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Cough, cough. Hack, hack.

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     Fair warning before reading: this post will be all over the map, a zig-zag mystery worthy of Tod Goldberg (who?), so mentioned because I've somehow found myself temporarily captured by the world of short mysteries.  The world of today is vastly long, too much and too long at times...the news, the amount of infomation, the drawn-out TV series, the terribly long lines everywhere.  And so I happened to pick up a batch of Best American Mystery & Suspense .  As one editor wrote of the series: Short stories can act like little tuning forks, helping us to clarify our own values.  In a time when our values are being tested daily, it’s hard to think of anything more important.   But alas, just as with those stories, this post has little to do with any of those writings* but more about a few real-life mysteries: remote work, penetrating identity and financial accounts (yours), and the new world of professional hacking (North Korea alone has ne...
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All Fall Down...

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     The chill has come with the announcement of fall, and with it the changing colors of the trees.  Friends tend to ask me what the best time of year is to "catch" the colors and it is truly a crapshoot.  This was again a year of drought in my area, so the trees, which somehow tend to know far more than our weather folk, appear to have begun the change early.  Why hang around looking for that extra bit of moisture when you can simply retire for the winter and hope that next year will be better (sort of like so many voters around the country).  And at this point, I must inject this side note that what used to be a 26-year cycle of drought is now projected by some to be a longer 50-year cycle; indeed the forecast is for a warmer and drier winter as well.  If things don't improve, archeologists may have their answers as to why once-thriving cultures such as the Pueblo of  Chaco Canyon , Mesa Verde, Canyon de Chelly and others simp...
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Fear(ful)? Boo(who)?

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    That rather famous phrase --"The only thing you have to fear is fear itself"-- actually came from Teddy's cousin, fifth removed, FDR (just as Jimmy Carter was related to George Washington, sixth-removed, wrote History Facts ).  Personally, I'd never heard of those terms "x-removed" but I guess it's sort of like that six degree of separation theory (or think Kevin Bacon if it's easier).  What??  Did someone say bacon?  Okay, I'm drifting off again so let's get back to being fearful...seems that I was doing fine, even with all that is happening in the news, until I read a piece in The New Yorker on just how unprepared we in the US may be for another war.  Here are just a few tidbits from the piece:      --30% of our Javelin antitank systems went to Ukraine, and it will take around 3 years for us to build that supply back up (that is, assuming we stop sending over more of those weapons; and don't even bother asking how low we are on b...
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(A) Salt & Pepper

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Police description of "wife-beater" outfit of alleged gang member      You've likely heard that old joke of two peanuts walking in the park: one was a salted.  Ha-ha, and it's something most of us can chuckle about because few of us have actually been assaulted, that is unexpectedly confronted, pushed and suddenly finding ourselves dodging punches or heaven forbid, knives or guns (and here I openly apologize to the millions of women and children who are victims of domestic violence and are indeed physically or verbally assaulted every day in their homes).  And one certainly doesn't expect this to happen when walking with your friends on a popular hiking trail, but that is exactly what happened.  Apparently, my friend had asked some girls to turn down their phone's music at a lookout by a lake, a place where pretty most everyone came to enjoy not only the view but also the quiet (there were people who thanked him for saying something to the girls).  Whe...
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