Author Archives: Derek

Royal Wedding

Posted on by

Today’s the Royal Wedding. I wouldn’t call myself a “Royal Watcher” but growing up in a Commonwealth country I guess it’s always just been something that’s sort of been there in the background.Diana and Charles. - Waving from the carriage.

The reason I bring this up is because I can distinctly recall what I was doing July 29th 1981, the wedding date of Charles and Diana. I was eight years old and was at Omi and Opa’s house in Mississauga. That morning my Dad and I were headed out of town for a canoe trip to Lady Evelyn Lake in Northern Ontario. It was about a six hour drive so to make sure that we got there with enough time to unload the car and canoe into the lake to find campsite we had to leave early in the morning.

I remember that after my Mom woke me up at some ungodly hour in the morning I walked down the hall to find everyone sitting in front of the old Zenith console TV watching the Royal Wedding live. I didn’t get to stay and see the whole thing but I do remember that it was right around the time she was getting to the church that we left.

Does anyone else remember that day?

First, Second, Third….

Posted on by

I’ve always been fascinated by churches with the names like ‘First United Methodist Church”, “Second United Methodist Church”, and so on. What makes the first different from the second? What about the “Last United Methodist Church”? Are they the end all be all of United Methodist Churches?

So in the spirit of xkcd I turned to Google to compare the number of search results returned for each church name. And so I present to you my completely unscientific results.

The Baptists have the largest web presence followed up by the United Methodist Church. Overall the Anglican’s and the United Church are the least represented.

And here’s to you the “Twelfth Baptist Church” in Boston, because after all, the first eleven just couldn’t get it right 🙂

Time to Update Adobe Reader

Posted on by

I promise some lighter fair here in the next couple of days but Adobe just published an update to a couple of versions of Adobe Reader that are labeled critical so you really need to update.

Start up Adobe Reader and in the Help menu select “Check for Updates”.

Adobe Reader - Check for Update

If there are updates available for your version they will be applied.

I would even suggest that if your not running version 10.0.1 (which I’m not in the picture above but I’m in the process of upgrading) that you go and update to this version. You can get it from Adobe at http://get.adobe.com/reader/

Time to Upgrade Your Flash Player

Posted on by

I’m a couple of days late posting this but if you haven’t done so already make sure that you update your Adobe Flash player. There are currently exploits out on in the internet lands that take advantage of certain security flaws in flash that could compromise your system. If there is anything that security experts can agree on is that if you need to run flash you need to keep it updated.

Validate Your Version

Go to the Adobe Web site and validate the version of flash that you are currently running: http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/ The version you are running will be displayed in the box “Version Information” which should look the the one below.

Your browser and operating system will dictate the correct version you need to be running but for the majority of users you are going to need version 10.2.159.1.

Update If Necessary

If you need to update you can go to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ and you should be prompted to download the correct version for your browser and OS.

You can also use the Manual downloader if you don’t like the whole Adobe download system by following the download instructions at http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/191/tn_19166.html#main_ManualInstaller

Validate Your Version

After you update double check that you are now running the correct version by going back to http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

Multiple Browsers

If you run multiple browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc, on the same computer you may need to update each browser separately. Double check that each browser is running the latest version.

Epsilon Data Breach – Has your Email Address Been Stolen?

Posted on by

Over the past weekend there was a fairly significant data breach at a company called Epsilon. Epsilon manages various aspects of online marketing and marketing services to companies like Best Buy, Disney Vacations, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Kroger, and others.

According to the press release from their website a “subset of Epsilon clients’ customer data were exposed by an unauthorized entry into Epsilon’s email system.” The breach was “limited to email addresses and/or customer names only.”

What does that mean to you?

Hopefully if your email was stolen as part of this you have received a notification letting you know. I’ve received three notices so far and I’ve read one report of a person who received six.

If you received a notice you need to be on the lookout for targeted or “spear” phishing attacks. Whoever stole the data has your email address and knows which company you gave it to. Spammers can target you with a specifically crafted message that looks like it comes from a company you do business with but try and fool you into giving up your login credentials or sending a message that contains a virus.

So what should you do?

Any email you get from companies, whether they were part of this data breach or not, make sure that any hyper links in the message point back to the actual company. You can typically see this by hovering over the link and looking at the bottom left corner of the browser and it will display the site address. For example, this link to www.google.com isn’t really going to take you to google. (You didn’t click on it did you…..) Phishers will get a lot more crafty then my simple example so you really need to be cautious.

If you receive an email requesting that you log in and verify your information, change your password, tells you your account has been compromised, or any other similar request asking for information, don’t believe it. Don’t follow any of the links in the email, go directly to the companies site as you normally would, either via bookmark or manually typing it in, and log in. If they want something from you chances are you will be prompted for it after you log in.

Don’t open any attachments that may accompany emails from companies. I don’t believe I’ve ever received an email with an attachment from a company that I wasn’t specifically expecting. Like purchasing tickets to an event and they send them in a .pdf file for printing. Any attachments should raise the red flag.

Other good practices include using different passwords for all your sites. I know, this can be a real pain, but if your email account gets hacked you don’t want the same password to provide access to your banking account. You also don’t want your email address to be easy to guess. How many times have you forgot your password to a site and the only information needed to reset it or get a temporary password was to enter you email address and the company sends you an email to complete the process. If I have access to your email account I could reset your password at lots of places before you know it.

While your at it for sites that allow it make sure you passwords contain special characters like * & # ! and don’t contain words found in the dictionary. This will make it more difficult for automated programs to guess your password. Additionally, passwords should be at least 8 characters long.

Lastly, make sure you are running some type of antivirus on your computer. I’m not real big on actually paying for software, I’m more of the free software kind of guy, but antivirus is the one thing I actually buy. Whatever product you choose make sure you keep it up to date. My AV updates at least once a day if not more frequently, that’s how fast they discover and block new viruses.

Snow Days

Posted on by

Here in Texas we usually get at least one day of snow per year. I know, not much compared to how much our northern family and friends get but it’s snow just the same. This year a couple of days before the snow arrived the local news weatherman were all talking about the “arctic blast” and “heavy snow” like it was going to be the end of the world and as usually I just blew it off as sensationalism.

That night the freezing ran rolled in around 3:00 am and at 6:00 am the phone rang and it was the school district letting us know that there would be no school that day. Around noon the snow rolled in and we got about 4 inches at the house. The cold weather stayed around and the temperature didn’t get above freezing for the next four days and school was canceled for the remainder of the week. It was the first time in the history of the school district that they had ever had to cancel 4 days of school in a row for snow.

Since we don’t have the ability to clear snow and ice from all the roads I ended up working from home the entire week. In addition to all the cold and snow the state wasn’t prepared for the surge in electric needs and they had to implement rolling blackouts to conserve electricity. My work building lost power for an entire day so even if I could have made it in I would have sent me home.

The boys certainly enjoyed all the time off school since it meant more xbox minutes but after being cooped up in the house for 6 six days we were all starting to get a little stir crazy.

True to Texas weather a week later we were outside and didn’t even need a jacket.

Here are some of the pictures that we took during our days at the house.