Author: John

John Mueller is a freelance author and technical editor. He has writing in his blood, having produced 123 books and over 600 articles to date. The topics range from networking to artificial intelligence and from database management to heads-down programming. Some of his current offerings include topics on machine learning, AI, Python programming, Android programming, and C++ programming. His technical editing skills have helped over more than 70 authors refine the content of their manuscripts. John also provides a wealth of other services, such as writing certification exams, performing technical edits, and writing articles to custom specifications. You can reach John on the Internet at [email protected].

E-book Integration in Schools

I use every opportunity I can to track the change in how people read information. Some of this material is in articles, some comes from readers and friends, and some comes from just observing. For example, at one time people would grab a magazine from the rack at our doctor’s office. Now it’s quite likely that they’ll take out a Kindle or other reading device to view their favorite novel. Even at our library, I see people sitting in front of computers reading, rather than holding a book. Increasingly, I get questions from readers who use the e-book version of my books, instead of paper copies. Let’s just say that in the year and two months since I wrote The e-Book in Your Future, things have changed considerably. E-books are reducing the cost of reading material of every sort, especially technical books.

That’s the reason I’m a bit concerned about some of the things I read about our school system, especially when conversations with students tend to bear out the information I read. One ComputerWorld article in particular, “The e-book revolution is bypassing U.S. elementary schools” really grabbed my attention. The author, Joe Mohen, makes some astute comments about the benefits of using e-books in schools. As an author, I see significant benefits in using e-books, such as the ability to update the information as needed. Schools often struggle with outdated texts now due to a lack of funds, using e-books greatly reduces the cost of updates making it possible for schools to keep their texts updated.

More worrisome is the fact that most of our colleges still use paper texts. In talking with any number of students, I have yet to find any of them using more than one or two e-books for their classes. Given the high cost of education, it makes sense to reduce costs by providing students with materials in electronic format. A recent Forbes article, “Should College Students Be Forced To Buy E-Books?” makes a strong case for using e-books in colleges. The same article points out that only three percent of students currently use e-books for their education.

My interest in e-book technology isn’t just a passing fancy. Part of the reason I spend so much time delving into this issue is to discover how to serve you best. A large percentage of my readers are college students. What if my books were offered only in e-book format? Would you still buy them? For now, my books will continue to appear in both print and e-book format for the most part, but the time could come when I’m asked about how my readers would be affected if the publisher produced only e-books. To answer that question, I need your input. Let me know your thoughts about e-books, especially in the school environment, at [email protected].

 

Continuing Development of Accessibility Aids

Technology continues to improve in its support for those with special needs. I try to read as many articles as I can on the subject because I truly believe that computers offer the means to provide a level playing surface for everyone. I’ve posted a number of other times about improvements in technology that will eventually help people lead better lives, even when they have special requirements. As our population continues to age, this technology will also help older people in the population to continue making valuable contributions to society as a whole, so these technologies aren’t just for the few—everyone is affected at some point.

I read with interest a story about new bionic hand. The problem with any prosthetic limb is that it doesn’t provide feedback. Without touch, using a prosthetic is incredibly hard. You must be able to feel what is happening at the end of your arm. This new bionic hand does just that—it provides some level of feedback using the person’s own nervous system. I find this amazing because it would have been science fiction just a few years ago. I had previously written about the ability of someone to simply think about the motion required to perform a task in The Bionic Person, One Step Closer, but this is different. Not only can the person think about what to do, but they can also feel the activity when they do it. Of course, it isn’t anywhere near as useful as a real hand, but technology takes small steps forward.

This new hand isn’t permanent yet, nor are any of the other exciting technologies in the works right now. The biggest problem is that the electrodes used to communicate with the brain cause problems—essentially, the body rejects them. In addition, the prosthetic limbs have a long way to go before they become as usable as natural limbs. For example, a natural hand has 22 degrees of controls, while the best that a prosthetic limb can manage is seven.

Many of the technologies used to help people with visual problems have been temporary as well. However, a new bionic eye may change that. In this case, the eye is designed to help someone with a specific eye disease and they must still wear special glasses to make the modifications work. However, the eye implant is permanent in this case, which means that after surgery a person has a permanent change in their vision that they can count on using.

This truly is an exciting time because it’s slowly becoming possible to give people their lives back when something catastrophic happens. Many of the articles that I’ve read say that it will still take 20 or 30 years before science has developed limbs and other body parts that function as well as the real thing, but every advance made does help at least a little. What are your thoughts on the bionic person? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Seeing Ice Feathers on the Ground

One of the nicer things about living where we are is that there is always something unusual to see. Nature is always presenting us with something interesting—all we have to do is keep our eyes open to see it. That’s what happened the other day. The weather was just perfect for creating ice feathers. Here’s one view of the ice feathers:

IceFeathers01

If you get close enough, they actually look like little feathers. Another name for ice feathers is rime ice. The name ice feathers is a bit more poetic and also more descriptive of a particular kind of rime ice. The crystals form when moist air, wind, and cold surface temperatures combine to create a kind of artistic statement. This sort of ice feather is somewhat rare—I remember seeing it only a few times in my entire life.

Some people might also call ice features like this hoarfrost, and that would possibly be an appropriate name, except that hoarfrost is the result of dew, where ice feathers form from melted water carried on the wind. There are minor distinctions between hoarfrost, rime ice, ice feathers, and other ice formations—all of which are quite beautiful. When I saw these ice feathers on the ground though, I knew they would be something special. You can see them in a little more detail in this picture.

IceFeathers02

Nature is always presenting us with something pretty. Whether it’s a sundog, an ice draped tree, or ice feathers, winter does have its own vision of beauty to offer. What is the most beautiful feature of winter that you’ve seen? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Winter Cactus Color

One of the issues that we face living where we do is the bleakness of winter. Yes, it’s just lovely sitting in front of the wood stove soaking in the heat, but the short days and gray skies do take a toll after a while. Even the heartiest of us feels a certain yearning for summer months of long days and warmer climes. However, I personally wouldn’t be without winter because there is too much to see and overall, it’s a pleasant season despite the occasional bout of depression.

Fortunately, there are many ways to combat the fatigue that comes with extended cold and short days. One of the ways in which we do this is to have lots of plants in our home. My office has more than a few. I personally like cactus. They’re easy to care for, have interesting foliage, and the cats definitely don’t like to eat them. A favorite cactus of mine is the Mistletoe Cactus. The foliage really is interesting and it just looks fun. Imagine my surprise when it bloomed for the first time after I owned it for 16 years. It has bloomed again this year, much to my delight.

Cactus

The interesting thing about my mistletoe cactus is that the blooms are bright yellow, not white like many pictures you see of them. According to the source I read, there are actually 35 varieties of this delightful plant that produce blossoms in white, red, pink, and yes, even yellow. The flowers look almost like they’re made of plastic and it was quite tough to get the picture you see in my post today.

House plants of any sort can help lift your mood. If you find that you have a terrible case of the winter blahs, try getting a flowering plant to care for. A truly interesting plant can take your mind off the weather and can prove to be quite fun. I’ve had this particular plant for over 20 years now and I’ve heard of people who have had theirs for 40 or more years, so I imagine I’ll see it bloom a few more times. What are your favorite winter plants? Let me know at [email protected].

 

Animal Control

Self-sufficiency involves a certain level of animal control no matter where you live. A weasel, raccoon, or opossum (amongst others) can make short work of your meat chickens, laying hens, or rabbits. Unfortunately, the literature on animal control is lacking. Even when you review many self-sufficiency books, it’s as if the authors purposely avoid the topic. When you do find information on the topic, it’s often biased or outright incorrect. Our experiences when we first moved here were frustrating in the best of times because we lacked animal control experience. When the deer weren’t eating our trees, the raccoons were feasting on our chickens.

We do have some significant animal control issues at times because we live next to a relatively big wooded area. Even though the woods look empty quite a bit of the time, there are animals galore in it. Of course, we have many of the same animals that appear in city parks, such as squirrels. Except for chewing holes in our birdhouse and occasionally through the siding on our home, squirrels present few problems. However, there are other animals that are much harder to control and they can cause serious damage at times.


Many sources recommend live trapping animals and moving them somewhere else, which sounds like a fine idea until you consider the repercussions of such a decision. Of course, there are consequences for the animal, who has now been made homeless and may be in some other animal’s territory. In some cases, moving the animal is a death sentence at the hands of a larger member of the same species who will simply do away with the interloper. The consequences for someone like me are also unpleasant because your problem is now my problem. In short, live trapping and moving an animal solves the problem if you can be certain that the animal will end up in a friendly environment far enough from humans not to cause trouble. It might be a better idea to consider giving the responsibility to someone else. If you’re struggling with certain animals on your property, it is often safer to consider calling out some wildlife control professionals to make sure the animal is removed in the most humane way possible. This should keep everyone happy and should limit the wildlife that comes near your property.

Generally, we try to shoo animals away when we can. If you make the animal feel unwelcome enough, it’ll go somewhere else. Some animals will simply ignore you. Skunks are an obvious example and personally, I stay as far away from them as possible (not that we’ve ever had a serious problem with skunks, except for the time our dog got sprayed by one). Opossums are generally inclined to ignore humans as well. However, a few nips from a dog generally convinces them to go in some other direction.

Sometimes shooing doesn’t work, so then we try barriers-either physical or scent. A fence around young trees or blueberry bushes will generally keep deer away. We’ve considered putting a deer feeder out in one of our fields so the deer eat that, rather than our trees and bushes. I didn’t know much about deer before looking on Feedthatgame.com but I’ve learned a lot of new things about deer which I’m keen to implement. However, rabbits, mice, voles, rats, and other animals will simply burrow under the fence to get at the delicious young plants unless you bury the fence about foot or so deep in the soil. Scents also have a powerful effect on animals, but you must reapply them regularly, especially after a rain. Soap does work for deer, while human or other barrier scents work for rabbits much of the time.

Passive barriers might not work in all cases, so then you have to resort to active barriers. To get our grapes to grow, we actually stationed a dog next to the young plants one season. It was an extreme sort of barrier, but the dog seemed to enjoy the change in duty and the grapes have now grown so that none of the local animals have much interest in them. We always station a dog next to our chicken tractors because racoons and weasels aren’t easily dissuaded from enjoying a chicken dinner. Even with a dog stations next to the cages, you need a strong cage to avoid predation by hawks and other larger predators.

Most of our efforts at animal control involve deterrence of some kind. We’ll keep experimenting until we find something that that animal doesn’t like. Unfortunately, sometimes there is nothing else to do but to get rid of the problem by killing the problem animal. It’s always our last option and we do it with a great deal of remorse. The other day I encountered a situation where an opossum had chewed through our rabbit cage, partially eaten the rabbit inside, and was busily working at getting to the rabbit in the next cage. (The same opossum had eaten some of our eggs the day before, so it was a repeat offender.) Shooing the opossum didn’t work and it didn’t seem to want to play dead either (a state in which you can move the opossum out of harm’s way). So, I ended up killing it. We use the fastest, most humane method possible. I offered the opossum to our local fox at her den in the woods (wasting anything is against my personal beliefs).

Animal control requires experimentation and a good deal of thought. The animals aren’t pests; they’re simply trying to earn a living in the only way they know how. We all know that they can be annoying, especially when they invade our personal space, but they’re only doing what they need to do to survive. Like we do. Even if it means that you have to look for a company like Apex Bird Control, (https://www.apexbirdcontrol.uk/service/guano-clearance-southampton) because some birds have decided to leave their droppings on your building, and you need to get it off before it attracts the wrong type of pests, then that is what you should do. Yes, the situation isn’t ideal, but we should let them off every now and then, right? So that’s why we need to find a way to effectively control them. Deterrence is always preferable to killing, but sometimes you do need to kill an animal because you have no other choice. Let me know your thoughts on animal control at [email protected].

Pros and Cons of Weight Loss

I’ve created two previous posts about my experiences with self-sufficiency as they apply to health benefits: Health Benefits of Self-Sufficiency and Health Benefits of Self-Sufficiency (Part 2). A number of people have read those posts and come away with some ideas that might not reflect the reality of my weight loss or weight loss in general. The five biggest concepts in my weight loss program are:

  • I never specifically set out to lose weight.
  • There wasn’t any dieting involved, the weight came off naturally as a result of the techniques I used.
  • The motivation was to become self-sufficient, which means eating food we grow ourselves.
  • Growing your own food involves a lot of exercise, but it isn’t the sort of exercise one gets from a gym.
  • Part of the solution involves getting proper rest and following the cycles of sun availability throughout the year (for example, we get up 2 ½ hours later in the winter than we do in the summer).

It’s important to step back at times and review how a specific set of actions has affected you, which is something I have done as part of this weight loss adventure. The person who crafted the statement, “There is no free lunch.” hit the nail on the head when it comes to weight loss at least in my case. Every weight loss journey is different, especially when people go about different ways of shedding the pounds, but as long as you’re willing to stay committed and motivated throughout this journey, then that’s where it all begins. Whether someone chooses to watch workout videos, visit the gyms three times a week or even stick to programs like the 14 day rapid fat loss plan, finding a suitable routine is what will hopefully make this weight loss journey easier.

Those previous posts stated a lot of benefits for losing weight. Getting rid of my medications, gaining stamina, lowering my blood pressure, controlling my diabetes through diet alone, and increasing my flexibility are all incredibly positive reasons for losing weight. Even though I have no way of proving it, I have probably increased my lifespan and I’ll be able to enjoy more of that lifespan. Just the decrease of pressure on my joints would be worth the loss of weight.

I keep getting asked whether I feel better. People seem disappointed when I tell them no. I actually don’t feel better-I feel different, but not better. When I weighed as much as I did, I was no less happy than I am today. I didn’t walk around constantly sad and I didn’t feel fat. Sure, going through a Houston weight loss regimen would be good for me – it is why people get a phentermine alternative to help their loss, after all – but it wouldn’t change how I feel about myself. A better word would be that I felt robust. The fact of the matter is that I was still quite active, even with all that weight in place. So, I would consider the whole issue of feeling better as a neutral element of weight loss for me.

There are negatives to my weight loss and there are people who seem surprised that I would have any negatives to express. The obvious negative is that I’m not able to eat all of the foods I used to enjoy. I’ve replaced those foods with healthier alternatives. To say that I don’t occasionally eye something that would absolutely trash my body and still feel a desire for it would be absolutely incorrect. I sometimes indulge, just a little, in those old habits, but they’re no longer part of my daily life. The reason is simple-I don’t want to spend my hard earned cash on those products (an answer that many find surprising). I do greatly enjoy my new food choices, but anyone who is honest about the matter of diet will tell you that the old food choices really do retain some level of appeal. I resist those options because they simply cost too much to attract my attention and I’ve grown used to the taste of better alternatives.

An interesting negative, at least for me, is that I can’t stay out in the cold as long as I once did. My body, sans the blubber that used to insulate it, simply doesn’t deal with the cold as well as it did in the past. The fact that I can work faster and that I’ve gained flexibility tends to overcome some of this limitation, but there are times when I would like to stay out longer, but simply can’t because my body won’t allow it. Observing nature is one situation in which I find the lack of durability in the cold to be an issue. I’m also having to be more concerned about the potential for frostbite when I work outside.

My work strategy has had to change. I replaced muscle and weight with flexibility and stamina. A log that I would have easily moved when I weighed more is no longer easy to move. I now have to apply other techniques to move the log and those techniques have to rely on my new fortes. A number of people have wondered why the muscle hasn’t been replaced since my weight stabilized. I don’t have an answer to that question, but I do know I have less muscle now than I once did, despite working hard to increase my muscle mass. I do have the muscle required to perform common tasks. For example, lifting 100 pound sacks of feed doesn’t present any sort of problem.

After talking with my doctor for a while, we decided that I do need to keep a little extra weight on for times when I get sick. I was finding that I would get incredibly weak quite fast when ill after losing weight. When I weighed more, I’d hardly notice any effect from being ill, except the actual illness (such as stuffy nose). The weakness afterward is a new wrinkle that I’m having to deal with. That said, I don’t get sick very often and the amount of extra weight is quite small (about ten pounds). Given the amount of weight that I have lost and the level of activity that I experience, the doctor and I both felt the trade-offs were acceptable.

The point is that any sort of major body change is going to involve choices and consequences. To gain the things that I have through weight loss, I’ve had to accept the consequences. Before you embark on a journey that involves a major body change, make sure you talk with your doctor and do some research. Be aware of the consequences of your actions and make sure you are willing to live with those consequences. Let me know your thoughts on weight loss at [email protected].

Emergency Repairs

A less thrilling part of being self-sufficient is dealing with emergency repairs. They seem to happen far too often, and it depends on what is in need of maintenance. There are some things you can repair yourself, but for others, you may need the help of an expert. For instance, if you want to repair your furnace and you’ve never repaired one before, you may want to search for a service that was ranked for top furnace repair in your local area since there is so much that can go wrong if you don’t repair it properly. However, for this emergency repair story, I’m not talking about a big repair issue, I’m talking about a small one. We use our snow blower to remove snow from our long driveway, as well as create paths to the various animal enclosures. It’s in this second capacity that I encountered problems the other day. The snow blower moved in an unexpected manner while working around the chicken coop and the side of the wheel hit the coop stairs. A small pop sounded, but I didn’t really notice. I did notice a few minutes later when the tire deflated and the snow blower was no longer usable . Emergency repairs are just an unfortunate part of adult life that can affect us in the most random ways. It may be something like your garage door that suddenly becomes faulty, which is not ideal but must be dealt with quickly and efficiently. If this sort of thing happens you’ll want to consult with local garage door technicians in Whitestone, New York. so that your garage can return to full working order as quickly as possible. Nobody wants to keep needing emergency repairs, but you’ll be grateful when you receive them.

Trying to blow the tire up with a hand pump didn’t work because the bead had popped. So, that meant putting the snow blower away and continuing snow removal by hand. Four hours later, I finally completed the task with Rebecca’s help. Nothing provides quite as much exercise as four hours worth of snow shoveling in freezing winds, but we also needed to get to town to fix the flat (as well as perform other tasks).

The snow blower is too large and heavy to get into the Explorer. So the obvious course of action was to get the wheel off and take it to our local repair shop. The only problem was getting the wheel off. The bolt holding the wheel in place is designed to provide a tight fit and proved quite resistant to any effort at removal. Blocking the tire would normally provide enough friction to allow removal of the bolt, but that technique didn’t work in this case because the wheel simply turned within the tire. I finally improvised by attaching a large deep reach c-clamp to the wheel, which blocked the wheel and made it possible to gain purchase on the bolt.

At this point, the bolt wouldn’t move at all and penetrating oil (WD-40) wasn’t helping much. I brought out my persuader-which is a length of pipe that I slip over the end of my socket wrench handle to increase the torque I can apply to the bolt. Actually, it isn’t a pipe in the conventional sense. I saved the torsion bar from our old garage door and have cut it into several pieces that I use for a number of tasks, including persuading bolts. Extending the handle of the socket wrench gives you a physical advantage and makes it easier to remove stubborn bolts, but you have to be careful not to break the sockets as a result of using the pipe. Moreover, fortunately, I have a few torque wrenches similar to these tekton torque wrenches in my automotive tool kit so I was able to carry out this task relatively easily.

Bolt removed, the wheel still wouldn’t come off. The snow blower shaft is keyed and the wheel fits quite tightly. Unfortunately, working with the front of the wheel wouldn’t accomplish anything because the wheel goes on in that direction. The back of the wheel isn’t easily accessed because the snow blower transmission is in the way. In order to gain access to the back of the wheel, I angled a 2 × 2 over the top of the engine and hit it with a mallet. After a few pounds with the mallet on the end of the 2 × 2, I turned the wheel 90 degrees. Each 360 degrees of movement saw me applying a little more WD-40 to the front and back of the wheel shaft. Eventually, the wheel came off.

Getting the wheel fixed was quick and easy. The local repair shop has a compressor and the tire blew back up without problem after applying a sealant to the bead. The tire is back on the snow blower now and the snow blower is ready for use after today’s snowstorm. The point is that you have to think ahead about the potential for emergency repairs and have a strategy in place for dealing with them. Yes, the approach we used was a bit inconvenient and time consuming, but it did work. But, of course, while things like repairing a snow blower can be done by us, other things that may need doing after a snowstorm, like slab foundation repair, should always be done by experts.

What sorts of emergency repairs do you think about when thinking about self-sufficiency? Do you have contingency plans in place to handle your emergencies? Let me know at [email protected].

Changes to the Start Command Functionality

Sometimes a change command line command occurs and no one really notices for a while, except that there is some oddity in the way the command executes. This is how I recently figured out a change to the Start command. Some update Microsoft provided changed the way it worked, but I have no idea of which one.

I have a batch file in the Startup folder that automatically loads all the sites I use in my favorite browser when I start my system in the morning. The old command looked like this:

Start "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\Firefox" "http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/"

This command starts a copy of Firefox and loads Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) for me. The interesting thing is that the command continued to work, despite the change in the Start command functionality. What changed was the fact that the command window didn’t go away once the sites were all loaded. The command window would remain in place until I closed the browser. I’ve had a lot of other things to worry about, so all I did was minimize the command window and let it disappear after I had looked over my sites in the morning.

Notice how the command is in quotes. This is a necessity because there are spaces in the command, so it won’t execute if you don’t place it in quotes. After some investigation, it turns out that the new behavior is treating the command as the Title argument for Start, rather than as the command. The Start command was opening the site based on the URL argument alone. Just why the command window wasn’t closing is something I haven’t figured out yet.

Recently I decided it was time to work out the problems with the Start command because I wanted to use Chrome to load some sites (in addition to those loaded by Firefox) and Chrome wasn’t loading them. The sites were all loading in Firefox. So, I wandered over to TechNet to see what Microsoft has to say on the Start command and that’s when I noticed that the documentation had been updated on April 17, 2012—about the time I started experiencing my little problem (it does sometimes take forever for me to get the time needed to fix an issue).

After thinking through the command for a little while and trying a few alternatives at the command line, I finally came up with a new command for the batch file. Here is the result:

Start /D"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\" Firefox.exe "http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/"

The new version of the command uses the /D command line switch to specify the path to the command. There is nothing new about the /D command line switch—you simply didn’t need to use it in the past to get the desired result from the Start command. Notice that the command now includes the full executable name and extension. The argument appears after the command as before. Now the command executes properly and the command window closes after all the sites are loaded.

Make sure you use this new information when working with either Administering Windows Server 2008 Server Core and Windows Command-Line Administration Instant Reference to ensure you get the desired results from the examples. Also let me know about any issues you encounter with commands in either book at [email protected].

 

The Myth of the Unbreakable Password

Complete books have been written about the topic of security and the correct way to create passwords. Each expert claims that if you only adhere to the conventions that he or she sets forth, that your computer will be safe. Let me say up front that the unbreakable password is a myth. Yes, you need to come up with something a lot better than “Secret” or your birthday, but be assured that any password you use is breakable. In fact, in the real world, what you’re striving to do is create a password that takes longer to break—realizing that anyone who really wants access to your system will gain it. Computer hardware has become so powerful that seemingly unbreakable cryptography is quite vulnerable today.

Many security experts want you to use completely undecipherable passwords such as @f*/L12-X]. If you can’t come up with a good password of your own, PCTools actually provides a generator to create one for you. If you’re unsure about the safety of your password, you can have it checked to determine how long it would take to crack. (Unfortunately, the number you get isn’t completely realistic because computer technology for cracking passwords improves all the time, as does the capability of the hardware used to crack it.) Of course, it would be absolutely impossible to remember such a password, so anyone having such a password is going to write it down. All someone has to do is pose as a janitor and pick up all the yellow stickies that have the password printed on them (or write them down as they pass through to avoid suspicion). For that matter, social engineering attacks can often yield passwords through a phone call in a few minutes.

Because truly secure passwords are the stuff of science fiction, other experts have come up with the passphrase. A passphrase such as “My yellow car is gr8!” theoretically has a long crack time and are easy to remember. Unfortunately, recent advances in cracking technology seem to make passphrases a bad bet too. It seems that the crackers now use grammar as part of their strategy to figure out your password. They use applications to figure out the most common words that would come in a sequence of words.

The advice today is to use unrelated words separated by special characters—something I have advocated in any book I write that contains information about security. A password like “Elephant*Green?H3llo” is infinitely easier to remember than @f*/L12-X], but still quite secure. Even so, if someone is determined, they can combine a dictionary attack with some brute force techniques and discover your password in a reasonable amount of time—assuming you don’t simply give it to them as part of a social engineering attack.

There are technologies that promise to make it harder for crackers to gain entry to a system, but they’re usually complicated. For example, you can add a retina (iris) scanner or thumbprint reader to improve security, but that means an additional purchase, specialized software, training, and other costly changes to your setup. Security cards are another option, but again, you have additional costs to consider and the use of a security card is open to social engineering attacks (unlike a person’s thumb or retina, which are firmly attached). Most organizations still rely on passwords or passphrases in the interest of saving money, so creating usable, easily remembered passwords that truly are safe should be the focus of administrators whenever possible.

One new method of securing systems does appear in Windows 8. In this case, the system displays a picture when you start it up and you use gestures to circle or otherwise identify pictorial elements in place of typing a password. There are some experts who are already saying the feature is easily cracked. It seems as if the technique would be unwieldy with a mouse and it has already been said that most people aren’t buying touch screens to use with Windows 8 (see my Some Interesting Windows 8 Information post for details), so this security feature may be a non-starter for most organizations.

Passwords and passphrases won’t likely go away soon, so the best approach for most users and administrators is to create a system where passwords are complex, easily remembered (and therefore, not written down), and changed relatively often. The combination of these three elements should make your PC safer from crackers. However, the best security is vigilance. Check your system for intrusion often. Rest assured, someone who really wants to get in will do so and without too much effort. Let me know your thoughts about passwords at [email protected].

 

Winter Storm

It pays to be prepared for winter weather when you live in the country. Each year we winterize the house by checking for drafts, sealing doors, getting a roofing company Raleigh to check for any repairs that need doing, and ensure we have enough food stocked for a few days. This week we had a winter storm that was simultaneously beautiful in the extreme and quite deadly if approached incorrectly. The storm itself started with some heavy snows that draped the trees in a pretty covering that glistened even in the subdued light.

Storm01

Watching the storm take shape was amazing, but I was also smart enough to know to limit my time outside. We carefully monitor wind chill so that we don’t end up frostbitten. For example, at a temperature of 5 degrees Fahrenheit and with a 20 mph wind, you can only stay outdoors safely for about 30 minutes before the possibility of frostbite intrudes. Dressing warm helps quite a lot, but getting the end of your nose frozen is no fun. Due to the fact that I knew the storm was coming, I made sure I had contacted an HVAC company like Valley Service to make sure that the heat would not go down in weather and that we could be reassured that we were safe and warm whilst we were indoors. There is nothing worse than being stuck in a winter storm with no heat available to keep everyone safe from the extreme weather.

The storm was severe enough to keep the roads clear. We saw a single car early in the morning before the storm reached it peak and then the road remained clear. Of course, it helped that most businesses and all schools were closed for the day. There is something to be said for the silent isolation of a storm. You look out the window and the road is missing from view (as is the case in this picture-yes there is a road there under the snow). You’re transported to a different time and can daydream of times past when life seemed simpler (and often wasn’t).

Storm02

The serene landscape is so quiet, so hushed, you could easily get lost in it for hours at a time. Even so, there is activity if you look for it. Our local birds were quite busy at the feeder and seemed to hardly notice the snow at all. We love to watch them during the winter months as a reminder of the life that will return in the spring.

Storm03

Another storm is past and soon life will return to normal. Today I’m exhausted from working in the cold to plow the road out so we can go to town tomorrow. I have yet to look for any potential damage to our house, but from a quick glance when I was clearing out the snow, everything seems to be in order. It is important that you check for any damage, as whilst you think that you have escaped unscathed, one clogged drain could seriously increase the chances of you experiencing water damage throughout the night. It happened to my friend not so long ago, and while he had insurance, his company took ages to get back to him and so he ended up contacting someone like this public adjuster Doylestown to help get the money he deserved so he could start the repair and cleanup process. Just seeing what he went through has made me make sure that it doesn’t happen to us, so I’ll have another check in the morning and we’ll go from there. Tonight I’ll sleep the most wonderful sleep there is and dream of the winter wonderland beyond my window. Our animals are all happy in their enclosures so carefully constructed to keep them safe and happy, the wood stove continues to heat our home, and our pets are inside as a source of comfort. Nothing is quite so cozy. What are your happiest thoughts of winter? Let me know at [email protected].