WTSIM Sunday Roast

The scent of roast chicken wafts through the house – the reassuring smell of Sundays, leisurely family days spent at home, everyone doing their own thing in different directions until lunch gathers them around the table. One nose buried deep in a book, another child intent on an elaborate game with toys and animals, another off at an aunt’s house until recalled for the meal. Sunday lunch is a

Backing Up Client Information

Non profit agencies are notorious for having inadequate resources to keep up with the crowd. One of the hardest hit areas is information technology and services.

With increases in Federal Laws protecting client information many haven't made the transition from a paper based system to fully electronic. Those that have are in most cases using well meaning employees whose original job descriptions have nothing to do with information management.

Systems can be exploited when their accessible to outside internet traffic. The majority of service providers I've had the chance of getting close to all have their computers networked and reachable to/from the internet. None of what I've seen shows any form of standardized imaging, controlled access, or protection from information being compromised...other than built in OS user IDs and passwords.

Here's a few tips to keep a non profit from facing a lawsuit:

1. Cut the cord. Unless a computer user has immediate need for internet access, disallow it both in and outbound.

2. Create an intranet for all electronic resources. Publications, client data, forms used regularly, and anything that's necessary for the job to get done.

3. Use existing tape drives for data backup rather than trusting server space that can be compromised by either attack or failure, preferably using a dual drive system...one for odd and the other even days. Doing so guarantees loss of only one day's worth of data in the event of failure of a unit.

A Trip into Town in an Orange Silk Scarf

Most of the time I am at home here, take sights that would astound someone fresh in from Europe for granted, like a lorry crammed with people in the open back, barreling along the main road. Sometimes, though, I feel like a tourist here, seeing things with fresh eyes, especially when I go into Cape Town on an almost joll, which doesn’t happen all that often.I don’t know whether it was my bright

Bob the Builder Eat Your Heart Out!

Bob the Builder, look to your laurels! This team can fix it and handle the business side too, all in fairy dresses. And they know how to use a spirit level!

Monday Mornings

When you bake bread every other day there are bound to be some disasters occasionally: usually forgetting about it, either while it is rising or once it is in the oven, as the computer inveigles you away to another time zone. Most of them are salvageable though – bread is very accommodating stuff and you can usually knock it down and re-form loaves that have risen too much, and still eat a rather

Braai by the Pool

Bright sunshine glints on the water of the swimming pool, which is still slightly murky after its winter rest despite a week’s machinations of chemical cocktails to clear it. Yellow leaves from the karee willow float here and there on the surface, bound to clog the filter, but the tree lives on to dapple us with its shade, fiercely defended by the romantic among us versus the practical ones, who

Reading South Africa

When I met and married my South African husband, I knew we were going to end up living here. It was part of the deal: he had been living in London for fifteen years and wanted to come home. We made a few visits over here to his family before we tied the knot and I started looking for some South African novelists to read, to help me understand a bit more about this country I would be moving

Sunshine in an Orange Skin

Living in a sunshine country we are totally spoilt with the abundance of fruit grown right here in the Cape. We revel in fruit that actually ripens to full flavour, that is sold by the roadside when in season, so that you can buy boxes of peaches that will all ripen at once sending you into an orgy of fruit salads, pavlovas and smoothies, just to use them up before they self-destruct. At a

Warm, fuzzy blog awards

I love getting blog awards, it gives me a warm buzz of belonging, so thanks to Jeanne of Cooksister for giving me one of these. Now, according to the rules, I get to share it with seven more blogs I love to read:Here are the rules: 1) Add the logo of the award to your blog.2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you (as shown above).3) Nominate at least seven other blogs.4) Add links to

Brown is the New Black

The post election global exhalation reached our house at breakfast this morning, with another illustration of this generation's different perceptions of colour to those of their hide-bound older generation parents.It's a normal school day filled with the usual rush to get breakfasted, sandwiched and out of the door by 7.30. This morning it is different though - an air of excitement and