Techno babel, decoded.

So the SINGLE, MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO, IS TO LOVE YOUR CHILD UNCONDITIONALLY. Tell them you love them, EVERY, SINGLE, DAY! Talk to them and make sure they know you trust them.   Establish this trust EARLY. In case you aren't familiar with me, I have a degree in psychology, 20 years of cyber security experience, father  of an autistic child and another on the way. Be aware of what they are and are not watching on TV, tablet, and telephone. Show them this!  This video is POWERFUL.  These same tactics work in real life and online. Show it to them several times. Will the tools in this video work every time?  Probably not, but it will MOST of the time.  The most powerful tool you can teach your children is KNOWLEDGE.  Understanding.   Most kids have been bullied, at some point in their lives.  I was rarely a victim of bullying because I was the second tallest/biggest kid in my class up until about 8th grade.  Even in high school it happened to me once and it bug

Cyber Bullying is defined as: W illful and repeated harm inflicted through the use of computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices ” Harm in this instances means emotional abuse.   For example, someone posts an embarrassing photo and then bully's make hurtful comments repeatedly.   Cyber bullying comes in many forms.   Emotional abuse through social media. Public shaming Creating/spreading rumors about people online or through instant messages Sending threats or mean messages to people directly. Creating a fake person in order to use that "person" to be hurtful to another.  Some facts about Cyber bullying Half of all adolescents and teens have reported cyber bullying.  About half have participated in cyber bullying in one form or another Only 1 in 10 report the cyber bullying to a parent or guardian.  Cyber bullying makes someone 2 to 9 times more likely to commit suicide.  Girls are more likely than boys to be victims of cyber bullyin

You may have noticed I rarely post about the cutting edge tech toys.  I don't spend money on most cutting edge items because I don't have it to throw around. I have had the GoPro Hero 5 for almost a year now and I purchased it about 2 months before the Hero 6 was announced so I paid full price. It is a great action camera.   It is fantastic for under water/beach/wet filming.  It's also very small and light weight so it is easy to transport and attach to things in a variety of ways.   The water slides right off the lens when you transition from underwater to air.  It is very light, has a huge variety of accessories through 3rd parties.  The digital stabilization isn't bad but it isn't spectacular.   It is better than my MotoX camera phone and does take good pictures but if you want pro quality smoothness you will need a Gimbal. If you use the GoPro stabilization and some video editing stabilization it can make for fairly smooth video. Also you will want to ge

Part of me really wants to say No, there is no such thing as to much security.  But the reality is that there is such a thing as too much security! What, but in this age of digital everything, Equifax, target, Facebook hacks/leaks how can there be too much security? Simple! When it drastically impedes your ability to do your fu(k!ng job, it is to much security. I was troubleshooting a networking issues for my day job a couple months back and it took 8 people at 6 companies to identify on which network segment and what piece of equipment was the source of the problem.  There were, routers, switches, and firewalls from different vendors and different networks all looking at packet traces to figure out which stupid piece of equipment was responsible because there were so many different layers of security and routing.  (8 firewalls in between.) This is what I'm talking about.   IT WAS NOT NECESSARY.  All those extra layers of firewall and routing were completely unnecessary f

Over many years I have tried dozens of different methods to copy large amounts of files. On home small networks windows drag and drop is sufficient.  But when you start moving 500+gigs and 100k files, you want something more robust. The clear winner is still Robocopy. If you haven't used Robocopy or are afraid of the command line, use winRobocopy.  It is free and builds the command line for you. The reason I recommend Robocopy is MULTI-THREADED.  Windows Drag and Drop uses between 1-8 threads to copy files. Robocopy can be set as high as 128.  This can change 1 day copies to just a few hours. This means it uses 128 channels so is effectively copying up to 128 files or segments of files simultaneously.  There are many additional switches you can use and this GUI makes it really easy to build commands and then copy and paste into the command line.  http://www.upway2late.com/#/projects/winrobocopy  #sysadmin #techtools #techutilities

Did you know that your phones can track you even when you have the GPS OFF. Even with both GPS and WIFI off, many phones can and do still track your location.  You agreed to this in the terms and conditions of use when you didn't read them and signed your contract.  All modern cell phones are capable of this, and it will depend on the company how and when they collect and use that data.  SO be aware that you are being watched.  This is part of big data.  Tracking your movements and using your location to target advertising to you based on your preferences and your location. The goal for businesses is to sell you more things and make money off that data. 

Sorry for the hiatus but 1 autistic kid and a new baby meant no free time, or brain power to spare.  So upon the last update to my Moto X pure the phone became so slow I was starting to curse it all the time.  My wife was having the same problem only worse.  We DON'T install a lot of junk apps, and we know how to id and disable them.  Well, after some tweaking the performance improved (a very SMALL amount.) I understand that updates help protect against vulnerabilities and there were some serious vulnerabilities which required major OS level patches on the last round but the phones became almost unusable for someone trying to run a business from it.  So we decided to upgrade and get some top of the line phones so we could hopefully last 2 years without an upgrade this next go around. My wife's was phone was worse than mine and we were going to replace hers first and then mine a paycheck or two later. That didn't work out as expected.  We settled on the Pixel 2 XL

There has been a lot of press about the Russian hackers and the VPNFilter malware infecting home routers. Well, Symantec made a tool to check if your Router is infected.  I would recommend checking your home router even if you have a different model router than the known infected list as the investigators are slowly discovering more models and the hackers are working to spread the infection. If you are infected, it will mean a little bit of work for you.   You will need to do a Hard RESET on your router (usually a button that you need to use a paperclip or pen tip to push.)  Then you will need to download the latest firmware from the manufacturer website. My posting schedule has been off due to major projects at my day job eating up a tremendous amount of my time as well as a 6 year old and a newborn. See my previous post FBI Warning for more details. Thanks for Reading. Please Stay Safe on the internet. URL of the Symantec Tool:   http://www.symantec.com/filtercheck/

YES.  IT is a very good field to go into.  There is still a high and growing demand for information technology professionals.  Programming, troubleshooting, developing, data mining and analytics.   All huge. If you want to pursue a career in IT you should look for my series about getting into IT. I'll be making some Youtube videos in the near future (once my newborn starts letting me get some sleep, so next year ish).  I work as a system administrator have been help desk, desktop support, network admin, system admin, network engineer, support engineer, team lead, support manager, cloud architect, and security administrator.  Let me tell you, some days it's amazing, and some days it's a nightmare.  But when you help your customer it is rewarding.   Sometimes it's just one person and they are thankful, sometimes you are helping a rocket company keep to their launch timeline, or military field teams solve problems that help the action in combat zones.  The wo

The cloud is a fancy name for someone else's computer.  That's really what it comes down to at the highest most basic level. There are several major "cloud" providers and different types of "clouds" for various purposes. For example, at my day job I am building an entire virtual computer infrastructure in one of the major cloud provider environments (Google, Amazon, Microsoft).   I'm building multiple virtual servers and routers and firewalls to duplicate our existing aging physical infrastructure while me transition to more modern architecture. You, if you are an entrepreneur or just want to have more computing power for your projects, can go to one of these providers and build apps, or servers on those systems directly. I mean, literally if you wanted to build yourself a video editing server, you could log into Microsoft Azure or Amazon Web Services and create an Extremely powerful server in about 30 minutes (including time to setup your init

Apparently the FCC lied to us.  (Shocked and appalled I am!) Okay, I've been doing some digging and the FCC didn't really lie, but commented in such a way as to let the press make exaggerated claims and twist words easily for their own media bonanza. I'm not sure how much is the media or political here but from what I can piece together the FCC did in fact see a HUGE spike in traffic.   Much of which was BOT related because people (myself included) often use bots to post comments to sites like the FCC.  Claiming that this is a DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service attack) is frankly bullshit.  Now, if they had said that due to excessive traffic the site is going down to a high number of automated postings, then it would be more accurate.  So was it a DDOS?  Not really.   DDOS implies intent to deny service.  What happened was SO many bots and users were hitting the site with automated and non-automated messages that the site couldn't handle the traffic.  This happ

How to use Google pbotos to organize and search your digital pictures. A few posts ago I made this  How-to-back-up-your-personal-photos-and.html Well to build on that post, you can use the Google photo assistant to help you organize and find photos. It uses facial recognition to identify people in your photos if it knows who they are.  It also tags things like water, ocean and uses any geotags on the image to help organize them for you. I've used this feature several times to find the photo I was looking for then go to my PC and search for the filename so I can use the full resolution original. You can also create collages, animations and movies/slide shows from your photos and videos. You can also create and sort photos into albums on google photos to organize your pictures. This is one of those where I will (eventually) get around to doing a video tutorial on.  I have a newborn baby so I'm barely able to get these blog posts done right now.  In fact, I'll

In short, NO.   Assume nothing you post is private unless it is to a Bank.  Then you can expect a reasonable level of security precautions. Okay, that's not fair to a lot of sites.  Most Major websites have taken reasonable and many exceptional security precautions to safe guard your information. But understand, once you post something, it is OUT THERE.  FOREVER, or until we get hit by a planet wide EMP. Anything that existed on the internet probably still exists, somewhere on some server.  Companies take lots of precautions to safeguard your information, but comparing the internet to the wild west isn't really bad except that the bad guys are GLOBAL and can attack you from anywhere in the world.  So, if you aren't comfortable with something you post eventually becoming public knowledge, don't post it online.  Everything is hackable one way or another. The biggest weakness isn't the tech, it's people.  When I make posts on my FB, IG, Linked in, e

If you own one of these devices listed below you need to reboot and do a hard reset of your router. Remember when I mentioned that the FBI issued a warning about Russian hackers targeting home devices.  Here it is.  There are about 500,000 of these which have been infected and need to be cleaned.   Resetting to factory default settings is the ONLY way to be sure you have Cleaned and Removed the infection.  See manufacturer website for details!  New analysis suggests MANY more manufacturers have been affected.  My own router is not yet on the list but I'm going  to do a factory reset and change all the settings.  Sigh.  Better safe  than hacked.  List as of 6/11/2018 2:20pm ASUS DEVICES: RT-AC66U (new) RT-N10 (new) RT-N10E (new) RT-N10U (new) RT-N56U (new) RT-N66U (new) D-LINK DEVICES: DES-1210-08P (new) DIR-300 (new) DIR-300A (new) DSR-250N (new) DSR-500N (new) DSR-1000 (new) DSR-1000N (new) HUAWEI DEVICES: HG8245 (new) LINKSYS DEVICES: E1200 E2500 E3000 (

I'm warning you this is a stream of consciousness post.  You have been warned. I.T. has evolved.  We are long past the days of dial-up modems, AOL, and "you've got mail." Email is a regular form of communication.  Chats and text messages are faster more immediate means of communicating via text.  Phones are no longer phones they are pocket computers and cameras which also act as phones.   The world is becoming more connected everyday.    Refrigerators, Ovens, air conditioners, light bulbs, ceiling fans, door locks, cars, are all being connected to the internet.   Privacy feels like a thing of the past.  None of this matters to your children.    For them, all of this is normal.  All the tech in the world doesn't matter to them.   They need Love.   They need you.  MAKE TIME, EVERY DAY to give them your undivided attention for at least 30 minutes.   EVERY! SINGLE! DAY! Sometimes it's taking th

Honestly, for a lot of people, you probably don't need a traditional desktop anymore or even a laptop. Tablets can handle most of the workload of traditional computers and with the rise of cloud services and cloud based apps, you don't even need the power of a traditional computer for things like video editing.   Truly though, it depends on what you do day to day.   The reality is that smart phones are in fact computers. They have more power, connectivity and capability than a room full of computers I learned to program on 30 years ago.  Think Commodore 64. I know people who run $100,000 businesses from their phones. Do you need a computer?  No.  You really don't.   You can do basically everything from a mobile device now.  Computers are still easier (in my humble opinion) for certain things but I do use my phone more and more and am considering a much more powerful phone for my next purchase.  Being a system admin I still need the power of a workstation for

IT SECURITY, is an ever expanding and rapidly growing field.  As cyber threats increase on a daily basis, information security professionals are becoming more valued and necessary across all businesses.  What do IT security professionals do? Many things, but really we are always trying to balance these three things: Availability, Integrity, and Confidentiality.  Think of each of these as points on a triangle.  You try to keep your data accessible, to the people who need access to it, but on one else.  You also try to make sure no one else manipulates it incorrectly or downloads it who shouldn't have access to it.  Mostly we try to take steps to keep bad people and malicious software out of our systems.  We build and work with network teams to isolate network traffic in order to minimize exposure and mitigate risk.  We create firewalls to segment, filter, and detect malicious intent. We monitor the inflow and outflow of data in our environments. We test our environ

Assume all goes as scheduled by the time this posts I will be the father of two children. I'm taking a break from tech for today because I'm short on time, resources, preparedness and sleep. Being the father of one autistic child and father to a very pregnant wife who is having an extremely rough pregnancy has been hard! I'm worn out.   I know our house isn't ready for two kids, but it isn't the complete disaster it was before my wife's mom intervened and helped us reclaim the kitchen, part of our bedroom and part of my sons room. One of the hardest things for me to learn over the years has been to learn when and how to ask for help.   It's not easy.  I like to be self sufficient.  I like doing things myself. I like fixing things myself. I can't do everything. I'm not an expert in everything.  I don't have the time to do everything. Even now while I type this post, anxiety is telling me I should be cleaning kitchen, doing laund

We have all been through this scenario (or similar one) where you are using your phone for several months or several years and then it just slips out of your hand and despite the nice case you bought, the screen shatters and you need to get it replaced.  Now people like ME, remind you CONSTANTLY to BACKUP YOUR DATA.  So before you take it into the store for repair you need to backup your phone.   A lot of stores will charge you now to backup and restore your data. But you don't need them.  As long as the phone powers on and is recognized by your computer, YOU can backup your own data. If you screen is shattered really badly and you could risk cutting yourself or swiping your finger across would pull small glass pieces out, then perhaps a temporary layer of saran wrap to hold it together until you get it fixed. Now, backing up your phone. iOS (iPhone any version.) Connect it to your computer, go into iTunes and select backup.  Android: This gets more complicated as

The IRS scammers are getting bolder.  They are leaving voicemail on people's phones.  I got one a couple days ago.  I wanted to call back and waste their time, but I don't have the time myself.  I may subscribe to the service that does it with a bot. But please know, the IRS will NEVER call you! They only send written notices! The only time they will initiate a call is if you have already called them and they are calling you for an appointment you made with them previously. Anyone who calls you claiming to be from the IRS is lying! If you have the inclanation mess with them.  Keep them on the phone until they are cussing and screaming at you.  That is 100% proof they are not IRS agents.  IRS representatives will not threaten or curse or demean you. On the rare occasion I manage to talk to a scammer I keep them on the phone and make up things as I go to piss them off.  One day I'll catch it on vidov for purely entertaining purposes.  Right now I have a sick kid a

This is the first follow up to this post Getting into IT. .  You want to get into IT support because it is a great field with lots of career options and good pay? Okay, I'll help you. What does IT support do? Mostly, reset passwords.  (No I'm not being facetious!) We spend a lot of time resetting passwords, fixing weird problems with user accounts or user profiles.  Adjusting permissions.  Or just letting users know that they need to update to a newer version because they have hit a bug. You will also need to be empathetic when they cry because they didn't have backups and lost their photos. (Been there, done that, but I had backups for most so I lost very little.) You need to understand the basics of what a computer is how the different components connect and the differences between hardware, operating system, and software as you may be troubleshooting in all of these areas.  You also need to be willing and able to use google and bing all the time.   We are i

Today we take a little time to remember those who are no longer with us. We honor those we lost in service to our country. To those who served in our armed forces and those who still serve, THANK YOU!

Not really cash back, but money back.  There are a myriad of sites out there to get you cash or usually points to exchange for cash back on purchases. I'm going to list a handful that I have used and come to trust over the years. Ebates - earn rebates for online purchases. Bing Rewards (microsoft) - Numerous ways to earn rewards. Swagbucks - can shop and earn through their site, print coupons, and earn from watching ads. Befrugal - Cash back, online coupons Ibotta (app)  - coupons and cash back via gift cards, codes, or paypal. receipt hog (app) -submit paper receipt photos to earn points towards gift cards or paypal deposit. You used to be able to stack multiple sites on the same purchase however the web devs have caught on and now only 1 cookie at a time works, so find the site that offers the highest rebate on the purchase.   I once got $98 back on an $800 purchase from Dell through Ebates.  Also, a bit of advice, only use these if you were planning on making a pu

Here we take a high level overview of windows parental controls. This is a follow up post to : Are your children safe on the internet? On Windows 10 and newer you will create a microsoft account for your child which also creates an email address for them.   You can then use this one account across any windows devices like PC's, tablets, Xbox, or windows mobile (are those still around?).  So for your children you will need to go into each of the above highlighted in yellow. Here you can see what your child has been doing on the activity screen, what they search, where they browse, what they play and how much screen time they have. Now the content Screen.   THIS IS CRUCIAL.   Microsoft and others work really hard to create age appropriate content and created rating systems and tools to help us limit children to age/developmental appropriate content.  The features on this page (2 images) are rich and can be explored in detail but I would always make sure to enable

So there are many ways into information technology but the primary paths are Security. Support. Development. Each have their own characteristics. At a very high level here are the considerations you want to take into account when looking at potential career paths.   This is basically me outlining the next few days of posts. Security:  - You are trying to balance availability, integrity and confidentiality.    You need to think about always providing least amount of access to a user or group of users to be able to do their job.     Ensure that data is not stolen or manipulated.    Make sure data is available for use when needed by the users who need it. Support:  Make sure things keep working or fix them when they break.    System administration - build and maintain servers that support business applications or processes.    System engineering - Designing infrastructure and hardware/software requirements for sys admins.    Front line support role - help desk or desktop

Probably, but you must be AWARE. If you are paying for something online and it says anything OTHER than "HTTPS://"  It isn't SAFE to enter your credit card information. Any trustworthy site should have https://. I recently came across a group of entrepreneurs who were in the process of starting online businesses. One of them asked for volunteers to test their payment page with the reward being their course for an extremely low cost price. So I thought I would check it out since I love to learn.  I went to the page, and was looking around and as I was pulling out my card to type in the information I paused because something wasn't right.  I noticed it did not say HTTPS  yet was asking for a credit card . (I look for those things AUTOMATICALLY.  I don't even have to think.)    I then looked at the certificate of the page and the certificate for the site did not match. On modern browsers you can view site certificates with a single or two clicks of a mous

So slightly off topic post here. But why am I just doing a text blog? BLOG John, really, How 2005 of me.   I know I know. What I am doing is getting into the habit of doing this daily.   It is one of the things I teach people as a life coach.  Small changes make big impacts.   Make one little change at a time until it becomes a habit.  Practice what I preach is the big reason. I know a lot about technology and like helping people.  Daily is probably more often than I have time for but I don't like to half ass things. Anyway, once I changed my first habit then make another small change, like obnoxious daily selfies in instagram.  (Yes really.) And another change, like daily push ups. And another, walking daily. and another, tracking my calories in vs calories out. Pretty soon, after 5 or 6 months or a year or two, you have completely change your life by building better habits. This is another step in my journey towards my next phase of life.  Thank you for sharin

Well, in my last post we talk about the IOT (Internet of Things). Now we are going to briefly talk about devices designed to help you daily. Smart homes are houses that integrate technology to help you do things.  (Like save money.) There are thermostats out there (I have a NEST) that actually save you money because they learn your habits and help you conserve electricity when you can. There are lightbulbs that you can control with your phone. Home security systems which can also monitor the climate in your house and help your thermostat be even more efficient.  Even turn your AC off if the smoke detectors turn on to help suppress the spread of fire. Ceiling fans which can be controlled by your thermostat to help circulate air so you use your AC even less and keep the temperature in your house more stable. Smart locks for your doors which can be remote controlled from your phone in case your friend forgot the spare key you gave them or forgot the code you assigned them.

The internet of things is really no different than the internet, but the number and types of devices we connect to the internet are expanding. We carry pocket computers (some call them cell phones) that keeps us connected to the global internet every hour of every day. We wear watches that count our steps or measure our heart rates. We have thermostats that monitor the weather and start heating or cooling depending on if you are home and learn your habits. There are refrigerators, ovens, even coffee makers that can be connected and controlled from the internet. Your phones door, or even your car can be unlocked from a device halfway around the world. We are literally surrounded and wearing technology that is internet connected 24x7.   Home surveillance, appliances, security, wearables, climate control, cars, airplanes, cameras, phones, gps devices, fitness trackers, computers, tablets, toys, game consoles, even light bulbs, alexa, siri, and more things that I am not thi

The internet is full of people, places and information.  Just like life, there are good people, bad people, good places, bad places, and things you don't want to see or know.    By and large the good tends to outnumber the bad, but navigating the internet safely can be tricky.  The bad people can shout louder and more savagely on the internet because they can hide behind a level of anonymity.  This is a perfect place for cyber bullies to hide and harass people especially young children and teenagers who are dealing with all the challenges of growing and learning about life.  I'll go much deeper into cyber bullying in future posts but suffice to say it is a big concern for anyone who has a social presence online, even adults.   Top things to be aware of when your kids are using an internet connected device (phone, tablet, game console, computer.) Where do they go online for entertainment? What are they watching online? What games are they playing? 

There is a lot of data being collected about you ALL the time.  When you use your phone. Where you shop. How you shop. When you shop.  What you buy, when and where.  This is tracked via numerous methods from your GPS in your phone to your credit card use, or paypal use or online cookies tracking what sites you view, your browser, your social media. Yes, we are already living in George Orwell's 1984 and Big Brother is everywhere.  It goes by various names:  Alexa, Siri, Watson, Microsoft, Equifax, Google, Cambridge Analytica, Amazon, and hundreds of others.    The thing is, most of this data collection is designed to SELL things to you that you already want .  Sometimes it makes suggestions and offers for things you need.   Some of this can even help improve improve our health.  I purchased a fitness tracker and paired it with My Fitness Pal (if you use this they had a data breach a month ago and you need to change your password).  I used it to