Wanderings

Yearly Archive: 2008

Now What?

With the election over, it’s time to begin putting civil things in perspective again. Obama won, and we will have to live with and work within that. As a Christian, I am instructed to work with the civil government. Only when it’s rules and regulations conflict with God’s word do I have clear choices to make.

I was both disappointed and proud of my country on Tuesday night. Disappointed that the Democrats were more in charge, and that the democrat had won the presidential race. I have my reasons for not liking them. My pride came in the way both the winners and losers handled themselves. True, there may be some kooks out there, but by and large everyone was civil.

Voting for Obama “just because he was an afro-american” did not make any sense. That was like hiring someone to run your business based not on his or her skills, but some other quality.

I’ll keep watching and reporting on what I see and how I feel. Just hope everyone keeps working to clean up the financial mess we are all in – as a country and as a world.

BTW, if all those foreign countries still need our help, why are their banks and other businesses able to come to the U.S. and buy our companies for cash. Maybe we ought to look at how much we send to other countries as “foreign aid”. It would be interesting to see the list.

Shred Away!

Sometimes, I just fly through the AARP Bulletin, but this time, the article struck a chord. They were talking about identity theft, and what you should shred. We have a shredder, and ever since our local police talked about people stealing mail just to get my credit card offers, we have been shredding more.

I actually started burning mail years ago, after an employee of one of our customers (a newspaper no less) had her purse “snatched”. Even though she was a newspaper reporter, with access to all kinds of “where to go to stop this” information, It took her over six months to get her identity protected again. She had to fight with banks to get her money back and her good credit rating.

Her article pointed out how easy it was for someone, once they had some information about you (and your credit cards), they could drain your bank accounts quickly. Even apply for change of address on existing accounts and open new accounts.

At any rate, the AARP blurb left little that you should not shred. The bad guys are everywhere, so shred anything that includes “your birth date, signature, account numbers, passwords, PINS or Social Security number.” The list goes on…deposit slips, credit card receipts (after you get your monthly statement), used airline tickets, old medical bills, those “pre-approved credit card apps and canceled checks you don’t need for tax purposes.

Quite a list, but rather safe than sorry. Seems that just throwing stuff away does not work (there are “garbage divers”). And once the bad guys have your information, it will be a while before you realize you have been had.

New Blog Blues

The thought was that this would be a simple thing. Move from the software I am presently using to something new.

Wow! Was I ever wrong – it's a whole new learning curve. Just getting it configured is going to take awhile. But at least it will let me import everything on my existing blog.

You can get a little flavor by clicking (this is very old, and the link has been removed – you are at the new blog!). Don't bookmark this, because when all is said and done, the link will be what you use now.

Hopefully, by the end of October this will be all changed over. The new software has much better ways to include pictures, links and ways to update entries. Then once my personal blog is moved over, I'll also have a technical blog that covers Phone Systems, voicemail and computers.

Keep watching…