Black Friday has another meaning this year. November 29, the day four Lakewood police officers were killed south of Tacoma a decade ago, lands on the same day this year as the kick-off of Christmas shopping season.
Of course Black Friday marks the day when retailers’ finances traditionally get “into the black” for the year. This time of remembrance for fallen officers is also a good thing.
Continue reading Gone But Not Forgotten – Remembering the Lakewood Four, Ten Years AfterGoogle’s priorities are not always the same as mine. Trust, security, compatibility, and safety are all important, and the terms are sometimes used somewhat interchangeably.
This is about as safe a site as you will find. Everyone is free to come here. No account or password is required. There’s no advertising, and I’m not selling anything.
Thanks to that, the search engines and browsers haven’t cared that a secure connection isn’t created when you visit here.
Norton Safe Web has dubbed the site SAFE, without threats or even “annoyance factors.” That doesn’t mean nobody will be annoyed by anything they find here. Norton defines annoyance factors as “Items that don’t necessarily do harm, but are a nuisance, such as joke programs or a site that isn’t what it seems.”
Actually, I’m fine – and so is the other Steve Case. However, Google’s Chrome browser warns that SteveCase.org is not secure.
Folks who know me know I give blood, and do it as often as I’m allowed to. (That’s every 56 days, which means six or seven times a year.)
One morning the staff double-checked my stats and told me where my unit of blood was going: Straight to the hospital, where it would be used for a baby’s surgery. How can that not warm your heart?
When GeekWire selected me as their Geek of the Week, they asked about my favorite cause. That was an easy choice: “Blood donation. You donate a pint of blood and around an hour of your time, and you give a gift that’s priceless.”
Lately a related mini-cause is the Blood Donor Emoji (like the ones at the top of this post). As the sponsors explain:
Continue reading Why I Donate BloodFifteen years ago today the first version of WordPress became available for download. Today WordPress powers over 25% of the world’s web sites.
I’ve been tinkering with HTML for 17 years, but when I started to get serious about blogging I moved my site to WordPress. That was in 2012, and WordPress was already nine years old. I made lots of newbie mistakes and came-up with all kinds of ways to break my site.
When I was invited to a screening of The Space Between with director, producer and actor Amy Jo Johnson, I knew I was going to meet a superhero. Johnson was an original Power Ranger. (The first Pink Power Ranger to be specific.)
I ran into the Power Rangers once at Emerald City Comicon but they were cosplayers. Johnson is the real deal, both as a Power Ranger and an actress in general. Her dozens of TV and film credits include starring roles in Felicity, Flashpoint, and The Division.
Continue reading The Superhero, the Producer and the Director
I got a surprise when my latest shipment arrived from Amazon. Though their app has been providing delivery notifications for a long time, this one startled me.
Not only did the app tell me when the package was delivered, but it included a picture of it in the place where it landed.
The photo was crude. You wouldn’t be able to identify either the package or the doorstep in a lineup. However, I recognized the location where it was delivered.
The photo was so bad that I wondered how it was taken. A typical police body cam would have done a better job, even while clipped onto an officer being dragged by a car. Still, it met the need.
I did take the opportunity they provided to “Tell us what you think about this photo.” I responded:
It’s a really poor quality picture, but still useful. Of course a better photo would be more useful if I didn’t find the package waiting for me.
I.E.: I couldn’t definitively identify the package or the location, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Continue reading Fighting Back Against Package Theft and Porch Pirates
