Housekeeping

Tech Savvy in a Perilous Age

I’ve been reading up on some tech issues involving security, website issues, and a host of other things. I’ve found some great things.

While its always been a nagging feeling that I should do more for security, famed whistleblower Edward Snowden recently said that professionals, and he mentioned priests, should do more for the security of their Parishioners.

The NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, has urged lawyers, journalists, doctors, accountants, priests and others with a duty to protect confidentiality to upgrade security in the wake of the spy surveillance revelations.

Snowden said professionals were failing in their obligations to their clients, sources, patients and parishioners in what he described as a new and challenging world.

“What last year’s revelations showed us was irrefutable evidence that unencrypted communications on the internet are no longer safe. Any communications should be encrypted by default,” he said.

And:

He added: “If we confess something to our priest inside a church that would be private, but is it any different if we send our pastor a private email confessing a crisis that we have in our life?”

This led me to consider our Parish resources. I’ve learned a lot from The Lawyerist, regarding paperless offices, redundant backups, cloud storage, and encryption at rest. That led to a simple investment in Crashplan.

We’ll keep you posted on the progress here. Stay tuned.

UPDATE – After my hours of research, I asked a Parishioner this weekend what he did for a living… IT director working with security for NASA. If only I’d’a known!

For the Life of Me…

Somewhere in the Holy Land, around 1885, via Wikimedia.
Somewhere in the Holy Land, around 1885, via Wikimedia.
I don’t know why I changed my blog over to this web address instead of keeping it at fatherallen.net. What was I thinking?

Well, I was thinking that it’s far better for me to have a dedicated blog, rather than a website that’s half photoblog, half anything and everything else. The things I do to evangelize!

But anyway, here we are at my silly little blog, as opposed to my silly little website. It’s a change in scenery if nothing else. Though remarkably devoid of any and all content, so far, we’ll have to work on changing all of that.

And we’re going to get to work on changing all of that very soon! “Why,” you might ask, “is it going to change very soon?”

Because I’m leaving for a whirlwind trip through the Holy Land starting next Wednesday, and will no doubt have lots of things to post. And zero time to do it. But when has that ever stopped me! I post at least once a quarter here, despite the regular allotment of my business allowances which get sunk into this remarkable adventure in Evangelistic outreach.

So, we’ll be in the air some 15-16 hours, in Bethlehem a few days then in Galilee a couple of nights, with a Mass said by the Holy Father somewhere right in between all of that activity. It’s a non-stop, whirlwind kind of trip, and should be completely exhausting.

But, oddly enough, I’m looking forward to it.

I’ll keep you posted.

PS – If you have any Mass intentions you’d like me to pray for in the Holy Land, leave a comment! Send me a note! Let me know!

Redbuds Abloom

Redbuds Abloom

There is soooo much going on around the Parish, and in my life in general, that I cannot find the time to write about much of it at any given point in time. And I have a few personal projects which need wrapping up this spring, which will take quite a bit of said time.

Be that as it may, keeping a weblog is sort of a necessity in this day and age, so I will need to devote at least some time and energy to it. I’ve put up a few links to others I’m in contact with, and will have to be adding some as time goes on.

Also, I don’t write about Church life (i.e. the Universal Church), as a rule, but am tempted to start commenting on that as the year progresses. #We’llSeeAboutThat

Splash, out.

Hello world!

So I’ve decided to start a blog. And am hijacking this stock intro post to add a few thoughts.

  1. I’m an artist not a scholar. Still, I like to read and do have some education.
  2. The plan is to to develop an outlet wherein I can be authentic about my journey in faith, and share in the world of ideas and conversations going on in the world today.
  3. To keep things real.
  4. Not to take it too seriously. I don’t have that kind of time.
  5. To meet new people, make new friends.
  6. To write. A friend recently had to joke that I write a lot (instead of just saying Shut up already.)
  7. God, I love being Catholic.

There we go. The next step is to conquer the world.

The Rev. Kenneth Allen