IBM Lost Tapes with Employment Information on Them

A few days ago, I got a letter from IBM saying that they lost some backup tapes with employment information on them including Social Security numbers. I'm sure glad they held onto my information for the few months I worked for them ten years ago. The best part is that they say the loss occurred in February, but they are only just now contacting people about it.

Interestingly, I have seen very little media coverage of this. Maybe the scale of the loss wasn't too large or the media is sick of covering stories like these.

Here are a few links of other people discussing these letters:

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/ msg07622.html
http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/4475

Iowans for Tax Relief exclude Ron Paul from presidential candidates forum

Two days ago, a post on the Ron Paul 2008 blog indicated that Dr. Paul was being intentionally excluded from a forum of presidential candidates sponsored by Iowans for Tax Relief. The absurdity of excluding Dr. Paul by a group that supposedly wants lower taxes is astounding.

Thomas Wood at lewrockwell.com contacted Ed Failor, an officer of Iowans for Tax Relief, to find out if this was true and was given some story about the candidates list being set a long time ago and that can't be changed. Yeah, right.

Ken Snyder, chairman of Ron Paul's campaign, was interviewed on WHO News Radio 1040 in Des Moines yesterday and Ed Failor called in to. Unfortunately, Ed Failor sounds too personally insulted by the whole ordeal to see the larger picture that Dr. Paul should be included in the forum.

Amazon's "Your Media Library" Sucks

Since I had a $15 credit from one of Amazon's Unbox promotions, I purchased season 1 of Arrested Development with the intention of downloading them to my TiVo to watch. Unfortunately, to download shows to your TiVo, you have to deal with Amazon's "Your Media Library".

To start off with, the interface is full of slow scripting which grinds to a halt on my laptop as I'm scrolling down through my list of shows. Next, there is no sane way to sort episodes of a season of shows to keep track of which one you want to download next.

The two sorting options are "date aquired" and "title". "Date aquired" seems to have no bearing on reality when you purchase a whole season of a show. The shows just appear in seemingly random order (the first four episodes in my list are 1, 3, 7, and 22). "Title" just keys off the actual title of the episode so it is equivalently useless.

I hope Amazon does something to improve this mess soon.

Ron Paul on Colbert Report tonight

According to Ron Paul's campaign blog, he will be on the Colbert Report tonight.



read more | digg story

Ron Paul will be on The Daily Show tonight!

Just saw a mention on Digg that Ron Paul will be on the Daily Show tonight. Make sure to check it out.



read more | digg story

Sub-albums in Picasa Web Albums

With the move from Wordpress to Blogger, I'd also like to move from Gallery2 to Picasa Web Albums. However, you can't have sub-albums on Picasa which makes organizing Anna photos very difficult. On Gallery2, we have many age-based sub-albums.

I have found a suggestion page where you can choose from a list of common suggestions including sub-albums.