Nice Kind Of Mello

Today has been a lot like yesterday in many ways. I did a little bit of work and help one of the guys on my team managed to get his tuition reimbursement set back up. Originally they had denied it because they said that the school he was going to was for a certification instead of a degree. Once we got this straightened out everything was set for him to get his $1000 reimbursement for the class that he had recently taken and passed.

This is a really good thing because I was worried that I would have to figure out a way to take the money out of that department budget to reimburse him. More than likely this would not have happened because even I was not able to get reimbursed for the $4000 I spent on classes this year.

Passwords

Passwords oh passwords they are such a tricky pain in the ass, necessary evil thing. They are one of those technology things that you want to be as complex as possible, but at the same time, not so complex that you cannot remember what they were. I tell you what, no matter how easy or complex I make my passwords it's still nearly impossible to remember them all.

It seems like every website that you go to either wants you to have a password or to use something else as your password like sharing your Facebook login or related to get you in the door and make life easier with one less password to remember that way.

The problem with this is that although it does in fact make it much easier and it is one last password for you to remember should something happen in your Facebook or other password that you have been sharing throughout websites gets compromised then you are hosed in many ways.

Most people assume "if they get into Facebook how do they know I have an account with Chase Visa?" Honestly that is just the tip of the iceberg and they will find out many more things and whether or not you have a visa card with a certain corporation.

They can easily tell by many things across the web or your blog or whatever what your children's names are, your friends names, and all things related and start using those items to do a full on attack on your passwords to determine exactly what the rest of them are.

In the case of sharing one password from something like Facebook for example this get much worse. Let's say you mentioned in some posts about how you like to go to a particular store or something. More than likely that website has a login as well which means that you may have used the same one or a very similar password. Again this is just the tip of the iceberg and not really the entire point of this particular paragraph.

My point is I decided to go the route of using another password manager that goes by the name of 'Last Pass'. They are well-known for their encryption and the way that they handle passwords and related. It is very secure, even more-so on the side of 'crazy mad scientist secure'. They have had tests run on some of the more simplified passwords that they have been coded and said a key for that were not able to be compromised.

They had one password for example that had a brute force attack run on it 24 hours a day seven days a week for well over two years. Even then the software was unable to figure out the password. This is basically unheard of with the tools out there to make brute force attacks much easier.

Anyway, that is a new toy that I will be setting up and most likely paying for their premium service and getting Cicely set up on it as well because she has a difficult time remembering all of her passwords as well. Heck I don't know anyone that doesn't. But back to Last Pass; the free service does a ton already and the premium only adds a few small features. All that aside, the way I look at it is that I am paying for them to continue their awesome work. Not to mention, it's only $1 a month, $12 a year to support them. Such a small price to pay for this kind of security with passwords.

So if you or anyone you know is in the market for something like this Last Pass would be my #1 suggestion. If you don't believe me I would encourage you to go out and look on YouTube and find reviews on it. There was one done by a security guru that I listened to today. The review was just over an hour long and filled with nothing but features and awesomeness regarding the software and related encryption used.

It's Back

So the movie that goes by the name of "The Interview", is now going to be back in theaters. Sony entertainment posted today that they will be moving forward and not shelving the movie. Instead they will start playing it on Christmas day as the official opening day. I am curious to see how this goes over and whether or not people actually go and see it or if they will avoid it and not take the risk of something happening at the theater.

Personally, I think that everyone will be okay but you never know with all of the crazy people out there. Someone may do something at a theater just to prove a point and start some shxt if for no other reason then to try and make it look like it was North Korea related.

The other crazy thing is that president Obama said in a press conference that he will do "whatever it takes as far as corrective action to make this right". Of course this is still assuming that they were in fact the ones that did everything. To me it seems like they just don't have the infrastructure or the knowledge to do it but you never know.

If they were in fact the ones that did all of the stuff to Sony the funny thing is that the entire internet in North Korea was shut down yesterday by a denial of service attack. I guess they are not very well structured in the first place which again leads me to wonder how they could have managed to do such a crazy attack on us unless they outsourced it.

I guess we will see in the coming days how this all turns out. My bet is that nothing will happen and the movie will be a flop just as it would have been had all of this not happened in the first place.

At the same time, it has me interested ever so slightly and although I doubt I would take the time or spend the money to go to the movies to see it, I will probably watch it when it comes out on Netflix, cable or another digital format.

Christmas Eve

Well tomorrow is already Christmas eve and that means we go over to dads house to have some traditional Croatian dinner. We will be having cabbage rolls as well as yummy desserts afterwords. I was planning on going over early to learn how to make the rolls Cicely and I have a bunch of running around to do and I don't think there is anyway we can get it all done and get over there by 9 AM.

Normally it would not bother me as much but because they are supposed to be moving to Alabama sometime during the start of 2015 I doubt I will get another chance to learn how to make them anytime in the near future. I can always try to make them on my own but the problem is there are little tricks that you learn and otherwise would not know if someone that has been making them for years did not show you.

Heck we still need to go out and buy Zoe some of her Christmas presents. She will be getting so much stuff from everyone else that I don't think it will be too big of a deal if we don't get her much but she moved some things to open here from Santa. I still need to wrap the presents for Cicely as well as get the gifts for my nephews before dinner tomorrow night. I am sure that Cicely is in the same boat as I am and needs to get gifts for her brother, sisters and her parents.

Done

Yeah with that I think that is enough for today's entry. I may go for a bicycle ride on the trainer this evening but I am giving it a little bit of a rest first. The workout I did yesterday kicked my ass pretty good. It was only an hour long but intense. Felt awesome afterwards though.

With all of the food and related that will be coming towards my face this holiday season I need to burn as many calories as possible. The last thing I want to do though is hurt myself and then be stuck on the couch.

We were hoping for a white Christmas but from the looks of it, it's not going to be anything of the sort. The weather guessers were trying to get everyone excited by forecasting the lie that there was a good chance of snow coming our way. I think they were just being their usual selves and not knowing what exactly was going to happen.

Honestly it's okay with me because I don't feel like dealing with shoveling or snow-blowing. It can snow as much as it wants to in the mountains, I am okay with that 100%, just not down here. Of course we have not had a really big, deep snowfall in a while so we are due.

With that take it easy and have a good Christmas eve and rolling into the Christmas Day holiday. Watch out for all of the nuts the day after Christmas as well both trying out the new stuff as well as trying to return or exchange stuff.

Photo: This is how a lot of the time has gone by the past couple days. Nothing more than clicks and clocks of a keyboard taking me places around the globe through a series of tubes.