Residents of several neighboring towns are without power because the company that supplied them with service was wiped out by the hurricane. They will be without electricity for weeks, probably longer. Local residents are trying to feed their families without refrigeration, and the stores don’t have it either so there’s nowhere to buy food. Local businesses that depend on electricity to survive are dark and deserted. There is no dramatic mass destruction to entice cameras into the area, so the media isn’t interested. FEMA is too busy to help. There are no relief workers, no emergency supplies, no outside help whatsoever. They’re on their own, with nowhere to turn.

My parents are fortunate; their electricity is supplied by Bluebonnet Electric Coop, which was outside the area hit by Ike. Their friends in several nearby communities like Caldwell, however, are not so lucky.

Bluebonnet has reportedly stepped forward and offered to supply power to Caldwell, but the city government is refusing the help that would allow its own residents to live, feed their children unspoiled food and clean drinking water, have medical care, survive the elements, and earn livelihoods. Why? Because, they say, they are bound by state law to their contract with the other electric company, the one ravaged by hurricane damage that may not be able to restore their power for weeks, or possibly even months.

Since when is a contract binding if one party cannot provide the contracted service? And in times of disaster, how can state law and useless contracts possibly take precedence over human lives they are doing nothing to protect? And what kind of city officials could possibly be so incredibly, incomprehensibly irresponsible as to turn down the only possible solution to a problem that threatens the lives, health, and livelihoods of their citizens because “it’s against the rules”?

Here’s a hint: They are the kind of city officials who are so caught up in their “good old boy” network that they would give the title of “disaster preparedness officer” to a guy whose day job is bagging groceries at the local food store, someone who, no matter how well-meaning, couldn’t possibly have the expertise to foresee possible disaster scenarios or figure out how to avert them. Even if he had, I doubt they actually gave him any real authority to act. As a result, the town doesn’t have a single emergency generator on hand, or even any way to keep the sewer system flowing while the power is out.

Texans pride themselves in being tough, strong, and independent. Texans stick together when things get rough, and always look out for their neighbors. Bluebonnet is showing true Texas neighborliness, stepping up to the plate when things are bad and offering the one thing that is most desperately needed.

The situation is nothing short of ludicrous. The city officials of Caldwell have, through their own ineptitude and irresponsibility, put the lives of their thousands of citizens in peril. Incredibly, even though these are their friends, relatives, and neighbors, they apparently place more importance on bureaucracy than on protecting the citizens they supposedly serve. They do not deserve to call themselves Texans.

This transplanted Texas girl would like to suggest a few good old Texas punishments for them, but I’m too much of a lady to put them in print. I’m sure you can think up plenty of your own, however.

UPDATE #1 (9/16/08)

Thanks to the intervention of Senator Steve Ogden, Caldwell is getting electricity today. Details are sketchy, but at last report the traffic lights were working, and power is expected to be fully restored by tomorrow at the latest. Hopefully the citizens will fix this problem permanently in their next election of local officials, but for now, at least, life can go back to something resembling normalcy in the little town of Caldwell.

Although the mayor of Caldwell has admitted to refusing Bluebonnet’s offer of power, Bluebonnet officials are denying having made any such offer. Regardless, Senator Ogden’s intervention has apparently spurred Entergy, the usual provider of electricity for the area, into action and they are working to get power restored to their customers in the area. Senator Ogden has already gotten Governor Rick Perry to temporarily rescind laws that were hampering the ability for another provider to bring power into the area, so if Entergy can’t get it restored by tomorrow, another provider will be allowed to step in. Area news mentioned Bryan Public Utilities as a possibility. Meanwhile, for the first time since the power went out 4 days ago, the City of Caldwell began serving lunch and supper in a local park for any area residents who need food.

I like happy endings.

As someone who attended nursing school after a successful career in the tech industry, it was disconcerting to be expected to forfeit my adulthood and life experiences and submit to being treated as though I were a naive and inexperienced 18-year-old just out of high school. I had lived in a foreign country and six different US states, owned homes and businesses, raised three children to adulthood, was a degreed engineer with two decades of experience, had been a manager and department head and earned a six-figure salary, and was practically the same age as many of my instructors. The condescending attitudes I encountered as a nursing student, therefore, were appalling. Even if I *had* been an inexperienced 18-year-old, I would have deserved more respect than some of them showed.

It’s no wonder that nursing instructors often complain of the lack of respect they receive from their students. Respect is a two-way street; you have to give it in order to get it. As both a parent and a manager, I could have told them that; tried to tell them that, in fact, but because I was a college student, I had nothing of value to offer them, so they couldn’t hear me.

There were exceptions among our faculty, of course, as I’m sure there are at all nursing schools. A few did appreciate the diversity of experience and knowledge brought to their classrooms by the increasing numbers of “nontraditional” second-career students. They were usually the same ones who showed common courtesy and respect to all of their students, regardless of age or background. Unfortunately, they were in the minority. As I’ve moved on since graduation, encountering other nurses trained at other institutions, I’ve come to realize that my experience was far from unique. Megan D., a current nursing student, tells a story eerily similar to one of my own experiences in her blog post, Lateral Violence in Nursing School.

In a profession whose most important qualities are empathy, caring, and appreciation for cultural diversity, the treatment of students is sadly lacking in any of these things. “Nursing school eats its young” is a common remark, as is, “it’s too bad it has to be that way, but that’s how it’s always been.” Well, here’s another thing I learned as an engineer: the fact that “this is how it’s always been done” does not qualify a process as “the best way to do it.”

Here’s only one of many examples from my own experience: I failed a math test for the first time in my life, in my third year of nursing school. I used to write complex equations full of imaginary numbers and integrals and LaPlace and Fourier transforms that completely described the functional capabilities of electromechanical systems. Yet in nursing school, I failed a test whose most challenging calculations were unit conversions and simple division of real integers.

I didn’t get any of the answers wrong.That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I derived my answers engineering-style, using the unit cancellations to check my work as I went, rather than plugging numbers into a memorized equation. My instructor (who was fully aware of my engineering background) explained to me that although I had arrived at all of the correct answers, the fact that I had not used the “need over have” nursing equation told her that I did not fully understand the relationships between the numbers. “You’re a nurse now,” she admonished me soberly, “and that means you really have to know what you’re doing, because when nurses make mistakes — they can kill people!”

After more than 2 years of having my engineering, management, and intercultural experience repeatedly dismissed as completely irrelevant to nursing, you might have thought I’d have gotten used to it. I hadn’t. I was stunned speechless.

If I had been able to speak I could have pointed out to her that nurses, no matter how badly they screw up, can only ever kill one person at a time. Engineers, on the other hand, can kill them by the dozens, or hundreds, with a single miscalculation. Shoot, in the right circumstances, they might possibly even kill them by the thousands. This would tell any logical person that engineers are probably trained pretty stringently in how to avoid making stupid mistakes. But logic is one of those things I had been repeatedly told was irrelevant in my new career choice. “Oh, Ruth,” they would sigh, “you’re a nurse now. You’ve got to stop thinking like an engineer.”

As it was, when I reported to the instructor doing the mandatory remedial math tutoring sessions for those who failed the test, and encountered the open-mouthed stare of disbelief from one of the rare faculty members who actually understood and appreciated the meaning of a degree in electrical engineering from one of the nation’s top engineering schools, I got to have a nice therapeutic venting session, and I ended up not having to repeat the exam.

I didn’t get to keep the test, though. I really wanted to frame it and hang it on my wall. I’ll just have to be satisfied with telling the story, I suppose.

That same year, some guy copied my site, put his name on it, and printed it out, complete with an introduction thanking some friend of his who had supposedly helped him put it together. I guess maybe his friend loaded the paper in the printer, or something, because there wasn’t much else to do, since I’d done all the research, writing, layout, and photography.

I might have never known about it, had he not been the inherently dishonest sort that he was, because I started getting irate emails from people demanding the books they said they had paid me for that I had not sent. I was a little mystified by this, since I’d never written a book (that I knew of, anyway), until I dug a little deeper and found out what was going on.

I wondered then what I have wondered approximately 47,942 times since: what weird sort of brain defect makes people think they are the only ones who have Web access and know how to use a search engine? If you find something online, doesn’t it stand to reason that the rest of the world can find it just as easily? Is it all that hard to figure out that somebody somewhere is going to know that the thing you are claiming as your own really isn’t? And that the resulting embarrassment is going to be witnessed by practically the entire known universe for possibly years to come?

I’ve spent a lot of time recently tracking down people who have used my dad‘s original cartoons without giving him credit. He’s a pretty popular artist, actually, especially his crybaby graphic, which seems to be in use on just about every blog in existence. I’m actually pretty lenient. If they even so much as link the image back to his site, I leave them alone, but it’s amazing how many people don’t even give that much credit to their sources.

The latest “what was he thinking???” episode happened when I was avoiding schoolwork using StumbleUpon. Up came Robert Hill’s website, with one of my photos right there at the top.(Update, 11/19/07: He finally, apparently, took notice of my attempts to get him to give me credit for my photo. Of course, rather than respond to my messages or acknowledge my authorship on his website, he simply removed my photo and put someone else’s up.)

The photo is posted on flickr site »”>my Flickr site, with a Creative Commons “attribution non-commercial” license. That means all the guy needed to do was give me credit for the photo, and he was free to use it. But he preferred to let people think he’d created it himself. Apparently it didn’t occur to him that since I’m interested in hypertufa, which would be obvious to any thinking person since I made some and then took photographs of it to post on Flickr, it might stand to reason that I would occasionally go browsing for websites purporting to be about hypertufa, and might therefore actually notice that he’d stolen my photograph.

Frankly, it’s pretty obvious from looking at the several blogs listed in his profile that his main object in having them is to sell e-books, which actually makes it commercial usage, if you want to press the point. But I’d have been okay with him simply stating where he got the photo. He didn’t even do that.

Hmmm. I wonder if he used it in his e-book, too?

I e-mailed SplashPress Media (which claims the copyright to the GeeksBlog site and its contents) them over a week ago to let them know that the image was not public domain and ask them for proper credit, and they have ignored me. So tell your friends, tell them to tell their friends, and let’s let the world know that SplashPress Media / GeeksBlog steals graphics from their rightful owners and uses them without permission, credit, or compensation.

If a company can’t act professionally and with integrity in such small and simple ways, do you suppose they can be trusted in any sort of business dealing?

Update – September 21, 2007: The plagiarized image has been removed from the GeeksBlog site, and an apology received from SplashPress (see comments below).

We have received a complaint from the family of Wayne Edwards that we inadvertently used one of his copyrighted pictures for one of our pages. This was quite a while back.

We have written to him to apologise as we had no knowledge this picture was his as it was freely available at the time with no copyright on it.

We have had one or two rude e-mails regarding the above. Among the comments made was that we are making monetary gain out of other peoples artwork. As our subscribers know we do ask or receive any money and have never done so.

We can appreciate Mr Edwards anger that we have used a piece of his artwork and have assured him that as we do not have this on our files now it will not be used again.

I’m calling it good enough, even though she didn’t include his link, which was one of my requests, to at least repay him a bit for using his work.

It’s nice to have so many great friends to help me defend my family. Thank you for your help!

We have had an e-mail from your daughter re a page done a long while ago. She has said we used one of your pictures. This picture was freely available on the internet at the time with no copyright notice on it at all.

We take very great care in trying not to use copyrighted images or pictures and always, always give the name of the author,writer, or whoever, whenever we know.

We do not have this picture at all now so cannot show you the original we received.

We have also had a few rather rude e-mails re the above stating that we are making monetary gain from your copyright. We have never and I repeat never asked or received any money at all for our pages. In fact we have spent rather a lot of our own money in buying licenses etc to enable us to use certain copyrighted stuff.

We do sincerely apologise for our error and can assure that we will in future be even more aware of pirated stuff being available on the internet.

Kind regards
Sandi and the thingos team

Have you ever known one of those people who blame everything on everyone else? Caught with their hand in the cookie jar, they’ll look you right in the eye and claim it’s your fault for not putting the top on securely.

I will admit to having gotten the wrong impression from her website’s language. Apparently her “subscription service” is actually a mailing list, not a subscription service (which is, by definition, when a payment is made in order to receive consecutive issues of a publication), and the fact that the website gives you the opportunity to view a sample page doesn’t mean to imply that there are others you can’t view unless you subscribe. But somebody is making a profit from the advertising, at least, so I don’t think I was completely in error in saying that she’s profiting from other people’s work.

Sandi has also apparently not read the copyright law she so extensively references in her own copyright notification page, since she doesn’t know that copyright is implied in any work regardless of whether it is explicitly claimed. In other words, if it doesn’t say it’s not copyrighted, then it’s copyrighted, according to the law.

Here is my reply:

Since I designed the FamilyPoet.com website and wrote the software that generates the pages, I can tell you with certainty that there has *always* been a copyright notice on every page of FamilyPoet.com. The home page has always carried a notice that all text and images contained within the site are copyrighted, and every poem page contained a copyright notice within the title displayed at the top of your browser window, as well as the name of the author and the date of creation under the title of the poem. Even if this hadn’t been the case, however, it would be irrelevant, since the law assumes that an artist’s work is copyrighted. Even if an image doesn’t specifically carry a copyright notice, that doesn’t mean it’s free to use. When someone’s work is displayed on their website, especially with their contact information readily available as it is (and always has been) on FamilyPoet.com, you are in the wrong if you take that work without first asking permission. Period.

As for “always” giving the name of the author/artist, you didn’t do that, and again, that piece of information is plastered all over FamilyPoet.com and always has been. So you knew whose image it was and how to contact him, but you took it anyway and put your own name on it, with no credit to him, taking the credit for yourself.

If you do not make monetary gain from your pages, then you should change the wording. “Subscription” is defined as a payment made for receiving consecutive issues of a publication. And the advertisers on your site are paying *someone*.

This Sandi V. woman runs a for-profit humor website called “WackyWits.com,” and a Yahoo! mailing list called “Thingos.” On her site, she has a six-paragraph page about copyright infringement, with numerous links to the US Copyright code. Yet this image, which she claims ownership of, contains an original cartoon that my dad created, which was taken from his website (FamilyPoet.com).

I have tried contacting her to resolve this nicely, but she has ignored my messages, and that makes me mad. She’s messing with MY DAD, by golly, and I don’t like that. Besides, thieves should not go unpunished.

Please help me plaster this image all over the Internet, so people paying for her service will know what kind of person they’re supporting. Link to it, blog it, send it to your friends, upload it to your Flickr page, anything you can think of! Help me show her that claiming other people’s work isn’t worth it!

And then go visit my dad’s site, FamilyPoet.com.

Thank you!

PO Box 78

Portland, OR 97207-0178

Re: Parking Violation #HA00696951

On October 5, 2006, I returned to my car after an evening class to find I had been issued a parking citation for 90% blocking the crosswalk on NW Overton Street at 23rd Avenue.

Since there are no crosswalk lines painted on the street at that location, and the curb carries no yellow markings, I used my best judgment to determine whether I could park in that location. Reasoning that the wheelchair ramp must define the location of the crosswalk, I made sure that my car was in no way obstructing the ramp. To the best of my knowledge, it appeared that my car was parked appropriately.

After discovering the citation and before moving the vehicle, I took the enclosed photographs. View #1 shows the location of the wheelchair ramp (the scored section of pavement) in relation to the rear bumper. The other two photographs were taken from other angles which, combined with the first, should make it clear to the viewer that the rear of my vehicle was definitely outside the bounds of the wheelchair ramp.

Since the ramp itself must, for reasons of safety, be entirely inside the limits of the crosswalk, and since the deputy issuing the citation stated that the crosswalk was 90% blocked by my vehicle, one must assume that the ramp falls within the 10% of the crosswalk that was not blocked. Although I did not have a tape measure handy, by conservative estimate I would say the wheelchair ramp at that location is approximately 3.5 feet wide. This means the crosswalk would have to be 35 feet wide in order for 90% of it to be blocked without obstructing the wheelchair ramp. My vehicle would have to be over 31 feet long to accomplish this. I am contesting this citation, therefore, on the grounds that it is physically impossible for me to have 90% blocked the crosswalk with my 12-foot-long ’91 Mazda Protegé without blocking any portion of the wheelchair access ramp.

Thank you for taking the time to consider my explanation.

Providence Health Systems apparently thought that having various managers carry copies of electronic patient data around with them was a better idea than paying for all those expensive professional-type offsite backups. Riiiiight. And the petty thief who stole the bag containing confidential patient information on 365,000 (that’s a comma, not a decimal place, folks) Providence patients (oh, yeah, and employee data on about 1500 employees, too) off the front seat of one of their personal vehicles is now scrambling to find the best way to leverage the goldmine he’s sitting on. And he’d have been happy just to score an iPod!

365,000. That’s one thousand identity thefts per day for a full year. (I can still do complex math like this after working all night, isn’t that impressive?)

But not to worry, surely such sensitive data was securely encrypted, right? Gee, now that you mention it, ummm… not so much. Not even just a little bit, actually. All those social security numbers and names and birthdays and addresses and intimate medical details were all just right out there in plain view. Makes restoring the backups easier, dontcha know.

Let’s see. If one HIPPA violation means a fine of, what is it, $50,000? Then 365,000 of them is… okay, too complicated for me in my present condition, but possibly enough to pay off the entire US national debt!

And that’s not even taking into account the potential lawsuits (if you read the article you will notice that the author has done a fine job of coaching the reader on just exactly how one should correctly go about instituting such a suit).

Wow. I am *SO* glad I work for Legacy (which is probably launching a full-scale IT review of electronic data backups and security measures as we speak)!

My first useless task was to actually read some of the news headlines that show up on my Google homepage when I start Firefox (my browser of choice). Usually I have research to do or something, and zoom on past them, but in celebration of my official Goofing Off Day, I decided to read them all. It didn’t take me long to go into Grammar Police mode. Where in the world have all the intelligent people gone? Doesn’t anybody read what they’re writing any more? I read three stories before I couldn’t take it any more. Here are excerpts from each of them:

A news story from Reuters UK about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome made this statement:

To investigate, Dr. Gordon C. S. Smith from Cambridge University and his team used Scottish databases to identify a group of women who had consecutive births between 1985 and 2001.

The implication here, for those of you just starting your families, appears to be that you should be sure to have your children non-consecutively, in order to lower the chances of losing them to SIDS.

The next story I browsed to was in The Columbian (Columbia County, OR), which said:

State Department of Agriculture officials said the cow share system is legal but doesn’t absolve the dairy of the need for a license to produce raw milk.

Dairy farming must be hard on the “little guy” these days — you’ve either got to pay the government for a license to produce raw milk, or find a way to afford cows that produce only pasteurized milk!

The next story was from MSNBC:

A team of scientists from Alzheimer’s Disease International estimate 24.3 million people currently suffer from dementia. Cases are rising by 4.6 million a year or one every 7 seconds.

I’ve been under the misconception that it took years to develop Alzheimer’s Disease, but apparently I was wrong. Somewhere in the world, someone develops it every seven seconds. Oops, there goes another one…