As you’re probably aware, you’re now embroiled in a bit of an ethics problem; 13 ethics charges have been leveled against you. Apparently, you were in “negotiations” to settle the charges which most likely means you’re at least partially guilty.

I would again like to thank you for the service to our country. I would also like to ask you to resign. Decorated war hero or not, you’ve been in the congress for 40 years and with numerous ethics charges leveled against you it’s high time that people in congress understand it’s a privilege to serve. It’s not a lifetime appointment Congressmen! Just because you’ve been there awhile doesn’t allow you the right to act as if the laws don’t apply to you.

Please, do the right thing and move on – set an example for the rest of your colleagues. Again, thank you for your service.

I’ve been absolutely mortified in doing some research lately about the business practices of the major credit bureaus. It’s nothing short of scandalous and I am absolutely curious about how they can sell your personal information and it not be viewed as wrong. I guess that’s an argument for another day.

If you go to this ftc website: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt063.shtm you can actually opt out of unsolicited offers. You essentially have two options; you can choose to opt out of credit card offers or you can opt out of credit card offers AND all other types of junk mail.

The credit card offers coming by the dozen? Then simply go here: https://www.optoutprescreen.com/?rf=t This website is run by the three major credit bureaus – it was mandated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It allows you to opt out of all credit card solicitation offers. You can opt out for 5 years or for life. If you choose the ‘for life’ option, you’ll need to also mail a form into them. They’ll enter you in the 5 year option in the interim.

It always amazes me how people are so willing to complain but, when you get a little further along in the conversation you find more people than not just never bothered to vote. It’s a civic duty people. You don’t vote, then don’t complain!

This is more about earning the right to complain. It’s about participating in the process. Having a say and telling our leaders the direction you want the country pointed. Go vote!

Face it, your life’s memories sit on a hard drive. Memories tend to elicit emotions that run the gamut – imagine the emotion of losing those memories. I’m instantly mortified. I can see all my memories gone forever. Am I sad? Sure. Mortification turns to panic pretty quick. That pretty much defines the task Data Robotics has indirectly on top of their day job of keeping your data safe. Needless to say, when a person thinks their memories are gone forever, calm and rational are not the emotions at the top of the pecking order.

The situation I describe in the previous paragraph is the predicament I encountered a few weeks back. Fortunately, I utilize more than one method of backup. Doubly fortunate for me that my computing platform of choice (Mac) has a wonderful utility called ‘Time machine’ that does an admirable job. However, while time machine is fine for a quick recovery here and there, it’s not the solution for optimum safety and redundancy.

With backup, the key is redundancy. The drobo makes backup easy. You plug the drobo in to an electrical outlet, plug it into your computer and finally, pop the drives into your drobo. That’s all you do. It takes your data and spreads it over several drives, for redundancy. It also does this automagically. You don’t need intimate knowledge of RAID arrays, or anything technical. It does all the difficult, mundane and boring stuff for you. It makes an incredibly complex and difficult task as easy as turning something on and plugging something in.

Ok, back to things going wrong. In very short order I had three drives go bad and it appeared my drobo was acting weird. I’m writing this article while I await the arrival of my replacement drobo. I wanted to take a few minutes to share a few lessons I learned about this experience:

I’ve been incredibly impressed with the support from the people of Data Robotics. You have real people trying to make a great product, improve the safety of our digital lives and do it with kindness and humility.

Is it Data Robotics fault that hard drives sometimes fail? No, it’s not. They’re taking a bad situation and attempting to make the experience of something that fails into an experience of “we’ve got your back”. How many companies can you say that about?

These are just a few. I’ll most likely add to this post if the coming days. Feel free to add your own.

Granted, this isn’t the 60′s anymore and people do tend to be less caring of others. Our politics is more about personal destruction than about being constructive – this goes for both parties. While I’m hopeful President Obama can be successful and bring real honest to goodness change, I’m doubtful it’ll happen. Not in the way change needs to happen but, that’s a topic for another day.

Dreaming big is only the first step. Looking inside yourself and determine what needs to happen to make the dream reality is the step before the first step.

Today is just a very exciting day. I’m looking forward to putting some goals in place myself and to dream big. My dream? To get people to understand that we’re in this together. Just because we may disagree with a political philosophy or view point doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, or civil or respectful. It just means we have things to discuss and debate

Which company is that? Amazon.com. Amazon has been known for sometime to have a great online shopping experience and terrific customer service. Maybe not Zappos type customer service but, good none-the-less.

Lately, Amazon has been making some rather peculiar and dare I say, hostile decisions. Most have effected publishing “partners” while one high profile incident had the company remotely deleting a download from consumers Kindle devices.

Any casual observer could plainly see that Amazon is making poor decisions and it has me worried. I think Amazon overall is a very well run company. It’s also a rather large company and anything of that size, with different decision points (read middle managers making poor decisions) and you’re going to have the incidents they’ve had as of late.

Having said that, it’s no excuse for the tactics they’re employing with some of their partners. See this New York Times article to get yourself up to speed.

I hope Amazon decides to go back to focusing on making the best e-book reader they can. Focus like a laser on providing the best buying experience on the net. In doing so, I think they’ll be able to turn it around. After all, it’ll be a boon for their customers and it’s no secret that’s the best recipe for success.

This morning I received an email as I’m subscribed to their newsletter. After reading it, I thought it would be a good idea to share with everyone else. See below. Needless to say, I agree with everything stated. I think it’s about time people start getting back to basics; simple things like common decency and doing what is right are not gray areas!

Newsletter from Consumer Reports pased below

Dear Scott,

Jim Guest, President
Consumer Reports

In the segment I watched, the banking industry representative painted the picture that the banks were “protecting” consumers by now not allowing debit charges to go thru if the funds were not available in the account. Maybe it’s just me but, isn’t that what they should have been doing all along? I think what set me off was how they framed it as they were protecting consumers. Does anyone really believe this crap?

Sure, I’m incredibly sad and obviously I’m going to miss not being able to pick up the phone and talk. I’ll miss not seeing him and being able to bounce ideas off him but, at the end of the day he’s left me with wonderful memories. I’d rather enjoy these memories right now than cry over his passing. Maybe I’ll do that at some point but, right now it just seems more appropriate to laugh at the good times.