Grandpa Ham – Grandpa Can do IT!

A note to all of you who have been waiting since January (and before).  We have been given authority.  There is security paperwork to do, but the process is now in place.

Here are the details about the the IPAWS-OPEN Special Interest Group Meeting to be held at noon Eastern Time on wednesday where I will provide further detail  :

Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS)
Open Platform for Emergency Networks (OPEN) 2.0 Test Environment
Wednesday October 20, 12:00 Noon Eastern

During our next Webinar, System Architect Gary Ham will provide the latest information about access requirements for the IPAWS-OPEN 2.0 development test environment, including documentation and reporting requirements.

This program is intended primarily for system developers.  Please make plans to join us via conference bridge and Live Meeting. As always, your questions and comments are welcome.

IMPORTANT: If you have not logged into Live Meeting before, check out the following connection instructions and participant guidelines prior to next week’s meeting:
http://www.fema.gov/about/programs/disastermanagement/archive/LiveMtgInstruct.pdf

(1) Login to MS Live Meeting for visuals: The following login link can only be used 30 minutes prior to the scheduled meeting time: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/eiip/join?id=DMprogram&role=attend

(2) Call into the Conference Bridge number as follows: 1 (800) 366-7242  PIN 3647 6736#.

If you are unable to attend this month’s meeting due to other commitments, a recording will be accessible from the DM Web site.

Rick Wimberly’s Emergency Management blog identifies the fact that I stated that IPAWS-OPEN could make international connections. BUT………
U.S. regulations make inter-nation connectivity fairly difficult, if not impossible, unless there are treaties and/or formal diplomatic agreements in place. So, it can work with Canada where we have both agreements in place and a real need for cross-border civilian population alerting. With other nations… not so much. Just a clarification.

Marck Lucero (FEMA) and I made a presentation to attendees at the World Conference on Disaster Management in Toronto in June about how IPAWS will be able to play in cross-border alerting and how we can use IPAWS-OPEN to connect to Canadian alerting infrastructure in a way that allows resilient connectivity between local authorities on both sides of the border. It is a 17 minute presentation in Quick Time format.

Admiral Grace Hopper lived for a long time after her first claim to fame as one of the builders of COBOL. I met her while teaching at the U. S. Naval Academy in the 1980’s. She gave lectures on Computer Science and handed out “nanoseconds” to every midshipman in her lectures. A “nanosecond” was a length of wire through which a bit of data could pass in one nanosecond. It gave structure to the concept of data transfer. She did not like Ada (the language) much. COBOL was always first in her heart. But she did inspire the midshipmen, both female and male, with her fervor and intelligence. Me, I liked Ada the language and the fact that it was named after such an important player in the history of computing.
A side story from my academy teaching days. I once asked my “Computer Science for Rocks and Jocks” class an exam question on history as follows: “What claim to fame does the Countess of Lovelace have on the history of computing?” I expected some of the dumb Jocks who had not read the material to make jokes related to Linda lovelace. I would then be able to point out that Ada, the Countess of Lovelace, was not only the first woman programmer, but the first person (man or woman) to describe how to program a computer. Only two students rose to the bait. Unfortunately, one of them was a female midshipman. She may have learned the most valuable lessen of all: Do not jump to conclusions. It can be embarrassing.

You may think that my contract holder is a big downtown DC firm. Not so, although they do have offices near Dulles, VA. This office, however, is my favorite. And it really is rural. You can see cows from the window. As long as you have big internet pipes, you can work anywhere. Yes, that is me standing out front.

Eye Street - Lincoln Office

This is a somewhat out of context post for this site, but today is an out of context day.  I am sitting in the surgical waiting room and Walter Reed Hospital in DC while my wife of 33 years receives the kidney transplant she has been waiting for for 2 1/2 years.  We both thank God for this chance to extend her life and make it whole again.  Even more, we thank the donor, and the donor’s family, for having the courage and generosity to help others in their time of grief.   Donor’s who die with healthy organs can save seven lives: two kidneys, a heart, a lung, a pancreas, a liver and a small intestine.  So sign up.  I have.  It is a chance to live beyond life. And to gain the eternal gratitude of folks like me and the person I have loved for so many years.