How did it get so late? It’s 9 a.m. and today’s post has not been posted. The computer has been a bit sluggish so I spent a while running DiskWarrior and searching for any problems that could be fixed. Nothing major found, just some housekeeping sorts of things. Hopefully all is well now.
On the state of the blog–These were the basic site statistics for July 2008:
Unique visitors= 8,719
Visits= 26,639
Page views= 106,258
Total bandwidth= 13.35 GB
Visits and page views were the highest recorded in any month to date, although not by too much.
Tucked away in an Advertiser news brief on Saturday, below the item on human remains found in Kalihi, was a report that Carol Philips, a candidate for the state House, was arrested last week and charged with violating a temporary restraining order.
Philips yesterday said the situation involves a past acquaintance, whom she declined to identify, who is harassing her. Philips said she and the man had taken out restraining orders on each other.
Philips said the man forged an e-mail to make it appear that she was harassing him, and that she will pursue a complaint to law enforcement agencies regarding the falsified e-mail.
“Had the Honolulu Police Department made any attempt to verify the authenticity of the e-mail the arrest would not have taken place,” Philips said in a written statement.
Philips is one of two Republicans running against North Shore rep Michael Magaoay. In 2006, she lost to Magaoay by less than 200 votes.
Crosscut.com, a great Northwest news source, has a good story detailing the latest on the Seattle Times’ financial struggles, in which the future of the newspaper is now dependent on success in unloading its newspapers in Maine.
A New York Times story on the case of the 2001 anthrax attacks notes the dangers of proliferation of biological warfare labs, such as the one planned in Honolulu.
And Congressional investigators recently warned that the proliferation of biodefense research laboratories presents real threats, too.
More people in more places handling toxic agents create more opportunities for an accident or intentional misuse by an insider, Keith Rhodes, an investigator with the Government Accountability Office, said at a Congressional hearing in October.
Nationwide, an estimated 14,000 people work at about 400 laboratories and have permission to work with so-called select agents, which could be used in a bioterror attack, although not all are authorized to handle the most toxic substances, like anthrax. With so many people involved, there is insufficient federal oversight of biodefense facilities to make sure the laboratories follow security rules and report accidents that might threaten lab workers or lead to a release that might endanger the public, Mr. Rhodes testified.
If we have trouble maintaining security systems in our prisons, and keeping up with critical maintenance at the University of Hawaii, how are we going to maintain the extremely high standards needed to protect the public and employees at the “biocontainment” lab planned in Kakaako?
From the Green front, here’s some info Meda received from a friend of a friend regarding use of biodiesel in our Jetta:
Biodiesel is a full spec diesel fuel made from veggie oil. Veggie oil in it’s raw form can be used as fuel but only if a conversion is done on the car which heats the oil before it hits the njectors. This will only work in certain cars. Most people out there will sell these conversion kits for any diesel car and not tell thier customer about the risk. It’s often said you can convert the veggie oil (biodiesel), or convert the car. Biodiesel users have very few problems assuming the fuel is good.
Straight veggie oil people have constant problems because modern fuel injection systems are not meant to handle the thick oil. The oil also forms harmful deposits in the engine. Biodiesel however is a great lubricant solvent and helps the engine run better & quiter. SVO works best on old Mercedes or trucks. Anything with a electronic fuel system will have issues with SVO.
You simply cannot run an 05 VW on Biodiesel or Veggie Oil assuming it’s the newer Pump Duese engine. This is very unfortunate because it’s such a great car. A topic of much debate and many damaged engines. This engine and some newer Mercedes engines are the only diesel engines in the world known to have problems with biodiesel.
You would never run one of these on straight veggie oil. It’s too nice of a car and too many people have already done the reasearch. The fuel injection system in that car is thousands of dollars to replace.
I’m pretty sure this new pump duese engine came out in 2005 or possibly at the end of 2004. There are people who do it, but it’s common knowledge that problems will occur because of the the fuel delivery system. VW only produced this engine for 1.5 years before realizing they made a mistake. The engine is a really great engine, it just has no tolerance for biofuels.
This goes for biodiesel or straight veggie oil. Biodiesel works great in a 99-04 but doing straight veggie oil in any capicity will not work in these cars either. Again, there are people who do it, but
only out of ignorance. The fuel system cannot handle SVO and it will major problems at some point
down the line. A tdi mechanic would cringe if you told him you were running straight veggie oil. The most desirable tdi engine for biodiesel is the 99-04.Another guideline people go buy is how much your car is worth? It’s never recommend to “experiment” on nice, newer late model cars, it’s just not worth it. The 99-04 VW’s have stood the test of time with biodiesel, I used to have a nice Jetta and drove 35,000 miles on Biodiesel. I personally would not run any car worth more than $5K on SVO.
They’re back! It’s fishing time again in Kaaawa as swarms of people gather in the shallow water to find the swarms of little silver fish.
It’s an annual affair. Here’s a link to the photo I posted last year at about this same time of the summer.
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what are your thoughts, if any, on the rex johnson scandal?
Much ado about nothing, in my opinion. Granted, if Johnson was spending hours every day surfing porn sites while he was supposed to be working, that would be one thing.
But if he used the state computer to send out racy e-mails to his buddies from time to time; well, no big deal in my book.
I look at it this way. How many of us use company resources such as the phone for personal business? Or maybe run off a copy of a recipe someone in the office has? Or check our personal e-mail on the office computer?
I would daresay it’s the majority of us. What’s the difference between that and what Johnson did?
It’s the x-rated stuff that makes it titillating but the crux of the issue is misusing state resources.
If all of us had to quit because we used company resources for personal use, I would guess it would mean mass resignations across the state.
do you think he’ll be forced to resign?
stagnant, no idea. But if the logic is that anyone who uses state equipment for personal use should resign, then that would be a high bar, indeed.
well, i think there’s a difference between sending an e-mail to your mom via your government computer and forwarding porn to your baseball buddies. and to say that the latter is okay is using the old “boys will be boys” reasoning.
Both are not “okay” and there is a difference but it’s all relative stuff, no?
Say you send a few risque e-mails to your buddy during work. That’s frowned upon, no doubt.
But say you run a side business on E-Bay during work on your computer that takes two or three hours of your time during your work day. That’s not only frowned upon, that would probably result in your dismissal.
In my mind, it’s no so much the content (barring criminal activity, of course) than the amount of “abuse” of state equipment.
Put another way. If you make one copy on the office copier that would be one thing. If you ran off 5000 copies, that would quite another.
Without knowing the details of Johnson’s trangressions, it’s hard to opine what would be an appropriate punishment.
i see your point, but i don’t think porn is appropriate in the workplace… say Johnson is sitting at his computer looking at an x-rated e-mail, and his female employees walk in. doesn’t that, obliquely, rate as sexual harassment? especially in his position as president and CEO?
I think we’re straying off the main point. As far as I know, Johnson is not being accused of sexual harassment. Besides, for argument’s sake, if the x-rated e-mail is all text, it’s very difficult for any employee to claim harassment. After all, you’d have to sit down and read the screen and then be appropriately offended, I suppose.
So, yes, porn is not appropriate in the workplace. I don’t know anyone advocating otherwise.
But, again, (and this will be my last post on this since it’s already repetitive), my main point is that this is about using state equipment inappropriately; i.e., for personal use. There’s a whole lot of activities (not just porn) that falls under this category.
In general, all employers, not just government, either discourage or outright ban using their equipment for personal use. Period.