Homemade masks may help curb spread; not protect against infection

I asked a fellow ToastMaster if making masks at home and donating them would be of value since they are not N95. More on that later.

We all see the medical personnel wear simple masks and people around the world wearing bandanas, handkerchiefs, etc. I assumed that they would help even if by reducing risk by 10 percent.

While fabric masks are not to be used in the care of COVID-19 patients, according to the CDC, fabric masks are a crisis response option when other supplies have been exhausted

While waiting for the reply, I realized something far more important given that few of us are tested - assume that you are infected. The Asians show us how to thwart the spread as a civic duty!

Time Magazine

I am not refuting Dr Fauci (thank goodness for his leadership)

While masks may block some droplets, Fauci said, they do not provide the level of protection people think they do. 

But, I am checking locally with feet on the street! Or, with our war fighters on the front lines. So, back to Chandler, AZ and my fellow ToastMaster. Here is what she said:

Covid has completely turned my world (out patient medical imaging) upside down...

I’ve had to make tough decisions that a few short months ago I never thought we’d have to make.

This past week, we set up a sewing shop in our business office conference room and produced 400 hand made masks for our employees. 

In addition, we’ve received donations from our patients etc.

...My sister also works for a behavioral health hospital that would graciously accept hand made mask donations.

No doubt, most of you are doing your part in this war against COVID-19 (restaurant gift certs, food bank donations, etc.) but if you thought of homemade masks, well, the above is a data point that could spur you to ask your local health facilities and know for sure.

Social distancing is the most violent action we can take against this and here is something else you could do to help in your spare time :-)

UBER for Vets And Others

What's this?

Imagine the following

1. Single parent needs one of the friends to give a ride to their kid(s) to/from school.
2. Vet needs a ride to VA Hospital or the nearest mall.

Their choices are

1. Call UBER/taxi
2. Call Friends and ask
3. Go on WhatsApp to their network for friends?  Or, their group of car poolers/drivers that have offered to help?

Can we make it better?

1. What if taxi was cost prohibitive like it is for most on a fixed income?
2. What of calling friends and playing tag takes too long?
3. Would WhatsApp work? What if you are new to the area or would like to reach out to trusted parties for help?

Imagine now that there is an organization that serves the person since they belong to a group.  Here is what I think it could look like but I need help to see if it makes sense and is viable.

Single parent is part of a group of school parents that they trust. 

• They can the rideShare App and ask those parents via the App for a ride.  
• And, they can add  their trusted circle of neighbours, friends, family but this set of folks are not part of the "trusted parents from school" group.  
• But, both get the request. 
•  First person to respond with a confirmation wins and others get to know that the request was fulfilled.

Imagine that the VA verifies (background check) a set of volunteers in the Valley. 

• They are part of the RideShare Program.  
• Any other VA could come to this group and ask for a ride.  
• Any volunteer that can meet the need can respond and everyone else would know that the need was met.

Would people use this?  Would it be of value?  Let me know.

Helping hands for Vets

There are several different ways that people go out and help their local community, people in their state/country/world.  I am saddened by -  http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-investigations/2016/10/04/inspector-general-rips-phoenix-va-hospital-again/91554300/.

And, then I saw - http://www.operationwelcomehomeaz.com.  This organization wants to build a memorial wall and then an area for families to meet.  But, is there something else that can be done? 

Imagine if you will...

A Vet wants a ride to go to somewhere.  How do they reach out to someone for help?  An 'UBER for Vets' concept. 

So, can we build an UBER for vets where the Vet has a trusted network and the drivers are trusted by this vet or by the Operation Welcome Home folks?  Wouldn't it be great to have an app that facilitates

 the above?

Want to help build that?  I am starting slowly but looking for help.

Digital Everywhere

The mobile apps got here 3-4 years ago when I benefited from a better app from the airlines and hotels.  But, what about becoming digital?

We see it now with mobile checkin, mobile wallets and MFS (http://www.millicom.com/what-we-do/mobile-financial-services/).  And, of course, the Apple and AT&T experience where the clunky POS is long gone.  Yes, Apple Pay has now made payments digital.

The next frontier is the Connected Car, Digital Home and IoT (though aren't the first two examples of IoT?). These are cool technologies (Zetta from Apigee is unique amongst many but I may be biased):


But, they are building blocks!!!

Digital starts showing up when external 'apps' start working  with my ecosystem to help me


Now, we can see how the world will change and it won't be because of the 'app' in your pocket!!

IPtables on Centos 6.3

Tomcat 6 on CentOS 6.3 installation is a breeze...lots of how-tos out there:

• http://zscribble.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/install-tomcat-6-on-centos-6/
• http://newpush.com/2011/10/how-to-install-tomcat-6-on-rhel-6-or-centos-6/

But, why not mention IP Tables.

1. vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables
2. #enter this line after the SSH line and NOT at the bottom of the file
3. -A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8080  -j ACCEPT
4. /etc/init.d/iptables restart

Now, you are set.

Coolest KnowNow Apps - Whiteboard

A long time ago (crica 2003/4) there was an app created to allow an energy broker to trade futures. This app presented on single page with the various futures that were traded in a grid format. The brokers could place bid/asks on behalf of their clients and close deals.

I actually saw this same page on a huge whiteboard at the energy brokers company.

What was awesome about this? That we have an AJAX application at that time and it was a business application used every day!

GoDaddy Windows + Wordpress won't work

This was a painful lesson.

1. Talked to GoDaddy and they say you can use WordPress w/ Windows account
2. Download was easy, setup was easy, and I could write new posts to the blog and create new pages.
3. Tried to change the configuration and that's where it fell apart.

I used K2, Tarski and the default Kubrick themes to test out if I could change options and none of them seemed to work. A few days of debugging showed that some of the options were not created in MySQL! Some more research showed just a slew of weird behavior :-(

Called GoDaddy again and they said "we don't support WordPress on Windows accounts!" Well, I sure wish they had told me that before I debugged PHP and the various themes!

So, DotNetNuke that will support the non-profit organization's web site. It actually downloaded easily and I was able to quickly create a site leveraging several different modules!

Yeah, I know - most of you are saying GoDaddy? Windows? Why didn't you use the LAMP stack that you know so well. I said non-profit organization, right? And, we have a custom ASP app that locked us into Windows.

KnowNow's secret sauce

I was contemplating what was so special about KnowNow and I came up w/ two features that encapsulate it all:

Dynamic creation of topics while enforcing permissions

The event router allowed you to create any topic and posts messages to them. And, anyone with the permissions could consume those messages. For e.g. let's say you run a web site and want to allow users on the web site to chat w/ each other - gmail supports this! How do you allow two users , say Fred & George, to start chatting with each other?

• Your back end systems need to create a secure channel where just the two of them can communicate and others cannot snoop, or even know of this conversation. How would you do this in JMS?
• What if Fred wants invite Harry into the conversation? Now, Fred needs to give permission to Harry to be able to read and write from that channel.

Imagine hundreds of such conversations and you run into problems with database storage, and near real time delivery. How does the server 'push' the information out?

Real time delivery to the browser

OK, so RIA is prevalent now. Well, it wasn't 7 years ago, I guess I would say it wasn't 4 years ago. Rohit & Adam's vision did come to reality!

Point is that with Comet and Ajax we now have browser apps that come close to rivaling fat applications on the desktop. Google docs is a great example! But, KnowNow could have given you that ability back in 2002! For your own applications on your web site!

I wonder if others out there (ex-KN, customers, or partners) think that some other features were unique???

It was a blast while it lasted!

KnowNow - Gone Now

The patent that was pending for years was finally issued on May 27th, 2008. How ironic!

Multitasking. Hmm... Not quite

I never had a problem w/ having several projects that needed attention. Just couldn't work on them in parallel. I had to take 'em one at a time. Don't get me wrong. Managing several projects is OK but you can only work on one project/task at any given moment.

I felt guilty being 'out of pocket' for a few hours so that I could complete something. Well, thank you Bill Koch! This article at PSJ is reassuring!

Havasupai

Go on the net and look for Havasupai and you will find tonnes of pictures of the falls.



A 7 mile hike into the village and then another mile or so to the camp site (no bathrooms). Of course, you can elect to stay at the lodge in the village and enjoy a warm bath after a hard days hikng and swimming in the gorgeous pool!

In the early days we would talk about KnowNow and every one would associate us w/ Tibco and Sonic. We would also get lumped with the stock ticker data delivery engines. Yes, we did have quite a few traders use the product through Excel, in dynamically updated web base dashboards and in reverse auction environments as well.

But, I do believe that the Enterprise Syndication Solution (ESS) actually does bring the right application to market.

I associate this application with fantasy football and apartment hunting in San Francisco. Of course, we have the sport sites (ESPN.com, FOXSports.com, FFToday.com, and other similar sites) to cater to the needs to the serious fantasy players. And, yes, craigslist does a great job of giving you the list of aprtments in your neighbourhood.

But, what do you do when you want to look for specific keywords within those data sources? Why should you have to scan the news of 10 sites to ensure that your player will play and is not injured! Why should you wait for an email to alert you that the apartment in your desired area is available? If your attention span is really the commodity, then aren't you wasting it.

Refreshing the web page, the RSS reader, and your mail client will distract you more drastically than one may anticipate. What if you were presented with an update when your specific keywords should up in the information stream. It is the information stream that you are monitoring - a highway of data that you want to monitor with your specific criteria.

ESS delivers this. If you can install Yahoo Messenger, then you can install ESS Deskbar - a utility that presents toasts as articles meeting your criteria show up in the information source! Yes, it grabs your attention when a toast shows up but isn't that exactly when it should?? Check out the first gen Deskbar and let me know what you think.

JotSpot

I had the privilige of meeting the JotSpot team recently. What a refreshing experience to see an early stage startup and the energy as the team embarks on the "Change the world" journey.

Well, I actually think this one will. The guys are motivated and the product continues to evolve at a rapid pace.

I can start using the blog app to exchange information within my company and the knowledgebase/forums are used by JotSpot themselves! What a way to jumpstart my support group! And, it is a viral app, right. You enable workgroups to get productive, small startups start using it and all of a sudden the corporation needs it!

This is one of a handful of tech companies that I will be watching over the next few years!

The AZ Desert in bloom

The AZ desert gives a fantastic view of desert wild flowers alongside mountains amidst huge expanses of the desert. The Lost Dutchman park has the Treasure Loop that is a great hike. Downtown Phoenix is way off in the distance (30+ miles away).

Back at KnowNow

I am back at Knownow and KnowNow has moved to much nicer digs. ING has found a perfect solution for KnowNow's engine and now it is time to turn it up a notch.

Vietnam Vets bring home Iraqi Vet

Here's a 19 year old going to war and then needing our help. I wonder when we start helping kids that are ordered to go fight. Yeah, they may not have known that they would get sucked into a war, or they may have wanted to fight for their country. Either way, how do we make sure the government (and hence us) takes care of them?

I get it, Adam!

Adam showed me blogs a LONG time ago (OK, maybe 3 years or so ago) and I blew it off. "Who the heck would want to know about someone rambling away about their sorry ass miserable life?!" is what I thought :-)

Now, I just saw the deal where I can restrict access to the blogs. That is what I always wanted. I want my information on the web so that my friends and family can get to it but not just anyone. I also want to put up pictures of my family and let my relatives around the world check them out.

Of course, if the blog is ' out there' then there must be a back door to get to it (other than the admins, etc.)

Adam - I just got it (yeah, you're right - I'm a late adopter).

Succes thru' adversity

I keep on reading stuff where it was never the smarts that made the successful person. It was always the tenacity. Insights into Excellence has that. So does, Harvay Mackay has another article that focuses on this.

I guess this picture says it all- NEVER give up!

This is the kinda stuff they need to beat into you when you show up in college. I can only thank Manny Aroz for saving my ass @ ASU! I guess I didn't give up then.

106 Miles

I was just checking out some notes on 106 Miles and get continually amazed. Silicon Valley constantly has folks that are looking for the next big startup that will change the world. The DNA of the place is like that. While out here in Phoenix, the folks are content with being with one company. The focus out here in Tech Oasis is on family and a good quality of life.

It is the make up of the folks that fuels the innovation out of Silicon Valley while the DNA in Phoenix is all about steady (and slower) progress towards a larger goal.

I remember a discussion with Steve Dossick when he mentioned that there were very few families in the Bay area with young kids. Actually, I think it was more focused on the startup scene rather than the Bay area. It makes sense that you thrive in the Silicon Valley when you don't have a family, or when one of you is at home. Mind you, I know some dual income families but I think they always had one spouse working in the HPs & Ciscos of the Bay Area while the other pursued the startup scene.

I sure wish such patterns were discussed in college to give graduates a wholistic view of the world. Maybe they already do?? After all, I wasn't exactly a stellar student in college :-)

How could I forget Karl?!

So, I forget Karl Stewart when I am rambling away on the wonderful KN folks. Awesome asset to any corporation!

Yeah, I know. I forgot a ton more.