Month: May 2022

It is 0900 on Tusday after Memorial day. There has been lots of talk about Congress looking to create new infringement laws. I decide to contact my Senators to voice my position and stance.

First I call the DC numbers for both. I’m given an option of leaving a message for my Senator. Nothing else.

I then call the office of my Senator here in my home state. A staffer answers, I give him my name and city of residence. This establishes me as somebody that is represented by my Senator. I request to make an appointment.

The staffer says “Tell me more about your concern and I’ll make sure they get your comments.” Now this is a blow off. So I again ask “How do I make an appointment to speak to my Senator?” Staffer again refuses to answer. This goes back and forth a half dozen times. He won’t tell me how to make an appointment. Keeps demanding to know what I want to speak about. “Her support of infringing on the rights of US citizens” isn’t good enough.

In the end he ends the conversation. In the course of the conversation I learned that I would have to tell an anonymous staffer what my concerns were. He would pass it to a staffer who would decide if they would pass my request to the schedulers who might then contact me to make an appointment.

So I called Ted Cruz’s office. He’s not my Senator. There is a message that Ted recorded, given multiple options including “Press zero to talk to somebody on my staff.” That staffer was unable to help me get an appointment with my Senator but explained how it worked for Ted. I had a pleasant conversation, said thank you. Told him I wished that Ted was my Senator, then corrected that to “I wish my Senator was more like Ted.”

Using the suggestion from Ted’s office, I went to my other Senator’s webpage and put in a request for an appointment with my other Senator. I’ll wait to see if I get an appointment.

In the mean time, I’m writing a letter to send to my Senator’s and Representative.

In terms of how much weight a political representative puts on any communications, they are ranked:

1. Comment on Social Media
2. Directed Tweet or other bulk comment
3. E-mail
4. Phone call
5. Typed/printed letter
6. Hand written letter
7. In person conversation

I’ve normally opted for making a phone call. I’ve attempted to get an in person conversation with my Senators. I’ve written a letter which I will print and send out later today.

Report your attempted contacts or contacts in the comments below. Let us know how well you did in communicating with your Senator or Representatives and what sort of response you get.

The sailor slumped in his life raft, surrounded by the deep blue sea. He was slowly dying, because even though there was water as far as the eye could see, none of it was potable.

You can go about three days without water before there are serious health issues. On the other hand, going without water for even a few hours can have a tremendous impact.

In order to study the effects of different water consumption models on soldiers, the Aberdeen Proving Grounds (Maryland) performed a number of experiments with different drinking models.

• Keep your canteen full, drink only when ordered, conserve water.
• Drink when you wanted
• Drink at rest times
• Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

They then had groups of soldiers march 20 miles with full load out and then deploy for battle. They evaluated the combat readiness of the troops at the end of the march.

The WWII method of either having a full or empty canteen with water conservation being a primary concern left the troops combat ineffective for over a full day.

The drink when the soldier wanted left the troops combat ineffective for a bit more than a full day. Less than the conserve mode but still requiring a significant recovery time.

Having the soldiers drink every time there was a rest stop worked better. They were only combat ineffective for around 8 hours.

For the “hydrate, hydrate, hydrate” method, the troops reached the end of the march, deployed, and were combat effective.

You don’t notice it but even small amounts of dehydration have a noticeable effect on performance.

Make sure you have enough water to keep going.

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So the little BLEEEEEEEEEP left some BLEEEEEEEEP behind.

He was a little sneaky this time. He left a javascript behind which pulled a javascript file which in turn pulled still another javascript file. He used a URL for his jumping off point that looks legit but wasn’t.

Since he has a server that responds to the request for the third javascript file he was randomly returning redirect code. So sometimes you could go to a page and it would redirect you to the phishing site and sometimes it wouldn’t. And he could look for clues that said if it was coming from a browser or a developer.

Sneaky little BLEEEP left his calling card at the end of posts that already existed. Thus we weren’t seeing the issue on new posts but if you were to look at older posts, there was a random chance of being redirected.

We’ve cleaned his latest BMs from the database. No promises that we got it all.

On the down side, we’ve had to send a bill to Miguel for this work. Trying to clean up everything has cost us over 40 man hours. That includes research, security evaluations, custom database work and a host of other things to protect this blog. We are eating most of that because of the value the blog provides to the community, but he is getting a bill for part of it.

We hope all of you take the time to click on the donate button on the right to help Miguel out.

AWA