Look what you did!!!! Plus, responding to more obfuscation from the Office of the Gov.

by: Celtic Diva

Fri Jul 03, 2009 at 01:37:54 AM AKDT

First, let's gaze upon the fruits of ALL of your labor!!!!  On one hand, it made me feel REALLY good to see those numbers in writing!  I felt so proud of YOU FOLKS for doing this...it sure wasn't me!  

And I admit it, I felt a tad bit grateful to C4P and especially the Stapletongue for opening that gargantuan mouth and shortening our fundraiser probably by days!

However, all of that is replaced by the anger I feel over the games the Palin Administration plays on every level to keep their activities secret.  

Let's go back to several weeks ago, before icons and desecrations and pageant pictures in running magazines...back to trying to get over the initial shock of how much an "open and transparent Governor" actually costs a private citizen.

Let's go back to when we DARED to ask for a fee waiver and see the response!!!

UNDER $5.00??  Really???  So if Father Fiorelli at Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt made a records request of all emails dealing with charitable work, you guys would charge him if it was over $5.00???

Wow, that I'd like to see!!!!  Oh...but wait...it will cost me an arm and a leg to prove it, won't it?

Nice little racket you guys have going here!

Now comes the responses to my computer guru's questions:

Oh, yeah, that's much clearer and in layman's terms...except that it doesn't even make sense to the computer guys!

And I loved the part about "I don't have a breakdown of time for each task nor can I produce it.  We are not tracking our time to that level of detail..."

I see...so that's the story you give to the State budget people when one Department feels they are being overcharged for your services?  You are saying that you cannot provide them proof to the contrary?  Or is it that you just don't WANT to give them to us so that we cannot point out the amount of time you are charging us for overnight functions when no one is working...those labor-free calculations?  But that's covered in the next questions...

So the answer to #2 is "yes" and not-so-amazingly, so is the answer to #3!!!!!

"Reasonable processing time is chargeable..."  Realize, pretty much EVERY AGENCY does its "processing" overnight, while the IT department is at home in bed and if there is a night worker, he/she is reading a book or catching up on his/her email.  So exactly how is it "reasonable" to charge me $54.84/hr FOR UNMANNED COMPUTER CALCULATIONS??

Here's a direct response to this letter from a System Administrator at a government agency:

Getting someone's current email mailbox from the exchange email server should not be that lengthy of a task.  Even with a large mailbox, it is something that can be started and left to run.  Multiple mailboxes can be done at the same time.

Converting the e-mail to a .pst file would be part of pulling a user's email from teh exchange server.  There would be no need to convert it as a separate process.  Again, if it is going to take a while, it can be started and left alone until completed.  Multiple email accounts can be handled this way.

The SSO team uses this Paraben search tool to look for email.  It will only search "reasonable sized blocks" of data at a time.  This is really bizarre as using something like Microsoft Office Outlook will search the entire .pst at a time and you only have to start it once.  If you combined all the various .pst files into a single file, you could perform one search and be done with it.

Here are comments from a computer expert in the private sector regarding explanations given by the State's computer geniuses, Enterprise Technology Services:

They need the .PST files from Outlook for the individuals requested for that period of time, then run those files through Electronic Discovery software to put into a text searchable format. IPro EDD for example. This I know since I do it for a living every day. We do it all the time for attorneys.

Since it is unknown how many pages these collections will be, the onus is on THEM to meet the strictures of the narrowed request. That means they don't hand you a stack of 200,000 email and say "here you go", they just give you the ones responsive to the request. All the extra charges for winnowing through them should be born by the state and it's obviously outdated and ill equipped IT department. It is not your responsibility to pay for their inefficiency nor do you need an explaination of "boo-hoo our job is so hard". They're paid much better than I am and have state benefits. They should do their jobs before the F.B.I. marches in there, seizes it all and brings it to me to do their jobs for them.

Even with all the technical jargon, it's more than obvious that something stinks.

By the way, if you read this and YOU have any questions about the Office of the Governor's email and records request process, the Director of ETS (Information Technology) is:

Anand Dubey
anand.dubey@alaska.gov
(907)269-5744

Mid-week Wrap-up: Idiots, Backlashers, Soldotna Whiplash and Email Karma

by: Celtic Diva

Thu May 21, 2009 at 02:26:45 AM AKDT

A village is missing its idiot...

In the entertainment industry, if a talk-show host needs someone to fill in for them while they are away, the rule of thumb is to use someone less-talented as a replacement.

I didn't think Eddie Burke could find someone that almost...almost made me miss him.  Then, he had McHugh Pierre fill in for him on Friday afternoon.

Listening to both parts was painful at times.  It was as if he had a list of talking points sitting in front of him that he would check off as he awkwardly injected them into conversations with callers, many of whom he clearly knew personally.  However, the most idiotic thing he said by far was during his diatribe about the Governor's book deal:

"I just think it's so bogus, it's not outside employment.  It's not like Rishi has a job or I have a job.  It isn't a second job, writing is a hobby."

If one needs any proof of the embarassment, all one has to notice is that even though Conservatives4Palin members are the ones who religiously YouTube Eddie's Show and then post those YouTubes as a story, they recorded McHugh but made no mention of him anywhere on the blog.

Eddie, your place as king-of-the-idiots is secure.



Darth Stapleton joins in the Backlash.

In another Eddie Burke-related story, Meg Stapleton was on his show yesterday to promote the fact that the FEC dismissed the CREW complaint to the RNC about Palin's wardrobe.

During the show, she spent a great deal of time maligning those who filed ethics complaints.  Eventually, she dove headfirst into backlash territory:

...I think we are to a point where we may have to say you know what this is enough and if we have to stop it to the extent where we have to become more aggressive then we have to become more aggressive...

So, is she taking over for Nizich?



Changing direction this fast is giving me whiplash...

So Governor Palin has issued several statements in the last few days to try and convince people that she is on an equal footing with President Obama.  

One situation was just bizarre.

It seems that, according to the above-linked article in the AK Politics Blog by Sean Cockerham, Palin blames Obama for the closing of a GM dealership (Hutchings Chevrolet) in Soldotna:

"Today, we learned that Obama's decisions continue to impact Alaskans; while we as taxpayers now own General Motors, Obama closes another dealership - this time in Soldotna as more of Alaskans' hard-earned money and jobs are lost to big government."

The problem:  it's not actually closing (Hutchings is terminating the franchise agreement but staying open for service and used car sales) and the change has been coming for awhile, according to another May 10th article also referenced in the Politics Blog.

Then comes the weirdness...

UPDATE -- I just got a call from SarahPAC spokeswoman Meg Stapleton, who contacted Hutchings about this blog post. While I was talking to Stapleton, Hutchings sent me an email saying Palin is right.

His email said "the bottom line is this: Governor Palin is correct: Soldotna lost a new car dealership as part of the federal intervention. 44 local jobs were terminated. Over a million dollars in annual payroll was lost. The net effect to Soldotna is substantial. Obama's actions have directly impacted Alaska and Soldotna. The Governor is correct."

Two things:

1)  Why the HELL would Darth Stapleton and SarahPAC have anything to do with this?

2)  Ummmmm...doesn't that email, especially the repeat of the phrase "The Governor is correct" at the beginning and the end, kinda come off as rather creepy?  It seems rather "Stepford Wife-ish" to me!  I joke around (sorta) when I say "Darth Stapleton" but I swear that some day, I'm going to see her grab someone by the neck and hold him/her over her head.

Fittingly, the final story...


She who laughs last...

Governor Sarah Palin's email hacker, David Kernell, may be getting some serious help in escaping major penalties in the case.

That help originated with Alaskan citizen, Andree McLeod:

A lawyer for the Tennessee college student charged with hacking into the Alaska governor's Yahoo e-mail account last year says his client couldn't have violated Palin's privacy because a judge had already declared her e-mails a matter of public record.

"He's not suggesting that e-mail can't be private," says Mark Rasch, a former Justice Department cybercrime prosecutor. "He's saying this particular e-mail was not private or personal because of who she is and because it wasn't intimate communication. "

The reason he's arguing this is due to recent litigation in Alaska's courts:

Tennessee, he says, only recognizes an invasion of privacy when the invasion exposes something that is inherently private, and the victim was placed in a false light by the invasion. But Palin wasn't placed in a false light by the alleged hack, and her privacy wasn't invaded since "an Alaska court has issued an order requiring Ms. Palin to preserve the correspondence in her private e-mail accounts on the grounds that the e-mails are public records."

Davies is referring to litigation that was filed by an Alaskan activist before the alleged hack occurred. That lawsuit sought Palin's private e-mail. The activist charged that Palin used her Yahoo accounts to conduct official government business and therefore e-mail in the accounts was part of the public record and should be disclosed under Alaska's public records statute. A judge ruled, after news of the hack broke, that Palin was required to preserve the correspondence in her private accounts until the lawsuit was resolved.

Davies implies in his motion to dismiss that there are reasonable grounds to conclude that Palin's Yahoo correspondence was a public record, and cites case law showing that information that already appears on the public record can't be considered private.

That "activist" was Ms. McLeod.  At the time of the hacking, she had this to say about it:

"If this woman[Palin] is so careless as to conduct state business on a private e-mail account that has been hacked into, what in the world is she going to do when she has access to information that is vital to our national security interests?" she asked.

Now, a more timely question may be:  How will Governor Palin react if the young man who hacked her email accounts has his case reduced or dismissed because of litigation generated by Andree McLeod?

Oh, the delicious irony...