Ashley Madison and me

I have been very interested in this whole Ashley Madison thing.

If you aren't familiar, it is a site that people use to set up affairs, so married people can cheat discreetly. At least, that seems to be the specialty. I don't think you have to be married to use it. Their data was hacked and being released.

Initially I had never heard of the site, and I didn't think a lot about it except that it was unfortunately that we had just named our new kitten Ashley.

Then I saw some people tweeting about how this could be very dangerous for the users. Some of them could be in abusive relationships, some might be in open marriages where it wasn't anyone's business, and while in my head there are probably still better ways to deal with it, yes, there can be some pretty difficult experiences out there, and it's not my job to judge. I heard that there have been at least two suicides related to the breach, and that may not even be the cheaters - some people finding out that they have been betrayed will feel a lot of pain from that. 

None of that is to justify adultery, but the initial thing you picture when you hear about it is overly simplified, and so while many people's first response was to think this was funny, it wasn't.

There was some food for thought there, but it was other stories that fascinated me. For example, apparently Ashley Madison was trying to get the breached material that was posted online taken down using copyright law. I learned that in an article explaining why that would not work under copyright law, and that article was very well-written and informative about copyright law.

The side note from that and other articles is that apparently part of the problem is that Ashley Madison had been paid money to delete certain information and not done so, making them derelict in customer service, and probably not really on the ball in terms of basic privacy protection which is a notable failing in any service using "discreet" as a key word. There is a level on which I find myself not terribly surprised about a site set up for this purpose not behaving completely ethically and responsibly.

Now the next interesting thing may counteract the final interesting thing, but it probably doesn't all the way. Anyway, it turns out that a lot of the female profiles were fake. A lot of men thought they were talking to women, but were really talking to other men.

Whether this means that it was rare for people to progress all the way to meeting up, I don't know. Even partially pursuing the intent to cheat can cause relationship harm, so this may be bad enough. However, it is worth remembering that not everyone is who they say they are, especially online.

Last but not least is user data, some of which may be invalid. Apparently in terms of famous names that have shown up, Josh Duggar has really admitted to using it. Of course, having already admitted to molesting his sisters and a baby sitter, we may be less surprised by depravity on his part, but Christian vlogger Sam Rader also admitted to it. It's enough to make you wonder about this article:

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/slices/expert-400-church-leaders-will-resign-sunday-because-names-surfaced-ashley-madison-hack

So, when you rank the states paying for Ashley Madison, and the state paying the 8th most is Utah, well, some of those accounts could be fake, but the paid accounts might be less likely to be fake, and we have to consider it at least possible that there are many Utah users, and many of them are LDS and active.

If you recall, before I got distracted by the mega-quake article I was writing about chastity and modesty. If it was not obvious, I have decided to wait to write more on the earthquake until after Unprepared airs October 1st, so this gives us some time to talk about sex. Religious people can get weird about it, and it does not make us more righteous. It can even make it harder for us to remain righteous.

The September posts are going to try and break that down.

2015 Garden Report

Will anyone be terribly surprised if my plans expanded beyond what I said I was going to do back in May?

I did plant the one cherry tomato plant and the one pumpkin plant. I did plant the lettuce tray. They it just didn't feel like enough.

Some of that was caused by additional research. I was looking at companion planting charts to make sure there were no conflicts between pumpkins and tomatoes, and I saw a note that when basil is planted with tomatoes they grow ten percent bigger. I really wanted to check that out, but I was only planting cherry tomatoes. Should they even grow ten percent bigger?

Also, as I looked up the pumpkin type that I had got, Spirit, it seemed like they wouldn't be big producers. It might be a good idea to get another one. I went to the garden center searching for two more tomato plants (because I had two more tomato cages), a basil plant, and one more Spirit pumpkin.

The pumpkin plants were completely gone, and I had no idea there were so many types of basil. I went with Sweet Italian because that seemed most likely to have a kinship with me. For tomatoes I got one Early Girl (I have always been fond of that breed) and one Jet Star, because that's Ray Toro's Danger Days alter ego and that was awesome.

Ultimately, I probably should have stuck with one tomato and one pumpkin.

The lettuce tray never did a single sprout. I am not sure how it managed to fail so badly.

Jet Star only had one tomato, and Early Girl looks like there will be a total of six when the rest ripen. Those are both good breeds, so I am wondering if they were just put in bad spots. I did add plant food and egg shells to the soil, but they are closer to the concrete and their spots did not have the soil worked as much by the ivy. Maybe it was the exact wrong kind of basil.

(Incidentally, I keep finding new ivy sprouts in odd places. I suspect that will go on for a while.)

I also for a long time only had one pumpkin.

Even without the crookneck squash encroaching, I guess pumpkin fertilization is not a guarantee. You see, pumpkin blossoms are gendered. You get a lot more male blossoms, and you need more quantitatively, but you still need some female blossoms, because only they will become pumpkins.

A female blossom is recognizable by the green knob at the base of the flower. If she gets fertilized, that know grows bigger, and a darker striped green, then keeps getting bigger and turns orange. (Well, the color changes can be different for different breeds, but that's how mine went.)

If the blossom doesn't get fertilized, it shrivels up and falls off. I had that happen more often than not. I lost at least three, so was starting to think about hand pollination, but then I didn't get any more female blossoms. Fortunately a few days ago I got one more, and without any interference on my part it is turning into a pumpkin.

This is especially good because it means I will have a pumpkin in October. The first one is already ripe.

Also, they are kind of small. Spirit may not be the breed for me, but also there is reason to believe that I am kind of the opposite of a green thumb with pumpkins, and am going to have to keep making slow incremental process.

At least my cherry tomatoes are going strong.

They may be going a little too strong. I should have guided their early growth more. They are now a gloriously messy bush, that frankly may have been responsible for suppressing Jet Star. They come in so many different sizes that I have no way of knowing if they are ten percent bigger than they would be otherwise. I have to consider the basil claim not validated at this point.

Still, even without either reserving a community garden plot or rototilling, I grew stuff. I have those cherry tomatoes I coveted now. I wanted more than one pumpkin, but even before I had to admit that my pumpkin growing was a big improvement over last year. Now that is doubly true.

That's how my garden grows.

Earthquakes and the individual

I am not done with all my asking around yet. Most of the contacts are related to getting better at recovery, which will be a community effort. How long will it take PGE to get electricity running again? How long does ODOT think it will take to get the roads in good order again?

Some of my thoughts come from a preview of an Oregon Field Guide that will be airing on Oregon Public Broadcasting on October 1st. That's not really that far away. Some conversations may be more productive afterward, though there is no reason not to talk about things now.

Even assuming the best case scenario, where communities up and down the coast prepare, with different levels of government cooperating with each other and with businesses and private citizens, it will not rule out the need for at least some level of personal preparedness.

I had noted a while ago that 72-hour kits seemed to have gone out of vogue, mainly because they were not going to last long enough. I am starting to hear a lot about kits again, but no longer with the 72 hours. They are less likely to give a time period.

The reality is, its hard to predict how long you might be roughing it, and the longer it seems like it might be the more discouraging it gets. It is nonetheless very empowering to prepare.

I think a good starting point is the results of the Aftershock tool, which were on the PBS site. For my address, these were the megaquake results:

Water will be available at distribution centers within about 2 weeks.
Natural gas will be back up within about 2 months.
Electricity will take closer to 3 or 4 months.
Police and fire response could take about 7 months to recover.
Water and sewer will take over a year to get operational again.
The restoration of top priority highways will take about a year and a half.
Getting health care facilities back to normal will take about three years.

There had also been details like structures being damaged, which means we might not be able to stay in the house.

Let's take it line by line.

Even under best-case scenarios, it's very likely that there would still be a two week delay on water, so putting in a two week water supply is smart. If you have your own well, that may seem like a non-issue, but study what issues would be likely to cause operation issues or contamination. A lot of our food storage will require water for cooking, so that is another factor to consider.

There will probably be a time period without heat. Do you have extra blankets. If you are having to sleep outside, do you have sleeping bags and tents that can endure lower temperatures. Personally, I worry more about losing air conditioning on warm days than heat on cold days, but both are possibilities.

There will likely be a time period without electricity. Do you have flashlights? Do you have replacement batteries for those flashlights? Do you know how much light they give, and whether it will work for necessary tasks? Do you have an alternative means of cooking, and know whether it is safe to use in the house (most are not)? If gas comes back before electricity, which is likely, will your gas appliances work without electricity available for the controls?

Also, and this is very important, if electrical power has been knocked out but you have gas where the lines have potentially been disrupted, so there could be a leak, do you have glow sticks so that you will not cause a spark by turning on a flashlight and possibly ignite the whole place? (There are sparkless flashlights available, but you would have to seek it out.)

With health care facilities, roads, and emergency services, there are a few different things to think of. Having a 4x4 can be nice, but that's a bigger investment than buying a Sterno stove or some lanterns. There will probably be some time cut off from resources.

Food storage is good. Food storage that contains variety, including some things that can be eaten without cooking, is even better. We are working on three months, but we would love to have a year. Having a garden where you grow some of your own is nice.

Knowing first aid, so you can be of assistance when you cannot get the professionals, is really good. Also, thinking about things like if you have some time where you can't get prescriptions filled, or if you have a household member who uses oxygen, or equipment that requires electricity, takes some thought.

It is great to get neighbors involved too, so that they know that they can come to you, and you know you can go to them. If we get a year's supply of food for the house, and none of the neighbors had food storage, we could help feed them and that would be great, but supplies would run out pretty fast. If everyone has a few months worth, that helps us get along better. It takes away a lot of the stress because we know we won't starve or fight each other over food.

I know that some people could see that there are seven months without the cops and decide the best response is to stock up on guns and ammo. People who encourage you to buy gold are also anticipating the total breakdown of society, but where they still believe that gold will be valuable for barter.

I still think I would rather have a supply of food than gold, because if there is no one to trade with, or they are trading more gold, or ammo, well, the food is going to be useful no matter what. More to the point, I think a great part of preparedness is to prepare to not have a total societal breakdown. There are a lot of people I care about out in society. There are people I don't know too, but I would probably like them if we met - I'm pretty good at liking people.

So when I am looking at what Metro is doing and wondering what OHSU's plans are, that's why. I'm not interested in being a survivalist if that means cutting myself off, and not caring about the people around me. That can't possibly be right.

So on October 1st I will be watching "Unprepared". I will be recording it. I will be listening for the part I can play. There are some good resources at the site already. 

I will be thinking about me and my household, but I can look beyond that too. That's something we need to do together.

http://www.opb.org/news/series/unprepared/

A simple reminder

This weekend I had too many things to do, and a few unexpected things went wrong. I was determined to still post more on earthquakes though, and then I wrote something up for my journal and felt to share it. 

While there shouldn't be anything embarrassing in it, it is not my story so I will remove names. Then we can get back to earthquakes next week.

I am the ward librarian, and the lost and found is in the library. I got a call from a member of the ward about a week and a half ago. She had lost her makeup bag at church. 

That may not sound like a big deal, but it would expensive to replace, especially the brushes. Nothing like it had been turned in, and she had done searched the building already. I wanted to help, but I knew it was not in the library. I had an impression, and I had to start off with I knew it would sound facetious, but I told her to have her children pray that she would find it.

That came from a lesson someone else gave on prayer, and a story she told. She was sitting for her nephew once and he wanted to play a game but a piece was missing. The nephew wanted to pray to find it, and she didn't want to, because then if they didn't find it then it would be the opposite of faith promoting. She didn't say that of course, but he prayed and found it right away. 

It reminded me that children are much better at having faith about things like that. If the piece had been destroyed or something, maybe that wouldn't be answered, but it can be a relatively easy prayer to answer and why not try that?

Anyway, she took my advice in the spirit in which it was intended, and said she would do that. I ran into her in the bathroom the next Sunday and it had been found. After we got off the phone, one child was in bed already, but she got her daughter and asked her to pray. About two hours later someone was going by the bishop's office and something caught her eye and she found it. Because there had been internet messages other people were able to connect them, and she got the bag back.

She was also able to make it a teaching moment for her daughter. She explained that she had to do work like searching and asking other people, including me, but that helped the prayer be answered. That built faith for both of them.

So I had to share that with the one who gave the lesson. She was going to let her nephew know that he touched people.

It's a good reminder that sometimes we sell ourselves short. Even knowing God's power, we don't take full advantage of it. Maybe we don't believe that we are important enough, or that the things we want are important enough. Maybe we feel embarrassed about the things we want, and don't need to. 

It's good to stop and remember that our Heavenly Father does love us, and is capable of quite a bit.

Earthquakes: Asking around

I did write to my company's disaster management person this week. It is reasonable to as your employer about their plans for the big one, and to have a talk about disaster planning in general.

It is not only your employer. If you have children in school or daycare, you should ask about that. If you have elderly parents in an assisted care facility, you should ask about that. It is highly possible that they will not have answers. In light of the article from The New Yorker, more people may be thinking about it, but not sure what to do. That would be a good time to offer to help.

In one of the pieces I have been reading recently, someone was talking about parents wondering if they should be homeschooling to avoid having their children squished in an earthquake. That's an overreaction. First, see if the school has a plan. If they don't, offer to help with that project. If the school is really resistant to making any plans, then maybe you think about transferring or going to the district. There's lots of steps before deciding on retreating from society.

Backing up a little, in my message, I put that while I was interested it would probably be more beneficial to write an article that everyone in the company would see, and that's what they are focusing on. That means me getting my answer may take a little longer, but I still feel it was the right way to go about it. This is something that concerns everyone.

Your company may not have a specific person over disaster preparedness. It is necessary for a larger company because there is so much more to look out for - more employees, more property, more processes - but even a single proprietor should know that there are risks and have a plan for them.

Even if you are only responsible for yourself as an employee, preparing for the "big one" is not a single person activity. The restoration of utilities matters. The rebuilding of infrastructure matters.

Here is a tool to get an idea of recovery time from a 9 magnitude earthquake:

http://www.opb.org/aftershock/

I will use the results for Aloha, but I have also run through Portland and Lake Oswego and they were all pretty close.

Water will be available at distribution centers within about 2 weeks.
Natural gas will be back up within about 2 months.
Electricity will take closer to 3 or 4 months.
Police and fire response could take about 7 months to recover.
Water and sewer will take over a year to get operational again.
The restoration of top priority highways will take about a year and a half.
Getting health care facilities back to normal will take about three years.

Those estimates sound dire, but here is something else to consider.

After the earthquake an tsunami in Japan, most hospitals were operational again within a month.

Not all of these wait times are inevitable. With preparedness, both to withstand better and recover faster, it can be a lot better.

But that won't happen solely through the efforts of a bunch of rugged individualists. Retrofitting hospitals and relocating schools takes cooperation and commitment, because it takes money. Corporations and governments and utilities need to be working together, as well as individuals.

I will be asking some more questions this week. One question may get other people thinking and planning, but it can also be rather easily ignored. It's better if more people are asking.

Talk to neighbors. Talk to local leaders. And talk to you boss.

http://www.redcross.org/prepare/location/workplace