3/31/12-4/1/12—Backing It Up

Weekend Reading: Two of Pentacles form the Hexen 2.0. The internet is a wonderful thing. How did we ever live without it? And while we're all pretty aware that stuff we put on Facebook or Twitter can be seen by authorities, retrieved from archives, viewed by potential employers and held against us in a court of law, keep in mind that EVERYTHING you do online has the potential to be seen at anytime by eyes other than your own. Your ISP knows and sees all. Google knows your searches based on your IP. Anything you do on a secure website is known by the owner. And anything that happens in the cloud in the cloud, stays in the cloud. And it's a VERY big cloud. Not to get your paranoia up, just stating facts. Someone else owns every site you hit, every mailbox receptacle you use and every engine you search. And you leave a fingerprint everywhere you go. More and more, people are realizing the things they erase from the internet, really aren't erased. So just balance your adventures with some common sense. And, while you're at it, make sure all the data you back up into the cloud is mirrored in some backup elsewhere, just in case everything go boom. With so many of your service providers operating in the ether, it never hurts to have all your bases covered.

3/30/12—Feeling The Pain

Today's Draw: Six of Pentacles from the Hexen 2.0. Have you ever spent two hours working on a brilliant composition about making tough decisions and being the guy who created the atomic bomb, only to have your blog site eat it?

I have. So, instead, today's entry is about how, no matter how disappointed you are by this, I am more disappointed. Gah! It was really good, too. But it would take more energy than I have left to re-create it. I'll circle back around with another card from the Hexen tomorrow.

But I'll leave you with the moral. Sometimes we have to choose between duty and our heart. Sometimes we have to make decisions where, no matter what we choose, people will get hurt. Consider your choices carefully, then make your decision without regrets. There will always be consequences you can't anticipate. Live without regrets. 

And if you don't know who Robert Oppenheimer was, he created the nuclear bomb out of duty to our country and a love of physics. He was also responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of people and creating a weapon so serious, it hasn't been used since. Upon first seeing it explode in tests, two divergent quotes from the Bhagavad Gita came to his mind: 

"If the radiance of a thousands suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one." 

And

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."