Reinke Faces Life

http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=341-2178

http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19&sku=A0158183

Buy a new hard drive for the XPS. ($200)

Preserve the old one as is.

Install the new one.

And restore from scratch using the recovery and distribution media..

If I missed anything, then I have the old one easily accessible to copy from or fall back to.

After everything works, I’ll take an image backup.

This will serve for the next time.

At some point in time, I’ll nuke the extra drive and use it for Linux effort.

Comments?

http://duffill.blogs.com/beyond_crayons/2007/
02/mindomo_raises_.html

http://tinyurl.com/33ovfs

THe “Beyond Crayons” blog has pointed out this out.

*** begin quote ***

Mindomo raises the bar for mind mapping software

Mindomo is a Web-based mind mapping software tool that runs in your browser, with the maps being stored on their server. But what distinguishes Mindomo in this growing field is genuine desktop-quality functionality. Pretty much everything you need from basic desktop software is there – rich formatting, curved lines, images and symbols, relationships, notes fields, task data, drag and drop editing, Web hyperlinks, and import from Mindjet MindManager.

*** end quote ***

I always liked mind mapping as a pair-of-dimes (paradigm) for communicating ideas. It seems better than power point for “mapping” a problem space. I’ve used it when consulting to scope engagements. I think it made me look smarter than I really was because when I’d “build” my map in real time, it would engage the audience like no powerpoint presentation ever did for me. It was tricky when they’d take it in a different path than I planned. The pitches always “sold” so I think it’s a great tool.

I’m being forced to consider a “bare metal” restore (i.e., wipe everything clean and start over).

And, in thinking about it, perhaps I should buy a new hard drive for luggable and swap it in for my bare metal restore. That’s one way to ensure that I can always fall back should a critical file be missed. After a good restore, (an how does one ever know that you did it all), I could probably get one of those external usb disk drive cases to save the value of the drive.

Argh!

Looks like I don’t have a working copy of Front Page installed anywhere?

Moved YAG to “my” WSP. In doing that, my “pretty” site was reduced to content. Argh! I think that was Front page based. Argh!

Sunday – COACHING

Monday – CONSULTING

Tuesday – CODING

Wednesday – INVENTING

Thursday – LEARNING

Friday – TEACHING

Saturday – WRITING

“seeing everything thru Joe and Harry’s window”

To which, I say YUDATL!

Now you say what the heck is YUDATL?

See I like tinyurl. Like many other url economizers, it takes long urls and smashes them down to size.

So

https://reinkefj.wordpress.com/2006/06/08/turkey-the-joseph-luft-and-harry-ingham-window-aka-the-johari-window/

has a length of 110 characters and resulted in the following TinyURL which has a length of 25 characters:

http://tinyurl.com/yudatl

Hence YUDATL.

I have a text file on my machine of tiny links. You’d be surprised at how useful this is.

So don’t give people long links. Or, when you give it over the phone, give the tiny link. It’s a lot less error prone.

You can also make a TinyUrl out of a mailto:crazyguy@theuniverse.org and that resultant short link will trigger an email.

Neat.

Worked so well for the Soviet Union? Why shouldn’t I have one?

I notified 7 of my contacts that they have been “pounded”. I don’t think they could know that they had been “pounded” by any other method than by someone telling them. (The commercial “even you best friends won’t tell you” comes to mind. Yeah, I know, too much teevee!)

So why don’t you check your LinkedIn contacts and see if any are pounded. (Maybe I’ve been pounded and I don’t know it?) It seems like a cheap way to add value to your networking relationships.

Here’s what I sent:

Your profile has been sent to the “dog pound” by LinkedIn. I think you need to take some action on that, but I don’t know what to tell you.

Is Your Profile Ending Up In The Linkedin Dog Pound?
Posted by: “Vincent Wright”
Tue Nov 7, 2006 10:01 pm (PST)

Because of the way the symbol for it is pronounced, I think of the “#” Section of Linkedin’s Remove Connections as “The Dog Pound” . (Some may think this a good name for certain types of profiles. :-))

In case you’re not familiar with the “#” Section on Linkedin, it’s located at the end of the alphabetized list of your contacts at: http://www.linkedin.com/connections?displayBreakConnections

You and I cannot place any contacts in this area. Profiles are assigned there by Linkedin’s contact algorithm based on certain types of elements
being present in the name field – I believe.

Food For Thought: Some people may use this as a way to clean up “weak” connections en masse. If this happens, your profile may unintentionally be removed even by a connection who may know you pretty well as a “strong” connection.

—
Thanks!
Vincent Wright
Chief Encouragement Officer

Feel free to steal!

*** begin quote ***

Yahoo! Groups Mail Delivery Issues, January 25

Due to a database-related issue earlier today, we are experiencing a Groups email backlog. Delivery of messages posted between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. (Pacific time) today, January 25, may be delayed several hours.

Messages posted now are being processed through our backup mail servers, so they will be delivered immediately. While our primary servers catch up, Groups users may see messages that were posted earlier today delivered out of order.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause you and your group members.

The Yahoo! Groups Team

*** end quote ***

At least they communicate.

I’m frustrated with the lack of the “killer application” comprehensive Contact Management.

Plaxo has a fragment of it (The great external pariticpation). LinkedIn has a fragment of it (The Bio and Connection). Corex Cardscan has a fragment of it (The rolodex metaphor). Outlook has a fragment of it (Speaks to Plaxo and Corex). Act has a fragment of it (the Sales Funnel). But no one has “it” (i.e., Like, in Lord of the Rings, One Ring to control them all).

I’ve even thought about writing my own app using MySQL. But, that’s a daunting task. Several have tried in Fat Client or Web-based, but they didn’t capture “it”. So I wonder if “it” is capture-able.

So does anyone else share my frustration? Sometimes I think I’d be better off with paper and pencil!

Fustratedly,
Fjohn

Many people advocate using a gmail account to protect against spam.

In my normal blundering way, I’m using two gmails to protect my ISP account from spam, and giving me a fully authenticated email address using gmail’s plus sign feature.

So let me see if I can explain how to duplicate the Yahoo AddressGuard. You can create and manage disposable email addresses to defend your primary address against spam. In Yahoo’s offering, they assign you a base name, unrelated to your real email name. Then Yahoo allows you to create suffixes that are just a string of characters. A real email address is created by base name, a minus sign, a suffix, and @yahoo.com. The suffix gets appended to the base separated by a a minus sign. (Great minds think … differently!) So if your real name is ABCDEF and your base name is ZXCVBN, then you can create, for example, ZXCVBN-EBAY. Then the address ZXCVBN-EBAY@yahoo.com will forward to ABCDEF@yahoo.com and you can even send from ZXCVBN-EBAY! Should your ZXCVBN-EBAY get spammed, then you can turn it off! They are easy to create, but there is no reporting or database with it. AND, it ain’t free!!!

So I sought to recreate that capability with GMail.

To refresh your memory, GMAIL (to their credit) has innovated by adding the capability to allow a plus sign in the email address. So if your gmail email address is abcdef @ gmail dot com, then you can put anything you want after a plus sign. So if email comes addressed as abcdef + fedcba @ gmail dot com will get delivered to your email account and you can test on that stuff after the plus sign.

Web sites may choke on the plus sign. (Gripe at them and don’t use their site till they fix it!)

I wanted to keep the base name concept. And, you want to control & database those suffixes. So here’s my concept.

I have an ISP account I want to protect called NORMAL@isp.com. So I created a “front door” account called FRONT@gmail.com and a “back door” account called WEIRD@gmail.com.

To test it all out I set it up so that FRONT forwards to WEIRD and WEIRD forwards to NORMAL. When it all works, I break that forwarding.

So far no big deal, just moving a lot of messages around. Except that FRONT does get vacuumed for spam by Google.

Now lets start using suffixes.

I created a table of suffixes and record where I use it. I then create a filter in the FRONT gmail that forwards FRONT+suffix to WEIRD+suffix. Then over on WEIRD, I create a filter that forwards WEIRD+suffix to NORMAL.

NOW:

* NORMAL only gets authentic pre-approved email.

* WEIRD is the protected hidden yahoo BASENAME equivalent.

* FRONT messages without a suffix get stopped there.

* FRONT and WEIRD get Google’s vacuuming for SPAM.

* If WEIRD is guessed by an alpha spammer, doesn’t move to NORMAL without a filter.

* Should any suffix be compromised, it can be stopped quickly by deleting the equivalent WEIRD filter.

* A web site, or intruder, who drops the suffix, to spam you, doesn’t reach NORMAL.

I think you need WEIRD, the second hidden BASENAME equivalent, so that you can change FRONT from time to time as needed. You could also have multiple “front doors” (i.e., FRONT1; FRONT2; etc.) feeding one WEIRD.

This a free solution equivalent to Yahoo’s address guard. It’s a great spam preventive.

For example, I now give each use of my gmail address a unique unguessable random code. (You expected different from a fellow who uses long strange email addresses?) Any email that arrives without a “plus code” is suspected of being spam. Should I get spam, I can pinpoint where the breakdown occurred.

Your comments, please?

Network World’s Identity Management Newsletter, 12/11/06
Secret questions are not foolproof
By Dave Kearns

***Begin Quote***

The problem, as many have pointed out, is that this so-called secret information is readily discoverable by anyone who wants to dig a bit. As security maven Bruce Schneier said in “The Curse of the Secret Question” : “I’ll bet the name of my family’s first pet is in some database somewhere.” Bruce’s suggestion? “My usual technique is to type a completely random answer – I madly slap at my keyboard for a few seconds – and then forget about it. This ensures that some attacker can’t bypass my password and try to guess the answer to my secret question, but is pretty unpleasant if I forget my password.” Well that actually defeats the one good purpose of the secret password as well as blocking the bad uses – an example of tossing out the baby with the bathwater. I’ve got a better suggestion.

***End Quote***

May I suggest our old friend ROBOFORM’s random string generator?

Yup, for each site that needs my Mom’s maiden name, they can have a unique one. F53FA849645C26 for Yahoo, EFA897CABA45D4 for Google, and DAD999B5244BA2 for AOL.

And, if they want my favorite pet’s name, it’s in turn C9AF, 7B2B, or 222459.

See spammers can go ahead and guess all they want!

And, my first car was a BAD753!

Some website’s registration edits don’t support the gmail plus sign option.

We have to insist that they do or not use their sites.

To refresh your memory, GMAIL (to their credit) has innovated by adding the capability to allow a plus sign in the email address. So if your gmail email address is abcdef @ gmail dot com, then you can put anything you want after a plus sign. So if email comes addressed as abcdef + fedcba @ gmail dot com will get delivered to your email account and you can test on that stuff after the plus sign.

It’s a great spam preventive.

For example, I give each use of my gmail address a unique unguessable random code. (You expected different from a fellow who uses long strange email addresses?) Any email that arrives without a “plus code” is suspected of being spam. Should I get spam, I can pinpoint where the breakdown occurred.

So, if a website would will NOT accept a plus code, I don’t use it.

(Note correcting an instance where the fingers led a life of their own.)

FROM THE LINKEDIN INNOVATORS

with a great tip on a pdf book!

Reintroduction and “The Virtual Handshake”
Posted by: “John-Patrick Skaar”
Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:47 pm (PST)

I think it is time to reintroduce myself again to my fellow Innovator’s. Since I haven’t been too active lately I see this as the best way to make
sure that you all know that I am still around.

I am John-Patrick Skaar, resident in Oslo, Norway. I have a small family and work as BD for IT security vendors (mainly Israeli and American) and do have several other projects hanging around that keep me busy.

I am a strong believer in networking, and arrange several “LinkedIn and virtual networking” workshops for sales organizations and recruiters. I
believe that nothing comes into a closed hand, and in order to take, you have to give.

Anyways, I just found out that the book “The Virtual Handshake” is available as a free download from http://www.thevirtualhandshake.com/home.html

I am open to expand my already very strong network, and mainly within the Nordic region, within the IT security industry or relevant recruiters.
Others are also welcome, but please use a non standard invitation.

My email address is <To prevent spam, get it from the group.>

Have a GREAT day around the world!

//patrick

Senior Business Developer – Nordic region

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpskaar

__

§ “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”
[Alan Kay <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay> ’71] §

An interesting thing happened today. I was doing my birthday greetings. And, one of my fellow alums record was basically null. It was missing an email address. That’s plaxo’s key. All other fields had NA in them. There may be as many as four other records in the same shape.

Now, the counter party can do what ever they want to their data. But not to mine. I know that there was contact information in those fields that I input. Plaxo has no right to nuke that data.

I usually keep a copy of the source record (i.e., web page, email. or whatever initiated or updated my interest). That was gone to.

LinkedIn does something similar when it “silently” disconnects a LinkedIn contact. Presumably that is at the counterparty’s request, but how do you know it’s not an error by some clerk.

This rattles my confidence in other people controlling my data or access to it. When I create a record, I don’t want it changed. Perhaps, it’s time for me to get out my quill pen and put everything in long hand.

At the very least, maybe my old system of text files wasn’t so bad.

Neither of these two services Plaxo or LinkedIn, nor Corex Cardscan, nor Outlook itself ages the contacts so I’m not happy with any of the technology solutions.

In today’s insecure computing environment, one needs personal pc protection. I’ve always had a router between me and the inet. Even when my isp (internet service provider) said I couldn’t. (Yeah right!) I’ve never had any problems with virus infections or bots that I know of. Somewhere in my travels I picked up Zone Alarm, (the free version), and it’s has served well. There are some other free alternatives as well for you to consider:

Sygate http://soho.sygate.com

Agnitum http://www.agnitum.com

and, of course,

ZoneAlarm http://www.zonealarm.com

FWIW YMMV and FAWWYPFI!

http://www.pcmech.com/newsletter/viewtip.php?tipid=748

***Begin Quote***

One for personal/business contacts, and the other for anything that requires registration or sign-up (forums, subscriber content, etc). This way, if your second account gets buried with spam, various advertisements, or nag emails, your personal account should be relatively untouched.

***End Quote***

Well, if you follow my previous tip, then you can use one gmail account and GUARANTEE no spam.

To refresh your memory, gmail with the plus sign gives you fully protected email. Create your gmail account and then a list of random codes. For each use of the email, assign one of your codes after the plus sign. Then, create that label and filter in GMail. Then, the only thing that will get into that FILTERED category will be valid email. Everything else can be nuked!

Neat!

GMAIL has an interesting plus feature. If you think of email address syntax as user@provider.xxx, then you can put anything you want after a plus sign. So it’s user+string@gmail.com. You can use that feature to protect yourself from phishing attacks.

For example, create a random string for your “Mammoth Big Bank” bank (e.g., D3BCA3846CB5). Assume your email id is user@gmail.com. Then you tell your bank that your email address is user+D3BCA3846CB5@gmail.com! Anything purportedly coming from Mammoth Big Bank has to come with your secret code or you’ll ignore it. You can trash anything coming from Mammoth Big Bank that does NOT have your secret code.

If you’re like me and have lots of dedicated email address, then you can actually set a GMAIL label and filter to discard email that doesn’t authenticate with the secret code.

It’s simple and easy to protect against phishing.

Just don’t forget the D3BCA3846CB5! ;-)

Argh! I’m mad at myself. When attending an event with a camera, I should have had a strategy. Photo everyone. Not only do you not get a second chance, but it could have been a hoot. Went to a “dance” last night, but didn’t exploit the opportunities to learn, link, and innovate. Argh!

I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.

May I suggest a most simple work around?

If you have a big glump to transfer and it even MIGHT be private … …

(i.e., if you are NOT absolutely sure it’s public info. AND bear in mind, from my time on Wall Street, I know that interest in public info by a registered rep is in and of itself sensitive. So you may always want to err on the side of caution!)

… … then encrypt it.

Now before everyone runs for the silver bullets and garlic, it’s almost trivial.

Get any of the free zip utilities. Take your file and zip it up with the password option. (Make the password easy live NEVADA, DOPEY, or CONSTELLATION. Just not “password”!) And, upload your encrypted and compressed file.

(If you make it an executable, it’s easier the receiver.)

The receiver takes the file download and is challenged for the password.

That allows you to use a free utility service for private information. If you are really paranoid, encrypt it twice with different packages and different passwords.

imho

November 13, 2006
Fortune Magazine
Page 51

Blogger in Chief
Jonathan Schwartz, 41
CEO Sum Microsystems

>10% of Sun employees blog … including general counsel

So there’s probably nothing illegal about blogging with some common sense.

>read what people thinking without walking around

Sounds like status reports.

> “Always worry about what people aren’t telling you”

Good advice.

> Ditch the desktop

A recommendation to be expected from the “Computer is the Network” company. And, what does one do when the net’s not there.

>Forget balance

True. For hunters, there’s no balance. For farmers, there’s balance, sequence, and order.

==

n.b.: There was no way to find this printed page on the net. Or at least I couldn’t find it. I would have thought that, if I went to “November 13, 2006 Fortune Page 51”.fortune.com, I’d have gotten it. Hmm?

[This poor person just wants to copy some stuff from one blog to another and has no copies other than what is on he blog]

>Copy over some posts from one blog to another

My observation is that you have all your “eggs” in the WordPress basket. No insult intended to WordPress I use them to … BUT …

… being a belt and suspenders kindda guy …

… and having “lost” more data than I’d care to admit over my career …

… two instances of which occurred at WordPress …

I’d suggest you need a backup.

WordPress now facilitates an XML output from your blog to local file.

Anally, OCD-like, I have:

(1) BLOGDESK client that I write almost all of my stuff on. It has a copy. If I don’t write it on BLOGDESK, then I still cutnpaste it to BLOGDESK and let it do the heavy lifting to my blog. SO BLOGDESK has a copy of EVERYTHING.

(2) FEEDBLITZ sends a daily summary copy (one message of all posts) to a dedicated email account where it is retained forever on my local desktop in Outlook and in that dedicated GMAIL account. SQUEET sends each individual post to that same account.

(3) I use RSSBANDIT which also makes a copy locally for a week.

(4) Often I use EDITPADPRO fro complex articles, that I can’t dash off in one sitting, those are stored locally in a BLOG directory forever.

Since I have been doing this, I haven’t lost a thing.

If you did this, you’d have more choices how to move stuff.

AND, you’d have a recovery strategy.

IMHO you’re taking an unnecessary risk.

Back in my younger days, I had a data drive that the corporate IT types were backing up for me. (Yeah, you see it coming!) So fat dumb and happy, I created content. Emails, white papers, spreadsheets. One day my hard disk died. NBD! Call pc support, they come slide a new one and press the big red easy button to restore it. Oooops, no data found. Turns out that NO ONE in the enterprise was backed up. I was just the first fool to find it. I lost several years worth of data. I was able to pull bits and pieces for all over but no comprehensive store existed. Not only that, but I didn’t know all that I had lost. To this day, I can still remember from time to time, tuff I have to recreate. (Luckily, I violated company policy and certain CYA things I cced to my home email. Now I do it as a matter of course. Encrypted of course.) I will NEVER make that mistake again!

So, no one needs to pay tuition for that particular lesson. You can learn from my mistake. (Trusting others to back up for you!) You must have a backup strategy that INCLUDES testing. How do you know that the data can be recovered. In this example, I can go to gmail and SEE my blog posts.

imho fwiw ymmv.

My alumni ezine used to be a giant pia. Each week it was a mad rush to do the stuff needed to pull it together. “Getting Things Done” says to focus on next actions. So, what I did was over several months, divide this big glump of work into parts. Small. Discrete. Little lumps. So for example, one task is to create the framework for the next week’s issue. It takes AT MOST fifteen minutes. So, now on Saturday night, while I am waiting for the Yahoo Group to accept my submission and say “Our you sure?”, instead of playing a game of Solitair, or alternatively pounding on the refresh button, I create the next week’s framework. Obvious you say? I’ve been doing this for 8 years and it just never occurred to me to get that much of a head start on the next week’s work. So, I have carved this particular turkey into lots of parts. I use Google Calendar to chastise me when I fall behind. But, all in all, it’s been working well. An hour a night, has meant no crazy Friday / Saturday wee hours, making mistakes, trying to get it done.

Lesson Learned: Kissing small frogs is less disgusting than big ones.

http://kentblumberg.typepad.com/kent_blumberg
/2006/11/lifelong_learni.html

http://tinyurl.com/y2k6ro

Kent Blumberg’s blog about “Leadership, strategy, and performance” has a great find.

It points to Wayne Hurlbert’s blog “Blog Business World”

http://blogbusinessworld.blogspot.com/2006/10/
lifelong-learning-after-you-think-you.html

http://tinyurl.com/wko4x

***Begin Quote***

Legendary Hall of Fame baseball manager Earl Weaver once said, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

***End Quote***

Ah hah, now that I am that formerly small jet of water (x-spurt), I have to begin learning all over again.

Sigh.

Yes, Universe, I know, “green growing; brown dead”!

Dear XXXX, You may want to shop around. $9 per month is a lot of money. For example, 1and1 has better deals. I host Jasper Jottings with them http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=9113251 and, while I have a pro package for my consulting business, they offer a “beginner package” (that’s pretty impressive) for 3$/month. So, I’d urge you to shop around. 1and1 offers commercial grade facilities at amateur prices. Fjohn