
Bad Dates Play at the Peterborough Players
Jun 17th
Last night, my grandmother and I went to “C&S night” at the Peterborough Players. We followed some directions and initially got lost. I paid for access to VZ Navigator for the day and plugged in our destination. The GPS on my phone, of course, gave us better results than the handwritten directions we had!
We arrived at about 7:45; the play was to start at 8. At the time we arrived, they hadn’t even started letting people into the playhouse. We arrived while a woman was explaining some things, and shortly thereafter we were allowed to enter. We were told the normal things like “no photography” and “please turn off your cell phones;” and since this was a dress rehearsal, the house manager (if you can call him that), explained that the set was completely finished (usually not the case for a dress rehearsal).
The play featured only one actress, a leggy brunette haired woman with blonde highlights. She was visually pleasing, and she was an exceptional actress! I was convinced only once that she had forgotten her line. Had she slipped up at any other point, she did a fantastic job hiding it. While her facial expressions, body language and overall appearance helped make the play more interesting, I did not find the play to be particularly good.
One of the things I disliked was that the actress was all by herself. While it allowed me to appreciate her exceptional acting even more, I felt that one or two more actors on the stage would have made it far more enjoyable. The entire play took place in her New York apartment, with her trying on various sexy shoes and telling a story the entire time. A few times, she even stripped down to her undergarments on stage to change. John Riley commented that this was to keep the men in the audience interested.
That’s essentially what the ENTIRE play consisted of, a story. The story of the woman’s life was interesting enough, but I just found the play a bit lacking. The women in the audience seemed to thoroughly enjoy the play. From the male perspective, John Riley said it perefectly: “You know how there are chick flicks? That was a chick play.” Had I not been with my grandmother, I would still have found the play entertaining enough to stay for the whole thing; several people, however, left at intermission.
Gym – 06/08/2009
Jun 9th
It felt great to be back at Total Fitness Zone last night! It has been a long time since I’ve done a weight workout in addition to the cardio I normally do. Last night I exercised for 47 minutes on the treadmill, burning an average of 1081 calories per hour. I varied my speed between 3.3 and 8.2, and changed the incline around.
After my cardio workout, I did bicep curls, forearm curls, bench press, tricep pressdowns, and dumbell flys. Today my body has been a bit sore, but it’s a refreshing feeling.
Hey Rusty Baker, Remember When?
Jun 9th
Rusty Baker,
I can dive into the history of my mind and remember several times where it felt good to be around you. I distinctly remember playing the video games we rented from Village Video and Reel to Real with you. We started out playing on the Nintendo, then the Super Nintendo, and finally the Nintendo 64. I remember when you and Mom first got together, the three of us would sit down in the living room and play Monopoly on the Nintendo. I don’t remember how old I was and I must not have understood what an auction was, but it was a fun time. It felt like I was part of a family to be sitting on the floor of the apartment at River St. playing and having a good old time. You and I also had lots of fun playing NFL Blitz, and had a hell of a time playing WWF Royal Rumble, laughing and joking.
I can remember, too, all of the times you would go and visit Lou and some other guy at the comic book store in Springfield. I, again, don’t remember my age but I remember you and he having conversations for what seemed like hours and I would happily browse the comic book store. All the while I’d poke around the store and look at the pictures on the comic books, admiring the shiny foiled covers of the special edition comics. This lasted for several years; and with every visit you’d buy me a comic book, or some racing cards, or a model depending on my interests at the time. It was a lot of fun and I looked forward to it, always eager to know when the next visit to the comic book store would come and always thrilled when it did. I don’t know when the visits started, but you bought me a set of Trax racing trading cards from 1991 a few years later. I also remember the comic book clerk trying to sell you the very first set of magic the gathering cards (I think this was 1995).
Somehow and somewhere along the line, this was lost. We stopped going to the comic book store together. I don’t know why, but I remember asking for a few times after that when we would go back again and we never did. I think this might have been around the same time that you got a job at the bowling alley and quit Grandma Frisby’s. This was, miraculously, also the same time we stopped eating crab legs. You started working at your Father’s on cars (supposedly) and seemed to have less time to see me and Mom. This seemed to be when the breakdown started happening. The reason? I am unsure.
When you worked at the bowling alley, you would sometimes let me come bowl. I enjoyed that so much. You actually let me use your ball and gave me a wrist guard and taught me how to do a proper four step approach. I still try to use it today, as it was what seemed to work best for me. Looking back, this reminds me of a baseball fanatic dad trying to teach his son to catch. I also would sometimes bowl with you and your friends and sit in the bar and talk with all of you. This was a lot of fun, and I always managed to learn something from the conversations. I even remember the one time you let me use your red ball. I bowled so many games that might, and ACTUALLY bowled a 234, though none of you believed me. That remains to be my highest score.
While I recall all of these good memories, I can’t help but remember some bad ones as well. There was one Christmas when I was very young (5 or 6 maybe) where you or Mom gave me a box of comic books. I Remember opening the gift, and realizing what it was. I don’t know why it was at that point, but you decided it necessary to rip the skin off of my blister on which I had a washcloth to keep it ’safe.’ I don’t know why you ever would do this to someone so young, especially on Christmas day and especially when the blister was a result of burning my thumb on something while helping you and Mom with a family dinner on Christmas eve.
I can remember the time when you and mom stopped at The Subway in Springfield on your way home from bowling or some other event. You ordered a pizza, and I really wanted a piece of it. I remember that I kept asking and asking (which I am sure was a big annoyance) and you and mom saying no. I remember asking why not and you kept saying because you can’t. The next day, there were some left over slices which you forced me to eat for lunch. I was excited until I realized that the pizza had mushrooms on it. All you had to do that night was tell me that the pizza had mushrooms and I would have kept quiet. Instead, you punished me the next day by making me eat the pizza. Little did you know, I enjoyed the pizza. When you weren’t looking, I took the mushrooms off the pizza and stuffed them into the crust. Then, once I had finished the slice, I threw the crust behind the couch.
A similar instance occurred with Honey Combs Cereal. I wanted something to eat for breakfast. I don’t know if it was due to a lack of money or other reasons, but there wasn’t much to eat in the house. I kept asking you (again I am sure quite annoying) for something to eat, and you finally fed me the cereal. Honey Combs was not my favorite cereal, especially stale. Despite my complaints about the cereal being stale, you forced me to eat it. When I couldn’t finish it because it was soggy and I was practically throwing up, you saved it in the fridge for later. It was even still in there when Mom came home; imagine now how she must have felt to know what had happened.
I can remember numerous times where you would come home from the bowling alley and go into the computer room and play Heroes of Might and Magic. You would typically enjoy a beer or four with this. I would occasionally watch as you attempted to explain to me how the game was played. This game could make you very upset sometimes, though, and I feel like you took it out on me. I remember specifically one night where I was talking with my girlfriend on the phone. It wasn’t a school night, and it was only about 11PM. I distinctly remember you asking me to get off the phone. I wanted to continue talking so I asked why you wanted me to get off the phone. You told me “because I said so.” I continued talking still, and the inevitable happened.
Angrily, you pulled the bookcase from the wall, causing the jar of pennies on top of it to fall to the floor. Coins spilled everywhere and a few books fell out of the bookcase. You then ripped the phone cord out of the wall and said something like “There! That’ll fucking teach you to listen to me.” Amazed and horrified at what I had just seen, I ran to the door and grabbed the keys to the 1989 Firebird, which was not registered nor inspected. I sprinted to the car and flung open the door with you close behind. I got the car started and was in the process of closing the door all at once when you came to the door and prevented me from closing it. You kept shouting “Shut the fucking car off. Don’t you fucking go anywhere!” “Let go or I’m dragging you I yelled!”
You persisted, as did I. I put the car in reverse and stepped on the gas. Genuinely concerned for your safety, I looked down and saw your feet being pulled under the door. I’m sure that was very painful, and for that I’m sorry. You finally let go of the car and sort of jumped away from it. I continued backing onto the street and drove to my grandparents house.
I guess that’s enough stories; I just want to say this. While you didn’t maintain contact with me (why would you, you loved football and wouldn’t even watch my games), I hope that your ‘new’ family gets to see the person you used to be. Maybe all of that was just an act? Maybe all of the bad things were just an act because you weren’t happy with the relationship?
I, for your new family, hope the later is true. I hope you hit and kicked me and called me names just because you didn’t want anything to do with my mother anymore. I hope all of the times that you made fun of me with your friends were just so you could ‘make yourself feel good’ for them. I hope all of that stuff was fake and that you’re an honest and caring person as you once were, but unfortunately i think the opposite is true. I think that YOU are a worthless piece of shit, not me.
Latest Comments