According to DG, they are Keeva, Kara and Kylie. She says that since they were all given boy names last year, it’s only fair that they be given girl names this year. Here they are bickering. It seems that sibling rivalry is universal, whether between herons or humans.

Me too. But I got some fun ones this weekend. It’s soooo hot outside and until about an hour ago, the breeze was nowhere to be found, which means that great water droplet shots can be had with enough patience and hydration.

The herons were really late nesting and hatching this year, but I have some fun ones to share now. Finally. There are three chicks this year, and they’re just starting to stretch their wings. One is older than the other two (not unusual) and in this photo, they’ve just been fed and are fighting. The fun starts when they start flapping. They flap their wings until they finally get them coordinated, then stretch up their legs and flap and flap and FLAP. And then….nothing. Somewhat deflated, they retire to the nest for the next meal and flap session.

Warning: It does have language that’s NSFW at the end. Still, it’s 2 minutes well-spent on how to have a productive online discussion:

Unlike Julie Amero, Michael Fiola won’t face criminal charges for possession of child pornography. But that doesn’t make his case any less egregious, or his life any different today. It doesn’t give him his job back, restore his reputation, or the harm that’s been done as a result of yet another ignorant leap to the wrong conclusion.

Michael Fiola worked for the Department of Industrial Accidents in Massachusetts. On November 20, 2006, Fiola was issued a laptop for use in connection with his field work as an accident investigator. In March, 2007 the laptop was seized and Fiola was subsequently fired from his job for possession of child pornography. The case was also referred to the DA for prosecution.

This time, however, the laptop was examined by a qualified forensic examiner, Tami Loehrs. Her examination and analysis of the laptop concluded the following:

1. The laptop was infected with at least 5 serious viruses and Trojans that caused the computer to be compromised for at least 4 1/2 months — longer than Fiola had possession of the laptop.
2. The Symantec antivirus software installed was outdated and not functioning properly from day one.
3. The Systems management software wasn’t installed properly, so no network monitoring or updates were being pushed to the laptop.
4. Mr. Fiola not only wasn’t responsible for the pornography, he probably didn’t even know about it.

Of course, the DIA didn’t take kindly to the allegation that this was all their fault, and in a fashion similar to Julie Amero’s prosecution, said that with their 3-hour examination of the hard drive and the assumption that one has to DO something in order to initiate such activity it was clearly Fiola’s fault and so he should be fired, he should not get his job back, and he should suffer the stigma of being a kiddie porn downloader for the rest of his life.

This is outrageous. Beyond outrageous. You can read Loehrs’ report yourself. The investigator for the DIA climbs up on his high horse and makes the usual specious statements about how “the network is monitored carefully” and that “the user has to do something to have pornography downloaded, it just doesn’t download itself”, indicating that he has absolutely zero knowledge of how Trojans and viruses work. In fact, one of the times the laptop had activity was a time where Fiola was out for the evening without the laptop. Loehrs hammers home the responsibility of the network administrator here:

It is their opinion that Michael Fiola must be responsible for the activity because it was only happening when he possessed the Laptop out in the field. How else could viruses, Trojans and hackers attack a Laptop? The Laptop must be turned on for the viruses and Trojans to execute or for a hacker to gain access to it. Therefore, the Laptop could only be compromised when Michael Fiola had the Laptop turned on and he typically had the Laptop turned on when he was in the field. He did not need the Laptop at the office because he had a desktop computer at the office, therefore the Laptop was not compromised during those times. In addition, viruses and Trojans typically need some event to occur in order to trigger their execution. For example, when the Internet browser is opened, it may trigger the downloader to download a back door which in turn allows the hacker to gain access. Therefore, when Michael Fiola opens his Internet browser to access a work-related website, checks his email or logs into the DIA mainframe, the trigger is pulled, the virus or Trojan begins its attack and the activity subsequently appears to be caused by Michael Fiola.

Her indictment of their disingenuity is no less scathing:

If the DIA had reviewed the Symanec logs, they would have discovered the numerous viruses and Trojans attacking the Laptop for four and a half months without resolution; that log files were missing or incomplete; that virus definition downloads were failing; that virus scans were only taking 30 seconds to complete. If the DIA had reviewed the SMS logs they would have discovered the numerous errors that began the moment Michael Fiola received the Laptop thereby leaving the Laptop unmonitored and unmaintained for four and a half months. If the DIA had reviewed the temporary Internet files they would have discovered suspicious activity occurring day after day including the appearance of pornography with no preceding event; websites being cached to the hard drive at the rate of 20 to 40 per minute; JavaScript files with malicious code. What should have been a “red flag” to Mr. Glennon and the IT department when they found the Verizon wireless data usage to be four and a half times that of any other user is that the Laptop may have been compromised by a virus, Trojan or hacker.

According to the Boston Herald article, the Fiolas intend to sue the DIA for the destruction of his reputation, career and life. His attorney has a good grasp of the big picture:

“Imagine this scenario: Your employer gives you a ticking time bomb full of child porn, and then you get fired, and then you get prosecuted as some kind of freak,” he railed.

This is happening to many, many people. The combined arrogance of in-house IT folks who don’t want to admit they screwed up someone’s computer and someone’s life and the ignorance of many who investigate on the employers’ behalf leaves real people behind, bankrupt and ostracized.

I hope Mr. Fiola succeeds in his efforts to hold the TRUE culprits available. And I hope Julie Amero is given a new trial, or better yet, has the charges dropped against her. Both are victims of something they could not control, and both found themselves at the mercy of IT administrators’ arrogance (or ignorance), and hot zeal to hand out punishment for it, whether or not the responsible party was punished.

If you know of anyone who has found themselves in a similar situation and are in need of assistance, send them to The Julie Group blog for assistance.

h/t Alex Eckelberry - Sunbelt Blog

I suppose I should. If it were “stepfathers day” I’d have lots to say, because I have one of the funniest, kindest, quirkiest stepdads on the planet. He still kisses my elbow when I walk in the house and sneaks cotton balls in my purse when I’m not looking. (I told you he was quirky) Those cotton balls bring back memories of sneaking in at 3AM trying not to let anyone know I’d just gotten home, only to be caught out when I let out an involuntary scream while turning the covers back on my bed. Under those covers, there would be the carefully laid pattern of cotton balls, placed for maximum possibility of inadvertent contact.

See, I hate cotton balls. There is something about the texture of them that gives me chills down my spine if I even think about them, much less touch them. The idea of picking one up, or inadvertently plunging my finger into the center of one just about sends me into orbit. Call it sensory disconnect, or just weirdness. Because it’s just this side of utterly bizarre, my stepdad thinks it’s funny to tease me with them. It never fails to get a laugh (even from me sometimes), and he also reminds me that it could have been one of my brother’s snakes in that bed instead of cotton balls. The boas, in particular, seemed to love getting out of their nice warm man-made houses and finding their way to the foot of my bed.

With a great stepfather like that, writing about my real father on father’s day would be one of two things: mean-spirited or phony. It makes more sense to remain silent. There is one thing, though. My dad is the one who taught me how to love jazz, and to respect the artistry behind the music. It makes me sad to know that he won’t have an opportunity to see his grandson carry forward the tradition of the music he loves best. Beyond that, the other stories are not ones I care to tell, especially on a day where fathers are celebrated. Flaws and all, I know he loved me as best as he could. He just couldn’t get around himself enough to make it count when it needed to.

So instead of writing, I’ll just wish all dads out there a great day, blow a kiss toward my stepdad’s elbow, and remind the kids to behave.

For a Monday, it wasn’t so bad. One of my coworkers is on vacation so I was in full-tilt boogie covering for her, had twitter open and had loaded up Leo LaPorte’s live stream of Steve Jobs’ keynote about the new iPhone.

I posted a post on the political blog and went back to work, listening to the iPhone presentation in the background, when all of a sudden some Twitter friends sent me a note at the same time telling me they were getting an error message saying that the site they were accessing was on a server that was to be deleted.

WTF? And sure enough, there it was.

I have several sites on Startlogic and all but this one have been migrated to their new server and admin platform. This is the oldest of them all, so I figured it would be one of the last.

Evidently not. It seems that something didn’t port well, and despite the rather snotty insistences that they had been sending me emails for months letting me know this was going to happen (they didn’t, but more in a minute on that), it was still sitting in limbo and due to be deleted forever on June 30th.

So instead of telling me they were going to redirect to a splash page, they said nothing. I went through all of my email and found the note saying it was scheduled for migration but no notice that there had been a problem. No notice saying “drop dead or fix it by June 10th or ELSE.”

Just a forced redirect to a splash page telling every visitor and everyone who linked to me here and on the political blog that…nothing was here.

After spending an hour holding for their tech support, I decided it just wasn’t worth the aggravation. I backed up the blogs, the databases, and all the multimedia and moved everything over to Bluehost before Steve Jobs could say “Congratulations, it’s iPhone 2.0!”

Now it’s nearly 11:00. It took over 12 hours for the DNS to update to the new server. I still can’t see the blog from my own computer here, but twitter friends assure me it’s really, really there. Of course, the database broke during the import and I ended up being locked out of my own blog, but that was a small thing, easily fixed. More or less, anyway.

Just a little notice, Startlogic. That’s all it would have taken. You could have sent me a “FIX THIS OR ELSE” letter. You could have called. Even robocalled and left a message. You could have twittered me, even.

But when you suck up someone’s entire site into a black hole and leave a splash page behind, we’re done. After three years, that’s exactly what we are. Buh-bye. You too, can suckit.

I first heard about Phil Burns on Twitter about 2 weeks ago when someone re-twittered his most recent post saying that his daughter, Serenity, might have leukemia. And she does. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Fortunately, A.L.L. is the more curable type of leukemia, but it involves 2 1/2 years of treatment.

They’re on day 16, and it’s already a haul. Did I mention that Phil and his wife have 8 kids? Here’s a little bit of what they’re dealing with:

So, I cancelled my fantasy of maybe being able to actually go do something with Adria Friday night and got on the phone and started making arrangements for the other kids while I drove home, Adria packed our bags. I got home and we loaded up Serenity and headed to the E.R.. She really didn’t look good. By the time we got to the ER at Utah Valley, the oncologist had already been on the phone with Triage and they knew we were coming. As we pulled up, I had my little speech prepared to keep us out of the waiting room (neutropenic means her neutrophil (a type of white blood cells) counts are extremely low and she has little to no immunity):

“This is Serenity Burns, she was recently diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia, she is neutropenic and is symptomatic of requiring an immediate blood transfusion.”

I spouted that a few times, feeling a bit like Jane from Firefly in the episode where they break into the hospital. Anyway, they sent us into a room to check us in and the first question out of the RN’s mouth after hearing my little speech is:

“Has she recently been on any medications”

I was stunned for a minute, couldn’t think of anything to respond with that wasn’t just rude. After a second I said without further hesitation, ”well, with recently being diagnosed with Leukemia, she is now on chemo, zofran, dexamethazine, prevacid, oxycodin, PEG injections, sephra on mon and tues, and has recently had about a dozen blood transfusions and as many platelet transfusions - but that really hasn’t changed in the last few days.”

Then it was her turn to be stunned and ask me to repeat the list slowly. hehe.

So, in addition to being a web entrepreneur working to launch a new Web 2.0 app, raising 8 kids, and trying to have a life somewhere in there, the whole family is now struggling with a new and very scary paradigm — knowing that the youngest child is facing a disease that can be deadly and can be cured, and the line to walk toward a cure is a very thin, carefully balanced combination of medication, monitoring and love.

Friends have started a fundraising effort to help his family with Serenity’s medical bills. Even with insurance, it’s not a walk in the park.

It feels kind of like a startup company, which I’ve been doing for the last 18 months anyway, it’s familiar territory and I feel kind of comfortable here. Just like a startup, Serenity’s plan involves risk - a lot of risk. But there’s a huge reward and it’s very much worth time, effort and money. Going into this we have no idea how much money it’s going to cost but it’s got to be done and we’ll figure that out as we go - just like an early stage startup. The point is, I feel like I can do this, I’ve been doing it for a long time.

Please consider a donation if possible, and if not, please send good thoughts, prayers, and hope Serenity’s way.

Serenity’s website is here, and you can follow Phil on Twitter here.

Photo credit: Phil Burns