SQLLawman

This weekend I was volunteering at the One America Mini-Marathon Expo to help raise awareness of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training and I reconnected with a team mate from Team Indiana’s cycle team for the Honolulu Century ride.  When he introduced me to his friend that came to the expo with him, the stated I was a “biking machine.”  Yep, my head swelled.  Now Scott is an athlete.  Less then a month before the century ride he competed in an Olympic length triathlon.  This summer in addition to running the mini, he is completing in an Olympic length, half, and full ironman triathlons.  He even acknowledging that I ride is made me feel so good.  So I’d like to challenge all to read this to be liberal with your compliments.  There is so much in the world that tries to beat us down, that an honestly complementing someone based on your perception of their abilities is refreshing.  Throughout the rest of the weekend, I began to watch how others greeted each other.  I was surprised how much sarcasm and insults were in the greetings.  Now I recognize that this is how we greet each other and no one takes these greeting as insulting.  But I wonder if complementing rather than insulting could change attitudes and turn back the wave of negativism that is so prevalent in our society.  So I am going to look for opportunities to complement and build up, and squelch the urge to break down, even in jest.  Since I am rather sarcastic to begin with, I find this a challenging decision.  Hopefully this will be a step in making this a better world.

I have been noticing a scary trend over the last few years.  Home computers have gone from a techno-toy (like a DVD player) to an important part of everyone’s life.  I have also noticed that computers are becoming 5 year assets.  People are replacing them every 5 years.  Today they are inexpensive enough to do that.  But the trend I am seeing is that the old PC is not being replaced, but a notebook is being added to the home computer.  So I have a lot of family and friends with 4 to 5 year old desktop PCs, and hard drives are beginning to fail.  Since most PCs came in as toys, disaster recovery is typically not considered by the home user.  Does the thought of loosing all you digital pictures, your password database that you are allowing your web browser of choice manage for you, or any document you have created scare you?  It should.  A couple of people have asked me my strategy so here it is.  I use a three pronged approach.  I have a wireless network in my house.  Every night at 2:00 am (wow, now that I think of that it is a really bad time to choose now that Indiana is on daylight saving time) *Note to self reschedule backups*.   I copy my documents folder to another PC that is on different power circuit in a different part of the house.  I also copy that data to a USB connected disk.  Please note, this is not a backup plan.  I cannot step back in time and get an old version of a changed file.  But in most cases I don’t need that.  Then once a month, I burn what I feel is most important (pictures, keepass password database, e-mail archive) to DVD and store it off-site.   I point all my applications to store their data in that location.  I am not saying this is the best strategy, but I would like you to at least think about your strategy.  The day after a hard drive crash is not the time to consider this.  Just remember, that e-mail and web surfing appliance is becoming a critical part of your life.  Protect it.

I was looking over my blog and I noticed that it was heading in a direction I didn’t like.  I had stared down the path of a whiney, ranting, complaining, negative blog that way too many blogs have gone.  So I am stopping it now.  I need to get more SQL and positive posts to offset some of the negative I am seeing in the blog world.  So here is the positive for today.  I am going to focus on the positive of the “special needs” part of my world.  My eleven year old daughter was born with Down Syndrome and congenital heart defects.  At eleven months she had open heart surgery to repair those holes.  At seven years old she was diagnosed with leukemia and fought to beat that beast for two and a half years.  To put it plainly, she is a fighter.  That is the background for her newest endeavor.  She recently began theraputic riding at a local stable, and her instructor was so impressed with her abilities that she promoted her to horse riding lessons and has now begun to ride full sized horses without side walker assitance.  She also joined 4-H and is working on halter class for this years county fair.  She will be competing against typically developing kids in this class, and that’s the way she like it.  So her battle for inclusion continues as she continues to impress and break stereotypes.  She may be “special needs” but if you are competing against her in anything, don’t take her lightly, or she will take you.  Perhaps I’ll tell you about her Karate touranment last year some time.  Inclusion does work, her life is proof.

Along with our two dogs, we are dog sitting for my brother-in-law as his family is out of the state.  Shipley, their German Shepard is a really good dog.  It has been fun watcing the dynamics of the dogs.  My dog Zoe, American Staffordshire Terrior mix, has assumed the role as alpha female.  This gives her the unique opportunity to be left out when the two shepards play.  But since she is fairly lazy, that doesn’t bother her too much.  Right now they are all lying down surrounding me.  It’s pretty peaceful in the house right now.  My shepard/akita mix, Belle, is lying beside me asking for attention.  That does make blogging a bit more difficult.  My wife and kids are watching  “Journey to the Center of the Earth” with Brandon Frazier again.  Yes, you can guess why my wife is watching it.