I like CNN, I go there a lot and read the articles but ...the S&P index lost how much?!

One often overlooked aspect of programming is that evil legal side.  Case in point, you are keeping user records of some kind.  Now, I'm not talking about SSN, Health Records (HIPPA) or bank info.  No, I'm speaking of retaining a users home phone, address, first name, last name, etc.  At what point does this fall into the legal consideration category?  The answer is "check your local codes".  Yea, it sucks, but there's hope.

Within 5 minutes I was able to find the state of Ohio's code regarding (legalese warning!) Private disclosure of security breach of computerized personal information data which is a fancy way of saying if someone steals enough stuff to grant the ability to steal someones ID or other non-public records.  The Federal govt has a law(s) for it, but local laws usually reach further and are more clear (as clear as a law can be) as to the actions necessary for this (typically notification and credit monitoring).  In this case, here's what the Ohio Law says "Private" information would be... Article 1349.19 section 7 chapter B items 1-4 (I don't make this stuff up)

(b) “Personal information” does not include publicly available information that is lawfully made available to the general public from federal, state, or local government records or any of the following media that are widely distributed:

(i) Any news, editorial, or advertising statement published in any bona fide newspaper, journal, or magazine, or broadcast over radio or television;

(ii) Any gathering or furnishing of information or news by any bona fide reporter, correspondent, or news bureau to news media described in division (A)(7)(b)(i) of this section;

(iii) Any publication designed for and distributed to members of any bona fide association or charitable or fraternal nonprofit corporation;

(iv) Any type of media similar in nature to any item, entity, or activity identified in division (A)(7)(b)(i), (ii), or (iii) of this section.

If you can't get it though normal means (public records, mass media or publication), its considered private information.  Still leaves room for "what is public" but something to consider.

I've been reading a chapter a night for the most part, except last night where I discovered one of them was 50+ pages and heavy on tech so I had to pay attention and it's covering good stuff that I -really- do want to know about.  Today however, I'm inbetween projects so I'm looking into a WCF book I have yet to really get into (I'm more interested in the security aspect of the book really) so, good time to do so -- learn some stuff, become a WCF ninja.  I'm all over it.

The WCF book I mentioned uses the all-mighty AdventureWorksDB as a backend.  Recently, one of the guys here at the office sent out a link for some downloads of other microsoft books for free, direct from microsoft, which I downloaded all 3 of them (why not?!) and then it hit me -- why not try to mesh the Linq book and the WCF book?  They're different and "unrelated" so this is crazy enough to work.  Kill two birds with one stone eh?

I've got a small library at the house here, I'm sure you have something simliar at home.  I've got things from college and various use books.  Unfortunately,  I use to read a lot more before I was a home owner, averaging a couple books a month and covering a slew of topics -- from psych, physics, engineering, programming, design, management, ton of stuff.  I particularly liked the psych books, they were fun to test.

I bought a couple books a while back and I've yet to really get into them, one is "Pro Sql Server 2005" and another is some kind of C# book ("Pro" as well).  I'm a firm believer that even the most basic book/video on the net can teach you at least one thing, and at my job, I've been learning a ton of stuff (I'm a big fan of delegates), but I've stopped reading like I use to -- until tonight.  I've decided that I'm reading (and also coding) a chapter a night at least, from both books.  I also need to snag a couple books @ work regarding certifications which I need to talk about Jim about the best approach, and the accountant recently gave me some test material I need to look over too.

So, this, tagged with my latest obsession with BeyondTV, my new Zune (yep, need a bigger one) and all the podcasts I've found, converting TV shows to ipod formats and rigging all this up to my TV, stereo and gigabit network, my new laptop and the new vid card I picked up so I can play bioshock ...shouldn't be too hard, right?

So I get a call from a person I use to work with and I've setup their home computer, etc etc, and she tells me "I've lost everything past C in my documents" ...hu?  Ok, she's moved them somewhere, no sweat.  I do a search across the system ...nothing.  Hmm, maybe she deleted it, ok fine, open up word, find a recent "lost" document and ...it opens.  With the recent updates.  Ooooooook.  I do a file, save as, point it to the desktop, bam, file appears.  Go to save as again, point it to my documents, it saves ...no file appears.  But if I make a file that starts with a, b or c ...it works. D-Z ...disappears INSTANTLY.

Now I'm confused.  I bust out the mad scandisk, and about 45 minutes later, scandisk says "I'm fine, no errors found" ...wait what?  Ok, windows is lying to me.  I plug in the drive to my laptop, run a scandisk on there and it says "hey I found stuff and fixed it!" sweet.  So I plug it back in and its time to move this stuff off the drive.  I go to copy it, and it promptly tells me there's not enough room on C.  Hmm, soooo how much room do we need (250g attached drive, 200g system drive so its possible) ...and I get this.

Yep, you see right, pentabytes.  Not mega, giga, tera ...penta.  12 of them.  I end up finding that _ONE FILE_ was causing this.  One. 

We discussed that we don't try to download the internet and she needs to show me the datacenter for the entire northern hemisphere thats hidden under her house.