If you haven't been attending meetings, you're really missing out. The presentation by Kathy Fritts of City Utilities IT department was one of the best I've ever seen. We learned that City Utilities has 850 computers in their intranet and how this has come to be since the 1980's when the computer system was a huge mainframe with punch cards and data entry personnel who received their information from hand-written reports.

I was amazed by the lengths City Utilities has gone to in terms of security. Because of the possibility that a future terrorist attack may very well come via the Internet as well as protection for the Utilities' and customers' records, a company of sophisticated hackers were hired to test security by attempting to break into the network system but were unable to gain access until they were actually sitting in a CU office. A software program was purchased to test how quickly passwords could be broken, and only one person's password could not be broken. Kathy explained that the passwords that are hardest to break contain both upper and lower case letters, special characters such as asterisks and underlines, and numbers. She cautioned against using any word in a dictionary or if a word is used, misspell it. A good password might be created by using the first letters of a phrase in a song as long as it doesn't spell a dictionary word.

Kathy showed us a piece of electronic equipment used to record readings from the meters. She showed us a Personal Data Assistant (PDA) that can contain a database for the meter reader's route telling where meters are located, if there's a vicious dog, and other pertinent details. A future development will be a piece of equipment that will read new style meters from the street. Eventually meters may be read electronically from downtown and meter readers will be no more. The new style water meters are being placed in new homes as they are built. Each new meter costs about $125 and CU has 180,000 customers each with water, gas, and electric meters so it would cost millions of dollars to replace existing meters.

I thoroughly enjoyed Kathy's presentation and so did everyone else to whom I've talked. Of the gathering of about fifty people, all seemed to be very interested.

Note for Genealogy enthusiasts: Ozarks Genealogical Society fall conference "Honor the Past" featuring keynote speaker Barbara Vines Little, CG, will be held September 16-17 at the University Plaza. Call (417) 862-0850 or (417) 881-5424 or email: ogsoc@sbcglobal.net for more information.

Mary Phillips, President