Friday, January 30, 2009
All Summer Long
I had to add this song to my play list. It is the perfect mix of Werewolves of London and Sweet Home Alabama, and really is Kid Rock at his best. Since it's release I crank the radio whenever it comes on much to the chagrin of the other people in the car. It reminds me so much of the summer after I graduated. My oldest wanted to know what we were drinking, smoking, and doing by the lake at night. hahahahaha Told her to mind her own business, it isn't what she thinks. The making love, no, but I do have to admit there were a few great NCMOs going on. To be 18 and carefree again?!?! Well, no thanks, been there done that, but this song does make me feel pretty young again. Singing Sweet Home Alabama all summer long.....
Vacuum sealing food
I purchased a Rival Seal a Meal for under $40. If you do get one make sure it has the port on top for the accessory tube, this way you can seal jars too. You will have to purchase the jar sealers separately, which can be done at numerous places but I found Goodmans in Miami to be good. There is a wide jar and regular jar size, I recommend both. Purchased a box of bags and have been busy all morning. At least the hurt foot came in handy in one way, it forced me to stay home and work at my food storage for the day.
My family enjoys the Martha White muffin mixes. These do require milk. The Betty Crocker brand require only water. Have purchased both when on sale. To vacuum seal and extend shelf life simply cut open a slit at the top of the package, fold over and seal in your baggie. Have also sealed hamburger helper/tuna helper this way. Make sure you do not seal powders in a bag without having them in another bag or they will be sucked up into the sealer and ruin the motor. This is why I leave the powders in their original container and simply slit a hole at the top, express the air, fold over, and viola. Food that's shelf life has been at least doubled.
My family enjoys the Martha White muffin mixes. These do require milk. The Betty Crocker brand require only water. Have purchased both when on sale. To vacuum seal and extend shelf life simply cut open a slit at the top of the package, fold over and seal in your baggie. Have also sealed hamburger helper/tuna helper this way. Make sure you do not seal powders in a bag without having them in another bag or they will be sucked up into the sealer and ruin the motor. This is why I leave the powders in their original container and simply slit a hole at the top, express the air, fold over, and viola. Food that's shelf life has been at least doubled.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Gimme a break
Today while teaching my step class I rolled my ankle off of the edge of the step. Being the Amazon that I am I kept going even though it hurt like the dickens. (What exactly does "hurt like the dickens" mean anyways?) Had a few errands to run after class, finally got home, showered and finished canning 40lbs more of chicken only to have my ankle and foot start to hurt so much by 2:00pm that I was writhing in pain. I was really in tears and that is not an easy thing to bring me to with physical pain. Finally strapped on Kade's walking boot and headed to the ortho. I either have an accessory navicular or a navicular break and a horrible sprain. Let's hope it's not the break because apparently those are hard to heal and have a high incidence of reoccurring. The pitting edema and bruising on said injury is pretty. Need an MRI to definitively diagnose the problem. Will know by Mon. Getting old is really starting to suck!!
Eavesdropping
Took the family out to eat to Carrabbas the other night. Must've been senior citizen night, well okay, maybe it's just the fact that this is central Florida and our town is overrun with snowbirds in the winter, but the place was packed with many people over the age of 65. While I was waiting for our food I couldn't help but overhear the two couples sitting near by.
"Have you heard about this blogging thing?" man 1
"Oh yes. I think I've heard about that." man 2
"Well, these bloggers are taking over the internet. I mean, after these news stories you can now email your comments (isn't it cute he thinks an instant comment is an email?) about the story and you don't even have to put your name. All of these bloggers are making comments and there were 93 comments after this story. And no one leaves their names. They are doing it anonymously. I think that is unethical. And you should see the language they use. F with three asterisks as if we don't know what that means." man 1
Okay you fellow bloggers out there. STOP emailing your comments about news stories and doing it anonymously. I mean, really, what's the worst that could happen to you if you were to put your name and location to a real comment being left? How about this:
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), email, web pages, websites, search engines, images, listservs, Instant Chat Relay (IRCs) are all cyberstalking tools. As Internet usage increased, it is not known if people realize what online stalking was or if it was recognized as a crime. One of the most famous cases that brought cyberstalking into the public’s eye was the Jayne Hitchcock incident. Her story brought cyberstalking to the attention of lawmakers and she and others helped rewrite state stalking laws. Her harassment begin online via discussion groups and emails and then lead to physical stalking of her and her family in the real world.
Another example of a victim was Cynthia Armistead of Atlanta, Georgia. She and her daughter began receiving threatening and obscene messages and phone calls from her stalker in 1996. He posted phony advertisements on the USENET offering her services as a prostitute and provided her address and phone number. She moved and changed her address. Then she was stalked physically. Her stalker continued to email her. Finally he was caught and brought to trial. The stalker could not be prosecuted because Georgia had no laws regarding cyberstalking, but the stalker, Richard Hillyard, was charged with the “traditional” stalking laws and found not guilty.
In 1998 Dwayne Comfort, a former USD student, sent over 100 threatening, harassing, terrorizing and sexually explicit emails to five different victims. He used personal information about them and intimidated them to the point of obsession. He was able to avoid detection for 10 months. Also in that same year, Richard Machado emailed “death threat” messages to 59 students, mostly Asian Americans attending the University of California. Machado threatened, "to find and kill every one of you personally.” He was convicted on a civil rights charge and sentenced to a year in prison with time served. Machado was also expelled for poor academic performance. At the trial, he testified he had sent the messages out of boredom and to provoke a response. He denied any intention to follow up on his threats. His case was the first civil rights charge for crime committed on a computer.
It was New Hampshire in the late 1990s. Liam Youens fell in love with his fellow eighth grader Amy Boyer and obsessed her from afar and online. She had no idea she was being stalked. Liam stalked her for two years and created a website dedicated to her. He chronicled his daily obsession about her and published it on the website, as well as the ways he would kill her. Liam obtained Amy’s social security number via an online database, found her place of employment, and as she was getting into her car, he shot her in the head and then killed himself. Because of this incident, and the easy accessibility to obtain social security numbers, the U.S. legislation passed the Social Security Number Protection Act of 2000. (The Social Security Number Privacy and Identity Theft Prevention Act of 2003 was introduced in the 2003 legislation to prevent misuse and identity theft of these account numbers.) It is now a civil and criminal offense to sell or purchase a number except for legitimate purposes. The online database brokers were also found liable for their role in Amy’s death. The New Hampshire Supreme Court has held that information brokers and private investigators can be liable for the harms caused by selling personal information.
About this time, then-Vice President Al Gore realized there was a rise in online stalking and commissioned the U.S. Justice Department Report on Cyberstalking. From the 1999 study, it was reported that more than 1 in 12 women (8.2 million) will be stalked or have been stalked, and 50% of the cases will not be reported. Stalking victims are usually between the ages of 18-26, and stalkers usually have a prior criminal history or a personality disorder. Cyberstalkers now may be younger, more intelligent and better educated than other criminals. They are described as fairly lonely, isolated, highly intelligent, impulsive, cunning, resourceful, understand how to be anonymous, and know computers. They love cyberspace because there are no face-to-face meetings.
Anonymity has another trait that is important in cyberstalking: pseudonymity. The Internet and ISPs allow users to create a fake name as their identity. One can fake gender, age, race and physical appearance. It is up to the user to decide how to control personal information that is released on the Internet. Another reason to use cyberspace is real-time vs. virtual time communications. Email users are more blunt and direct in their communications and less concerned with what possible impact their speech or chosen words may have on another person. Email has no body language, no tone of voice, and no facial expressions. Most often people do not realize that emails are not private and that email systems can create a compete record of transactions. And what about cookies? Cookies or data text files are stored on a user’s hard drive. When visiting certain sites, one can track the habits of the users by accessing the cookies. Most surfers do not know how their information is gathered and used. Now many commercial and non-profit websites will tell the user what they do with the collected cookies. But this information is not in “plain sight” and one has to hunt for the policy.
On the Internet, cyberstalkers can sometimes reach an anonymous identity by using a tool called Anonymizer or MixMaster. Using one of these applications can wipe out someone’s electronic identification information and reallocate it to an anonymous ID. These re-mailers can also use public key cryptography so there is a complete privacy for the user. By chaining together a few of these re-mailers, the user can create a complicated trail for law enforcement and others to track. There are several individuals and groups who would like to call for a prohibition of these re-mailers. But the First Amendment and privacy issues play a part in why these applications are still available to the public. Free speech can be facilitated by anonymous online usage, which allows human rights activities, political and religious speeches and whistleblowers to engage in confidential communications (Wallace, 1999). For example, Anonymizer was used in 1999 to launch the Kosovo Privacy Project to provide free and confidential web browsing and email to people in that region. Other Internet tools that are utilized to taunt their cyber victims include: spoofing (forging headers), spamming, sniffing, chat rooms, and news groups (Wall, 2001, p. 147). for the full story click here
I know of other stories and couldn't help but chuckle to myself listening in on the conversation and thinking, "wow, how times have a changed. Used to be you would never write a letter to the editor of your local paper anonymously, you would be proud to put your name, and maybe you received a rebuke or nasty phone call about it from someone who disagreed, but in today's world, people have gone LOCO and will hunt you down and kill you for not agreeing."
"Have you heard about this blogging thing?" man 1
"Oh yes. I think I've heard about that." man 2
"Well, these bloggers are taking over the internet. I mean, after these news stories you can now email your comments (isn't it cute he thinks an instant comment is an email?) about the story and you don't even have to put your name. All of these bloggers are making comments and there were 93 comments after this story. And no one leaves their names. They are doing it anonymously. I think that is unethical. And you should see the language they use. F with three asterisks as if we don't know what that means." man 1
Okay you fellow bloggers out there. STOP emailing your comments about news stories and doing it anonymously. I mean, really, what's the worst that could happen to you if you were to put your name and location to a real comment being left? How about this:
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), email, web pages, websites, search engines, images, listservs, Instant Chat Relay (IRCs) are all cyberstalking tools. As Internet usage increased, it is not known if people realize what online stalking was or if it was recognized as a crime. One of the most famous cases that brought cyberstalking into the public’s eye was the Jayne Hitchcock incident. Her story brought cyberstalking to the attention of lawmakers and she and others helped rewrite state stalking laws. Her harassment begin online via discussion groups and emails and then lead to physical stalking of her and her family in the real world.
Another example of a victim was Cynthia Armistead of Atlanta, Georgia. She and her daughter began receiving threatening and obscene messages and phone calls from her stalker in 1996. He posted phony advertisements on the USENET offering her services as a prostitute and provided her address and phone number. She moved and changed her address. Then she was stalked physically. Her stalker continued to email her. Finally he was caught and brought to trial. The stalker could not be prosecuted because Georgia had no laws regarding cyberstalking, but the stalker, Richard Hillyard, was charged with the “traditional” stalking laws and found not guilty.
In 1998 Dwayne Comfort, a former USD student, sent over 100 threatening, harassing, terrorizing and sexually explicit emails to five different victims. He used personal information about them and intimidated them to the point of obsession. He was able to avoid detection for 10 months. Also in that same year, Richard Machado emailed “death threat” messages to 59 students, mostly Asian Americans attending the University of California. Machado threatened, "to find and kill every one of you personally.” He was convicted on a civil rights charge and sentenced to a year in prison with time served. Machado was also expelled for poor academic performance. At the trial, he testified he had sent the messages out of boredom and to provoke a response. He denied any intention to follow up on his threats. His case was the first civil rights charge for crime committed on a computer.
It was New Hampshire in the late 1990s. Liam Youens fell in love with his fellow eighth grader Amy Boyer and obsessed her from afar and online. She had no idea she was being stalked. Liam stalked her for two years and created a website dedicated to her. He chronicled his daily obsession about her and published it on the website, as well as the ways he would kill her. Liam obtained Amy’s social security number via an online database, found her place of employment, and as she was getting into her car, he shot her in the head and then killed himself. Because of this incident, and the easy accessibility to obtain social security numbers, the U.S. legislation passed the Social Security Number Protection Act of 2000. (The Social Security Number Privacy and Identity Theft Prevention Act of 2003 was introduced in the 2003 legislation to prevent misuse and identity theft of these account numbers.) It is now a civil and criminal offense to sell or purchase a number except for legitimate purposes. The online database brokers were also found liable for their role in Amy’s death. The New Hampshire Supreme Court has held that information brokers and private investigators can be liable for the harms caused by selling personal information.
About this time, then-Vice President Al Gore realized there was a rise in online stalking and commissioned the U.S. Justice Department Report on Cyberstalking. From the 1999 study, it was reported that more than 1 in 12 women (8.2 million) will be stalked or have been stalked, and 50% of the cases will not be reported. Stalking victims are usually between the ages of 18-26, and stalkers usually have a prior criminal history or a personality disorder. Cyberstalkers now may be younger, more intelligent and better educated than other criminals. They are described as fairly lonely, isolated, highly intelligent, impulsive, cunning, resourceful, understand how to be anonymous, and know computers. They love cyberspace because there are no face-to-face meetings.
Anonymity has another trait that is important in cyberstalking: pseudonymity. The Internet and ISPs allow users to create a fake name as their identity. One can fake gender, age, race and physical appearance. It is up to the user to decide how to control personal information that is released on the Internet. Another reason to use cyberspace is real-time vs. virtual time communications. Email users are more blunt and direct in their communications and less concerned with what possible impact their speech or chosen words may have on another person. Email has no body language, no tone of voice, and no facial expressions. Most often people do not realize that emails are not private and that email systems can create a compete record of transactions. And what about cookies? Cookies or data text files are stored on a user’s hard drive. When visiting certain sites, one can track the habits of the users by accessing the cookies. Most surfers do not know how their information is gathered and used. Now many commercial and non-profit websites will tell the user what they do with the collected cookies. But this information is not in “plain sight” and one has to hunt for the policy.
On the Internet, cyberstalkers can sometimes reach an anonymous identity by using a tool called Anonymizer or MixMaster. Using one of these applications can wipe out someone’s electronic identification information and reallocate it to an anonymous ID. These re-mailers can also use public key cryptography so there is a complete privacy for the user. By chaining together a few of these re-mailers, the user can create a complicated trail for law enforcement and others to track. There are several individuals and groups who would like to call for a prohibition of these re-mailers. But the First Amendment and privacy issues play a part in why these applications are still available to the public. Free speech can be facilitated by anonymous online usage, which allows human rights activities, political and religious speeches and whistleblowers to engage in confidential communications (Wallace, 1999). For example, Anonymizer was used in 1999 to launch the Kosovo Privacy Project to provide free and confidential web browsing and email to people in that region. Other Internet tools that are utilized to taunt their cyber victims include: spoofing (forging headers), spamming, sniffing, chat rooms, and news groups (Wall, 2001, p. 147). for the full story click here
I know of other stories and couldn't help but chuckle to myself listening in on the conversation and thinking, "wow, how times have a changed. Used to be you would never write a letter to the editor of your local paper anonymously, you would be proud to put your name, and maybe you received a rebuke or nasty phone call about it from someone who disagreed, but in today's world, people have gone LOCO and will hunt you down and kill you for not agreeing."
Monday, January 26, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Tired of My Political Tirade? Me too, so how about some Food Storage Made Easy
Yesterday our ward hosted a preparedness fair. It was nicely done and we received a booklet with invaluable information. I've really been working on our family food storage and had never heard of this idea before, but boy did it make sense and seems so easy. Here is the nitty gritty of it. (by Wendy DeWitt)
I've based this system on a "worst case scenario," meaning, if there were no stores, gardens, city water or electricity, I could still feed my family. This scenario also assumes that each family will be on their own, that we won't be "banding together" at churches or schools. How much food is a year's supply? This system answers that question right down to the last teaspoon of salt. You choose 7 breakfasts and 7 dinners that you would want to have once a week for one year. There are 52 weeks in the year, you're having this meal once a week, so you'll have it 52 times. Make these meals things that you eat all of the time, thing that you like! You are going to multiply everything (including the amount of water used)in each of your recipes by 52. An example would be if you used 1 jar of Ragu and 1 pound of spaghetti to feed your family, you'd buy 52 jars of Ragu, 52 pounds of spaghetti and include the water to cook the noodles. If we're in a "worst case scenario" your big meal of the day is going to be in the afternoon before the sun goes down (this is because you are using your solar oven for cooking). You would have breakfast, a big dinner and maybe a sandwich or a snack in the evening. This is a very simple system that saves time and money because you only store what you really need and will eat. Plus, each time you use something (yes you rotate your food storage) you simply replace that item the next time you are at the grocery store.
We received great food hints, like using gelatin as an egg substitute in recipes. It is less expensive than powdered eggs and has an indefinite shelf life. Also tons of information on water storage, collection and purification. The booklet we received is quite large, but if you would like a copy I am willing to take the time to copy it and mail it to you. If you didn't hear from me about ordering a solar oven last fall, you really should look into it. Normally they are around $200 plus shipping, but we received a great deal on a sport model $139 includes shipping if done in one order of at least 10 or more (an even number) and paid with one check, shipped to one address. You need to talk with your individual ward food storage specialist about this. These things are amazing!! You can cook just about anything in them. We've even done bread, cookies, cake, etc. It works much like a dutch oven but without having to make a fire. Things are moist and tasty!! You can cook pastas and rice in them too and can purify water in them. I can't recommend them enough as an important tool of emergency preparedness. You don't have to store fuel and they come with reflectors for cooking on overcast days.
I will be canning 40lbs of chicken this week and vacuum sealing most of my pastas/rice/and dry goods to extend the shelf life of them. It has been fun in a weird way to finally be able to get involved in this. I've stocked up on feminine hygiene products, TP, soap, toothbrushes, cleaning supplies etc. Even cat litter to use as a make shift latrine.
Bertolli pasta sauces and a great brand of pasta were on sale this week for BOGO free at Publix, so I really stocked up. The check out guy was laughing at me and said something like, "wow, you're going to be cooking a lot of spaghetti!!" Umm, yeah, something like that. Now go and do as the Lord has commanded and prepare your family. Happy to supply help, advice, and handouts if you so desire.
I've based this system on a "worst case scenario," meaning, if there were no stores, gardens, city water or electricity, I could still feed my family. This scenario also assumes that each family will be on their own, that we won't be "banding together" at churches or schools. How much food is a year's supply? This system answers that question right down to the last teaspoon of salt. You choose 7 breakfasts and 7 dinners that you would want to have once a week for one year. There are 52 weeks in the year, you're having this meal once a week, so you'll have it 52 times. Make these meals things that you eat all of the time, thing that you like! You are going to multiply everything (including the amount of water used)in each of your recipes by 52. An example would be if you used 1 jar of Ragu and 1 pound of spaghetti to feed your family, you'd buy 52 jars of Ragu, 52 pounds of spaghetti and include the water to cook the noodles. If we're in a "worst case scenario" your big meal of the day is going to be in the afternoon before the sun goes down (this is because you are using your solar oven for cooking). You would have breakfast, a big dinner and maybe a sandwich or a snack in the evening. This is a very simple system that saves time and money because you only store what you really need and will eat. Plus, each time you use something (yes you rotate your food storage) you simply replace that item the next time you are at the grocery store.
We received great food hints, like using gelatin as an egg substitute in recipes. It is less expensive than powdered eggs and has an indefinite shelf life. Also tons of information on water storage, collection and purification. The booklet we received is quite large, but if you would like a copy I am willing to take the time to copy it and mail it to you. If you didn't hear from me about ordering a solar oven last fall, you really should look into it. Normally they are around $200 plus shipping, but we received a great deal on a sport model $139 includes shipping if done in one order of at least 10 or more (an even number) and paid with one check, shipped to one address. You need to talk with your individual ward food storage specialist about this. These things are amazing!! You can cook just about anything in them. We've even done bread, cookies, cake, etc. It works much like a dutch oven but without having to make a fire. Things are moist and tasty!! You can cook pastas and rice in them too and can purify water in them. I can't recommend them enough as an important tool of emergency preparedness. You don't have to store fuel and they come with reflectors for cooking on overcast days.
I will be canning 40lbs of chicken this week and vacuum sealing most of my pastas/rice/and dry goods to extend the shelf life of them. It has been fun in a weird way to finally be able to get involved in this. I've stocked up on feminine hygiene products, TP, soap, toothbrushes, cleaning supplies etc. Even cat litter to use as a make shift latrine.
Bertolli pasta sauces and a great brand of pasta were on sale this week for BOGO free at Publix, so I really stocked up. The check out guy was laughing at me and said something like, "wow, you're going to be cooking a lot of spaghetti!!" Umm, yeah, something like that. Now go and do as the Lord has commanded and prepare your family. Happy to supply help, advice, and handouts if you so desire.
The Big Bad FEMA
The ironic thing is, Pres. Bush was castigated for his lack of federal response after Katrina. If the liberal masses only knew what the real function of FEMA is, like the federal leaders do, I'm sure they would be more than relieved FEMA wasn't functioning up to par during Katrina.
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