i.t. generalist

I am starting another blog today.  Not that I have a bunch of
these things floating around, but I've been blogging alot on theology
and social issues, my avocation, and not at all about my
vocation.  Other blogs I have started have been more personal and
a little scary.   The worst part of blogs is lack of
boundaries and expertise; the best part of blogging is appropriate
boundares and some measure of expertise. 

So I tumbled to an add for Tech Republic and started writing.  So
far the experience has been easy, quick and reliable, which is the
hallmark of truly advanced technology.  I love things that work
without brain surgery!

This is yet another blog.  I hope to keep this one going for a good while.

A co-worker of mine reminded me of a common problem in small
companies:  retaining knowledge over time.  Staff come and
go.  A company created, organized and reorganized.  People's
responsiblities change.  How do we retain knowledge through
change?  Put another way, how do we "sustain" the organization
through change? 

You can get a global view of creating learning organizations by reading
Peter Senge's "The fifth discipline:  the art & practice of
the learning organization." 

Down at the "Why did we do what we did when we did it" there are
several ways to capture information.  One is paper, which is
time-honored but hard to manage.  Another is a database of some
kind.  Well, we have BridgeTrak, a great call tracking system, but
I find in a one or two-person I.T. shop it takes more time to update
the call tracking system than it took to solve the original
problem.  Not every problem needs to be documented to the Nth
level of detail.

How about a wiki or a blog?  I have used both on a personal
basis.  Both have their uses.  Wikipedia is a good (perhaps
the best, most successful) example of an interactive database. 
Web logs or "blogs" are ubiquitous.  My blog on TechRepublic is
only the most recent example.

How many non-profit organizations use blogs or wikis internally for
knowledge retention?  I used Ward Cunningham's web site
(http://c2.com) to find an ASP-based wiki called Noodle
(http://adamv.com/dev/asp/noodle/).  It is simple to install, easy
to understand and extend, and easy to use.  I will describe how we
use Noodle in future posts.

As time's arrow only goes one direction (I know, there are quantum and
relativistic effects, but not in everyday life), there is no getting
wasted time back.  For the purposes of this blog, I define "wasted
time" as time that doesn't strengthen human relationships, complete
chores or advance some goal (like losing 20 pounds).  Like
searching the web for new FOSS software to compile on my eMac.

I shelved a project to get a Python-based wiki working because I needed
to find a database, a Python interface to that database, and then then
wiki itself.  All three components needed to be built from source
and installed.  I thought I had everything working, but I began to
run into what appeared to be little errors.  The wiki wanted
access to a database, but an include file was missing.  Actually
it was not missing, just not where the wiki expected it to be.  So
I had a choice to run down the rabbit hole - or not.

After a good 15 years of spending my free time this way, I have learned
just a very little about when to quit.  My "quit time" is down to
about a day and a half.  It is not worth chasing down the
differences in the installation locations of three pieces of software
just to run a wiki for local use.

And that is not all.  I could, if I wanted to, run a compiled
program that does the same thing (I tried it, too much of a performance
drain).  I could use a little journal program I bought for $20
(which I am bored with for some reason and don't use.  And its not
the first time I've bought some little diary program that I didn't
use).  I could use the PHP-based wiki I found and installed at
home in 10 minutes (which I am likely to use) or the ASP-based wiki I
found and installed at work (also in 10 minutes, and I am VERY likely
to use).

Time sinks are many.  Computers and all related to them are famous
time sinks.  If I had been born 20 years earlier I'd probably be a
motorhead, building cars.  Its great to get mechanical and
technological tools working, but in the end its like getting excited
about a shovel.  Or a pencil.  They are just tools. 
They have no purpuse until they are used creatively.

Its time to start the day and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

I define "advanced technology" as any tool I can afford that works
without fuss. My eMac, running OS X, is one such tool.
Windows is, well, adequate most days. I wouldn't exactly call it
advanced, but it gets better with each major release.

A great example of truly advanced techology, more advanced than any
computer, is a pencil (or pen) and paper. It is ubiquitous. It is
affordable. It works without power. It has limitations (a leaky pen, no
pencil sharpener, paper tears) but it
works.   I am trying to use pencil & paper more often because
of a consequence of constant typing: my penmanship, which was never
more than "okay," has suffered. Other's have the same experience
(see Mike Zielinski's "Zeke Blog" and Dana Hoffman's "I'll Rest When I'm Dead").
FYI, for Dana's post, click on the link and then scroll up above the track-back.

One of the great things about a written journal is that I can practice
my handwriting.  A written diary,
journal or calendar also keeps some things secret; the lack of
boundaries in wikis, web logs and sites like Facebook and Webshots will
come back to haunt people, and sooner rather than later. It is no
wonder employers aggressively pursue employees whose posts they don't
like. What do you think will happen when your spouse or parent
finds your blog? An employer can only fire you. Your family
can punish you forever!

See "Ivan Tribble's" article in the July 8th issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, called "Bloggers Need Not Apply."

TechRepublic is the first blog I've started and kept up. I post very selectively to other blogs.

I also use Google's automatic search tools (we used to call them "SDIs"
for "selective dissemination of information" in library school) to see
where me and my email address pop up. I assure you that my life
story is not posted on the Internet. A blog and my resume are
quite enough, thank you, and even that may be too much.

I suggest bloggers and wiki editors be far more circumspect in their
posting. Editors function as gatekeepers in the major
media. I always wondered what function they served besides saying
"Your story stinks," "Your writing stinks," and "We're not printing
that." Oh, yeah, to say "Your writing stinks. Do it again
until I say stop."

Now that everyone is their own editor, and
there are no gatekeepers to be found, then the unwashed (of whom I am a
proud member) are self-publishing everywhere. I think the rewards
will ultimately be greater than the cost. But we've yet to see
what the cost REALLY is in lost jobs - and lost trust.

The killer application of the next 10 years will be a blog flusher,
something that finds and selectively erases every unwanted post a
person has made to a blog.

I have two thoughts on "social computing." The first is about the
use of blogs and wikis internally. Usefully enought there is an
article about this on TechRepublic. See "Blogs vs. wikis: Which is best for internal government use"
by Ramon Padilla Jr. Like all applications, the choice between
one tool another depends on the problem to be solved, the skill level
of the end user, the right infrastructure, and adequate documentation
and training.

I had personally tried a great variety of time management and planning
tools for personal and professional use. I found the best
combination for me includes:  1) a hand-written diary for the most
personal topics.  2) a paper calendar (its portable, uses no power
and can be easily replaced).  3) a personal wiki on my eMac to
learn about wikis and organize my A+ study notes (I use pmWiki).  4) several wikis, organized by topics, for work projects (I'm trying multiple installations of Noodle).  5) this blog on TechRepublic (the first I've started and kept updating, ever).

I am also looking at a help-desk product called Liberum.
I've used a variety of help desk products and none of them were
satisfying. My employer has a license for BridgeTrak and
CIDiscovery, products of Kemma Software.
BridgeTrak and CIDiscovery are very good products; they would have been
a great product in previous jobs, but it may be overkill for what I do
now.

I am interested in Liberum because it is "free" (nothing is free, but
the product can be had for nothing; it is impelementation that takes
time. And we all know time is money). We need a web-based
work order system for our maintenance department. Liberum might
be just the ticket. The trick is making Liberum
"HUD-compliant." That is a topic in itself, as is help-desk
software.

To finish my first thought, it takes some work to find a good fit
between a stated or unstated need and software that meets the
need.

The second thought is how to adopt "social computing" tools to a social
services setting. I work for a non-profit agency that provides
mental health services and supported housing. There is a
discussion, on-going, on the HUSITA
("Human Service Information Technology Application") discussion list
about low technology literacy in human services work. It reminds
me of librarianship 30 years ago. I finished my MLS (Master of
Library Science) degree in 1986, 19 years ago. In that time the
library profession has gained broad, deep and detailed technical
expertise, rivaling anything to be found in industry. This is
especially true of academic librarianship.

In short, I don't know if the counseling staff where I work will give a
hoot about a wiki or a blog. I think excitement about technology,
familiarity and comfort with technology, are a somewhat
generational. The younger a person is (chronologically or
behaviorally) I find they accept technology more. Translating
this into technical facility in the work place takes a long time.
It has to be an organizational value, something expected and supported
by the organization. This support has been mixed over the course
of my career; government, industry and non-profits are somewhat cool to
technology education. You can't demonstrate how useful something
is until you learn how to do it. You can't learn something new -
on someone else's dime and time - unless you can show its useful.
That is why I.T. people are auto-didacts. No one will teach you,
so you have to teach yourself, and lift yourself up by your own
bootstraps. It gets old.

I bought a Microsoft Fingerprint Reader to see if we could use it at
work. It would be convenient to use fingerprints in place of
passwords at some (if not all locations).

The reader I ordered
from Staples was just $50 ($64 with tax and shipping). The reader
uses a bundled copy of Digital Persona fingerprint reading software.

I discovered this product does not work with Active Directory, so it is useless to
us. This may have been apparent to others, but it was not to
me. The packaging was not marked in anyway; the note about Active
Directory was buried in Digital Persona help file.

In an Active Directory environment you need: a fingerprint reader
for each workstation. This is the least expensive part; a client
program that connects to the reader and the local Windows security
subsystem. on a workstation; a "fingerprint server" which integrates
the tokens
generated by client software from fingerprints into your AD forest.

I have not priced all this, but for, say, 10 servers and 100+ workstations I
bet it comes to a tidy sum for both the initial and continuing
costs. Indirect costs, like the labor and travel time for
installation and maintenance, must also be included. Staff will
also need training and orientation. What sounds simple is
not simple.

I think we'll wait on acquiring and deploying
biometric security hardware and software - at least until Microsoft
changes the copy on the packaging for their low-end fingerprint reader.

I watched some of the "special features" that come with "The Lord of
the Rings" DVDs last night. I asked myself "How did Peter Jackson
create this work of art?" For that matter, how did J.R.R. Tolkein
and Peter Jackson manage their respective projects to such a successful
and lasting conclusion?

Does anyone in business think this way
anymore? Does anyone in the technology business think
this way anymore? Are there any case studies on how and why books
or movies fail or succeed? Can lessons in the publishing and/or
entertainment industries be applied to other industries? Its
worth looking in to.

Like many people in the I.T. world, I have a lot of reading to
do. Some of my reading is for pleasure, some is to keep up with critical issues in the my
industries. Why the plural? Because I have one foot in the
I.T. world and another (sometimes it seems like more than one foot,
like I'm a cow or something) in another problem domain. In my
case the problem domain is come Venn intersection of non-profits,
mental health, behavioral health, homelessness, project management,
HIPAA, security, privacy and the Microsoft product line (with a couple
OpenBSD boxes I built for variety).

How on earth can I possibly keep up with it all? And that's just
professional reading. In my personal life I am a student of world
religions (Christianity and Zen in particular) and the martial
arts. And the parent of a toddler. Each of these has its
own stack of reading, too. Being a librarian lends a certain
flavor to all this reading. I keep buying more things to read for fear
that the thing I'm interested in will go away; bbooks go out of print
quickly and no library has them all. So
the stacks get higher (more to read on a particular topic) and broader
(more to read on different topics). Its a struggle to keep
up. It is very important to read more of the right thing, and
fewer useless things. Let me clarify the word "useless." E.B.White said
"One man's meat is another man's poison." So not
everything I call "useless" is, in fact, useless in itself. It is
only useless to me at the moment.

That said, here is a first pass through some stuff I've been collecting
for months or longer, in hopes of keeping my employer and I informed,
and not too surprised.

1. Baseline: the bottom line it I.T., published by Ziff Davis. I have found over the years I
need exactly one copy of Baseline on hand, the most recent issue. Baseline's case
studies are the inspiration for what an advisor of mine once called
"pencilling it out."

To "pencil it out" means to understand what you do, why you do it, how
much that costs, and what your options are for a replacement
system. You could call it being a business analyst, but most
businesses, whether for profit or non-profit, can't afford to hire a
business analyst, as a consultant or an employee. So somebody in
house needs to do the analysis, in addition to the 10 or 100 other hats
they wear. Baseline is good for models of how to "pencil it out."

2. The critical path: project management news for the healthcare
industry, published by Knight Associates and EPM^2e. Sorry, it
wasn't useful for me. Pick up a copy of "Project Management for
Dummies" at Borders if you need a brief introduction to project
management. If you aspire to be a project management wonk, check out the Project Management Institute and look in to certification.

Odds are there is someone in the work place who is doing project
management, regardless of their job title, education or training.
I suggest becoming that person's servant, if that's what it takes, to
get just a little of their knowledge about how to succeed. The
rest is on-the-job training, often in the form of failure, in
shepherding projects.

A supportive supervisor is also
necessary. "Supportive" in this context often means working for
someone who will box your bollocks off - politely - but not fire you if
you screw up a project. We need more managers like this, not
fewer. FYI, here's project management in a nutshell: 1. Evaluate -> 2.
Goals -> 3. Tasks -> 4. Calendar -> 5. Tools -> 6. $ 7. Go
to step 1. This is the signature line on my email, not to show
off but to remind me of what my job is, over and over and over again.

Continuing my "What I read" thread, I opened the following while I sipped a large mug of coffee this morning:

1. Healthcare IT news: the news source for healthcare information technology, published by Medtech Publishing Company in partnership with HIMSS.
Its chock-a-block full of articles about healthcare I.T. Its
thick in areas that don't concern me and thin in areas that do.

A first pass through this publication shows the "adline" (as my
journalist wife says) is small. Right away this is a publication
that would drop to 4 pages if I.T. vendors stopped advertising, though
pride would probably keep HITN in press long past its death date.
That was the case with the HP 3000 rags I used to read.

There are many pictures of people in suits I've never heard of.
"Suits" aren't necessarily bad - I used to be one on the library
automation business. I
am sure they are kind, friendly, highly-educated and hard-working folk,
but none of them are current in my field, which is the one-man I.T.
shop for the small provider.

What's more, my particular part of
the world, which fits best in allied health, is a backwater of I.T.,
and that's not to damn it. Where does one turn for attention -
industry attention, public policy attention - to mental health,
behavioral health, public health, soclal rehabilitation, psychosocial
rehabilitation, supported housing, homelessness, dual diagnosis and the
like? This is more than just a rhetorical question. We use
technology to foster our work. A great deal of our work is paid
for by Medi-Cal. I read about neither in HITN. Should I
expect to? Probably not.

So what is this publication good for? Issue and trends? Yes, but
not technological ones. To borrow a line from the movie
"Jerry McGuire," I advise the reader to "Show me the money." Or
better yet, follow the money. And the names. And this blurb
from what a page layout person might called a "boxed kicker" - "There
is no better time than now for technology companies that are part of
the healthcare IT industry." What this means is the sharks smell
blood in the water - time to check your pocket for your wallet and
check book.

Unfortunately, there is no interest
on the part of vendors in improving technology in my little part of the
healthcare I.T. world on the part of the healthcare I.T. industry,
we're on our own. I can hear the criticism "If its important to
you, you do it." I will, as soon as I can sleep 4 hours of my 28
hour day and work the rest of the time.

The public policy, business and payment cycles in my world are quite
out of sync with the larger healthcare world. But you watch, as
soon as some suit makes a decision in Sacramento or Washington, the
impact will be felt far, wide and deep, years later, in hundreds of
little providers across California and across the country. How
does one get some attention paid, and money (with few strings attached)
to critical, small and uninteresting parts of the healthcare
system? And do one's job at the same time? But I digress....

Healthcare IT News is what my 2-year old son would call a "blah, blah, blah." Only suits need apply.

2. Network magazine: technology architecture for the 21st century,
published by CMP Media LLC. Occationally NM is a good read.
I read it for ideas and reminders of things I should be doing.
For example, there is an article about "signature-based intrusion
detection systems." Geez, has my network been penetrated?
How would I know? What will it cost me to find out? What
will it cost me to measure and prevent network intrusion? Is this
even a problem? What does a small company do about this? I
manually monitor firewall and security log files, and look for unusual
jumps in cummulative network traffic by protocol. Its all I have
time for and all I can afford. Is there a better way to do
this? What is it?

There is another article called "Telecom bills: an untapped gold
mine." It would be useful to audit our phone bills
quarterly. Whose job is this? Should be looking ahead to
VoIP? How much will an infrastructure change like this
cost? What do we gain by doing it? What is the payback
period compared our current, continuing costs and the initial cost of
switching from conventional telephone switches to VoIP? Its time
to get the pencil out.

An article on a product called AppDetective yielded this nugget:
HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley, FISMA (Federal Information Security Management
Act), California SB 1386 and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. How do
these laws affect small providers? I don't know. I can tell
you how it affects storage, search and security vendors: they all
have solutions in search of a problem, but which of them will stand up
in court with you if you are sued?

The article on "Trusted Computer Architecture" and Intel's Active
Management Technology bears watching. Having maintenance
and security tools built into PCs and servers would make my job much
easier. I would rather fix a machine from my desk than go
on-site. So would the users I serve. It means faster
service for my customers, reduced wear & tear on my car, and time
saved for everyone. A very good idea. This was the best
part of this read.

I just lost a post because Jive's blogging engine won't accept
duplicate titles. The title must be a primary key
somewhere. Stupid. That's one post I won't get back or
re-type.

Okay, here is another try at this morning's post, shorter this time.

1. Red Herring - This is what I call a "suit rag," for the would-be
entrepeneur (sic?) or VC type. It seems like a Wired-wanna-be, so read Wired instead.

2. Redmond magazine - This is moderately useful. The July 2005 issue has
good articles on building a business case for projects, on biometric
security, and on the Windows Server Update Service. This issue is
a keeper.

As promised I expanded this post. The article on biometrics is
pretty good. It eventually described a weakness in the Microsoft
fingerprint reader: it doesn't work in an Active Directory
environment. Too Bad. It looks like rolling out biometric
security will be a major project. I am curious about the
experience of the Naperville, IL Public Library
in Illinois, where your fingerprint is your library card. Privacy
advocates are rightfully wary of the expansion of fingerprint
technology. I'd like to hear from the privacy advocates after
they've worked a week at the circulation desk of their local public
library. It would be an eye-opener for them.

The sublime is this link to Jesse James Garrett's article about AdaptivePath's approach to interactive web site design called AJAX. This same toolset is used on AdaptivePath's own web site. And it is very, very cool.

I learned about AJAX while trolling for information about JSON,
which is gaining favor as a behind-the-scenes replacement for
XML. I learned about JSON while following the continuing
development of the PINES library automation system.

I am still cool to large-scale, open source software development
efforts in vertical markets. Its not clear to me that these
efforts have a clear understanding of the difficulties of on-going
software development. For back ground see this exchange on LinuxMedNews.
I think the very good intentions of the free, open-source software
movement are balanced a) the hard work of a very few people and b) an
overall lack of resources. This leads to "reverse scope-creep,"
resetting expectations, diminished functionality, late products and
abandoned projects. Sourceforge is littered with them.

The mundane is I edited my previous posts for grammer and
punctuation. If TechRepublic and CNET are going to borrow my
words, I should at least spell those words correctly.

I just skimmed Andrew Conrey-Murray's article "The threat from within," in the August 2005 issue of Network Magazine.
I have two reactions to this article. First, you have to trust
somebody. Networks don't run themselves. Someone manages
that resource. Of necessity some person or persons will need the
run of the network to maintain, repair, trouble-shoot and tune a
network. That person should be trustworthy, but how do you
know? Audit their maintenance work? Who does that? And how
do you know the audit is reliable - who will watch the watchers?

Second, the tools mentioned in the article are aimed quite a ways up
the economic and corporate food chain. My employer will not be
implementing SecureSphere, IPLocks, SQLGuard, AppRadar, Entegra or TZX
1000 (by the way, who names this stuff? Please check what the
marketing department has been smoking, okay?). We can't afford
this stuff. There is a premise that everyone is running SQL
Server, Oracle or both. Well, we're only running SQL Server to
the extent its embedded in Exchange 2003.

Our major applications are all very small, very vertical and they store
their own data. In a way that data is more secure than if it were
all in one database. One of our applications is written in
Ryan-McFarland COBOL for DOS. I defy you to find anyone who is
willing to hack their way in to our network for the pleasure of taking
a hex editor to an ISAM file. You need to be a certain age, and
have a certain base of experience, to even understand that last
sentence. The pickings are much easier elsewhere.

Over all, another good read from Network Magazine. If I had to
subscribe to it I wouldn't, its too expensive. But I am glad CMP
Media LLC sends it for free. The addline is a little thin, which
makes me wonder how long Network Magazine will last.

I would like to use the same title for a series of blog entries, but I
can't save two blog entries with the same title.  So the pt. 1,
pt. 2, pt. n is a work around for this problem.

I've decided to call my blog entries on the Health Insurance
Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 "The HIPAA grind." 
Other titles come to mind.  The title I chose is accurate but not
too negative.  One my co-workers finds it easier to work on HIPAA
by considering the the law "a way to actively support the privacy
rights" of the people we serve.  I like this statement because it
emphasizes something my employer has always done - protected client
privacy - regardless of the impetus.

My general notes will go in my blog.  More detailed entries will
go on an internal wiki for staff use.  I'll also give detailed
citations for those interested in finding the original documents (if
available)

I revised the titles of the "What I'm reading" thread to unify the
thread.  My next post will be about a great set of blogs I've
collected on technology, along with the inevitable pile of print
sources (mostly about theology).

I like having one list of URLs stored on the web. There are many
ways to do this. I could simply list links on a static web page
and be done with it, but I've never had the patience or interest in
creating a web site. So the "My Links" section of my TechRepublic
account is great. Here's the new stuff:

ArsTechnica - I could bolt from TechRepublic after spending just an hour at ArsTechnica. Their discussion area is very good. In "Current state of OS X multi-user database applications?"
I found a number of people doing serious database development work on
the Apple Macintosh, using OS X, in minutes. They were discussing
what they developed, why they developed software a certain way and best
of all, the economics driving their development work. Very good
stuff. It similar conversations exist on TechRepublic I haven't
found them yet.

As aside, just ran in to another maddening loss of text in Jive. 
Client-side text editing isn't all its cracked up to be.  I can
just see using this editor in a heads-down, clinical database
application.  It would not work very well.  That said, for
more news about AJAX in the field see Gabriel Serafini's blog and There and Back Again by Josh Eicorn.

A few random links to finish.  To see a code artisan at work please look at Ian Bicking: A Blog.  Ian makes Python site up and beg.
Likewise Marc Liyanage, who
strikes me as An Incredibly Decent, Generous and Hard-Working Bloke for
his generosity, and ability to deliver working product on time to
thousands of people he's never met.  Like me.  Thank you,
Marc, for your PHP and PostgreSQL ports to OS X.

Finally, see The New Atlantis - A Journal of Technology and Society for some uncomfortable questions about how technology affects society.  And give Deborah Liv Johnson a spin for your soul's sake.  Her music is lovely!

For no good reason I decided to jot a few news about places I've trained.

I stared my martial arts training in September 1997 at Do Chikara Ju
Kawa, a Kodenkan Jujitsu dojo led by Duwayne MacCraney Sensei.
This was a Jujitsu America
dojo. The dojo met in the multi-purpuse room of the Pacific Grove
High School. Classes were offered as part of the Pacific Grove
Adult School. This training did me a powerful good. In a
year's time I dropped 25 pounds and earned my first kyu
certificate. When I was a jujitsoka I also attended a few classes
at Chow-Hoon Goshin Jitsu with Scott Merrill Sensei, and Chow-Hoon Dojo
Monterey Bay with Michael Blackburn Sensei. Unfortunately the PG
Adult School decided to go out
of the martial arts business and the dojo closed. I trained from
September 1997 to April 1999 and had to find a new home.

That home was Aikido of Monterey, a school in the California Aikido Association.
My heart and spirit are still centered on Aikido, though my life
situation and interests have temporarily changed. I actively
trained in Aikido from April 1999 through August 2003 and am a 3rd kyu
in Aikikai Aikido. I tested for 2nd kyu, but wasn't ready for
that rank, so I kept training. My son arrived in August 2003 and
I trained
intermittantly after that. I left the dojo in May 2005, but still
train occasionally at Aikido of Monterey. The the time I left the
dojo I had accumulated 350+ training days after 3rd kyu.

Its typical for martial arts students to train in other arts, or at
other dojo. Its considered good form to ask your "root" teacher's
permission to do this, but its not required. I have also
trained at Pacific Grove Aikido
(in Aikido) and the Yosokan Dojo at the Monterey Martial Arts Center
(in Jujitsu). I also trained 6 months, consistently, in Iaido at
the Monterey Budokan, home of Seibukan Jujitsu. I hold no rank in Iaido. When I travelled for work, I trained at the Toronoto Aikido (in Toronto, ON), The Eight Winds Aikido Society (in Gatier, MS), the Kansas City Aikido School (in Kansas City, KS) and at Aikido Institute of Spokane (in Spokane, WA). I trained in two classes at each dojo.

I am visiting friends in Charlottesville, VA at the end of August 2005. I hope to train at Aikido of Charlottesville while I'm there.

There is a remote chance I'll try jujitsu again, probably with my old
mates Tom Nonella and Hector Reynosa, at Chow-Hoon Dojo Monterey
Bay. I started training with Tommy and Hector 8 years ago, when
they were nikyus (brown belts) and I was nothin'. Now they are
both nidans (2nd back belt) and I'm, well, still gokyu (5th kyu) in
jujitsu. But I have some experience under my belt!

A friend of mine gave me a copy of a quote from Goethe on committment.  Ever the librarian I had to track the source of this quote down.  It turns out its not Goethe, but its still good.  Enjoy!

Of the many inquiries about Goethe
and Goethe quotations that come to the Goethe Society of North
America through the website, the most oft repeated and vexing
one has been a passage about boldness, magic, and providence that
certainly sounded like Goethe, but eluded our attempts to track
it down. You may recall that in our Fall 1996 Newsletter an editor
at Celestial Seasonings Teas even offered some tea in exchange
for help in identifying it. Most inquiries focused on the closing
lines: "What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it! /
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." But some cited
a fuller passage:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to
draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation),
there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless
ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits
oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur
to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole
stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor
all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever
you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius,
power, and magic in it. Begin it now."

Well, it's been found and it is partly by Goethe, in a way. We
first heard from Ellen Todd Hanks, a senior information service
librarian at the Briscoe Library of the University of Texas Health
Science Center. She found a variant of the final two sentences
in Stevenson's Home Book of Quotations: "Boldness
has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the
mind grows heated. Begin it, and the work will be completed."

The lines are attributed to John Anster in a "very free translation"
of Faust from 1835. They are indeed "very free"
writes Katja Moser, who solved a larger piece of the mystery this
May, and provided a fuller excerpt from Anster's translation,
where the lines in question are spoken by the "Manager"
in the "Prelude at the Theatre":

          Then indecision brings its own delays,
          And days are lost lamenting over lost days.
          Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;
          What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it;
          Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Moser points to Faust, 214-30, as the passage paraphrased
by Anster:

          Der Worte sind genug gewechselt,
          La?t mich auch endlich Taten sehn!
          Indes ihr Komplimente drechselt,
          Kann etwas N?tzliches geschehn.
          Was hilft es, viel von Stimmung reden?
          Dem Zaudernden erscheint sie nie.
          Gebt ihr euch einmal f?r Poeten,
          So kommandiert die Poesie.
          Euch ist bekannt, was wir bed?rfen,
          Wir wollen stark Getr?nke schl?rfen;
          Nun braut mir unverz?glich dran!
          Was heute nicht geschieht, ist morgen nicht getan,
          Und keinen Tag soll man verpassen,
          Das M?gliche soll der Entschlu?
          Beherzt sogleich beim Schopfe fassen,
          Er will es dann nicht fahren lassen
          Und wirket weiter, weil er mu?.

Katja Moser also identifies the author of the lengthier passage
being attributed to Goethe and, in doing so, reveals its connection
with John Anster's inventive paraphrase. She writes:

"The quote as you give it in a larger context seems to be
from W. H. Murray in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition,
1951. There the text apparently goes:

'But when I said that nothing had been done I erred in one important
matter. We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway
out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money--booked a sailing
to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence.
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw
back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative
(and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of
which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment
one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole
stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor
all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance,
which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned
a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

          Whatever
you can do or dream you can, begin it.
          Boldness
has genius, power and magic in it!'

So, did Goethe say it? Not really. Thank you, Katja Moser, for
the discovery!

Meredith Lee
University of California, Irvine

I found this on the NAMI (the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) web site and am glad to share it.  The original link is here:

April 8, 2005
Pope John Paul II on Mental Illness
As the world bids him farewell this week, NAMI remembers these remarks of Pope John Paul II from 1997

"[The Church] reminds the political community of its duty to
recognize and celebrate the divine image of man with actions that
support and serve all those who find themselves in a condition of
severe mental illness. This is a task which science and faith, medicine
and pastoral care, professional skill and a sense of common brotherhood
must help to carry out through an investment of adequate human,
scientific and socio-economic resources...

"Whoever suffers from mental illness 'always' bears God's image and
likeness in himself, as does every human being. In addition, he
'always' has the inalienable right not only to be considered as an
image of God and therefore as a person, but also to be treated as such.

"It is everyone's duty to make an active response; our actions must
show that mental illness does not create insurmountable distances, nor
prevent relations of true Christian charity with those who are its
victims. Indeed it should inspire a particularly attentive attitude..."

-- Pope John Paul II, International Conference for Health Care Workers, on Illnesses of the Human Mind, November 30, 1997

The Human Route

Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed -- that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.

Then what is the one pure and clear thing?

Zen Master Seung Sahn

Courtesty of The Kwan Um School of Zen

Sayings of

Zen Master Kyong Ho
(1849-1912)
Great-grandteacher of Zen Master Seung Sahn

1. Don't wish for perfect health. In perfect health there is greed and wanting. So an
   ancient said, "Make good medicine from the suffering of sickness."
2. Don't hope for a life without problems. An easy life results in a judgmental and lazy
   mind. So an ancient once said, "Accept the anxieties and difficulties of this
   life."
3. Don't expect your practice to be always clear of obstacles. Without hindrances the mind
   that seeks enlightenment may be burnt out. So an ancient once said, "Attain
   deliverance in disturbances."
4. Don't expect to practice hard and not experience the weird. Hard practice that evades
   the unknown makes for a weak commitment. So an ancient once said, "Help hard practice
   by befriending every demon."
5. Don't expect to finish doing something easily. If you happen to acquire something easily
   the will is made weaker. So an ancient once said, "Try again and again to complete
   what you are doing."
6. Make friends but don't expect any benefit for yourself. Friendship only for oneself
   harms trust. So an ancient once said, "Have an enduring friendship with purity in
   heart."'
7. Don't expect others to follow your direction. When it happens that others go along with
   you, it results in pride. So an ancient once said, "Use your will to bring peace
   between people."
8. Expect no reward for an act of charity. Expecting something in return leads to a
   scheming mind. So an ancient once said, "Throw false spirituality away like a pair of
   old shoes."
9. Don't seek profit over and above what your work is worth. Acquiring false profit makes a
   fool (of oneself). So an ancient once said, "Be rich in honesty."
10. Don't try to make clarity of mind with severe practice. Every mind comes to hate
    severity, and where is clarity in mortification? So an ancient once said, "Clear a
    passageway through severe practice."
11. Be equal to every hindrance. Buddha attained Supreme Enlightenment without hindrance.
    Seekers
    after truth are schooled in adversity. When they are confronted by a hindrance, they can't
    be over-come. Then, cutting free, their treasure is great.

from THOUSAND PEAKS: Korean Zen -- Tradition and Teachers by Mu Soeng
(Primary Point Press, revised edition 1991)

This page copyright ? Kwan Um School of Zen

"I feel that the bulk of what I teach is more than technical. One major
thing I believe is that any resistance that we feel to anyone or any of
the feelings that come up inside us having to do with our training
partner and actual attacker or an uke, are really our own feelings. So
if I feel resistance when somebody grabs my wrist, it's my own
resistance. I can only feel my own feelings. So what I work at and what
I teach is that the place to remove the resistance is inside myself and
isn't about the one who is holding on to my wrist. For me, that
profoundly affects what manifests physically, because I do feel the
release of the resistance.

This involves psychological and spiritual
implications for me too. I work with many people on boundaries, a
concept that's being worked with a lot now in the psychological growth,
healing and recovery movements. I feel that what allows us to move into
someone's personal space and have it be an expression of harmony is
moving in without judgement. I really carry this as far as I can, and
do not even call what's happening an attack, but remove the judgment
from it. I try to make my first reaction be to connect up with my own
center, and then, without judgement, to move in and from that place to
connect up with the center of another person, and not to be attached to
the outcome. As soon as I decide to stop the attack or defend against
it, then I feel what I've done is move out of the process I have
described."

Danielle Molles Smith Sensei, 5th Dan & Dojo Cho
Aikido of Monterey
California Aikido Association

From "California Women Instructors (2)" by Stanley Pranin, Aiki News #93 (Fall 1992).

"I do my basic job - supporting staff & fixing things - well.
I like [where I work], its mission, clients & staff. I am
fascinated by behavioral health care & I.T. work in this field, and
[I] consider this a career change from librarianship.

"My challenges are not with my intelligence, intensions or demeanor,
but with [the] timely planning & execution of difficult projects,
without distraction by crisis or my favorite diversions.

From my last evaluation.

Mark Andrews

I used to be a member of the American Library Association.
While I support libraries, the services libraries provide to the public
and society, librarians and the library profession, I cannot support a
"professional" assocation whose leadership wastes its time on matters
of public policy, namely national security, that are entirely outside
its professional competence and responsibility.

Individual citizens have the perfect right and responsibility to
declaim on these matters. But a library professional association
that passes public resolutions on the war in Iraq doesn't have enough to do.

Let me make a comparison.

I am a Roman Catholic. I accept, hold and support the teachings
of the Roman Catholic Church on the sanctity of human life. Human
life is sacred from a natural conception to a natural death.
Human dignity is not depedent on one person's opinion of another
- that dignity is inherant. It is not subject to the whim of a
person, state or culture.

I'd like to know why the ALA Council doesn't pass a resolution in favor of my beliefs?

The answer, simply put, is that the ALA Council has no interest,
competence or authority in the long-running debate in America about the
fundamental value of human life, and the kinds of thinking people do
around that issue, and the choices they make based on their beliefs and
thinking. Nor does ALA, the American Library
Association. No resolution I could favor or support could pretend
to represent the diversity of opinion among ALA members on such a
contentious issue.

Similarly, a resolution about the war in Iraq (or war anywhere for that
matter) does not represent ALA's "mind" (to the extent that it has a
mind) on national security. At best, that resolution represents
only opintion of those who supported it.

The American Library Association, in it self and it its "council,"
doesn't have any more knowledge or authority on issues of foreign
policy and national security than I do. I suggest ALA spend its
time on issues that actually matter to libraries and the people those
libraries serve: funding, funding, funding. And lest anyone claim
that funding for the war might magically be transferred to libraries,
the majority of library funding comes from local & state government
and from personal & corporate donors. Any increase in funding
is going to come from those sources closest to the people libraries
serve, not from the top down.

These kind of resolutions make librarians and their association look
distracted, inane and innefective. And this librarian is TIRED of
it.

After my digression into complaining about the American Library
Association, and posting some inspirational quotes (so I can get rid of
a little paper), its back to being an I.T. generalist. I've
amassed quite a bit of reading material (as I've said earlier), so its
time to get reading.

My co-worker and I built a test server. One of the things we
thought we'd do with it is install Microsoft SharePoint Server 2003,
which I see as a portal server, but its much more than that. The
first thing I noticed is SharePoint requires Windows 2003 Server; in
fact the demo is bundled with a 6-month trial edition of Windows 2003
Server Enterprise Edition. This is overkill for us. The
company I work for has 8 Windows 2000 servers and 1 Windows 2003
server, which runs Exchange 2003. As the older Windows 2000
servers age out, they will be replaced with Windows 2003 machines, so
experience with Windows 2003 is helpful. But back to SharePoint
and InfoPath.

InfoPath is bundled with Office 2003 and works with SharePoint
2003. The SharePoint product is bundled with a runtime edition of
Microsoft SQL Server 2003. I think it uses SQL server to store
its own parameters as well as content. I do not know if you
can use the licensed copy of:

1) InfoPath 2003 with the SharePoint 2003 demo.

2) Access 2003 with the SharePoint 2003 demo.

3) InfoPath 2003 with the instance of SQL Server bundled with the SharePoint demo.

4) Access 2003 with the instance of SQL Server bundled with the SharePoint demo.

If that is not confusing enough, I have PostgreSQL 8.0 running on my
PC. I have thought if and how InfoPath or Access work with that
database either.

When I got home from work I took another whack at InfoPath and SharePoint.  I found hints about both products on TechRepublic (just follow the links in the previous sentence).

I'll continue the "HIPAA grind" this afternoon.  I'll focus on
identifying current sources of information on how best to comply with
the security rule.  As for applying the security rule in a small
non-profit, well we're writing that book by living it.  More news
as it happens.

In the mean time I'm blazing through an introductory book on InfoPath,
and how to use InfoPath with SharePoint.  The current issue with
SharePoint is how to open it up for remote access to users inside our
network.  I'm using demonstration version of SharePoint, so the
only person who will be using it is me.

The other news is that we've completed the Exchange 2000 Server to
Exchange 2003 Server migration without incident.  The actual
migration was done months ago.  I left the old Exchange 2000
Server system running out of superstition.  The Exchange 2000
services are finally shut down.  As long as Exchange 2003 doesn't
complain about its buddy being gone, well remove the software and the
old mailstore by Labor Day.

The next little Exchange 2003 project will be installing the Microsoft
Exchange "Intelligent Message Filter."  We'll use this instead of
the Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition spam filter; we have an SAV
corporate upgrade from v7.5 (in the field) and v9.0 (at he main office)
to v10.0 (across the enterprise).  There are 9 servers and 70+
workstations to upgrade, and 15 new PCs to receive, configure and
deploy, too.  As always there is plenty to do.

At the start of a new week I also started through the latest stack of reading, trying to keep it from getting too high.

At the top of the list is the much hated (by me) "Healthcare IT News (only because its thin and a
little vapid).  In an earlier post I  described this as a
"vendor rag."  So there's a practical aspect to it, too, as the way
HIMSS members communicate among themselves about their upcoming
conference. It is hard to condemn that. If it didn't exist
it would have to be invented.

So its not the internal
communication part of HITN I have problem with. Its the rest of
the unwashed - vendors, professionals and politicians - crowing about
the wonders, necessity and benefits of "healthcare I.T." It
reminds me of the movie "The Road to Wellsville," where the
fictionalized Kellog character kept crowing on about "exhonration of
the
bowels" and the "sin of Onan." I mean, who could possibly know
enough to agree or disagree with either of these statements? 
Nonetheless I found three useful things in the April 2005 issue of HITN:

First, a political cartoon on p. 10, where a dump truck backs up to two
guys and unloads. One guy asks "What's that?" The other guy
says "This week's crop of heathcare I.T. bills." The dump truck
is from Congress.

A word to our friends in Congress and the state legislatures: stop
already with the healthcare I.T. bills.  Don't we already have
enough to do, like comply with HIPAA?  How about some money for
that - for PROVIDERS?  Its like
Congress, seeing a stinking mess in heathcare I.T., hands everyone
involved a shovel instead of asking why there is so much manure in the
first place. Yeah, the shovel is needed, but why on earth is
healthcare I.T. so hard to do?  Keep reading....

Second, Peter Goltra, in his piece "Place 'operability' ahead of
interoperability," hits the nail on the head. If 'healthcare
I.T." doesn't work in the provider's exam room and office, nothing else
matters. How do you get useable software? Focus groups,
"extreme programming," testing, documentation, support, planning - all those things vendors
love to talk about but won't spend money on. How's this for a
suggestion: fire any three vice presidents and hire 6 more
testers in their place? The officers of software companies may
complain that "I've never led a company." True, but I've never
seen any of them bust a sweat personally delivering working product on
time, release after release after release.  Just how does one deliver
working product on time?

Third, see Glen Knight's piece called "Healthcare I.T. needs project
management." Knight is dead-to-right when he says there is a "20
percent failure rate" for health care I.T. projects in Canada, and by
extension the U.S.  That failure rate is probably low.  I ask
you, would you buy a care built that
way?  I suggest to the boards of directors of health care I.T.
companies is that only people who hold a PMP ticket from the Project
Management Institute are promoted into management;  those people
should
come from mechanical and construction engineering, where you have to be
licensed by the state to create a physical object (on time and budget)
that solves a problem and protects human life.  It is long past
time to turn "software engineering" into a reality.  Its an
oxymoron now.

Dear Congress:  I'd like more money (immediately followed by
less of your involvement) for:

 * after-the-fact reviews of failed projects
 * more
project management training
 * more engineers in the I.T. business

And a far more jaundiced form of board
oversight of senior management in private and public companies.  I don't mind if senior management
gets paid a bizillion dollars for their successes, as long as
they are publically caned for their failures.

Okay, so maybe Healthcare IT News was useful this month.

From I.T. to personal reading, a few quick comments.

Tanya Theriault's article, "The Genesis of Our Faith," on Avivah
Gottlieb Zornberg's approach to the Midrash, is very good.  It
appeared in the January-February 2005 issue of "The Catholic
Worker."  Zornberg's reflections are helpful in my own writing.

J. Budziszewski's "Designed for Sex" in the July/August 2005 issue of
Touchstone: a journal of mere Christianity, is very, very good.

I took a whack at the June/July 2005 and August/September 2005 issues
of First Things.  I confess I don't have the patience for these
right now.  I cut to the chase and read Richard John Neuhaus' "The
Public Square."  When I read Neuhaus I grown inwardly for an
editor.  A ruthless one.  As an English professor of mine
once said, after Strunk & White, "not one word where silence will
do." 

I read and re-read what I wrote on my old blog, at TechRepublic, and I decided to start over. I digress alot, in to politics, religion, spirituality, you name it. I suppose that is what makes blogs wonderful, but I am at my best when I am on-topic.

That topic is working as an i.t. generalist at a non-profit agency that provides psychosocial rehabilitation and housing services in Monterey, CA. The challenges include (but are not limited to):

* HIPAA compliance, including privacy & security issues
* Project planning & management
* Business continuity & contingency planning
* Running a Windows shop
* Continuing education & training
* Lessons taught by failure & success

and other issues as they arise. I'll re-publish this web log at TechRepublic too.

This post originally appeared on an external website

As I thought about my huge pile of HIPAA reading to do re/compliance work I realized that compliance is an ongoing process, not a static event with a convenient close. No can say they have complied with HIPAA, only that they are complying and can demontrate that fact.

And compliance goes hand-in-hand with client & patient privacy practices, continuous attention to security, and (in the light of Hurricane Katrina) with business continuity planning. Whether it is business growth (at best) or crime, natural disaster or terrorism (at worst), a business must plan to exist, not just hope for the best.

This post originally appeared on an external website