October 31, 2007 by David.

Dustin’s daughter, Aimi, took first prize in a Toys-R-Us Halloween photo competition in Japan.  Dang cute, say I.

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October 29, 2007 by David.

Slate has a nice layout of postively spectacular foot bridges. A visual feast…

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October 26, 2007 by David.

CNN has some dang good drinking tales from the days of yore.  Yes, not only do we come by our inclination to imbibe naturally, heck, most likely the primates that preceded us did too.  A drunk T-Rex might be something to avoid, but, hey, let’s all sit around the campfire and laugh at the wobbly woolly mammoth.  But, I digress…

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October 22, 2007 by David.

PC World has a nice write-up on how to spot eMail scams.  Having a good sense of disbelief and a few basic cautions will save you time and again.

eBay and PayPal have pages dedicated to helping you identify the whether an eMail purporting to be from them is fraudulent, things like how they put your name in the eMail and the layout of known scams.  The are also very responsive if you eMail them asking if something you received is legit.

If you are active on the Internet at all, you need to have multiple eMail accounts.  A minimum of three in my book.  Use one for known & trusted business, like your banks and PayPal.  Pay attention to what the “to” eMail is when you receive eMail.  Not only will you have a permanent eMail address you won’t have to change with these accounts, you can quickly tell if a message “from” eBay but it isn’t the account you use with them.

Have a second for “trash.”  You know, when you have to sign up for something you are pretty sure you don’t want to hear from again but have to supply an eMail address.  Check it occasionally and when you start getting a lot of trash, just kill it and make a new one.

Third, have an account for your usual eMail communications - your friends and associates.  You know eventually this will pick up spam because there is always someone who sens eMail to a group and exposes them all the addresses (instead of using blind copy) and eventually that will get in the hands of the wrong person.  However, this won’t soak up spam real fast and so you might change the account every year or two to keep it clean.

You might have a fourth if you are forced to use only one specific address from work.  That is a hassle because you don’t have a way to rotate it to keep it clean so just guard it carefully.  I even went so far as creating business cards with the company logo (the actually created them for me) with the “junk” business eMail.  I’d carry both cards and only give the permanent eMail to trusted insiders, giving away the junk eMail to everyone else.

Ok, that’s five accounts, but this system has worked well for me, especially since you can forward eMails and thus I only have to check one or two places.  Also, most good eMail packages will pull from multiple addresses.  For instance, Outlook will pull from as many mailboxes as you’d like and then you can add a display colum to show the “to” address to easily track which ones you want to open.

To get those accounts is really easy even if your personal eMail is xyz@comcast.net and your can’t-change-it-and-break-the-standard business eMail.  The easiest and cheapest way is to use hotmail, yahoo, or the like for alternate addresses.  However, to get a more official looking eMail, create a domain name just for eMail if you have to.  Heck, for six bucks per year for the URL and four bucks per month you can have your own domain name with more eMail addresses than you can possibly use from 1and1.com - well worth the cost if you care about spam.  Besides, who wouldn’t rather have yourname@CoolURL.com instead of name456@hotmail.com?  I’ve used 1and1 hosting service for years and it is one of the very cheapest out there for both hosting and domain name registration.  You will find their products very robust and well featured.  Click the 1and1.com link in the side bar to check them out!

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October 17, 2007 by David.

CNN has an obesity map showing the states with population in obesity catagories.

In 1985 there were 13 states with obesity rates below 10% - and that is with a number or states with no data reported, so it is probably higher.  8 states had 10-14% of their population obese, with no states above 15%.

You can track the increase in obesity ever few years up to 2006 where NO states have an obesity rate below 15%, only Colorado is in the 15-19% range, and over half are above 25%.

I’m amazed. I knew as a nation “we” were getting more overweight. I had no idea how pervasive.

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October 16, 2007 by David.

Included with the Adobe Master Collection package is a training DVD. I am blown away by both the quality and the quantity. There are many hours covering the many products included in the Master Collection. It is nicely “chunked down” to topics. There is a variety of presenters but nearly all do a stellar job of walking one through the topic.

In case that wasn’t enough, there is also a free month subscription to on-line training at Lynda.com. They go into a lot more depth and breadth than the single DVD from Adobe, and of course cover a lot more than just Adobe’s products. Between the two resources I got a great start on using the software. I’ll continue my Lynda.com subscription. After all, $25/month is like buying one book (or in some cases, half a book). The educators on the Adobe DVD are also on Lynda.com but are not duplicates so the two mesh well.

This beats going to a standard school hands down. Both college classes and business education (such as New Horizons) are way too slow for me. Both have to progress at the lowest common denominator and I find the majority of time is wasted on material I already know or is just moving WAY slower than it needs to.

Maybe my prior experience with video education was just a run of below standard material, but I am amazed at the concise usefulness of Adobe & Lynda’s videos. Since the training is so succinct, one can move at the pace he or she wants. The presenter just gets right to the point and lays it out. For material that is completely new to me, I replay short sections as I’m going along until I get it, but the end result is MUCH faster than sitting in a classroom setting.

These training videos have made me a believer and, furthermore, will allow me to get so much more out of the software. My biggest concern in ordering this suite was there would be so much to learn and going to a class of any type would take so long and cost so much I wouldn’t get nearly the use out of it that I could have. I’m not worried about that anymore! 

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October 15, 2007 by David.

Can’t believe I haven’t heard of this product even though it has been out a couple years. It is an impact jacket that inflates when the rip cord attached to the bike is pulled. Credited with saving the life of a guy in Baltimore (who now says he is giving up crotch rockets for cruisers…).

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October 1, 2007 by David.

Google sky is a very cool app, but check out PC World’s collection of space images. Spectacular!

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