creeva

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Image from here

So one of my e-mail buddies felt the urge to add me to a chain letter in Facebook.   I’ve been nice enough to my readers to rarely do these things (though if I do I do them on the blog).  I found it odd that I was tag since I’m fairly transparent online.

Here is the message I was sent:

Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish).

Now I’m not posting this initially on Facebook so I’m not going to “tag” anyone else.  So the chain dies with me - you have no reason to repeat it but if you do great - let me know.

So, moving on, in no particular order (I thought I would use my Flickr photos for illustration):

1.  I still play with Legos

2. I’ve worked at haunted houses in two states

3. My father saved me from being named “Christopher Robin” - yes the name of the Winnie The Pooh kid.

4. I still read comic books

5. I prefer Disney cartoons over Warner Bros.  - Donald Duck for the win!!

6. When I was younger I collected Garfield books - I had a stuffed Pookie until an ex-girlfriend gave it to Goodwill

7. My girlfriend dumped me shortly before prom - so I took a good friend instead.

8.   My senior year in band I was only the fifty yard line as a featured section or player more times then anyone else except my prom date (we tied) - and I wasn’t even the best player

9. I’ve been outside the Goonies house

10.  Reagan is my favorite president

11.  I have a friend in Florida that still has the pony tail I cut off in 2001.

12. I arranged a small F-Body car event in Oregon -  I didn’t know anyone that came but I invited everyone I could fine with an F-Body.

13. I have a psychotic dog (and another dog and four cats)

14. I collect retro video games - with a pretty extensive Nintendo collection

15. Thanks to my mother I loath decorating for Christmas

16. I think Crater Lake is one of those places everyone should visit once.

17. I’m hoping to build a voice dialing system for home with my grandmother recorded for the operator prompts

18. I’ve always had, and always will have horrible fashion sense

19. My mother thought it would be cute to tell Chi-Chi’s it was my birthday after I told her not to - on the way out of the restaurant I hung onto her like she was my girlfriend, embarrassing her all the way to the car.

20. I miss Satin Jackets, Michael Jackson Thriller Pants, and Hammer Pants (please reference no. 18)

21.I couldn’t sit up until I was six months old.

22. I once tied my sister up and hung her sideways on a doorknob for about a half hour.

23. I owned a Back to the Future Skateboard - and I miss it - you can kind of see it the picture

24. I still own the above shirt (fifteen years later) - and my wife hates it

25. I can’t believe you read this whole list

Now I hoped you are enlightened or at least amused.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

When I was four years old I really wanted to see Flash Gordon, even at that young age I was a sci-fi junkie.  Neither of my parents however were too keen on seeing this, I think the answer was always no.  I’m not sure why - I think Queen was still popular at the time.   I know that it was based on pop ideals and all in all it wasn’t that great of the movie - but geeze when your four year old is obsessed with something this small and it isn’t going to hurt him in anyway, indulge him.

My grandmother in Greenville seemed to agree with my modern view point on it.    We were down visiting and she agreed to take me.   We only managed to get down to see my grandparents in Greenville a couple times a year, so my grandmother spoiled me when she got the chance.  We went to the movies and I loved it, to this day I still immensely enjoy this movie, more now because of the memories then the movie itself.   After the movie my grandmother took me to McDonald’s and I had a hamburger and french fries with lots of ketchup.

What I have outside of memories is the rest of the story that I had forgotten over the years in direct memory, my parents in later years filled in the blanks.  My grandmother originally was going to get me some food during the movie’s intermission.   It had been so many years since my grandmother had been to the movies, that she thought there still was intermissions.   By the time the movie was over she felt bad that I hadn’t eaten and taken me to McDonald’s.

This grandmother died when I was young,  so I only have a few vague memories and stories about her.  I’m sure the rest I have will make it to the blog eventually.   The interesting side note is my wife once criticized Flash Gordon, I relayed this story to her, and never since has she bad mouthed the movie.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Image from here

Yesterday to help ease navigation around Creeva.com I consolidated my categories.   I went from over one hundred to just having twelve.   I used categories kind of like tags, but not really.  I was using them for specific organization methods, but over time that becomes unwieldy - especially when certain categories are not relevant or used any more.   So yesterday was a big consolidation that literally took hours.

One side effect I noticed that alot of old articles managed to get re-crossposted.   I’m not sure why  since nothing I did should have called that function in wordpress, but it did.   It honestly is as much of a pain for me the author as much as you the reader on this different sites.   Hopefully though you will find it easier to navigate different categories around the blog.   I also added a ton of tags yesterday so articles should link together better and keyword search should be stronger.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Last Saturday morning my blog was down for the count.  I had received an email from Are My Sites Up stating that Creeva.com was down.   It told me that my blog went down late night on Friday.    I verified on Saturday that it was still down, and I had wanted to do some writing on it.  I waited.    I attempted to call tech support but after being the first caller inteh queu for over an hour I surrendered.  Saturday came and went and no blog.   Sunday morning site was still down.

I called into tech support again Sunday afternoon.   I was fifth in the queu and I was moving forward about 15 minutes at a time.  Either people ahead of me were getting help, or they were giving up like I did the day before.   I held on and finally managed to get through to a person.  Upon talking to the tech support I learned that my hosting server had moved.   Not only had it been moved, it was moved back in October.

I had known that they were going to move servers, but the e-mail announcing this stated that most people would not notice an changes.   What this says to me is that a new server will be put up with the same IP address with very little down time in the migration.    This however was not done, so all of my data was moved to a new server.    Since October I had been updating my information and blog on the old server.   When I managed to correct my DNS entries at my registrar, I discovered my blog was out of date since early November.   I was missing literally hundreds of articles once you take into account my lifestreaming posts that don’t make the front page or RSS feeds.   I was livid.

I called back and they stated they would get it synced back up off of the old server.   Ten hours later there was no change.     I waited until Monday when I knew there would be more then just support in the office.   Since I’m a reader of the Consumerist I followed on of their recommended ways of dealing with this is, I sent an executive e-mail carpret bomb here is what I wrote:

To Whom Can Help Me,

I have been a customer with AN Hosting (anhosting.com) a division of Midphase Hosting (midphase.com) since 12/24/07.   In October you were planning a server consolidation/migration plan (notice sent out is given below my e-mail (removed from blog article)) - which stated that some of our accounts would be migrated to new servers.   At that time I created an offline backup of my domain. Things went on working as they normally did until Friday night 1/16/09 7:15 PM.  At this time my site went offline.  This was verified by the service Are My Sites Up? (aremysitesup.com).   I was not aware and didn’t check my email to be informed about this until Saturday 1/17/09 early evening.   I called the support line and though I was the first customer in the queue I waited over an hour before I gave up.

On Sunday 1/18/09 I called in with my problem.  It seems my “free” domain was working properly - I don’t really use this site so I hadn’t checked it.   My add-on domains however were not working at all.   My main site which is an add-on site (creeva.com) was not working.   The technician stated that I had been moved to a new server and the old server was turned off, but my data should still be available.   My old server IP address was  [REDACTED], the new server you had migrated me to was  [REDACTED].   The technician on the phone stated that if anything was wrong with the site to call back and they could pull the back-ups off the old server.  I thanked the technician and got off the phone to start relocating my DNS and testing the site.

Before I migrated my DNS I adjusted the local host file on my computer to make sure everything was working on my main site.  Upon loading it and checking the entries it seems at the closest date I could pin down my latest blog entry was written at 11/10/07.   It’s hard to pin down since in October due to other concerns I had written and scheduled blog posts for most of the month of November and some going forward to early December.   The data may even be from October because I use these functions of wordpress.  I called back in to the support line and explained the issue and asked if I could get the backup loaded that he previously mentioned.

He opened a ticket for me and stated he would get this assigned.   In the ticket language he was vague - here is was he entered on my behalf:
Hi, I am having issues with my addon domain(creeva.com). My account was migrated
to another box. I am not able to view the latest version of my website, its
pointing back to November 10. I’ve been posting updates to my blog. Can you
please look into my account?

thank you

I’m not sure why it had to be opened under my name using the “I” reference - since the technician opened the ticket (ticket number  [REDACTED]).  I would think this is misleading to the technicians working on the case.   I checked out the language after I got the auto-email generated when the ticket is assigned to another technician.    I added the following entries after the auto reply to clarify the situation:
None of my add-on domains to my account are up to date - these have been
constantly updated through the last few months - yet under the current server
migration I was told I was migrated about 3 weeks ago.  So there would still
have been a discrepancy of a month during hte migration.

The migration letter stated that it would be seamless to the end user -
normally in most scenarios this would include making sure that the data was at
the latest possible and maintaining the same IP address - since I’m sure I am
not hte only customer that use another registrar.  If monitoring this was made
more apparent in the letter going out about the migration I’m sure this would
have saved the technical support some headaches.

I was finished some major changes on my add-on site creeva.com at about 4PM
1/16/09 - if a backup of the previous server ( [REDACTED]) can be found after
that time that would be terrific.  Is it Midphase’s policy to make backups
before taking a server offline?

Also wanted to ad - my blog at creeva.com may seem up to date more Nov. 10 - but
everything going through a publishing right now was written to publish at a
future (now past date) and the blog is catching up with it’s scheduled posts.
The current date of the latest post is not an accurate reflection of the latest
data from a back up - the bet I can ascertain the date was at least Nov. 10th
if not earlier.

A while later one of your technicians had checked on the issue and issued this reply:
Dear Brent,

We have investigated your issue. We could find that your account was migrated
from our old server  [REDACTED] to our brand new server  [REDACTED]. Please let me know if
you are using any ftp clients to upload the files. If so please use the details
that we have mentioned below to upload the files and update your website. Please
check the settings of your FTP client.

Server name : [REDACTED]
Server IP :  [REDACTED]
Username : [REDACTED]

We have also checked the blog site creeva.com and entered a post and the post
was successfully updated. We have attached 2 screenshots along with this mail
for your reference. Please check it.

Please let me know the exact issue regarding your subdomains. It seems that you
are uploading the new updates to our old server. So please use the above details
in your ftp client so as to upload the files to the new server.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Regards,
[REDACTED]
Technical Support Representative.
Hosting Services Inc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since he didn’t seem to understand what I was asking I reiterated my request - also notice in  [REDACTED]’s reply that he gave me a third IP address that I should be using:
I need the data off of  [REDACTED] - which is where my add-on host was before
yesterday - I wasn’t using an FTP client - I was directly entering the data via
the wordpress interface - I checked my e-mail  logs and at no time was I alerted
there was going to be a server move where I would have had to adjusted the IP
address records of my add-on domains, if I had received that I would have been
more pro-active and migrated the DNS earlier.

The problem is I need the lastest information from Friday off of the
[REDACTED]  - one of the advantages on your home page is the fact that you
do nightly back-ups - so the backups should still be available.

I’m missing approxiamately 200 posts on my blog - affiliates update
information, theme updates - and that’s just for one add-on domain.  I also
find it odd that you give me the IP address  [REDACTED] - earlier tech
support gave me   [REDACTED] - which restored my access to the site  - I added
the IP address you gave me and added it to my hosts file locally before I
updated my registrar - I was hoping it would give me a more up-to date version
of my blog - it didn’t and just delivered me to a CGI page and the site doesn’t
load at all.

The problem is not access - and I can re-adjust my own FTP software - my
problem is data -freshness

Can I please get my data restored from the old server?

While you stated that during the migration - “In most cases, the migration is completely seamless. We have brought in a team of experienced migration experts to ensure this effort is handled with the best of care. If you should have a problem relating to your site, please do not hesitate to contact us: support@anhosting.com. We have a team standing by 24/7 to help out!”  I question the migration experts that performed this migration.  Currently at my place of employment we are performing similar actions with our infrastructure - and there was more customer outreach then you have given.   Since you know what are add-on domains are are your servers - any customer with a third party registrar should have been alerted by e-mail that their DNS records would have had to be adjusted.

Further action should have been done to sites on the old servers that were still getting traffic.  Since my site was receiving regular and steady traffic that should have been a tip off to action by your IT personnel that the customer should be alerted to adjust their DNS records.   This is all a failing on your team of migration “experts” by things that could easy have been prevented by a little due diligence on their part.

The biggest coincidence is that over hte last week I’ve been in discussion with someone to move over to your service.  I also had planned on migrating one of the non-profit organizations ove to your service next year to a VPS plan when their contract runs up.  Currently in good faith I can’t advise this to either of those accounts.   This disruption and loss of data is just not acceptable when it could have been easily prevented by checking what was going on the old server before you took it offline.

I am merely asking to have my backups from  [REDACTED] restored to my account.   Is this possible or do I have to make some other plans?  I am also sending the Consumer Advocacy blog “The Consumerist” (consumerist.com) a copy of this e-mail.   While the migration diligence seems to be in error you can still correct this problem and an unhappy customer by performing adequate customer service.   One of your features of An Hosting that is touted on your site is ” Backup Storage -Nothing is more shocking and heartbreaking than losing ones data and hard work. We back up our servers nightly to ensure you always have ANHosting to depend on!”  I am solely asking for my data to be restored as close to 4PM 1/16/09 as possible and my faith that I can “always have ANHosting to depend on!”

I sent this e-mail out to the American general manager of the company, the consumerist, the European Executives, and support.   I received an e-mail from the general manager and he got a technician working on the issue right away.   The issue was resolved in a couple hours.   They pulled my data off the old server and synced it to the new one.   There was still some minor issues that I had to correct - wordpress needed to be re-upgraded, but all my SQL databases were up to date.   They also kept me informed during the whole migration.

I really wish I could have had that level of care taken of me on Sunday, or at least a time frame when the data could have been restored.    When they try to equate a blog with a normal static website, it just shows ignorance on their part.   It does show the problem I have with doing regular back-ups - which is in the architecture stages right now.    The only thing I ask of my hosting provider is to live up to the promises they have given me.   I don’t open tickets - really I’ve talked to them only about 3 times in the last year.   The first being a simple problem I had while waiting for my account to activate, the second inquiring about the share SSL certs, and the third this issue.    I’m glad even though I “yelled” across the Internet more then I should have, that they came through and everything is now working.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Between posting my mother’s email to me, or some random notice I get from a website.  It would seem that sometimes I either do not value privacy or exploit others.   This isn’t the case.    I post things I think are interesting - sometimes it’s the personal moments in my life.    If you send me an email in confidence and ask me not mention it to anyone, or post it online - you don’t have to worry about it making it out for public consumption.

Yes this post is short - kind of a blah type of thing post - kind of how I feel right now anyways

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

I look at my data on Flickr and I get overwhelmed.  I’m missing meta data, missing tags, missing proper titles.   Though when you are looking at organizing and maintaining  over 3000 images anything you can do to start to organize them can get a little overwhelming.

I’m assuming the number of pictures I’m going to upload to Flickr this year to my account is going to at least double.   That means if I do not get a handle it on it soon, I’m going to be looking at 6000 photos to edit by this time next year, and I think that is being selective.

How do the rest of you handle problems of this magnitude?

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Tonight the weather was bad so instead of taking what would be an unsafe over three hour commute home I decided I was going to get a hotel room.   My wife had called and warned me before I was really aware of the weather so she was aware with no surprises.   I managed to get a room that in a clear day would take me less then eight minutes to get to the office.   Tonight it took me over twenty to get here.  The last three minutes was getting into the snow entrenched parking lot that was on a slight incline and had about 5 inches of unplowed snow - I spun the car sideways getting in.

When I was consulting I stayed in many hotels.  I also learned before you went anywhere in bad weather to get a reservation.   So at this hotel close to work I had reserved my room, it came to around forty dollars before tax.    Let’s have a tour through the room and see if it it’s worth it.

The following pictures were taken with my cell phone so please excuse the quality.

This is my coffee table - seems someone didn’t like it very much.

Bathroom shot one - somewhat normal right?

Still somewhat normal - not great by any means though…

OMG - WTF IS THAT????   First here we have the MELTED hair dryer plug  then you have that round knob next to it.   Did you know it took me a good five minutes to get the light on in the bathroom because of that damn knob.   You see you have to turn it, and then the light is on a timer, when the timer runs out the light goes off.   Maybe this is a green initiative by Days Inn.

Another standard Bathroom shot.

Well I at least have tissues I can cry into.

I’m glad it wasn’t hot - I don’t really want to touch the air conditioning knob.

Mobile blogging station / Bed shot.

Another bed shot.

Such neat and orderly hangars they have around here.

Ah - I can iron my clothes with this conveniently placed ironing board.

On closer examination - maybe I don’t want to use this ironing board.

Look a TV, The Bucket List is playing - I don’t think this hotel was on their list of stops in the movie.   Also if you adjusted the location of the TV - the picture goes bad.  It’s not a wiring connection either - it’s just retarded.

My mother had that lamp - she got it over twenty years ago.

My heater that doesn’t fully heat the room

I call this area the west wing.

I think this coffee maker would make a lot of people cry - and those styrofoam cups are the only cups in the room.

My alarm clock, it would be my jelly bean station, but I don’t have any jelly beans.

Cross advertising - I’m not sure which name is getting dragged through the mud on this deal….

This is where the air conditioning would have come out with if it was below freezing outside.

Well at least I have a smoke detector, I’ll be safe for the night.  Something looks a little wrong though.

Yes this is the way I found it.  So if I die in a fire tonight - you all know who is to blame.

I’ve stayed at bad places, but this may be one of the worst.  It does look nice on the outside though.

BTW - I think I know what happened to the iron and why it’s gone.   There seems to be a melted carpet spot in just the shape of an iron on the floor - it didn’t quite come out though - pity.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Image from here

I know I just gave a post on using creative commons based works, and about the problems of dealing with international public domain laws, but Youtube has cracked down on me.   Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting e-mails from youtube that say the following:

Subject: A copyright owner has claimed content in one of your videos

Video Disabled

A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video [redacted]. The audio content identified in your video is [redacted]. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.

Replace Your Audio with AudioSwap

Don’t worry, we have plenty of music available for your use. Please visit our AudioSwap library to learn how you can easily replace the audio in your video with any track from our growing library of fully licensed songs.

Other Options

If you think there’s been a mistake, or you have other questions, please visit the Copyright Notice page in your account.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team

Now in theory I could fight this, but I know I am in the wrong.  I had videos on my profile that did include copyrighted music.   For the most part they are not videos that I created, I was merely archiving them in a central location so people could find them.   All the videos that have been taken down are Machinima videos that were “filmed” in Star Wars Galaxies.  I can’t really take them up on the music swap suggestion, since the person that originally made the videos had a specific intent that went along with the chosen music.

This all goes into the idea of fair use and when is it ok to use something to create something else.   This argument is a bit out of scope for this post.   What I can say is all of these videos still exist online, archived in far off pages.   It is sad that they can’t be displayed to wider audiences since most of them do have true genius in their design.

I thought this apt to add before anyone thought I had a holier then thou attitude in anyway because of my recent conversations.   I knew the risks and issues involved with posting these pieces.   I never claimed any part of the work was mine, and the most important thing is - I knew where it stood in the grand scheme of things before I did it.   I’m not saying you will never run into a spot where you won’t ever use copyright material.   Just be aware of what you are doing if you do.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Recently I started contributing to the International Music Score Library Project and I’ve ran into a small snag.   Currently I’ve only uploaded two pieces ( I did say I was going to contribute more to the public domain going forward) and I received the following message the day after I uploaded the pieces:

Dear Creeva,

IMSLP is located in Canada and therefore operates under Canadian copyright law. A very important difference between Canada’s law and that of the USA is that the term is determined by the death date of the composer or author of the work in question (term is life-plus-50 years). I was able to find out that George Hendricks Rosenkrans died in 1955 and is therefore public domain in Canada. Gus W. Bernard is a different matter.

I was not able to find anything on the date of Gus W. Bernard, so I have to estimate his approximate lifetime. Please be advised that should info surface that he died later than 1959, the item you posted may well have to be deleted. Also, please try to include complete information on composers when you add a new name. You can often find out things quickly by means of a simple Google search.

Thanks,

[NAME REDACTED BY CREEVA]

Now I wrote yesterday that just because something is online it isn’t in the public domain.    Let’s look at the other side of the coin just because something is in the public domain, it doesn’t mean it is in the public domain.   In my normal mode of thinking, I think in US copyright law.     When we are dealing with other countries in our global economy and global communications infrastructure we need to be aware of their laws as well when interacting with other services.

Now the project above could get in trouble if the work is copyrighted in Canada and they display it.   I however uploaded it from the US so I broke no US law since both works were in the public domain here.   Did I break a Canadian law though?  I don’t know.   This is one of the problems when dealing with the public domain.   The question over the Canadian law comes to light when you consider while the service is in Canada, I physically performed the actions legally from a US computer.   Very fuzzy and gray in many aspects when you look at the big picture.

So when contributing ot the public domain - be aware where the servers are physically located in the world, be aware of the copywrite law in that physical location.   Now if only we could get a US Mirror to work off of for that project……..

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

The above picture has nothing to do with this article.

A few weeks ago I was having a discussion with one of my family members about web site design and blogging.   He stated that he was going to be starting some sort of manga/anime fan site based on a certain character.  I stated that he should be a bit wary about the images he used that he may have to worry about copyright issues since the images were trademarked and copyrighted.   Keep in mind this was the same brother that wanted to setup a website for a girl so you couldn’t download the images (and I called him out on the futile nature of that).    Kind of ironic when he wants to control it, he thinks one way - but when he wants to use it he thinks another.

Another family member piped in that they thought if it was online it was public domain and free to use.   Now I corrected them, but so everyone else knows - just because something is published online doesn’t mean it’s free to use.   When I don’t use my own pictures I always use creative common licensed images and put an attribution link beneath the image (sometimes I do use public domain images and don’t attribute).   I even had an online scuffle with someone who licensed her work via creative commons and didn’t know what it meant.

I gave my family the two minute off the top of the head review of current copyright law and how creator’s rights worked under our borked legal system.   Essentially if you are in the US anything made 1923 or earlier is free game - anything after that is the life of the creator plus seventy years.   Unless the page it’s on states otherwise you have to assume the work is copywritten.   Then we get into fair use, which is a whole other ball of wax entirely that I’m not going to touch right now.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Over the last couple months I’m sure some of you have noticed that I’ve been sharing more personal stories.   This isn’t to say that the blog is going to be all personal (I’ll keep the the mixture of technical to personal to irrelevant), it’s something to share a bit about myself in my writing.   Sometimes I don’t get personal and tell my own stories at all.   I think this leads to an abstraction to any regular readers that do not really know who I am.

Telling the stories that mean something to me is two-fold.   One is that it is cathartic like my Month of Mom series, others are just blowing off steam.   The second major thing is it makes sure that there is a record some where for my son to have the stories about me that I may forget to pass down in the old oral tradition - in my day we had modems that moved 1.4 KB down or up the network at a time - and we liked it.

I also think in a way it makes me a better writer.   I think it gets me in touch with the things that are away from the realm of technical.  The people that follow or friended me on any of the services I use can have a peek at me in a way that other bloggers don’t share.   Other bloggers can stay on set topics for an overall blog better then I can, so it’s a hodge podge here of what you may or may not get.

I hope everyone is enjoying the ride.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Picture from here

I could pick on a few things actually, once again I didn’t vote for the guy, but I don’t absolutely detest him.   I’m in wait and see mode.  Ars Technica is reporting about Obama’s plead to push back the transition to digital TV.   If we look at the digital TV migration timeline, we can see the originally scheduled date was Dec. 31 2006.   Because of multiple issues it was pushed back and brings us to this upcoming Feb. 17th as the transition time.

We can argue that the government hasn’t done enough to inform the public or make it easy for the public, but I would argue otherwise.   I was well aware of this migration when it was first discussed over 10 years ago.   All in all the government has pushed out this transition longer then necessary.   You can say that’s it’s a good cautious thing they are doing by waiting and delaying, but every delay costs the tax payers more money.

If we truly want to get through this we need to pull the bandage off as quickly as possible.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

You would think from the image I chose for the header that I was doing something cool with the Nintendo Entertainment System.   This unfortunately is not the case.  Where the Nintendo came into play was that it was the object of my desire.   I desperately wanted an NES.  This was sometime around seventh or eighth grade so the years would have 1988 -1989 and the Nintendo was in full swing, you can see one of the commercials below.

Now my father didn’t believe in video games.   About five years earlier he got us a Commodore Vic-20, this is all fine and dandy - my parents fell for the whole “give you kid a computer and he’ll be computer literate for life” crap that they were handing out in the eighties.  A computer was meant for learning and yes there were a few games we had for it, but it was meant to learn something on.   I learned I never wanted to be a programmer, that’s what I learned.  I could go to my neighbors and play the Atari 2600 or play Ultima on his Mac Classic - but me - I was going to have the Vic-20 and like it because I wasn’t getting anything else.

Picture from here

We moved to Vermilion the summer before my seventh grade year.   I’m sure I started begging for a NES around that time if not earlier.   I’m sure the logic explained to me was that if I wanted a Nintendo I was going to have to earn it.    This meant getting a job.   I don’t know about your area but for Vermilion, OH there wasn’t much call in the work force for 12-13 year old kids.   The one thing that did open up was the ability to get a paper route.  The area where we lived in Elyria was a bit too rough for a 11-12 year old to deliver papers, but Vermilion was a quiet small town where such things almost seem nostalgic.

Picture from here (not me)

Another boy was giving up his paper route that was a year younger then me (should have been a sign) and did a week long transition with me so that I could learn the route.   By the end of the week I learned the route, I had my little punch card slip ring for billing, I had a carrier bag, and I also had baskets on the back of my bicycle to carry newspapers in.   I would try to say it was pimp, but I can’t even type that with a straight face.   I rode my bike to school and I got mocked by how stupid it looked.  Of course being a geek on the nth degree anyways there is always other things to get picked on then a bike, so I struggled through it.  I was a newspaper boy for the Lorain Morning Journal.

You may say that I learned character and fiscal responsibility because of that job.   You would also be wrong.  I hated that job with a passion.   I struggled for the first couple months to get through it.  The NES was the apple of my eye and I was going to save the 99.99 (plus tax) for the Action System which included Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (and the pimp NES Zapper).   I was impatient to get it, so impatient that I gave my mother the money to get it while I was at school.   You would think this being the first large purchase of my life I would have wanted to go and hand over the money and buy the system myself, nope I just wanted the damn thing home.

I get home, my mother isn’t there.   I go do my paper route and get back home, my mother isn’t there.   I sit in the grass on the front yard and wait.   Eventually my mother pulls up in that blue dodge caravan (minivan) we had.  She had done other shopping and had a ton of bags.  Which one was my Nintendo?????

My mother stopped me and said she talked to the sales person who told her the Sega Master System was the better system to buy since it was faster and supported more colors.  WTF?  I had worked my butt off in a job hated to have my mother go out and buy me a Sega Master Sytem.  No one owned a Sega Master System, only people with no friends owned a Sega Master System.   I was not going to own a Sega Master System.    I told her with certainty that she had no right to spend the money I earned to buy a Sega Master System.  We were going to get back in the car right then, go to the store and exchange it for a Nintendo Entertainment System.

My mother then started laughing.  Out of the back of the van she pulled out a Nintendo Action Set.   You do not mess with a pre-teen in that way - ever.   She said she was going to go upstairs and use the restroom, after which she would come down and help me hook it up to the TV.  I think by the time she flushed the toilet I was already on World 1-2 of Super Mario Bros.  I had hooked up the Vic-20 so many times that I knew how to do it in my sleep.   The NES was more of the same.

At this point I did not want to do the paper route any more, but my grandfather thought it was good for me so I kept plodding along.    I delivered papers a 3 AM Christmas morning wasn’t that quite the thrill, not.   I would definitely preferred to have been sleeping.    More and more of my customers were moving to prepaid accounts, which cut into my money.   You would think it wouldn’t have effected  my bottom line, but I lost out on tip money from these customers - and to this day I believe the Journal used some creative account billing to the paper boys.    My grandfather thought I was just doing it wrong, but I was let off the hook after about a year.

Me and my grandparents a year or so after the paper route.

My brother took over the paper route with the help of my grandfather and my mother in delivering the newspapers.   Now I don’t know about you but if someone would have driven me on the route every day, I may have been more likely to actually like the job.   He is five and half years younger then me, so they were not going to let him go off alone to do it.  The funniest thing was after about a year they started loosing money also and it became not financially viable for them either.    I guess it wasn’t just me.

You would think that this would end my families relationship with the Journal after so many bad experiences, it didn’t.  For the last few years my sister (now 22) has a motor route in Vermilion delivering papers.   I guess she makes really good money at it.   It would seem the third time is a charm.   I don’t think my brother or my sister ever hated it as much as I did.   I did get my NES though.

Below is a link to Google Maps that shows the actual route location of my paper route.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Image from here

Every once in a while I get comments from SEO professionals that try to advise me on how to re-arrange ad placement.   They tell me I should put ads in the middle of the posts instead of at the end like I do.   Their theory is this would cause more people to actually click these ads.  There maybe some truth in that logic, I find the breaking up the text annoying that way.   I have it set up to work in a certain flow, this is my personal preference.

I could be writing sell out articles where I’m paid to review a product, but you don’t get paid by others if you are known for negative reviews.  So I don’t bother trying to get involved in that.   The biggest money loss I’m sure from an SEO stand point is that I cross post to other sites that do not show my advertising, and in some cases no advertising at all.   A free pass to read my articles without any pressure.   Hundreds of people I know on facebook and myspace read my articles for “free”.

So for those SEO’s that hate me and think about the money I waste - please don’t e-mail me to try to optimize my revenue.  I’ll handle it, or I’ll come to you when I decide otherwise.   This year I should make a profit even though I’m throwing money away.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Picture from here

I really want to contribute to the public domain this year.   A short while back I wrote about how I thought the general public and the Internet was failing at actively giving back to the public domain.   To try to counteract this I’m going to make sure that I give something back.  I’m sure that I have at least a few books that can be scanned to submit to Project Gutenberg.   I would like to work on a sheet music archive.   I will still be releasing most of my images and video to the creative commons, so I’ll be submitting free to use and share work, I’ll just maintain control over it enough to make sure no one else is making money off my work, unless of course it’s me.

So what are you going to do this year to help out the public domain?

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

The recent twitter phishing scam had non twitter users scratching their heads on why this service would be targeted for a phishing scam at all.. Most people view little or no monetary value to twitter accounts. For most people this may actually be true. For people like Scoble or companies that promote themselves over twitter, well the brand name damage caused by a hijacked twitter account could be quite costly.

One of my friends on twitter had a reply about this issue (I’m assuming the other person didn’t realize the long tail potential impact (yes I used the term long tail - get over it)). What I saw was this:

@jeremyasmus could be any number of reasons, spread malware, spam, get passwords, us humans tend to use the same password over and over.

This is the crux of the issue isn’t it? The problem isn’t average user with nine friends directly, it’s the large power users and the passwords for other services. Let’s look at each of these.

Let’s say you are Scoble and your account get’s hijacked. Scoble has a level of trust built from himself, he is known to get the inside scoop on information, people click his links. Scoble has over 47,000 followers. If his account was hijacked and ten percent clicked a link that was really a malware installer - that would be 4,700 people infected within a matter of minutes. I think however the number of Scoble followers would be much larger probable in the 50-60% range. For a malware distribution this is a great return for the time frame, with the added benefit that you may get some other high profile names in the attack.

The cost to deploy such an attack is extremely low - under ten dollars, while the net return would be a few thousand, potentially more. Since there is little risk to getting caught if you know what you are doing, you could make some decent money by exploiting this chain of trust that exists and is protected by a mere password.

Let’s look at the side of this coin, the normal user.  Adam Baldwin nailed it right on the head when he stated “us humans tend to use the same password over and over”. I know I do, though different level of things have different passwords - my banking account does not use the same username/password combination as my twitter account - neener/neener. It is however shared with some other web 2.0 services. Some other people may not be so diligent. This once again is a chain of trust issue. You are trusting the companies that you give your passwords to are truly them, so once your password is in the wild it’s exposed and all of your accounts are open to attack.

Let’s look at the information an attacker can get from you if they have your twitter password:

User Name - while by itself it’s exposing a little bit about your account and your password - the problem lies in having both bits of this information. That part should be blatantly obvious. The issue lies in the fact that most of us use the same username or “handle” across many sites on the web. Doing a Google search for “Creeva” yields over 46,000 hits. A lot of these hits are different services that I play with and over 90% of the hits link back directly to me in some fashion. Since most sites use you username as your login name, if I used the same password every single one of these services would be exposed if I fell for the twitter phising scam.

E-Mail Address - Yes though it maybe only a small amount these days, your e-mail address is still worth a few percentages of a penny to the spammer. This would get you on more mailing lists, and ones that would be quite hard to get off of. It is also normally used as a login name for service that do not use your handle. More accounts have now been exposed because of this. If your e-mail account passwords is the same as your twitter account (dumb mistake) everything about your online life, accounts, and transactions can now be exposed and utilized against you. Would you notice a gmail filter that someone setup to clone every incoming e-mail?

The other issue is even you do not have accounts that show up in a Google search they could use a service search engine such as Spokeo to find accounts even you may have forgotten about.

Mobile Phone Number - This probably would be one of the most annoying things, that your phone number has been exposed to the internet underground. Phone spam, call back charges; there are a few things they can do with this number. I do think this is small annoyance compared to loosing your email account.

Being a good security professional my recommendation is to use strong passwords that are unique to each service and are rotated regularly. I am also a realist and know that you won’t. This may be the time to start doing segmentation where different accounts do get different levels of passwords. This is what I do so if my twitter account was compromised only the services that I consider on par with Twitter security-wise was at risk. Lower level accounts would be safe and higher level accounts would be safe. I also think with the range of accounts, I could move faster then the phishers going through and knowing what to change faster then they could try all 46,000 sites. It’s a thought - now what are yours?

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

You ever notice that when you are on social networks that you seem to seek people out that you only have the most tentative of connections with.   I’m as bad as anyone.   I’m speaking of this after a true friend added me yesterday on Facebook.  It’s someone I messaged back and forth a few times with, and may mildly keep in touch with.   After that I went through my graduating class and added more people.  Some people I’m interested in from afar, some I’m interested in communicating with, some I have a passing interest in.   I also didn’t add a few that I wouldn’t be interested in, but I would friend them back if they connected to me.

I was thinking afterward though that just like high school, some of these bonds and connections are true and some of them just a passing fancy where no communication will ever really flow from one end to the other.   I see people that I know vaguely, I’m at least proper enough to stick with people I actually had classes or conversations with.   Some of these people only have friends that they went to high school with.  Some I may be the only one.

Looking at the sociological dynamics is very interesting.   Some people are extremely close with those they went to high school with.   I’m not, mostly since I’ve fallen out of touch with a lot of people.   Moving to Oregon also put a bit more space between me and the rest of the class, and even now I live about sixty miles away - though I play in the community band in that town.

Even the bullies, the preps, or the prima donnas from school, I wish them no ill will.  There was a moment in time I was worried about my standing in the social pecking order, but I think I left that behind when I was an underclassmen in high school.   I’m someone that cares about my immediate social circles and not those of memories of people over a decade old.   If they however wish to know me more in depth then my blog posts allow I’m happy to converse with them, maybe even have a coffee - but things won’t be like they were.  Because of that I don’t judge them by the way they are.

Time has changed most if not all of us.  I’m sure some of them all hang out with the same people from high school, get drunk every night with the same people they drank with when they were underage- but I hope the majority of them have moved from that.   That their dreams have been realized.   We have this spark of moment in time where we had a shared experience and it bounds us.   Not everyone is brave enough to face that moment in their lives, some people want to leave it behind them never to return back.   I’m sure those people I’ll never be able to reconnect with, the saddest part a couple of those were some of my best friends.

To the future and the past, we move forward solid in our own steps.   The echoes of the past follow behind us as we make our way into the unknown.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Picture from here

One thing my wife has been on me about is getting things done in a timely manner.   Some things are mounting with the pressure of the baby’s emminent arrival.   So I’m back in the eternal effort of attempting to get todo’s and calender updates going and taking care of them.   So here is hope that in the new year, and with a baby forcing me to re-adjust my schedules that I can finally get on some sort of regular schedule that allows me to things done that need to be accomplished.

Originally published at Creeva's World 2.0. You can comment here or there.

Image from here

Remember in high school when we had to do the five hundred word essay.  It may have been on Roman Politics and how they were the basis of modern government.  It may have been a book report on Huckleberry Finn, which we were forced to read in high school; for the record I like Tom Sawyer better.   Either way we would dread doing this report.   It could have been given to us two weeks ahead of time, but I’m sure most people didn’t utilize those two weeks.    Instead they put it off knowing sometime in the future they would get around to writing such a paper.

So we would leave until the night before we actually had to turn it in.   We would fret and strive over which words to use and we also liberally used the word “the” and “and” as much as possible counting those along the way.   If anything I am sure our grammar was actually better since better grammar usually has more words.   We would finish page one, one hundred and sixty four words finished.   Doing that math in our head we realized that we needed about three more pages worth of words, cursing the teacher as we struggled on.

We would take synopsis from the text book, paraphrasing along the way.   We would wonder if we actually bothered to use citations in our work if those counted, or if they were just a waste of time.   We wondered if the teacher actually counted each and every word to make sure that we reached the minimum of five hundred.  We worried as we stuffed in more “the”’s into a sentence on how Custer actually had influence on the following presidential election.   We pretended that we had spent the full time working on the project, in reality the teacher knew that we didn’t, but yet graded us on the great masking of illusion that weaved the BS spilling neatly across the page.

It was all a power struggle, the teacher pushing out hte work and the requirements, the students doing their bare minimum to get by in the hopes that the paper about Zeus was actually going to matter to the Seniors after they graduated.   The teachers taught, and the students pretended to learn.

These days however we know the stupid things that we were taught, truly did nothing to the make us better.  Most of the learning I’ve done in my life I have done best out of the school setting.   Writing also doesn’t intimidate me, five hundred words really is a blink in the moment of time that I can breeze through in a matter of minutes.   I hope my child has the drive to do the same.  Writing is simple.  Writing is easy.  I can ut out five hundred words in no time at all.   This piece is exactly five hundred words and took me 12 minutes to complete - I wonder if I was faster in high school when I didn’t count the words.