By most measures I (and family)
am/are connected… We live on the northern fringes of what is known as Silicon
Valley… We have high speed internet (T-3 via fiber optic cable… very fast) with
wifi at home… my phone can stream data and can be configured as a wifi hot
spot… I have a lap top and an Ipad (some are android pads), so does the wife
and daughter and many extra daughters and the son when home and others…
visitors… we all are on line… here at the place we call home… This is the way
of the modern world…
I have email accounts (more than one,
maybe more than 5) I have been blogging
for 8 years… (I had a blog on Xanga, back in 2005, before Blogger…) Of course, there is Facebook and Myspace
(does anyone beyond stray musicians use Myspace anymore?) and Yahoo Groups… and web sites… I had my first web site (now abandoned)
“The Birth of California Narrow Gauge” back
in 1996.
I once was driving east, between
Tucson and El Paso, on I-10 while a passenger, one of my extra daughters, was
on line, on Ebay, buying a pair or Christian Louboutin shoes… (I have many
women in my life, a wife, a daughter, extra daughters who visit often… all (at
least many) seem to have shoes with red soles… (some of them many pairs…))
I have blogged from an alluvial fan
in Death Valley, next to a camp fire, with a coyote a hundred yards off, lurking
near… On another occasion from a camping
ground in Mesa Verde, next to a camp fire, from the Antarctic Peninsula, from
Tasmania… I once made a reservation for a tour of our house museum, along the
shores of San Francisco Bay (the museum) while on the shores of Lake Titicaca,
while on vacation… On another occasion, I needed a weather report, while
driving in the Nevada desert… Tina forwarded a report… another time, while in
Utah, somewhere north of the Great Salt Lake… on a dirt road… a map might have
been emailed… For the most part, I am never far from information…
The lovely Tina may in fact work for
the god being which is Google… This doesn’t make us more connected, but gives
us occasional insights to the community that facilitates our connectivity… I am
not part of the industry, but like the coyote in Death Valley, I sniff about
the edges…
So, the world, our world, is very
connected, at least most of the time…
Except at work…
My work, not the lovely Tina’s work,
which as expected is always very connected… At my work, the connections get
difficult.
At work, (my work) our access to the
big bad evil internet is restricted… We are scared of the internet, scared of
staff wasting time on the internet… scared of unauthorized information being
released via the internet… At work we are scared of the internet…
I can’t
access my blog from work… or any other blog… When I try, a little box pops up
and says
Content blocked by your organization
Reason:
This Websense category is filtered: Blogs and Personal Sites.
But, the softwear that blocks blogs
(and other internet evil) is capricious… It universally blocks anything from
Blogger, but Word Press sites seem to sneak through… (my blog sneaks through sometimes…but only if
following a link instead of searching for it directly… the Websense system isn’t
that smart)
So, at work, My blog, (and in
theory) all blogs are blocked… (much of the current information about
other house museums is found on blogs… but that doesn’t matter, they are
blocked) Most discussion boards are blocked… Anything that might be naughty
(booze, porn, etc, including sports and places to purchase tickets for sporting
events) is blocked (at least that is understandable… occasionally heavy
handed, but understandable)
But I can access Hulu, and
stream full episodes of TV shows… From my work computer... because its logical… or not. I know this because a staff member spoke of
an episode of “Family Guy” (specifically “Joe’s Revenge”), where Peter visits a
house museum… (the Pershing House in El Paso, it has a facebook page) “Is that
his table? Is that his bed? Is that his
window?... Wow” (If you run a house
museum this is really, sadly funny) So, since she mentioned it, I goggled it
(we can google… we are not that backward) and the Hulu link showed up… and
worked… because streaming full episodes of TV is sooo conducive to productive
work…
In my employer’s defense, there are
logical reasons for some of the sites blocked… as a government agency, they
block file sharing sites… Dropbox for example, for fear that we might put a
government document there, outside of controls about public access and record
keeping laws… For a long time Facebook was blocked, but then the City
established Facebook pages for City in general, for the Police Department, for
Economic Development and for the Water Park… so now, we can look at
Facebook from our work computers, and can now waste our time looking at
pictures of cats. Picasa Web was
blocked, but was un-blocked at my request so it could be used to send photos to
our architect… Appeals are considered
and exceptions may be granted for good reason (or good behavior)
Blogs on behalf of the government
are a concern based on the possibility of public feedback and how those
comments could be moderated, but also for what we, the employees might say in
public… Even if the Navy has authorized a US Navy Destroyer to blog from deployment... we won't be... we just won't go there...
I should probably shut up now, and go look for pictures
of cats…. and snarky quotes to re-post on this blog…
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