Chris Estes

So its official I am going to be attending Birmingham Wordcamp.

From the about page of Wordcamp Birmingham

So what is WordCamp Birmingham?

WordCamp Birmingham is a conference for WordPress users and developers being held in Birmingham, Alabama on September 27 & 28, 2008. It is one of several WordCamps that have been held or being planned around the world.

The folks from Automattic provide this excellent explanation of what the conferences are all about on their WordCamp Central site.

According to CNN and the McCain campagin Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail account was hacked.  According the the CNN article the account was a Yahoo account.  I wonder if it was a free account or paid?

You can form your own opinion when you read the ticker and the following fall-out from another Sarah Palin controversy.  It just goes to show you that e-mail is certainly not secure.  Even the mega secure Yahoo! can be cracked.  Scary, Eh?

McCain camp seeks investigation over reported e-mail hack

(CNN) — John McCain’s campaign said Wednesday it has contacted “appropriate authorities” over a report that Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin’s personal e-mail had been hacked.

“This is a shocking invasion of the Governor’s privacy and a violation of law,” campaign manager Rick Davis said in a statement. “The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment.”

The statement came hours after a user on the Web site WikiLeaks said he had gained access to Palin’s Yahoo e-mail account and gained access.  Screenshots of the e-mail messages and photos of the Alaska governor’s family were published on that Web site and later on gossip Web site gawker.com.

FBI Spokesman Eric Gonzalez in Anchorage, Alaska confirms to CNN an investigation is underway.

“We are aware of the allegations and we are coordinating with Secret Service as far as the allegation that someone has hacked into Governor Palin’s personal e-mail account,” he said. “We are going to be working a joint investigation with Secret Service on this.”

Brian Hale, an FBI spokesman in Washington, also confirms the FBI has been contacted about the incident. Two federal law enforcement sources say the FBI and Secret Service would have concurrent jurisdiction normally on a matter such as this, but it remains to be seen if the Secret Service will take the lead on the investigation because Palin is a protectee.

The e-mails shown include one from July between Palin and Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell and another dated earlier this week from Amy McCorkell, the woman Palin appointed to the Governor’s Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in 2007.

Palin has faced criticism for using a private e-mail account to conduct some state business — prompting critics to allege she was attempting to hide information from the public record.

Sometimes I run accross random articles that are interesting. From the title you can guess I just read about Fire Hydrants. I have lived in rural areas where we have to pay for our fire hydrants as a community.  In fact I where I live does now.  Do you know how your fire hydrant system works?  Do you even know where yours is?  Will it be enough?  The people in this article just assumed.

Are the fire hydrants in your neighborhood turned on?

ROCKWALL COUNTY – A North Texas homeowner wants you to learn from his family’s tragedy.

By CHRIS HAWES / WFAA-TV – Dallas, TX

The fire hydrants in his neighborhood are turned off.

But he didn’t know that until June 24th, the night his house caught fire.

“My grandfather died last year. My wife’s grandfather died last year. All our pictures were the biggest thing that we lost,” said Eric Aderholt.

It didn’t have to happen. When the fire began, firefighters from around Rockwall County responded quickly.

But when they went to hook hose to hydrant, there was no water.
WFAA-TV
Fire hydrants painted black may not function.

“No one ever told us that they were turned off,” said Aderholt.

Clay Hodges is the general manager of Cash Special Utility District.

He explains all the district’s hydrants, including those in Alexander Ranch, have had their water turned off since just after 9/11 – something a trade association spokesman tells us is common practice for rural systems.

“These hydrants need to be cut off in a way to prevent vandalism or any kind of terrorist activity, including something in the water lines,” Hodges said.

But Hodges says fire departments know, or should have known, the water valves can be turned back on with a tool.

“All our fire departments, at least the local ones, I know were notified of that.”

But, when firefighters came to the Aderholt’s home, no one had that tool.

By the time someone brought it, it was too late.

The neighborhood association’s now working to get the tools in the hands of homeowners, as an extra precaution.

Cash Water’s also sent out a letter letting fire departments know they’re welcome to use the hydrants, if there’s enough water pressure but reminding them they’ll have to turn on the water first.

“It was a tragic situation we don’t like to see that happen to anybody, especially one of our water customers,” said a company representative.

You may have noticed the fire hydrants along Aderholt’s street are black, not red.

In Texas, that legally warns firefighters they may not function – private companies such as Cash Water are not required to maintain enough water pressure to fight fires.

They maintain the hydrants are technically only there to help flush out and clean their systems.

Over the next few days you will notice some changes to the look and feel of Chris-Estes.com.  In addition to design changes we will be adding some functionality that we haven’t utilized.  Some of the technical changes we are going to make will be changing our feed burner address to a Google feed burner address.  The new design will take care of the bare space around the blog by adding more advertisements.  Yes the advertisers might not be everybody’s favorite thing to see on a page to clutter it up.  Since times are hard I can’t bring you the great and cutting edge stories with out increasing the advertising on my blog. So my entrepreneurship and marketing training is kicking in to utilize the space.

The advertisements are going to be based on content relevant ads that bring in revenue per click and others one I select.  The ones I select will be target to things I think you are interested in.  In order for me to receive revenue it will require you to make a purchase so of course I am only going to put up advertisements you would be interested in.  The banner and content ads are the only type of advertising I plan to us.

There is the thought of sponsored post.  But that would discount the type of post I plan to make.  Speaking of post.  I plan to talk more about politics and a little less this and that.  So for the next few months my theme is going to be Chris Estes on Politics.  I might sneak in a random post or two about just random interesting things.  So get ready and prepare as I plan to bring you coverage of the the National and local races that affect everyone but more specifically the things in my area that matter.  I am going to try and bring fair and balanced information.

Bloggers postings and musings are becoming more and more powerful and I would like for my voice to be heard and addressed.  I have to yet decided on a candidate for president.  Even though I am trending towards one based on the conventions. Within the next few days you are going to witness a change in direction of my blogs change.  As the major changes are in place I will make announcements on how you can utilize the change for you.

My feed url will be changing from a Feedburner URL to a Google Feedburner URL that will need to be updated in your feed aggregator.

Stay Stuned for future updates.