Blitzed by @FeedBlitz

Some of you may have seen a scary message when you clicked on a link to my blog post this morning. The service that handles distribution of my blog, FeedBlitz, had a bit of a meltdown this morning. They've explained the error in an email and on their blog. In part,

This morning, shortly before 8am US Eastern, one of our databases became overloaded and, to use a technical term, crapped out.
Our monitoring apps told us of the situation, we quickly jumped on the apparent problem, and we thought we were done … but there was more to the issue than at first appeared.
One of our downstream web servers that handled tracking became horribly overloaded as a consequence of its being unable to reach that specific database. That in turn caused a failsafe in FeedBlitz to kick in, which had the nasty and unintended consequence of putting up a scary malware message.

There was no risk to your computer or with anything on www.roasterboy.com. I'm sorry for this false alarm. FeedBlitz responded quickly and correctly, getting the servers back online and communicating pretty well.

Twitter / RoasterBoy: It appears that @feedblitz ... via kwout

They did continue their regular Twitter posts, which did not relate to the crisis at hand and, for while, leading to the impression that it was business as usual. 

BoA getting it wrong in Holden

So, the Bank of America in Holden recently repainted the entrance to its parking lot. In the process, it got the arrows wrong in all the ways possible.

In this view, we're facing Main Street.

1. Left turns form Main Street into the BoA parking lot are prohibited. Nevertheless, there's an arrow on the parking lot showing how to make that left turn.
2. Coming out of the parking lot, only right turns are allowed. Therefore, there's an arrow for a left turn.
3. Both of those arrows are on the wrong side of the island. 

21st Century media via 19th Century communications technology

While my mother-in-law was in hospice care, we watched closely for signs of pain. If we saw grimaces or if she cried out, the nurses could give her more morphine.
Sometimes, though, the prescribed amounts weren't doing the job. The hospice team would quickly confer, in person or by phone, and recommend an increase in the regular and/or PRN dose and/or frequency. The nurse would then send the recommendation by to the doctor who, in turn, would send the prescription by fax to the pharmacy.
If the fax machine is out of paper or otherwise not working properly, the request or orders can be delayed. An hour's delay for a normal prescription is no big deal. An hour's delay for a terminal patient who is in pain is, well, do you want that for your mother?
The first patent for the process that would become a fax machine was issued in 1843. Based on those ideas, a commercial fax line connected Paris and Lyon in 1865.

The Pantelegraph in 1865, by Giovanni Caselli

The Pony Express had come and gone.We were still a couple of decades away from the telephone.
Physicist Michio Kaku observes that paperwork is, to descendants of hunters and gatherers, proof of the kill. Our caveman selves, instantiated as CYA bureaucrats in insurance companies and government offices, demand hard copy to prove that we've done something useful.