Cheerful Curmudgeon

I got a frantic email from a friend this week. One of his subcontractors went crazy and trashed several of my friend’s clients’ web sites as well as my friend’s own business site. The police have been involved but much damage has already been done. I wish I had been hosting my friend’s sites. Had I been, I could have recovered everything from backups. As it is, all I could do was sit by and fume, wishing that his hosting company had had something to offer him in the way of assistance.

I know my friend’s pain. In the 30 years that I have been doing system administration, there have been numerous times when my own bacon has been saved by backups. I have been struck by the dread BUOD error (Bad User On Device) in which a glitch sitting between the chair and the keyboard has made the computer do all kinds of hideous deeds. The worst, early in my career, idled a team of a dozen programmers for three days. Why three full days? You guessed it: no backups. At the other end of the spectrum, a member of my team recently trashed a critical configuration file on one of our servers. This, however, resulted in no downtime; we simply grabbed a copy from the backups and continued on our merry ways.

If you accidentally delete a file from your web site (or, in my friend’s case, all of the files), can you recover it? Does your hosting company provide backups and, if so, can  you recover files from their backup? In many cases, hosting companies’ backups are only for their use in cases of disk drive failure.

My company offers one (excellent, in my opinion) solution, Nest Egg Backup for Web Servers. There are many other alternatives. Do choose and implement one. When you go comparison shopping, ask the key question: How long are the backups retained? If only for one night, that means that your window of opportunity is extremely limited. If you delete a file at 10:00pm and wait until 8:00am to try to get it back, you are out of luck. You should have at least three days of retention, preferably more, preferably a lot more. Thirty days can give you a nice warm, fuzzy feeling of safety and security.

Lesson of the day: Back up your hosting accounts! And be sure to include everything (email folders, MySQL databases, PHP config files, etc. etc. etc.) The day disaster strikes is a day too late to start backing stuff up.

I just read a shocking article in the paper about a newly available intoxicant. It starts on the front page and continues for almost the entirety of page A8. That’s a lot of words for our local rag. Here are a few quotes so you can understand why so many people are concerned:

The clerk at the… shop called it a “slow night” Thursday but a steady stream of customer filed in to purchase [it]…. During one hour, 16 people purchased [it].

and

One of the customers Thursday night was Jeff Jacobs, a 50-year-old former Chrysler worker from Afton.

and

[Tom Neer, St. Charles County Sheriff,] said some people report it gives them a high, while others say it makes them dizzy or gives them a headache. “I have a concern about the product if it is determined that it can alter a person’s senses,” Neer said. “You get someone using it behind the wheel and it impairs their driving. Certainly, I’m concerned about it.”

Sounds like alcohol, no?

The article continues:

State Rep. Ward Frans, R-151st District, sponsored a bill that would place [it] on the state’s list of controlled substances. Possession would become a felony, Franz said.

Well it sure can’t be alcohol if the state is about to outlaw it.

But what’s going on here? Someone comes up with a new intoxicant and our government’s response is to make it illegal. The effects sound just like alcohol, which is legal. Is our government protecting us from a dangerous drug or from the need to take personal responsibility for what we put into our bodies? Is our government shielding us from the responsibility for our actions, regardless of what we put into our bodies?

What are the criteria for deciding to create another law? When was the last time that anyone, anywhere examined those criteria and held a frank discussion on whether or not our society is well served by them?

I know that many of you like to play the games on Facebook. That’s definitely cool. What isn’t cool is when you get ripped off for real money in the process.

Examples Of Scams:

A typical scam: users are offered in game currency in exchange for filling out an IQ survey. Four simple questions are asked. The answers are irrelevant. When the user gets to the last question they are told their results will be text messaged to them. They are asked to enter in their mobile phone number, and are texted a pin code to enter on the quiz. Once they’ve done that, they’ve just subscribed to a $9.99/month subscription. Tatto Media is the company at the very end of the line on most mobile scams, and they flow it up through Offerpal, SuperRewards and others to the game developers.

As you can see in the image below, nothing in the offer says that the user will be billed $10/month forever for a useless service.

Another scam: Video Professor. Users are offered in game currency if they sign up to receive a free learning CD from Video Professor. The user is told they pay nothing except a $10 shipping charge. But the fine print, on a different page from checkout, tells them they are really getting a whole set of CDs and will be billed $189.95 unless they return them. Most users never return them because they don’t know about the extra charge. Woot. Again, sites like Offerpal and SuperRewards flow these offers through to game developers. See here for more on the Video Professor scam.

Of course, there’s no mention of any of these payments in the offer itself.

You can read the rest in the Washington Post’s article, Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell. Y’all be careful out there!

The reactions to the mid-air collision last month between an airplane and a helicopter over the Hudson River in New York City have me thinking about safety in airplanes and safety in cars. For those unfamiliar with the details, just before noon on August 8, a six person airplane and an eight person helicopter came together in the air over the Hudson River; the nine people on board the two aircraft died in the ensuing crash. This was a terrible tragedy and my heart goes out to the families and friends of the nine people who lost their lives.

Immediately (as in, within a couple of hours) after the accident, the calls-to-action to improve safety in the “VFR corridor,” the name of the airspace where the collision occurred, began. These calls took many forms, from the sensational TV news reporters and politicians who demanded that the VFR corridor be closed and the helicopter tourist business be shuttered to the FAA which convened a New York Airspace Working Group panel to review everything from airspace structure to pilot training to air traffic controller practices. The focus has been on safety much more than on blame, and that’s a good thing.

Compare this to the common reaction to a driving accident: If the accident is big enough to make the news, the key reporting points are a) what happened, and b) who caused it or blame. Rarely do we react to an automotive accident with an urgent need to prevent future accidents in the same place and of the same type. We may well get to this point, of course, but only after several accidents have happened. A city might install a traffic light at an intersection, for instance, but only after several accidents have occurred at the intersection.

According to the Air Safety Foundation, the August 8 collision was the first accident of this type (airplane and helicopter) over the Hudson River in ten years. It may well have been the only accident ever. What is the cultural difference between flying and driving that we demand safer flying, even after a single accident, yet we accept car accidents as the daily norm?

Pilots place safety first. The Federal Aviation Regulations stipulate biennial “flight reviews,” essentially flying tests, by FAA certificated flight instructors. Fail the review and you don’t fly until you get some training and are “passed” by the flight instructor. Beyond that, the flying culture strongly encourage all pilots to participate in on-going training such as the FAA’s WINGS Pilot Proficiency Program. This, in turn, builds on the assumptions that none of us are perfect and that all of us can learn from others’ mistakes and can become better, safer pilots. We actively seek out and study stories of bad situations, not to assess blame but to learn and improve our skills. Even more to the point, most of us regularly fly with a safety pilot, asking the safety pilot to critique our performance. I try to get up once a month, though it is sometimes as infrequently as every three or four months, with either Jack or Linda. On these flights, I expect them to be vocal with me about anything I do that is less than perfect. Some of the training is during the flight; some during a debriefing afterwards. I always come away from these flights having learned valuable lessons.

We act differently with our cars, though. Most of us are deeply offended if anyone suggests that we might need to take either a written test or a driving test when renewing our driver’s license. We never volunteer for recurrent training on driving. One of the best ways to make a friend angry is to suggest that he or she do something differently while driving. Why? I think because driving is more important to us, on a personal level, than safety. We judge that we are “safe enough” that we don’t need to stress about driving safely any more. What is most important is that we preserve our “right” to drive, pretty much at any cost.

I think our priorities are a little mixed up and I have a suggestion. First, bear with my while I share a few figures with you.

• In 2005, 43,510 people died in the US in fatal car crashes.
• That same year, another 2,699,000 people were injured in the US in car crashes.
• In 2005, the latest year for which the NTSB reports aviation statistics, 563 people died in the US in fatal aviation accidents.
• That same year, another 723 people were injured in US aviation accidents.

Consider again our reactions as a society to aircraft accidents and to traffic accidents. Now take it to a personal level: How do you react to aviation accidents versus fatal car crashes? Are your reactions congruent with the numbers of people killed and injured in each type of accident?

Here is my suggestion to improve traffic safety, to reduce the number of deaths and injuries.

1. I’m not a perfect driver. Join me in admitting that you aren’t perfect, either.
2. Get a friend to act as your safety driver for an hour. Go drive around. As you drive, talk to your safety driver about what you are seeing, what you are thinking, and how you are making your decisions. Invite your safety driver to give you constructive criticism on how you might improve your driving.

It’s that simple. Imagine how many fewer people would die if we took driving safety as seriously as we  take flying safety.

This just in from the Alliance for Aviation Across America:

The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security recently released a report that dispels many of the myths about the security of general aviation.

In the report, DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner stated that “Although [TSA's Office of Intelligence] has identified potential threats, it has concluded that most [general aviation] aircraft are too light to inflict significant damage, and has not identified specific imminent threats from [general aviation] aircraft.”

Recognizing the great steps the aviation industry has already taken to keep our airports and airways safe, the Inspector General continued that “The current status of [general aviation] operations does not present a serious homeland security vulnerability requiring TSA to increase regulatory oversight of the industry.”

Click here to read the full story in GovExec.

Perhaps now DHS will stop treating small plane owners and pilots like we are inherently more dangerous than the people who own and drive trucks, minivans, and cars.

I like to feel safe and I like to know that my family is safe. I would wager that you do, too. John Goekler has written a crystal clear piece in CounterPunch, The Most Dangerous Person in the World?, which highlights the risks to our lives. Some snippets:

A significant majority of Americans… list terrorism as one of their greatest fears. Like most of our media-inspired interests and worries, however, this one has little basis in reality. In actual fact, unless you’re serving in a war zone, the most dangerous person you’re ever likely to encounter – by several orders of magnitude – is the one you see in the mirror every morning.

and

The single greatest killer of Americans is the so-called “lifestyle disease”. Somewhere between half a million and a million of us get a short ride in a long hearse every year because of smoking, lousy diets, parking our bodies in front of the TV instead of operating them, and downing yet another six pack and / or tequila popper.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, between 310,000 and 580,000 of us will commit suicide by cigarette this year. Another 260,000 to 470,000 will go in the ground due to poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. And some 85,000 of us will drink to our own departure.

After the person in the mirror, the next most dangerous individual we’re ever likely to encounter is one in a white coat. Something like 200,000 of us will experience “cessation of life” due to medical errors – botched procedures, mis-prescribed drugs and “nosocomial infections”. (The really nasty ones you get from treatment in a hospital or healthcare service unit.)

Goekler’s article is a delight to read but if you are impatient or like numbers (like me), here are the Cliff’s notes: Read the rest of this entry »

Julie Pukelis put a camera in front of a telescope to get this view of the scene in the river.

As I am sure you know by now, a US Airways A320 ditched into the Hudson River this afternoon, just minutes after departing from LaGuardia Airport. The accident appears to have been caused by multiple bird strikes. It is truly amazing that the simplest things, from ice to birds, can bring down our most promising machines despite our best efforts.

But, and this is huge, unlike that fateful night in 1912, today everybody lived. It looks like everybody got out of the plane to safety due to the exemplary work of the pilots, the crew, the mechanics, and the people who designed and built the plane and its safety gear.

Did you realize that the US airlines did not suffer a single passenger fatality in a crash in either 2007 or 2008? This is the first time since the airlines began flying jets, 50 years ago, that two consecutive years have passed this safely. So the next time you fly, or see an airplane, or think about someone who is flying, send some appreciative energy to the men and women who make aviation safe, the

• Pilots
• Crew
• Mechanics
• Air traffic controllers
• Designers
• Builders
• Managers

Safety is no accident.

I have ranted about our national paranoia before. We are still paranoid and it still bothers me. Over the last few days, I have read about:

• AirTran Airways ejected nine people from a flight (including two women and three children, ages 7, 4, and 2) because two of the men in the group discussed the proximity of their seats to the engines.
• Amtrak police arrested photographer Duane Kerzic for refusing to delete pictures he had taken of Amtrak trains. Kerzic took the photos while standing on the public platform of New York’s Penn Station. He was trying to enter Amtrak’s own Picture Our Train photo contest.

AirTran has since apologized to the people who were removed from the flight and given them full refunds. Amtrak has changed Kerzic’s arrest charge to trespassing.

We all know the old joke: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. As a society, we seem to have taken this to heart… and it is wrecking our quality of life. Our paranoia is making people miserable while neither saving lives nor improving safety. If we want to keep people alive, to improve the level of safety in our lives, we are working way to hard in much the wrong areas.

Here is one example. I am quite sure that you can think of dozens more.

In 2001, just 2,976 Americans died from the terrorist attack using airliners. I say “just,” though this is a terrible trajedy, because 17,448 people died from alcohol related traffic fatalities in the same year. Worse, the drunk driving deaths go on year after year after year: 17,419 more people in 2002; 17,013 people in 2003; 16,694 died in 2004; 16,885 in 2005; and 16,005 in 2006.

That’s about 101,000 dead from drunk drivers and about 3,000 dead from maniacs in airplanes.

What the heck are we doing? How can anyone, in good conscience, profess that all of this paranoia is about saving lives?

The beginning of the new year is a good time for resolutions. Let’s resolve to set aside our paranoia and turn our attention and our resources to things which can actually make our lives better. We live in a bountiful world, courtesy of a loving G-d and the the loving attentions of our fellow human beings. Let’s enjoy it.

I know what I am going to dress up as tonight. A Halloween costume so scary that my wife will be upset that I am wearing it in public. I am going to wear a disguise so socially unacceptable that three entire school districts will close for a day to assure they their students do not come anywhere near these creatures.

I am going to dress up as a voting United States citizen.

Yup; you read that right. I am going to dress up as a voter because voters are so potentially dangerous that several school districts (Ft. Zumwalt, Francis Howell, and Wentzville) have canceled classes on election day, November 4. I blogged about this last February, in Paranoia is Not Safety. Since then, I forgot about it, figuring that this was so ridiculous that nothing would come of it. Wrong!

When I look around my county, I see students coming into contact with voters all over the place all the time: in stores, in shopping malls, at movie theaters, on sidewalks, at public libraries, in public parks, etc. Of course, no one recognizes these voters as the predators that they are because 364 days of the year, the voters are cleverly disguised as ordinary people including trustworthy neighbors. Thank goodness that for one day of the year, all of these perpetrators are unmasked and gather at polling places so that we can keep our children away from them.

Someone should make a list of all of these voters. If it is not safe to let our children be in the same building with them on November 4, I cannot imagine how it would magically become safe on November 5. If any of the school teachers, administrators, and support staff happen to vote, by no means should they be allowed back into the schools the day after election day. Someone should also check for 18 year old voters who are still enrolled in high school, a particularly pernicious bunch. These heinous fiends intermingle with teenagers on a daily basis and might never be spotted if we do not catch them at the ballot box.

Here are a few tidbits from “Several Schools to Close on Election Day,” published in the Suburban Journal, October 29, 2008, page C1. I cannot link to the article because it did not appear in the on-line edition of the paper.

Fort Zumwalt School District Superintendent Bernard DuBray said,

They’re expecting a huge turnout. We’re concerned with that kind of turnout about the security in the building, so it just made sense to close the schools.

What kind of turnout is that, Dr. DuBray? Do voters become a marauding pack above a certain critical mass? Is there evidence of such behavior? Has it been observed in the wild?

Rich Chrismer, director of elections for St. Charles County responded to phone calls from people “wondering why he would allow strangers to vote in a school building” by getting the superintendents “to agree to shut down their schools on November 4.” Mr. Chrismer, did you ever think to point out that these voters are not strangers? Did you mention that the voters are people who live within the same voting district as the school? Did you tell the callers that these voters live in the same neighborhoods as the kids who attend the schools?

[Added 11/4/08] I sent a copy of this posting to Dr. DuBray. He was kind enough to reply and point out that the newspaper misreported this item. All of his schools are closed on election day. The make-up day is Friday, November 7. It gets more absurd: The same Dr. DuBray who decided that voters are too dangerous also decided that they are not too dangerous if the students have already missed a day of school recently. Some of the Ft. Zumwalt schools will hold classes on November 4 because they had been closed on October 9 and those students need to make up the day. Are the voters dangerous or not, Dr. DuBray?

This foolishness will not stop until we citizens, that would be you and me, loudly voice our opinions. We deal a hard blow to our children and ourselves and our country when we pretend that students need to be physically separated from American citizens exercising the right to vote.

I love the inconvenience of airport security. The fact that I am paying for the privilege of being inconvenienced, in lieu of having my security enhanced, makes the whole experience all the more charming. Recently, Jeffrey Goldberg took all of these goodies through airport security at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Read Goldberg’s entire article on airport security at The Atlantic’s web site.