July 17, 2006 Spokesman

Our guests of Rotarians were:  Wendy Allen, Washington Mutual Park Place;  Bistra Rodarmel, water color artist;  The afore mentioned Gayle Auslander, wife of Bob;  Evan Perrollaz, Ev Cox's landlord at Redmond Lodge and Sheryl and Jack Bloodworth.

A thank you list of key contributors for the duck dash 4^th of July event were honored by Jeannie McCrae with certificates including John Pruitt for the music, Brian Tucker for the flag retirement ceremony, Dennis Newell for the US Coast Guard rescue demonstration, Bob Webb for logistics, Dave Aubry for parking and Patti Smith for coordinating volunteers and many, many more.

The Duck dash leadership team reported that we did well this year with $44,000 of the projected $45,000 achieved.  Expenses were higher but sponsorships were up even though over all ticket sales were down a little.  Every year we learn something new.  Way to go to Lee Johnson Chevrolet for the KIA available as first prize at an attractive price to us and making their facility available for the labeling party.  Alice Volpe kept the venues humming seamlessly as last year  Couldn't do it with out you Brett, Alice, John, George and the rest. 

Committee reports were given and it was clear that Steve's year is well planned and under control.  Jack Danforth presented two flags from visited clubs and reported that Computers for the World projects are on track.

Chancellor Brockway came out of retirement at the request of President Steve and in spite of the announced decision to accept dollar happy gifts only, the giving spirit of Kirkland Rotarians could not be restrained.  It looks like another banner year if this first meeting is any indication.

Our program tonight was interesting and frightening on the subject of identity theft with Ernie Hayden, a fellow Rotarian and head of communications security for the Port of Seattle presenting.  Ernie is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) for you acronym aficionados.  In 2005 alone, there were 256,000 cases of identity theft complaints investigated.  All your data is at risk if you are unwary, especially social security numbers and credit card accounts.  We learned about "phishing", a false use of a well known business's web site with links to identity theft rings in foreign lands.  Wow is the only word that captures my sense of this.  Watch your credit card billing cycles, check out your credit reports often, get your picture on your cards, cleverly change your passwords at banks and other accounts, avoid being a veteran  (oops, too late for that), give a fraud alert to at least one credit bureau agency, don't answer personal questions unless you call them, keep the FTC hotline handy, copy the stuff in your wallet,  buy a confetti shredder from Costco, don't carry your Social Security card with you, don't use links ( e-mail direct instead),  quickly close pilfered accounts, change your pin numbers and keep a chart of action when you go through the laborious process as a victim.  Ask the person "why do you need that?" and hope they are not good liars.

I remember in the late 60's they were talking about us having a cashless society and then credit cards exploded in use, the internet came and now we are anonymous no more.  Where is this world going anyway?

Our speaker signed a book for John Muir Elementary's Library, Mary Alice Burleigh tried to pick the blue Rotary marble (President Steve never could get the card thing down) but failed and we went home at 8:00PM in time to watch 24 if it was September.

John Woodbery, Scribe