I Won The Lottery!

Chicago Marathon LogoNo, I didn’t win the kind of lottery that would let me quit my job. I did, however, get selected for one of the 33,000 public lottery slots in the Chicago Marathon! Come Sunday October 12th, I’ll be running my ass off in an attempt to prove to myself that spontaneity, insanity and months upon months of physical training can be fun and painful! That reminds me, I’d better put in for a vacation day on October 13th. I think I’ll have earned a day of rest by then.

In the meantime, I have 180 days to kick my training into high gear and get ready for the most physically challenging event I’ve ever undertaken.

Heartbleed Bug

heartbleedHoly shit! So every day, you use websites encrypted using OpenSSL to order things online, do your taxes, pay your bills, etc… Well for the past 2 years, your information has been susceptible hackers by means of a vulnerability known as “The Heartbleed Bug.” The news just broke yesterday. I didn’t know anything about it until I received an email from my bank stating:

[We are] aware of the “Heartbleed” bug. We are evaluating the situation and are prepared to execute any changes, if necessary, as quickly as possible. We are committed to protecting the security and integrity of your personal information and we will continue to update you if any further action is needed.

Now I found that a little disturbing. Enough so that I decided to dig a little and find out what this Heartbleed Bug was. This is what I found published yesterday on Time Magazine’s website:

Internet security experts are scrambling to assess the extent of the breach caused by a massive bug called Heartbleed in the OpenSSL technology that runs encryption for two-thirds of the web and went unnoticed for two years until last week

Naturally, as a person who runs his own websites, I was a little disturbed to say the least. Especially when I used this site to test whether or not my servers were susceptible to the attack. Low and behold, they were. Well my Linux-loving brethren were pretty snappy about putting out a fix. I patched my server and tested again to verify that it was, indeed, fixed. Not that my web servers are host to any potentially dangerous information, but it’s the principal.

So what should you do? Chances are, you haven’t been affected. It’s not the same as someone hacking into a server to steal information. It’s more like a hacker being able to peek in occasionally, and only see a tiny snapshot of what the server was processing at that exact same moment. However, it may be prudent to protect yourself. This article has some pretty sound advice on what to do.

 

Signs of Intelligence in New Jersey

Welcome-to-New-JerseyDon’t judge a state by several morons and television producers with no moral conscious whatsoever. There are signs of intelligence in New Jersey, and remarkably enough they’re in the state legislature. Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll makes a brilliant speech regarding the lack of mental prowess required to ban “the wrong size metal box.”

This is definitely worth 6 minutes of your time to watch. I only wish more politicians actually took the time to think things through as well as this man. Thanks to my buddy Joel for sending this my way.

Ransomware Alert

MALWARE ALERT – CryptoLocker and CryptoDefense

So this is the new scam, and it’s pretty disturbing. Unless your PC is devoid of significant data or you have a spare $500 or $1000 lying around that you don’t mind parting with, you may want to give this one a read through. There is a new string of malware being released into the wild that will encrypt your data files on your computer, and then extort money from you in order decrypt them. Have a read through this newsletter that was sent to me from CyberHeist News. In particular, you’ll want to pay attention to this:

It appears that this infection initially was installed through programs that pretend to be flash updates or video players required to view an online video, and then moved on to a variety of different phishing attacks that all show an email with a zip file and ask to “open the attached document” with is supposed to have been “scanned and sent to you”.

Continue reading

ESO – Initial Impressions

Elder Scrolls Online LogoEight years ago, when I first played Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I was awestruck with the sheer size and scale of the game. One of my first thoughts was, “They need to make this a multi-player game!” I’ve been anxiously awaiting the release of Elder Scrolls Online since before it was ever announced. Well here we are 8 years later, and my wish to see this game in a multi-player format has finally been granted. Early access began this past Sunday for those who pre-purchased the game.

As an added bonus, my wife Jenn and our oldest son David were equally excited about the game launch, along with several friends and guild-mates from back in the Warcraft days. Jenn and I even set our alarms for early Sunday morning so that we could get on as soon as the game opened up and reserve our character names.

Now I had played in several of the beta test events, and I already had a taste of what I could expect from the game. Truthfully, I was a little Continue reading

ESO – Great Place to Farm

Looking for Rough Maple, Iron Ore and Raw Jute? Well here’s the place you want to be.

I was able to gather about 500x Iron Ore, 500x Raw Jute and 300x Rough Maple in about an hour last night just running in circles.

The circuit took roughly 45 – 60 seconds, and by the time I made my way back around, the gathering nodes were respawning already. There was a little competition last night, but not enough to make it discouraging. Now as word spreads, this may change. I’m fairly certain that this area is going to see a nerf to either the amount of nodes or the respawn rate fairly soon. Get it while you can!

The area I’m referring to is in a circle surrounding the Wayshrine in the south east corner of Bal Foyen, illustrated below:

Bal Foyen Farm Circuit