That's right. I said it. If you are the victim of a stolen identity, there is a 95% chance that it is the result of a seriously idiotic, brain-dead, maneuver. Yeah but you know what the catch is? Chances are high that it's not your fault.

4 days ago and 2 weeks after it happened, the VA finally nutted up and said that some jackass at the VA took home a laptop with 26.5 millions Vets DOB & SSN in it. WTF?! I'll say it again; 26.5 million. According to most reports, that's every single living vet. And guess what Charlie Brown. That's right. If I had a cookie to dole out, you'd get it. That laptop was stolen. This is the second biggest data loss so far, only dwarfed by the incomprehensible ass-clowns at CardSystems Solutions, who lost 40 million records last June. Some folks are even saying that the spouses of some vets could be included in this loss as well. This is awesome.

At a time when our Government is supposedly watching out for us more than ever due to countless ways terrorists can attack us (according to Dick, we are in constant danger - and he must safe-guard the nation by hiding.), they are doing nothing to safe guard our data. Nothing. It is inconceivable to me that a single person would have access to take the entire Database home on a laptop, and have (supposedly) no one know about it. Unless this joker was a high level manager and/or System Administrator - they shouldn't have had rights to it. This would be tantamount to me walking in to work on Tuesday, and skipping out with the accounting database, and then having my laptop stolen. "Oops sorry Greg, I guess I'm a retard. Please don't be mad." The person who did this should go to jail. Every single one of this idiots supervisors should be fired.

The thing that really pisses me off, other than I know my data is in that group, is no one is doing a damned thing. "Oh gee, it's a long weekend, so sorry folks, me and the Pres are going to the ranch - I promise I'll get to it first thing in June."  The VA issued standard BS about it. Other  folks aren't surprised. Me, I'm just pissed. I have done an excellent job at keeping mine, and my family's information secure and safe - just to have it betrayed by the complete ineptitude of our Government. Thanks a-holes.

This is the single greatest threat to the American public. And we aren't doing anything about it. No one in big government cares. Just us. I wonder when it's going to be important to the people who are supposed to be safe guarding the well being of the general public? A US General getting his ID stolen didn't do it. Of course it wasn't really stolen - some other inept government employee posted it on a official website.  Unless the President himself is a victim, my guess is the American public is going to remain hung out to dry, fending for themselves...

You hear about it more and more, and it doesn't surprise anyone more... a company decides to downsize, laying off senior employees and keeping the chum to take up the slack. It just happened to a friend of mine and it pisses me off. They kick the long-term employees who have been with the company for years, decades even (in some cases, from back in the day when you could count up all the employees and still have fingers left to pick your nose) to the curb, and decide to keep the ones who cost less, and just about always know less - under the thinly veiled mask of trying to keep the company viable. It's no wonder that loyalty ranks nearly dead last in corporate hiring priorities, as seen by everyone except the HR department.  You still get crap like:

"I think they[employees] have a responsibility to us to pay their dues before they jump ship. If they have been here four or five years and then they decide to leave, that's not too bad. But to leave in a year or two? We are not happy about that,"

coming out of the department heads and execs. So why is it such a stretch to expect this in return? Why would anyone expect any employee to want to stay with a company that disregards the tenure of those who have stayed with  the company for the long haul? Stood their ground when others jumped ship, remaining loyal to a company they thought would treat them fairly, only to have their years of dedicated service rewarded with  a shove out the door.

Okay, so they give out severance packages. So what. You still don't have a job in the end, so unless they drop a 3 or 4 year deal on the table - it's little consolation to their wives and children.

This kind of behavior is indicative of how the working class in this nation are treated as a whole. By their employers and by their government. The message is simple: you don't matter - your vote doesn't count. How often do you see the CEO, and top floor VPs take a pay hit in order to save a company? More often than not, they sit fat and happy with their golden parachute, not really caring about what happens because they rob the company on the way out. Take Craig Conway for instance, PeopleSoft fired his sorry arse in 2004, and he got somewhere between 10 and 20 million. For being friggin' fired! WTF!?

How often is it the complete ineptitude of the corporate leaders that lead up the woes of the company too? More than 75% I would wager. I was laid off from a job once, only to be hired back as a contractor at almost double the pay, and they still paid my taxes. Again. WTF?! How does that make any sense what-so-ever? It doesn't. In fact, in a massive twist of fate the company went tits-up not even 3 months later. I know, what a shocker. But the President had another job before the offices were cleared out, hmmm - I guess at least one person saw the writing on the wall.

Why does this bother me? That's simple. I'm one of those 34%. I love my work. I enjoy my job and almost every aspect of it. I live for the web. Designing, building, creating sites and applications for the web is what makes me giddy. It is a passion. I also get very invested with the company I work for. I always have. With every company I have worked for in a professional capacity. It's how I am. I have a work ethic. Part of that work ethic is caring about my employer, and trying to do whatever I can do to contribute to making it a successful business. That's what an employees job is really about. It's just too bad that it seems to be becoming ever too common that employers do not return the loyalty in kind, instead they toss it like an old sock.

Some recent studies indicate that employees are becoming more loyal to their companies, but what about the other way around? I mean, hey that's great, right? People are happy with their job (well, 34% of them any way), and willing to turn down another offer to stick by the company they are with. Maybe it's time the employers starting hearing about this at review time. Why not? If HR says they want loyal employees, than they should reward the ones that are. Of course, this reward will be the exact thing that makes them the likely target when the Bobs come calling on your office space.

I started playing around with HDR photography a bit, and it's interesting what gets picked up and some of the tools that interface with Photoshop. It's pretty flippin cool.

The image shot here on the right, was made up from 5 separate images, shot at 1 stop intervals from 0. I did not use the auto bracket feature. I shot an f/8 for all 5 images, at 50 ISO, then did 2 stops up and 2 stops down. I controlled it all via shutter speed, to get the best depth of field I could from my Nikon Coolpix 8700, which apparently is not in the product line anymore. Yipppeeee!!!! I love being obsolete.

Before I digress too far.... I plan on shooting a ton more HDR images this summer, as well as using my new medium format camera around the area - so stay tuned for more images. Back to the image at hand. It's my house. Duh. I made 2 separate variations; one from within Photoshop, and another using Photomatix. Both images can be seen on my Flickr site. Keeping in mind I haven't done a lot yet, but I like the variations in color tone that you can easily achieve from with Photomatix. It really makes for an interesting blending of surrealistic tones within the photograph. You can also create an image that is much more traditional as well. Photomatix runs about $100 or $70 for just the tone mapping plug-in to Photoshop. I'm just using the trial version, but will most likely purchase the full version soon.

Also, if anyone is in the market for a new digital camera, the Sony DSC-T5 kicks pixelated butt! I just got one on sale at Staples so I would have a camera to tote around with me so I can shoot more images, and it's awesome. I'm not going to go through the specs, but I am very happy with it. I will posts some shots from that soon...

No matter whom tells you it's a good idea.

I was watching Mythbusters yesterday with the boys, and they were trying to build a jet out of a vacuum. hehe, didn't really work, but it was sorta funny to watch em' try. Anyway. So I snapped this shot from a flash back from when Adam put his face up a vacuum motor and his cheek got sucked in. As you can see.

I'm not sure what made him think it was a good idea, I mean, come on Adam! Just look at Jamie's face in the background - he knew you were gonna' get thumped.

Here's a link to the M5 Industries site as well.

Every now and again, something comes along that is funny as hell, clever, and well... spot on. The Philips Body Groom is a pretty slick little shaver, probably better than my current beard trimmer too - but if you look at their site; the beard, is not the fuzz they are talkin about turning into a Topiary.

The site itself is a riot. An awesome use of Flash Video, and it's not horribly top heavy. I would notice, since my internet connection at home (Stinking Atlantic Broadband Cable) is not all that and a bag of chips. There are several levels, and it even has a bit of timed interactivity if you sit and stare at Mr. Clean Cut here. The site does require Flash 8, but if you don't have it - you should. So upgrade!

I have no idea who did this site, but they knocked one out. They even had the good Flash sense to use Geoff Stearns Flash Object embed method as to avoid the Eolas crap that Microsoft so happily dumped in our laps. Jerks. So A for that, it's the right way to do it. They would have gotten an A+ if they were on the newest version of SWFObject....

Any way, check out the site, and demo the shaver online. But please, I don't want to know why you bought it.... mmmmkaaayyy?