top o' the mornin'®

[earendel]

A mixed bag over the last few days...

1. On Friday I got a frantic call from my office telling me that the DoD Chief Information Officer had handed down a decree prohibiting the use of "smart" drives on government computers, effective immediately. Evidently there was concern about a virus that was circulating and might be introduced into the government networks via such drives. In a classic case of bad timing our office had just purchased 45 such drives to use to backup our computer files prior to the "great refresh" that takes place starting December 1. Since people have files too big to put onto CD (mostly e-mail archives) and our district network isn't large enough to handle everyone trying to put their files on a secure server, we're scrambling for ideas as to what to do. Of course the backup is just a precaution - our "most efficient organization" assures us that nothing will go wrong in the "great refresh"; the files from the old computer will simply be transferred to the new one.

2. On Sunday we celebrated our grandson's first birthday. It was an awkward situation - our son had the party at his apartment, which he shares with our grandson's mother and her parents even though there is no "relationship" between them any longer (I believe I've chronicled that little saga already). Caden, in typical fashion, decided he preferred to wear the cake rather than eat it; elwing has some shots of him bedecked in cake and icing.

[Bob Juch]

Actually all external media devices are banned. That's probably a good idea even if you don't worry about worms.

[earendel]

Actually all external media devices are banned. That's probably a good idea even if you don't worry about worms.

The jury is still out on some external devices, or so we've been informed, but it's likely to end up being a full ban, for the time being at least. The security issues are on both sides - fear that someone might introduce a worm or virus into the system through an external device or that such a device, containing sensitive information, might be lost or stolen. As to the latter, supposedly all external media used by the government are encrypted so that the data can't be used. As to the former it seems as if it would be easy enough to write a program that would run a security scan on the external device whenever it's plugged into the computer. And that may end up being what happens - such external media are far too useful for the government to try and get along without them.

[peacock2121]

2. On Sunday we celebrated our grandson's first birthday. It was an awkward situation - our son had the party at his apartment, which he shares with our grandson's mother and her parents even though there is no "relationship" between them any longer (I believe I've chronicled that little saga already). Caden, in typical fashion, decided he preferred to wear the cake rather than eat it; elwing has some shots of him bedecked in cake and icing.

There continues to be new and different arrangments for families to live together. I love that they are trying something to keep both parents in Caden's life. I hope the awkward can become 'the way it is' and everyone finds a level of normalcy.

[earendel]

2. On Sunday we celebrated our grandson's first birthday. It was an awkward situation - our son had the party at his apartment, which he shares with our grandson's mother and her parents even though there is no "relationship" between them any longer (I believe I've chronicled that little saga already). Caden, in typical fashion, decided he preferred to wear the cake rather than eat it; elwing has some shots of him bedecked in cake and icing.

There continues to be new and different arrangments for families to live together. I love that they are trying something to keep both parents in Caden's life. I hope the awkward can become 'the way it is' and everyone finds a level of normalcy.

Unfortunately it isn't being done in Caden's best interest. As the situation goes, Samantha (Caden's mother) abandoned my son and grandson (and her daughter by another man) in order to go back to an old boyfriend who had just gotten out of prison. She would still be with him except that he was living with his parents and when he was re-arrested for new crimes, his mother threw Samantha out, so she came back to my son.