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Category: Story

9/11 Tribute Lights NYC

Dawn’s Handmade Jewelry

It’s great being retired but Covid-19 has pretty much killed off all my side hustle of playing bass in a couple of bands. It also killed off my wife Dawn’s business of selling jewelry at street fairs. It’s just too risky for her because of her Lupus.  

I’ve built her website to sell her hand made jewelry. I’ve found the the tech side is much easier for me then the marketing side <grin>.

I’m certainly biased but many people find her handmade designs both unique and beautiful. You can see some of her creations below. And, find the web site here: Dawn’s Handmade Jewelry

cafe52 Woodside Webcam

Woodside Webcam

Back in 1999 when I was working at JP Morgan as an IT consultant for CSC I decided to registered the domain cafe52.com. At the same time I had a DSL line provisioned and requested a static IP address. I did this so that I could run my own web server and email server.

Being a member of the JPM network security team at time I couldn’t do things by half, I built a Linux firewall that utilized the TIS Tookkit (Trusted Information Systems). This was an open source version of the Gauntlet Firewall which we used at the time. There were no binaries for Linux available so I had to compiled the toolkit from source code. The firewall directed Internet traffic to my Linux web/email server and, allowed me to browse the Internet. I was in geek heaven.

Around the same time while working at JPM I acquired a Mac PowerPC. This Mac had a video input. The gears started turning and before long I had an 8mm handy cam connected to the Mac and was directing Internet traffic to the video stream from Mac. The Woodside Webcam was born.

Since those early days the Woodside Webcam has gone through many different technology iterations and hardware outages. The current iteration is a Raspberry Pi which is certainly a lot smaller and less power hungry than the original Mac PowerPC. You can see the live stream here:

Woodside Webcam

25 Years in IT

I’m retired now but I spent close to 25 years working in IT. A good portion of that was spent working in network security. So, this Dilbert cartoon struck a chord with me. There have been plenty of times where a firewall I managed was blamed for a problem.