Looking through the site there are beautifully crafted guns ranging from the Mongoose Concealable Ray Pistol to the Blunderbus Unnatural Selector I am amazed at the creativity and ingenuity of Greg Broadmore.

So who is Greg Broadmore?  As a designer for Weta Workshop, chances are you have seen his work in District 9, iRobot or The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  He created not just these beautiful works of art but an entire site dedicated to the world in which they exist.  Greg just recently released the Dr Grordbort’s Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory full of fantastic inventions, incredible background, and the latest in the weaponry for gentlemen of adventure.

So make sure you are armed with your Infallible Aether Oscillators before you stumble upon a Shallow Beaked Grogan and if you are still not convinced then read for yourself the testimonials of their many satisfied users.  Captain Ernst Kurtzwattle, “who is a fine upstanding gentleman of the military order with a gentle disposition, fresh minty breath and very clean fingernails”, personally took time out of his busy schedule of collecting Shrubber Tree wood on Jupiter to write the praises of his ray gun.  With fine fellows like him backing the ray guns how could you go wrong.

You get your child’s credit card bill to find that he is over his limit.  When I say over the limit I don’t mean by $10 or $100 I mean to the tune that the GDP of the entire US would not pay the interest.  Take a look at the notice this guy got on his son’s card:

Dear William,

This e-mail is being sent to notify you that the balance on Daniel XXXX’s card is $-23,148,855,308,184,400.00.

That’s right that is a credit card bill for over 2000 times the national debt.  So how did he run up such a large bill?  It was a pizza and a coke.  A pizza…and…a…coke?  I guess he should have skipped on the extra cheese.

It turns out that this is not the only case.  There were in fact several people that owed $23 Quadrillion.  I am guessing those banks won’t need a bail out.  In the picture you see what should have been a small purchase at CVS turn out to be $23 Quadrillion.  Or a purchase of cigarettes result in a bill that would fund universal health care for generations.  I like that they added the $20 overdraft fee because if anyone is going to pay $23 Quadrillion dollars then what is $20?

Turns out the issue was with a program called VISA BUXX.  It is a prepaid debit card designed to help parents keep their kids spending under control.  Somehow a glitch in the programming occurred and a Hexadecimal conversion to Decimal conversion (or vice versa) went wrong and bam that’s $23 Quadrillion.  The Consumerist gives a more technical explanation for those who are interested.  The error affected over 12,00o people including the interesting story of Lydia Alcock how got a similar bill for riding the Metro.

The story does have a good ending because all 3 people have reported Visa has removed the charge and will remove the overdraft charge once they straighten out the error.  How is that for generous.  The moral of the story is not to take all the charges on your bank statement as 100% accurate.  Keep your receipts and compare them and if you see an error then call and stay at it.  Not all errors are this easy to spot.

On the flight about to land from Ohio there were about 20 WW2 Veterans who were part of a Tour of Honor sponsored by the Honor Flight network.  He went on to explain that the Honor Flight provides to WW2 Veterans a cost free trip to Washington DC to see the World War 2 Memorial.  He asked that as they exited the airplane that we show them the honor they deserve by giving them a round of applause.  Then slowly they came out one by one and I was pleased to see that as far as I could see people had stopped what they were doing and were applauding.  Some walked out on their own, others with help, and some in wheel chairs.  The veterans showed their appreciation of the greeting with warm smiles, waves, and a general sense of pride that beamed clearly on their faces.  The crowd, in turn, never stopped applauding and in fact grew even stronger towards the end.

Upon reflecting on the event I couldn’t help but think that here I have spent the prime of my life doing things that help fulfill me spiritually, start my own family and build a career with the only hindrances being the ones i placed on myself.  These honorable soldiers gave up many of their prime years and put family and career on hold to fight for something greater than themselves.  Many of their friends never left Europe or Asia and here they are in their golden years being given an opportunity to see for the very first time a memorial build for them.  Having been to the memorial many times it is a beautiful monument to the heroes that served when called upon and those how sacrificed all that they had.

I want to also mention the Honor Flight network who puts these tours together at no charge to the veterans.  From their website:

The Honor Flight Network program was conceived by Earl Morse, a physician assistant and Retired Air Force Captain. Earl wanted to honor the veterans he had taken care of for the past 27 years. After retiring from the Air Force in 1998, Earl was hired by the Department of Veterans Affairs to work in a small clinic in Springfield, Ohio. In May of 2004, the World War II Memorial was finally completed and dedicated in Washington, D.C. and quickly became the topic of discussion among his World War II veteran patients.

Earl repeatedly asked these veterans if they would ever travel out to visit THEIR memorial. Most felt that eventually, somehow, they would make it to D.C., perhaps with a family member or friend.

As summer turned to fall and then winter, these same veterans returned to the clinic for their follow-up visits. Earl asked if they accomplished their dream of visiting the World War II Memorial. By now, for most of the veterans he asked, reality had settled in; it was clear to most that it simply wasn’t financially or physically possible for them to make the journey. Most of these senior heroes were in their 80s and lacked the physical and mental wherewithal to complete a trip on their own. Families and friends also lacked the resources and time to complete the three- to four-day trip to the nation’s capital.

I was surprised to learn that in 2008 they transported 11,137 veterans and have the abitious goal of transporting 25,000 in 2009.  There their motto really sums up my thoughts on that day as they passed by.  We can’t all be heroes. Some of us have to stand on the curb and clap as they go by.” –  Will Rogers

Secret mall apartment

They added a very plain looking utility door some furniture, a tv, a waffle iron, and even a PS2 to pass the time and they had their own little island in the local mall. All in all they secretly brought in over 2 tons of materials to build this secret hide away. There they lived for about 4 years. Life in the mall

The group spent time walking the mall and documenting various aspects of life in the mall from the number of signs to surveillance cameras to the water lines to cataloging what items stores carry and rating them for a project called “Malllife”. According to one of the artist, Michael Townsend, “The mall has something really positive to offer, something that has nothing to do with shopping….” Consider that there are many social firsts there for many families in sub-urban life. Where do you go to spend your first paycheck, or meet people that are not your neighbor or hang out with classmates? According to Townsend, the mall is designed from the ground up to be an escape from the pressure and grind of daily life and offer a sort of vacation away from work and daily life.

I admire their ingenuity and their ability to take a portion of the “mall experience” and make it their own in finding ways to find comfort in a center of commerce. However, I tend to find the idea of living in a mall and cut off from the world of nature depressing. If our lives are now so limited that we to look to malls as our source of experiential connection with the world around us then we have lost touch with what matters.

So what is Woopra?  To put it simply, if you have a web site or a blog, Woopra connects you to your viewers in real time.  You can see what is driving people to your site and what people are reading while on your site.  The best part is this all takes place in real time.  You can see what is happening when it happens and make changes if you are not seeing the results you would like.  As one of our users shows, this give you very actionable information to improve the effectiveness of how you do business on the internet.  To top it off, all this information would be useless for most users if it were hard to use.  As you can see, every care was given to make sure you can easily view and understand what is happening on your site.

Crisp clean interface to easily show you what is going on

Beyond Woopra, I have been taking time to hike through out the Northern Virginia area.  I will post pictures and a brief write up for each location.  For those that want to follow me on Twitter my handle is zehn10.

If you enjoy these, this site has several more.

Understanding there are Risks

Sadly enough, in many cases no. Spam, phishing emails, and spyware are just the tip of the iceberg for the many tools that cyber-criminals use these days to steal millions of dollars every year from every day people like us. How real is this threat? Consider this account and the level of detail that the criminal had to have to pull this off

It was July 2004 and Brian Campbell had been on Isla Mujeres off the coast of Cancun for three days for a relative’s wedding when he discovered he’d been scammed.

An American MBA student studying in Australia at the time, Campbell (not his real name) was accustomed to checking his investment portfolio daily over the internet. But the wedding distracted him a couple of days, and when he finally got online, he found he was locked out of his Schwab trading account.

He called Schwab and discovered that his user name and password had been changed. What’s more, $106,000 had recently been wired from his account to a Fortis bank account in Belgium. Campbell hadn’t requested the transfer.

Unknown to Campbell, a cyber thief who went by the nick “desertmack” had gained access to his e-mail account and had been watching him for weeks. The Mexico wedding was the break desertmack needed. He’d been hoping a little tequila and sunshine would distract Campbell from obsessively checking his brokerage account long enough to steal the money and send it to Brussels, where an accomplice would withdraw it.

A more complete account of the life of a cyber-thief turned FBI informant was written by Wired here.

Understanding the Depth

If this has your attention, then consider that Campbell’s account represents a detailed attack on a single individual. Where we are at risk are the large scale scams designed to capture information from thousands if not millions of consumers. A follow up article by Wired details how prevalent this is.

There was also a service called PhantomInfo, which consisted of a script that tapped into the computers of the ChoicePoint data broker. For $29 a month you could send unlimited e-mails to phantominfo@xanon.net containing the names of victims whose identity you wanted to steal; the program would search ChoicePoint’s database and reply with the victim’s Social Security number and current address.
“Today, it’s just normal, everyday stuff,” Thomas says. “But back then it was the first that we had seen of that kind.”

Did you catch that…”Today, it’s just normal, everyday stuff.”

The days of identity theft by lone individuals has been replaced by international organized crime. There have been several high profile busts that highlight how well organized these criminal elements are. Pavel Chistov was referenced in the above article as a key player that was busted. From an article in Pravda.ru

Investigators determined that Pavel Chistov created a website in August of 2002, which offered clients a variety of services. The criminals had client databases at their disposal, and it did not cost them much to use that information for counterfeit cards. The price of one fake card varied from $100 to $500.

So essentially, they can create a counterfeit version of your credit card and some cases ATM card and sell it for up to $500 to someone that will use it to run up charges to max out your credit card and clean out your bank account. In many cases the good purchased were resold at below market value to help cover their tracks and launder the money. So the criminal would buy a duplicate credit card and drain your account via online purchases and have them shipped to random drop off locations, turn around and sell the goods and pocket the cash in many time before you would notice. According to Thomas “…guys were making $100,000 a day.”

So what does this have to do with me receiving unwanted emails?

To answer that, let me ask, how do they get all this information? The data has to come from either the bank/financial system being compromised of which you have no control or it comes from your computer systems being compromised. While there have certainly been several high profile breaches in the financial systems. Visa and others have worked very hard to adopt a more secure and rigid standards and are enforcing them. This isn’t to say that they can’t be breached again but that they are now aware of the problem and are working to keep in under control. Further, there is little you can do to secure yourself in the system.

How to be Risk Adverse

What about your computer now? How do they get your personal information, such as, when you are going on vacation, what is your bank account number, PIN, Date of Birth, etc? To do this they often rely on tricking you into giving it to them willingly. Here is how:

Trojans – this refers to a method of tricking you into letting them have access to your computer. Simply viewing spam in the preview pane or going to a website can cause malicious code to run on computers that are not properly configured or don’t have the latest patches. That game, picture, or movie file your downloaded can just as easily be infected. This code can be used to install programs that spy on your email, web browser or even key strokes. You computer can also be used to attack other websites and harvest contacts from your address book for further attacks. Here are some examples.

The lesson is – keep your computer up to date with the latest OS patches and anti-virus software. Even with this, don’t open emails or install programs unless they are from a trusted source.

Phishing – this refers to emails that are designed to fool you into giving out information about yourself. Often they are emails from a bank that will tell you your password or PIN has been stolen and you need to log in and change it immediately. Simply click on the link below and you can reset it. That link takes you to a site with the banks name in the url, with all the graphics and text identical to your current banks page…except it isn’t. It is a site designed to fool you into giving out your username and password. Some have been sophisticated enough to event take that information and log you on to the real site so you will never know you put gave out your personal information to a cyber-thief. Judge for yourself how convincing these can be here and here.

The lesson is – never click on a link in an email that requires personal information. Go directly to the main site or, if you have any doubts, call customer service (not the number on the email but on your bank statement).

This is by no means comprehensive. I am working on follow-ups that detail these and others security concerns in more detail. It is a starting place to make readers aware that while the internet is a great resource for information, entertainment, and resources, it is also a place that can prey on the uninformed.

A few tips to help you on your way to better secure your internet experience:

1) Email is not secure

Never send personal information over email and when you receive passwords over email, change them.

2) Most web pages are not secure

Make sure you verify that the site you are about to input your user name and password is using SSL Encryption.

3) Passwords

If your password is in the dictionary, it is not secure. If you computer is at home go ahead and write your passwords down in a safe spot on your desk rather than use the same insecure password for every site. Here is a great article on creating secure passwords.

4) Secure your web browser and email client

If you use Microsoft go here for more help on securing your computer, yourself, and your family. Make sure you change your security settings so that you, by default, are set to not trust any site unless you specifically allow it. Also consider installing an alternate browser to Internet Explorer such as Firefox.

5) Make sure your kids know how to stay safe

Social networking sites are starting to blossom with kids and young adults wanting to socialize with each other, they are becoming targets. Every parent should at a minimum review these with their kids. To further assist parents, Onguardonline.gov is a site set up by the FTC to provide parents resources in helping their kids stay secure. Remember, kids can be especially vulnerable to Trojan schemes when they think they are getting emails to install games or visit websites from their peers.

Again, these are all pretty basic items. And while each point deserves more detailed accounts and descriptions, that will have to be another article.

However, what if you were left a quadriplegic? How would you life change then? I would have to relearn how to interact with even the most basic of elements in my life. Eating, working on the computer, calling people are all things I would have to relearn how to do. I would could it a success if I could get my life as close to its previous state as possible. Taking up new endeavors would seem forever out of reach.

Enter Eric Mohn. I was at a local festival visiting some of the artist booths with my family. We were attracted to the paintings in one booth and began to intently scan the prints. Impressed by the images of Americana, historical rural life I began listening to the person at the display talk about the artist. To my surprise, this painter was not only a great artist but a quadriplegic. After being injured he was determined to not let the injury keep the creative vision locked in he head forever. With great perseverance he learned how to paint using the brush in his mouth.

You can visit his website here and see a video interview. His online gallery is here.

So this begs the question, is it reasonable to expect a modern car to last 200k+ miles? The article offers some great suggestions on which cars to choose and which ones to avoid. But even so there are several things you need to do to keep your car running.

Prevention is cheaper than a repair – check and change your oil and other fluids regularly, rotate tires, check your belts.
Keep it clean – wash your car and even wax it to keep the exterior from looking bad. You are more likely to want to keep a car that still looks good.

The lights in your dashboard are there for a reason – many times it is something minor but requires your immediate attention. Fixing it early can keep you from paying more later and even worse leaving you stranded. Squeaky brakes are usually cheaper to fix than a grinding sound.

Do you have a car with over 100k miles? If so let me know your tips and suggestions.