Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Shredding ukulele

You have to see Jake Shimabukuro play to believe your ears. This artist can play things on a ukulele that most guitarist would like to be able to play with 6 strings, and Jake is playing it on 4. You have to see Jake play “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Digging Dig

As you know I work in the technology . It’s imperative that I keep up with the latest news on the technology front. If there is a new web browser, I download it and start testing our web site and home banking. Enter digg.com, digg is a social  bookmarking and rating site that is center around technology. One of the nice things about the site is that you can see all of the links/articles you “dugg” as well as being able to see the what your friends are “digging” too. I really like it, check it out.You want to see want to see what I dugg? My username is “o2bjang” Just add me to your friends list.

Monday, August 08, 2005

I've finally found a way to mow the lawn

As you may or may not know, I am very allergic to grass, specifically cut grass. Because of this I am denied the basic male excuse for going to home depot, which is, I need to get something to finish mowing the lawn. General my Beautiful Wife mows the lawn. I try to help get everything ready for her, and then flee the area. There are times with I do get to mow the lawn, however it looks like I’m about to perform surgery with a darth vader mask on. (Which by the way I still think is over at my Folk’s house). I have latex surgical gloves on, and a respirator that makes my breathing sound like darth vader, and is amazingly warm to wear.  Not the most ideal lawn mowing apparel.

That is where the RCLM2006S comes in. A completely remote control lawn mower. I bet if I put a wireless camera on it I could mow the lawn from the living room.

Sunday, August 07, 2005

A Word About Phishing

Phishing is a reel pain. (pun intended)  So the phishing I am referring to in the Internet scam kind. I know that my family reads my blog, so this is for you guys. I don’t want you getting ripped off by the evil people out there on the Internet. In 2004, 970,000 people were victims of phishing scams.

So lets talk about what a phishing attack is, and how it starts. Its starts simple enough, you get an email that says it is from your bank or credit union. It usually says something to the effect that they’ve either done some system maintenance or had a system upgrade and need you to log in to the home banking site to verify either your information or your account. Of course for your convenience they’ve added the link to home banking in the email for you, so all you have to do is click the link to login.

See the Evils Phishing Bad Guys or EPBGs for short are very crafty. They will completely copy the look and feel of the website they are trying to imitate. Oh and don’t think because your bank or credit union is small that the EPBGs won’t try to phish it. It’s become a matter of when not if for all banks and credit unions.

So how do you tell the real email from the fake ones? Here is where the details matter. For the most part the EPBGs are launching these attacks from overseas, mostly Eastern Europe and Asia, so improper grammar and spelling are give aways that the email is probably a fake. Take it from me, our marketing people go through at least 5 revisions before an email is sent out.  Another thing to look at is the link in the email, does it look like the right address or is something a little off? If it doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t right. Third call the FI (Financial Institution) that send the email, don’t be afraid to ask them, “Hey did you send me this?”  If they don’t know about it, then they didn’t send it.

Okay now you’ve figured out that the email you got was a phishing scam, don’t delete it just yet, report the email to the company that the email claims to be from. They need to know as soon as possible, to protect themselves and their customers, as well as get the scam site shut down.

I’m not trying to scare you guys, I just want to keep you informed.