Image from LA Times

After reconsidering a run for president, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie stuck with his original answer…

Heck no!

The Republican governor had originally said some time ago he wouldn’t seek the White House.  But, pressure from voters and donors unimpressed by the current Republican field caused him to give it one last look.

A media frenzy surrounded Christie’s possible entrance into the race, which would have offered an alternative to front-runners Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.

During a press conference, he cited his current role as governor as the driving reason behind his decision.

It did not feel right to me, in my gut, to leave now when the job here was not finished.”

Thanks to USA Today!

Hey! That’s not the iPhone 5.

Bad News Bernanke: Fed Chair delivers report on the nations’ economy.

Putting it on “paws?” Hollywood Council pushes back ban on fur.

Football & Führers: Country singer’s theme song pulled.

And, will a picture still last longer?

Psalm 103:1-5 (NIV)

Of David

1 Praise the LORD, my soul;
all my inmost being, praise his holy name.
2 Praise the LORD, my soul,
and forget not all his benefits—
3 who forgives all your sins
and heals all your diseases,
4 who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion,
5 who satisfies your desires with good things
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.

Reflection:

“Praise the LORD, my soul; all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the LORD, my soul, and forget not all his benefits…!” You can almost feel the deep sense of joy and gratitude that the psalmist is trying to express with every single word. He doesn’t want to praise God on just a superficial level, but with all of who he is, and from the deepest places of his heart. Likewise, when we see and know the wonderful things that God has done for us, we too are to erupt with this sense of joyful life of consuming praise. Not merely worshipping with God with small compartments of our lives, but with every single thing. This does not only cover our physical being but everything that our lives touch: work, school, family, etc. He is the One who has forgiven us of every terrible thing we have ever done, and He healed the diseases that plagued our lives for so long. How else could we respond, but to give all of who we are? Let’s praise the Lord!

Response:

God truly is the One who has worked through the many situations that we have gone through in this life in order to bring us into a life of knowing Him. Therefore, after a time of reflecting on the things He has rescued you from, spend some time praising Him and declaring what He has done. This can be with a simple song, a short prayer, or even a poem, but whatever it is let’s do it with all of our hearts and richly offer up our lives again. Praise the Lord!

In early July, the Greater Baltimore Tech Council launched a search for companies with the most unique, innovative and creative technologies. A panel of judges reviewed the applications and compiled a list of the top 10. Two Catonsville-based companies made the list, including one located at bwtech@UMBC.

Now you can vote for those two Catonsville companies, Via Place and Rogue Networks, to be named the Greater Baltimore Tech Council’s “Hottest Tech in Town.”

Via Place develops mobile GPS apps and is an affiliate company of chamber member Mindgrub.

Rogue Networks develops cybersecurity solutions in the Cync incubator at bwtech@UMBC.

Voting is open until October 13 here.

“I think it’s more than a jargon,” says Karuna Joshi of Cloud Computing, a topic she will discuss this Friday during a Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department Colloquium, “It’s an actual paradigm shift.” Ms. Joshi, a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at UMBC, has been pursing research on Cloud Computing for the past three years and was recently awarded a prestigious IBM Ph.D. Fellowship (2011-2012) to help fund her efforts. Ms.Joshi explains that with the widespread implementation of Cloud Computing, Computing has the potential to become a utility—such as power or water—that would be widely available over a wireless network.

Though the cloud has the potential to save money and increase efficiency within organizations that choose to implement the new technology, there are still serious concerns about security, she says. What’s revolutionary about the cloud, for example, is that is removes the need to contain software and information on a particular device. Instead, information and services are wirelessly available to a network of users. The risk is that without proper security enforcement, sensitive information could potentially be accessed by hackers.

Nevertheless, Cloud Computing is steadily gaining credence among popular companies, says Joshi. Amazon, Microsoft and Google, for example, have all developed clouds. “I believe it will be strongly adopted by the industry,” says Ms. Joshi, “It’s the fastest growing field in the computing area.”  Even federal agencies have been mandated to move to a cloud system under the Federal Cloud Computing Initiative, as a way to reduce cost by consolidating necessary information and services into a central, easy to manage location.

Ms. Joshi explains that the novelty of the field makes her work exciting. The research allows her to explore issues that have not been addressed, such as the future of negotiation for acquiring services in the cloud. Through her research, Ms. Joshi has developed an ontology for the life cycle of the cloud that is composed of five phases: requirements, discovery, negotiation, composition and consumption. In addition, she is collaborating with the National Institute of Standards and Technology ( NIST) on a web-based prototype system.

Ms. Joshi envisions a future where powerful portable computing devices, like iPads, tablets and smartphones, will replace traditional computers. This future is only possible, explains Joshi,  if the widespread implementation of Cloud Computing and the transformation of computing into a service becomes a reality.

Ms. Karuna Joshi will speak about her research this Friday, October 7^th at 1 p.m. in ITE 227.

NPR’s Morning Edition reports the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote today on a temporary measure — or “continuing resolution” — to keep the government funded through mid-November, after having missed its appropriations deadline for the 14th year in a row. Congress uses continuing resolutions when they can’t complete work on appropriations bills before the start of a new fiscal year. UMBC political science professor Roy Meyers told NPR, “What that means is that there’s a great deal of uncertainty when you’re running a program about how much money you have to hire people or to sign contracts and the like, and that creates lots of inefficiencies.”

A USA Today article on the same topic focused on proposals to improve the budget process. However, not everyone is optimistic about the suggestions. Meyers is wary, telling USA Today, “When members of Congress don’t want to confront the difficult policy decisions, they start talking about process, and we may be in that phase now.”