Hacker Would Make Me a Slacker

One of my online friends Dave, from the Jen and Dave show, lost his entire site to the plague of the Hackers about a month ago. I found this out because when I went to download his latest show it gave me an error message in iTunes saying that it was available and then it never updated. As I sit in front of my computer I am almost scared to death when a sound blurps (that words is blurted and chirps mixed together) and my antivirus is saying that a Trojan had been found in a certain file. I was alarmed when I saw that the file it was coming from was the Jen and Dave show file. So, Dave had been taken over completely by some deranged individual that probably loves being on the Javascript blacklist and has aspirations of being one of America’s Most Wanted.

So Dave had to completely destroy everything that he had on his sites after this attack. He deleted it all! Now his sites are back up and more protected than ever with some serious code hardening and probably a 47 character password to his dashboard! I have to say that I do not think that I would have even had the strength or know how to put it all back together and bring my site back from the edge of death. So, if you are are a hacker please don’t ever attack me because I would not know what to do and my kids would probably start crying….loud…without ceasing….very annoying.

 

 

 

September 15, 2011 | Filed Under General | 1 Comment 

My Top Travel Destinations and Maybe Finding a Stargate

Crystal and I recently had our first serious getaway since our honeymoon almost eight years ago. I didn’t think I would like traveling so much…but I do. Crystal starting asking me of all the places I would go if I got the chance to travel to them. I promptly told her that if given the chance I would love to check out some all inclusive holidays to Italy. That is where my family all started many many years ago and I would, like most people, like to travel to see my country of origin.

My second place that I would love to visit is Egypt. Who would not want an all inclusive holiday to Egypt to check out tons of stacked stone that makes up the wondrous structures known as the pyramids? I told Crystal that if we go I would definitely make the most of the trip and spend some time trying to find the location of a very ancient yet technologically advanced device known as the Stargate. See if we had that we could travel instantaneously via a wormhole directly to our destination. Then we wouldn’t have to fly across an ocean and we would be able to have cheap holidays to Egypt instead of pricey ones.

The third place I want to go is Japan. Who wouldn’t want to go to the birthplace of Nintendo?  Not only that  but I think that the Japanese culture is such a unique one.  From the their food to their architecture Japan sets trends that echo throughout the world.  I really want to have my own kimono too.

 

 

August 11, 2011 | Filed Under General | 3 Comments 

Flight Delay

There has been a delay in me flying. Not a single instance or a certain flight but the delay in getting me on an actual flight in a long time. I first flew when I was around nine years old. My step-dad took me on a short flight from Houston to Austin to spend the day with his parents and give me the chance to see life above the clouds.

I am now set to be going out of town this next week and I will be flying for the second time in my life. I have no idea on what goes on or how this process is supposed to go. So many things are running through my head about the flight itself. Even simple stuff like “what are the bathrooms like on a plane?” I heard that if you unrolled a whole roll of toilet paper on a plane it would suck it all down in around 5 seconds! I’m sure that after I tried something like that someone would inform me of how un-green that is. Crystal always says that she could never sleep on a plane. I think I am going to try to and see if I can do it and if it’s comfortable or not. I’m sure that when I wake up from my catnap I will have a pamphlet on my chest filling me in on all the information on snoring that I will ever need.

I’m not even going to go into the security thing. Hopefully, people won’t pat me down to much.

July 31, 2011 | Filed Under General | 2 Comments 

The Internet is Spooky

So there I was minding my own business in the middle of the night browsing the web looking for reviews of novels that I could download for Crystal’s new Kindle. I looked under crime and found some really neat-o books. I browsed around for a bit and looked under mystery and found another couple that I thought she might like and proceeded to purchase them. I looked around a bit more from this site that is associated with the Kindle and bought a couple of more items from this site. What happened next really freaked me out. I don’t know how they do it but whatever email marketing software geniuses they have are well worth their money. I started getting emails and Twitter followers from sites and users that knew nothing of me until I placed those orders.

This whole thing is so spooky. What’s next? I am going to be in the kitchen one night looking up some recipes to coordinate some sort of semblance of a wonderful dinner and someone is going to email me about something pertaining to what I am currently looking at. If I go to a online conversion chart to see how many tablespoons are in a quart they will probably email me the link or current special where I could buy the exact product to figure that out with. I don’t know about how everyone else feels but that is way too scary.

 

July 24, 2011 | Filed Under General | 2 Comments 

Here Comes the Bride

It has finally come down to that time where I have to experience one of my own siblings walk down that aisle and link up to that ol’ ball and chain. My sister who is twenty one and fresh out of college is now engaged. I didn’t think I would ever be ready for her to utter anything having to do with dress styles and/or ring settings. I think that since we are ten years apart and I was so much older when she was born I have always been more protective than I probably should with her. I have really slacked off though since leaving home and saw how very responsible she was in making good decisions in her growing up. I was very pleased though that she never decided to get too serious with some of the d-bags that I had previously met.  I did meet one that I did like and they are now engaged.

They are a really good match and I think they compliment each other very well. They both seem happy and they plan to tie the knot sometime in 2012. So now comes the really grueling part of them picking the place to have it, going to bridal shows, endless dress try-ons, cake and food taste testing, drooling over all of the Since1910.com engagement rings, figuring out where to go on a honeymoon, and then where are they to live. Seems like a ton of stuff to do…thank the Lord it’s not me! My mom says that the experience is really grounding them though on the price range that stuff can cost and what really seems sensible. All in all I think that they will be fine as long as my sister keeps her temper under control and my future brother-in-law doesn’t get an attitude with my sister when she texts him and wakes him up from an afternoon nap. Dude..put your phone on silent if you do not want to be bothered! Remember, a happy wife means a happy life.

July 23, 2011 | Filed Under General | Leave a Comment 

A Big Mess for Clean Teeth

Why is it that my kids make so much of a mess when they start the several times daily ritual of brushing their teeth? They make such a huge mess and leave so much caked on tooth paste all over the sink that I really thought that I was going to have to rent some sort of industrial equipment to blast some of that stuff off. I have tried and tried to instruct them on the way to get this done in a more easy and neat manner.

I usually tell Taylor to go in there and get the tooth brushes ready so that they can brush, then potty, and then get into bed. I usually wander into their bathroom about two minutes later to finish them up and check to make sure they did a good job. This is when I find that that spit has been dribbled all down the side of the sink, tooth paste all smashed into the carpet, and some spittle up and on the toilet since someone thought it would be “so cool” to spit into the toilet since the sink was a little crowded. I really don’t know what to do. Some company needs to come out with some sort of conveyor system that starts from the very beginning of getting the tooth brushes ready and then being the system that facilitates the entire process without making a mess. Knowing my kids one of them would go into the process standing on their head and that would throw the whole thing off. I think that they will eventually grow out of it though and maybe I should save for their college instead of tooth brushing machinery. Then again I could take some of that money and invest in a couple of tooth paste companies since most of ours is on the sink instead of their teeth.

July 17, 2011 | Filed Under General | Leave a Comment 

How’s the Air up There?

Most of you know that I was in a competition between me and other dude bloggers to see who could get the most votes to become the Official Camp Dirt Blogger. WAIT, WAIT, WAIT! Don’t close or “X” out your window yet! I am through with asking for votes from you guys and I did want to say thanks to all of you that actually did vote for me. I haven’t officially heard from them yet, but I did get an unofficial email saying that I should be getting and official notice by email that the contest was over and that I had officially won.

So, as I start to think about how it’s going to be I sit back and realize that this thing is in Colorado. When most people, that don’t live there, hear of the state of Colorado they usually think about all inclusive skiing holidays and a bunch of snow topped mountains. All I can think about is as long as I can remember I have always heard that the air is thinner there. What does this mean to a boy who has pretty much been in Texas his whole life? I really have never been that far from Texas. I will only be taking my second airplane ride at the end of the month when I fly to San Diego for the big BlogHer convention this year. I may need to look up about the whole “high altitude thing” as soon as I can. If I am going to be running around playing in the mud I need to know if there is a chance that I will be out of breath faster than normal. Also, do I have to follow all of the “high altitude” instructions that are on stuff like boxes of macaroni and cheese if I get a hankering for some grub?

July 14, 2011 | Filed Under General | 3 Comments 

Preserving Our Digital Life is Hard Work

Every once in awhile when I go over to my mom’s house she breaks out the huge photo albums and we sit there and reminisce about the good ol’ days. Today we all try to shoot as many photos as we can day in and day out. Then we take our extremely powerful cameras with ten times the photos that were in all my mom’s albums and put them all on a small memory card about the size of a stamp. Then what do we do? Well if you are like me, you end up sitting in front of the computer and edit pictures all day. I have literally spent hours in front of my laptop just messing around with one or two photos.

There are some great programs today that have made this a whole heckuva lot easier. Programs like Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro have made it easier though over the years. I am always worried though that what if all of my family’s history disappers in the form of a fire, flood, or my laptop getting stolen? I do backup every once in awhile but I don’t always do it regularly. I think what I am going to start doing is not spend so much time getting the perfect shot or touching up photos because the light was bad or there were pimples on someone’s face. In the past people took pictures on whatever they had and cherished them no matter how they turned out. I mean I have a picture of me and Spiderman and the original General Lee on old Polaroid pictures. I think that I’m going to just shoot life and let it be from now on. Spend less time editing life and spend more living it.

July 12, 2011 | Filed Under Family, General | Leave a Comment 

Have a Super-Charged Summer with Powermat

You all know that I am a super fan of Powermat. This summer we have been doing a ton of traveling and I have brought my portable Powermat with Powercube to keep us charged up while at the hotel. What happens though when you go to a theme park at 8am and by noon your battery screams at you that it only has “20% REMAINING”? Well if you have a Powermat you definitely want to get a power! Dual 1200 Rechargeable Backup Battery for your excursions! This rechargeable backup battery provides power on the go for smart-phones and hundreds of other devices. Charges two devices at once with its Micro-USB and Apple connectors and recharges when placed on any Powermat or when plugged into a computer. Also, this is a must for a parent whose child totally spends too much on their smart phone!

The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely that of the blog owners. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider. I have been given a product free of charge, but that does not impact my views or opinions in any freakin’ way.

July 1, 2011 | Filed Under General | Leave a Comment 

Computing On the Go

Recently Crystal has been traveling all over the U.S. these days. She went to LA for four days, came back for a day, and then left the day after that to go to Detroit. Next she goes to Seattle for a weekend getaway to cover something else. We both take a trip together at the beginning of August to San Diego for BlogHer 11. She has really been complaining about the size and weight of her current laptop and has showed a definite interest in learning more about and then maybe getting a netbook to take on trips. I told her it was a great idea because I know I was going to end up carry her twenty pound monster at some time on the trip.

We have been talking about it more and more in the last week and I just thought it was time to look into actually doing something about it. We sat down and talked about it and she said that she really didn’t see any sense in having another actual computer sitting around so I brought up the idea of her maybe getting a tablet pc to be even more of a portable soultion for her. So, after lunch on Sunday I took her to pick out one and we settled on her getting an iPad2. She got it complete with a pink protector case. Somebody is happy with her little solution and I am happy I won’t have back problem if I have to carry her stuff when we are out of town.

June 26, 2011 | Filed Under General | Leave a Comment 

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