mhryvnak.net

Where the F I Was

Posted on May 7 2012 by M Davies

I’m summoning my inner Nikki Minaj for this evening’s blog post title.

I’ve been avoiding my blog like the plague for the last few weeks because I was beyond pissed off at it. It seems that every time that I start to write a post, Firefox decides that it wants to freeze up and then WordPress conspires along with it to not save my blog posts before it crashes thereby losing whatever I worked on (sometimes for multiple hours). I haven’t figured out why Firefox is being such drama queen, but I have figured out what’s wrong with WordPress. A few years ago, I was having trouble with the backend of WordPress. In the “Edit Post” section, the tool bar at the top that would allow me to create links, bold, italicize, etc disappeared. I searched all over the Internet and in the WordPress.org forums to find a solution to the problem, but had no luck. I decided to do some further investigation on my own and found a plugin that replaces the WordPress toolbar with a proprietary third-party toolbar. Welp. For whatever reason, the toolbar was causing the autosave function to stop working. I have a feeling it was not compatible with whatever the most recent version of WordPress was that I updated to. This problem only popped up within the last few months. I took a chance like Columbus and disabled the plugin and luckily my WordPress toolbar is back. I also hacked at the WordPress PHP and set the autosave to happen every 30 seconds. I will never lose another post again, even if Firefox has another one of its temper tantrums.

No. I don’t like Chrome. No. I don’t like Safari. I have my reasons. I like Firefox best on Mac. Shut up, leave me alone.

It’s been a wild four weeks. Let me just tell you. On my last post, I was under a lot of stress and deadlines. Some of that has since faded, but not much. I will still feel better once this semester is over and I have my final grades. As much as I hate doing recap posts….here’s what’s been going on…..

I was on ComputerWise on 4/11 to talk about Pinterest. Below is a screen cap from the show. I was going to rip the show off of the DVR, but it was removed before I could. They will probably repeat it again over the summer.

On 4/16 Owen had an ENT appointment to which I found out that he would need to go for surgery. The doctor took a few hearing tests, and his right ear appeared to have the tube in from 2 years ago. Tubes are only supposed to be in the ear drum at max for 2 years. The tube in the left ear had already fallen out, the right tube was hanging by a thread. The doctor did not feel comfortable that Owen would hold still to remove the tube in the office, so we scheduled the surgery. The surgery was on 4/19 and everything went fine. Owen’s ear drums are completely healed and we do not need to replace the tubes, thank god.

In between all of that mess, the 4square meetup day was on 4/16 and I got to see Red Green at the Kirby Center on 4/17 with my crazy brother, who started a blog recently.

I went to the spring edition of the NWS Skywarn Training on 4/23 at Wilkes University. In the same week, I also participated in Community Reading Day, NEPA Blogcon Meet and Greet and was in the “Women in Technology” panel during TECHbash at LCCC.

I still have been regularly attending my Tuesday night COBOL (or as I like to call it COB-Hell) class and my Thursday night Networking & Communications class.

Busy, busy, busy.

I was supposed to be taking over the on-air Blog of the Week segment Tuesdays on WBRE’s PA Live on 4/10 in place of Harold who now has a full time job with my ~~employer~~ former employer Travelocity. I had worked out a deal with my manager at the time that would allow me to come in early enough on Tuesdays so that I could leave early and head down to WBRE. That was all well and good until I received another job offer. The job offer was for WNEP. I’m sure you can understand why this arrangement wouldn’t have been a good idea to move forward with. There was a lot of back and forth and I wasn’t really sure what was happening with the WNEP job. I know that my references were being checked, so I figured that was a good sign for my career, but not for the PA Live segment. I was communicating with Harold the whole time to let him know what was going on and we immediately started our contingency planning. We asked Gort if he would want to take over the weekly segment, but he was unable to due to his work schedule. With all 3 of us unable to commit to doing the weekly segment we were out of ideas and it looked like the segment was going to end. Then along came Shannon Nelson from A Girls Gotta Spa! who graciously agreed to step in and take over the weekly segments, taping each one in advance. That solved that problem.

I didn’t get the WNEP job offer until 4/5, which was supposed to be the day I was to be going for a root canal. I rescheduled the root canal for another day and went to WNEP instead, BEST DECISION EVAR. I was officially offered the job in person — which was a first for me. Most of my job offers have come over the phone or in writing. I was a nervous wreck! My first day of work was 4/23. This will be my 3rd week at WNEP, and so far everything is going well. I’m still a nervous wreck, but I’m sure that will pass. One thing I can tell you though, not a single person has told me that I don’t know how to use a stapler, no doctors have screamed at me on a telephone, and I haven’t been asked for a report needed for a presentation yesterday. I don’t like job hopping, but when you are not happy somewhere, you are not happy. I read about the WNEP job online and even though at the time I was only at Travelocity for a few weeks, I just could not pass up the opportunity to apply.

I am hoping to get back to regular blog posts again shortly. I just have to get through this week of classes and I’m home free.

(At least for 3 weeks, anyway. Then the summer semester starts.)

Category: Misc/Crap, TV Rants

Blah blah blah STRESS blah blah blah

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Posted on Apr 9 2012 by M Davies

I have once again over-allocated myself to the umpteenth degree. This really shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. It's a sickness.

A look at the week ahead:

Monday:

An 8:30am root canal to which I'll being to work immediately after it is completed.

Once I arrive at work, I have a 2pm, 3pm and 4pm meeting. The 3pm meeting is a training for Excel Vlookups, to which I'm not finished preparing the training materials. I think it's informal, but I'd feel better prepared with having some reference guides/training aides to present to the peeps I'm training.

I need to write-up 2 BOTW posts for NEPA Blogs. There's a whole story behind that, which I will tell at another time.

Tuesday:

Work.

My COBOL homework and test is due, and I have class from 6-8pm.

I need to complete my research and write-up something for ComputerWise about Pinterest.

Wednesday:

Work.

Computerwise at 7pm in Lehighton.

Networking homework chapter 9 (which was due like 2 weeks ago) and chapter 10 need to be completed and submitted.

Thursday:

Work. Meeting at 10:30am (which I will be the subject of this week, no doubt).

Networking class 6-8:45. More homework and another test will be assigned.

Friday:

The 13th…

I'm supposed to have a dentist appointment for a cleaning on this day. Yeah, that's funny right? I'll probably have to reschedule that. I don't need people probing around in my mouth after I've been through a root canal on Monday. Plus, I really can't miss any more time at work. I'm falling behind on shit.

Work.

Next week isn't looking much better.

**SIgh**

Is this semester over yet? I want my life back.

Category: Annoyances, Misc/Crap

Why god? Why?

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Posted on Apr 2 2012 by M Davies

Remember my dental fiasco over the summer? Welp. If you don't, head on over and read the post and I'll wait here until you come back.

……

Glad to see you're back. Yeah, that tooth is infected….AGAIN. Driving home after the Scranton Story Slam on Saturday night, I noticed that the left side of my mouth was extremely sore. The pain reminded me of having a clenched jaw or grinding your teeth. I didn't think it was a cavity or anything like that. I immediately started to wonder if I should have Doc Hollywood paged to see if I could get some pain medications. Something did not feel right. I decided to take some Advil when I got home (it was 11:00ish when I got back to Sweet Valley) and hoped that it would clear up overnight.

The Advil did absolutely nothing for the pain and it was more intense the next morning. I decided that I better not fuck around with it, and had the dentist paged. He prescribed me Tylenol 3 (with codeine) and Amoxicillin. I am allergic to sulfa drugs (Bactrim) so I can't have any of the stronger antibiotics or I can get really sick. Rich went and picked up the medications for me at CVS after they were called in… and I took them, but I was still feeling pretty sore. Chewing was a problem, so the only thing I ate yesterday was soup.

The dentist's office called me this morning and asked if I could come in for 2:30. I checked with my boss who was ok with it, so I planned to leave around noonish. A few minutes later, the dentist told me that something earlier opened up and they wanted to know if I could leave right then. I checked with my boss again and he said no problem. I left and took everything with me…I wasn't sure if I'd be back or not. In the car, I raced up the Larksville Mountain and headed over to Trucksville. The dentist took me back right away and started to do some X-Rays. I gagged like 3 times because that's what I do and then I nearly barfed.

Of the 3 X-Rays he was able to take, nothing appeared out of the ordinary. I tried to show him where the pain was coming from. It is along the bottom left gum in the vicinity of where my root canal happened over the summer. It wasn't necessarily the tooth itself, but the gum. He sanded down my tooth thinking that my bite was off. The adjustment did feel slightly better, but there was still pain. And then that was it. He lifted me back up from the chair and told me I needed to go to a specialist. He referred me to (what I'm guessing) one of his other buddy dentists in Forty Fort. I was referred for 2:30pm and they were nice enough to make a cleaning appointment for Friday the 13th. LUCKY ME.

I headed back home to kill some time in the interim, and headed back out. I was honestly scared shitless at this point. The root canal experience was HELL, and that was with a bunch of gas and Novocaine, and I still felt every thing that was going on. The new dentist, who specializes in only root canals, was extremely nice and caring. He wanted to know who did my root canal – was it Dr. Asshole or "Jamie". Jamie? I didn't feel right calling my dentist by a pet name. I shook my head and he said "Jamie?". And feeling backed into a corner about the name, I finally said "Yes, Jaime." He took 3 more X-Rays (my head is going to glow in the dark tonight!) which were as equally gag-inducing as the last set that were taken at Jamie's office. The new specialist has an advanced X-Ray machine apparently, and he was able to tell right away that something was not right….and with the root canal tooth like I had thought.

It turns out, there is an abscess beginning to form directly under where the last root canal was. It's becoming infected. He tested this by pressing and wiggling my tooth and gums back and forth. I nearly went through the ceiling. YEAH OW. YOU FOUND IT, NOW CUT IT OUT.

After spending nearly 600 dollars on my last root canal, I decided that when I got my new job I would opt for the secondary dental insurance as a back-up to my husband's existing policy. His insurance kind of sucks and doesn't cover much apparently. I flashed the two insurance cards like a champ and after their calculations this root canal should cost at most 50 dollars out of pocket. WINNING. However….he doesn't have gas in his office. He numbs up the tooth and surrounding areas and that's it. When he told me that, I was ready to cry right on the spot. I barely made it through the last root canal, how am I going to make it through this one. Can't they knock me out? Hit me in the head with a rock? A brick? I'll even sign a waiver in my own blood that I won't sue. Just please god, I do not want to be conscience for that again.

At any rate, the root canal round #2 is scheduled for Wednesday at 11:30am. Kill me now.

In the meantime, the new specialist assigned me some super-duper hulk strength steroids. I'm not really sure what the theory is behind this. He says that it will help calm the tooth down so that it won't be uncomfortable to work on Wednesday. I have been reading online about these little pills (six of which I have to take by the end of tonight). Hooo boy. I'm in for a fun week. Side effects include: Severe allergic reactions (rash; hives; itching; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue); bloody, black, or tarry stools; changes in body fat; changes in menstrual period; chest pain; fainting; fever, chills, or sore throat; increased hunger, thirst, or urination; mental or mood changes; muscle pain, weakness, or wasting; seizures; severe nausea or vomiting; slow wound healing; stomach pain; sudden, severe dizziness or headache; swelling of the feet or legs; tendon, bone, or joint pain; thinning of the skin; unusual bruising or bleeding; unusual skin sensation; unusual weight gain; vision changes or other eye problems; vomit that looks like coffee grounds.

I'm really excited about the coffee grounds vomit especially. I guess it is to be expected when you are on a drug that has "meth" in the name. Methylprednisolone to be exact. Gesundheit!

I didn't sneeze. Oh wait, it must be the mental or mood changes kicking in. The voices in my head are carrying on a conversation.

I headed over to CVS after all of that to pick up my prescription and found out that my husband's health insurance policy was canceled. What the .. … .. . ??? Apparently, someone at the company decided to conveniently "forget" to send in the check to Blue Cross. This happened yesterday when he stopped by to pick up the prescriptions that Doc Hollywood a.k.a. "Jamie" called in. The company assured us that it was taken care of. Guess what? It wasn't. I had to pay double what I normally would for the scripts. The HR person said that we are able to expense whatever expenses were not picked up by the insurance for the medications. Gee ya think? Needless to say I was not pleased, and still am not. Good thing I wasn't in a major car accident or something and need to be admitted to the hospital.

"SORRY, Mrs. Davies, I know you are dying, but your insurance card is coming up expired. We're going to have to wheel you out into the street until this issue gets resolved with the insurance company."

"Over my dead body you will….oh wait…."

There are the voices again.

I guess I should probably lay down and get some rest. Today sucked.

I'll be posting my Blog Fest recap tomorrow hopefully. As usual, I'm the last one.

Category: Medical Issues, The WTF File

BlogFest Spring 2012 Edition

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Posted on Mar 28 2012 by M Davies

There's only 2 short days left until NEPA BlogFest.

I've been working behind the scenes once again to help promote the event. Before I go an further, here are the details in the event you are interested in attending.

NEPA BLOG FEST (Spring 2012 Edition)

Date: Friday, March 30th, 2012
Time: TBD, but usually at 6pm
Location: Rooney's Irish Pub; 67 South Main Street; Pittston, PA 18640. A menu can be found here.

This is a free event open to local bloggers, lurkers and anyone else interested in hanging out with the "cool kiddies" of the local blogosphere.

***You can RSVP to the Facebook Event Page right here.

Why should you attend NEPA Blog Fest?

There was an entire article in this week's edition of the Weekender that explains it better than I'd ever be able to. Special thanks to Nikki Mascali for taking time out of her busy schedule to interview me and my blogging partners. You can read the article online right here…or perhaps, go and pick up a print version of the Weekender. I will autograph it for you

You can also read our press release about the event right here.

For me, NEPA Blog Fest has always been about networking with new people and hanging out with old friends. You get to know your fellow bloggers intimately through the words of their blogs and then meeting them in person gets to put a face behind the name. I hope that you'll join us on Friday night.

Category: Events, Hobby-ish, NEPA

Staying with the theme….

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Posted on Mar 26 2012 by M Davies

2 3 4 5 new crimes in Hanover Township –

From the TL: A home invasion/shooting/robbery/mugging – http://www.timesleader.com/stories/Shots-fired-in-pursuit-of-stolen-vehicle-,129279

From the CV: A robbery at the Game Station (video game store) - http://citizensvoice.com/news/courts-police/police-blotter-3-26-12-1.1290444?localLinksEnabled=false#axzz1qEXsFJmB

Also, from the CV: Where's my schmoopy? No you are my schmoopy. Ahhhh schmoopy schmoopy. Obviously, not at Schmoopy's Bar and Grill, because it was burglarized. http://citizensvoice.com/news/courts-police/police-blotter-3-27-12-1.1290774?localLinksEnabled=false#axzz1qKwLOnFg

From the CV: And now, there are 5 storm grates missing. http://citizensvoice.com/news/thieves-yank-grates-from-hanover-township-roads-1.1294052?localLinksEnabled=false#axzz1r047IlOV

Update 04/30/12 – From the TL: Attempted abduction in Hanover Township. http://www.timesleader.com/stories/Attempted-abduction-in-Hanover-Township-,145199

I'm literally thinking of starting up the Wilkes-Barre crime map again…only for Hanover Township this time around.

Category: I hate my neighbors, NEPA, The WTF File

Haxes, Taxes, and Annoyances to the Maxes

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Posted on Mar 26 2012 by M Davies

After a week, I'm back online. My websites were hacked. Well – at least 2 of the 3 were hacked. I don't think mhryvnak.net was, but kind of sort of was due to the domains all being linked together through Dreamhost's web panel. The ass kicker here is, I was not the only one. There's a 30+ page thread on Dreamhost with several customers experiencing the same issue. A fellow local blogger (Shannon Nelson) also had her site hacked on Dreamhost a few weeks ago. After doing extensive research, our hacks were different – her site was hacked via JavaScript. Basically, an iFrame linking to a website with malicious software was inserted into her WordPress installation. On the other hand, my hack was a base64 hack which happened via PHP. You can read more on that here: http://danhilltech.tumblr.com/post/18085864093/if-you-get-eval-base64-hacked-on-wordpress-dreamhost I still have some clean-up work to do, and then I'm going to re-evaluate my hosting provider options. I have 3 options that I'm currently looking at.

We had to submit a request for an extension for submitting our taxes this year. I can't recall a time that I've ever done this. It turns out our taxes are uber complicated this year, and the tax guy actually had to look up the tax code to figure out how to file. After holding off until he figured out how to do them, he worked on a bunch of other people's and our taxes got pushed to the back of the list. Now we are working on borrowed time. Terrific.

This morning I discovered that the power supply for my new Macbook pro was dead. I plugged it into the wall and it refused to power up. I reseated the cables and tried another outlet and still no dice. I determined that the power brick part of the cable was messed up. I'm not sure exactly got messed up with it, but it wasn't working. I guess, if I knew more about electricity, I could hook it up to a multimeter and test levels. The happy ending of this story is that the local Wilkes-Barre best buy had the exact cable I needed, so I didn't have to wait for an Apple RMA. The bad news is, it cost 80 effing dollars. We just purchased this Mac in November. There's no reason the damn power supply should be bad already, but it is what it is. It's covered under Apple Care still, so I'll get a replacement for free, but it's just another annoyance.

Follow-up to our electricity issue in the bedroom (…ummmm…I just realized that may sound perverted, but no, we actually have an electrical problem in the bedroom…): We have a bad whosa-ma-whatsit in the fuse panel. What are they called? Circuit breakers? Fuses? I told you I don't know much about electrical things. We purchased a new thingee majig from Lowes to replace the bad one — which by the way is leaking a white substance, and Rich is going to try to replace it tomorrow. I'm not sure how this is going to end up. He says he's going to kill the power to the entire house before he attempts it. Still…I'm nervous.

Can anything else go wrong lately? I probably shouldn't say that too loud, or I'll be struck dead by a lightning bolt or something.

Category: Annoyances, Technology Hates Me

It Never Fails

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Posted on Mar 11 2012 by M Davies

Many people text, put on makeup, channel surf and jam out to the radio while they drive. Not me. I write blog posts. In my head.

It dawned on my on my drive home on Friday that the three year anniversary of the move from Hanover Township to Sweet Valley is coming up. We made the move in March of 2008, after an extensive and exhausting search for a new home. Why did we move? We outgrew the house in Hanover Township. I planned to blog about how happy I am to call this northern corner of Luzerne County my home. That is, until I arrived home.

The first thing my husband said to me when I walked in the door was not "Hi" or "Welcome home". It was "We have a major electrical problem." AGAIN?! What the…?

We've been having issues with various electrical things in the house since last summer. It started with the power going out for 5 days during Hurricane Irene, continued on with the Washer & Dryer conspiring to stop working at the same time, and in December the baseboard heat decided it should just stop working in the Living Room upstairs. I pretty much had my fill with stupid house problems last year. I REEAAAALLLLYYY don't want to start the year with another plethora of crap that needs to be fixed around here. Anyway, back to the story….

We don't really know what happened, or why it happened, but there is now 0 watts of power going to the master bedroom. Zero. Zilch. Zippo. Like nothing will turn on. At all. When I'm annoyed. I. put. a. period. after. every. word. The power was working fine in there on Friday morning. Rich turned off everything before starting to work (he usually works from his computer room in the basement). He went back upstairs sometime in the afternoon and nothing would turn on. He thought, "Uh oh, I bet a fuse is blown." He went over to the fuse panel and proceeded to throw every switch. Nothing turned back on. He went back into the basement where we have a second fuse panel and threw every switch there. Still nothing turned back on in the bedroom. What the….?!?!?!?!

It's now Sunday and still the entire bedroom remains powerless. We have no idea what's wrong, but it's more than likely going to require a professional electrician to come out and look at the wiring. I'm really nervous about what that may end up costing us. Also, I'm even more nervous about what he may find. When the baseboard heat stopped working in the living room….Rich came to the conclusion that the thermostat was bad. He turned off the power and took it off of the wall to find something majorly wrong inside of the wall. Basically the wiring got hot enough to melt through the plastic shielding that surrounded it and the wires were bare and exposed. We are seriously lucky that the entire house did not burn down. I'm not really sure how hot it would have needed to be to melt wires, but it kind of freaks me out thinking about it.

Here's the thing about this house, it's a divorce house. The people that lived here before us got divorced, and the wife ended up with it. The husband was some kind of masterful electrician. If you toured the house, you'd know what I mean. There are about 8000 light switches (I still have no idea what half of them are supposed to control), 2 fuse panels (as previously mentioned), an external garage completely wired up, a timer, and a million and one weird configurations of lights and etc. I'm really wondering two things. 1) Was he really a good electrician or one of those hacks that says they know a lot about electricity? 2) Did he purposely wire crap up to fail after the divorce papers were served? I'm not one for conspiracy theories…but…..

All things considered, I do really love Sweet Valley. I'm very happy to call it my home. I may have some odd neighbors, but nothing like the lunatics I lived next door to in Lee Park. I would take the lunacy any day over the week over the scumbags, murderers, thieves, more thieves and megan's law violators. By the look of things, not much has changed in Hanover Township. Just this week, 3 major crimes happened within a 24 hour timefame.

1. Marion Terrace Slashing

2. A Drug Bust

3. Shooting Near the American Legion

I think we made the right decision by moving out when we did. The city is starting to get more and more dangerous each day.

Now *ahem* about that electrical problem…..anyone know a good reliable yet affordable electrician?

Category: Annoyances, I hate my neighbors, NEPA

Practice Safe Hex

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Posted on Mar 10 2012 by M Davies

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the local media's use of social media and what they were doing right and wrong. I'd like to think that six months later, they have figured things out, however, I'm not so sure.

On Monday, Andy Palumbo blogged about nearly pulling the plug on his Twitter account because of a virus/phishing attempt circulating through Direct Message. Several people that I follow on Twitter in the local media have "received" this virus and it started spreading like wild fire. I got two of the messages myself:

Did I click on them? Um. No. Although, I'm sure plenty of people say nasty things about me online.

Here's the thing about viruses. They don't spread unless someone clicks the link or opens the file, or runs an executable, etc. If you don't do these things, the virus doesn't spread. The problem with Twitter is that it uses a lot of shortened URLs to save space in Tweets making it hard to tell if a link is legitimate or not. I have a solution to this: URL Void - http://www.urlvoid.com. You can put any link into box on the website and it will scan the URL to let you know whether or not the site is safe to navigate to. If those who were "hacked" on Twitter took a few extra seconds to practice safe hex by plugging in the URL in question from these direct messages, they would see that the website was an exploit.

Deleting your Twitter account because it has the potential to be "hacked" is just silly. And let's be clear. These accounts were not "hacked", the user clicked on the URL that they received in a direct message, this is how this type of VIRUS spreads. There is a big difference between being "hacked" and receiving a virus. I get viruses and spam sent to all seven of my email accounts every day, but am I going to delete my email account? No. Am I going to get rid of my Internet access because there's a potential that someone unauthorized may try to use my Wifi network? No (because we have MAC address security enabled, layer 2 FTMFW).

You just have to be smart about how you use the Internet, practice safe hex, as I like to call it. A few years ago, when I was more active into Newsgroups, I followed one called alt.comp.virus and one of the posters wrote up an entire article about what "Safe Hex" means right here: http://www.claymania.com/safe-hex.html. The article is several years old, but a lot of the same theories still apply. I think in this instance, tip #4 is very applicable:

4. Be cautious when reading email with attachments and downloading files
You should never, ever (and we really mean it!) do the following:

Never open email attachments from someone you don't know
Never open email attachments forwarded to you even if they're from someone you know
Never open unsolicited or unexpected e-mail attachments until you've confirmed the sender actually meant to send them. If you know the sender and you are absolutely sure they intentionally sent the attachment, then scan it with an up-to-date virus scanner before opening it.
Never pay attention to virus warnings or even forward them unless you subscribe to a serious virus newsletter.
Never obtain software from "warez" sites or peer-to-peer programs like Kazaa. Get it from known, trusted sources only.

Additionally, it is wise to consider configuring your email program to display messages as "text only" and not "HTML". HTML can easily include malicious scripting (which may "do something" unwanted automatically), malicious links (usually obfuscated and too easy to click) and other unwanted junk. Keep in mind that if you send HTML email, many anti-spam solutions may aggressively target HTML formatted email as SPAM.

If you replace "email attachments" with "Twitter Direct Messages" or "Shortened URLs" it is the same advice I'd recommend to anyone using Social Media these days.

Here's a few other tips I can share with you:

Phishers usually tend to be bad spellers and/or bad at punctuation and grammar. That's the first way I can spot a phishing attempt at 20 paces (whether it be by email or social media platform)
Email addresses that the phishing message comes from is usually fake, or non-existent on the domain. On Twitter, the account is usually created only to spread these viruses. They may have no actual tweets with a ton of followers, they may have a bogus picture and URL in their profile information. If it looks too good to be true (i.e. She's a supermodel stripper wanting to send you XXXXX pictures) then it probably is.
Hovering over the link in your email client and checking your status bar will let you know if the URL is legit. Example. I can make a link say www.ebay.com but then have it redirect to a fake site using HTML. This however, does not work on Twitter if the URL is shortened, you will need to use a link checker such as URL Void (mentioned above).
DO NOT USE THE SAME PASSWORD ON ANY ACCOUNT FOR ANY REASON EVER! You are just asking for trouble if you do.

And now I will share with you a story....(names changed to protect the stupid)

A “Network Engineer” I know was victimized by one of these phishing emails and actually had his bank account compromised. Here’s what happened: someone had sent him an email stating to be from ICQ and that he needed to confirm his email/password on his account so that his account wouldn’t be deleted. He did exactly what the email asked of him. (WRONG! BAD! NO!!) Nothing happened for months, then all of the sudden after a deposit was made into his personal checking account, the thief decided to make a move. At the time, the engineer was using the same password for his E-mail, ICQ, and Bank. The phisher knew about the deposit via email, knew what bank he used and knew the password. He was able to transfer the money elsewhere thereby stealing it and leaving the checking account penniless. The bank fraud department had to get involved and was able to see the unauthorized transactions. They had to close out the account and reimburse for the fraudulent activities. Long story short…if a Network Engineer can be fooled by one of these emails, ANYONE CAN (except me of course....KIDDING).

The bottom line is this: As long as hackers/spammers and phishers see an opportunity to make a dime off of someone else or get a sick thrill off of ruining someone's online reputation, it's not going to stop. Security threats are not going away anytime soon, they are going to keep growing exponentially and Internet users (business and home) really need to stay educated in order to protect themselves and their assets online.

Category: Technology Hates Me, Twitter

The (mis)adventures of Flat Stanley

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Posted on Feb 25 2012 by M Davies

My daughter brought home a project for school last week called "Flat Stanley". She was given a 5 inch 2d laminated paper man and was to take her picture with him in various places and chronicle her adventures in a journal. It looks like several of the other students in her class already had completed the project by flipping through the book. Flat Stanley had been ice skating, at a chicken farm and in the baby ward of a local hospital before he got here. Before I go any further, here's a picture of Flat Stanley:

My first impression of him was favorable, however, I was a little puzzled by his fashion choices. I mean stripes and polka dots? That's a big fashion no-no. At least he wasn't wearing socks with sandals.

The first morning that Flat Stanley was with us, it was clear that he was not a good influence on young children. How do I know this? Well, lets just say I found out the hard way that Flat Stanley was a player. He was seen macking on Kim Karsashian Barbie and Ariel that morning.

When I lectured Flat Stanley about his philandering ways, he threatened to commit suicide by jumping from my car's visor. Luckily, I was able to talk him down from the ledge. In case you are wondering why I took the photo of the suicide attempt, it was to protect me. I didn't trust that he wouldn't have told people I tried to push him had he survived.

After Flat Stanley calmed down, I agreed that I'd take him to work and school that night to keep him out of trouble. He made friends with the Travelocity stress gnome at my desk.

After arriving home at 9pm that night, I was exhausted and went right to bed. I was half way into my dream that included a bottle of champaign, a jacuzzi and Brad Pitt, when I was woken out of a dead sleep by my ringing telephone. It was Flat Stanley. He was in jail and needed to be bailed out. I was his one phone call. Good thing I answered! Sure enough, at 4am, I had to drive down to LCCF and bail this fashion challenged shiny man out of jail. Apparently, he violated the restraining order that Kim Kardashian Barbie put into effect earlier in the day.

When I texted this picture to my cousin, his response was "Since he's flat, you'd think he would figure out that he can fit between the bars. I don't think Stan is the sharpest knife int he drawer."

We all had an exhausting and stressful day, so Flat Stanley decided to chill out with a few drinks at home after work.

I think he got a bit carried away for a Wednesday night, when he drank through a six pack and wanted to go out and get more. Flat Stanley caused a pile up on the Cross Valley. He decided to "borrow" Barbie's car for the evening. Come to find out he's driving with a suspended license and is uninsured. Not to mention he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. I'm not sure how he made it out of this incident without getting arrested. I think he paid off a cop.

One of my Facebook friends sent me a message saying they spotted Flat Stanley on a poster in the Dallas Shopping center. Check it out! This Flat bastard is a bigger celebrity than I am! At least he cleaned up his image and put on some matching clothes for this picture.

Not only did Flat Stanley's secret celebrity status shock me, but also allowed him to be invited to the funeral of one of the most beloved singers of all time, Whitney Houston. He decided to stay out of shenanigans on Saturday to attend the somber event. I even spotted him on TV!

As most of the tacky celebrities did, Flat Stanley live tweeted from the funeral. Once I texted this picture to him, he posted it on Twitter, and caught the attention of the local media. They were chomping at the bits to interview someone local with a connection to Whitney Houston. A few hours later, the local news media showed up at the door looking for an interview. I really think that the camera subtracts a few feet from Andy Mehalshick when he's seen on TV. Oh well, I guess this will even out once WBRE converts to HD news casts in April.

There was a news story that the local strip joint was robbed on Sunday morning, Flat Stanley assured me that he had an alibi during the time it happened, however, I'm not so sure if I should believe him.

(BTW – This is supposed to be a picture with a crappily drawn money bag….an artist, I am not)

Flat Stanley went out to meet up with some of his other 2d buddies to play 2d call of duty. I expected he would be rolling in before 11pm, as it was a Sunday night, and I had to be up for work the next morning, but he never came home. I happened to go to the Casino 2 days this week to arrange a dinner for some of my visiting co-workers, and look who I found! My friend Duffy (not the one on Rock 107) labeled this photo best, "Flat Broke Stanley".

That bastard gambled away all of ~~the money he stole from the strip join~~t his life savings!

I brought Flat Stanley home with me and made him sleep off his hangover and depression. The next morning he allowed me to take a picture of him at sunrise. It was his last day with us and I wished him well in his future adventures. I hope he gets his life on track soon.

THE END.

And now for the serious part. I obviously didn't use any of these photos in Gabby's school project. I just thought it would be funny to have a parallel adventure with "Bad Stanley". The "Good Stanley" does appear in my daughter's school journal and on my Flickr photo feed. Hope you enjoyed the (fake) adventure with me!

If you want a Flat Stanley of your own to adopt, you can visit http://www.flatstanley.com or download the free app on iPhone by visiting the Apple app store!

Category: Hilarity

We now interrupt this blog post, with a blog post

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Posted on Feb 18 2012 by M Davies

I haven't blogged in a few weeks, because I have been semi-busy. I wouldn't say super crazy busy, like last semester, but busy none-the-less. I am taking 2 classes at night this semester and I've determined that this semester is a "throw-away". I did a quick calculation of the amount of classes I'll be missing vs. when I'll be present. Yeahhhhhh…. When you miss 3-4 classes in a 16 week semester, you may as well call it a throw away – that's a whole month if the class meets once a week.

I will get back to the 2011 year in review, I promise, but I just wanted to share with you the amazing sunrise/fog and light from yesterday morning. I started a new blog called "Sweet Valley Sunrises" where I upload a photo or two during sunrise if the weather cooperates. This is the extended version of what was posted yesterday over at Sweet Valley Sunrises. Enjoy!

(Click little picture to get bigger picture)