A Life For Itself

Author: Christopher A. Kess

  • A Great Pleasure – 10 March 2021

    Today’s joy:

    Last night, I started rereading Erotique Noire.  A couple of the poems in the first chapter.  Plus, the other day, CTA uploaded new ride-the-rails videos of the CTA Brown Line in the snow.  Good railfan viewing.

    Today’s inspiration:

    The Delroy Lindo interview towards the end of today’s episode of Keep It! Podcast is so good.  He discussed his process as an actor, working with Spike Lee, working in theatre, especially doing August Wilson plays, and other good stuff.  I should have listened twice.  It was worth listening just to hear him talk about his craft as an actor.

    A Past joy:

    Sneaking off and reading stuff my mother didn’t want me reading.  Hiding a copy of Erotique Noire under my bed was my version of hiding Playboys, I guess.  That wasn’t the only book I hid under there, though.  Long story.

    Erotique Noire.  In my late teens, I first borrowed an older relative’s copy, with their blessing.  I was interested in the subject and I was mature enough to read the content.  I didn’t want to give the book back.  Eventually, when pressed, I did, and bought my own copy of it.

    I liked the stories, but the poems were the best part for me.  Some of them inspired me to explore the topic in my own poems.  Well, more than I already had at that time.  I’m starting with the poems as I’m reading it this time.  I may even skip the fiction.  We’ll see.

    Listen to Delroy Lindo’s descriptions of some of the events that took place during the filming of “Da 5 Bloods.”  It’ll excite you if you’re into craft and he gives a great glimpse into his performance in that movie.  He even talks about working with Aaliyah and Jet Li in Romeo Must Die.  It’s a really good interview.  I can’t wait until we can gather again for theatre.

     

  • All Day Writing – 9 March 2021

    Today’s inspiration:

    R&B and Soul music. Specifically, 80’s and 90’s R&B and Soul. The stuff I grew up listening to. I’ve been keeping a running list of essential 80’s and 90’s R&B and Soul love songs and writing from that list. I need to get back to my play-in-progress, but it was enjoyable spend all night listening to some of the music I love and writing.

    Today’s joy:

    I started writing as soon as I woke up this morning and spent as much time as I could, writing. No resistance, no writer’s block, nothing. That felt good. Plus, it feels like spring is close. By this time next week, it’ll be lighter longer, ushering in my favorite time of year.

    A Past joy:

    The chicken parm at Trattoria E Pizzeria Da Enrico in Columbia, Maryland, is still probably the best chicken parm I’ve ever had. When I was dating somebody out that way years ago and we’d order food, that was by far my favorite. I might roll out there and get carryout one of these days.

    I wrote last night and this morning about some resistance I had to being vulnerable in my writing. And yet, by the time afternoon rolled around and I’d been inspired some, I was able to get down what I needed to get down. I’m on the fence about how much, if any of that stuff, I’m going to share here. I may later in the week after I’ve had some time to reread and edit some of it.

  • joy and creating and stuff

    The poet Tiana Clark writing in the March/April 2021 issue of Poets and Writers about her process, and sometimes lack thereof, of writing during the pandemic, remarked about editors soliciting “Black pain from Black writers” in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd. At that time, she wasn’t sure she had much to add to the conversation, she wrote. After all, the killing of George Floyd was just the latest such killing in recent years and any Black writer suffering from fatigue from discussing the latest death of an African American at the hands of law enforcement, was understandable. One has to wonder how many times and in how many different ways you can frame this conversation.

    Her response ended up being a turn in the opposite direction. She embraced “black joy and pleasure.”

    After I read the essay, I had to ask myself and wonder where I had joy and pleasure in my own life. Especially during the pandemic. One place where, until recently, I had come up short was my writing. Participating in the online production of North Avenue was indeed a happy experience and yet, after that was done, I looked around and didn’t see that much joy. For one reason or another. I’d been in a play that ended just as the pandemic was starting. The first time in a long time that I’d been on stage. And when the world retreated and reorganized, I didn’t do the same as far as that goes.

    The last couple of years, I’ve been involved with prayer circles where folks gather once weekly to talk about life and then pray for each other for a time. Last year, I’d considered the possibility of merging that practice of weekly prayer with creativity. I wanted to use it as a space not just for people to come together and “hold the high watch,” but to also be partners in support and accountability. We’d support each other in our creative pursuits and make sure that we were all holding to our own and each other’s word. I told my spiritual community what I was interested in doing and they were enthusiastic supporters. I wasn’t ready right when I had the idea, but it was definitely something I wanted to do in the future.

    This year, the idea came back up and I told the group that I was ready.

    Then I read the essay.

    And thought about it.

    And what I decided I wanted was not just a spiritual and creative practice, but one specifically centered around joy. I told the others who would be participating that this was the intention — not just to talk solely about what was going on in our lives and to ask for prayer around the parts we wanted to improve, but for us to consider where the joy is in our lives. Or can be. Where we’re inspired. And how we can be inspired in our work.

    The others agreed to make these practices part of our journeys for this gathering. We’ve agreed to do the inner work and the outer work of making whatever it is that we claim we want to make, and to share it, daily.

    I think it’s a necessary process. It’s good to keep focus. With all the death around, the fear and anger. Conspiracy theories. Half truths. Hard-to-swallow truths. Scarcity. It’s easy to become distracted and derailed from the creative process at this time, so it’s good to get focus back on practice and on those things that are life affirming and not just on all of the conditions of the world. It comes across as privilege at first, but it’s not. It’s paramount. And the conditions will still be there, ready to be picked up, chewed on, etc. later. It’s less about divorcing ourselves from the world as it is about giving ourselves a place where we can find and be our best selves –especially our creative selves– in the world, as the world is ongoing. As Tiana says, “blood and bruises from history or current events will always be present in my poems.”

    Tiana also said that this year, she’s “trying to curate more joy into my life.”

    I am, too.

  • Five Things – 2 August 2020

    Twitter Hackers Caught

    There’s a scene at the beginning of “Ocean’s Eleven,” where Danny Ocean and Rusty Ryan are trying to talk Ruben Tishkoff into joining them in their planned casino robbery caper. Ruben is hesitant at first, but is happy to join in once Danny and Rusty explain that they’re planning to rob the casinos of Ruben’s nemesis, Terry Benedict, who had recently bought Ruben’s hotels from under him and was planning to demolish them “to make way for some gaudy monstrosity.”

    Despite the good feelings engendered by Ruben’s joining the plan, he makes an important warning. Stealing from Terry Benedict like this is especially dangerous. “At the end of this, he better not know you’re involved, not know your names, or think you’re dead, because he’ll kill you, then he’ll go to work on you.”

    Since the movie is older than at least one of them, almost as old as the other two involved, I guess the young men who pulled off the Twitter hack had never seen it, or at least that scene. And perhaps nobody told them leave their names fully out of online activities like that. And that means anywhere along the lines.

    What’s the point of using a “hacker alias,” a VPN, TOR, an airgapped machine, Kali Linux, or any of that other stuff, if you’re going to use your real name on your bitcoin account that you use to receive stolen Bitcoin?

    I only ask because that’s apparently how guys in the caper got caught. They’re described as the middlemen, but, if you’re the kind of person who involves themselves in such activities, you’ve probably taken a lot of other precautions, such as the ones listed above, to protect your identity, as much as possible. They might even use burners phones and such. But if you’re going to be receiving stolen bitcoin, why on Earth would you receive it in such a way that can be tied back to you? There are ways to transact with Bitcoin anonymously and I was surprised to hear that this is how law enforcement was lead to the two.

    In Ocean’s Thirteen, when discussing that film’s caper, the specialist Roman Nagel asks Danny and Rusty possibly the most important question of any caper, “what’s your exit strategy?”

    These guys must not have given much thought to theirs. Now, they’re facing multiple felonies.

    President bans TikTok

    The other night, Twitter was ablaze with the news that the President of the United States planned to ban the short-form video content creation app, TikTok. If you’ve been living under a rock or perhaps spend the majority of your social media time on Facebook and therefore don’t know what’s going on, TikTok has been controversial because it is owned by a Chinese company with ties to its government and the app has come to be considered to be spyware. India’s government has banned TikTok, but they’ve also been having other issues with China this year.

    This, and perhaps other issues (like, really, who even knows?) have prompted the President to make the move to ban the app in the United States. But, if the comments on Twitter are any indication, there might be some trouble enforcing that.

    As a baseline, the government would need Google and Apple to remove the app from their app stores “in the U.S.” Even so, the moment the app is removed from those locations, what’s stopping someone from hopping on a VPN and changing their location to another country, like say, Canada, which has not banned the app, and getting the app?

    It’s possible on both Android and iOS without rooting, and it’s super easy on Android.

    But even so, for those who might be unable or unwilling to do that much, there are alternative app stores out there. And even if one does not trust those, what’s stopping people from going to other websites and getting the app(s)? It’s pretty easy to sideload an Android app. And while it doesn’t seem as easy to me to do the same on iOS, it’s possible. A quick web search will reveal a bunch of possible ways to do so.

    As this tweet says, pretty much nothing sort of the government building a “Great Firewall” is going to stop the app from coming into the country. They’d have to enlist every ISP, including cell phone companies and home Internet providers. Would they do it by blocking the DNS of known places where the app might be? Still, people can use DNS in other countries and even Cloudflare, whose 1.1.1.1 DNS service is encrypted. VPN providers have their own DNS servers, so if someone connected to a VPN, if that VPN provider were outside of the country, then they’ve already circumvented things. They’d have to ban VPN services.

    Then, what’s stopping someone two people, one inside the US and one outside, away from known VPN services, from setting up their own site-to-site VPN and just sharing the app between themselves?

    All of that aside, it’s being reported that Microsoft could buy the American arm of TikTok and I guess that, along with making sure the apps aren’t like … spying on people, will could make this issue go away? Hopefully, the kids will take their lessons on Internet privacy seriously, regardless of what happens.

    MLB Still Going

    Pleasantly surprised is a good way to describe how I feel about this MLB season, so far. Despite coronavirus diagnoses on several teams, MLB is pushing through. Now, Rob Manfred has told the union that too may more players testing positive would mean he’ll have to shut it down, and has told their television partners to get ready for that possible eventuality, but so far, they’re pressing on. And the O’s are near the top of the AL East. I do want baseball, not because I have this sense that it’ll be providing “normalcy.” Normalcy would be the season starting early spring when it’s cooler and fans would be in the stands and no fan noise would be piped in. But, baseball does bring me joy like few other things in my life, so I’m happy to have it. But, if the health situation becomes unmanageable, then it’s time to shut it down.

    NFL Better Pay Attention to MLB

    The NFL needs to be paying as much attention to how things go with MLB. In fact, while I’m pretty sure they’d never do this, were I in control of the NFL, I’d have done my best to have health and operations officials from my league working closely with some counterpart in MLB to monitor the situations and the decisions being made, to relay that information and to help us make better decisions moving forward.

    The two leagues are in similar situations, in that they both decided to contest games in each team’s home stadium. However, while no fans are present in MLB games, the NFL has decided to leave the question of fan capacity, ultimately up to teams and local governments. The Ravens announced several weeks ago that M&T Bank Stadium would have a capacity of no more than 14,000 fans (PSL holders were given priority ticket purchase rights since they wouldn’t all be technically able to use their PSLs this season), but ultimately, the decision is up to the City of Baltimore to decide whether that number of fans will be allowed into the ballpark, or fewer, or none at all.

    The challenge of preventing a breakout in any team’s locker room is magnified for the NFL, as NFL rosters are basically double the size of MLB rosters this season. NFL teams pretty much always have more coaches than the typical MLB team. More players play in closer quarters on every single play in any game, than in MLB. The NBA and WNBA have distanced players sitting on the bench, so it’ll be interesting to see how the NFL deals with that particular issue because there are a lot more players along the sidelines at any time during an NFL game than there are in any basketball game.

    It’s a logistical challenge and I think the NFL should have decided upon sequestering players, officials, and such in one or more places across the country and I’m surprised they did not. The NFL had lots of time to think about it. They planned and executed a physically distanced, and quite fun, in my opinion, draft in a relatively brief time.

    Now, on the chance that both the MLB and NFL seasons successfully complete, I do hope the O’s and Ravens do end up on top. I usually do, obviously, being from Baltimore and having been a fan for such a long time, but want to see the win for Mo. Baltimore superfan and child cancer patient, Mo Gaba, passed away this past week. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an outpouring of love or care or concern for anybody in the Baltimore sports community. Tweets came from current and former Baltimore players. Even whole sportscasts have been dedicated to him and his memory. Understandably so. He didn’t just love Baltimore sports, but that was part of his love of life. In spite of all of the challenges he faced. I never met him, but like so many of us, was touched by him and his story. The Orioles put him into their Hall of Fame hours before he passed and I hope that gave him peace and joy in his final hours. I’m glad the O’s and Ravens, and others, did so much for him, rallied around him. These are my home town teams, but we’re also part of a community that I’m grateful to be part of. At least one championship would be a great tribute to a life lived briefly but bravely.

    Isaias

    Tropical Storm Warnings have gone up in this area, and we’re hours from the forecast arrival of Isaias. Hopefully it will be just a Tropical Storm when it arrives in this area. From the looks of it, the storm will be here with us from sometime late Monday night through Tuesday afternoon/evening. It’s done quite a bit of damage down in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but thankfully lost some intensity last night and was downgraded. But tropical cyclones are anything but fully predictable, so we’ll have to wait and see how things turn out.

    Baltimore City is offering free sandbags for local residents on a first-come, first-served basis.

    Providing these bags is a great service, but I think in future storms, this needs to be done on the basis of living near one of the City’s waterways. The City has neighborhoods that flood almost regularly, like Canton and Fells Point and ones right next to the Patapsco like Cherry Hill and Westport. Those neighborhoods, and ones like Clipper Mill, which sits in the Jones Falls valley, and Mount Washington, are the most at risk when a storm threatens to rain hard and consistently for hours. There are also other smaller waterways, which can become hazardous during a huge rain event. These are the places the city needs to focus on, as well as areas with poor drainage. The City knows about these issues and can focus resources better itself than relying on citizens, who might come from neighborhoods at less risk, and come more out of fear than out of a sense preparedness. With the pandemic going on, city agencies like schools (yeah, yeah, I know how it runs and how its funded, but it serves Baltimore children and it’s located in Baltimore) have faced logistical issues in serving people. The last thing we need is people unnecessarily showing up places for something they probably don’t need. Hopefully, the City will correct this and do a better job in the future. This isn’t a condemnation, but advice, as I know that Baltimore, like pretty much everywhere else, is under unprecedented pressures at this time. Whatever happens in the next couple of days, I hope that we make it through, as unscathed as possible because the logistics around sheltering people during the pandemic would be a major challenge. I know the City has many good people working for it, but again, there’s a big strain going on.

  • Five Things – 26 July 2020

    I haven’t been blogging through the pandemic, nor through the recent social movement. I have lots of thoughts on why that is, and I may put some out there about that at another time, but one of the reasons is that I’ve been working mostly on new plays. I’ve been working on my latest full length and off, and on, a ten-minute play based on my most recently completed full-length. Or, perhaps that’s just an excuse.

    But not blogging or writing much of anything else, and feeling the urge again, is the main reason I decided to come back and blog again, at least weekly.

    I’m going to do my best to blog weekly, one or two items from the tech world, one or two from the arts world, and maybe one or two personal things. We’ll see how it goes.

    Instagram Fake, the Twitter Breach, and Social Trust

    A couple of weeks ago, I found out somebody had created a fake Instagram account using my name and my picture. Apparently, it had been created some time in June and I only found out because I was tagged in a post by a third account that roots out such fake accounts (big ups to them for this.) This was pretty surprising because I’m not a known name or anything, not yet. I didn’t think there was any value to impersonating somebody without much social visibility or trust or good will built up. At least not outside of people I personally know.

    And yet, there was the fake. Along with the new profile picture I’d most recently posted, this time, across all of my social media accounts, as my Gravatar, et. al. The account creator had lifted the verbiage from my Twitter profile, albeit without linking to this website or to my Keybase identity, both of which would have immediately exposed them as a fake. Not that posting on Instagram in different languages, not found on this site or in my other social media accounts, helped to establish any credibility any. Nor did not posting anything about Baltimore, which is one of my things.

    I reported the account and for a few days, it was still there. A friend of mine told me she’d gone through the same experience and had to send Instagram a picture of herself, holding a piece of identification. Fortunately, by the time I found my passport –I’d decided that was the ID I’d use instead of my license– and was about to take the picture, Instagram had already removed the offending account.

    I’m glad I didn’t have to go through the extra steps and all and while Instagram never notified me of the steps they took (which it says they’ll do when you report an account impersonating you), I would have liked to know if they decided that the offending account was truly the fake because I have these small measures of social trust posted online, e.g. my Keybase account and this website. I honestly thought about going live as proof that my account was the real one because while the offending account could certainly have downloaded any video out of my account and uploaded into theirs, Instagram would have at least known how the video was created –streamed directly into their service– and known that I’d made it and the copycat had not.

    Hopefully the Keybase account is good enough for at least techies to trust. At least it probably was before Zoom’s acquisition of Keybase. It may have been in this case. The offending account didn’t offer any form of social proof that they were me.

    Whether it’s Keybase or not, these forms of social trust are going to become more crucial in the future. Especially looking at the recent Twitter hack.

    As I mentioned before, my Keybase proof is in my Twitter profile. However, had I been a victim of the recent breach on that service, that would not have mattered, since the hackers had access to the service’s administrative console. They could have deleted any references to my Keybase proof. So, while there is some social trust in verified Twitter accounts, that trust now greatly rests on not just the user becoming verified, but also on practices like Twitter admins posting sensitive passwords with wide access in locations like Slack channels.

    I know this is a sensitive issue, especially inside the privacy community, and adopting specific means of identity verification, even like Keybase, is going to be difficult. But for the larger Internet, some kind of alternate means to say “this is the person you believe you’re communicating with” will probably become more important as we learn more about how some social networks operate.  Nothing compulsory, but a place where people can more reasonably trust that they’re communicating with the people they think they’re communicating with.

    In the meantime, I still have my Keybase account and it’s here:

    https://keybase.io/kesschristopher

    And remember, if an account online displays this proof, but the Keybase profile doesn’t point back to it, then it’s likely not me.  And you can come here to see if an online account says it’s me, but you have concerns.

    Thin Clients for the Masses

    I love thin clients, as quite a few folks I’ve worked with, will tell you. Not that they did. Most of the people that I asked, and even a bunch more that I never asked, and who volunteered this information, partly due to one frustration or another, did not. At least not the ones at the office, moreso the Wyse Winterms than the HP thin clients we eventually moved to, running Windows XP. At least, initially.

    Some of the same people did not like Chromebooks when they first came out, either.

    And now, coming next year, Microsoft will be releasing an Azure powered cloud PC. DaaS, Desktop as a service. Essentially a thin client. Probably for a subscription fee.

    According to Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet, Windows loaded on a machine’s local storage, as we know it now, won’t be going away any time soon. But, what will be coming sounds like something that businesses, large and small, as well as some freelancers, will be interested in.

    For instance, say you’re a small nonprofit and you own a lot of legacy equipment and perhaps have an Office 365 subscription, but take advantage SaaS apps for functions like accounting and such, this may be more attractive than, say, buying a bunch of new PCs at once.

    Maybe you’re a large enterprise and you want to hand out laptops to users but don’t want them to be used off of your corporate network. Assuming Microsoft baked in IP address filtering into the service, it could prevent machines from booting anywhere but on the corporate network.

    Perhaps, down the line, you buy yourself a new Apple-silicon based Mac, but need access to a Windows desktop. Last I checked, the situation with software makers like VMWare and Parallels was unclear (even though Parallels will let you run Windows on a Chromebook in the future). This may end up being another case for Windows AAS.

    There may be lots of use cases in the corporate world.

    Depending on cost, I can certainly see some in the education world adopting this model. If there’s a need for certain software, yes. I’d imagine a company like nComputing, whose legacy equipment I’ve supported in an educational setting, developing hardware specifically for this Windows use case. And because of the pandemic, with public support for distance education at the K-12 level growing, being able to deliver a (more than likely) familiar Windows experience may have some value, as systems further refine their distance learning strategies.

    Hopefully, this news, coupled with Chromebooks still being popular as learning devices, larger conversations can be had about the digital divide, especially in places like Baltimore. Baltimore City Public Schools System (BCPSS) and the City of Baltimore, along with some local nonprofits, have been distributing Chromebooks to help with distance learning, often times disadvantaged areas. The problem has been that Chromebooks need to be connected to the Internet (I’m writing this on my original HP Chromebook 14) to reach their full functionality and the City has addressed this by distributing WiFi hotspots. But even with that, there have been complaints about the bandwidth and data amounts provided by the service being inadequate for the online instruction being offered as well as the availability of the devices to begin with.

    If companies are offering these tools and local school systems where there are inequalities of access, want to leverage these systems, there need to be real solutions for delivery. The value of systems like DaaS and hybrids like Chromebooks is predicated upon reliable, high speed Internet.

    Will I want to run out and get one of these Windows cloud PCs? If you have a .edu email address to share with me, then yes.

    Also, speaking of my coworkers, I told some years ago that desktop support as a job would be going away one day “in the not too distant future.” Well, if you’re a company running Windows, either in a data center or from the cloud, you have less need of someone to support desktops there in your office. Managed service providers, as long as those are around, will need people to support desktops remotely and sometimes in the office (seen that in action, personally), but even that should change some, the more that Microsoft moves things towards the cloud. It won’t happen in the spring or even perhaps for a few years, but if Microsoft can choose between allowing you to pay once for local Windows desktop or month-to-month for a Windows cloud subscription, I wonder which it will choose.

    TaaS – Theatre as a Service

    With the pandemic, theatre has moved online. I’ve seen more tweets and FB posts about theatres, large and small, here and there, offering one kind of performance or another, online. One playwright I’m friends with on Facebook has had weekly readings of his work for the last few weeks now. Broadway itself isn’t moving back into in-person performance until some time next spring. So, in the meantime, if you’re into theatre, you have to know how to work Zoom (which you probably do by now), Facebook, or YouTube. Theatre has become, hopefully for the time being, at least here in the US, a virtual service. Theatre as a service, if you will.

    I’m part of the fun too, as my latest ten-minute play, “Milton Avenue,” will be part of a group of readings by local Baltimore playwrights by Rapid Lemon, a local production company.

    Baseball

    Baseball came back the other night. It was surreal to hear all of this talk of MLB’s opening night while it’s hot and muggy out. We’re supposed to be seeing the top teams start to pull away going into August. But MLB is giving it a go, still, albeit without fans present. I don’t think any fans will see any MLB in person anywhere in 2020, assuming the league even makes it to the end of the season, which I’m struggling to see happening, at least not the way it started.

    I only say that because I’m less certain they’ll make it, than I am say, of the NBA and WNBA making it through their continuation and “full” seasons respectively. As it was reported, Juan Soto missed the other night’s Yankees/Nationals opener because he had been diagnosed with Covid-19. That test was administered on Tuesday, before that day’s Orioles/Nationals preseason game, in which Soto played. So, he had to have played while positive. And even as of the other night, all I heard in the media was that Soto had tested positive, but no word about his teammates. But he played around his teammates and around the Orioles. And this weekend, his teammates played around the Yankees. And this weekend, the O’s have played the Red Sox. And are supposed to be playing the Marlins tomorrow, with four players having tested positive.

    At least the NBA and WNBA are playing in bubbles with strict protocols about players entering and exiting the environment. They apparently tested completely free of the virus the other day. The bubble and the wubble have worked.  MLB is already stumbling. I am hoping for the best as I love baseball and while I’ve enjoyed KBO, staying up until 4 or 5 AM to watch it, has been tough (I like to watch sports live). Having said that, NC Dinos is my KBO team. I like their uniforms.

    Breathe, You Are Alive

    In the 2000s, I encountered the work of the Vietnamese Zen Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. I’ve enjoyed and found great wisdom in his teachings. One of my favorite ideas I’ve picked up from him is the phrase, “breathe, you are alive.” It’s the title of one of his many books.

    When in times of distress or upset, I learned to come back to my own breath. Come back to that center. And not to just breathe, but to feel it deeply and ground myself in my breath, in my body. I learned to feel gratitude for the breath because it was a reminder that yes, I was still here. And if I’m still here, I can feel better, think better, do better.

    How scary it feels to know there’s a virus running rampant still, whose main activity is taking away the breath. And whose long-term effects aren’t known.

    Mask up. Be safe.  Remember to come back to the breath.

  • How to Fix Baltimore

    Baltimore Magazine recently published an article by senior editor, Ron Cassie, with some bold proposals to, as the title says, fix Baltimore.  The article recounts some of the historical reasons for why Baltimore has come to be in the position that it’s in.  It’s not what most people would think, especially outsiders, who most likely think the issue is crime, because they’ve watched The Wire; they’ve maybe even binged it during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.  It’s true that Baltimore, as it is now, is a product of the decisions made about its governance.

    Whether one agrees with the ideas presented in the article, the article is a great starting point for discussions about what Baltimore needs to become in a post-Covid-19 (hopefully) world.  The office of Mayor is up for grabs this year with a bunch of candidates.  There are other offices up for grabs, though right now, those are not nearly as powerful as the Mayor’s office, which is touched on in the article.  Yet, these ideas need to be on the forefront as leadership changes in the City. 

    One of the ideas presented in different ways in the article is that there needs to be more regional governance.  I agree and I’ll be discussing the ways in which I agree, below.  For that reason, I think this is an important read, not just for residents of Baltimore City, but of the entire Metro area, not just because some of the ideas, if ever implemented, would bring changes to the lives of non-residents, but also because the Baltimore suburbs, long intended to be bulwarks against urban ills, are experiencing some of those same ills and because the way that other areas around the country and the world are developing, the lines between Baltimore City and the surrounding Counties, are hindering, not helping.  Baltimore specifically and Maryland in general, are stuck in 1950’s thinking in 2020.

    Below are my responses to a few of the ideas presented.

    Knock down I-83

    This gets a hell yes from me.  I first came across this idea a little over a decade ago.  If I remember correctly, it’s been discussed on the old Envision Baltimore listserv I lurked on for a long time.  As the article states, the idea entails knocking down the elevated portion of I-83, which spans several blocks before it terminates at Fayette Street.

    While Baltimore might lose the charm of having its farmers market underneath the JFX anymore, it is past time to get rid of this.  As local business captain MJ Brodie, is quoted as saying in 2007, “Let’s plan now to demolish this elevated, archaic section of I-83.”

    People who work in more northerly reaches of Baltimore City, as well as those who live in the suburbs, would probably lose their minds at the prospect of not being able to speed into, and out of, Downtown (or crawl, whichever the case may be), 83 is a scar Downtown.  Getting rid of it would not just re-stitch together neighborhoods, as the article says, but doing so might also help lead to two more changes in the urban environment that might lead to some good: daylighting the Jones Falls and figuring out something with the stretch of I-83 adjacent to Woodbury/Hampden and Clipper Mill.

    Yes, a river flows through the middle of Baltimore, but you’d miss it if you didn’t know it’s there, because once it passes by the Harbor, it gets encased in concrete all the way through to parts of North Baltimore.  But that’s a topic for another blog post.

    With respect to that more northerly stretch of I-83, they need to do something.  There seems to always be an accident there; traveling northbound, there are major curves and the speed limit drops to 50, but drivers often ignore this, which leads to the accidents.  And on the southbound side, we’ve even had cars leaving the highway and dropping into the valley below.  Maybe once we’ve figured out how to live without the highway stretch of 83 south of Penn Station, we may figure out what to do with that stretch, which leads to congestion and delays so frequently because it’s so dangerous.

    Other cities are learning how to live without some of their highways and freeways.  As the article discusses, San Francisco’s Embarcadero Freeway suffered damage in the Loma Prieta Earthquake and then they tore down the rest.  Seattle buried their Alaskan Way Viaduct.  Boston’s Big Dig built a highway partially underground at its start.  Will Baltimore follow?

    Car-Free Streets

    One of the days that New York closed Broadway to cars, I was there.  I loved it.  Plenty of space to move around and not be close to people (that sounds like something that we may want to do moving forward for at least a while anyway).  Restaurants set out extra tables.  There was so much life on the street.

    Not that I discussed the idea with too many people back home because Baltimore is often dismissive of outside ideas (aside from former Mayor Martin O’Malley, who seemed like he couldn’t get enough of them and the people who had developed them), even ones that could be adapted to make Baltimore better, so married to the status quo are so many Baltimoreans.  And any idea that threatens car culture in Baltimore is going to be especially derided.

    Yet, as the article reports, Councilman Ryan Dorsey suggested closing Charles Street to cars.  No matter what the benefits may be, it’s an idea that would probably need a ton of support because those voices afraid of losing every single inch to speeding up to the County would be loud.  But still, I think it’s a good idea.  Not just because I think the City needs to be focused more on the needs of its own citizens until such as time as true regionalism is achieved, but because there are some stretches of Charles Street with restaurants and all that could use the freedom to expand into the outdoor environment, especially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, but also because doing so might bring some life to those parts of Charles Street.  Now, ideally, Charles Street would be closed to cars and the once-proposed Yellow Line light rail would run on it, but the Yellow Line is another topic for another blog post.  Or, perhaps another section of this one.

    Charter Reforms to Mayoral Power

    I could just say “Healthy Holly” and be done with an argument for why this is good, but it goes further than that.  I agree that the mayor in Baltimore’s system has too much power.  Cassie outlines some of the ways in the article, but I want to add that Baltimore needs to get rid of the Board of Estimates, which puts way too much spending power into the hands of too few people.

    While we’re at it, I agree we need ranked choice voting.  Anything that’s nonpartisan.  A lot of people complain that Democrats have had too much power for too long in Baltimore.  This is only a surface read.  Baltimore’s politics don’t always follow national trends.  There are people registered Democrat whose politics don’t necessarily follow the center-to-left-center (or even left-leaning) politics most associated with national Democrats.  It’s a hodge podge and some of this is probably attributable to the desire of people in some circles desiring to be close to power and some not wanting their vote to be disregarded entirely, since other political parties are marginalized in Baltimore City.  Baltimoreans need to hear from other voices and some other form of elections would help to make that a reality instead of the Democratic primary more or less deciding most elections within the City.  

    Long term, I think Baltimore needs a City Manager, in conjunction with a Mayor (out of the norm of either governmental form, I believe).  In this scenario, the city manager would be in charge of the day-to-day management of the city and the Mayor would focus more on “big picture” things.  Ideally, the City Manager would be elected on their own.  Perhaps, if we were to maintain partisan elections, the City Manager would legally come from a party in opposition to the Mayor.  Just an idea.

    Build the Red Line

    Fully in support of this.  The City needs to have an east-west, fixed-rail transit line built.  Regardless of what Larry Hogan might have thought when he canceled the line, transportation planners thought it was needed, not just in 2002, but in the late 1950’s (probably the only 1950’s era Baltimore idea that I do like).  The reason cited to cancel the line was because of the tunnel under Boston Street, even though other alternatives had existed.

    I think this project may be more crucial than ever.

    The Maryland General Assembly has been recently working hard to craft the future of commuter/regional rail in Maryland.  Among the ideas presented are service to Delaware to meet up with SEPTA Regional Rail and service into Virginia.  Also presented is the need to connect the MARC Penn Line, which runs along Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, and the MARC Camden Line, which runs along parts of CSX’s Baltimore Terminal Subdivision and Capital Subdivision.  A connection between the two lines could conceivably take the form of the proposed East Baltimore MARC Station as well as some other connection that could possibly route Penn Line trains into Downtown Baltimore. 

    If Penn Line trains were to meet their Camden Line counterparts, the connection would probably be right at Pratt Street, right at the Convention Center and Camden Yards.  Red Line conceptions had the line traveling right along Pratt Street and meeting the current light rail line there.  If I remember correctly, there were plans for it to run either in a tunnel or on the street.  One of the reasons for the anger surrounding the cancellation of the 2002-planned Red Line was that the line was meant to, among other things, give people on the west side better access to jobs on the east side.  But, with the Penn Line possibly making an appearance in this part of town, alongside the Camden Line, then a revived east-west line would give west side residents not just better access to the east, but improved access to the Penn Line (at two stations) and the Camden Line.

    Overall, a new hub for fixed rail transit would be a net good for Baltimore as a whole.  As the money and city’s focus has moved more towards “Inner Harbor East,” making a transit hub closer to the traditional Central Business District would bring relevance back to that area.  It’s difficult to consider the idea of Maryland finally offering commuter trains that terminated in Downtown Baltimore the same way that it offers ones that terminate in Washington, D.C., and not support it.  Especially if there were more connections to other areas of the City and surrounding areas at that point.

    Cassie also mentions the Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition’s push for a regional transit authority.  It’s my position that the only way that a new Red Line, or any other line, will ever be built, is if it’s done in a regional transportation authority.  The decision can’t be left up to Annapolis, no matter who the governor is.  We rightfully decried Larry Hogan for cancelling the project, but it also sat for years under Democrat Martin O’Malley while he was governor.  And while he was mayor of Baltimore.

    This also goes to the regionalism necessary to make the project worthwhile.  The Red Line didn’t end at the Baltimore City line, but extended to the park and ride out in Woodlawn.  The history of transit projects is fraught with NIMBYism and outright racism but, before the Red Line’s cancellation, there was support from Kevin Kamenetz before his death.  The next line will need to regain that support.  A line that possibly terminated at Security Square Mall would help bring some relevance back to that area as it struggles to find some new use.  A park-and-ride at the mall with access to the line would not just help get people from the western suburbs to get Downtown, but the mall there could become a real center of activity like it used to be before the growth of Owings Mills.

    Any proposed RTA also needs to consider that we don’t need just lines, but a system.  So, if the state is considering planning an East Baltimore MARC Station, then any future transit line on the east side needs to connect with it.  And while we’re at it, if they’re going to build such a station, it would be nice if the current subway could be extended to it, since it terminates so closely to the Northeast Corridor.  Ten years ago, we could have quipped about Joe Flacco being able to throw a football from the Metro station to the Amtrak tracks.  These days, we can quip that Lamar Jackson could run from one to the other in a matter of seconds.  Or throw the ball, since he has some arm too.

    Create a Metro Government

    The City and County of Baltimore?  I need to think about how I feel about it more, but I’m confident that even if I lived to 120 years old, I would not see it.  However, that does not mean that in the meantime, we can’t think and act more regionally.  That needs to be done on transit and transportation.  The City needs to reconfigure some of its streets to serve its immediate residents, but that doesn’t mean that the two can’t collaborate on common solutions like a regional transit authority and such.  They’re already collaborating on crime along I-95.

    But creating a metro government?  I don’t know.  Baltimore is not a big city now and whole areas are being ignored.  I can’t imagine then adding in, not necessarily places immediately adjacent to the City like Woodlawn, Catonsville, or Parkville, but places like Hereford and Middle River, and expect those places in the city currently that are ignored now to improve.  The resources would be there, but along with that, would still be residents of those places that wouldn’t be keen to give up part of their way of life to live in those places.  And to be honest, I’m sure there are more than a few who live out there, specifically because they don’t want to be inside of Baltimore City.

    Maglev

    So far as I know, it’s going to be built and it’s out of the hands of City leaders.  Outside of the possible construction jobs, I’m not seeing much benefit, at least in the short term, until the full line is built.  Some folks, who are able and willing to pay prices that may rival Amtrak’s Acela Express, will commute on it, depending on convenience, etc.  

    From what I understand, the station will be located in South Baltimore, if it’s not located at or near the Harbor.  That may be a problem for those in other parts of the city and other areas that may want to use it for their commutes.  It would probably be convenient for people living in or near Cherry Hill, Westport, or Port Covington, and Port Covington may be the target for their choice of location for the station.  Commuting from, say, Parkville, might not even be an option.  It would probably be easier to just hop on 95 and drive from there.  If Port Covington ends up being built as envisioned –and with the pandemic, who even knows if it will be?– and the current Light Rail receives a spur across the water to Port Covington, then that may help with people coming from outside of the immediate area.  But, this is a ways off and there are lots of questions other than what might happen with the current Light Rail.

    Also, the stated goal of at least Northeast Maglev has never been travel between Washington and Baltimore, but Washington and New York.  The phase to Baltimore, as I understand it, was meant to be the demonstration phase.  If and when the project expands and moves towards full production, I don’t know if it’s clear what Baltimore’s role will be in the service.  I think it might be a “nice to have” option for the area, but I think, at least in the near future, steel wheels on steel rails will be the way we go in the Baltimore region.

    As I said before, I think the article is a great starting point for conversations about Baltimore’s future, along with ones about what’s going to happen in the neighborhoods, including municipal WiFi.  Digital Harbor Foundation is working on that right now with their Project Waves, so hopefully that will be the start of a larger network around the city, since they’re handing Chromebooks to students these days.  No one person or group knows how to fix Baltimore, so hopefully, it’ll be a large discussion.

     

  • The Facebook and Whatsapp Adventure

    I’m not a huge fan of Facebook. A decade or so ago, I had a professor (won’t divulge their name) ask me why I didn’t have a Facebook account, given that I worked in IT. The fact was surprising to them. However, that was the main reason I didn’t have a Facebook account. Back then, I even asked people not to even put my name into it, talk about me there, or even worse, put a picture of me, or any picture that I might have been in, into Facebook. I understood their privacy practices were questionable to say the least, and this was long before their activities hit the news and the consciousness of the general public.

    Eventually, I would break down and get a Facebook account, once I started to gain an interest in keeping in touch with people for whom I might not have another means of contact or whom I might not feel like texting. One of the attractive things about Facebook is convenience and you do pay for this convenience, even if it’s not in dollars. Understanding that, I still signed up, but with the understanding that I would never post anything to Facebook that:

    1. I either didn’t or wouldn’t post anywhere else.
    2. I didn’t mind anybody knowing about me, or knowing that I had said, that I might not have posted anywhere else.

    Nor would I go around friending everybody I knew.

    One of the things that I miss about Google+ is the concept of circles. In G+, you could put your contacts into circles, should you perhaps want to add context to your relationships to those people and even segregate them. For instance, why would I want a relative, someone I’ve probably known my whole life, possibly interacting with a coworker I’ve only known a short amount of time? Or even someone I’m not tight with, and possibly at odds with, interacting with someone I am tight with. Google+, I felt, left a lot less room for drama. On Facebook, you just had friends, and while there are some ways built in now to minimize the kind of drama I wasn’t interested in then, Facebook didn’t seem to care back then. It seemed like Facebook’s interest was just in knowing who you know, no matter what, for their advertising and other activities. One could argue that Google’s product was a little more nefarious, given that it did include the possibility of you adding context to your relationships, meaning that Google could get to know you a little better that way.

    Nor would I install their apps to my devices. Down the line, we’d find out how much data they were siphoning out of devices using their app. They were doing the same with cookies in the browser, but with apps like Firefox Focus, I could just delete the cookies after each session. And in Windows and on Chrome, I could just go into the browser settings and delete the cookies. When I started, I also used the app, Buffer, to send social media posts into Facebook, without the need to log fully in, until they took away Buffer’s ability to send posts to a personal profile. I see responses to any of my posts that way, but I didn’t care. I’d log in and see those later.

    I’d also eventually get an Instagram account once I started to get into photography and share some of my pictures until the recent situation where a news organization used a photographer’s picture without their permission. As of this writing, I’m leaving up pictures of myself (because I know nobody cares) and otherwise just using my own little platform to boost messages important to me.

    This has the extent of my interest in, and usage of, Facebook. No messenger on my phone. Anybody wanting to send me any messages directly could text me (good) or send me a message on Hangouts (better) or Signal, should it be something they wanted to really keep private. I never use it as SSO. I don’t link games and such to it. They already gather up enough other information about me, though, when I looked once at the stuff they were willing to tell you they had gathered about you, I was pleased to see that quite a bit of it was inaccurate. Nor was I ever going to correct any of it.

    I have joined groups and friended people, but Facebook didn’t need me to post there to know that I’m a playwright, that’s public. Nor that I’m an actor. That’s public, too. I’m affiliated with Laurel Mill Playhouse. That’s public too. And that’s stuff I want a lot of people knowing. Maybe they’ll be interested in coming to see a play of mine after the pandemic.

    So, I was happy with how I use Facebook.

    Then, I got a message from a friend who was starting up a group of interest to me.

    On Whatsapp.

    And at first, that seemed really like a bridge too far.

    Again, I’ve been happy with how I use Facebook. I didn’t want to go any further into it. Yes, I know Whatsapp is supposed to be end-to-end encrypted, using the same kind of encryption found inside of Signal. But, so long as the app is owned by Facebook, I’m not going to trust it fully. But I did decide I was going to somehow join the group. I decided I’d put it on my phone and not give it any permissions in Android settings. That way, I’d at least have the illusion of control over the app.

    What I did not know was that the app required a telephone number to sign up.

    That was a problem. I had no intention of putting my phone number into Facebook.

    Now, I know that anybody with my number who has signed up with Facebook and who has me in their contacts, and uploaded them, would have already given my number to Facebook. But that doesn’t mean that I need to verify this information. No. No phone number.

    But it was difficult to complete the signup without giving them one. I looked up some ways to subvert the process, but those looked a little too complicated, which would quickly become ironic.

    I decided I would sign up for a free number with Talkatone. I’d used Talkatone in the past before, when it tickled me that I could do so much texting on my (older) iPad. Eventually, I’d let it go and they’d close my account, but this seemed like the perfect time to join back up. All I needed was to receive a single text.

    And even better, I could sign up using Facebook. So, not only would I have a more or less burner text number, signing up using Facebook could, in theory, give them a number that they would know was mine and was good. Even though, from where I’m sitting, it’s far from.

    I complete the signup within the app and then tell Whatsapp to use that number as my number for the service. Nope. When the app reported having received Whatsapp’s verification text, it said that this was a premium text and I had to make a purchase within Whatsapp in order receive the text. I figured Talkatone must be a means that a lot of people have used to sign up for Whatsapp or other services and this was Talkatone’s way of making a few extra bucks. I wasn’t upset or nonplussed. That’s just how the online game works.

    And they’re far from the only app offering free texting. My next approach was TextFree, another free texting service I’d used in the past with my (old) iPad (I should do a post about free texting services one day). I signed up for another account and put the app on my iPod. This time, the verification SMS from Whatsapp didn’t even reach my inbox. I sent a message in from one of my Google Voice numbers and that went through, so I figured TextFree was outright blocking Whatsapp.

    I thought about going to Text+, yet another free texting service, but I didn’t want to keep creating new accounts on these services, even if they would end up holding nothing but Whatsapp verification messages. Instead, I decided to use one of my Google Voice numbers, which I did not want to do at first. But, I settled on the one I use the least and since I configured it to not ever ring to my phone, there was no harm in using it. And it’s the most disposable of all my Google Voice numbers, so if I needed to quickly change it for whatever reason, that would be fine too.

    So, I completed the signup with that number and joined the group.

    When I was doing the initial signup, I declined to give Whatsapp access to my contacts. Uploading them into Whatsapp was tantamount to uploading them into Facebook, which I’ve never done, and I have many more contacts than Facebook knows that I have, which is how I like it.

    After I was done signing up and joining the group, I decided to look around the app. I hit the new message button and the app explained that uploading my contacts was helpful, I guess, in finding out who I might know that used this app. Again, I declined, and this time, I checked the “don’t ask again” box because really, don’t ask me again. When I went back to the new message button, it told me that to help me message my friends and family, to go into Android permissions and turn on Contacts. When I tapped on “Not Now,” it went right back to the inbox. So, I guess you can’t initiate any conversations with anybody unless you give up your whole contacts list. Even if I know just one person who uses it, and even if they’ll know exactly who that one person is, they won’t allow you to just talk to them unless you tell them everybody you know. I’m guessing that this person could just initiate a conversation with you if they have your phone number, assuming that they themselves have uploaded their own contacts and are allowed to then send a message.

    I don’t think I know anybody else who uses the service and that’s all well and good. I also don’t need to know, since I have other ways of contacting people. I’ll just use the app for the group and delete it once it’s done.

    Updated: 14 May 2020

    Functionally, I get why they want you to upload your contacts. Comparing them with known users of the service makes it easier for you to connect with them through that service. I still don’t like that, given that I still don’t want to give Facebook any more information about me than they’ve been able to hoover up from all across the web (I do not use Facebook for sign-on into any other site, so that’s helpful and I limit my use of Google for this purpose where I can). It’s a shame because Whatsapp is a pretty cool app. And one of the best parts is the login on the web, which I use often for my previously mentioned group. I just hop on the computer, receive the daily message, send my reply, then log out and most importantly, clear out my cookies.

  • On VPN Privacy and the Workplace (and school)

    Good article today on Lifehacker about some of the issues using a VPN that touches on two of my new favorite subjects: VPN privacy and remote work. A reader wrote in asking if they could use a VPN at their soon-to-be residence, which is paid for, and whose Internet access is provided for, by the university where their spouse works.

    One of my favorite parts of the article is this:

    Some bored IT worker doesn’t care if you’re wasting time online (usually)

    Before I went remote, when I had a desk in an office where I had coworkers who saw me on a regular basis, I’d run into the worry of whether I was somewhere monitoring what people were doing on the system. I had some coworkers who swore I was somewhere with a little window on my desk, watching web traffic scroll down my screen like Tank in The Matrix, but I never had any such thing. I think one of my ex-coworkers even had the idea that I was sitting at home monitoring their online habits after hours, which was patently ridiculous because: a) I left work at work to the greatest degree and b) I was busy writing and acting in plays after hours, which I would have preferred doing during hours, as it was.

    As it stood, our managed services provider partners had the responsibility of monitoring edge equipment like routers and firewalls, so we didn’t concern ourselves with it internally. The only monitoring of web traffic they did was concerned less with content and more with the amount of bandwidth between our offices and their data center. Even when filtering was available going through their data centers’ web connections, we didn’t request any filtering outside of anything else they may have had in place for all of their customers, including us.

    Our staff could also access the Internet outside of the MSP connections, but we didn’t monitor what anybody was doing. The only time that we even came close to any sort of monitoring was when we deployed an early wireless mesh network at one building. The system came with monitoring and when I’d log into the control panel –usually to see what any of the nodes were up to, if someone told me the wireless there was slow or something– I’d see which sites were being accessed, generally by all users. I was too busy and lacking interest to see what any particular user was up to. But I will say the people in that building used a ton of bandwidth going to Facebook.

    It was a slightly different situation on the student network at the alternative high school program. On that network, I purposely deployed an Untangle gateway server (with OpenDNS for extra filtering) in order to monitor and filter what the students were up to. From the time I came on board, it was known that students would go online and do whatever they wanted. Whether it was general non-educational web surfing, social media, downloading music, whatever, students used a free and open Internet connection as such. And they were teens. Who could blame them? They didn’t even have web filtering or parental controls in my day. Even at school.

    At some point, this situation became unacceptable and I came up with the Untangle gateway server as the solution. The server itself came with an app that I set up for filtering of categories and content, as well as the ability to filter specific websites. OpenDNS had the ability to filter sites via categories that they had compiled, too. And usually once or twice per month, I’d take a look at the Untangle logs to see what new websites the students were going to, in order to block them. A few of the more clever students would find some way around the filtering, usually through proxy websites. One of them, a really smart young man who has since passed away, unfortunately, went so far as to have fresh proxy websites delivered to his email. I’d block one and he’d go to another one, a game we played until he graduated.

    I didn’t monitor any specific students, however. That was never an intention of mine or anybody else’s. We got the data we needed from monitoring and filtering the connection, not the individuals, and nobody ever got in any trouble because of our actions.

    In the case of the reader who wrote in, it’s just as likely that there’s nobody sitting in the university’s data center monitoring what they themselves are specifically doing on the university’s Internet. But, as the author says, there may be flags in place in the case of certain content being downloaded or sites being accessed, specifically through DNS requests. Web browsing over HTTPS, and probably requests sent to devices like Google assistant, are sent encrypted, so the university (their ISP in this case) may not be able to know what’s being sent, but without the reader’s using DNS over TLS (like Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1), the university can know which websites are being accessed. Same goes for you at home, by the way.

    If that’s okay to the reader, then they don’t need to use a VPN. Otherwise, if they want to use a VPN, there a bunch of different options these days. Most of them have apps for Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, and Linux (including ChromeOS).

    As the article also states, they can find a router with VPN client software. ASUS makes routers that come with client software. Some Netgear routers come with it as well. On the higher end of the price and feature scale, so does Synology’s lineup of routers and access points. And if you’re more technically inclined, you can use an alternative firmware on a router and get this functionality or even set up a Raspberry PI. And if you’re really, really technically minded, you can set up a VPN with Linode or DigitalOcean or other such service online for this purpose.

    #

    It’s important to note that VPNs will only hide what you’re doing from your ISP. The VPN therefore will know what you’re up to, so your trust is placed into them instead of your ISP. Because of this, if you’re using a VPN, you’ll most likely want to use one that doesn’t log what you do, if you’re that interested in your privacy.

    In the case of the reader, I would definitely want to use a VPN. I don’t know what their use case is fully, but knowing what I know, I’d want to go with a router with enough horsepower to make sure that I was able to use all of the allotted bandwidth. Hopefully they’re being provided with a router in their residence that can accept a downstream connection. Then they can use their own router with a VPN configured. This is mostly because they’re using cameras and devices that use Alexa. It might be easier to just put the VPN on the outside connection than on every single device they may find themselves using.

    I don’t know what his spouse’s job is, but given the climate around universities and academic freedom, unless the university says don’t encrypt, I think it would be a good idea to encrypt with a no-log VPN, and use that service for as much of their surfing as they deem necessary. Yes, it will slow down their connection, but it may offer some peace of mind. Instead of the university knowing exactly what they’ve been up to, the school might have to do some digging and either be unable to find out or unwilling to go as far as necessary to find out, something about their web usage habits.

    #

    As for your web surfing with your employer, common sense says if your employer hands you a machine for your work, only do work on it, nothing of a personal nature. We did not monitor anything on the laptops that we were loaning out, but that doesn’t mean that your employer is the same. There’s obviously a use expectation, so it’s better to be on the safe side and use your own equipment for your own Internet usage. Unless you are IT and you know how it all works and you’re the person who might be doing the watch watching and nobody’s watching you and you know how to subvert it, in which case, knock yourself out.

  • Maryland Food Polls

    Thinking forward to the next few months, I think I’d love a great snowball this summer. Yet, I doubt that’s going to happen. I’m not sure, no matter how good they are, that snowball stands will be allowed to be categorized as essential. Yes, they serve a food item, one pretty well beloved in Baltimore, but I don’t think they case can, or will, be made.

    Snowballs are just one of my picks in one of the latest Twitter quarantine games: Baltimore and Maryland food polls. In this one, you had to pick just three to keep.

     

    As you can see, I chose 1, 4, and 9 — crabs, snowballs, and scrapple.

    Yes, of course, I chose crabs. I would ask what Marylander wouldn’t choose crabs, but my younger sister might do so for the sake of being contrary. Who knows? Maybe a transplant might, but I don’t always count them. Unfortunately, I’m also having doubts as to whether crabs or crab cakes will realistically be on the menu this summer, as well.

    #
    I would love a scrapple sandwich with cheese. Just like we used to eat on Sunday mornings before church. Minus the egg. I probably should have had one during the pandemic, but because I only eat turkey scrapple, and that stuff isn’t always as easy to find as the standard pork variety. So, once this situation ends and things are more open, whenever that may be, one of the first things I plan to do is find a nice block of turkey scrapple. Then, I’ll have a nice, toasty scrapple sandwich.

    Some will point out that scrapple might be more of a Pennsylvania thing, even more of a Delaware thing. That’s cool. New York and New Jersey both claim best pizza and recently, bagels. I’m willing to share scrapple. I’ve even heard that you can go to some places along the Chesapeake in Virginia and get some decent-to-good crab cakes. Now, again, this is a thing that I heard and can not verify personally.

    #
    In this other poll, I just took a bunch of them. I didn’t feel like deciding between the ones I liked.

     

    Crab soup, #8, can be really good, but cream of crab is so much better. Imagine that fishy, pungent, spicy taste of crab with Old Bay, not within a thin broth, but a silky, creamy one. A soup understated as it first hits the tongue, but gives you all of its crabby goodness on the back end as it goes down. That’s cream of crab. First time I ever had it was in a small deli in Annapolis. I fell totally in love. The next time I had it, I ordered a bowl and ended up dipping a couple of chicken fingers in it. I’m pretty sure few others will find cream of crab to be so versatile, but those chicken fingers were so good. I should have reviewed that meal.

  • Isolation Easter Dinner

    easter dinner plate
    Isolation Easter dinner 2020

    Not the most ideal circumstances for Easter, for Easter dinner, probably anywhere. Didn’t have enough garlic powder and was not about to go out and get any. Mac and cheese didn’t come out as well as it normally does on like Thanksgiving or Christmas. I forgot a couple of ingredients in the meatloaf and had to add them, mix it all together, and re-form the loaf in the pan.

    But in the end, I’m still really grateful. I had food to cook and eat and it still came out well, even if it wasn’t my best. I’ve seen so many tweets from people saying a parent or another relative had passed away due to the virus and I have not had that happen. For what it’s worth, I’m able to communicate with people on social media and this website. Next time, I’ll express more of my gratitude by going and getting a proper light before taking any food pics.