New Media Will Change the World in 2014

The writing is on the wall so to speak. The linked article speaks of sweeping change on the horizon for old media as well as mergers in new media to topple the Evil Empire (read Microsoft). Another article which supports this theory is about Craigslist and how his website is taking $$ away from San Francisco newspapers. The article states that listings in Craigslist has cost San Francisco newspapers between $50 and $65 million since it's inception in the mid-90's. Now given that and the fact that Craigslist has expanded it's market place to 59 cities in the US of A makes for a lot of lost revenue to traditional classified papers.

So, if the above article come to pass, Googlezon will be the hot one-stop shopping, email, news resource, communication tool of the future.

Read about the this blog entry about EPIC or Evolving Personalized Information Construct,

Things That Make Me Wish We Lived In a Condo

Seems that either an underground pipe for the sprinkler system or a sprinkler head that I can't easily see has broken and was running the pump for the well for a couple of days. I didn't really think much of the loss of water pressure when in the kitchen, but when in the shower, it really made a difference. I'm not sure exactly when it broke, but I noticed it on Tuesday morning and turned the valve to the sprinklers off. Now I need to wait for the rain to subside before I attempt to look for the broken pipe. This is the second broken pipe in the last 3 months. The previous one was under a bridge where the PVC pipes leads to our property on the other side of the creek. Lucky for me, the water was low in the creek and I was able to get in there and cut out the portion with the crack and fit a new piece in it's place.

Trust, there will be an entry about the fun of fixing the pipe!

A Rockin' New Year's Eve

I've spent a few New Year's Eve's with the Mother Hips and this one should be better than the rest. They are playing at the Sweetwater Saloon in Mill Valley and the show begins at, well, they say 9:30. The reason this one will be better is because currently they aren't really a band as they broke up in late 2003. I'm thinking back and remember at least one of New Year's shows I've been to. One was back in 1994 or maybe it was 1993 but it was in Chico at Tres Hombres which is an odd venue for a show since it's a restaurant. I went to that show with a bunch of friends from Costco and had an incredible time. Anyway, I'm expecting a full blown rock and roll show which I'm hoping to get some pictures of and maybe some video with my fancy new camera. Maybe I'll even sneak in my digital recorder and get a couple of songs, but then I'm not sure I want carry all that stuff not to mention the legality of recording.

As it's recommended to not drive on New Years Eve, we've gotten a spa room at the Tiburon Lodge and plan to take a cab to and from. I hope the cab situation in Mill Valley isn't as bad as in Chico on New Year's or we might have a 6 mile walk home!

Happy New Year's everyone!

New BBQ install

I should have just put a few M-80's around the base of the old BBQ and just blasted it off it's base! But why waste good explosives on an old BBQ? So, instead I purchased a new metal grinding disc for my drill (costs about $2.97 at the Home Depot) and grinded off the better portion of the heads of the screws. Then, using a drill bit specifically for drilling into metal, I drilled out the rest of the screw. Even after removing all the bits of screw remaining, I couldn't seem to get the BBQ off it's stand. So, figuring it would eventually give into my continued attack, I moved the wheelbarrow up along side the BBQ so when it did fall, it would fall mostly into the wheelbarrow. So, I pummelled the BBQ like I was Reggie White (RIP) until it fell. The gunk at the base was fairly nasty, so I somewhat brushed that aside. Since it was raining pretty hard and the ground was slick with olives from the trees around the patio, I didn't bother cleaning it off very well. Then it was time for the install, LOL. I released the locks on the four wheels of the new BBQ and pushed it into place over the old base and re-locked the wheels. I then pushed the old gas line into the hole at the back of the new BBQ and connected it to the hose on the inside. Install complete! I did though, mount the side table on one side and the push handle on the other side. I even disassembled the cabinet doors so to fix the hinge as they had rattled loose during transport, I imagine.

Please excuse my photos because we just got a new camera and I'm attempting to familiarize myself with it. These were taken with the Sony DSC T-1 .

Armstong Wins AP Male Athlete of the Year, Again

Lance has won the AP Male Athlete of the Year award for the third year running. Armstrong joins Michael Jordan as the only two to ever accomplish this feat since the inception of the award in 1931. There's not much else to say other than this year he definately earned the title.

Also mentioned in the article which I couldn't confirm anywhere else is over 30 million LiveStrong wristbands have sold to date!

Mother Nature Fights back...

In the wake of the tsunami which devistated anything in the Indian Ocean and ended the lives of up to 52,000 people comes the latest update from NASA which now gives the astroid know as 2004 MN4 a 1-in-37 chance (probability of 2.7%) of hitting Earth on April 13, 2029. Not great odds if you happen to live on Earth, but I'm going to bet that we have a viable solution buy 2029. Or at least I'm hoping for one, because at 59, I'll be too old to change my lifestyle to meet the potential change an astroid hitting the Earth would cause.

Read the article about the tsunami here.

I think this tsunami must be ranked as the worst natual disaster of the past 100 years. I can't think of any other incident where so many perished. To boot, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that disease in the aftermath could double the current death toll. I watched some of the videos shown on TV was wasn't really impressed by the "walls of water." I was expecting a 50 foot wave, but then realized tsunamis, many times, are just floods of white water, kind of like after a wave breaks and is heading to shore, except these come with much greater force. This is tradegy at it's best, I wish all who are involved the best of luck in getting back to normalcy.

Christmas Recovery

Well, it passed as quickly as it arrived and now it's over. I was expecting the travel between our destinations to be tough but it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated and I only saw a few crazy drivers on the road during our 320 miles or so of travel. Things turned out great, I was able to see most of the family I was expecting to see, I didn't over-eat, and we weren't late for the Christmas meal, which was tasty as usual. The best part was Christmas being on a Saturday, we weren't so rushed to leave my parents house as in years past. The drive home even went quickly, which seems backwards given we were going home to open our gifts to ourselves. I think we got home about 10:30 or so and saw off the house sitter before settling down around 5 minutes to midnight to begin opening gifts.

I have this habit or maybe you could call it a disorder about the tidy-ness of the kitchen so I had to clean up the kitchen before we started in on the gifts. During this time, Karin was out enjoying her favorite past time, killing slugs in the yard with salt. The only reason I mention this is because the kitchen windows look upon the back patio and Karin had hid one of my gifts right out infront of the kitchen windows. I couldn't figure out why she was getting upset at me cleaning the kitchen but then later realized it was because the gift was right infront of the windows and much too large to wrap. But, being so late and me being so tired, I didn't even notice the large silvery contraption in the yard.

Anyway, so we open gifts starting with the stockings. As usual, Karin gets me tons of useful stuff and I her. We open gifts one apiece and would admire each for a short time before moving on to the next. Usually, I have a pretty good idea as to what I'm going to be getting, but this year, Karin had me fooled. I was getting a lot of B-B-Q items which was throwing me off. First a B-B-Q book, then a leather heating pad and glove, some cool B-B-Q boards for cooking on, and a really nice flipper. I thinking, great, all this cool B-B-Q stuff and we've got this 20 year old grill that looks as if it's been to the moon and back. I made some comment about how cool all the items are and how I'm going to so enjoy using them, especially this nice flipper. She can see that I'm like, what the hell are you getting me all this B-B-Q stuff for and tells me there is one more gift that isn't under the tree. I flew off the floor like I was Superman with flipper in hand and ran to the back slider door. Much to my amazement, sitting infront of the kitchen window was a huge silvery Kenmore B-B-Q. Karin was very sly about having the gift delivered to a neighbors house and having the house sitter and neighbor move the Q into the backyard while we were away.

Of course I got bunches of other wonderful gifts which I will mention in following posts. Also, look for the future post about me ripping out the old B-B-Q and installing the new one. I'll try and take picture of the process. It should be fun as the old one is affixed to the patio tile.

League Names Chico a Bicycle-Friendly Community

Yeah for Chico! Not only were we 1997 Bicycling Magazine's #1 Best Bike Town, but now The League of American Bicyclists is recognizing Chico, California with its prestigious Bicycle Friendly Community designation. We received the bronze-level award and are only the 8th community in all of California to receive an award from The League of American Bicyclists.

The League's BFC reviewers were impressed that Chico boasts a 5.2% bicycle mode share, one of the highest levels in the country, and about five times the national average. The League staff and reviewers consider several factors before granting a community BFC status, including:

• The physical environment for bicycling -- on-street facilities, trails, parking etc.
• Education programs to promote a "share the road" ethic among bicyclists and drivers
• Promotional initiatives to persuade people to ride or ride more often
• Enforcement of traffic laws for both motorists and bicyclists
• Future plans and evaluation techniques to improve conditions further

So, check out the linked article above to read the entire report or go out and ride your bike instead!

Looking forward to Christmas

Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus right down Santa Claus lane...

So, I'm excited Christmas is arriving soon. I'm looking forward to seeing family I rarely get to see, have some tasty Christmas dinner, and move past the moratorium on buying stuff I really want that I might get for Christmas. Note that most of the stuff I want is not stuff I would consider other people buy for me.

Anyway, it will be nice to see my brother and his family as he lives about 4 hours away and I never see him. Imagine, both of us busy with work, life, and family. So, maybe someday we'll be able to get together and do some of the fun stuff we used together as kids (ha, retirement isn't too far off). I'll get to see my grandparents who live only slightly closer just in a different direction, haven't seen them since Easter. I'm hoping they bring some of their tasty beef jerky which is always a family favorite. I will also get to see my cousin Kristi and her husband Brian, son TJ and new baby, Chase. I'll get to see how my cousins John and Matt, the firemen, are doing. I hope they are being safe out there! I'll also get to hit up my uncle John on his digital camera knowledge as Mickey Mouse and friends probably have my camera now and I'm in the market for a new one; read this post if you didn't know. Then there is uncle Henry and aunt Betty and their family. I'm interested to see how Chris and Karen are doing in school and see if Chris has anymore stories about William Hung. Hopefully, my Mom's cousin, Chistine and her Mom Teresa (or it could be Theresa, I can't remember) will be there. And of course my parents. It's bound to be an action packed afternoon over at my parents house, with all the catching up, the white elephant gift exchange, and of course our family favorite, Raiders, playing the afternoon game on Christmas day. Unfortunately, life being what it is, we only get to spend about 5 or 6 hours over there at best as my wife will want to get home to open our presents. I don't think, and I hope that, we won't be bringing any of our gifts to us with us on our trip.

Speaking of the trip, we plan to leave sometime on Friday to head over to my mother-in-law's house in Lincoln to start off the holiday. Then we are supposed to leave about 11 AM or so to head to my parents house Christmas day after opening gifts with the in-laws. I'm not omitting the fact it will also be nice to see them, but being they live the closest to us, we tend to see them more than other family. After leaving, I'm hoping we make it their on time which can sometimes be an issue. It's always tough as we have to make the rounds every year and once at someone's house, it's always hard to leave. You always want to spend more time, but you realize that time doesn't exist if you are attempting to see everyone on such an important day. Yay for family!

Cause Santa Claus comes tonight!

Oh poor me.... Health issues!

Well, for months now I've had this occasional recurring pain that runs from my left hip into my groin area. It's not really been an issue in terms of my activity, but once about a month ago, while sitting in my chair at work I had a nasty strike of this pain which prompted me to see the doctor.

So, I went to see the doctor for the pain as well as a persistent cough I couldn't kick. After checking me out, he states, "you have a slight hernia." So I question him as to how I can fix it or what I can do about it. It seems that there isn't anything to do other than surgery once it's full blown. The doctor did mention doing more situps and leg lifts, but I've been in pretty good shape at times this past years and question the diagnosis as I had pain then as well. I've got another appointment in 3 weeks and will question him again.

Anyway, a hernia doesn't seem life threatening, but I'm getting to the age when I need to be slightly more concerned about my health. Being that I work at a Regional Cancer Registry and being a bit of a hypocondriate because I've recently had friends my age with cancer, I'm debating asking for an x-ray or MRI, just to rule that out.

One story from a friend who had cancer years ago, which was supposed to humor me, not worry me, did just the latter. This friend used to work on a tuna boat in Alaska and noticed a lump in his groin area. Upon returning to shore, he saw the doctor who promptly told him, you have a hernia, come see me next week for the outpatient surgery to correct the problem. Anyway, during the surgery, the doctor realized it wasn't a hernia but a cancerous lymphnode. Luckily for him, he had a twin brother with which to get a bone marrow transplant and is currently living happily ever after. So things about this story that concerned me were the fact it didn't hurt him when he lifted heavy object (same here), and the doctor thought it was a hernia (same here).

One good thing is that he never felt pain, where as I do, so I'm probably worrying about nothing but a hernia.

So, my plan is... once I kick the viral infection which has kept me inactive for about 5 weeks (oh, did I forget to mention that's what the doctor thought my cough is about) I plan to start hitting the bike and gym hard in anticipation of early season, 100 mile bike rides I have planned and also to see if I just might aggravate the hernia enough where as requiring the surgery. The 1000 mg antibiotics I'm on seem to make me really tired and lazy not to mention it is killing my lower intestine in about the same area I have the occasional hernia pain so I haven't been working out at all.

So, on the surgical side of this, I've read up on hernias and found the following sites very informational:

1. Hernia Resource Center
2. National Ambulator Hernia Institue
3. WebMD

Anyway, it's not like the thought of death and disease is keeping me up at night, so I'm sure I'll be back to feeling normal shortly. Ok no more thinking about that as it's hurting my side.

California Catholic Conference of Bishops want you to live

Yet another gift from the Catholic church... first it was the crusades, then it was priests fonding little boys (I thought that was Michael Jackson's job), and now they want to stop a bill that would allow physician-assisted suicide. There was a similar 1992 ballot measure which "polled very favorably until the last two weeks before the election in which the Catholic church pumped $4 million into a very negative ad campaign based on emotion," Assembly member Patty Berg (D-Eureka) said.

Seems to me that if you want to die it should be your right. But even that is not what this is about. This law would would only give that right to terminally-ill patients with the doctors consent. I think it's time for a good ole' crusade, either you're with us or we're gonna kill ya!

Lance and Antonio ride cross

Lance Armstrong and Antonio Cruz showed up to ride the Scary Fast 'Cross this past Sunday at Pierce College in Woodland Hills. Reports stated Lance was looking good as far as his cross skills on the mounts and dismounts over the barriers and that he and Tony Cruz appeared to be riding stock Trek X01 cross bikes.

Lance and Masters National Champion in the 45+ category Mark Noble, lead the race basically from start to finish with Lance having a 30 second lead at the bell lap and rolled in for the win to a thunderous crowd. Of course Lance donated the prize money to charity. Check out the pics at the linked article above.

Seems as if Lance is hanging in SoCal a tad this winter after the week long training camp USPS had in Austin earlier this month. I imagine he is chillin there before heading back to Austin for Christmas and then out to Discovery's headquartes in Silver Spring, MD January 10th for the Team presentation before heading back to Solvang for the team's first training camp January 11-21. Ah, yet another cycling season, gotta love a sport that runs almost all year.

Web Fire Escape

Just in case you shouldn't be reading this blog while at work or maybe you don't want people to know you can read or maybe you just want to get away from my blog, you can escape by using the little green icon that looks like this .

If you blog you might want to add this feature to your blog, just use the linked article above.

Enjoy!

Not going to be flying Delta anytime soon!

The Queen of Sky has been grounded by Delta for the following pictures posted to her blog at the linked article above, watch out, they are pretty risque.

Queen of Sky (QoS) or Ellen Simonetti (her real name) was an attendant for Delta Airlines for eight years when she began blogging about work and life to get through some tough times after her mother died of cancer the year prior. As it turned out, she had posted some pictures of her and fellow attendants having fun while at work. It seems Delta didn't take kindly to the pictures and on Saturday, Sept. 25 they suspended her. It was not until a meeting with human resources and her supervisor on Wednesday, Oct. 6, that she learned the official reason for her suspension: "inappropriate" pictures.

By now you've looked at the linked pics and realize those are about as risque as what Michelangelo painted on the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Not to mention, I didn't even realize she was wearing a Delta uniform. Anyway, I'm not going to have an extened rant here, so you can read the articles and decide for yourself, but me, I won't be flying Delta.

Articles and info you may want to read:

1. http://news.com.com/I+was+fired+for+blogging/2010-1030_3-5490836.html?tag=st.pop
2. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/146115_blogger30.html
3. http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=661&topic=-1

Be a Christmas Hero

Send your loved one's a personalized Christmas song at Instasong.com. It usually costs $5.95 a song but if you use this Promotion code, bc2004, you get endless freebies.

Please protect us from ourselves!

So, if you live in Manteca you better not warm up your car! You could get a $50 ticket for doing so if the Manteca police chief, Charlie Halford, has his way.

The police chief was quoted saying, "Our auto theft rate has increased 60 percent as compared to last year," Halford said. "So far this year, we've had just under 800 cars stolen as of the end of November."

I wonder if Manteca is experiencing an extremely cold year compared to last year for the rates to increase so much? Or maybe there are just more thieves moving into an area where the policing is weak at best.

Charlie should try barking up a different tree, woof!

Microsoft does it again!

Well, just last weekend I blogged about a Microsoft IE security vulnerability that I used for a class report and amazingly the same flaw has been discovered in Windows XP SP2 and IE once again. If you want to see if your browser might be vulnerable click here and look for Test Your System, then click the link below.

The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the DHTML Edit ActiveX control when handling the "execScript()" function in certain situations. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary script code in a user's browser session in context of an arbitrary site. The vulnerability has been confirmed on a fully patched system with Internet Explorer 6.0 and Microsoft Windows XP SP1/SP2.

As this past Tuesday was the second Tuesday of the month, therefore Microsoft Patch Day, I wonder if MS might put out a patch before the next patch day in January? Anyway, here is what to do to resolve the problem until there is a patch.

Set security level to high for the "Internet" zone (disable ActiveX support). So in your browser go to Tools Internet Options and select the Security Tab. Click the Internet Zone, click the Custom Level button at the bottom of the screen and then scroll down in the resulting screen until you see "Script ActiveX controls marked for scripting" and select the Disable radio control. Click the OK button and select YES when the warning screen pops up.

Then test your work by going back to the test page I linked to above. You should receive a dialog stating "an ActiveX control on this page is not safe" and the page won't display.

Happy safe computing!

Blockbuster to Eliminate Late Fees...

Yeah, Blockbuster is eliminating late fees as of January 1st. So, that means all those late fees I owe them will disappear shortly. Yeah, I'm finally getting one over on the video store after years of paying two or three times the rental fee.

Big news in IT

Well this week was huge for the Information Technology sector with Symantec purchasing Veritas and Oracle finally buying PeopleSoft.

Computer security giant Symantec Corp. is buying storage and backup program specialist Veritas Software Corp. to create the world's fourth largest software maker in a deal worth $12.4 billion.

Oracle got the acquisition ball rolling earlier this week with a $10.3 billion takeover of bitter rival PeopleSoft Inc. — a combination that was cinched after 18 months of turmoil.

My interest in all of this resides in the fact we use products from both Veritas and Symantec, so I'm concerned about the support issues and licensing aspects which will come out of this merging of the two.

In terms of the Oracle/PeopleSoft deal, I've got friends working at Oracle hence my interest and I've recently found out my bosses brother works for PeopleSoft. I hope he doesn't loose his job during this acquisition.

Craps! Get Dicey: Play Craps and Have Fun

A co-worker recently started a publishing company and has written a book about Craps. I looked over the book, not knowing how to play craps and really loved her writing style. So, I've got to give the book a plug! Check it out at the linked article above. If you are interested, I might be able to get you a signed copy. The name of the book is Get Dicey: Play Craps and Have Fun.

LiveStrong band = "do not resuscitate"

It's been reported that the yellow LiveStrong wrist bands you've seen people wearing to support cancer research are similar to those used by BayCare Health Systems to specify "do not resuscitate." Note to self, if I'm in the hospital, take off LiveStrong band.

As of October 26th, more than 20 million band have been sold. Between www.laf.org and www.wearyellow.com, 150,000 bands are sold each day on average. The record being September 20, when the LAF sold 382,000 wristbands in one day. Yay for cancer research! It's keeping me in a job.

I stumbled across this photo of me at the Martinez marina back around Easter of 1997. Man, where did those curls go and what happened to the last 7 years, damn that went by fast.

It's Office Holiday Party time...

Since Karin and I have the largest home with the most central location, again my company's Holiday Party is at our house. I believe this will be the 3rd year running and in the spirit of the holidays I thought it might be appropriate to touch on Holiday Party etiquette. Side note on Holiday vs. Christmas party; these days you just have to be PC, eh? I'm not sure if people are more offended by a Christmas party beging called a Holiday party of vise versa. So, read up on not dancing on the tables, inappropriate touching, and over consumption (and I don't mean the food) here.

Crystal Reports training...

The last two days of this past week were spent in wonderful Sacramento for training in Crystal Reports. As much of the software support aspect of my job seems to be tailing off with the continual iterations of the software, I need to find ways to make myself useful. One such ways is joining the California Cancer Registry's Reports Development (RepDev) team. To get ramped up, I've taken a week long course on Programming a Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database and now Crystal Reports 9 Introduction. After the SQL class, the Crystal class was kind of like a vacation. I'd say Crystal is fairly straight forward and rather intuitive. As I've only been connecting to the RepDev servers via SQL Enterprise to familiarize myself with the stored procedures and work on formatting them, I'm interested in working on the aesthetics of the reports. I'm not a programmer nor do I want to be, hence my excitement about Crystal and steering clear of developing new stored procedures, though I currently have a development assignment I need to get to.

Anyway, I enjoy visiting Sacramento, even though this time it was very short. I the enjoy the hustle and bustle of a somewhat large city along with the different people and cultures which isn't available here in Chico. While I was there I made a quick stop off to see a cycling friend at the California Cancer Registry to drop off a super light weight set of wheels I'm to fat to ride. Before I left, he showed me a new bike he had recently bought and stashed in his cubicle to hide from his wife. Shame shame I told him until I saw the bike. It was a beautiful white carbon (totally proprietary technology, usually carbon is black) Bianchi which he got on eBay from a distributor. After filling my drool cup twice over, I had to leave before I asked to ride it.

Say it ain't so!

Ok, after just over 3 months of service my Linksys wireless router/firewall has taken a dive. Fully understanding the WEP algorithm isn't totally secure, even the 128-bit version, I decided it was time to change the wireless encryption password on my unit. Upon changing the 26-character code and saving the configuration I was unable to return to the user interface. Not really a problem, I had to do was reset the unit and reload the back up of my config. Well, after the attempted reset, I still couldn't connect to the unit via the wireless card (not really recommended for this procedure) or by a cabled connection. At this point, I had a strong feeling it wasn't a software issue with the unit and called Linksys support.

Caveat, the support is now located in India which is both good and bad. The good part is that labor is cheap there and the techs will stay with you on the line forever and a day without punting you. Punting is when the support person doesn't know how to solve your problem, doesn't care about helping you, and or is more interested in keeping his call times very short to appease a support manager by telling you they don't support the issue you have or that the problem belongs to another entity. The bad part is I have trouble understanding what they are saying and the connection via phone, most likely an IP phone, to India, isn't real good.

So, I called the Linksys techs on two occasions to worked through the same stuff I had done on my own and had similar, negative results. We tried resetting for 10 seconds, then 30 seconds and then 90 seconds. We tried variations of reset times while unplugging and then plugging in the AC adaptor for the unit, but each time my machine wouldn't connect and would auto configure a 169.254 address, which is no bueno. After hard coding an IP address and gateway into TCP/IP settings and still not being able to ping the gateway, the tech gave up and supplied me with a code for merchandise return.

Currently I'm stuck to the wire until the replacement arrives. Oh well what can you expect from $60 networking equipment anyway?

PhishNet it's not just for stockings anymore!

I'm going keep this short and sweet as you could write a book or three on Phishing. I did a report on phishing about 11 months ago in a security class I took at Chico State, the phishing attacks began about 4 months prior. My report focused on a Microsoft Internet Explorer flaw which allowed hackers to display a fake address in your browser's address bar in attempts for you to provide personal and financial information to what you would think are legitimate websites. They looked like legitimate websites because they were just recreations of said websites at a spoofed address. Basically, phishing boils down to identity theft.

Now, I'm sure everyone out there has loaded patches in the last year, so you should be protected against the flaw I reported on in class, but as you might know, don't ever give out financial info when asked via email. To check to see if you are patched go here and click on the button labeled "Test Exploit." If you receive The page cannot be displayed than you are patched, but if you get to a page that says Microsoft.com, you'll want to patch your machine by visiting JavaScript code to JPG images. To truly combat phishing, don't ever give into solicitation for your personal and or financial info.

If you want to read more about phishing these people are the pros.

Now onto Phishnet, no not the stockings! Phishnet is a program developed via the collaboration of International law enforcement and numerous industry leaders to catch phishers by tracing the origins of deceptive e-mails and phony Web sites in real time, then by passing that information on to law enforcement. The article didn't really go into how this might work for you and I directly other than to bring culprits to justice. If you get a phishing email you can join in the fight against phishing by reporting it to DigitalPhishnet.org.

Playboy, attack of the pornbot!

The Playboy I'm speaking of isn't found in a magazine or even at Playboy.com but might be found on your computer. I'm talking about a fairly new mass-mailing worm spreading around the internet with the ablilty for high distribution, meaning it could spread quickly. The email you recieve will be from a spoofed address and contain an attachment named PlayGirls_2.exe, so make sure your virus definitions are upto date and don't open any emails with the Subject: 12345. The worm, called W32.Maslan.C@mm, arrives as an attachment promising naked photos of Playboy models, which leads me to believe it should spread easily. Once executed, it drops an IRC (Inter Relay Chat) bot capable of transmitting passwords and sensitive information back to the virus writer. It also allows unauthorized remote access, sends a mass-mailing to email addresses gathered from the infected computer, and terminates processes related to security products.

Anyway, it's easy to remove if you do get it. Read more about the dirty details at Symantec or McAfee.

Shout At The Devil

It seems Motley Crue is getting back together to reek havoc on concert goers and their cities once again. As Nikki Sixx states in the article linked above, "We're back in ... It's gonna freak you out. Trust me, no one's seen anything like this in years."

They have a ton of shows TBA in the US and are scheduled to come to Reno and Oakland sometime in 2005, look for mayhem to ensue.

Cal going to Holiday...

No Roses for Cal, quality run though!

Cal could be Rose Bowl bound...

I'm not college football fan nor much of a Cal Bears fan, but I am a fan of Chicoans who do well and here is a perfect example of one such Chicoan. Aaron Rodgers is tearing up the competition in the PAC-10 and has helped put his team in a fine position for a BCS bowl bid. Yey, for Aaron and the Bears.

Follow up from the Yahoo Message board...

If you read my post on the Costco Robbery in Fairfield and enjoyed it at all, you may want to read the debate strawbry_blonde and myself have going on the Yahoo Message Boards. It's very informative as well as entertaining!

Could this be signs of things to come?

Shoplifting Suspect Injures Two

Ok, I previously worked at Costco for over a decade (oh such fond memories) and was witness to many shoplifting incidents, one where I actually witnessed thieves drive off with over $3000 in cigarettes. That incident was one of the larger thefts I personally saw, luckily no employees intervened (note, we had a security department at that store). More times than not, employees get injured in these incidents and I believe intervention eventually costs more than the lost items. So, I can't understand why Costco, or any other store for that matter, would let an employee chase after a shoplifter. Now, I must say not each store I worked at had a security department, so I'm not sure if the injured employees were part of that department or not. I would imagine that a store in Fairfield would have security but still I don't think chasing someone down for 3 CDs (just a hypothetical ripoff) is worth risking injury or even an attack by the shoplifter.

The article tells the story of a shoplifter hitting two employees with his car door as he attempted to get away. I wonder how many thousands of dollars of inventory the guy got away with? I say that sarcastically because most of these incidents are over less than a couple hundred dollars. Now Costco has two injured employees who may have to go out on disability. No wonder Costco was behind last years push to change Workers Comp in California.

I recall an incident at one of the stores I worked at where an employee chased a thief for close to nothing. Well, the guy got away on foot and my friend tore a ligament in his knee which put him out on disability for a number of months. I wonder what that cost?

My question to anyone who reads this is, why? Why chase shoplifter?

There was no policy about chasing thieves when I worked there, but I retired back in 2000, so maybe they have one in place now. I'm not sure, but would have to guess the answer is NO, based on this article.

Costco, please think about a "no-chase shoplifter" policy to save your employees from injury and even save yourselves a little money or have workers comp costs been reduced that much?