Assignment 12-1

On Saturday the 17th of April, like every mid April Saturday the kenduskeag canoe race goes on. It s a tradition here in Bangor, Me. When all the locals dig there canoes out of the back of the shed. Dust themselves off, and in about a day become the most rag tag professional canoeist on this side of the Mississippi.

The event is like the Bangor fair and the Fryburg smashed together on the water edge. The only missing is the friend dough, and the clowns. Other then the ones with the paddles. So the race started out eventful as the crowd gathers at local hot spots along the stream, mostly near bridges, like the famous 6 mile falls, and the finish line.

The races top competitors contains some great white water enthusiast, like Maclean who finished the race in first in 2 hours 19 min and 5 seconds, and Lang who came in second with 2 hours 23 min 46 seconds. Jeff Owen from Orono and Steve Woodward from Cumberland came in third with a two man canoe. Being the first two man vessel to cross the finish line.

The race is also used as publicity stunts to all out hysterical events that involve Obama's, cut out, gumby, a guy dressed like captain Morgan, and the Mohawk twins. These boats please the crowds and bring in the audiences. That and the many tipped over canoes along the way. This race isn't just for professionals but it is for anyone who has a canoe. Some people cant even hold a paddle, which of course the shore is lined with safety just in case someone takes a swim. This race has a total of 889 paddlers in 479 canoes and kayaks entered the race.

The unexpected event during this years race is the unbelievable water flow. The water was questionable by the lowest that some of the veterans have ever seen it. This caused by the quick melting that occurred in February and March. This leaves no snow to melt and fill the rivers at the specific time.

Windmills

Energy is all around us, from what we cook with to flicking on the light switch. We need energy to survive, but at what cost does will it take to have energy. We are burning coal, putting up nuclear power plants and extract to oil to keep up with demand. This process is hurting the world around us, we are killing our only resource, the earth. What solutions do we have to keep our energy demand satisfied without hurting our earth.
One option that has been harness for hundreds of years but never has been fully taken advantage of is wind. Wind is all around us in the State of Maine. Its on our lakes, rivers and mountains, its near our coasts and on the rolling hills. If its so plentiful, why are we having trouble harnessing it.
In the town of Lee, a wind project on Rollins Mountain was planned to go into effect and constructed on Summer of 09. The plan was 31 windmills along the town line of Lee and Lincoln all the way down into Burlington. The purpose of the project was to harness wind energy for the state of Maine therefore leading to a lesser carbon foot print in the state. Carbon footprint mean energy used and carbon release by combustion into the atmosphere. The project was going to bring jobs to the area, which is great because our only industry, has been failing since 80's early 90's. It was the solution to the world and the towns problems, but the project never got off the ground.
The problem was that people don't seem to like windmills all that much, there reason being that they are ugly, loud, and annoying. They state that the windmills aren't natural. Statements like this are made everyday when observing the windmills in areas like Mars Hill or Stetson Mt. I may agree with most of the opinions of the locals but these people realize that even though they are all those things, they are still an necessity and need to be constructed, kind of like telephone poles once were. They are need to support the high demand of energy that we have.

There are a few groups that fight these environmental project because they either cannot get by the reasons obvious annoyance or they have there own beef with the spinning wonders that are saving the planet, its hard to say. Its groups like this that are killing the environment.

Windmills are the best option for the success of the earths cure, the reverse of pollution and in the hard economic time, to get jobs for hurting citizens in rural areas. We need to stop the bull crap and deal with the turbines, just like our great-grandfathers dealt with telephone poles.

Lifelines Meeting

Campus Ministry opens up new schedule for students outdoor activities at crazy cheap prices. Lifelines the ministry is ready to plan a new fall of rafting, rock climbing, hiking, and paintball schedule. They are offering these trips to whoever is ready for adventure and has a great attitude.
Lifelines has been around for the last 10 years trying to build leadership, character, and spirituality with students on most of the Bangor campuses in this area. Joe C, the leader of lifelines works on staff with them years round. He states to his group, “We need to get trips together, and we need to find people who are willing to commit; that's the hardest part nowadays.” Lifelines method of running trips is almost always contacts from students. If a student in the organization knows someone that is part of another group, they get together and make a plan to make something happen. This makes it a more personal relationship with the group that is on the trip.
“Our focus is to reach as many students as possible,” says staff member Tessa Prest-Berg. The group likes to reach students in different majors, groups, organizations, religions, and views. “The more people the better” Joe states as he goes throughout the meeting.
Lifelines has seen a dwindle in the numbers for their trips. The rafting which is usually full every year, have had a tough time getting the numbers that they are used to. Which is hard to believe because rafting is such an awesome sport, the action, adventure, the rush! Lifelines hope to see a different turnout this fall, improve numbers, and more group members to take the leadership of students that are graduating.
Lifelines is a Spiritual based organization that focus to is to share the gospel of Jesus Christ to everyone.

Windmills in Maine

Drew Pickering

Windmills in Maine


The state of Maine is going through some changes, the one thing that Maine is not good at doing. Maine has always been the nature state. The place where it is “the way life should be.” Maine is a stubborn state full of stubborn people, but what if changes were for the good of Maine, and the environment.
A new type of energy has storm the east coast in the form of wind. A new wind revolution is changing the way Americans see green energy. Energy is something that is as easy as a gust of wind, making is simple to capture. But how will this wind energy effect our small towns across Maine.
In the more north eastern part of the state, a town called Lee has been the same way for 200 years since it was established. Lee has about 800 people total, and it has little to no economy. Its inhabitants mostly work in the mills and lumber yards in the surrounding areas, which has been a steadily dropping business for a while. Little does Lee know, but it is a prime spot for a set of windmills on Rollins Mountain, a range on the west side of town.
The windmills would provide money for the land owners in the project area, the companies would be paying big dollars for the once known worthless land. The wind turbines would also provide a source of green energy for the state of Maine. Lowering the carbon foot print of our state.
This may sound like a good deal, but there are some problems with the wind turbines. They stick out if place in the middle of Maine on the side of a mountain. There white color and tall stature makes them an eye sore among the Maine landscape. They have been rumored to make a ridiculous noise, that is more of a drowning to the sense.
This will greatly effect the rural towns in Maine. They will have to switch from their rural ways of classic living to giving up natural beauty to green energy and modern technology.

Stop Light

Drew Pickering
Stop Light

As of February the new stop light on the East Entrance of the University of Maine campus has been installed. Its intention was to provide support to the overwhelming commuter traffic that floods the university campus every day. The system is a failure and waste of time for many students.

The light has a system that is primarily for traffic from the main road into campus, but when you are leaving campus the odds are against you. Although the system seems very simple, it is very expensive for the value. Lastly, are the people trying to always beat the red light. All considered I would like to get to school without encountering a light.

The lights primary objective is to cars into the campus in the most effect manner, off the main road into campus to park their cars and run to class. This makes sense; the light has the ability to be programmed to give different times for the stop to go pattern. This light however is very one sided, leaving a line of cars from the main entrance backed up. It takes forever to leave this campus.

The expense of this piece of equipment is ridiculous. The cost of a stop light can be up in the 10, 000 of dollars or more. This equipment does not seem to give us a so called bang for the buck. I have driven through the intersection many times in the last 4 years without the use of a metal box telling me what to do. I feel that we as student have done well overall in completing the task of getting through the intersection safely and quickly.

Red lights always seem to bring out the bad side in us. Why do we always seem to be racing that damn light even thought we know that the yellow means red is coming. I feel that this causes more accidents than anything else. The idiot that figures he has got at least 3 seconds, which may seem like a life time in a car but is defiantly not. They speed through expecting that everyone sees them coming. Meanwhile, the other drivers now affected by the lights draining inability to think for ourselves, we drive aimlessly into the oncoming impatient idiot. This I feel is more dangerous than life without a stop light.

The East Entrance on our beautiful, untouched Umaine campus does not need a traffic light, but save the time, money, and judgment of your students and take the idea of a stop light out.

Small Town Kid

Drew Pickering

Small Town Kid



In 1968 a boy was born in the small town of Lincoln. His parents named him Thomas, which very quickly grew into Tommy. The kid didn't speak a lot , quite, content, always kept more to his father. He grew up quick, strong, stubborn, and hard working which most small town kids do. Tom was smart but having the attitude that you cant get paid to go to school, he spent more of his attention on work then on class.
Toms father was a logger, which was the only other profession in this small town other then working in the paper mill. Tom started to help his father at age 14, running the skidder, and hauling logs. By the age of 15 he was running his own operation on the weekends, from chainsaw to skidder, using the equipment while his father was taking the weekend off.
In high school he did not focus on physics or calculus but region classes that included mechanic's, heavy equipment, and woodworking. Tommy would bring his car into class to work on it, focusing on skills that had more practical applications. Tom had also developed a strong personality, the “no bull shit kind.” He only saw one thing that was important, “the harder you work, the better off you are.”
After graduation he went right into the mills, working nights full time, trying to make enough money to ask his girlfriend to marry him. About 5 months after he graduated his family home burnt to the ground. Tom then asked his girlfriend Cindy to marry him on Christmas Day, a month after the tragic incident with the home. Then things turn bad for Tom's family as his father suddenly had a heart attack and died that February leaving no one to reconstruct the widowed mothers home.
Tom took it upon himself to build the house for his mother. Having no experience, and no knowledge of what to do, he took on this large project alone. People around town would stop by and show him different things, which he would work at till done. He worked full time,in the mill an hour away, driving home after work to construct. Every free moment of Tom's life at that time went into a house that wasn't even his. It took him only four months to finish so his mother could move in.
Tom then married Cindy about a year later, starting a family and having 3 kids. He also built five more houses for his family. He would not have done so if not for the skills that he learned in desperate times.

Sad day for the Frisbee fans!

Frisbee inventor dies at 90 years old.
Pick

Cutting In Maine Jail Systems

In recent news Sheriff Glen Ross is showing concern with the recent Mental Health Bill. Sheriff Ross runs the Penobscot County Jail, and he sees these cost cuts affecting him and his jail.
The state of Maine is cutting back across the board for all systems, but should the jails be included in this big budget plan. Glen Ross states that it should be the last resort for the state of Maine, he states mostly on the fact of the high suicide rate that takes place in the prison. There are at least 100 people in Penobscot county that are put on suicide watch, many of them being in the prison. If this funding were to be cut, Sheriff Ross feels that his employees may be inadequate to run the jail.
When asked to edit this broadcast on channel 6 news, many different ideas came to mind. This includes content, the facts about suicide watches and its importance in the jail system. Or the mental health bill and the cutting of costs which our Governor just passed. How should we share this information with our viewers? What kind of verb usage gets our point across?
The news story primary focus is about the cuts that are going to be made in the jail, but does not really specify how much or what they are. The reporter just states that the cuts will happen, which makes the viewers have a false sense of the actually event.
The article also did a huge switch from the focus on budget cuts to the amount of people that have to be on a suicide watch list. This seemed primarily to give sympathy to the amount of work that the jail has. It was a good tactic, but it was such a large switch in the focus of the news air, that I felt like I was being tricked.
The usage of verb is mostly past tense as what has already happened, and then present to switch to what could happen. The reported did fine as to get his point across and did well in using the proper verbs for the actions.

Media Convergence

Media convergence, what is it? How does it work? Is media convergence good or bad? These are all questions that the media world is asking, but what are the answers.
Media convergence is the idea that because of the progress in technology, various different types of media are combining into a single media. An example being, newspapers, magazines, tv, radio, and internet all being combined and accessed on our cellular telephone.
Media Convergence can be both good and bad as it all depends on our view. We may have different in view points if we see it economical, relational, or efficiency. A different stance could be taken on all of them as media convergence has a huge gray area when breaking it down into good and bad.
Economically media convergence is a huge influence of where money is going and who it’s coming from. It is usually more apparent in the buying of new technology, like computers, cell phones, palm pilots, or iphones. This is a process of constantly buying the technology to make life easier; fueling companies to make more advances in technology to constantly grow. Thus, making more opportunities, more places to invest; you know economics 101. But, if we are buying the new more efficient way to get all our media, who is buying the magazines, papers, cable, movie rentals. There really isn’t a need, because it’s all now in the palm of our hand.
Efficiency is a goal in our lives; the more we get done the more successful we are. This is apparent, but how do we accomplish these goals? Media convergence is suddenly making everyone a multi-tasker, we can get everything in one place. Your e-mail, cell phone, calendar, GPS, and another thousand applications are now found inside something called an iphone, which is no bigger than a poptart. Technology has made media so much easier to access and a hell of a lot cheaper to view, all your news papers, articles, videos, and time wasting games are now free.
Does media convergence help our relationships? It brought us facebook, myspace and every dating site know to man. It enables us to communicate by voice or text anywhere at any time. IF we have this much access to communication, we should all be that much closer, right! This does not seem to be the case, we in fact have grown further apart. We can communicate with each other 24/7 but what is the content of that communication. Our motivation has suddenly flipped, instead of caring, encouraging, considering, and affirming, we are looking to just please ourselves. None of us log on to facebook saying “man how can I help someone today.” It’s a selfish motivation to flaunt ourselves, hide our weaknesses, and see the latest gossip. It has corrupted the foundation for healthy relationships, which involves transparency, vulnerability, and sacrifice. None of which can be easily done through our wireless modem.
Media convergence is very gray area, as it all depends on our standpoint, where coming from, and what we’re trying to accomplish.

Review of "Just make it HackMe"

For this blog assignment I decided to critique the article "Just Hack Me" written by Ashlee Vance for the New York Times. The article focuses on the underestimation that we put on passwords as users, that many different users all seemed to use the same password in a recent study.

The articles main source of information comes from the site Impera. Impera contains information on the case that involves a hacking of a large number of user names and passwords on RockYou.com. After RockYou was compromised, Impera reviewed over 32 million passwords and complied the passwords in to most common used, which included password, 123456, and 123abc, but who's passwords where they.

The site RockYou is a software creator for sites like facebook or myspace. It provides its user with add-ons including slide shows, picture management and everything you would need to make your profile aesthetically friendly. Who would used this sort of software? I do not see this site as a priority for a strong password, nor do I see that anyone using it would have anything to be stolen as probably most of the users are 12-18 year old girls, looking to make something cute for there pages.

So if the data that is collect are the used passwords from 12-18 year old girls, how well is the article representing the amount of our population that use passwords to protect bank accounts or stock exchanges. I feel that the article scrutinizes the rest of society because of the misrepresented data provided.

I do feel that the article had very good content, as I agree that some people do not take their passwords seriously. They don't understand how easily it is to steal someones identity until its too late. The article also does a good job at finding explanatory quotes from seemingly reliable sources, but the quotes do seem to overload the topic.

The article is very un-balanced and unfair because of the misrepresented data, and the extreme use that is put on it. If the writer would have found more data proving his point, then I feel that the article would have drastically improved its worth to us readers.


“If Your Password Is 123456, Just Make It HackMe”, written by Ashlee Vance. It was published on the New York Times' website on January 20, 2010.

Haiti in Ruins

On January 14^th 2010 Haiti was shaken into rubble by a massive earth quake. This quake was so intense that is reached 7 out of 10 on the rector scale, 10 being the highest. The quake’s location was near the largest city in Haiti Port- du- Price, where over 2 million being affected by the disaster. The people of Haiti were left in ruin. There were thousands of people buried under the rubble and not enough rescue teams to save them in time. The suspected body count was near 100 thousand.

One man stated that “For the moment, this is anarchy,” said Adolphe Reynald (NYT), an aid to the port-du-price. There are thousands in need of food, water and shelter. The streets littered with dead bodies from the collapsed buildings.

The media acted swiftly to cover the story, as the reporters trying to get the destruction, horror, and grief on the papers back in the states. This included pictures on the New York Times site of the said dead bodies lying among the rubble, the morgues piling the ones that were not so lucky from the traumatic event.

My question is, does it seem right to show someone’s loved ones mangled and broken in our newspapers or on our websites. Are we disrespecting the lost lives of the disaster, or are we helping by using the graphic photos to better explain the devastation that unfolded. This picture would or could lead the people of our nation to help with the cause.

The point of a journalist is to set light in the darkness, to show people what needs to be seen, was the New York Times in violation of an ethical problem that the media has to deal with everyday. It’s hard to say who is right and wrong, yes the truth needed to be shown, but maybe not with a pile of bodies on the street.

Cave, Damion, Ruth Fremson, Neil MacFarquhar, Helene Cooper, Micheline Maynard, Donald G. McNeil Jr., Jack Healy, Sharon Otterman Ginger Thompson comp. "Patience Wears Thin as Haiti’s Desperation Grows." New York Times. 15 Jan. 2010. Web. 15 Jan. 2010.

Welcome

This is my first blog, My name is Drew, I am a senior graduating this May. I have been at the University for 4 years in Survey Engineering Technology. I am graduating in May hopefully, and I have no idea what my plan is.

A few things about me..
I love the outdoors, most of it includes a lot of water and elevation, or the too combined. My focuses in life are my family and God.

I have no interest in being a journalist. This is mostly because I am not much of a writer, but hey no worries, I'm sure that I will learn a lot in this class.