Tuesday, August 25, 2009

EarthEcycle update

Just a quick update regarding an earlier post regarding EarthEcycle. Since my original post, the EPA has turned back now two (it was originally one) cargo shipments allegedly originating from EarthEcycle headed to South Africa.

As recently reported in the Trib EarthEcycle has asked for an administrative hearing with the EPA, to say, as Jeff Nixon himself (I'm assuming it was him, since he posted the comment anonymously) said, get all of the facts out.

However, EPA spokeperson Deb Berlin said that the request from EarthEcycle came after the deadline given to the company, so it remains to be seen if EarthEcycle's request will be approved.

The Trib further reported that the Monroeville warehouse still contains discarded computer and electronic parts, and that the company stands to potentially be fined up to $37,000 a day if found out of compliance by the EPA. Stay tuned!

Monday, August 10, 2009

Julie & Julia; Julie and that Bobby Guy

Today I went to the movies to celebrate a financially profitable month (thank you, air bed and breakfast) and to escape the hottest day of the summer. Taking the suggestion of a couple friends of mine, I went to see Julie & Julia.

I can't recommend this movie enough: Nora Ephron did a marvelous job interweaving the stories of the two principal characters: Julia Child and her diplomat husband, Paul; and Julie Powell and her editor husband, Eric. I suspect that Meryl Streep will get the lion's share of attention in her portrayal of Julia, but to my mind, Stanley Tucci did just as brilliant a job. The two of them had genuine chemistry and became Julia and Paul quite convincingly onscreen.

Kudos also to Amy Adams and Chris Messina, who also did a great job as Julie and Eric. They gave what I thought were not-over-the-top performances (I mean this as a compliment) and also had a nice on-screen rapport. And of course the fifth star of the movie was the food, and my God, if you don't leave the theatre ravenous, then there's something wrong with you.

Going into the movie I knew more about Julia than I did Julie and of course knew that Julie had written a blog (before everyone and their brother wrote one, myself included). But I knew nothing about what prompted her to start writing. Turns out she had a job in lower Manhattan post-9/11 in a part customer service rep, part ombudsman, part whipping boy as she helped families of the victims. It also turns out that she was also a writer with a half-finished novel and a circle of friends who were uber successful.

On the eve of her 30th birthday, her husband suggests writing a blog, and once she got the idea of working her way through the entire Child cookbook, she took to it like a house afire. As a blogger myself, I shared in her blogger-related joy in parts of the movie ("I got my first comment!" she excitedly shared with a co-worker, then quickly deflates when the identify of the commenter is revealed; then, later "I got 53 comments and they're all from no one I know!").

The movie got me to thinking about this blog, and I thought I'd tell you all why I started mine. Because I guess it never occurred to me to tell you. Duh.

When I was a little girl I loved two things: reading and writing. Growing up in a small town in a fairly remote area, reading gave me an opportunity to be, as Isak Dinesen said, "a mental traveler." And writing gave me the chance to create worlds of my own.

I never thought I was smart enough or good enough to write for a living, so I went to school and took business classes and got a job at a bank. Then fate intervened and I found myself out of a job a few years later. After some "what do I want to do with my life" moments, I decided to go back to school. I got a job at CMU, and took two writing classes there, which I loved. It didn't hurt that I had the good fortune of having some of the smartest English majors in the classes and very supportive professors.

So I graduated and I did a bunch of stuff: consulting, marketing at an engineering firm, working for a bunch of trade associations, and finally starting a charity. When the time came to look for a job last year, I knew I wanted to get back to doing more writing as part of my job.

There's a company in Pittsburgh that is the go-to place for writing, strategic planning, branding, etc. I'd been applying for every available job, when finally I got an interview. As interviews go, it was a weird one, with a guy I'll call Bobby and a girl I'll call Betty (which may or may not be their real names). They made a bunch of snarky, inside-y type of jokes, and I got the sense that sitting at the table interviewing me on the pleasure scale was somewhere between a root canal and having your motherboard crash.

Post-interview, Bobby tells me I have to take a writing test, and emails it to me. It's a draft of a magazine article. It's dreadful. I've been allocated no more than 2 1/2 hours to either re-write or write one from scratch. I research the topic, write the article, checking punctuation, etc., and email it back. Then I get an email back. Apparently it is so bad that Bobby not only doesn't want to hire me, but won't even consider having me work freelance.

Talk about deflated. Then angry--I have a writing degree, dammit. From CMU--known for its writing programs, yes, plural, programs! Then--oopsie--I realize I'm forgetting one trifling detail: I hadn't written anything of any length in over three years! Three years! Of course I sucked!

So just like a marathoner has to stretch muscles and go for a run each day, I decided I had to exercise my brain--or at least the part of the brain that allows me to string words together, anyway. So I had to find a way to write: on a regular basis, doing research, finding topics, coming up with something interesting to say.

So this blog was born. This isn't Tolstoy, but it's my little mental stretching of those writing brain cells. And saying I designed and write a blog looks not bad on my resume. So thanks, Bobby, for giving me a figurative kick in the pants when I was getting too big for my britches. I owe you one. And your weird little friend, too.

Friday, August 7, 2009

Two Attacks: One Local, One Worldwide

I saw the headline on Yahoo! -- shooting in gym kills at least 3, injuring others. It didn't mention the city, and I assumed it happened somewhere else. Then I saw my friend Lori posted on Facebook: "Just wanted to let everyone know I'm okay. I'm a member of LA Fitness, but I wasn't there this morning," and I realized that the shooting happened here in Pittsburgh.

According to reports, George Sodini entered the Collier Township gym and sprayed bullets into a group of women gathered for an early morning exercise class. Then, after killing 3 and injuring 10 more, he turned the gun on himself.

Acquaintances and co-workers recall Sodini seeming like a normal enough guy. Sodini, 48, worked at K&L Gates, doing IT work for the prestigious law firm for the last ten years. He owned a small, tidy home in Scott Township, where his neighbors describe him as friendly, although not overly so.

But it seems Sodini had lots of secrets, which he shared online. Like Richard Pawlawsky, the individual who killed three police officers this spring in Stanton Heights, Sodini also chronicled his ramblings via an online diary. It's full of racial and political epithets, hatred directed at his family, his friends, and his employer.

Fueled by self-proclaimed loneliness, lack of happiness in his life, and his perceived rejection by women over more than a decade juxtaposed against the "young girls here [who] look so beautiful" at 24 Hour Fitness, he begins a plan: arming himself and killing. Read his online diary and you'll find evidence that within his "normal" exterior laid a very troubled man.

While Sodini took great lengths to leave some sort of legacy through his diary (where he urges "copy this to netgroups, where my voice will speak forever"), another individual halfway around the world from Pittsburgh was equally intent on removing the voice of another.

Yesterday, social networking sites Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and the site that hosts this blog, Blogger, were all hacked into. Facebook, LiveJournal, and Blogger (for the most part) stayed online, but Twitter's site completely went dark.
Ordinarily my response would be so what, these sites are fairly frivolous and the worst that could happen is that you have to wait a few hours to take yet another inane Facebook quiz. However, according to published reports, the attack was carefully planned and orchestrated and had only one target: an individual going by the user name Cyxymu.

So what's so special about this guy Cyxymu? Cyxymu is reportedly from the former Soviet republic of Georgia and has been making some statements that made some people angry. So angry, in fact, that they decided to silence Cyxymu by bringing down these web sites. The fact that not only Cyxymu, but the other millions of users also went offline, was apparently just collateral damage.

Internet experts have tracked the hackers location to Abkhazia, a territory along the eastern coast of the Black Sea that's in dispute between Russia and the Republic of Georgia. The presumed thinking was, shut down the websites, and it will shut up the person.

Many of you know that in 2003, I started a nonprofit that brought together volunteers with charities that needed help. Pretty innocuous, right? As it turned out, another charity didn't like what we were doing and threatened us with a lawsuit. When we didn't back down, four weeks later our web site was hacked into and destroyed. Coincidence? I never thought so. The FBI were called in and traced the hackers to overseas, where their jurisdiction ended, and the case was closed.

It was bad enough that this happened, but the hackers hacked into the server and not only destroyed our site, but the 50-60 other sites on the server, not unlike these hackers that brought down an entire site in an attempt to silence one person.

No one wins when a hacking like this takes place. And as these hackers will discover, it won't shut down a single person or a single organization. A few weeks later, my web site was back online, intact and just as strong as ever. I suspect the same will happen to Cyxymu.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Buy One Get One Free Applies to Groceries and Sometimes...Diplomacy

You can laugh at Bill Clinton all you want, but he is the "git er done" man of the hour, paying a visit to North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and successfully convincing North Korea to free Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the two American journalists arrested in March for illegally crossing the border into North Korea.

Clinton was an unexpected choice, doing what I'll call a "Jimmy Carter" (an ex-president pressed into service to do some quasi-diplomatic work) and sitting down with Kim Jong Il, who, according to an Associated Press report has not met with a prominent leader from the West since allegedly suffering from a stroke a year ago. In fact, Carter might have been a more logical choice, since he himself sat down with Kim Il Sung, Jong Il's father, for similiar, unofficial diplomatic talks in 1994.

The situation of using Clinton reminds me of a slogan used in Clinton's first presidential campaign: buy one, get one free. In that case, it referred to electing Clinton (buy one) and getting the brainpower of Hillary, too (get one free).

It's interesting that this time, roles have been reversed, with Obama appointing Hillary and getting Bill for free. Many politicos squonked about Bill being a detriment when Hillary ran, and I will admit he publicly said some pretty reactive, stupid, off-the-cuff remarks. But maybe, like Carter, he has found his ken as a behind-the-scenes guy smoothing the way with prickly dictators and even closing a few deals.

I'm sure the commentators will express trepitation that he will overextend his power and influence, usurping not only his wife's role as Secretary of State, but of Obama's as well.

And I mean this as no disregard to Clinton (or Albright before her), but despite many Americans thinking that the world is an enlightened a place as we are when it comes to the role and status of women in work and society, it's not. Certainly it's safe to include North Korea into this less-enlightened category.

And while I don't think that anyone should replace Hillary Clinton (or any female in that position) as chief diplomat, perhaps in countries where we know females are treated as third-class citizens, adding to the mix a seasoned (and yes, male) diplomat such as Bill Clinton (or Bill Richardson or John McCain or even Jimmy Carter) makes infinite sense. Especially someone who has a long-standing, positive relationship with a person or country that historically has not been an ally.

Since the journalists' arrest and sentencing Obama, Hillary Clinton, and others in the State Department have issued public apologies to North Korea and asking for the immunity of the arrested journalists. And there were indications that perhaps it wasn't falling on deaf ears.

In July, Ling (through a phone call to her sister Lisa Ling, herself a National Geographic Channel correspondent) reported that she and Lee were never transferred to prison after sentencing, but were rather being held in what was classified as a "guest house". It was speculated that while they were not free per se, their kind of house arrest was preferable and more humane than in transferring them into the North Korean jail system.

I have long said that North Korea is the country to watch, especially with Kim Jong Il at the helm. Not to discount the unrest and atrocities in other parts of the world, but we sometimes tend to forget this little island country that now, suddenly, has nuclear capability and a leader that doesn't always seem to think too rationally. I am hopeful that this is but a small step in a series of other steps to open up diplomatic talks with North Korea.