Sean Bossinger's Doings

R. I. P. Ms. Climber

seanb — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:05:23 +0000

We just came in from burying my sons’ hamster, whom they affectionately named Climber. Climber was a Dalmatian hamster, so named for her spotted fur coat; and she was huge, for a hamster: 7″.

Of course, the kids being kids are already asking “Can we go to the PetSmart with the brown roof?” Tracy, on the other hand, used my shoulder quite liberally.

We’ll miss you Climber.

My new ipod

seanb — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 00:54:27 +0000

I had the fortune to get a new iPod touch for free. And I like it.

Civility… It’s time has come.

seanb — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:43:05 +0000

Today, on the ride in to work, I was listening to the podcast of Hour Two from The Diane Rehm Show of yesterday, on which she was interviewing P. M. Forni, on his book “The Civility Solution”. The gist of the book, and hence, of the interview, was Dr. Forni’s insight into why people are rude, and what we can do to confront those who might be rude.

I have to admit that since listening, I’ve been more aware of my actions toward others, and, perhaps more importantly, more attuned to how I am thinking about treating others.

I hope that I can improve how I deal with people… and to do so, I may pick up a copy of Dr. Forni’s book.

Tags: civility, politeness, rudeness, Forni, Rehm

What a wonderful vacation…

seanb — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:32:43 +0000

Well, we just got back from vacation, and I’m working on getting caught up at work.

I had a nice week off!

A shout out to those who are just joining me…

seanb — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:08:35 +0000

I’ve been communicating with some new contacts lately. Or, more to the point, I should say I’ve been renewing some contacts with former aquaintences of mine from high school. It’s been a humbling yet exhilirating experience. Almost twenty years have passed since I graduated from the hallowed halls of South Dade Senior High. It’s time to take a walk back in time.

Yeah, I probably should have kept up with them, but life happens. Life before the internet, anyhow.

I just want to say “hey” to anyone who swings by here as a result of my link on the SDHS Class of ‘88 site. Welcome to my little corner of the world.

Protected: What do I want?

seanb — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:27:48 +0000

Security is Important

seanb — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:46:36 +0000

This week at work, we had an Information Technology security conference. The US Secret Service was kind enough to send one of their Cybercrime unit specialists to talk to us about Identity Theft.

It reminded me that I hadn’t changed my passwords in… months.

So, now, because I have the tool that I downloaded from http://www.keepass.info, I feel confident telling you that I now have 55 different passwords of varying strengths, and I don’t know any of them. I don’t need to. The tool remembers them for me, types them for me, and keeps them encrypted whenever they are resident in memory or on the hard disk. And if you don’t have my master password (good luck guessing it) and the key file (good luck getting that, too), chances are you won’t be able to decrypt any of them.

A prediction market you can influence!

seanb — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:16:33 +0000

A friend of mine who works for a non-profit in the education sector has turned me on to a prediction market that her organization has set up for demonstration purposes. This prediction market acts like a stock market, only the questions being bet on are much more interesting than the price of a company.

I recommend you visit it at http://markets.nitle.org/.

A brief update…

seanb — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:03:48 +0000

I’m going to try to write more, I promise.

We’ve been home for a week or two since our trip to Disney World. That trip kinda wore me out, and I’m sure my family is still trying to recover, like I am. We’ve (my work) has also been on spring break this week, so the campus has been dead.

But this weekend is Easter weekend, and we’re going to be traveling a bit. We get to have a wonderful “Easter” lunch on Saturday with my sister and her husband, and hopefully get to see quite a bit of our family. Sunday? Don’t know what we’ll be doing on Sunday, but the Easter Bunny will be stopping by.

Gotta finish reading books for my classes… . Then I need to write two papers and a presentation.

What’s new…

seanb — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 03:48:26 +0000

Got the AppleTV up and running, complete with our set of videos that we put on there for the kids. Now all we need do is figure out what we’re doing with the rest of our library. No way it’ll all fit on there. But maybe…

Met tonight with a few newfound fellow bloggers who write with me on www.transitmiami.com. We’re looking at ways we’ll be able to help the cities and counties in the area figure out how to get development right, so that we can make the place more livable.

Still got stuff going on at work. More cuts are coming. I think it’s going to eat into the services we provide, though I’m not certain how. I hate meeting with the staff to talk about nebulous things such as “how much are we going to cut the budget,” “what’s going on with positions,” etc., when I don’t know how we’ll be affected.

Off to bed for me…

Enjoy your night.