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REGISTERING ON THIS BLOG WILL ALWAYS BE FREE. Soapblox charges Blue Oasis a monthly fee for the blog platform as well as the yearly charge for the website domain. There are also occasional fees for records gathering activities (CDs of meeting minutes and copying fees for letters and other documents from APOC). If you can support the blog and all of our work towards justice for ALL Alaskans and to hold ex-Governor Palin accountable, please visit the drop- down list above. Any contribution is much-appreciated!
Thank you!
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| About |
THE BLOG--HISTORY
"Blue Oasis" began in 2005 in its Blogger format (now an archive) and became possibly the first Alaska Blog on Progressive Politics. At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis was honored to represent Alaska as the state blog.
Transition--Community Blog
In September 2008, Celtic Diva's Blue Oasis moved to a Soapblox Community Blog format. Readers can become full participants by registering on the blog to comment and write "diaries." Diary titles appear on the right sidebar for folks to read and provide comments. Blog editors may choose to move some of these diaries to the front page.
While this Community was formed specifically with Alaska in mind, all "friends of Alaska" are welcome as members!
**Note about registering** Scroll down the right side until you find the link to register. Then, just follow the instructions!
**Note about comments** To comment on a story, click on the heading and then look for the "comment bar" at the bottom (it's light grey, I can't seem to change it). I believe the font color NOW permits you to see the "post comment" text.
YOUR BLOGMISTRESS
My name is Linda Kellen Biegel and I am a former 15-year Federal employee. Thirteen of those years were spent working for the US Army Corps of Engineers. I am also semi-retired from the Alaska music scene (singer, sound tech, stage manager, logistics).
When the blog was chosen to represent Alaska in the DNCC State Blogger Pool at the Denver Convention, I attended with the help of Alaska Real blogmistress, Writing Raven and my daughter Morrigan. On August 29th, one day after Barack Obama's inspiring speech at Invesco Field , my life took another turn as it did for all Alaska bloggers when Gov. Sarah Palin was chosen to be John McCain's VP running mate. Since then, I've either assisted or have been interviewed by media from the UK, Italy, Australia and Germany as well as national media outlets such as Wall Street Journal, NY Times, ABC Good Morning America's Kate Snow, National Journal, Dallas Morning News, LA Times, and NPR.
Presently, I work as a freelance writer, PR, event coordinator, community organizer, wife to computer programmer Josh and mother to 11-year-old Morrigan. Our family especially enjoys our summers in Alaska where we get to subsistence set-net fish Sockeye salmon as well as halibut fish/whalewatch in the family's homemade aluminum boat, "The Neverdone" (when it's working). We reside in Anchorage, Alaska.
Origin of "Celtic Diva"
I've used "Celtic Diva" as a screen name since the early 1990's on Web TV.
"Celtic"
"Folks have asked about my Celtic heritage, especially in light of my name. What they don't realize is that I'm adopted. I was born Valerie Morehead of the Clan Muirhead. I was adopted at three-months-old by the Kellens. I always "knew" I was Celt even before really knew. I was drawn to all things Scottish, especially music. That's why my parents eventually told me at age 16."
"Diva"
"Linda is well-known in Alaska & beyond as the prominent progressive political blogger Celtic Diva of Celtic Diva?s Blue Oasis. But back in the day, the early 1990s, I knew her as Linda Kellen, a member of the local folk/rock band Sky is Blu, which amongst other things performed in at least a couple or so of the annual women?s show Celebration of Change, in which I also performed. And if you don?t already know, let me tell you: Linda is one fine damn singer."
I went on after the break-up of "Sky is Blu" to perform with various Alaska musicians and work with national folks like Bo Diddly, Coco Montoya, Debbie Davies, Taj Mahal, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Bad Company, Creedence Clearwater, Carny Wilson, etc...
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| Proud Member of These Organizations: |
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| Archive Search by Topic (Prior to September 9th) |
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For the Alaska Community and beyond...
My daughter touched a Silver Medal!
USA Women's Olympic Hockey Team Star Kerry Weiland with our friend Isabella and my daughter Morrigan at St. Baldrick's Day
(Scroll down to find posts.)
(Please register to participate in diaries and comments! We'd love for you to join our Community!)
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Tue Jun 16, 2009 at 10:40:30 AM AKDT
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In our last episode, the Governor's right-hand woman, Linda Perez, sent me a letter with 1) her summary of the modified records request, 2) the new total cost of that modified request.
So we know the final cost of:
-- doing a search on two names
-- in six email accounts
-- through 10 months worth of emails.
In this post, I've provided the third page that I requested from the Palin Administration--the explanation for those costs from Enterprise Technology Services (ETS).
I know what you are thinking. You are thinking EXACTLY the same thing I thought when first reading this page...
HUH???????
Luckily, not being a computer expert, I happen to know a number of them who could wade through this gobbildy-gook and either a) explain it or b) ask the right questions to get a better explanation. One of them, a government System Administrator, provided questions for me to ask ETS about their processes.
From: Linda Kellen
Sent: Sunday, June 14, 2009 1:42 AM
To: 'Perez, Linda J (GOV)'
Cc: 'Nizich, Michael A (GOV)'; 'Perry, Kristina Y (GOV)'; 'Fabrello, Michelle A (GOV)'; 'Jones, David T (LAW)'; 'Leighow, Sharon W (GOV)'
Subject: RE: Records Requests
Thank you for the reply.
I gave the 3rd page of the letter to a Network Operations Manager at a federal government agency so he could explain it to me. He had some questions:
1) Please break down the parts of the job and the amount of time required for each part. Please describe each step in layman's terms.
2) At any of those steps, are you performing a batch process that requires no intervention until it's complete? That is, is it something you start by defining parameters, and then wait until it's finished for the output?
3) Agencies generally do their batch outputs overnight and off the clock. Are you billing the time for someone to sit and wait for that batch output?
4) Since all email is "combined," why can you not search on multiple users/mailboxes at the same time? Are you actually having a technician search on multiple users/mailboxes at the same time but just multiplying those same hours by the number of individual users for billing purposes?
5) You indicated that the duration of time for which to search does not change the time required to perform the searches. This seems to indicate that some process will automatically pull files for a set duration from the retrieval location. Is this correct?
6) Why do the e-mails need to be converted? Shouldn't e-mails be in a text format already, even if it's an e-mail coded in HTML that adds tags but doesn't interfere with searching it for text?
7) It sounds like you are doing a text-based search, meaning that you search for several text terms or phrases, correct?
8) Why does the e-mail need to be converted twice? From your statement before, it sounds like the e-mails have to be converted once when they are retrieved, then again when they get to the State Security Office for parsing. Why is that?
I would like to know, what criteria do you use when you determine who gets a fee waiver and who does not?
Also, could I please have a list of the records requests you have filled in the last 6 months where fee waivers were granted?
Thank you for your help!
Linda
Though these questions are also somewhat technical in nature, one can glean from them a pattern. In order for ETS to come up with the number of hours/charges per email account, they may be:
1) Charging labor for services (batch output) that do not require labor (are generally overnight processes),
2) Charging for a single search of all files, then multiplying those hours per email account to come up with the cost,
3) Charging for processes (multiple conversions) that may be unneccessary.
So now, we eagerly await Ms. Perez's response, as well as her explanation for who is eligible for the fee waiver available for information in the "public interest" that is provided in the Alaska Statutes.
However, I'm not going to wait until then to start collecting money to pay the bill because I have a limited time frame in which to do that before they make me start the process all over again. I've come up with an idea where you guys can truly help support this process but I'm still working out some of the details. Since I must get on the road in the next 1 1/2 hours to get back to Anchorage, I'll post more on this after the Assembly Meeting tonight.
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| Celtic Diva :: The price tag of Palin's transparency: What that money is paying for... |
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