In February of 2008, I reported on the arrests of Scott and Summer Day. Scott and Summer were doing what so many Americans are finding themselves doing these days: growing their own medicine in the form of cannabis. Scott suffered from a rare condition that usually took the lives of its victims at around age 12. Because of this, he required upwards of $40,000 worth of treatment every month; cannabis provided a relief the costly medicines could not provide.

Almost a year ago, I regretfully extended that report with the loss of a good man: Scott Day. He and his wife found their lives wrapped up in the turmoil of the drug war; the stress of which, ultimately aided in the untimely death of Scott.

In that report, I pleaded for anyone and everyone to contact the appropriate departments in Beaverhead County, Montana to try and halt the prosecution of Scott’s wife, Summer. She was still facing 2 years to life in prison and a fine of up to $50,000 after having to deal with the blow of losing her husband.

Now, I am pleased to report some wonderful news! According to Patients & Families United, Summer Day has had her prosecution deferred! Here’s the quote:

We are very pleased to announce that Beaverhead County has decided to defer its planned prosecution of Summer Day.

Many of you know Summer well, from past gatherings we’ve held, and also knew her husband, Scott Day, who died last September. They became cherished members of the Patients & Families United network from the moment we met them, soon after the western Montana drug task force invaded their home and destroyed Scott’s medicinal garden. At the time, they were medical marijuana patients – but unregistered with the state health department.

In our view, the county’s unnecessary but relentless prosecution of Scott and Summer Day contributed mightily to the worsening of Scott’s health and his premature death. The county attorney’s continued attempt to prosecute Summer, even after Scott had perished, was unfounded and especially unconscionable.

We congratulate Summer on having this legal cloud finally dissipate, and we thank her attorney, public defender Jon Moog, for all his hard work on Summer’s (and Scott’s) behalf. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to know and work with both of them, and gratifying to see another patient cleared of punishment at the hands of our overzealous “criminal justice” system.

Depending on the type of deferment, this means that the charges against her could, eventually, be dismissed.

This is a wonderful bit of news in a long struggle.

ILoveBonnie.net would like to personally congratulate Summer and extend a thanks to her public defender, Jon Moog for his hard work.

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RAID != BACKUP

This is a story worth sharing with anyone concerned in the tech community.

http://journalspace.com/this_is_the_way_the_world_ends/not_with_a_bang_but_a_whimper.html

Tuesday:

Journalspace is no more.

DriveSavers called today to inform me that the data was unrecoverable.

Here is what happened: the server which held the journalspace data had two large drives in a RAID configuration. As data is written (such as saving an item to the database), it’s automatically copied to both drives, as a backup mechanism.

The value of such a setup is that if one drive fails, the server keeps running, using the remaining drive. Since the remaining drive has a copy of the data on the other drive, the data is intact. The administrator simply replaces the drive that’s gone bad, and the server is back to operating with two redundant drives.

But that’s not what happened here. There was no hardware failure. Both drives are operating fine; DriveSavers had no problem in making images of the drives. The data was simply gone. Overwritten.

The data server had only one purpose: maintaining the journalspace database. There were no other web sites or processes running on the server, and it would be impossible for a software bug in journalspace to overwrite the drives, sector by sector.

The list of potential causes for this disaster is a short one. It includes a catastrophic failure by the operating system (OS X Server, in case you’re interested), or a deliberate effort. A disgruntled member of the Lagomorphics team sabotaged some key servers several months ago after he was caught stealing from the company; as awful as the thought is, we can’t rule out the possibility of additional sabotage.

But, clearly, we failed to take the steps to prevent this from happening. And for that we are very sorry.

So, after nearly six years, journalspace is no more.

If you haven’t yet, visit Dorrie’s Fun Forum; it’s operated by a long-time journalspace member. If you’re continuing your blog elsewhere, you can post the URL there so people can keep up with you.

We’re considering releasing the journalspace source code to the open source community. We may also sell the journalspace domain and trademarks. Follow us on twitter at twitter.com/jsupgrades for news.

Yea, ’cause OS X is really known for randomly overwriting entire disks.

It’s worth saying again: RAID configurations are not the same as backups performed routinely, separately, and on media that will last.

EPIC FAIL

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Since 9/11, one of the things that has confused me is the inability for our military to find/capture/kill Osama Bin Laden.

It does not make logical sense that the most powerful military in the world would have so much trouble finding one man. This is especially true considering how successful we have been in finding others.

I’ve always had a gut feeling that there was something else going on, until now.

For the first time ever, a Delta Force leader has donned a complete facial transformation to talk about how his unit was just moments away from capturing/killing Osama Bin Laden on camera. He decided to share his story after discovering how wrong the media was regarding Bin Laden.

“Dalton Fury,” has a new book due out this week entitled, Kill Bin Laden. He says that the proceeds will go to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation.

It’s good to know that our military wasn’t the failing point.

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