From the "What Day Is It" Department ::

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live a very long time? With advances in technology, I believe there are people 60 years old today that could conceivably live to a 150 or more years. Spare parts for worn out body components are no longer the stuff of science fiction. Things like the latest in exoskeleton assitance could even allow a 125-year-old person to be a productive member of the community and not have to rely on offspring or the spring off of offspring to provide some sort of monetary contribution to keep the blood pumping.

I would think the caring family of Cruz Hernandez was the biggest reason she was able to celebrate her 128th birthday yesterday. (Readily available exoskeleton equipment isn't that easy to come by in El Salvador.) It's somewhat ironic that El Salvador, the scene of a brutal civil war that killed tens of thousands - actually a clash between American and Cuban ideology - and the home to the most barbaric of street gangs - the Mara Salvatrucha or MS13 who kill for pleasure and not only profit - would also be home to the worlds oldest living citizen. What are the chances of that happening again anytime soon?

Anyhow..., think for a minute what it would be like to live for a very long time. I have a grandmother who is going to be 99 this summer and what keeps her going is that she still gets out and does things. She's looking forward to her 100th birthday and that's something else that keeps her going. If you don't have something to look forward to then you start dying from the inside out. I could see Gram living for another 10 or more years without TOO much difficulty.

Just thinking of all the things that could kill you is enough to avoid many of the causes of cerebral atrophy. Atrophy of any body part is generally the result of inactivity. Dodging, or otherwise avoiding becoming a victim of reckless actions by yourself or others has a sizable "luck" factor involved as it relates to survivability. You could be on your way home from work, minding your own business and some idiot running a red light on his way to pick up a lottery ticket could center punch you and your sub-compact gas saver - killing you that way - or provide you with a near miss that would be enough to stop your heart - flat lining you by way of a heart attack. 36,525 days is a long time to go without screwing up or having someone else screw up on your behalf to the detriment of your further existence.

What I wonder about is what I would do to keep myself occupied for a 150 years. There's a lot of things I would still like to accomplish but there's a ton of obstacles that are making that exceedingly difficult. One thing I'm absolutely certain of though is that sitting around watching mindless TV is not enough stimulation to keep all parts functioning in harmony. (The only TV I watch is the Discovery Channel and the Comedy Network - even some of that is somewhat mindless.)

The only thing that's been proven to give you a few extra years is reducing your calorie intake. There's not going to be any fat folks in the Sesquicentennial Club. Nope, it's going to be skinny people with bionic eyes and ears outfitted with a robust exoskeleton and a disproportionate allotment of luck that are going to make up the core membership.

Will they be the equivalent of brainiac cucarachas totally wired for survival? It's hard to say. I just can't imagine what reality TV is going to be like when that 60-year-old today turns 150 in another 90 years but I'll bet that 150-year-old won't be watching it.

From the "Now Hiring" Department ::

Alberta's Population Increases By More Than 25,000 In Final Quarter of 2005

OK..., here's the deal. There is a ton of work available in Alberta but there isn't much for accommodations. Now that's not really a problem in the summer cause you can always camp out. This winter was not that bad for the camping workforce but who's to say this global warming thing won't just blow over and we rapidly descend into a 100,000 year ice age. In that case you're going to wish you have a decent place to stay with enough heat to keep the water pipes from freezing.

Eh..., it could happen! Who knows when some meteorite might come screaming in from left field and center-punch a hole into the molten depths of our planet creating a mega-volcano spewing ash and flaming bolders skyward and blocking our Sun's rays for eons. It could happen before midnight or it could be a buzzillion or two years before it does. Who knows?

One thing's for certain though, it WILL happen and may be witnessed by the electro-mechanical offspring of your immediate descendents. If there's one thing the Boy Scouts teach you it's, "Be prepared!" That's why it's a good idea to pick up your rocket science patch or at least know what your escape velocity is and what's required to achieve it.

Just so you don't have to go hunting all over the place it's pretty much accepted that escape velocity is the minimum velocity you need to achieve in order to escape the gravitational pull of the earth, that is, escape the planet earth without getting sucked back.

So:

1/2 mv2 = GMm/R

Where "m" is the mass of the object, "M" is the mass of the earth, "G" is the gravitational constant, "R" is the radius of the earth, and "v" is the escape velocity. Which translates to:

v = sqrt(2GM/R)

or

v = sqrt(2gR)

Where "g" is acceleration of gravity on the earth's surface.

OK..., what this amounts to is finding something that can blast you off the surface of the earth at about 25,000 mph. Personally, I would go with a hybrid solid fuel rocket using liquid oxygen for extra oomph and nitrous oxide for the driver.

If you accelerate enough, like up there near light-speed you end up in some kind of Einsteinish Suspended Animation negating the need for food or other earthly necessities - or at least until you throttle back. I'm guessing that just slowing your ship down to where you can maneuver it into a parking spot could take an hour or two.

If you're hoping to get somewhere before time gets you though, you're going to want to find something that'll propel you at considerably more velocity than 25,000 mph. Bear in mind that with the speeds we're talking about you're going to want to know exactly where you're going because a vector change is going to eat up a lot of inter-galactic real estate before the turn is realized.

Sorry about that, really got off on a tangent there.

Check back regularly, no telling what little nugget of gnarled knowledge or whimsical wisdom you're going to unearth here but it could be an 'Interstellar Nugget' - hitting even a tiny one of these at 25,000 mph can really ruin your day.

Note:: These headlines rotated, updated & barbecued throughout the day. Enjoy!

Hasta La L8r Señor Rocket Scientist Wannabe

NEW WORDS FOR 2006:
Please Update Your Spell Checker!

This was passed on to me by my friend Doug, a Greyhound driving network expert and I thought it was so well done that I decided to put it up here for all to see. I haven't a clue who the original author is but just so it wasn't a wholesale rip-off I added number 8, 21, 22, 23, 24, & 25 to the list. That's a 25% addition to your lexicon if you've seen the list before. What a bonus!

1. BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a "Deadline" was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
2. SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.
3. ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard.
4. SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get chewed out by a grizzly bear at quitting time.
5. CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles
6. PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a "Cube Farm", and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
7. MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
8. DINKS: Dual Income - No Kids. This can be a life filled with the latest and greatest that can come to an abrupt end without very careful planning.
9. SITCOMS: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What "DINKS" turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.
10. STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
11. SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
12. XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.
13. IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. In the "Old Days" it was the "Radio Jingle" you couldn't get out of your head. Remember radio?
14. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.
15. ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
16. 404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error Message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located.
17. GENERICA: Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, and subdivisions.
18. OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.(Like after hitting send on an email by mistake.)
19. WOOFS: Well Off Older Folks.
20. CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously passing gas while passing through a "Cube Farm".
21. TRENDOID: The co-worker that has to have the latest and greatest anything.
22. BUSTICATED: A state of being when "Percussive Maintenance" no longer has an effect.
23. REMOTE CONTROL: The power your boss has over you even though you know he won't be back from his Hawaiian vacation for another two weeks.
24. AFFLUENZA: The affliction that strikes the offspring of the newly rich rendering them completely void of ambition.
25. BUZZILLIONAIRE: A guy who's wealth is based more on buzz than bucks.
26. IJACKED: Being the victim of identity theft.

Check back regularly, no telling what little nugget of gnarled knowledge or whimsical wisdom you're going to unearth here but it could be a 'Completely New Nugget' - and you can say you saw it here first.

Hasta La L8r Señor Definition Expert

Another year slips away on me as I try and imagine what the New Year will bring. Where I live in Central Alberta, the energy sector is oozing money and it shows by the record spending this Holiday Season. The problem is that it revolves solely around oil and gas. With oil and gas at record highs I see two things happening, one, the oil companies get embarrassingly rich and two, alternative energy finally gets the respect and R&D investment it deserves.

I truly believe we are on the threshold of discovering how to uncork the secrets held in the hydrogen atom. One of the problems relating to the use of zinc in the production of hydrogen has been solved by focusing the sun's rays on zinc oxide to achieve the temperatures needed to free the zinc from the oxygen. By using the sun we are not using fuel to produce fuel with little net gain. Yet another hydrogen production technology showing promise is the discovery of a bacteria living in the toxic environment of volcanic vents that eats the highly poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas, flaring off hydrogen as a byproduct. It's just a matter of training the little beasts to do so on a commercial scale.

Then there's the furor surrounding hydrino - the form of hydrogen characterized by a single proton orbited by a single electron in a path a little closer to the proton than usual. Dr. Randell Mills, a Harvard medic and former student of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology along with his company, Blacklight Power claim they have a working model of a hydrino generator that produces up to 1,000 times the heat released by conventional fuel. Those that have toured Dr. Mills labs have left feeling Dr. Mills is on to something. If Dr. Mills is right then quantum physics isn't! A working model of a hydrino generator sitting on the shelf at the local hardware store at a reasonable price should silence most critics. His first consumer product is rumoured to be a household heater.

One way or another, we better get ready for hydrogen as our chief source of light and power. Personally, I would like to see a device simple enough to be installed by the local handyman once and for all freeing us from the tyranny of the local utility company and the multi-national oil companies. I for one will be near the head of the line just like I was when I saw that VoIP phones made more sense than dealing with the local Telco monopoly.

I also predict that LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) will replace conventional lighting by the end of the decade. I suspect that's why the fluorescent screw in bulbs characterized by their coiled tubes have come down so dramatically in price. A couple of years ago a single fluorescent bulb replacement sold for about $25 while today they can be had for less than $3 each if a person shops carefully. It could be argued that the production of the screw in fluorescent bulbs has reached a point where they can be mass produced for pennies but I would suggest that the reason they are so cheap is that they are being dumped in anticipation of a mass move to LED lighting. LEDs are rapidly becoming a cost effective way of producing light. Two years ago it took a bit of effort to track down an LED flashlight but now they're everywhere. The one I like is the flashlight you shake to charge - a sliding magnet, a coil of wire, a capacitor and an LED - what a brilliant concept.

What should we expect to see in revolutionary medical discoveries? With the decoding of the human genome our understanding of what makes us succumb to illness is becoming a lot clearer. Couple that with advances in replacement parts for the human body and I would predict that there are 50 year old people alive today that will live to be a 150. That's something we should start considering because that's a lot of time to have to occupy. A few hobbies might be in order to break the monotony of an extended lifespan. Those hobbies better be moneymakers cause it's like going to cost a bit to live that long. I think it was Rodney Dangerfield that said, "When I die I want to donate my body to science fiction."

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it." --Chinese Proverb

Check back regularly, no telling what little nugget of gnarled knowledge or whimsical wisdom you're going to unearth here but it could be a 'Science Fact or Fiction Nugget' - and you can say you saw it here first.

Hasta La L8r Señor Technophopic Dinosaur

Hand Picked Headline News
    - Served Fresh Daily -

This was just way too ironic to pass up. I receive an interesting newsletter from Marilyn Jones of Mediamag e-Zine, a well done site out of Edmonton geared towards media interests in and around the Capital City.

It's quite a lengthy newsletter and as I was scanning the various headings I ran across this one:

OCTOBER 19 TO 21
NETSPEED CONFERENCE for librarians, technicians and knowledge workers. Presentations on SuperNet, digital production, copyright, privacy and more. Sponsored by the Alberta library. To be held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Edmonton. For more info see the "Conference Website".

The mere mention of "librarians" and "privacy" in the same paragraph immediately grabbed my full and undivided attention. Should you be interested in finding out exactly why this would have been so noteworthy to me, check out this site I put together regarding my involvement in the unfortunate keystroke logging incident at Parkland Regional Library.

While checking out the link to the "Conference Website" I noticed that one of the plenary speakers was Dr. Michael Geist from the University of Ottawa - Faculty of Law. A quick scan of the Adobe Acrobat PDF linked from the Alberta Library website indicated, on page four, that Dr. Geist would be speaking on a touchy subject considering Parkland Regional Library is a member of the Board of Directors at the Alberta Library consortium. From the conference program I provide the following:

Dr. Michael Geist   Room: SALON A
Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law University of Ottawa

Michael Geist will identify the challenges that lie ahead for Canadian privacy law in light of emerging new technologies. A pending Parliamentary review of Canada’s national privacy legislation in 2006, combined with a growing number of existing provincial privacy laws, have created a challenging national privacy patchwork. New technologies such as radio frequency identification tags, web cam video surveillance, keystroke logging, and Internet telephony are stretching the boundaries of current privacy legislation. Michael will focus on how policy makers can adjust to emerging technologies and how organizations can anticipate the future shifts of the Canadian privacy law landscape so that they can be ready for future privacy compliance requirements.

I sat back for a moment to absorb some of the irony this provided and that's when I noticed that the "contact for more information person" was Mary Jane Bilsland, whom I worked with at Parkland Regional Library and who was also the sister of Parkland Regional Library's legal counsel, John Bilsland. Throw some more irony on the irony blaze why don't ya! I just about flipped my chair over backwards when I leaned back laughing.

Anyhow..., I would have loved to have been there in some shape or form. For one thing, I respect Dr. Michael Geist for his tireless pursuit of privacy rights for the individual but from the personal entertainment angle, being there would have been priceless.

Check back regularly, no telling what little nugget of gnarled knowledge or whimsical wisdom you're going to unearth here but it could be a 'Foul Smelling Nugget' - and the odour appears to be coming from behind some library bookshelf.

Hasta La L8r Señor Gordo Low-life Scumbag

Hand Picked Headline News
    - Served Fresh Daily -

Privacy ::
The "E-Commerce Times" Commentary

Decent commentary from a Toronto E-Lawyer who also does the Laws of Dot Com site.

Privacy ::
"Lacombe Globe" Story on the Keystroke Logging Incident

It's a sad day when libraries decide to spy on their employees!

Privacy ::
"Red Deer Advocate" Coverage on the Parkland Regional Library Keystroke Logging Fiasco

Ladies and gentleman, your tax dollars at work!

Privacy ::
Another Take On the Use of Keystroke Loggers in the Workplace

I just can't help but agree with this guy!

Privacy ::
A Primer on Keystroke Loggers

Do you sleep well at night?

A couple of weeks ago the Privacy Commissioner for the Province of Alberta published his ruling on the use of keystroke logging software for employee performance monitoring.(PDF) His decision clearly indicated that keystroke logging software was excessive, intrusive, invasive, and indiscriminate in the information it gathers. Curiously, Parkland Regional Library's flawed logic attempts to defend keystroke logging as an objective measure of employee performance. For anybody interested on why this is flawed logic I would suggest a scan of the comments on Slashdot concerning this matter.

Anyhow..., the Privacy Commissioner for the Province of Alberta ruled that the information collected by way of the STARR keystroke logger was stored in a secure manner. Unfortunately, a wee bit of research into this matter would have clearly shown that the information gathered was, in fact, stored as "clear text" html files easily viewed by anyone with a web browser contrary to what's been reported. That would be just about anyone with a computer hooked to the Internet these days. As far as this genre of software is concerned I would have to say that the IOPUS STARR product is amateurish at best and if nothing else, sleazy.

The deployment of the STARR software on the Parkland Regional Library network was poorly implemented and completely unnecessary. Curiously, software I provided for Parkland Regional Library network in the form of the Request Tracker trouble ticketing software provided PRL with everything they needed to monitor employee productivity and much more. Unfortunately, inept management completely missed the opportunity to exploit Request Tracker for 'Human Resource' purposes. This is clearly an example where IT staff have no business whatsoever dabbling in 'human resources' matters.

Check back regularly, no telling what little nugget of gnarled knowledge or whimsical wisdom you're going to unearth here but it could be a 'Breaking News Nugget' - and you can say you saw it here first. Others will just have to wait for the rest to catch up.

Note:: These headlines rotated, updated & barbecued throughout the day. Enjoy!

Hasta La L8r Señor Headline Hunter

About a month ago I set this web-site up to do some serious testing on who visits this site, how they get here, how long they stay, and from what page they exit. This was done for a specific reason - to try and figure out how to make this site pay it's own way. In the process I've made some startling discoveries.

A couple of weeks ago Bobby Clarke, a ferry operator at the Cree community of Norway House in Manitoba, took a 2 minute and 49 second video of a "bigfoot" or "sasquatch" as is the more common name here in Canada. I did a short follow up on the initial story that I found on the Internet and then followed that up with a couple of other stories linking to when and where the sasquatch video would be aired. To my utter astonishment the story has generated up to 500 hits per day on search engine referrals alone.

But by far the most interesting thing I noticed on close inspection of the web-server logs is that a sizable percentage of those hits are coming from business and government URLs. Those hits are also coming in during normal working hours when those URLs should be staffed by employees punched into the time clock. This leads me to believe that a lot of productivity is being wasted by employees punching, "norway house bigfoot video" into their favourite search engine and scanning the results that come up.

I was very surprised by this revelation as a year ago I was fired from a job after I exposed the surreptitious use of a keystroke logger on my workstation. I know exactly why the keystroke logger was installed and it had absolutely nothing to do with performance monitoring and everything to do with a supervisor trying to impress a woman he had a crush on. In any case, the keystroke logger had been installed for a month before I discovered it and it failed to find any evidence of productivity issues. In fact, I was fired in an effort to suppress a potentially embarrassing situation for a publicly funded organization from getting out into the open. This cover-up even included perjury during an inquiry held by the Privacy Commissioner for the Province of Alberta.

Call me naive but I just didn't think there was that many people that surfed the Internet for personal reasons at the employers expense. By the same token, I didn't think an employer would go to such extremes to try and prove it. The last year has been an eye-opener.

Anyhow..., the Privacy Commissioner will be making a ruling within a week or two and you will read it here first. That's a guarantee!

Check back regularly, no telling what little nugget of gnarled knowledge or whimsical wisdom you're going to unearth here but it could be a 'highly embarrassing nugget' propelled by naturally generated methane.

Hasta La L8r Señor Time Waster

What is it about men and doctors? I mean why do so many of us fear the doctor? I'm sure that for some it's the fear of the unknown. Personally, I've had some bad experiences with doctors so I think I'm justifiably wary. I'm not saying that all doctors should be tarred with the same brush but in the last fifty years I've had three visits to the doctor that didn't go quite the way a doctors visit should.

There was the time I accidentally stuck an awl just above my kneecap. Minor really but my leg stiffened right up and I could barely walk. I lived in a small town at the time so as I was heading down the main street on my way home I noticed the doctor's office still had the lights on. Good enough..., I peered in the window but didn't see any activity so I knocked on the door and what greeted me was nearly enough to send fleeing like a scared rabbit but..., my leg wasn't working real well remember?

Anyhow..., in the doorway stood the town doctor with his wool socks barely clinging to his feet, his shirt tail hanging out of the zipper on his pants, his hair askew, and a six-shooter strapped to his side. I didn't know whether to crap my drawers or go blind.

Curiously enough I followed him into his office willingly. He was wobbling a bit but not totally out of control. When he came at me with a hypodermic needle for a tetanus shot though I had to grab his hand, take the needle from him and ask him how I should administer it. He was shaking just a tad too much for my liking. Bad experience numero uno!

Then just a couple of years later I was working at a coal mine just inside the British Columbia border. It was a small company town and the doctor only showed up once a week. I had skinned my knuckle a few days earlier and infection had set in causing it to swell up and look real ugly.

I sat in the doctor's office for most of the morning and was a bit curious as to why everyone coming out of the examination room looked visibly shaken or chuckled nervously as they left. Before too long it was my turn and as I walked through the door I immediately knew why the others before me had reacted the way they had.

Sitting behind the desk, barely upright, was a relatively young doctor slouched down in his chair, saliva running from the corner of his mouth, and slurring his words so bad I thought he was going to fall asleep mid-sentence. It was apparent he had been doing a little pharmaceutical research!

The town nurse, who was easily twice his age, barged in at this point and proceeded to give the poor slob a stern lecture concerning self-medication. The whole while he just sat there with a goofy grin on his face. She had no sooner finsished when the doctor, to my utter amazement, stood up and made his way around to my side of the desk without falling flat on his face. The nurse just glared at him with a look that should have tipped him over.

The doctor took a cross-eyed look at my swollen finger, grabbed an aerosol can from the shelf beside him and sprayed my finger with some kind of "winter in a can" that left actual frost on my knuckle. Thankfully the nurse butted in at this point and led me out of the room and into another where she proceeded to drain the infection and dress the wound. No words were exchanged but when we left the examination room she made an announcement to the rest of the patients still patiently waiting. She told them to go home and come back the following week. I left the clinic at a brisk pace.

The next incident I recall was when I got bit by a dog and went up to the hospital to have the bite looked into. The doctor was actually very good and well respected in the community so I really wasn't too concerned, other than my thumb felt like it was ready to throb off. We hoofed it down to the emergency operating room and the whole while I tried to keep from passing out. Once seated, the doctor cleaned up the wound which had me howling like a cat with it's tail in the fan belt.

There was a nurse present and when the doctor was done poking and prodding he directed her to give me an intramuscular shot of bug killer to the hind quarters. She prepared the injection and he left the examination room and proceeded down the hall. I rolled off the examination table, lowered my drawers and bent over as instructed. The nurse harpooned me and within seconds I got a horrible medicinal taste in my mouth, started having trouble breathing and started to get real dizzy, real fast. I rolled myself back onto the examination table to the sound of the nurse running down the hall screaming, "I need a doctor right now, It's an emergency," echoing in my ears.

The next twenty minutes were the definition of surreal as I lay there surrounded by a whole team of doctors and nurses, one with the 'booster cables', another with a syringe of adrenalin, one doctor with a stethoscope to my chest and another taking my blood pressure. It ended rather quickly - when it finally ended - as my eyes quit rotating and the words of the entourage returned to earth. Spooky stuff - just glad they didn't have to restart me with the booster cables!

It was several years later, when I was telling the story to a nurse I met, that I finally received an explanation for what had happened. She told me, "With an intramuscular injection the proper procedure is to withdraw the plunger slightly to see if blood enters the syringe. If it does then it's likely the needle has hit a vein." Apparently I had taken my dose of bug killer right into the blood stream.

Anyhow..., I haven't been to the doctor for quite some time and I have an appointment this afternoon. I'm a wee bit nervous as you may well imagine. If I survive, you will read about it here.

Check back regularly, no telling what little nugget of gnarled knowledge or whimsical wisdom you're going to unearth here but it could be an 'nervous patient nugget' they can arrive without warning.

Hasta La L8r Señor Chicken Man which, by the way, has no connection to 'Avian Flu'

[Update]:: I live to tell another! Someday I'm going to tell you what a sigmoidoscopy is all about. That will tone up your splincter!

With "identity theft" in the news on a daily basis it's getting people thinking about how to protect themselves from this blight. Who better to ask than a couple of identity thieves serving time for their criminal activities. That's exactly what WYFF-TV in Greenville, S.C. did. Their story is both intriguing and scary, all at the same time. One inmate used a low tech approach and social engineering while the other used technology and position for criminal gain. As usual, it was greed that eventually tripped them up. They do offer some decent suggestions on how to avoid losing your identity and the story is certainly worth reading.

Identity theft is generally perpetrated solely for financial gain but there are many documented instances where identify theft was orchestrated to cover previous criminal activity. The many lives of Albert Walker is a perfect example of identity theft for this reason. Poor Ronald Platt was murdered in a desperate attempt to continue Albert Walker's deception. It's bad enough when someone steals your identity to clear out your bank account but when they want your identity badly enough to take your life for it you have to be a tad nervous.

During the heyday of espionage identity theft was a common tactic for inserting an operative behind enemy lines and is often used to this day by those in the 'business' of immigration for a price. Be wary of identity thieves! They could be after your wallet, your wife, or your life. Make sure you know where yours are.

Just how much is your identity worth? Bank employee's were being paid $10 per name by Orazio Lembo, the alleged mastermind behind a massive scheme where customer account information was being peddled to collection agencies and lawyers in what is being hailed as the worst breach of banking security in U.S. history. Lembo appeared in court on Thursday, April 28th, to face the music.

Even those that take precautions can still be at risk. Keystroke loggers and packet sniffers can compromise username and password pairs well before any encryption has a chance to provide it's protection. A keystroke logger was the tool of choice for identity thieves at Brigham Young University that's put the identities and personal information of more than 600 students in jeopardy. It's alleged the the keystroke logger was installed on April 4th, but was only discovered on April 21st. A ton of information for the bad guys!

Anyhow..., if I knew who I was I may be able to get my identity back. I thought I had the thief the other day until I realized it was my reflection in the mirror.

Check back regularly, no telling what little nugget of gnarled knowledge or whimsical wisdom you're going to unearth here but it could be 'somebody else's nugget' - don't leave yours laying around.

Hasta La L8r Señor Whoever You Were