Progress Update: Fri Sept 6th, 2013

Ajahn Viradhammo Visits Abhayagiri Monastery

Ajahn Viradhammo will be visiting his old time friend (back from their days together at Wat Pah Nanachat): Ajahn Pasanno, abbot of Abhayagiri monastery.  Ajahn Viradhammo returns to Tisarana Sept 11th.

Upasika Program is Full

We would like to thank all applicants for applying to our Upasika program.

September Residential Meditation Retreat is Fully Booked

Again, we would like to thank all applicants.  The spaces filled up very, very quickly!  It’s inspiring to see the tremendous willingness of our community to meditate intensively.

Sunday Dana Meals for Vassa Fully Booked

Gratitude is expressed to Nalaka and Risini, for coordinating Dana meals for each Sunday all throughout the remainder of this Vassa Season (ending Saturday Nov 2nd).

Antique Tractor in Action

We’ve posted photos of Cornel Pop driving our tractor and delivering gravel in a recent work project to improve various paths on the monastery property.  Cornel and Ion have done great work in reviving the tractor back to health.

Note: we are planning to purchase a large snowblower attachment for the tractor, to do the snow removal ourselves this winter.

Website and Office Computer Security Tightened

In keeping with common best security practices (which would be typically found in any small or medium business environment today) security has been tightened in several ways:

• Passwords are centrally managed in a LastPass online vault.
• Poor passwords (based on English words, and/or not containing a mixture of uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and punctuation) have been replaced with stronger passwords.
• Tisarana’s website now has SSL encryption, meaning it is now possible to visit https://tisarana.ca.  This is mainly useful to protect logins to our Content Management System from any potential eavesdroppers.
• Webform submissions (namely, our Guest Bookings form, and Contact forms) now have SSL protection (during all movements across the Internet) between our website, and our Inbox.
• All Email is now retrieved from Email servers with SSL encryption
• File transfers across the Internet are now done either with SSL or SCP encryption (instead of unencrypted FTP, with plaintext password authentication)
• …and several other minor adjustments too geeky to mention