Review of "House of David"

Making Biblical epics suddenly seems to have become fashionable again.  "The Chosen" project has been going on for a few years now.  There have been two animated movies recently, "The King of Kings" (for some reason structured as Charles Dickens telling his son about Jesus' life), and "Light of the World" Jesus' ministry told from the perspective of a strangely pre-teen John the Evangelist).

And now we have "House of David."

First of all, even the title is pretty misleading.  David was not only a king, he was the founder of a dynasty.  His son was Solomon, famous for his wisdom.  (His grandson, Solomon's son, was not exactly exemplary, and a number of other kings in his dynasty were less than stellar monarchs.)  Two of the gospels in the New Testament go to considerable length to demonstrate that Jesus was, in fact, a descendant of David.

Actually, in a number of senses, the House of David starts even before David was born.  There was, for instance, Ruth, who was David's great-grandmother.  (Ruth is also probably my favorite book in the entire Bible.  But I may be biased about that.)

And the movie (mini-series?), "House of David," really only covers the story of David and Goliath, and a little bit leading up to that.  The movie doesn't even really cover David's reign.  So, the "House of David" movie ends even before the House of David, as a dynasty, even begins.  (OK, it claims that it's season one, so if we get a season two we may go further.  But, at the turgid pace that it moves, we may have to wait for season five before we even get to David's *first* coronation.)

But in another sense, the movie "House of David" is about so, so much more than the House of David.  The movie script is about so much more than can be attested to by scripture.  Did you know that David was a bastard?  Neither did I!  And I have read the Bible, cover to cover, at least twenty times.

The thing is that, like "The Chosen," and the two animated movies, "House of David" has decided to give us background.  And backstories.  And explanations.  And all kinds of details that cannot be verified from scripture.  In fact these details aren't even reasonable inferences from what we do know about scripture, or the historical and social facts that we know about the times.  For the most part, these additional details are pretty much purely speculation.  To put it plainly, they're just fiction.  They're made up.  The way that the scripts for these movies and series are written is what Gloria's family would have called sowing a coat around a button.  You take a fact, usually a small fact, from the Bible, and then you embroider.  Heavily.  The first episode of "The Chosen," for example, relies on half of a verse in the New Testament.  From this half of a verse they have created an entire backstory for Mary Magdalene.  They have also created a backstory for Matthew (or Levi), the tax collector, and a backstory for the centurion who sent to Jesus asking for his servant to be healed.  None of these backstories have any support for from scripture.

Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are all known as the people of the book.  The books are slightly different, and the specific definition of what "the people of the book" might mean is probably not precisely agreed to by anyone in any of the three religions.  But all of them would agree that you mess with the established canon of scripture at your peril.  You even have to be careful when you do interpretations.  Adding things to the canon, or taking things away from the canon, is dangerous.  In fact pretty much the final words of the final book of the Christian Bible makes the point that if anybody adds to this book, all of the plagues described in the book are going to be added to them.  Adding to scripture is dangerous.

This insistence on the Canon is something that I, as an information security maven, understand all too well.  One of the three central pillars of information security is that of integrity.  It's why we ask people to sign written contracts, and it's why we have witnesses signing and attesting to the signatures of those signing contracts, wills, and marriage certificates.  It's why we digitally sign documents when they are electronic.  It's why we have the business proverb that pale ink is better than the strongest memory.  Ensuring that the canonical document, or collection of documents, is unchanged is how you insure that you keep the intent of the original document.  It's the reason that, in translating the Bible into English, we look at many different documents, and even tiny fragments of the documents or pages that represent the oldest samples of those documents that we have available to us.  It is all too easy to start reinterpreting a document when you are translating it, or translating it to a new medium, to some interpretation that you would prefer because the original is not quite convenient for you.

So, no, I can't say that I'm a really big fan of the "House of David" movie.

How Computers Work [From the Ground Up]

In the seniors' computer club, when asking for new topics to cover in the new year, somebody asked me to address how computers work.

Since I've been asking myself the same question, for over five decades, and I'm still quite sure that I don't fully understand how it all works, and since I've been teaching how computers work for at least four decades, initially I thought this might be a non-trivial task.  Remember that this is for a bunch of seniors, from a town where neither the high school nor the college have any computer courses aside from graphics for games.  So it can't require any technical sophistication, and it should be available for the general public, for business people, for students, even at the elementary grades, and for anybody who is interested in how the computers that run our world actually work.  I have seen lots of attempts, by various people, to explain how computers work, and mostly what they demonstrate is that the instructor really doesn't understand how computers work.  The results tend to be non-illuminative, and generally pretty boring.

I once took a course on computer architecture with a bunch of doctoral students in computer science.  We were divided up into groups and the groups gave presentations on different aspects of computer architecture, with the individual members of the groups covering particular topics.  My group was addressing the most fundamental aspects of computer architecture, and I was addressing the use of electrical circuits to create logic circuits, and why sometimes using the seemingly most straightforward circuit was wrong, and that complicated gates were often, counterintuitively, faster and more power efficient than taking the seemingly obvious route.  After my presentation I started to get what I considered to be really strange questions, and at one point I got frustrated and burst out "You do know that when you create an electrical circuit you have to have a source, and a sink, and a constant and continuous path between them, don't you?"  After the class in which our group had done our presentations I was talking with the leader of our group and I apologized for losing my temper and said that I shouldn't have assumed that they didn't know such an obvious and basic fact.  "Oh no," she replied, "that was useful!  I didn't know that!"

I have learned a bit in all that time.  And, mulling it over, using all that I had learned over more than fifty years, I started to get a few ideas of how this might be done, and done effectively.

So, as an addition to my (generally failed) attempts to provide seminars and workshops to the churches in town, so that they could then provide presentations (such as security for seniors, the Jesus Film Festival, dealing with depression, grief resources, and public art in Port Alberni) that might draw in the unchurched, allow me to propose to you "How Computers Work [From the Ground Up].  (I even have a sermon  that might start it off.)

Computers run our lives. We use computers for our work, pretty much regardless of what our work is.  We carry computers around in our pockets, pretty much all the time.  Computers handle our communications with each other, our social activities with each other, our reservations for restaurants, hotels, and airlines, and computers mediate pretty much everything that goes on in our lives.  It would probably be a good idea to find out how they work.  Starting with how to build devices and circuits to do logic, and how to do logic to do calculations and to hold information in memory, a series of possibly eight to ten one-hour presentations cover how computers work, how they do what they do, what they can do, and what they can't do.  This isn't just how to use common computer tools.  This is a basic understanding that lets you know what tools computers can build.  What tools can be built with computers, and what can't.  And, how they operate, right from the ground up.  When this series is over, possibly you won't be able to take a box of transistors and build your own computer, but you will have enough information to go and learn how to do this if you want to.

This is still a work in progress, but topics include:

 - In the beginning ...

 - COMPUTERS ARE NOT MAGIC!!!

 - Logic

 - Memory

 - Computers do two things ...

 - Programs

 - Data Communications

 - Networks (and how to do *everything* *MUCH* cheaper!)

This series is going to be technical, in the sense that I'm providing technical information and explanation, but it's not going to be technically demanding.  There aren't any prerequisites.  I'm going to begin with the supposition that the audience is not going to know anything about how computers work.

Review of "Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen"

Hallmark has done a movie called "Sense, Sensibility, and Snowmen."

I don't know whether you would call it an "adaptation" or a "based on."  Mainly it seems to be "based on" merely the names of some of the characters in "Sense and Sensibility."

I really like the books of Jane Austen, but I am not simply and automatically opposed to adaptations.  I think "Clueless" is actually rather underrated as an adaptation of "Emma."  I don't think "Bridget Jones Diary" is as good an adaptation as "Bride and Prejudice."  I don't think anyone expected "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" to be a very faithful adaptation, and I didn't mind it.

Marianne and "Ella" are sisters.  They are in business together.  Both of their parents are dead.  Marianne is the sensible one, and probably the elder.  Ella is the sensitive one, and a bit of a flake.  We never meet Willoughby: he has dumped Marianne before the movie even begins, and she doesn't care much.  Edward Ferris is firmly established as head of the family company, his father is still alive, and his mother is in favour of the match with Ella.  Brandon is his cousin and close friend.  There is a Lucy Steele, but her character is so irrelevant that one wonders why.  Most of the rest of the characters in the book don't exist in the movie, and there is pretty much no travel.  Marianne never gets her heart broken, and Ella never has to keep any secrets.

"Sense, Sensibility and Snowmen" is far from the worst movie Hallmark has ever produced.  (But there's a lot of competition.)

Interested?

He is in the helping professions.  As a matter of fact, not only in the profession that he is in right now, but in some side hustles that he has previously had.

And we were talking about training, and education, and degrees that we have held.  Well, for the most part, of course, about how the training that *he* has had, and the degrees that *he* holds, and the fact that a not particularly distinguished degree, that he holds, allows him to do the job that he currently holds, because, even though the degree is not in the field that he should have had agreed to hold this particular position, the fact that it's a master's degree technically fulfills a checkbox, and that means that he gets to hold this particular job.

But, as I say, he is in a helping profession.  And this particular conversation, in a significant part, we were having because he thought that he was helping me.  Even though he wasn't really asking all that much about me and he was talking mostly about himself.

It would have been nice, and would have been helpful to me, if he had, in fact, asked about me.  Expressed some sort of interest in me.  Instead of just, whenever I mentioned anything, it reminded him of an experience that he had had, or a job that he had done, or various other aspects of his life and experience.

And the really funny thing was, that, at one point in the conversation, he started talking about how *interested* he was in other people.  And, specifically, how interested he was in people like me, as I've had a wide and varied background.  He is so terribly interested in people like me, who have had an awful lot of interesting experience.  It is so interesting to find out about people, like me, who have had all kinds of interesting experiences, in all kinds of interesting fields.  They have so many stories to tell.  *I* have so many stories to tell.  He was so very interested in people like me.

And he kept talking.  About himself.  About his background.  About his qualifications.  About his experiences.  About the jobs that he has had.  Throwing in very occasional questions about me.  And every time that I answered one of the questions, my answer prompted him to remember a number of his own experiences that he needed to tell me about.

He was, of course, completely oblivious to the contradiction here.  The fact that he was talking about how interested he was in other people.  The fact that he was interested in people, specifically, like me.  And the fact that he really wasn't asking all that many questions about me, and he couldn't wait to interrupt whatever I was saying with his own stories and experiences.

Nobody listens (2)

At one point here I included a post noting, in a joking way, that nobody actually listens to what I say.  I have, at times, wondered if I over-exaggerate some of these notes or comments.

Recently I had a couple of conversations that indicate that I do not exaggerate.

In the same day I had two conversations, both with people who know me reasonably well.  In the one case it was somebody with whom I have had extensive experience doing volunteer work together.  In the other it was with somebody I have known for a long time.

Both conversations turned to my recent health issues.  In both conversations, the other party asked for details of what had been going on, and I gave details of my experiences.  In both conversations, slightly later in the conversation, the other party raised the topic again, and, once again, ask all the same questions.  I gave all the same answers.  In neither case did the other party recognize either the fact that they were asking the same questions, or that we had previously covered the topic, or that I gave all the same answers, all over again.

I wasn't wrong.  Nobody listens.

So, Rob, where are you going to church these days?

2 Corinthians 2:1-2

So I made up my mind that I would not make another painful visit to you.  For if I grieve you, who is left to make me glad but you whom I have grieved?

We need Remembrance Day

I put myself through university working as a nurse.  I worked at Shaughnessy Hospital, back when there *was* a Shaughnessy Hospital.  It was a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital.  So I was working with veterans.

One day, as I was getting one of the old guys up, he mentioned that he was a veteran of two wars.  In the full flush of my youthful ignorance, I replied, "Oh, the first world war and the second world war?"  No, he replied, the Boer war and the first world war.

So, I knew veterans of the Boer War.  I even knew a veteran who had received one of Queen Victoria's scarves, and it was only much, much later in life that I realized the significance of that, and I rather suspect that almost none of you who will read this will, in fact, understand what that was.

But the point that I'm trying to make is that I have known veterans from the Boer War, and the First World War, and the Second World War, and the Korean War.  And I knew actual deserters from the American military, and the war in Vietnam.  (Yes, there were a lot of draft dodgers who came from the United States to Canada during the time of the Vietnam war, but there were deserters as well.)

And I have known veterans from wars and conflicts since.  The list goes on, and the names of conflicts and wars are not less important, but grow too many to list.  Although the reasons for remembering the wars do not change, and do not grow any less important, but rather more important.

The veterans from wars that are older and fading into history are dying off.  Gloria and I attended one particular Remembrance Day service for twenty-five years.  It, like the wars that people might consider less significant, was not a particularly notable service.  It was in an old folks home (or "care facility," if you will), and Gloria sang at the service.  For twenty-five years.  We saw veterans from different wars dying off, over the years.  It affected me deeply, because we knew these people (and also because the memories involve Gloria).  So much so that, these days, I have difficulty attending Remembrance Day services that are simply pro forma political appearances, rather than services.

I have known these people.  They are different people, because people are all different.  They had their own reasons for going.  Sometimes to save comrades, sometimes to protect family, or communities, or their country.  They had different experiences.  They had different attitudes to what Remembrance Day was all about.

And as the veterans from different wars, and particular to the First World War, where the whole Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day, or Veteran's Day thing started, people start to wonder what is the point of Remembrance Day.

One thing that we are remembering is that war is hell.  War doesn't just affect those who go to fight in it.  It does not just affect those from the armed forces, of the various countries involved, and who are actual combatants.  War is terrible.  It hurts a lot of people.  It destroys lives.  It leaves injuries on veterans, it leaves injuries on civilians, and in many cases it actually leaves injuries on the land itself.  (I have been to the Vimy Memorial, on the crest of Vimy Ridge.  Signage warns you to stay on the paths.  Sheep graze on the grass.  The sheep leave behind droppings that might make walking on the grass a bit messy, but that is the least danger that you face by walking on the grass.  The sheep are there because that is the safest way to keep the grass trimmed.  [Well, maybe not for the sheep.]  The battle of Vimy Ridge started on my birthday in 1917, more than a hundred years ago, and there is still ordinance there that makes it too dangerous to run a tractor lawn mower over the grass, let alone allow tourists to wander on it.)  War is terrible, and we should always remember that we should take every effort to avoid war.

We also need to remember those who go to war.  We need to remember, with gratitude, the thin Blue line, or the thin Red line, or the thin camouflage line, or whatever color we use and choose to represent those who, for whatever reason, go to stand in the gap on our behalf.

We need to remember those who went, and did not return, and made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf.  We need to remember those who went, and who did return.  All of those made a sacrifice.  Sometimes the sacrifice was time.  Sometimes the sacrifice was friendship, with their comrades who made the ultimate sacrifice.  Sometimes their sacrifice was injuries and disabilities, and losses of others sorts.

We need to remember that a sacrifice is a sacrifice, in the same way that, in regard to grief, a loss is a loss.  After Gloria died, I was having coffee, on a fairly regular basis, with a fellow whose wife was still alive.  He didn't understand the grief of the loss of his spouse.  He kept on asking me what it was like.  I would try to explain what grief was like.  He never did understand, but he did keep on asking, and it was kind of him to keep on asking, and to try to understand, in opposition to the great many people who did not understand, and who tried, sometimes rather desperately, to avoid the subject or any thought of that kind of loss and grief.  He never did understand.  I hope he never does understand.  Grief is an awful thing, in the same way that war is an awful thing.  And we who have not gone to war need to understand that we never will understand.  But we need to remember that there are those who do, all too well.

We need to remember that war is awful, and is to be avoided.  We need to understand that we do not understand the experience of those who went, and we need to be grateful and thankful for their service.

We need Remembrance Day.

Will genAI stifle *all* creativity?

Innovation has always had a problem with acceptance.  It's always been difficult to convince people to try something new.  But our newest innovation may make it even harder.

I just came across a piece where someone is noting that a certain type of innovation may suffer because genAI tools will not have enough data on novel approaches to accept them.

The thing is, that concern is not limited to the one specific area the piece covers.  The AI industry has been pushing all kinds of tools to make "suggestions" about creative work, such as research.  Or to do a "first pass" elimination of ideas that might not bear fruit.  We use AI tools to relieve ourselves of the tedium of paring down a pile of applications for a job.  The AI tools do statistical matches to patterns that have been found in data that they have been fed.  But if the data that they have been fed hasn't been extremely carefully curated in the first place, it won't return the best results.

And if anything is truly novel, it won't appear in the old data at all.  And so anything truly innovative will be rejected out of hand.

I am fond of the quote that creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes, but that art is knowing which ones to keep.  Large language models make mistakes.  Some of the mistakes are so truly awful that they are actually kind of amusing.  But those error instances are exceptional and rare.  It is not for nothing that AI generated content is coming to be universally referred to as "slop."  And, even so, "amusing" can be a far cry from "useful."

But my concern is not just that genAI produces much that is useless.  It is that in using AI to prune, pare, correct, and edit our *own* creative work, we may be allowing AI to restrict us to what has gone before, and has been fed into the large language model.

If we do that, we may well ensure that there is nothing new under the artificially intelligent sun.

Review of "Sketch"

Since "Sketch" is from Angel, I was wondering what a studio known for (almost toxically) positive, uplifting, and usually religious movies was doing making a monster movie, even if a somewhat comic one.

It's not about horror.  It's about grief.

The points aren't exactly surprising, and mostly get buried.  But the movie should probably get more attention than it has.

Faith is good.

Hard to hug, though ...

Signed, Sealed, Delivered: The Vows We Have Made

Psalm 142:4

Look and see, there is no one at my right hand;

    no one is concerned for me.

I have no refuge;

    no one cares for my life. 

The final lines of "Sorry, Baby"

When you grow up, you can tell me whatever.  Like, if you have a thought, and you're like, that's a bad thought, I probably had that same thought.  But, like, ten times worse.  So you can just tell me.  I'll never be scared by that.

If someone does something bad to you, if someone says something scary, if you want to kill yourself with like a pencil or a knife or whatever, you can just tell me.  I'll never tell you you're scaring me.  I'll just say yeah.  I know.  It's just like that sometimes.  Yeah.  I'm sorry that bad things are going to happen to you.  I hope they don't.  If I can ever stop anything from being bad let me know.

But sometimes bad stuff just happens.

That's why I feel bad for you.  In a way.  That you're alive and you don't know that yet.  But I can still listen and not be scared.  So that's good.  Or that's something, at least.

******

I'm not a fan of art films.  I'm not a fan of "relationship" films, where the characters stumble around, not really understanding their own feelings.

Even so, you have to see this film all the way through to get the real power of the final scene.  Even though it is turgidly slow, and you don't see how carefully it is done until the end.

But the final lines are an incredibly powerful statement about loss, and the inability of our society to accept the pain of those who have suffered a major trauma or distress.

Black Heart

Elon (or Grok: it's hard to tell the difference) has created a little video valentine for us.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1970744420522996204

But I wonder how many people realize that the "heart," in the video, starts out as a black hole ...

Resistance is futile.  You will be absorbed ...

Generative Enlightenment

Some recent research notes that the LLM/genAI model Claude, when talking to itself, eventually comes to produce something that looks like eastern mysticism.

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/11/claude-finds-god

This has led to excitement, in some quarters, that AI has "found God," or, at least, enlightenment.

However, I wonder if this is not yet another case of taking perfectly good data and drawing precisely the wrong conclusions from it.  I'm rather an AI cynic, and my own research into eastern mysticism tends to indicate that it contains some truths (such as that suffering arises from desire, and that eliminating desire would remove suffering) that are demonstrably true, but not particularly helpful.  So I can't help but wonder if this result doesn't indicate not that AI has been enlightened, but that eastern mysticism, with its self-referential and self-reflective processes, has, over a longer period of time, reached the same point that large language models have reached much faster.

And with similarly unhelpful conclusions ...

Illuminati

For years I have heard vague tales of the Illuminati, a secret cabal that rules the world. I have, of course dismissed this as antisemitic nonsense, the province of the tin-foil hat crowd: the utterings of those who, dissatisfied that they are not as important as they think they have a right to be, imagine that there is some mythical opposing force that is keeping them from their deserved power and wealth.

I was, apparently, in error.

Recently, I have received a number of email messages inviting me to join the Illuminati. (How did they get my email address? Of *course* they have my email address! They're the Illuminati!) So, I will be taking my proper place among those of rank and consequence, ruling the world, and will no longer have time for dealing with rabble like you lot. (Just wanted to let you know before I supposedly disappear.)


(I am a little surprised that is has taken the advanced fee fraudsters this long to get around to this particular variation on the 419/Spanish Prisoner scam, even though I suppose that it takes an oddly convoluted mind to invert a conspiracy theory and make it a hustle. Probably an effective one, of course, since conspiracy theorists are unlikely to have the analytical skills necessary to realize that they are being taken ...)

🙂

I find that I am getting better at Gloria's "pleasant resting face."  I am, in public, with people who don't know me, getting more smiles from people who *think* that I am smiling at them, simply because I am not scowling all the time.  When it happens, I often feel kind of bad, because I am, essentially, lying to these people, by presenting as someone who is OK, and not constantly wishing that I were dead.

See also:

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/how-are-you.html

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/05/synack-let-me-know-if-i-can-ever-help.html

MGG - 5.51a - HWYD - Positive

Both the RCMP and ICBC want us to track "positives."  A positive is a compliment, or a positive comment, or even a wave and possibly a smile, that members of the general public give us while we are out on shift.  This allows both the RCMP and ICBC to track the public's general perception of the program, and therefore, partially, the possibilities for its success in changing driving behavior.

So, while we are out on shift, we dutifully track "positives."  Tracking the positives also forces us to pay attention to them, and, I suppose, also helps to reinforce us in the perception that our work, as volunteers, is worthwhile and valuable.  (I suppose that this is a point to be added to my series on motivations for managing volunteer staff.)

In addition to positives, we are quite well aware that we get some "negatives."  There are some people who don't wave the whole hand at us, but only one particular finger.  There are those who shout abuse at us as we are on shift by the side of the road.  (I suppose that I shouldn't point out to strongly that, while we generally get the gist of the tone of the message that they are trying to send, very often on a noisy street soundscape, we simply can't hear whatever words they are shouting.)  Then there are those who stop for a chat, and try to convince us that it is illegal for us to note license plate numbers and other information.  These people seem to belong to the sovereign citizen movement, which doesn't seem to have any strong legal or constitutional background or political theory behind it, but is more driven by the hypothesis contained within the statement "freedumb means I can do anything I [expletive deleted] well please and nobody is allowed to make any rules about it."

We are well familiar with these negatives.  I suppose, having discussed the issue elsewhere that I need not stress too strongly that we, as volunteers, consider that we are doing the community a service, and sometimes even saving lives, and so we tend not to spend very much time thinking about the fit of pique displayed by one of these individuals.

In any case, today we were out doing a distracted driving check.  This is primarily about ensuring that people aren't actually talking on their cell phones while they are driving, but it also includes things like whether they are drinking while driving, or eating a hamburger while driving (sometimes holding the hamburger with both hands, which raises the question, who is actually driving the car?), or having an overly affectionate dog on your lap while driving.

There is one particular intersection in the city where we frequently set up a distracted driving check.  This one particular intersection is the place you are most likely to encounter an actual conversation with the occupants of cars.  When the light turns red and a car stops right where we are standing, surprisingly frequently, the window may roll down, and the driver start up a conversation with you, usually starting with, "What are you guys doing here?"

So today we had had a few similar conversations.  And then one particular car rolled up, and stopped, and the window rolled down, and the driver turned a very sour face upon us.  I must admit that I was rather preparing myself for one of the usual sovereign citizen blasts.  And he started out with a very grim, "What are you guys doing here?"  So I answered that we were checking for people who were talking on their cell phone while driving.  He got a look of withering disgust on his face, and I braced myself for one of the sovereign citizen diatribes.  He started off with, "Well, [expletive deleted] that!"

I was pretty certain, by this point, that we were going to get a negative blast.  But, almost immediately, although still with the incredibly sour look on his face, he said, "Good for you!"  And made a thumbs up gesture.  And added, "Keep it up!"  And the light changed to green, and he took off.

So, we counted that as a positive.  Although it was one of the *weirdest* positives I have ever encountered ...

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/12/mgg-551-hwyd-community-policing.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/02/mgg-552-hwyd-555-1212.html

MGG - 6.06a - Gloria - Business Continuity Planning

Okay, this may seem to be misplaced a bit, since, when we got married, I had not yet started my research even into computer viruses and malware, let alone the broader field of information security as a whole.

When Gloria and I got married, it was still possible to have a "Church" wedding, without the government being involved until after the fact.  At that time, the church could simply publish the banns (which basically just meant announcing the fact of the upcoming wedding) three times, over a period of a month, before the wedding took place.  Then, *after* the wedding took place, the church would inform the department of vital statistics that the couple had gotten married, with date, time, witnesses, and other necessary details.

Gloria and I, being staunch and long time church people, decided to have a Church wedding.  And the Church got into the process of reading the banns.

But Gloria, as mentioned elsewhere, had been a wedding hostess.  She was quite well aware of all of the possible problems that could occur during a wedding, and *particularly* the ones that would prevent a wedding from taking place.  She suggested to me that we get a marriage license anyway.  I thought that was a reasonable idea, and went and got one.  We didn't tell anybody about it.

The church read the banns for the first time.  And, a week or so later, they read the banns for the second time. Reading of the banns, as mentioned, simply means that you announce the upcoming wedding during a regular worship service.  (The term "banns" probably simply refers to the fact that the announcement includes the "if anyone knows any just cause why these two should not" et cetera.)

And then came the last Sunday before our wedding.  So this was the last chance to read the banns for a third time.  They didn't read the banns at the morning service.  But, this church had an evening service as well.  So we dutifully went along to the evening service, whereupon they didn't read the banns then either.

So, once the service was over, we mentioned, to the church administrator, that they had not read our banns for the third time.  That they had read the banns twice, in previous services, but they hadn't read them the third time.

This created some consternation.  As mentioned elsewhere, our wedding was a big wedding.  It was a big event in our denomination.  As a matter of fact, it was a bit of a an event even beyond our denomination.  So it was going to be pretty embarrassing, if announcements had to be made, and all kinds of arrangements had to be rearranged, if we could not be married on the date that had been, quite widely, announced.

All kinds of ideas were thrown around.  There was even talk of pretending that the regular Wednesday night prayer meeting be designated as a worship service, somehow.  All kinds of ideas were raised, and then shot down, as unworkable.

I must admit that Gloria and I let all of this go on for possibly longer than we needed to before we admitted the fact that, anticipating just such a problem, we had, in fact, previously procured a valid marriage license.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/01/mgg-606-gloria-wedding-planner.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/01/mgg-607-gloria-who-are-you-again.html

Not Hallmark, but ...

Wasting time, this time with one of the Superchannel productions that are, if at all possible, even *worse* than Hallmark movies, I was startled by a line that became a bit of a tagline, and even important to the plot (if these things actually have any plots).  This character says "if a woman makes you want to jump into water, you love her."

No, this line is not exactly profound.

The thing is, in one of the earliest times that I can remember meeting Gloria, I jumped off the Keats dock (fully clothed), as a kind of a goodbye sendoff for the Women's Retreat.

(see also https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/07/profundity-from-hallmark-movie.html ,

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/11/another-one.html , and https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/07/another-hallmark-one.html )

Review of "How to Train Your Dragon," 2025 CGI version

Yes, many animated movies are now being redone in "live action," with photorealistic CGI.  In the case of "How to Train Your Dragon, I kind of wondered what was the point, since the animated version was relatively recent anyway.

Overall, the translation does hold up well.  Using live actors does allow for more subtle nuance in what is, after all, an emotionally complicated story.

There is, however, one caveat.  The use of real landscapes and CGI "dragons" does, often, strain credibility with the physics of various scenes, and sometimes only serves to point out the problems with scale and distance that the original, somewhat cruder animation, hides.

Vibe coding

I *love* this ad.  I mean, it's for a recruiter, and a gig economy one at that, but even so, it says all kinds of things about genAI tools that just ring so true.  "[A] no-code world that's too good to be true."  "[J]ust not tested through."  "I don't care about bugs."  "I don't need a backend if I've got the spark."

Non-kosher potatoes?

Potatoes get a bad rap from the "no carbs" diet crowd.  Potatoes are actually amazingly nutritious.  (The "Potato Famine" in Ireland was so bad not simply because of monoculture, a new pathogen, and amazingly short-sighted forced migrations, but because the *introduction* of the potato to Ireland allowed the populations to balloon ten times over in a very short time.)

So it is interesting to note a new study which indicates that tomatoes may be a genetic ancestor of potatoes.  Particularly in light of the fact that almost everyone eats the french fired version of potato chips (not crisps) dunked or covered in ketchup.

However, this may create a new problem for those seriously following the tenets of the Jewish faith.  There is that statement about "thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk," which has developed into a prohibition against cheeseburgers.  (You can't have meat and dairy in the same dish.)  Given this same logic, ketchup on chips no longer seems to be kosher ...

Another (Hallmark) one?

"I took the least trusting person I know, to a place where *nothing* can be trusted.  And I told you to *believe*!"

 - "Believe in Christmas"

(see also https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/07/profundity-from-hallmark-movie.html , https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/08/not-hallmark-but.html ,

and https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/11/another-one.html )

Grief cleanse

In "Unlocking the Mystery of Grief," Cam Taylor suggests the "grief cleanse," a specialized form of grief journalling, that he credits to Christina Rasmussen.  This is a seven-step process repeated over seven days, mostly asking, "Grief, will you come out and speak to me?":

Step one - ask, Grief, will you come out and speak to me?

Step two - gauge your resistance 

Step three - why should I do this?

Step four - ask grief will you come out and speak to me question again, write answer

Step five - what did I find surprising

Step six - grief will you come out and speak to me?

Step seven - is there anything God wants to say to me?

So, I've done it.

Rasmussen/Taylor "Grief Cleanse" - Day one

Step one - ask, Grief, will you come out and speak to me?

Step two - gauge your resistance

 - no particular resistance or expectations, possibly 4/10

Step three - why should I do this?

 - let no one say that I am unwilling to try any unverified and unsupported suggestion that anybody makes to me about my grief and/or psyche.

Step four - ask grief will you come out and speak to me question again, write answer

 - crying

Step five - what did I find surprising

 - unsurprising

Step six - grief will you come out and speak to me?

 - no response

Step seven - is there anything God wants to say to me?

 - unsurprisingly, no response

"Grief Cleanse" - Day 2

Step one - ask, Grief, will you come out and speak to me?

Step two - gauge your resistance

 - 2/10

Step three - why should I do this?

 - recover anything I've forgotten or missed?

Step four - ask grief will you come out and speak to me question again, write answer

 - no response

Step five - what did I find surprising

 - how quickly resistance is fading

Step six - grief will you come out and speak to me?

 - no response

Step seven - is there anything God wants to say to me?

 - apparently not

Day 3

Step two - gauge your resistance

 - 1/10

Step three - why should I do this?

 - (so far not much point?  Simply completing task?)

Step four - ask grief will you come out and speak to me question again, write answer

 - note random moments in Hallmark movies trigger grief bursts?

Step five - what did I find surprising

 - low expectations, but surprisingly little benefit/insight so far

Day 4

 - no reponse

Day 5

Step three - why should I do this?

 - sheer desperation?

Day 6

 - no reponse

Day 7

see above

Grief topics: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/06/grief-table-of-contents-and-resources.html

Review of "Unlocking the Mystery of Grief" by Cam Taylor

Taylor does, albeit very briefly, touch on the standard advice about grief: accept your grief rather than fighting it, think about your grief and your feelings, get enough rest, eat a proper diet, get some exercise, engage in activities, find a purpose.  He also suggests grief journalling, in a number of ways: poetry, the standard dairy-like journal, and grief writing prompts.  There is one additional format that he credits to Christina Rasmussen; the "grief cleanse"; a seven-step process repeated over seven days, mostly asking, "Grief, will you come out and speak to me?"

However, one aspect of the grieving process crops up over, and over, and over, and over again in the book: tell your story to empathetic listeners.  I am very glad that Taylor had people who were willing to listen to his story of grief sufficiently to get him through the grieving process.  I hope that everyone who goes through grief has his same good fortune.

Review of "Patience"

The British generally do police/detective TV series better than the Americans, generally with more creativity and less firepower.

"Patience" is an interesting addition to the genre, although it is not completely original.  It is obviously based on the French and Belgian series "Astrid et Raphaelle."  In both series a (female) police detective specializing in murders is assisted by a (female) criminal records archivist--who is also autistic.  As in most ensemble cast relational series, the relations between the characters are an important component of the series.  In the case of these two series, the relations between the characters is both complicated and enriched by the ongoing development of understanding between neurodivergent and neurotypical characters, and the budding perception of differing perceptions of what a relationship may be.  (How far this can be developed in a TV series is still open to question.)

The British series ("Patience") is much less consistent (although also less stereotypical) in terms of the representation of autism or Asperger's spectrum.  It also extends the exploration by having the detective be mother to a son who may also be on the spectrum.

Distracted Driving

So, we (Community Policing) are doing a distracted driving check.  We're at a light-controlled intersection.  The light's red, and the passenger is chatting with us (so that's a positive), and it's a nice, sunny day, and it's a nice chat.

And his Significant Other (who is in the driver's seat), pulls a Big Mac out of nowhere, and takes a huge bite.

I mean, you have to use two hands on a Big Mac, even if you are at a table!

So she's got both hands on the burger, and doesn't have a spare one for the wheel, and isn't looking at the road, because she's making sure the shredded lettuce and goop isn't falling into her lap.  And the light goes green, and they move off.

And I'm thinking, who's driving the car? ...

VM - G - 2.03 - governance - policy breaking policy

Having made the point that you should never create a policy that your volunteers are going to be forced to break, I should immediately note that sometimes policy has to be broken.  You cannot think of all possible situations, and all possible conflicts, when creating a policy.  Your policy is never going to be perfect.  Therefore, there are always going to be situations where the policy has to be broken.

Therefore, one of the things that you should always do is to have a policy breaking policy.  What is it that your people are to do when the policy, for whatever reason, cannot be followed?  As far as possible, this policy should give guidance as to what kinds of occurrences or situations would justify not following a policy.  However, since you cannot foresee all possible situations (and if you can foresee them, you can probably craft your policy in such a way as to avoid those situations), this probably isn't going to be terribly effective.  Possibly the best that you are able to achieve in this regard is to address, or list, principles which might justify the fact that a policy cannot be followed.

More importantly, your policy should, particularly, address who is allowed to make the call that a policy is not to be followed.  Are all the volunteers allowed to make this call?  Are only shift leaders allowed to make this call?  *Are* shift leaders allowed to make this call?  How far up the organizational food chain do we have to go before we reach someone who is allowed to make the call that, in this particular situation, the policy is not to be followed?

In pretty much all cases where a policy cannot be followed, or must be broken, a written report, with justification, should be provided.  Your policy might contain a form, giving details of the situation, the policy that could not be followed, the person making the call, and additional details of date, time, location, and those involved in the situation, both within and outside the volunteer organization.  You may create a form for this purpose, or simply write into the policy the details to be included in any such report, and to whom the report is to be submitted, and copied.

These reports should be reviewed, and as a priority.  The first point to note is whether this situation is likely to recur, and whether your policy has created a situation where the policy must, frequently, be broken.  If so, the policy needs to be amended as quickly as possible.  Once again, ensure that you do not have an active policy which requires that your volunteers are regularly in a situation where a policy cannot be followed.

In some cases the situation might be rare enough that an amendment to the policy is not necessary or justified.  This is possible, but be careful, and deciding this, that you are not simply taking the easy way out.  As noted, no policy is never going to be absolutely perfect, and there are going to be some situations that you simply can't address.  However, ensure that this is truly a rare situation, and that it cannot be addressed by some amendment of the policy.

Volunteer management - VM - 0.00 - introduction and table of contents

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/05/volunteer-management-vm-000.html

Persistence of Learned Behaviour Following Extinction of Reinforcement Cues

So, on 10th Avenue, just south of the dip (or the mound, if you are a true original Port Albernian) Dunbar crosses 10th.  Dunbar crosses 10th at a slight angle, but there really isn't anything impairing anyone's vision as they approach the intersection.  Up until about a month ago, there were two left turn lanes for those at the intersection, for those who were turning left, either east or west, on to Dunbar.

The intersection of 10th and Dunbar is one of the proofs that Port Alberni drivers are the worst drivers in the entire world, and possibly an explanation of why.  Yes, the intersection is on a bit of a hill.  Yes, the intersection of the streets is not exactly perpendicular.  But, as noted, there is pretty much nothing to distract you, and no obstructions of the sight lines around the intersection.  And yet drivers keep killing people at 10th and Dunbar.

So, about a month ago, they took out the left turn lanes, and built a median barricade down the middle of the street, in order to prevent people from turning left onto Dunbar from 10th, in either direction.

As I mentioned, previously there were left turn Lanes at the intersection.  So, if you weren't turning at the intersection, but continuing straight on 10th Avenue, in either direction, you had to swing to the right as you drove through the intersection.  But, as mentioned, now they have taken away the left turn lanes, and so you no longer need to swing to the right as you go through the intersection.

But, of course, the reason that Port Alberni drivers are the worst drivers in the entire world is that they pay absolutely no attention to the situation around them.  Including the road, and any huge changes in traffic patterns that may have been built, and signposted.  So, as I was driving up 10th a few days ago, I noticed that a car, ahead of me, as it drove through the intersection at 10th and Dunbar, swung out to the right.  Even though the road was completely clear, and there is no longer any reason to.

I suppose it's no wonder that Port Alberni drivers don't pay any attention to the road, or the cars, or to people on the road, or to any other aspect of the situation around them when they are driving.  Port Alberni drivers don't seem to drive by visual cues, but by muscle memory.

GriefGrads

I am a grieving widower, of three and a half years standing.  I have been through both individual and group grief counseling.  I am looking for some type of, if not exactly peer support, at least sharing of shared misery.

Having been something of a researcher all my life, when my wife died I started researching grief.  I have researched, and developed some resources, on topics such as men's grief, grief scams (I am also, by profession, an information security specialist), grief bots, and a variety of other topics.  I am currently working with a hospice society producing a podcast which we call "A Good Death."  Various articles on different topics of grief can be found at https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/06/grief-table-of-contents-and-resources.html.

Grief (peer) support groups are composed of people who, by definition, understand bereavement.   Unfortunately, most grief support groups seem to end when the formal group curriculum ends.  One of the hospice societies with which I had some connection had a Saturday tea, which anyone who had taken either individual counseling, or group grief support, through that hospice society was allowed to attend.  (I referred to it as the Grief Alumni Tea.)  There were people from different grief support groups, and some who had just had individual counseling, but all were bereaved, and all were able to provide support, and insight, to each other.  (Unfortunately, I moved away from that area, and into an area where the population doesn't seem to support group meetings that don't involve beer.)

I figured that there must be a lot of places where the population won't really support a face-to-face drop-in situation for informal grief support.  So, I have been attempting to find such, online, so far without success.  Such groups seem to be extremely rare.  So, being not exactly an expert in grief, but having researched it a bit, and being professionally an expert in computer communications, I'm trying to get something started, under the title of GriefGrads.

I would appreciate help from anyone who feels that they would like to participate.  But I would like to make it clear that I am not interested in starting yet another business in the grief industry.  For those in the grief industry, if you find this might be interesting or useful to some of those with whom you have contact, I would appreciate any kind of publicity that you feel able to offer.  If you run something similar and charge for it, I completely understand if you do not wish to publicize this type of free activity.  Those in the grief industry who are looking to advertise their own services or shill for clients are cordially invited not to attend.  If you are, in fact, bereaved, and are willing to talk about your own grief, and help those who participate, I welcome your feedback and participation.

As one of the Internet dinosaurs (I was on the Internet before it was *called* the Internet), I am initially interested in running a group over email.  I realize that many people see this as a kind of a privacy concern.  I have two responses to this concern, first that the identification of those participating in GriefGrads with an email address is a realistic privacy concern, but that the identification of scamming participants with particular email addresses seems to me to outweigh the concerns about participant privacy.  In addition, I know that social media platforms are far less anonymous that many people seem to think.  However, I am willing to consider social media platforms, as well.  Since the girls require me to be on WhatsApp, I would consider this as a kind of a second step in providing a GriefGrads platform.  It provides for easy chat functions (once somebody is on the system), and can also provide for small video conferencing meetings.  I am willing to consider additional social media platforms, with the proviso that I want to make this as accessible to people as possible.  I would consider virtual meetings with video conferencing, such as Google Meet, although I do want to keep the GriefGrads available as a free offering, and the free offerings on the various virtual meeting platforms are generally limited to short meeting times.

For those wishing to participate, you can contact me at rslade@gmail.com

For those who might be concerned that this is a scam, or simply want to check me out, you can start at 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Slade

or 

http://shouldersofinfosec.pbworks.com/w/page/146046189/Rob%20Slade%20-%20%28Slade%2C%20Robert%29

or 

http://fibrecookery.blogspot.com 

If you want to check me out even *further* on social media, you can start with the accounts listed at https://www.blogger.com/profile/00652675651093388424

Multi-factor authentication

A friend was asking me about multi-factor authentication apps or just authentication apps.  So, he, unfortunately, got an earful.

We are not doing well with regard to authentication.  We never really have.  Oh yes, I know all the theory.  I have taught it for decades.  Authentication is based on something you have, or something you know, or something you are.  But actually implementing that seems to be really, really difficult.  And it's getting much *more* important, rather than less, that we have reliable and usable authentication.

First of all we went with something you know.  Passwords.  And, of course, everybody chose really stupid passwords.  1 2 3 4 5 6.  I actually got a letter, just this past week, setting up a session, and using that exact password.  When I got into this field, apparently you could get into 75% of all computer systems using the passwords love, or sex, or secret.  Then there was everybody who used their birthday, or their pet's name.  So, for years we have been trying to convince people first to pick reasonably strong passwords, and then, eventually, trying to move away from passwords all together and to some other kind of authentication.

Lots of companies have tried to sell something that you have as a form of authentication.  I have carried various one-time password devices.  Yes, I suppose it uses a password, but it might do a challenge and response type hashing of the password, or a password generation based on the time, or some other means of verifying a non-replayable password, and one that the person can't choose, themselves, in order to avoid all the problems with stupid password choice.  Then there were the various USB keys that you could stick into your computer and use as authentication.  Once again, something that you had.  But, of course, everybody had to agree on which of these systems would be used universally.  And, of course, no vendor would agree to use somebody else's system.  Which is probably a good thing, because that would have meant that we had a monoculture in terms of authentication, and therefore a single point of failure in terms of authentication for absolutely everything.

What people seem to be using these days, in terms of multi-factor authentication, is a secondary backup which, once again, involves something you have.  But, in this case, the something that you have is slightly more reasonable, in that it's a cell phone.  Everybody has a cell phone these days.  Everybody has a cell phone, and, indeed, an awful lot of people are getting rid of their landlines.  So, if everybody has a cell phone, then everybody has a cell phone number, and, as a backup to the password, and an implementation of multi-factor authentication, the system can send you a text with a PIN or code that you have to enter in order to verify that it is, in fact, you that knows your password, and just entered your password in authenticating to the system.

Which I find annoying.  Yes, I have a cell phone.  But I also still have a landline.  I'm a dinosaur, and keep technology around far too long, remember?  And I am not the type of person who walks around with my cell phone actually glued to my hand.  I occasionally turn my cell phones off.  As a matter of fact, when I am home, mostly they are off.  So, when I'm sitting at my desktop computer, and trying to sign on to something, it's a royal pain to have to go, get my cell phone, turn it on, and only then be able to do the secondary verification that, yes, it is me trying to sign on to my account.  For which I have long and complicated passwords, thank you very much.

Now I'm really not sure why, but an awful lot of companies have decided to get into the market, selling authentication, but relying on the fact that you have a cell phone.  Yes, I suppose that there is SIM swapping.  And, if some scammer knows your cell phone number, they can go and get a cell phone, and then, yes, when somebody sends you a text with some kind of pin in it, they can get that message as well as, or possibly instead of, you.  So, yes, I suppose that there is a vague point about authentication apps, on your phone, being somewhat more secure than simply texting a PIN.  But, other than that, in terms of the convenience of multi-factor authentication, using these authentication apps, I have the same objection.  Why should I have to keep my cell phone on, and with me, all the time?

(Yes, yes, I am well aware that convenience is the enemy of security.  I have been teaching that for decades as well.)

I actually only use one authentication app.  It is the BC Services Card.  Now, when I talk about the BC Services Card, I have to explain that the BC Services Card is not, in fact, a card.  It is an authentication app.  It runs on your phone.  It is actually a quite well-designed, and very usable, system.  It had better be.  I well remember sitting in on a presentation when they implemented the very first part of what eventually became known as the BC Services Card.  At that point it was just the public key infrastructure for what would, eventually, in the fullness of time, become the BC Services Card.  So, the BC government (and primarily Gary) have had thirty years to work on the background structure, and how it will work, and how it will work with other systems, and how other people will be able to use the BC Services Card, and how other companies will be able to use the BC Services Card, and how even the federal government will be able to use the BC Services Card, for authentication.  I understand (although I haven't yet tried it) that you can actually use the BC Services Card to sign on to your bank.  Congratulations Gary!  It works.  I had to sign up for it for something that I had to do with the death administration when Gloria died.  I can't even remember what it was that I had to do.  As a matter of fact, although I have come across an awful lot of possible uses for the BC Services Card in the intervening years, I have only actually used the BC Services Card about once every two years.  This means that using the BC Services Card isn't exactly a daily occurrence.  So, each time I have to use it, I have to relearn, all over again, how to use it.  Every time I have had to use it, it has actually been much less traumatic than I always expected to be.  It works.  It works well.  And I was even able to switch it from one phone to another without too much trouble, when I got my new phone.  (I did have to take both phones into the Service BC office.  I suppose that I didn't necessarily have to, but I was definitely nervous about the process, and I figured it was easier to just go into the office then to try and figure out how it worked by myself.)

The BC government, and all the people that I know who work in aspects of the BC government programs which use the BC Services Card, insist that it is very useful, and that everybody knows about it, and knows how to use it.  This is absolute nonsense.  Every time I talk about the BC Services Card, I have to explain that there is no actual card.  I have to explain that it is an authentication app.  There are all kinds of things that you can use the BC Services Card for.  But almost nobody actually knows that there is a BC Services Card, and what it is.  For the most part, unless your wife dies, you don't have to use the BC Services Card.  You can sign on to your bank using some other means.  You can sign on to the Canada Revenue Agency using some other system or method.  The BC Services Card could be very useful.  But it isn't required, and so almost nobody uses it.  If more people used it, and if more people had it ... well, that's sort of the problem isn't it?  If more people had it, more companies would use it.  If more companies used it, more people would have it.  It's a really good system, but you have to get both people and companies to actually use it.  Nobody is going to get it until it becomes useful to them, and no companies are going to offer it, as authentication, until more people are using it.  Catch 22.

But there is, of course, fairly widely used, yet another authentication boondoggle.  This is the fact that, if you go to some website where, in order to use it, you are supposed to have an account, but you don't have an account with this particular system, you can sign on with your Facebook account.  Or your Google account.  Or your own account with one of the other systems one of the other information technology giants, where a lot of people do have accounts, and they provide this form of online authentication.  You sign on with your Facebook username and password, and Facebook authenticates, to the system that you actually use, that you are you, and you should be allowed to use their system.

As I say, a number of the tech giants are starting to get into this particular service.  Once again, everybody would like to be the system that everybody else has to rely on.  One company that is interested in getting into this field is Open AI.  Yes, the people behind ChatGPT.  Now, personally, as far as I can tell, large language models, and generative artificial intelligence, are a solution in search of a problem.  About the only service that generative artificial intelligence seems to have been able to get anybody excited about, is code generation.  So ChatGPT is writing a whole bunch of code for a whole bunch of companies.  (Well, really it's more of an "autocomplete on steroids" function that searches existing code bases.)  (And, I suppose in doing that, that they can't do much worse than an awful lot of the programmers out there.)  But, in terms of authentication, I am less sanguine about the capabilities of hallucinatory generative artificial intelligence.  Since we can't trust the text that these systems produce, why should we trust the authentication that they, supposedly, verify?

VM - G - 2.13 - governance - requirements

Functional and Assurance requirements

In the world of information security, we make a distinction, in determining our requirements for a tool or a system to help us, in regard to the requirements.  We specify two types of requirements: functional requirements, which have to do with the actions of the actual tool; and assurance requirements, which answer the question is the tool doing actually performing, and is the tool actually doing what we intend it to do.

These two different types of requirements can, in fact, be applied to pretty much any task that we asked anything, or anyone, to perform.  What is it that we want done, and how do we know that it is being done, and that it is effective.

I I got what I thought was a nice illustration of this idea one day when I was getting lunch.  I was in a store that sold sandwiches of the types known as hoagies, or hobos, or submarine sandwiches (presumably because of the general overall shape).  When you are eating in a restaurant, or getting food from a takeout place, you will know that there are signs, in the washrooms, saying that all staff have to wash their hands after using the washrooms, and in between every order that they prepare.  This is good hygiene, and pretty much everybody understands why it's there.  This has to do with the functional requirements of preparing food.  You want to ensure that people the people involved in preparing, or serving, food, have clean hands, and definitely hands that are not contaminated by germs transferred from somewhere, or something, else.

The thing is, the only *assurance* requirement that there is that this functional rule is followed is the sign in the bathroom.  Sometimes there may be a sign at the counter instructing the staff that they have to wash their hands between each order.  But, if you pay attention, you will realize that the staff are mostly facing *away* from that sign, and that they actually very seldom wash their hands between one order and another.

But in this particular shop, every time the staff made a sandwich for someone, they pulled a couple of disposable plastic gloves out of a box and put them on.  The disposable gloves fulfill the same functional requirements: being sure that any germs that are on the food preparers has don't transfer to the food that is being prepared.  And, indeed, because the use of the gloves is immediate and fairly easy, it's fairly plain to see that, as they move to somebody else's order, they throw away the gloves that they were wearing, and put on a new pair of gloves.

The functional requirement is the same in both cases: making sure that germs don't transfer from the preparer's hands to the food.  But the assurance requirements are much different.  In terms of determining that the food preparers wash their hands every time they use the washroom, well, you really can't check that out unless you go to the washroom with them.  But, with the gloves, you can see that they put on the gloves.  You also can see that they throw away their gloves when finished with your order, and put on a new pair of gloves when they go to prepare somebody else's order.  So, while the functional requirements for both hand washing and gloves are the same, the assurance requirements are much stronger for the gloves than they are for the hand washing.  Gloves have it all over hand washing in terms of the assurance requirements.

This is something that should be applied to the management of pretty much any task, whether for a commercial enterprise, or for volunteers.  There is the functional requirements of the task that you want done.  Those are generally specified.  But the *assurance* requirements, that the job actually has been done, and that the task that is performed has some effective results, is generally given rather short shift.  Very often, when we send volunteers out to perform a task, we asked them to fill out some kind of report as to what task has been done, how many times, and if there were any incidents in the performance of the task.  To a certain extent, this does fulfill the assurance requirement.  The job has been done, and, a certain number of times.

But there is that sort of second half of the assurance requirement: was this task effective?  That is something that relatively few managers actually think about.  There's an awful lot of work, both paid and volunteer, that gets done, and is a complete waste of effort.  No one has ever checked on the assumption that what we are doing is, in fact, having some kind of benefit.  Think about this some time.  How is it that you know that what you are doing is, in fact, effective?

(In other management literature, some of this issue of assurance requirements is covered under what is known as "metrics," or key performance indicators.  But that's a topic for another time.)

One of my volunteer jobs is community policing, and one of the tasks that we undertake is speed watch.  We take down a lot of statistics: how many total cars do we see, how many of them are under the speed limit, how many are roughly at the speed limit, how many of them are driving about ten kilometres an hour over the speed limit, and how many of them are driving twenty kilometres an hour over the speed limit.  (For this last set, that's the group where we take down the license plates, and they get a polite but pointed letter from the local police.)

The data and statistics that we collect go to the provincial motor vehicle authorities.  Presumably, over time, they can see what the average speed is at the different places where we set up speed watch.  A much more immediate, and significant, assurance requirement to which we pay attention is the fact that we can measure the speed of cars more than half a kilometer away.  We can see that someone who comes into our zone at seventy kilometres per hour, by the time they get to us (and have had the time to see that we are set up), may be traveling thirty-seven kilometres per hour.  We can also see when someone, quite far away from us, slams on their brakes, and the front end of their vehicle is suddenly a lot closer to the ground.

We know we are having an effect.

Volunteer management - VM - 0.00 - introduction and table of contents

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/05/volunteer-management-vm-000.html

Luggable dream

I had a dream this morning.  Unusually, when I woke up from the dream, I remembered the dream.  Even more exceptionally, in my case, what I could remember of the dream kind of made sense.  It was about ordinary things, as far as I can remember, and it wasn't totally bizarre.

What I can remember of the dream related to the old luggable computers.  Those of you who are as old, or almost as old, as I am, and worked with technology in those dim and distant days, may remember these suitcase sized "portable" computers.  Originally most of them ran on the CP/M operating system, and later versions ran on PC or MS-DOS.  Most of them had dual five and a quarter inch floppy disks for storage.

As I was waking up from the dream, but still in that fuzzy half state where you're not fully into the current world, I was thinking that these machines would have been in a bit of difficulty these days, since it's hard to get five and a quarter inch floppy disks anymore.

Actually, it's pretty much impossible to get five and a quarter inch floppy disk *drives* anymore.  I don't think that they're making five and a quarter inch drives anymore, and, unlike the three and a half inch floppy disks, nobody ever made, or sold commercially, a 5 and 1/4 in floppy drive with a USB adapter.  Somewhere around here, in my much reduced tech junk pile (or piles), I probably still have a three and a half inch floppy drive with a USB connector.  It has, of course, been a long time since anybody sold a computer with either three and a half, or five and a quarter inch, floppy drives actually installed.

I actually had, and was very proud of, one of the relatively rare Canadian made luggable computers.  It was a Canadian made, and physically exceptionally well designed, Hyperion computer.  Dual floppy drives, of course, and a rather beautiful machine in terms of its ergonomics and overall design.  It did have one fatal flaw: the read only memory, the basic programming that ran everything else, was only designed for PC/MS-DOS version 1.0.  That meant that there was absolutely no possibility of ever installing a hard drive in one of these machines.

(It, along with so much other technology that I had hoped to donate to a computer museum one of these days, went in the mass furor and clear out as Gloria was dying [and slightly before we actually knew that Gloria was dying], while the girls were throwing me out of the townhouse, and moving me to Delta.  There were $120,000 worth of, primarily technical, books that went in that clear out, and more than a couple of trunks full of old computers, old laptops, various kinds of boards, and a whole bunch of ancient technology.)

And, speaking of ancient technology, and five and a quarter inch floppy disks, it reminded me of all kinds of ancient storage media, a lot of which went in that clear out.  As well as a whole bunch of three and a half inch discs, and 5 1/4 inch discs, a whole bunch of eight inch floppy disks went.  There were also various formats of tape storage, including some nine track tape reels.  I never actually worked with punch cards, but I did have an opportunity to play with them at one point, and so there were a bunch of punch cards that went, as well.  I didn't still have any, but I do remember doing some educational programming with twelve inch laser video discs.  (As far as I can recall, the total storage capacity of video on those twelve inch discs was about thirty minutes of video.)  All kinds of storage, all kinds of memory, all kinds of files and information.  All lost, like tears in the rain.

And the dream reminded me not only to write down the thoughts about storage, and ancient storage, and luggable computers, and ancient technologies, but also about multi-factor authentication, and also about my dead phone.  And I was awakened out of the dream at four in the morning, and I've got all these ideas swirling around and have to get them down or I'll never get to sleep, so I guess I'm up for the day.

VM - G - 2.12 - governance - planning levels

In any kind of management there are three levels of management and planning: operational, tactical, and strategic.

Operational planning and management is short-term.  It deals with the day-to-day, and the immediate task.  Most of the operational planning for your volunteers office or department will probably fall to the volunteers themselves.  The volunteers are, by and large, going to be undertaking tasks generally independent of you for immediate direction.  They will be ensuring that they have the resources that they need for the immediate shift, or task, that the necessary group of volunteers have shown up, that they have the right equipment and determine by asking you whether anything has recently happened that changes the task that will probably have been planned by you previously.  As noted, this is primarily done by the volunteers themselves, although they will get direction from you as to any changes, and will report to you in terms of resources expended, damage to equipment, successful completionism task for otherwise, and any administrative details and reports that detail to completion of the tasks.

Tactical planning and management is primarily your job.  This deals not necessarily with the individuals day-to-day tasks, but with midterm planning.  You will be keeping an eye on the overall inventory of resources and equipment, the hours of work by the volunteers, noting who is doing too much and is in danger of burnout, and who is not doing enough and may need a bit of encouragement,  and keeping track of the completion of tasks or the failure to complete tasks, and the types of tasks that are completed, and possibly types of tasks that aren't.  You will be noting the details of the reports that the volunteers turn in.  You will be planning for the future, ordering supplies, not only as needed, but sometimes possibly *before* needed, in order to ensure that the resources are available to the volunteers when they are needed.

Strategic planning and management is larger in scope, and longer in term.  This is going to be primarily involved with the Board, or senior management of the organization.  This is generally beyond the scope of your job as a manager of volunteers.  This is going to involve the perception of the organization within the community, for issues of fundraising and resource acquisition, and overview of the objectives, long-term and overall, of the parent organization, and whether there need to be changes in the tasks that the volunteers should be organized should be encouraged to pursue, and the position of the organization within the larger community over the long term, trying to look at least five years down the road.

The thing is, that these three levels of planning and management apply to any kind, and any level, of management.  You, as a manager of volunteers, have operational tasks that you need to address every day.  You need to the reading the reports that the volunteers turn in to you.  You need to be noting who shows up for shifts, and who possibly is late, or doesn't show up at all.  You need to keep an eye out for attitudes, and signs of tension, between the groups of volunteers that are working together.  You need to know individual problems that may happen on individual shifts, but which happened consistently, and therefore may indicate a need for additional training of the volunteers overall, to address this particular problem.

Reading of the reports is operational.  The analysis of the types of problems that show up on the reports, and considering that further training may be necessary is going to be tactical.  You also have overall tactical management that you are going to be needing to deal with in your job.  Ensuring that volunteers are showing up for shifts, to cover the tasks as necessary.  Recruiting new volunteers on an ongoing basis to fill any vacancies as people leave the organization.  Planning attendance for any kinds of events within your larger community as may be appropriate to your organization, and to the volunteers that you have.

But there is also strategic planning and management that you need to undertake in your own job.  You are reading the operational reports from the volunteers, and, from your analysis of that, planning what you need to report to senior management, or to the Board, in terms of changing needs or priorities.  You may also need to strategize, again, with data that you are receiving from the daily operational reports, educate, guide, or simply influence the decisions that senior management and the Board may be making that affect you.  You are going to be making representation to senior management in terms of your overall budget, even though salaries for the volunteers are not part of what you need to budget for.  (Perks, equipment, appreciations, and parties for the volunteers are part of what you have to budget for.)

Volunteer management - VM - 0.00 - introduction and table of contents

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/05/volunteer-management-vm-000.html

MGG - 5.53 - HWYD - Dead phone

I keep my tech far too long.  I have *no* idea how old my desktop computer is.  One of my laptops is over twenty years old.  I bought a new phone last year because my old ones were running out of memory/storage.  Even though I install only minimal apps on them, and clear off pictures as fast as I can email them to myself, I *had* to get something with more room.  So, I moved my SIM chip, and mobile phone number, to a new phone with more memory, and a higher resolution camera.

But, of course, I didn't get rid of the old phones.  I can still use them for email, and dictating, and my calendar (an absolute necessity, these days), and WhatsApp, and tracking walking on Google Fit.  The old phones don't have phones numbers or SIM chips, but using them for those things saves battery on the new phone.

And you may have noticed I said "phones."  Plural.  When we first got a cell phone (and I was *very* late to the game on that) we immediately realized that we had to get *two* phones, because the only time we *used* the phones (back then), was to call each other.  So, one of the old phones is Gloria's phone.

Which has now died.  For the last few weeks it has been difficult trying to charge it, and yesterday it just absolutely refused.  I've tried it with the various chargers that I have, and it's just dead.  (Cruelly but appropriately?)  *My* old phone still seems to be working, so I'll carry on using it for email, etc, etc.

I find that I'm having trouble with the idea of throwing Gloria's phone away ...

I have realized, that I have a way, workable but slightly inconvenient, to resurrect, and even keep using, Gloria's old phone.  Since we always had two phones, and mostly they were the same phone, I can switch the batteries on the phone, and use my phone, to charge the battery for Gloria's phone.  Then I can put the phone the battery back in Gloria's phone and actually use the phone.  As I say, it's inconvenient, and slightly kludgy, but it's possible.  I probably won't actually *use* Gloria's phone, but I can get it back into working order, and probably pursue some way of doing a factory reset on it, so that I can safely send it out for recycling.

Which, along with the dream about the luggable computers, got me thinking about the fact that I use computers and devices far too long.  I actually don't know how old these phones are.  I know that they are more than six years old at this point.  Actually, over the roughly thirty-five years that we had cell phones, Gloria and I only had four sets of phones.  Our first was a pair of Nokias, so that's how far back this started.  Our second set of phones were a couple of flip phones.  And in that generation, Gloria had a pink flip phone, so we actually didn't have quite the same model.  The next generation were Samsung cell phones, with slide out keyboards.  (The girls were demanding that we start texting.)  And then there were these current Samsung Galaxies, once again the same model, and so able to interchange the batteries.  Last year these phones got to the point where, while they still worked, I ran out of space and memory on the phones, and so had to go and buy something more updated, with larger storage and memory.  (Oh, I probably should throw in there that, as a prize at some vendor seminar or trade show, I did actually have a Windows phone for a time.  I never got an account for it as a phone, but I used it for quite a while as a kind of a mini tablet, and it had the best camera of the phones that we had at that point.)

What did I want to say about phones, in this regard?  Probably that I use them in weird ways.  I keep them far too long.  The Windows phone still worked when I had to get rid of it, but the Windows cell phone operating system, which it ran on, couldn't be updated for that particular model (a later Nokia, as well) of phone.  That meant that the apps on the phone couldn't be updated, either.  And, eventually, all of the apps stopped working, as everyone was switching to https, and none of the apps on the phone would connect in that way.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/02/mgg-552-hwyd-555-1212.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/12/mgg-6oo-gloria-introduction-and-glorias.html

VM - G - 2.08 - governance - support requirements of enterprise

Address and support the specific requirements of the enterprise

In information security, as previously mentioned, we have to make sure to point out to our professionals that security is there to support the specific requirements of the enterprise.

There are two reasons to emphasize this particular point.  The first is that it is vitally important, in a field where we are the experts, and the people who are managing us very often do not understand the threats, vulnerabilities, and risks specific courses of action, and implementing different types of technologies, to remember that we are there to support the business.  Unfortunately, all too many of my colleagues simply look at the risks, and not at the benefits of the technology.  Technology should always be implemented with an awareness of the vulnerabilities and risks involved, but simply because a technology presents a risk is no reason not to use it.  You have to mitigate the risk, in order to use it, but all too often my colleagues will say that we simply can't use this technology.  Security therefore gets a reputation as "the knights who say 'no,'" and is seen as opposed to business.  This should not be so: security is a vital support for the business, and we should be careful not to run afoul of the perception that we are there to impede everybody else's work.

But the second reason to emphasize this point is because of those "specific" requirements.  It is important to consider what the business is doing, and pursuing, and which type of security is most important to it.

This may seem to be far afield from that of volunteer management.  It's not.  You always have to remember that, whatever the objectives and tasks of the volunteers in your volunteer office or department, they are part of a larger organization.  The overall organization does not exist simply to provide tasks to the volunteers.  The volunteers, and indeed, the volunteer office or department itself, is there to support the objectives of the parent organization.  We always have to make this clear to the volunteers.  And, as the person managing the volunteers, you are the one who has to make this clear to them, and keep repeating it every time individual volunteers seem to be pursuing ends of their own that are not those of the parent organization. 

That's a delicate task: reading the riot act to the volunteers, while, at the same time, trying not to do away with their motivation to continue volunteering.

But, once again, there is a second reason to remember that we, as volunteers are there to support the aims of the parent organization.  And this is the specific requirements of the parent organization.

One of my, very long-term and extensive volunteering has to do with the provision of support for those who'd have been affected by some kind of disaster.  We were responsible for making sure that people had the basic necessities for life in the aftermath of such an event, for a short period of time.  As such, we had authorization to call upon certain levels of funding, and provisions, in order to distribute to those who did not have the necessities of life.  But, at one point, I was volunteering in a location where there was a significant population in chronic need.  I remember feeling rather uncomfortable at various meetings where the idea was discussed that, since there was some oversight of the provisions that were available to us, but very little detail in regard to specific events, it would be possible for us to divert the emergency provisions to those in chronic need.  This might seem to be a kind thing to do, but was not the specific intent of the parent organization, and it would be possible to say that doing this kind of diversion of provisions was a kind of fraud.

But the issue of specific requirements of the parent organization can be viewed in other ways, as well.  Most particularly, it means that there is no "one size fits all" of volunteer management, any more than there is one size fits all in security.  Each volunteer organization is going to be unique, and is addressing a unique need, in a unique situation.  This is why, in this particular series, I may be seen as providing very broad brush and cliched recommendations for how to pursue volunteer management.  It's basically impossible to get too detailed.  As soon as you do, you start running into situations where those specific actions in terms of volunteer management actually conflict with a number of volunteer organizations who don't quite fit that pattern.

Yes, your job as a manager of volunteers is difficult.  No, I can't give you a cut and paste, checklist set of specifics of how to manage your volunteers.  That's just the nature of volunteer management.

Volunteer management - VM - 0.00 - introduction and table of contents

https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2025/05/volunteer-management-vm-000.html