I agree that repackaging stories wholesale is bad, and should be punished. It’s also already against the law. The idea that someone driving traffic your way should pay for the privilege is so wrong-headed as to be mind-boggling. I know that publishers are rather desperately casting about for new revenue streams, but we’ve seen that rampant stupidity didn’t serve them well through the 90s and early years of this decade — it seems unlikely that idiocy will turn out to be a winning strategy now.

For the record, if you’d like to quote from any of my posts in order to link back to this site, feel free. Let me know if I can make it easier. At least I understand how the web works — unlike some of the highly-paid executives in my industry.

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I’ve also grabbed a couple of things that help me keep information moving between the iPhone and the Macbook Pro. Evernote is a wonderful cloud application for keeping notes and information available regardless of where you are, and Bento is a super little database that I use for information that’s a bit more structured — my health info and notes on tutoring sessions, for example.

All in all, I’m really pleased with the iPhone — it’s one of the few tech purchases of the last few years that hasn’t carried some regret with it. Now, if I can start keeping up with my Microsoft Office docs on the phone, I’ll be set…

Last week, I had the opportunity to see my town with fresh eyes. We participated in the Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk 2009 here in Gainesville, Florida. Carol and I each took a bunch of photos, and have been working with them in order to get the pool down to the two we’ll submit for possible prizes. The rest of mine are available on Flickr, as are Carol’s It was really great meeting new people and getting together after the walk for pizza — it’s amazing how few people we really know here after a dozen years of residence.

What kind of photos did I take? Here are two or three of my favorites…

I love the “art” aspect of the sign in the window. Simple, but fun.

I “popped” the color a bit on this, but really enjoyed the depth of the greens in the shot. Finally…

This shot just worked for me…nice color, and good light-to-dark contrast.

Hundreds of photographers took thousands of photos around the world — check out some of the groups at the web site, or on Flickr!

Judith Woodburn has written a wistful look at the dilemma, A Time in Life for Pie and Beer, in the New York Times. She talks about the issue from the caregiver’s point of view, but there’s a lot in the piece that I recognize. I’m not in the shape her father was, and I can afford much more balance in life, but recognizing that our food culture puts us in a bit of a fix — and that food is far more than simple fuel in our society — is a critical part of learning to keep the things you put in your mouth from killing you.

Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer — Glenn is always good for thought-provoking links.

Until then, though, this is just about as cool as I can stand for a Friday afternoon…

In general, I go to rehab three times a week, spending about an hour and a half there each time. While there, I’ll spend about fifty minutes doing aerobic exercise (stationary bike, NuStep, treadmill, and arm machine) and twenty minutes or so lifting weights. During the whole time, I’ll have a heart monitor attached so the nurses can keep tabs on my heart activity. So far, I seem to be handling everything well — at least, that’s what the nurses tell me.

Speaking of nurses, Angela is great at offering encouragement and keeping the atmosphere upbeat — I haven’t had experience with rehab nurses who do it any other way, but the team at North Florida is great. Here is Angela getting me set up on my least-favorite machine, the arm cycle.

That machine takes some work, and I seem to spend a lot of time concentrating and looking quite serious while I’m turning the hand cranks.

Of course, I have to work my legs, too, and the stationary bike is good for that. At the half-way mark on my time, I let the nurses know and they check my blood pressure. So far everything is looking good — my BP goes up (indicating my heart is working) but not too much, and when they check it one last time before I leave it tends to be slightly lower than when I came in. Today’s check out BP? 100 over 58. Not too bad.

The part that I’ve really been looking forward to is weight-training. I didn’t realize, though, just how weakened I’d become. The photos below show me working with 7-pound dumbs, and by the end of a dozen reps I was ready to put them down. I’m working my way up in both weight and reps, but it’s going to be a while before I’m pushing any sort of serious iron.

I do several exercises including front arm extensions…

and good ‘ol arm curls.

By the time I finish with the routine, I’m ready to sit for a little while, but at least I’m up and moving, getting some exercise and feeling better. I’m to the point of truly looking forward to September, when I get some numbers back on my heart function. I feel like they’ll be good numbers, but the confirmation will be nice.

Podcast to come, but work for revenue comes first, so look for the episode sometime next week.

The project was a review of universal threat managers (UTMs) appropriate for branch-office deployment. UTMs are like firewalls on steroids, responding to and protecting against a much wider variety of threats than can be handled by the classic firewall.

The review is in multiple parts. First we introduce the cast of UTMs, then describe the testing regimen we developed for UTMs. Next, we move on to a look at the test equipment from Ixia and Mu Dynamics that we used to run the tests. Finally we come to the UTMs themselves, with separate write-ups on the products from Astaro, SonicWall, WatchGuard, and ZyXel. Who won? Well, you’ll just have to go read the review to find out, now. Enjoy!

Don’t give up on the new podcast about my cardiac adventures, either…I’ve got photos (courtesy of Carol) and a new episode that will cover my first foray into cardiac rehab. When will it go live? As soon as I have time to finish the recording! When it happens, I promise that you’ll be the first (or maybe the second) to know.

I’ve also been spending a fair amount of time on the Interop FaceBook and LinkedIn pages, as well as on other sites that will become much more public in the near future.

I also started going to cardiac rehab last week: that will be the subject of the next Learning About My Heart podcast, which should be posted tomorrow. The post should be fun, with plenty of photos courtesy of Carol.

Come back, take a look (and listen)…I’ll try to keep up a little better over here.