Greeley Annual BaloonFest

I am experimenting with some photos I took last October during Greeley’s Balloon Festival. I thought I’d see if I could upload them using the Gallery feature in Wordpress.

Fake Virus Scanner Scams

By now you’ve no doubt visited at least one website, usually one that appears in page one of Google’s search results, that does a redirect and all of a sudden, what appears to be a virus scanner is now running on your computer screen. It may look something like the window below.

Click on the image for a larger version of it.

The image on the screen is animated with the green bars filling in and the % complete changing, and shows that it’s scanning your drives for viruses. It finishes in a surprisingly short time. However, it’s just a JavaScript animation, nothing more, and it’s not doing anything with your files because browsers cannot open your computer’s files without your help. Invariably, it will find threats and invite you to download a product to ‘fix’ them. The other messages that pop up may look like the following:

Most of the popups are harmless, but the last one is an attempt to get you to download an executable file that, if you open it, invariably will end up taking you to a site where you’ll have to put in your credit card number to pay for the virus scanner to remove the viruses and to ‘keep you safe’.

Downloading an .exe file won’t do anything by itself, but if you open an ‘.exe’ file, then all bets are off, because it can do anything it wants, including installing a real virus, which would not be a stretch for a company that is trying to steal from you already.

The safest place to click on the pop-up windows are on the red X’s in the upper right hand corner to close them, but sometimes you’ll find that you can’t get out of the web page or browser because they keep popping up. If your browser keeps a ‘memory’ of the sites you were on when it closed (like Firefox does), it feels like you can’t get rid of the offending site. But there is a way to safely extract yourself from the clutches of these evil doers.

You can disable JavaScript temporarily and all windows will close when you close them and the popups will stop. To disable Javascript on Firefox, just click on Tools->Options->Content and uncheck the box next to JavaScript. You can re-enable it after you’ve gotten out of the website. For Internet Explorer, to disable JavaScript, you can select Tools->Internet Options->Security->Custom Level and scroll to the “Active scripting” section of the list (under “Scripting”) Click Disable.

JavaScript by itself cannot harm your computer, but if you give it help, by actually acting on the pop up messages and saying ‘ok’ or ‘yes’ when you’re in this situation, then you can do yourself some harm, and pay the price for what will be, at best, a useless virus scanner. It’s pretty hard to use the Internet these days with JavaScript disabled, because so many sites depend on it to work properly. So trying to disable JavaScript permanently isn’t really an option.

There are a number of real virus scanners out there, and a popular one is AVG. You can download and install it for free, although it may do some unsavory things such as change your default search engine to Yahoo and install yet another toolbar. These things are easily reversed, of course.

So, you might wonder, how does this happen that a website ends up in page one of Google’s search results and yet is a site that is so obviously evil that it’s trying to extort money from you? It’s usually done by cloaking. When Google’s search bots go looking to index websites, these sites give the search bots a different page filled with keywords that look like an exact match for what you’re searching for so they score high enough to reach page one. However, when the website detects a real browser, it will redirect it to another website that tries to convince you that you have a virus and now must buy some protection. Google and other search engines hate cloaking, but they have a hard time detecting it, since a website can tell whether it’s being visited by a search bot vs. a browser.

If you’ve visited a site like this, you should to do a real virus scan, particularly if you allowed it to download and execute the .exe file. As long as you didn’t open the .exe file, you’re probably OK, but for peace of mind, a scan with AVG or similar virus scanner may help your computer feel just a little less slimy after visiting one of those sites.

Looking for a Twitter app…

In order to improve my productivity, I am looking for a Twitter application with the following automation features:

1. Tweet a quote from some famous person every 5 minutes. I have a book of over 2800 quotes and it would be ideal if it could be scanned into a database and direct the contents into my Twitter stream. It will take about 23 days to cycle through all the quotes at that rate. After it’s over, I want it to loop continuously for the benefit of my new followers and in case someone missed one of the quotes.

2. Check the local weather and send a message to all my peeps about what it looks like outside my window, at least 5 or 6 times a day. It should also tell people when it’s getting dark in my neighborhood.

3. Connect to a pillow sensor so that when I’m hitting the hay, everyone will know, as I’m sure they are curious. It should issue a random yet clever statement with the word ‘pillow’ somewhere in it.

4. Each morning when I arise, it must proclaim that momentous event and simply send the phrase, “Mornin’ Peeps!!!”

5. Whenever Guy Kawasaki tweets anything, which happens about 300-400 times a day, the app should be the first to Re-Tweet it, ideally within 30 milliseconds so I can get my mug to appear in the Tweet stream before his next posting, if possible. For an extra bonus, remove any gratuitous references to alltop.com.

6. It should monitor for any DMs sent to me and forward them to my spam bucket, because, frankly, I just don’t have the time to check my Twitter DMs.

7. It should search through Google’s newsfeed and tweet the top headlines as they change every 3 minutes. It should insert ambiguous and random catch phrases that go something like “This is cool!”, or “Can you believe this?!” in front of the tinyurl link.

8. Harvest the entire Twitter member database and follow everyone.

9. Auto-follow anyone who somehow manages to follow me before I can follow them. It must then send them a Tweet, an email, and a phone text telling them how much I appreciate their follow and how I intend to hang on their every word.

10. If anyone should ever stop following me, notify me about it immediately, so I can launch a marketing campaign to get them back, ASAP, unless it’s someone who doesn’t Tweet every hour, because I really could care less about those kinds of people.

11. Send out some blip.fm song link every 10 minutes that will make my followers think I have very sophisticated musical taste.

Have I left any out? Feel free to add your own ‘must have’ Twitter automation features in the comments…

UPDATE 2009-03-21: Just in case the satire didn’t shine through, I think that automation in social networking is a slippery slope that eventually ruins the experience. People who engage in the techniques above make me want to ‘unfollow’ them on Twitter.

The Adventures of Johnny Bunko

I’ve read Dan Pink’s previous books, Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind and enjoyed them thoroughly and wrote reviews of them. Just recently I read Dan’s latest book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need. This book contains several important career lessons that it helps to be reminded of periodically. I liked its creative approach of using Japanese Manga comic style for a business book. It makes the lessons much more memorable and fun to read. The book has 6 lessons, namely:

1. Your plans and jobs will change, so don’t try to plan out your entire career in advance. Each position will help you learn what you’re good at which can help to direct your career. Positions will sometimes change or move away, so you shouldn’t get too attached to a pre-conceived notion of what your long term career plan must look like to be successful. Despite what your parents may have told you, there are no safe “fallback careers” anymore. Also, if a job is safe but you can’t stand it, then it is no way to spend your career.

2. Find positions that focus on your strengths and not your weaknesses. If you work in an area that requires you to do things that don’t resonate with your strengths, it will be nearly impossible to be successful. There are some good resources recommended about finding your strengths, such as the book Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham. Knowing your strengths will allow you to better choose positions where you spend more of your time doing things that you do well and enjoy.

3. Your career is not about you, but rather about what you do to help customers, clients, and co-workers to be successful. Using your strengths and enjoying your job is important, but they must be applied to helping others, not just yourself.

4. Persistence is more valuable than raw talent. Your career isn’t a sprint, but more like a marathon. You need to continue to show up, practice, and never give up.

5. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. The only people who don’t make mistakes are those who never try anything. When you do make mistakes, make sure you learn from them. If you make a really big mistake, you’ll know because it may be named after you (This has something to do with the choice of the main character’s name).

6. Leave an imprint. When you look back at your career, you’ll want to be able to know that you made a difference that mattered.

There are a lot of business/career books out there that have useful information, but you’d be hard pressed to find one that has as much great advice concentrated in as few words as this book. I was able to read the entire book during a lunch break. One of the common objections I hear from my colleagues who tell me that they don’t read business books is that they don’t have the time, but that excuse won’t work for this one.

This may be the “last career guide that I’ll ever need,” but I’ll certainly look forward to any future writing Dan Pink does on the subject.

Mixing technology with politcal punditry

I unsubscribed from Robert Scoble’s blog today because I decided I don’t much care for his politics. Scoble is an ‘A list’ tech blogger, or at least that’s what he should be doing, as a mouthpiece for Podtech. It’s not very smart to go airing one’s politics in front of an audience that subscribes to your blog looking for information on technology, yet Robert Scoble did it in spades with this posting. It’s not the first time he’s delved into politics either.

I think that part of the problem with tech bloggers is that a few of them think they are experts on everything, including on how to run this country, and want to pontificate about it. Political punditry is for political bloggers and I avoid them because the ones I disagree with annoy me and the ones I agree with are preaching to the choir. It’s most unwelcome to find political commentary in a blog that should be politically neutral.

The country is nearly evenly divided by political beliefs, which is why the last few elections have been so close. Tech bloggers should respect the opinions of those who disagree with them because it’s likely to be half of their audience. That means when it comes to politics they should avoid those topics or risk alienating about half of their readers.

Oshkosh bound

I’ll be heading to Oshkosh for Airventure tomorrow. I won’t have email access for about a week, so if you need me, you can contact me on my cell phone at 970-978-6188.

I got a call today from one of my cousins who was born in Ireland and immigrated to the United States. He had heard the news of my recent ‘retirement’ and was calling for confirmation. That could only mean one thing. One of my relatives is reading this blog. Why, I had no idea!

-Lee

How to make mailing labels with Excel and Word

I’ve done mailing labels over the years when I was the local chapter EAA newsletter editor and then a few times for Christmas cards, but each time I do them now, it seems that I can’t remember the steps it takes to repeat the process and as a result, it feels like I have to learn it all over again. So today I carefully went through the procedure because I’m helping out with my high school reunion and we will need to print out mailing labels several times in the next few months. I figured other people might want to know how to do it, so I will give the step-by-step method here in the blog.

First of all, you will need to put your mailing database in an Excel spreadsheet. Even though you’ll use the MailMerge function of Word, a spreadsheet is much easier for manipulating lists of data compared with trying to work with tables in Word. You should title the columns with intuitive names such as, LastName, FirstName, Address1, City, State, Zip code because if you do, MailMerge will usually correctly guess the order to arrange the data when it comes time to put them into a mailing label format.

I like using type 5160 Avery adhesive labels which are arranged in 8.5″ x 11″ sheets with individual labels 1″ x 2.625″ spaced 3 across and 11 down for a total of 33 labels per page.

[Note: When I first wrote these instructions, I was using Office 2003. Now that I have Office 2007, I can see that some of the menus have been changed. I'll add some extra instructions below for those with Office 2007.]

Here are the steps for producing labels using the Mail Merge program in Microsoft Word:

Launch Word and use File->New to create a Blank Document

Tools->Letters and Mailings->Mail Merge Wizard

[Office 2007: Mailings -> Start Mail Merge -> Step-by-step Mail Merge Wizard ]

You’ll see Step 1 of 6:

Choose the option ‘Labels’ then select ‘Next’ at the bottom of the menu.

Step 2: Make sure ‘Change document layout’ radio button is selected and then and select ‘Label options…’ below it.

This will take you to a Label Options menu that allows you to select a label type. I use ‘Avery Standard’ and type ‘5160 Address’. Then select OK. Office 2007 asks you if it’s OK to overwrite your document at this point. Select OK.

In Word 2003, a grid should appear in your document that shows labels borders spaced in 3 columns, 11 rows per sheet. This grid doesn’t appear in Word 2007.

Step 3: Now select ‘Next: Select recipients’

Make sure the option to ‘Select/Use an Existing list’ is selected and the select ‘Browse’ and find the .xls file on your computer with your database and then open it. Select the spreadsheet page you wish to use. If it has just one page, you will see $Sheet1 and you should select it. In Word 2003 you may select ‘entire spreadsheet’ if you have only one sheet. You will then see a list of names from the spreadsheet. Select OK. You may have to select OK again. A list of <> entries will appear in the document.

Step 4: Now select ‘Next: Arrange your labels’

Select ‘Address Block’. Look at the preview field to see if the example label has all the information you want. Because of the layout of the heading row spreadsheet, it should be correct. If it’s not, you can fix it by selecting the ‘Match fields’ option and editing them. Now select OK. You should see <
> in the first label and <> in all the other labels. Select ‘Update all labels’. This will cause the text <
> to be added to all the labels that previously had just <> in them. So the first field will have <
> and all the others will have <
><>.

Note: If you wish to have more control over your labels, instead of selecting ‘address block’, you can select ‘More options’ and this will allow you to apply the exact amount of spacing, carriage returns, etc., around each field. I’ve found this helpful if you have international addresses mixed in.

Step 5: Now select ‘Next: Preview your labels’

Now you will see a sample page of the labels.

At this point, you can select ‘Print…’ which will walk you through the steps of printing out the labels on a local printer, or you can select ‘Edit individual labels…’ If you select that, it will create a Word document file that you can edit or store away for future use or print from another computer. I usually use that option.

I should mention that there was an issue with the zip codes that started with ‘0′ (zero). You should format that field in the spreadsheet as a ’special’ zip code field, which is an option in the format command of Excel. Then during the import to MailMerge, I had to use these steps.

Preparing DDE settings in Microsoft Word:
If you perform a mail merge in Office 2003 and use Excel as the data source, some of the numeric data may not retain its formatting when merged. To resolve this:
1. Open Word
2. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the General tab.
3. Click to select Confirm conversion at open check box, and click OK.
4. Continue creating the mail merge as explained above
5. Open Data Source.
6. In the Confirm Data Source dialog box, click MS Excel Worksheets via DDE (*.xls), then click OK.

You may have to answer a few questions when you import the .xls file but it will fix any issues with the zip code field, especially with those starting with ‘0′ (zero).

Another trick to making labels is printing a single sheet of labels out on plain paper first to make sure the alignment is OK. You can hold the sheet of labels up to the light with the printed paper labels behind it and insure that the text will all end up inside the sticky label borders. You don’t want to be making mistakes on the label stock because it’s much more expensive than plain paper.

Bicyling in Greeley

I’ve been trying to take advantage of my new status as a retiree and enjoy it for as long as it lasts. I haven’t acquired the skill at doing nothing for more than a day or so and so I’ve been distracted every time I hear of some new job opportunity. I attended an orientation session on Wednesday for career counseling services that are part of the EER deal and I have a limited time in which to take advantage of it. Several points they made were how long it can take to find a job (several months from the time someone starts looking) and the importance of networking in finding positions. On Tuesday I visited a networking meeting in Fort Collins to hear about what’s going on locally in the Biotech and Renewable Energy industries in Colorado and there seems to be quite a lot of activity in those areas. I ran into some people I hadn’t seen in several years.

Terri also found out last week that she’ll need to find another job in the next few months. Our plan was to have one of us working for a few more years so as not to draw on savings before we’re really ready to retire. So I’m trying to enjoy this time off while it lasts and not worry too much about my productivity or lack thereof; yet at the same time, I’m trying to network as much as practical to keep abreast of any opportunities that look interesting.

I hadn’t ridden my bicycle much in a long time, several years actually, so on Monday I filled the tires and took it out for a short ride through the neighborhood down toward the HP plant which is now for sale. During my last year working at that location, I rode the 4 mile distance nearly every day in the summer on my bicycle. It was nice way to get about 40 minutes of daily exercise. Commuting to work by bicycle was pretty much out of the question after my job moved to Fort Collins. It wasn’t just because of the distance, which is about 22 miles, but because of the lack of bicycle lanes on the roads along the way. I had hoped that a paved trail along the Poudre River would have been completed by now so that at least once I could have ridden my bicycle the distance from Greeley to Fort Collins, but its progress has been slow and it only goes to Windsor at this time, about half the distance to Fort Collins. On Monday I rode about 10 miles, much of it on bicycle trails that have been constructed in the past 2 years. Had the Greeley plant still been in operation, these new trails would have allowed me to get to work without the need to share a narrow shoulder on the roads with fast-moving cars. Since the population of Greeley has increased about 15% in the past 7 years, with much of it in neighborhoods that have sprung up between my house and the HP site, the new bicycle trails are a welcome addition to avoid the increase in traffic the growth has caused.

I’d been curious to see how much more of the Poudre trail had been finished since I last bicycled on it about 3 years ago so on Wednesday I explored the sections between west Greeley and Windsor and then on Thursday I went eastward on it toward downtown Greeley. I live about 5 miles from the trail, so just to get there and back, it takes 10 miles of bicycling. Wednesday’s ride was a total of 25 miles and I could feel it when I got home since I hadn’t ridden that far in a very long time. Thursday’s ride was 26 miles but I took time off in the middle of it tour Centennial Village. The trail section from west Greeley to Windsor is quite picturesque, meandering along the river and through farms and fields with a beautiful view of the Rocky Mountains to the west. The east section has some nice sections on it, but a lot of it parallels a series of sand and gravel pits and so it’s not quite as nice as the western section. It’s also missing about 1.2 miles in the center of it, which requires sharing the narrow shoulder of a few roads with cars. As I got to the end of the trail on Thursday, I entered Island Grove Park and got to see a lot of activity as the town gets ready setting up the park for the Greeley Stampede, a carnival and rodeo that runs for 2 weeks, starting today, and culminating in the world’s largest 4th of July Rodeo.

Centennial Village is a historical museum park located near Island Grove Park on the northeast side of Greeley. It’s been in operation since 1976 and I had never visited it, despite having lived in Greeley for more than 18 years. I decided that it was a good time for a break and paid the $4 entrance fee to take a tour of it. The park is made up of a number of attractions that have been gathered from all over Weld County and brought into a small village that represents the historical period during Greeley’s settlement. There are several houses, a church, a store, a firehouse, a blacksmith shop, a train depot, and farm buildings. Some of them were moved to the village from various surrounding locations and some are replicas and are representative of the architecture from around the time Greeley was settled. There are tours every hour that take you through the interior of several of the houses all of which are furnished very much like they were when they were inhabited. I was quite impressed with it and I can certainly see how it earned the title of the ‘best place in Greeley to take guests.’

If I can keep up this level of exercise, I’d be back in shape in no time. It’s enjoyable and I am able to listen to podcasts and audio books, so I feel like I’m actually getting several things done to help alleviate the feeling of not being productive.

Canceling an XBOX Live Gold membership

I got an Xbox 360 about a year ago with the hope of using it as a media player for my HP Media Vault because it is supposed to be a DLNA-compliant media server. It’s not. You can get it to work by installing Twonkyvision’s server on the Media Vault (which costs another $40), but it won’t stream Divx/xvid-encoded videos, which pretty much renders it useless as a media player in my opinion.

I’m not much of a gamer myself, and so the Xbox 360 hasn’t gotten much use. For some reason that I cannot recall, I decided to upgrade my Xbox 360 silver membership (which is free) to an Xbox Live Gold membership which costs about $7.99/month. I figured I could always just switch back to the free membership if I didn’t use the Gold membership features. After a while of seeing that monthly charge appear on the credit card, I decided to cancel it. I first tried canceling it on-line via the webpage for Live, then through the Xbox console, and wasted at least a half hour before searching on the Internet only to find out that that only way to cancel it is to call up 1-800-4MY-XBOX (1-800-469-9269) to wait to talk to an operator. And that took an additional 18 minutes, most of which time I was on hold.

I really hate it when a company makes such an obvious attempt to hang on to subscription fees that it causes that level of inconvenience when attempting to cancel a service. Signing up took a few minutes and I didn’t need to call anyone, but canceling took 48 minutes from my life. So I’ll post this here for three reasons:

Google bookmarks

Since I’m shilling for Google today, I’d like to also recommend the bookmark feature that they offer in the latest version Google toolbar. I use 3 different computers at home and keeping bookmarks synchronized on them was just about impossible. Two of the computers are dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu Linux, so that makes it even harder. I also use IE as well as Firefox and so that means I have 6 different browsers I can use just on these 3 computers. It was even more complicated when I had 2 additional work computers because then I had 6 more browsers because one computer was a triple boot, XP, Vista, and Ubuntu. About 2 months ago I decided to give the latest Google toolbar bookmarking feature a try and now that I’ve used it I find that I absolutely love it. No matter which computer or browser I’m using, the bookmarks are properly organized and accessible.

If you use it, you will come to see this image in the toolbar as the most frequently used real estate on your screen

Even if you’re on a borrowed computer without the Google Toolbar, you can still access your bookmarks in a webpage by going to http://www.google.com/bookmarks

I should mention that Google Bookmarks use ‘tags’ for organization, so a single bookmark can be listed under several tags. Traditionally, bookmarks could be stored in a hierarchical order, which somewhat defeats the purpose of a bookmark, because you have to go searching through a directory-like structure for it instead of having nearly instant access to it. Unlike organizational tools that are heirarchical, tags are flat, so when you store a bookmark and can’t think of where it belongs, you can put it under several tags. I mention this because if you import your bookmarks and you have multiple levels of categories, Google will make up unique tags for each level. I found that to be a distraction, so I reorganized afterward by editing those tags.