Techno babel, decoded.

Has someone done something nice for you?  Random act of kindness or inspiration that gave you a little pick me up when you needed it?   Did they help you overcome one of life's many hurdles?  I'm going to say something weird, don't worry about paying them back for their kindness or generosity.  PAY IT FORWARD!.   Help someone else out in their time of need.  Smile at someone who is frowning.  Compliment someone who looks like they are having a bad day.   A little bit of kindness can go a long way.  Recently I had a dog who was shot by a crazy neighbor and he had to have a leg amputated because the femur was shattered at the hip joint.  I didn't have the money for the surgery.  We started a fundraiser to help us cover most of the cost of the surgery and we raised a little over $3500 to cover most of the surgery.  We still had about $2000 in Emergency and post care bills, but we were able to cover that.  I now share stories about other people and their situations and wh

The Heartbleed bug has been in the news a lot lately, and there are a lot of technical and poorly worded non-technical explanations.  So here is a brief summary of what you NEED to know. The vulnerability affects versions of OPEN SSL which means that sites containing HTTPS may have been affected.  (Not all sites use open SSL.) For a list of sites that you NEED to change your password on, please visit.  http://mashable.com/2014/04/09/heartbleed-bug-websites-affected/ If you have a Cisco home router check this site to see if you are affected. http://tools.cisco.com/security/center/content/CiscoSecurityAdvisory/cisco-sa-20140409-heartbleed The bug basically was a vulnerability in an ongoing communication timer to make sure that the connection stayed open.  It allowed nefarious individuals to use this timer to steal data in small packets over time.  The length of time this vulnerability has been on the market is scary.  Please change your passwords soon. If you need a way to ke

The journey of our lives is never quite what we expect.  All of us have encountered a myriad of pitfalls, speed bumps, and other hazards as we try to make a living and work on having a career and family.   I've fallen victim many times when too many things go wrong, but the one thing I can control is how I act and react to the challenges I encounter.  I do my best to find the positive in everything even when it is sometimes impossible, but I try.  I have found that I am much happier focusing on the positives in life rather than the negatives and the only thing I have changed is my perspective. Sure it sounds easy to say. Just think positive!  The reality is that it takes a lot of conscious, continuous effort to truly change your outlook on life. (Also good e-mail and social media filters help!) But the effort is worth it.   Your biggest impediment to happiness is looking at you from the mirror.  Stop beating yourself up over the mistakes of the past!  Learn from them, don't r

This is a practice I do every day at some point.  Sometimes, I'm driving, sometimes I'm walking, sometimes I hear something on the radio, regardless, I take a few moments every day to appreciate something I see.  Everything we see on this beautiful planet of ours was forged in the heart of long dead stars.  Every atom of our bodies, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the earth we stand on are the result of billions of years of evolution. Our lives play out on a tiny spec of dust orbiting giant nuclear ball of gas in an average galaxy in a universe of billions of galaxies.  We are but tiny pieces of the universe trying to understand itself.* So take a moment to appreciate something you see, a mother and her child playing in the park, a flight of birds migrating, a squirrel looking for its next meal, whatever you see that makes you smile. Stop and appreciate it the fact that 14 billion years, countless long exploded stars, and 4 billion years of natural selection has lea