A huge amount of data was stolen from the Metro election commission here in Nashville. Over 300,000 people’s names, addresses, social security numbers, etc. were taken, so the city, in it’s infinite wisdom (cough, cough, covering their asses) decided to provide identity theft protection for all those whose data was stolen. Sound like a great idea? The problem is, it’s a band-aid for a hemorrhage…not enough. Here’s an email to one of our council members from someone very close to me which describes the shortcomings of metro’s decision:

Your website was forwarded to me since I live in your district. As you, I was pleased to see Metro trying to take some action in responding to the recent breach at the Metro Election office. I was greatly disappointed to learn of the program selected and the ineffective measures proposed and the exorbitant costs that the city will incur. Nashville is home to two of the largest ID Theft Protection Services in the country and to my knowledge neither of them were contacted. I am very familiar with the Debix program and it is an extremely superficial approach to deal with ID Theft and breach resolution. Their program is strictly a fraud alert system, with some technical bells and whistles, which can be done for free by all citizens simply by calling one credit bureau which is required to notify the others. The other preventative services such as Opt-Out and the Do Not Call Registry, Debix’s other preventative measures, are all free consumer services that can be easily accessed by web site links or toll free numbers. Credit related events only account for 48% of Identity Theft so this approach only addresses half of the problem…if that. An effective program should include restoration services that cover all types of ID Theft and takes over all of the work if a person becomes a victim. The menace of ID Theft is the amount of time and frustration an individual has to spend cleaning up the problem. The FTC and independent studies indicate that it takes between 400-600 hours and up to five years to resolve an Identity Theft. Spending the amount of money you noted to only partially protect the preventative side of this risk and provide no protection if the event actually occurs is a total waste of the City’s money. I know from experience that companies can provide blanket restoration services which means all citizens would be fully covered if they did become a victim, regardless of the type of ID Theft (Credit, Social Security, Insurance, Benefit, Employment, Criminal, Medical,etc.). I am just disappointed to see that a lack of understanding of what the true risk of ID Theft is has lead to such a quick and poor decision by the City. There are much better and more effective options available if someone did a bit more homework.

Once upon a time, Michael Jackson was a cute African American and he still looked like a human… I so remember running the loop around UT Knoxville to this song on my “walkman”. It was the perfect tempo for my pace, and Cindy and I would sing it together while we were running.

Remember?

I wonder who reads this silly thing, and how they find the page???

I see the locations of people who click on the blog, and it is very interesting. People from other countries, and all over the U.S. It can’t be interesting to anyone…it’s just my boring life.

Wow. I thought this was such a great idea, I could write here instead of my journals and keep it all in one place. It’s all in one place, but my last post was over a year ago. At this rate I might fill up a regular journal by the time I’m dead.

H’s in 7th grade. (Oh, my God, I know!). I really do remember 7th grade. Donelson Junior High, stacked sandals, Candies, Bell bottoms, hip huggers, flared sleeves, (sounds like today!), and as for ME, braces, a horrible hair cut (gypsy shag gone bad)…just plain old awkward. H’s 7th grade is nothing like mine, except for the clothes, which she would be horrified to know that I wore almost the same thing she’s wearing. She’s doing really well in school, has lots of friends, plays soccer, basketball, and runs cross country. She did give up dance this year, as well as school soccer and it’s such a relief. She loved dance, and was really good at it, but it just didn’t fit into her schedule with her other priorities. I think she was hanging on because she felt if she quit she could never be a dancer again…but we reassured her that she’ll always be a dancer. Later as other priorities shift she might take it up again.

We’re rounding the final bend in building our house. It’s been so long. I think we bought the lot about 2 years ago. Builder tells us we’ll be in by Valentine’s Day, 2007. We’ll see. We had no idea getting into this that it would be such a major pain in the &(*. (Although I suppose it could be worse, if we had a different builder). B is a great builder and has wonderful relationships with his subs and uses really good ones, so any problems so far have been very minimal. It’s just all the decisions and things that have to be made. Thank God J is such a details person…he keeps everything going much better than I could. Our architect is M , B ‘s brother, who is a genius. He took all our ideas for what we wanted and shook them up in his brain and out popped this wonderful home that is so cool. It’s more modern than I think we realized we wanted, but it’s great. We’re in an older residential neighborhood full of ranch homes, so it’s quite a bit different than the norm, but more and more people are doing these tear downs, so we aren’t the only ones. One thing that I am very certain of, and happy with, is that it is not a “Brentwood Box”, which is the best way to describe the multitude of HUGE, boring, homogeneous homes with little to no landscaping being built all over the Williamson County countryside.

O.K. here goes…
I’ve never done this before, and don’t really know why I’m doing it now, but writing things down in a journal is something I’m always doing, but never in the same book. So I have entries from many years spread out in no particular order in about ten different books. Maybe this will help.

I’m so glad the weather is cooling off. I had to run on my treadmill all summer because I just can’t run in the heat here in Nashville. Now it’s actually feeling almost pleasant. Soon the mornings will stay cool and crisp for several hours and I will remember why I like to run.

I’m going to call my dear daughter “H” for short…I think I should keep this relatively anonymous for awhile until I see how it goes. She is finishing up her third week in sixth grade and so far, so good. We’re still working on organizational skills and following through with homework, which isn’t so bad so far, but will get much worse. At the school she attends (where we pay more for one year than I spent on four years of college), homework is unbelievable. I have a hard time understanding why they get so much…what DO they do during the day? H doesn’t complain about it, I do! She doesn’t really know anything different, so I guess she doesn’t think it’s so weird to come home from school and do homework for three hours, squeeze in dinner and a shower and go to bed every single day.

I’m doing what I usually do in the mornings…eat breakfast, catch up on email, read the paper, make phone calls, and try to go to the bathroom enough so that when I go for my run I don’t have any emergency pit stops. (Sorry, but that’s an unfortunate reality of my body. Now anyone who knows me has probably figured out who I am…oh well). That’s the main reason I have to run indoors during the summer, because I can’t do my “business” in time to fit in an early morning run before it tops 95 degrees!

H has cross country and soccer practice today, soccer game and her birthday party tomorrow, “Nutcracker” auditions and basketball practice on Sunday…then school starts back again on Monday. I’m tired just reading that list. And to think we have cut back on a couple of things she does. Right now there is overlap in sports seasons. Cross country will be done in two weeks, and basketball is a pre-season thing, because she really wants to make the middle school team when they have tryouts in November. I don’t know why she’s doing soccer. Something tells me that is one that we could also eliminate.

I’m not sure how this works. I guess I will post this and write more later.