October is here. Halloween season extends from now until December! Happy days! This is also the month for cancer awareness (10/13). Also on 10/13: We have National Stop Bullying Day. Jump on board and learn some martial arts. It will help. Choosing a good school is important (some places seem to like to use new people as targets, most try to leverage the person to become better: Not all schools are for everyone, choose one that best works for you).

This is also anti-bully month. Have you ever really considered what a bully is? Sure, it is easy to think of the Biff's (Back to the Future) of the world. The definition indicates a person that coerces, abuses, or intimidates people. So here is an entertaining exercise: What else could be considered a bully, fitting that definition (no matter how unlikely) and not be the typical Biff? Could someone who targets a section of the population (perceived to be incapable of taking care of themselves) and proceeds to remove responsibilty of growing and learning from them be considered a bully? It fits the bill. To put it another way, when you are helping a person, you should be careful that you are helping them grow and not just removing opportunity to learn and grow. Sometimes, especially when you look at the more well-to-do people (I believe), you might find that people are accidentally hindering poeple when they are trying to help. Sure, it might give you a warm-fuzzy feeling tossing a few bucks to the local pan handler, but maybe guiding them to the local 'Hope Campus'-type of place might be better? I tend to look at what the main-stream politicians are hopeing to 'help' as an example. Usually their pitch can be framed as: 'These people are not educated enough or lack the ability to do a thing, so we should do it for them'. It is the same formula: A person is abusing (the perceived) less fortunate (by removing the opportunity to learn or grow). This would lead to the question of when would it be helping a person versus abusing them? I would claim helping them would be giving them room to grow. Sure, a one-time helping hand would be find, so long as it includes a finger pointing to how they could help themselves. For a long-term solution, checking up on the person to make sure they are at least trying to better themselves. I heard stories that this is what the Churches used to do. They would help their congregation and, when a person would abuse the help, they would stop helping the person (Thus allowing the person to grow). I tend to think the setup still works today, in spite of the Government attempts to hinder and bully those that need guidance and help.

* https://www.techrepublic.com/article/lawsuit-claims-ransomware-attack-caused-fatal-injury-to-infant-at-alabama-hospital/ - This is interesting and depressing. On the one hand, ransomware is the process of encrypting your data and attempting to coerce money from a victim to get the money back. The typical response to this is to keep your backups up to date (which, for some reason, the medical industry believes is a low priority). The lag that is suggested seems odd to me. Unless the computer in question was compromised and was running slower. In any case, this is an issue with how the business runs: The moment this situation existed, all nurses should have been required to do mandatory physical observation of the monitors in the room (assuming that is even possible), with a priority on those in critical condition and the young (sorry old people). I would be interested to see an opposing thought process.
* https://www.techrepublic.com/article/why-you-have-to-care-about-employee-experience-and-how-to-improve-it/ - Hiring the most knowledgable is highly important. I tend to believe this works, most of the time, but the employee also needs to be able to blend in with the social atmospher of the business. If everyone at the business enjoys a mid-day rousing game of canasta and joking about speeding on the freeway, then a new hire would need to brush up on the canasta rules and vehicular termonolgy to fit in. On a similar thread: Consider Linus Torvalds and the kernal developers: If you do not have a savage sense of humor and thick skin, you may not last: You will not fit in and will be unhappy.

Shane Koyczan would be a great feature for this month:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltun92DfnPY - To this day
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV805a2XJgA - blueprint for a breakthrough
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=670if6Etx0o - troll

September (the end of it) brought a concern about cyber security: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/09/the-rise-of-one-time-password-interception-bots/ - which reveals that two factor authentication can still be circumvented: by social engineering.

Once again, I am working on the search feature of the website. I have not made much progress, but I will hope to work on it more this month. I am taking some time figuring out the best method for me to add new entries to this site.