Second Half

While not as severe a case as Bruce Schneier's "Infants on the Terrorist Watch List", today I had a personally disappointing experience with U.S. Customs.

I had flown 3,000 miles from New Jersey to California to attend the wedding of a dear friend. The wedding was scheduled to take place on a cruise ship, after which the wedding guests would get off the ship and the wedding couple would proceed on a 10-day Mexican Riviera cruise. This was to be a rare chance to spend time with several old friends and colleagues.

Since the ship was to exit the U.S. (for the cruise, not the wedding), security has since been tightened for passengers as well as "temporary" wedding guests like myself. The groom had contacted me to get my driver's license number and other identifying information so that it could be checked at several security check points as we were to board the boat. In addition, our driver's license would be held so that they could verify that all of the wedding guests had gotten off the boat before it sailed.

The dilemma occurred when I arrived at the port, along with several of the groom's family, and we proceeded to get out our driver's licenses so they could be checked at the first point of entry to the ship. Regrettably, my name was not on the list. Not misspelled, not out of order, but simply not there. Being fairly easygoing about the whole thing, we were early and I was sure that such a simple oversight could indeed be corrected with the right escalation process.

The groom arrived and said that he would go through security, contact the wedding coordinator to see what could be done and then call me via cell phone. Meanwhile, I talked with several friends and eventually, after encouraging everyone to go on through security (as I was sure that I would join them shortly), the groom called and said that someone was looking into what could be done.

Someone from the ship's crew came out, asked me a few questions to verify to her satisfaction that I was indeed a U.S. citizen, and then asked if she could take my driver's license to the security people and see what she could do. She did say that I did not appear on the list and I acknowledged that.

About 10 minutes later, the same person from the crew returned, handed me my driver's license and said that, although she was deeply sorry, my name was on none of their lists and that there was a 48-hour notice requirement by U.S. Customs, and as a result she could not let me on the ship.

I did not press the situation as there was clearly nothing she could do. It was rather sad not being able to attend the wedding, although one friend later sent me a camera-phone photo of the lovely couple and they looked fabulous.

Chalk this up as another case where common sense security failed to prevail.

Technorati Tags: security

Posted by Bob Monsour at 10:23 PM | Permalink

I am looking forward to attending the Pragmatic Rails Studio. I am not an active Rails programmer, but am interested in hearing the best about Rails from two of the more prolific experts in the field. The opportunity to see/hear these guys with just a short 4-hour drive from home is hard to pass up. I am also going to take advantage of the 1-day Ruby tutorial day that preceeds the 2-day Rails program.

Stay tuned for a report on the event.

Posted by Bob Monsour at 7:11 PM | Permalink

Google has this wonderful service they call "Public Service Search". It's meant for web sites like the private school site that I built. Here's the blurb on what it's about:

Google is pleased to offer educational institutions and non-profit organizations worldwide free SiteSearch, which enables users to search your website, and free WebSearch, which enables users to search the Internet.

It works great. It lets me put a search box on the site and generates site-specific search results. It even lets me fit the results into a template that makes it all still look like the school site.

One of the very nice features is, er..., was that you could login to the Google public search site and get reports on the search terms used on your site. The reports were by day and it was a great way to see if site visitors were not getting what they wanted with the navigational elements presented.

It was a great feature, as I say, until it stopped letting me access the reports, generating the following, less-than-pretty error page. I sent an email to their support address about a week ago and have heard nothing back (caveat: I use spamsieve and it would not surprise me if their reply got caught up in the filter; it has been working so well, that I have increased my eyeball skim speed of my junk email box as it rarely catches a "good" email).

Sad to see Google "Public Service" go the way of most other "Public Services".

Posted by Bob Monsour at 6:56 PM | Permalink

Haven't posted in several weeks for a couple of reasons...both stress-inducing.

First, and most important by far, my brother was stricken with severe back pain, combined with a very high fever. So, off to the hospital emergency room we went (after a brief detour to the chiropractor, which the fire department obliged via ambulance...don't ask).

After an X-ray and an MRI, he was admitted to search for the reason for the high fever. Initial speculation centered on the possibility of an infection, which it was theorized could have manifested itself partly as back pain.

A blood culture and a few days of growth revealed a strep infection in his blood. Additional tests included a bone scan, a CT scan and a white cell scan...not to mention a TEE. The fear about this particular flavor of strep was that it could cause a heart infection; specifically, one known as bacterial endocarditis. Not a good thing to get or have.

After 10 days in the hospital, being filled with a combination of two antibiotics (ampicillin and gentamicin) as well as doses of a pain killer called hyrdromorphone (avoid it if you can), my brother was pretty much out of it. I came to find out after he came home that he didn't remember a lot of what transpired in the hospital (visitors, etc.). I spent a good part of each day (8 hours or so) at the hospital so that if any of the doctors were to come by, I could provide the necessary coherence to a conversation on behalf of my stricken brother.

For those of you who have had family in the hospital, you all know that it is not fun. For me it was all-consuming, both emotionally and intellectually. While I had work that I wanted to get done and tried to make myself think I could do some of it in the hospital while he was sleeping, I could simply find no available brain/heart cells to allocate to anything but my brother's care.

One of the reasons I no longer like to go into hospitals is that both of our parents, after being admitted (separate events), died due to complications from surgery. While these events were 13 and 9 years ago, to this day, I don't get a good vibe being in hospitals at all.

Without any exercise for about two weeks and eating plenty, I managed to lose 2 pounds on this stress-induced diet.

My second stress inducer over the course of the last week or so, has been my work on trying to sell a company. I am an investor in the company and the company has had more than one inquiry about being acquired. Among the more difficult things to do in such a situation, particularly as the lead negotiator (my role in this instance) is to make sure that the company's (the selling company, that is) stakeholders are all on the same page with respect to what a reasonable deal could be for this company. So far, so good, but it certainly can be trying. At times it can be a relief to deal with the prospective buyer(s) as there is a clear separation of interests and both sides know when the other is dealing reasonably. For the "insiders", the agendas are not all consistent and often hard to discern.

Anyway, just a quick note on my most recent stress-related weeks of life.

Posted by Bob Monsour at 8:22 PM | Permalink