Technicalities

June 12, 2013

How valuable is your email account?

I've heard some pretty dismissive comments when I tell people they need to make sure their email accounts are safe. If you think your email account is a throw-away, first read what Brian Krebs has to say.

The Value of a Hacked Email Account

You may not bank or shop online, but that doesn't mean there is no harm done if your email is hacked. If you use an online service like gmail, yahoo, or hotmail, do set up the 2 factor authentication.

Thank you.

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June 07, 2013

The Stanley Cup

So this is a bit of an ad since Discover Card made a series of these, but this one is really fun. The engraving of the Stanley Cup. Whether or not you watch hockey, this is a fun thing to see. It's very short, so have a look.

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June 04, 2013

Let the shoes do the work

My dear friend Sissy sent me a link to an article in the Boston Herald because she knows I love my Pilates.

Special shoes get grip on workout

As I read it, I was once again dumbfounded by the manner in which people are willing to cut corners with their practice because it makes things "easier". I wrote back to Sissy via email and in the middle of my paragraph, I realized my comments should be a blog post. Yes, the post is considerably longer than my email.

I completely understand the problem with sweating and slipping on floors and equipment. And I prefer being able to practice without feeling as if my feet will slide out from under me. However, this bit caused me to stop and gape.

The premise: The shoes provide firm footing, but also guide feet into a perfect stance. It’s what’s known in yoga as "pada bandha,” a foot "lift” that has you press down on all four corners of your feet while lifting your arches and taking the weight off your toes. This pose protects the knees, but it often requires conscious effort to maintain. The shoes, with a padded arch, did the work for me.

And right there she misses the entire point of Pilates. It's about exercising the body. The whole body. Not just the abs or the legs or the arms or some other "more important" bit. Yes, it takes concentration to achieve decent form and to maintain it from head to foot for the duration of class. It is supposed to!

Also, she is throwing yoga terms into the mix. This is something that many people find confusing. Yoga and Pilates are two different types of practice. They are compatible with each other, but they are not the same. It becomes more confusing as people mix the two practices together. The teachers generally learned each discipline separately and know the differences. Unfortunately new people in these classes don't know the differences and then come to think it's all the same thing... but I digress...

Protecting yourself from pain or injury is a good thing, wearing special gloves or using padding on bars is helpful and allows you to move as fully as possible. Having shoes "do the work for you" so you don't have to think about your feet and stance negates a large part of your practice. Pain prevention allows you to move better, not having to think about a body part allows that body part to be ignored.

Pilates is a mind/body form of exercise. You have to concentrate. Hard. Intently. But, doing it right will give you the best results for your body. It's also good practice for the mind. A major benefit of this, when you concentrate hard on your practice, you can't be thinking about other irritations of the day. This is a good break for the mind especially on very irritating days.

If you are finding ways to blow through practice without thinking too hard about it, you are doing your body a huge disservice. The worth is in thoughtful motion, not motion for motion sake. At some point in your life, being well acquainted with your body and what it says to you may even come in handy. It can help prevent injury or recognize when you need to see a doctor.

So, take off the shoes, get sticky pads to keep your feet from sliding and start working on mindful motion.

It does a body good.

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 08:31 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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May 28, 2013

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

A little news of the day...

Want email privacy? Think about moving to Texas, if they pass the new law...

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Are you ready to drop live tv?

Not until they start giving me options for watching sports easily.

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Think you have a strong password? Think again. While I am all about strong passwords and diligence in creating them, I'm really trying to figure out if there are any passwords that are useful.

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I need to do some reading on this artist. This looks very interesting.

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If you think of it, someone will build it.

We need more and better thinkers!

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We keep hearing (ha) that the cicadas are coming. So far it's been very quiet here. This may be because they have only hatched as far north as Staten Island.

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And last of all, this is why I don't read Vanity Fair. Just sayin'...

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Have a lovely rest of the evening.

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 08:25 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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May 23, 2013

I think this young woman will go far

Sabrina Brady - a high school student from Wisconsin, wins the competition for today's Google Doodle. I don't often pay attention to these, but this one is excellent. The story and the doodle (if you haven't seen it) are posted in this WaPo article.

Go check it out.

Congratulations Sabrina!

Posted by: Teresa in Military at 06:57 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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May 22, 2013

Shades of 1995

Today in the mail I received...

A CD along with an invitation to join Juno!!! All I had to do was:

Load the software on my pc and I could be on the internet in no time!!!

How exciting is that!!!!!!!

I don't know how I could resist such an offer. The wonderful world of online can be mine just by loading software on to my pc. I'm positively giddy with excitement over this, but not sure if I should really give it a try or not.

Scary exciting this is. Must think carefully and try to decide if I'm up to venturing into this whole new world.

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May 20, 2013

Oklahoma

I'm sure, by now, almost everyone knows about the horrible devastation in Oklahoma. If you would like to help, but can't quite decide how to do it, please consider donating to Team Rubicon.

Operation Starting Gun

We can't be there to help, but they can. Whatever you can give will go directly to helping a community in need.

Thank you.

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 09:31 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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May 16, 2013

Junkware is not always considered a problem

In general I have always been careful enough when installing things to keep my system from picking up extra browser toolbars and crap like that. Things like the very irritating Ask dot com (no I won't link to them) toolbar that installs with Java updates if you aren't careful. They can also be very difficult to get rid of if you do pick up one of these barnacles.

This was the topic of a rant by a caller to the Mike Tech Show podcast a couple of weeks ago. After that lament, a number of people wrote in with fixes for the problem. The real issue is that not everyone considers these irritations to be junk, so anti-malware/anti-virus/anti-spamware programs don't get rid of them.

Instead of reinventing the wheel, I will point you to Mike's web page for his podcast. He has links to the relevant removal tools and he discusses them in the podcast (near the beginning). If you have problems with these things, go check it out.

Mike Tech Show Podcast #458

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May 13, 2013

The Mom Manual

Just in case you've never seen it, here are all the things a mom says in 24 hours condensed to 2 minutes 55 seconds. Yes, I have said most all of them. Sometimes even in a 24 hour period.

Deep breath and Go...

*** Had to update the link, the original link posted got pulled.

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May 09, 2013

Coming up on Friday

Here are a couple of short ads that are my current favorites because they are so funny.

This one with Mario Andretti took me a while to figure out because I had no idea what the ad was for, I was laughing too much.

And then there is this one, currently the best commercial ever made (although it's too long for a television spot).

The two Spocks compete (old Spock and young Spock). Awesomeness.

Now I have to go find the Bilbo Baggins song...

Happy weekend.

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May 02, 2013

The Eagle Has Landed

This is the most cool thing ever.

Someone went to the trouble to put together all the feeds; audio, video, telemetry of the first moon landing. It's played in real time with a timeline across the bottom of the screen. When you scroll over items it will give you a pop up with a description of what you are looking at. It's also a transcription so you can read what is being said and who is saying it.

If you remember the moon landing, or you want to see a great piece of history, check it out. I've already watched it several times. (it doesn't work quite so well in my Safari browser, so be warned if that is your browser of choice!)

The First Moon Landing

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Some Photo Stuff

In the comments of the previous post Pam was asking about Adobe Revel. Since I don't pay too much attention to that part of Adobe, I hadn't really heard about it, so I did some looking.

Last year Adobe renamed their Carousel image service to Revel. With the rename they added features for minor editing, filters to apply to photos, and added apps for idevices and mac. Android apps are under development but it's been over a year and I don't see any listed yet, although you can upload from those devices to your account.

It doesn't look too bad if you don't do much to your photos once you take them (if you like to play in Photoshop this would not be for you). The idea is you upload all your photos to the Adobe Revel site. They live there, you edit there, and you don't have to take up space on your iphone/ipad/Mac. Then you can create galleries and share images as you like.

It's a little unclear to me from the fast look, how permissions are given out. Apparently you can also share galleries that allow others to edit the photos in those galleries. I'm not sure I'd want that feature at all, but I suppose it works for some people. I just hope it's not a default feature but that you have to allow it when sharing the gallery.

Sounds like it's an easy to use service for people who don't want to mess around with something like flickr, which you can forget to make private if you aren't careful! Or picasa, which being google is free, but always wants more and more info from you. Some people don't care about that since they like the "free" part.

The apps for iPhone/ipad are a nice touch. Not sure how well they work since people seem to be complaining about the logo of the app itself rather than how the app works. (geeze louise!) A few were griping about network connection - I wonder if it requires wifi rather than using the data connection.

The apps for Revel are free. The basic Revel account is free, with unlimited uploads for the first 30 days then a 50 photo upload limit per month. For unlimited uploads all the time, it costs $5.99/month. If you pay for a while then stop, your account is converted to a free one so you don't lose your photos just the unlimited upload feature.

Flickr pro is less expensive at something like $29 a year (can't quite remember but it's about that). If you like to share your photos publicly, Flickr is definitely a better bet even though you don't get editing tools with it.

The last thing I don't know is what size photo it stores - is it the full sized jpg? Or does it size down? I looked, but didn't see anything posted about this. If you are using a DSLR I would guess it does not import RAW files.

It doesn't sound too bad for someone who wants online galleries to share with friends but not necessarily the world at large. It might be worth checking out for the 30 day unlimited upload trial to see if you like it. If you are Mac based it might work well for you.

Posted by: Teresa in Photos at 12:04 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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April 29, 2013

And another Google Reader Alternative

In the comments to an earlier post, VW points out that Newsblur is no longer free. I had started to check it out back when Google made their fateful announcement about closing down Reader.

Never got much farther with it because I don't use a feed reader any more. Too many other things going on which means I never check it.

However, if you are still looking for an alternative, try Feedly. They have a Firefox plug in, also an idevice app and an android app. So far as I can tell, it's free. Of course this means it may just go away in the future, but it is available now.

Check it out and see what you think.

Happy reading!

Posted by: Teresa in WebTech at 08:29 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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April 23, 2013

Forget the music

It's "the day the water heater died". No one gives two hoots about music if you can't have hot water. Seriously.

This morning I made my usual trip to the basement office. I had planned to check the mail, do a couple of quick little things, and go get coffee.

Best laid plans and all that...

Got to the bottom of the stairs, stepped on the carpet and it went : SQUISH.

Hmmmm... not supposed to do that. Panic moment ensues. Last time this happened, the sewer line had collapsed and water was backing up through the drains. So not good.

A quick check of the bathroom showed there was no water backing up and no sign that water had been there. The only other place water can come from is the hot water heater.

Oh yeah. Open the door to the utility room and there is a small lake.

In all honesty I wanted to close the door, go get coffee and THEN think about it. But, it wasn't going to get fixed by itself and no one else (aka my husband) knew about this. Therefore no one else (aka my husband) could call someone to come fix it.

So, I called the oil company (it's an oil burning water heater). Then called my husband. Bless the oil company - they sent someone right out. He took one look and said, "New tank needed." In the meantime my husband took off from work and came home to help me sop up water.

About 2 hours later they were back with the new heater and ready to install. Since the room with the water heater is in about the worst possible place, they had to drag the new one through 2 rooms and over carpets and drag the old one out the same way.

It took about an hour and a half, but they got the new one in and we were set. The carpet was a mess. There are now a couple of places were the wood work got knicked. But we have hot water.

I'll take it.

Tonight we have scrubbed carpets and fans running to dry things out. I wish it was warm enough to have windows open, because I still smell oil. I'll open them tomorrow even if it's snowing so I can get fresh air in this place.

In the meantime I'll read a book, sleep a while, and then get up to take a shower.

That works. Life is good.

Posted by: Teresa in Ho-Hum at 09:50 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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April 22, 2013

Calling all Security Nerds

Verizon just published their annual Data Breach Investigation Report. This is the report computer security geeks wait for every year. Verizon creates it and then posts it for all the world. That earns them huge kudos in the pay it forward realm.

Dark Reading has a quick overview of what can be found in the report itself.

The actual report can be found here. It's a pdf. And the numbers are fascinating.... things like

"97% of breaches were avoidable through simple or intermediate controls."

That's an astounding statistic! Well, except for the fact that most everyone thinks they are immune to data breaches. The "it will never happen to me" seems to be ingrained in people, until it does happen to them.

I would say, at least read through the stats at the beginning. Stats are not my strong suit but these are presented well. If you are the owner of a company and think you are immune, I hope this will convince you to take further precautions. If you are an employee of a company, perhaps you will cut your computer security people some slack. They have a very tough job and no one likes helping them at all.

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Debugging the iPhone

Ah me. Over the last weekend my phone decided to have some issues. It is irritating enough that I have gone into full debug mode to pinpoint problem, if I can.

At home I use wifi for my internet connection, no point using the data plan when I don't need to. I have a mini-tower for the cell connection because we are in a sucky cell reception area. Since I don't receive many calls and only a limited number of text messages, I'm not exactly sure when the cell data cuts out on me... before or after I leave the house.

At some point in time, I completely lose cell data connection. No calls, no data until I reboot. When I have a wifi connection I don't know there is a problem because the apps all work that connect to the internet (app.net, twitter, fb, safari) . It isn't until I leave the house and get the dreaded "no network connection" errors when the problem becomes apparent.

What could cause this? Here is a minor and incomplete list:

- bad cell phone radio

- current cell phone 4G radio doesn't like to play nice with mini-tower radio which is 3G

- icloud (something I would not have thought of prior to listening to this podcast from Mac Geek Gab (MGG 445))

- iOS updates (unlikely since I haven't done one lately)

- an app that is causing a conflict with the cell/data stream (unlikely but possible)

- an app update conflicting with iOS - (not likely but certainly possible)

- the bluetooth radio not playing nice with the cell radio. (I use bluetooth but turn it on and off as needed to save battery)

Today I did a complete restore of the phone. With the restore done, I will be running on the cell data network with wifi off to see if I lose connection at home. Next up I'll turn off icloud and see if that changes anything. Then anything else I can scrounge up by reading online. My last resort I'll be taking it to the Verizon store to see what they might be able to do for me.

It will be interesting to see what happens. At the moment I suspect the problem occurs when I leave the house and the mini-tower connection. It appears as if the LTE connection does not pick up like it should. I get bars, I even get the LTE letters, but there is no data. Turning "airplane mode" on and off does nothing. A reboot of the device is necessary to restore the connection. Yeah, annoying.

Stay tuned if you are interested. If I figure it out I will post results.

Posted by: Teresa in Ho-Hum at 12:18 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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April 18, 2013

When the crowd sings

Probably the best rendition of the National Anthem ever. Boston's TD Garden for the Bruin's game. Rene Rancourt, who is generally a bit too over the top for me, does the most incredible thing. He starts the anthem and then lets the 17,000+ crowd finish it. Not a dry eye in the house.

I tried to embed the video, but it doesn't like my blog platform apparently. So hit the link above to go see it.

This is the best of the videos out there as it is from the beginning and shows the Fire Department Color Guard walking out.

Also touching was seeing Bruin's Defensive man, Shawn Thornton, a Canadian, singing along.

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 10:39 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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April 16, 2013

And back to tech...

There was a major java patch released today. If you have java on your computer, do go get it patched up.

Thank you!

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April 15, 2013

A Heartbreaking Day

A marathon, many people out enjoying the day. Then bombs. It doesn't get much worse. Too many injured and certainly too many dead. (even one death is too many).

My prayers go out to the families and friends of those who were injured and to those who rushed in to help. All will be effected forever by this day.

I will be staying off the internet and social media like twitter because of the incredible amount of crazy stuff that starts spewing forth. Even those supposedly with editors and that all important vaunted "control over content" the news media insists is good... Here's a perfect example. I posted this on facebook earlier:

Why I don't pay much attention to the news of a disaster the first day... or maybe even the second day.

Headline tonight from the WSJ at 8:38pm:

Five More Explosive Devices Found in Boston, Counterterrorism Officials Say

Then at 9:40pm also from the WSJ:

Law-Enforcement Official Says Suspect Devices May Not Be Bombs

Alrighty then. That certainly settles things doesn't it. Sheesh. I hate news people in a frenzy. And no, I deliberately did not link either story since I see no point... it will all change again in an hour or so.

Posted by: Teresa in Current Affairs at 10:16 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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April 11, 2013

The Sad Saga of the Computer

After having a work network meltdown happen at the same time my work computer decided to develop a fatal flaw in the hard drive and completely crash, I finally managed to dig out from under all the mess. Things are back up and running again. Whew.

Being as I am conscientious, I had 2 sets of backup disks for my work computer... for all the good it did me.

Microsoft can suck it. I tried to restore Windows 7 from my backup disks to a new SSD (that is a Solid State Drive). I wasn't able to clone the old hard drive because of the humongous flaw. I was getting "broken pipe" messages every time I tried.

How stupid of me to want to get a smaller, significantly faster, hard drive. What was I thinking! Windows believes I should stick with huge, slow hard drives, even if I don't need them.

GAH!

Windows won't restore my valid paid for OS to the new drive because it's smaller than the original drive.

Therefore, I installed Ubuntu. I won't go with Windows again unless pushed to it. Ubuntu is working beautifully.

However, I am still pissed off that I couldn't restore the basic OS to the new drive. I paid for it!

The bastards.

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 08:57 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 My workhorse of a computer died at work and they gave me a new one. We hadn't converted to W7 yet, we were still on... NT? VW would know.
Anyway, when the new computer came in, it came with an SSD. The IT guy opened it up, threw away the paperwork, including the bright orange piece of paper that was supposed to serve as some warning, loaded it up and brought it to my desk. For months, I was dying. Everything chunked and clunked. I kept complaining. I started an EXCEL spreadsheet to track times on how long it took to open simple MS software or check my email. Fifteen minutes sometimes to open WORD.
It happened to someone else on a different floor. During an IT meeting the IT guy said something about this and the guy who works the PCs informed him he was supposed to be running some software to make the SSD work with the NT. "Didn't you read that bright orange sheet of paper?"
Right.
It never did work great, so I asked them to find some old POS and give me that one. They found a previous generation computer and it works like a charm. Windows is too tedious on the new machines.

Posted by: Bou at April 11, 2013 09:21 PM (k+xbT)

2 Oh, wow. Hope Ubuntu works for you!

I just -okay, after I called Dell and wrangled a copy of my OS from them - reloaded one of my drives. Thankfully, all is well.

Hubby was recently obsessed with buying a SSD but hasn't yet.

Posted by: pam at April 12, 2013 06:00 AM (Wce/n)

3 Bou - I'm guessing you run XP and you MUST add trim to the OS for it to work right. If it's being installed from an OEM set up for regular hard disks, it has to be realigned some how too. *sigh* When it works right - it is great. It's all in how it's installed. It's really annoying when people screw things up like that.

Pam - if he gets an SSD he either needs the Windows install disk (not a rescue disk) or he needs to be able to clone the disk using something like Macronia, Drive Image XML, Acronis (you have to buy this one to get the clone feature), Clonezilla... something like that. It has to allow you to clone the drive and then resize on restore. So it's not trivial, but is certainly doable if you can clone the drive. It's much easier if you can just have the original disk and put a new install on the SSD. Probably ends up nicer too. Win7 is all ready for SSD's. Earlier Windows require extra work as Bou points out above.

Posted by: Teresa at April 12, 2013 08:21 AM (hJwgq)

4 Yes, we run NT and it had to be re-aligned. It never did work great. I love the old one they gave me.
And I don't want to go to W7, because VW (who works in our IT department now) informed me that my blueprint software doesn't work on W7. So I want to stay on NT with an old computer.
I feel like an old fuddy dud, but hey, my stuff works.

Posted by: Bou at April 13, 2013 09:16 PM (k+xbT)

5 You know - it works and that's good. If your software worked on W7 that would be different. There are many people out there doing the same thing with old old software because they need to use it for business to go forward and no one has been able to update the apps to work on newer systems.

Posted by: Teresa at April 14, 2013 10:42 AM (hJwgq)

6 Teresa, I never thought I'd hear you say that.
/Yabu

Posted by: Yabu at April 14, 2013 07:39 PM (gU01f)

7 Well, Yabu, it's a PITA not having the OS to refer to when I have to do "help desk" stuff with the other people I work with. I can do some from memory and I can have them "tell me what you see". But since it's all done over the phone, it's really hard without the OS to refer back to on my own desktop. *sigh*
Oh well. We'll see what happens. Ubuntu works well and is a very nice interface... as long as I can still work, it's all good. If I can't for some reason then that's a problem. heh.

Posted by: Teresa at April 14, 2013 10:16 PM (hJwgq)

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