Out With the Old and In With the New

As always I'm ready to move on to a new year.  Not that this particular year was bad, but I like to look ahead and not back.

So Happy New Year to all of you and may 2012 bring you many wonderful things indeed! 

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News You Can Use

Tim Thomas is the best goalie in the NHL.  He's also a really fantastic guy.  AND he's 37 years old!  I don't endorse athletes as role models, but many kids could benefit from knowing how he got where he is today.  My favorite quote:

"Sometimes it seemed like they would have rather had goalies in the NHL who looked good getting scored on than ones who looked bad stopping the puck,” he remembers.

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Stop brain shrink?  Well that's what these people are touting to keep you from losing your memory as you get older.  Does it work?  Who knows.  It's about as good as anything else out there I guess.

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A couple of scientists are proposing SETI be used to look for alien footprints on the moon.  I think they should look for human ones first and if they find them, then go on to the alien type. 

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So there you go.  Have fun. 

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Tweetings That Make me Laugh

One of the things I like about Twitter is the humor factor whether intentional or not.  If you follow the right people you will see some very funny things. 

Unintentionally funny:

DON'T DRIVE DRUNK. From 6pm-6am on New Year's Eve/Day AAA will take your drunk self and your car home for FREE, member or not: 800-222-4357

This was a retweet and I don't follow the original person who posted, but the first thing I thought was "so any other time it's okay to drive drunk... alrighty then".

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Here's another retweet from a person I don't follow but maybe I should....

BROS-DO NOT HIRE A MÖBIUS STRIPPER 4 A BACHELOR PARTY.OURS TOOK OFF ALL HER CLOTHES AND YET END UP FULLY DRESSED.FEELING PERPLEXED+RIPPD OFF

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And here's one from @deathstarPR who I do follow. It's all in how you look at it:

You say, "Force choke", we say, "thoughtful long-distance throat massage". #StarWars

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Do be careful though and don't look at twitter's public timeline - you'll need to bleach your eyes if you do.  Just sayin'...

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 01:42 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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More Meanderings

Saw a headline today that said...

Will Nelson's Exit Cost Dems Senate?

And I thought - I had no idea Willie Nelson was a Senator... um...oh okay... nevermind. heh.

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Apparently someone threw a dead duck onto the ice near the end of the San Jose (Sharks) / Annaheim (Ducks) game. I think that tops the dead squid they throw at the Detroit games.

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The guys at Bagel Tech Foto found Missy MWAC last week on youtube. This week they had her on the show. She is hilarious.

Here's her first vid where you will find out all about "the camera".



It's good, but I have to say her appearance on Bagel Tech Foto was awesomely hilarious.

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Ah lovely, GoDaddy supports SOPA - this makes them even sleazier than I though they could ever be and I thought they were at the bottom of the barrel.

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The security analysis firm Stratfor was hacked. Anonymous got lots of emails and passwords. Long long ago I subscribed to Stratfor. They started out free then went to a paid subscription. They were good, but sadly (in my view) a presidential election came along. They decided they had to make their very own "Presidential endorsement". *sigh* That's when they started touting their own political stance in their newsletters AND that's when I dropped them.

Politics of any stripe tend to make people into idiots of the highest order. Not good at all when you are trying to run an information business. At that point one has to question the quality of the information they are presenting in other areas. Best to not say anything at all.

Still... I wonder if any of my old info was still on their servers. Interesting.

As for the people throwing out innuendo about a security firm being hacked and "how good can they be"... well, it all depends on how they got hacked. Even then it's difficult for me to get too critical. Any web presence can be hacked if the people behind the attack are determined enough. They only need one way in - the site has to try and protect against everything. It's a losing battle.

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That's it for now. Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend and are resting up in preparation for the New Year.

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 07:11 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Merry Christmas!

Have a lovely day!  I've been a little bit busy and forgot to post something until now. Ha! 

Hope Santa was good to all of you.

Let me add... I just saw this post by Charles and of course I had to go find a Topo Gigio vid. Then I saw Señor Wences.  So for all of you who remember Sunday nights with Ed Sullivan... enjoy!

Topo:


Señor:

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 10:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Social Media

Saw a tweet today from Chris Selland:

@cselland You know which bloggers are my absolute faves? Those who can take ANY topic and turn it into a post about themselves.

I thought this was the definition of blogging. All else is online media. heh.

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This story from the Telegraph was tweeted out by someone else - I forget who so it was probably a retweet.

Airline offers chance to pick who you sit next to using Facebook

Honestly I think I'd rather take my chances with whoever ends up next to me.  Except in cases of extreme weather and such, I won't have to sit next to the person for longer than a few hours.  The thought of someone looking me up on facebook to decide whether to sit next to me or not creeps me out for some reason.  No idea why, but it does.

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Evernote tells me Skitch for ipad is now available.   I may have to look it up and see if I can play with it.  Didn't have much interest in using it on my desktop mac, but it might be lots of fun on the ipad. We shall see.

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And last of all - this new service being offered by Rhode Island's TF Green airport.  I love this airport.  Really I do. 

That's it for now.

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 07:34 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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YooHoo

For some reason I have a ton of emails that I subscribed to voluntarily.  I guess it's easy enough to hit the delete key so I don't really read most of them.  Today's headline caught my eye though and I looked at it for quite a while.

"WSJ TECHNOLOGY ALERT: Microsoft, Nokia Flirted With Idea of Making Joint Bid for RIM"

I'm wondering how companies flirt... Do they send chocolates?  Pen little notes they pass around the board tables beneath the noses of the person running the meeting (oh yes - definitely folded into that cute little football shape)?  Text them late night notes that say "I'm thinking of you..."?   Take them on dates to exclusive restaurants? 

Oh the story itself?  Who cares about that when we can speculate about the sex lives of companies...

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 08:08 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Wandering Stuff

There are headlines all over the net... sometimes 2 or 3 in the same feed telling me that Kim Jong Il is dead.  Okay - I get it already.  He has assumed room temperature.  Can we go onto the next story now?

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Google has an "Easter egg" going. If you go to their search bar and type in "let it snow" it starts to snow on your browser and then frosts up.  Not sure whether this is cool or not, but it got them lots of tweets and even a few headlines.

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Young son is headed this way for Christmas.  I hope the big snow storm which is now causing issues in the SW part of the US doesn't cause problems with his flight out. 

He got straight A's again this semester and I got him a good Christmas present.  It would be pretty much of a let down if he couldn't get here.

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There's a headline on one of my feeds that says something about a "British sprinter" raising money on ebay.  I keep reading it as "British spinster".  heh

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That's all I've got for now. 

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 11:06 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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A Little Dog Christmas

I love Border Collies and Papillons (there was a Papillon in the training class where I trained our dog years ago - small but very smart) also German Shepherds, Aussie Shepherds... well I like dogs. 



Now if only I could get them to decorate my house I'd be set.

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 05:39 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Winding Down the Week

Okay so it's been about a week since I posted something.  And then I realized I don't have anything much to say even after a week.

I totally missed some sort of debate last night because really... who wants to voluntarily watch a bunch of idiots blowing hot air? 

I haven't had time to take any pictures lately or even look at those I took a while back.  Then again I have such a low attention threshold I almost never feel like going back and working on photos I took longer ago than last week.

I picked up flipboard for my iphone.  I can't decide if I like it or not. I haven't created an account because they won't let me do it on my big computer and I'm too lazy to try doing it on my iphone with the tiny keyboard.  So I open it and flip through the stories hoping something really interesting will be included.  So far nothing has really grabbed me.  I've seen other people tweeting how much they love it so I must be doing something wrong. heh.

After a conversation I had earlier today I keep thinking I really really need to write a book titled: A Geek's Guide  Do-it-yourself computer security for people who think nothing will ever happen to them. The prospect is daunting though and I don't know where to start.  Oh my.

Okay I need to get back to writing some code. I think I've procrastinated long enough.  Have a nice weekend.

Posted by: Teresa in Ummmmm at 05:09 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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And Now It's Adobe Flash

Ho-Hum... another day another Adobe Exploit.

This time it's Adobe Flash with a Zero Day

The most relevant bit... since there is no fix available and heaven knows when there will be.

The exploits should be addressed by Adobe sooner or later, but until then you might consider a tool like Click2Flash, NoScript, or Click2Plugin for blocking unwanted Flash content from running on your system.

UPDATE: found this vid at CNET that walks you through how to use noscript if you add it to Firefox.

Posted by: Teresa in WebTech at 11:59 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Do You Use Adobe Reader?

There is currently a zero day exploit - a hole in the software that is known but has no patch available as yet - making the rounds.

Security Threat in Reader

I'm linking to a Mac site because it needs to be emphasized that this is a problem with Adobe Reader NOT just on Windows PC's but on Windows, Mac, and even UNIX machines (which I assume includes Linux).

Version 9.4.6 is the currently exploited software (there is malicious software in the wild).  On Windows machines, it will be patched next week. If you are on a Mac or on Unix using this version you are SOL because... hey dudes, it's the holidays! They'll get something out early next year...

Oh... Jolly good then.

If you have a new version of Adobe 10.1.1 there are some options available. The first paragraph refers to Mac (because it is a Mac site).

To enable protected view in Adobe's Reader X and Acrobat X products, go to the Edit menu and select Preferences. Then select "Security (Enhanced)" and check the option to "Enable Enhanced Security," ensure that either the "All Files" or "Files from potentially usafe locations" are checked if they are available.

On Windows PCs you can also go to the "General" section of the preferences and ensure that "Enable Protected Mode at Startup" is selected, but this option is not available for Reader on OS X.

Or better yet - get rid of Adobe if you can.  If you are only using it to read pdf's, then for heaven sake - on Mac use Preview. It's on your system and it's free.  If you need a pdf type thing that's allows you to edit, use PDF Pen.  It's great and it's cheap!

If you use Windows, do yourself a huge favor and grab Foxit Reader. It's free and about 1000% faster when opening PDF files than Adobe is.  They also have editing software that is not too expensive (although I have not used it). 

Really - get off Adobe Reader - get it off your system and you will be safer and be able to read documents far faster than you can with it.

Posted by: Teresa in WebTech at 02:02 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Jumping Forward 70 Years

And changing Navies... to the British side.  Here's a Christmas vid from the Aviation Department of the HMS Ocean. Heh.



They were supposed to be deployed for 7 weeks and that turned into 225 days.  Welcome home sailors!

Posted by: Teresa in FUN at 03:29 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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It's Been 70 Years

I wasn't born yet, my parents hadn't even met... but listening to this and remembering Pearl Harbor still makes me catch my breath and makes my heart twist.



We can never repay the debt to all the men and women who stepped up to fight for our freedom.  We never forget those who lost their lives that day. 

Posted by: Teresa in Military at 02:29 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Stuck in a rut is far less work

Saw this tweet go out today via Twitter Support:

Some users are unable to upload a new #avatar. We're aware of the issue & working to fix it.

And it occurred to me to wonder... how many people try to change their avatars and how often?  I know I see avatars that seem to be changed on a weekly and even daily basis on twitter and facebook. 

My thought?  There's at least 15 minutes of my life I won't get back just to change a teensy picture... not to mention the abusive tweets one decides must be written once one does waste the time to change the avatar only to find that twitter is (surprise!)  FUBAR.  And then the anxious waiting until twitter says "it's fixed".  Followed by more abusive tweeting to the twitter help after one finally gets the beloved avatar changed.

Yeah, it makes me tired just thinking about all that work for a teensy picture.  I think I'll go take a nap.
 

Posted by: Teresa in Ummmmm at 01:43 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Geekery

Tonight I am tired of computers. 

After setting up a server today and trying to set up access controls (the user can only do certain things and nothing else) I was wishing I could just tell the friggin' computer "this is what I want to let them do - nothing else - got it?"  At which point it would do all the nitpicky work and I'd be finished.

But then I realized as soon as we can tell computers this stuff, someone will figure out a way to tell the computer a long story, instead of giving it a command... something like Little Red Riding Hood... then they'd say "command shell". Then they would own your computer.  I call it Future Buffer Overflow.

I know this little post will lose me the last 3 readers who persist in reading... heh.

Posted by: Teresa in Ummmmm at 06:16 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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