Cosmic Echoes…by Rich Fleetwood

Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

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Yes…it’s another annual holiday today…

Which one?

It’s National TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY!

Celebrate…YAARRRR!!!

Rich

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First, read this…

I can see a couple of things here that concern me.

First, yes, it’s easy to see if a file has been accessed on a hard drive…IF it’s still in the original computer that was running the Operating System AND things such as resetting the computer’s clock wasn’t done.

I’m full aware of forensics software tools and their uses, as well as many variations of file recovery methods. I also have 24 years of computer experience, two computer science degrees, and A+ hardware certification.

Here’s the thing. Once a laptop hard drive is removed (or any drive for that matter), it’s so very easy to plug the drive into an external drive case (USB 2.0 for example), plug that data cable in, and simply make an IMAGE file (.iso) of the entire drive, which is an EXACT bit for bit copy of the data on the drive, to another same sized or bigger hard drive.

Then, return the stolen drive to the original computer, and no one is the wiser for what MIGHT have been done with, or to, the original stolen data in question.

In short, this story is NOT over, and all that data is STILL a valuable piece of personal information history that could still bite 26.5 million veterans in the proverbial buttocks.

The computer and drive were out in the wild for how many weeks? And how many hands did that system pass through? And there are NO fingerprints on the drive OR computer?

By the way, did the computer have any PHONE HOME software installed so that if it was online during it’s trip into the countryside, it could secretly call home base and give it’s current IP address so it could be tracked down immediately, by all the Alphabet Agencies neccessary?

Update ONE:

The Internet Security Zone has a story out this afternoon about this incident, with details on what the Feds may/might have done in their “checking” of the data. A nice little trip into the world of Computer Forensics

Update TWO:

Here is the OFFICIAL FBI Press Release regarding the fact that “They Found It”. Right….SOMEONE ELSE brought it TO THEM.

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After much prodding the past year or so, I was able to talk my wife Annie into actually starting her own blog. I’ve had a Wordpress blog set up for her since early last year, but she had never done anything with it, and nary a post was made.

Until this week, that is.

After watching my Google Adsense income take flight this spring, after doing some testing, retesting, and tweaking, I had a thought…and a very good one at that. I thought, wow…what a wonderful time for Annie to share HER wisdom with the world, and with that great Adsense tool, make some income for our family to continue thriving, based on her wonderful and caring perspective on life, from her point of view.

You see, Annie is disabled…and has been in a wheelchair for several years now, due to an injury received in a car accident in Alabama (where we lived before moving to Wyoming), nearly 14 years ago. Her injury came about when we were rear ended on a county highway overpass, at Exit 100 on Interstate 20 in Bucksville, Alabama, waiting to turn into a gas station. Her hip was injured, and diagnosis was not fully made until about five years later, by a very good bone doctor. During this same accident, I earned a broken back (compression fractures in the vertebrae between the shoulder blades), my daughter a broken arm, and both my boys suffered with cuts and contusions.

By the time the damage was actually proven with good xrays, the top of the femur at the hip joint was dying, and the hip socket itself was grossly pocked with extreme calcium buildup, making any movement of the hip very painful.

This was in 1999.

Now, 7 years later, Annie has been in a wheelchair full time for almost 4 years. During this time, she has also earned TWO college degrees, helping our kids move into the adult phases of their life, kept ME fed and clothed, and helped us keep working towards our own home based business, with growing success each month. And, she is now a grandmother of two adorable kids.

Also during this time, we have moved 4 times ( once across the country in 2000 ), been homeless for a few weeks (Spring of 2001), and started over again…twice. And throughout it all, she has been the key to us making it to the next phase of our lives.

She has been through a lot, yet has a LOT to share for others who may be going through the same things we have gone through. With my background of prep and survival skills, learning self reliance the hard way, and my extreme research skills, I’ve brought a lot of new found knowledge into the family.

She’s had to come to a lot of it the hard way, from the point of being disabled, taking care of meds and doctor needs on a very small income, and learning to let go of a lot of things…and grabbing the horns of bigger issues, and wrestling with them on a grand scale…i.e. dealing with the administration of Central Wyoming College, and getting their attention regarding the very disturbing lack of awareness about accessibility issues all over this campus.

She puts a lot of effort into helping others (much like I try to do on a daily basis) and doesn’t notice so much some things that she needs to focus on for herself…others first is her thing sometimes…

I love my wife dearly, and in a few short weeks, we’ll be celebrating our 25th anniversary of marriage.

I hope that you will support her in her blogging career, and that she will be able to reach out to folks the world over, and help them become more self sufficient, personally enriched, and successful individuals….disabled or not.

You can visit her blog here…

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I see that the Wordpress programmers have released a new update to the open source Wordpress blog software package today, to fix some security issues, and even give users a taste of what is in the upcoming release of 2.1.

2.0.3 of Wordpress includes:

Small performance enhancements
Movable Type / Typepad importer fix
Enclosure (podcasting) fix
The aforementioned security enhancements (nonces)

Upgrading is fairly simple, just overwrite your old files with the latest from the download. When you go to your admin it will give you a link to update your database.

Doesn’t seem like much on the outside, but of the many blogs I am running (over 15), I’m running 1.5.2 for this blog and a couple more, while the rest are v.2.0.1. I need to do a little catching up.

In other news, MSNBC has a disturbing article about the health problems being reported and measured from the 1st responders who suffered all kinds of environmental toxins at Ground Zero, and inhaled a toxic cocktail of asbestos, mercury, silica, fiberglass and other potentially hazardous materials released when the twin towers collapsed.

On to the wild side…there is continuing talk of the US attacking Iran this summer is coming around again, this time from Prison Planet and Alex Jones. A Former CIA Analyst Says Iran Strike Set For June Or July, according to Ray McGovern. Read some of the tripe McG brings to the world, of reasons why this attack may, or may not, occur….

Personally, anything Alex Jones brings to the table, I will ALWAYS take with a grain of salt. I don’t know of a SINGLE news item he has released that has PROVEN to be true…always conspiracy…always an EEEE-vil Federal Government….ohhh…scary….

For those of you looking at career opportunities, and with an interest in digital video, I’d like to recommend a very cool and quite helpful magazine called Digital Video. Click the link and sign up for a completely FREE subscription. Let me know if the link doesn’t work for you…I hope it does. They ASKED me to share and recommend it…and I do appreciate the knowledge I’ve gathered from it…give it a try.

And now for something completely different…

Tom Flocco is a nut job. Completely.

I hope you’ve heard of the REAL reason for the shut down of the Capital in DC this week, due to “gunshots” being heard there.

The national news covered it here…and here…

Tom has a completely different alternative reality, which involved spies, terrorists, bombs, the shut down of the rail lines between DC and NYC, and a passel of Secret Body Shop Guys being flown in under cover of darkness….well, you will just have to read it for your self…..ewww….

That’s it for now…

More regular daily postings to follow…

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As some of you might know, I won the New Century Scholar award for Wyoming several weeks ago. With that comes a free trip to Long Beach, where I’m staying in the Westin Hotel…a very nice, 4 star, and extremely expensive place to spend a couple of nights.

I’m here for the awards ceremony, as well as the opening night of the American Associaton of Community Colleges, being held at the Long Beach Convention Center. Tomorrow night I get to pick up my scholarship winnings at the official New Century Scholar reception. Hint…look at the very BOTTOM of this page for my picture.

From http://www.ptk.org/knb/apr06/h0421064.html

“Fifty outstanding community college students will be honored as 2006 New Century Scholars during this week’s American Association of Community Colleges Annual Convention in Long Beach, California. New Century Scholars are the highest-scoring nominees for the All-USA Academic Team in each state. They each receive $2,000 scholarships from the Coca-Cola Foundation and the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation. Learn more about the 2006 New Century Scholars online.”

Just finished the rehearsal phase of the presentation for tonight. Very interesting. The Grand Ballroom here in the convention center is HUGE. Two giant screens on either side of the stage. Looks like a couple thousands chairs as well.

The New Century Scholar part is the middle part of the presentation, after the opening remarks by the PTK CEO and so forth. We march on (of course I’m the very last one on stage), and then they present us, and then people cheer (think Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the minstrels rejoice)…and then Coke is given the Truman award (they’re the money for the New Century Scholar), and then Coke goes away, the lights go down, and we all march off stage back to our front row seats.

Sometime after this event, PTK will be shipping all participants a DVD of the event, so all will be able to see the whole thing.

Fun.

After the presentation tonight, the ballroom at the Westin has live video feeds, where us PTKers, er, um…Scholars…will get to watch the Hallmark awards, which I think is the international convention for PTK…going on this very same weekend in Seattle (you’d think they plan better!).

That’s the place for free pizza and soda…yum.

Around lunchtime, I did walk uptown on Long Beach Blvd. to “Acres of Books“, and found three VERY good used books for $20.03…all pertain to production stuff for our business, and future plans…film making, screenwriting, and online community planning.

You would love AOB. Think Half Price Books, when they were in that old store off Northwest Highway in Dallas…the one that had the Ship looking thing in the middle of the ground floor…but with stacks stacked HIGHER, and rows much narrower. I could stand in the aisle and both shoulders touched bookshelves across from each other. There must have been MILLIONS of books!

Weather is still cool here…and very breezy. Got some video last night before sunset of the bay, the Queen Mary, and ALMOST got video of a seal swimming around the giant boats…kept going underwater before I could grab him on video.

I can’t believe the prices here….haven’t found a 7/11…or even seen a gas station in this neck of the woods. Spent $14 at Borders…got the one PODCASTING book , and 4 alkaline batteries for the digital camera. Breakfast via room service was over $30. 2 eggs, sausage, coffee, OJ, a small basket with 3 danishes, and hash browns….jiminy christmas!

My lunch here at the events center, a piece of roasted chicken, mashed taters, brocolli, bottle of coke, and bottle of water, and a tiny bowl of salad … $17! On Jo Anne’s (the college president, who is also here for this convention) credit card of course…

Tomorrow evening is the “official reception” for the NCSers…I think that’s when I get the check (which I hope isn’t a gift certificate for $2,000 worth of Coke products!

Anyway…that’s about it for now. Gonna go snoop around this floor and find any freebie stuff that have…and fill my pockets!!!!

More later…!

Rich

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Author Dan Simmons imagines a not-so-distant future…of war, one hundred years worth…for the world, against the Nation of Islam.

While a science fiction, fantasy, and horror genre specialist, this particular story hits you right in the pit of your stomach. It IS a fictional piece, but Jee-ZUS…does it hit close to home.

I’d recommend you take a few minutes to read the article at the link below….

April 2006 Message from Dan
Greetings Readers, Friends, and Other Visitors:

The Time Traveler appeared suddenly in my study on New Year’s Eve, 2004. He was a stolid, grizzled man in a gray tunic and looked to be in his late-sixties or older. He also appeared to be the veteran of wars or of some terrible accident since he had livid scars on his face and neck and hands, some even visible in his scalp beneath a fuzz of gray hair cropped short in a military cut. One eye was covered by a black eyepatch. Before I could finish dialing 911 he announced in a husky voice that he was a Time Traveler come back to talk to me about the future.

Being a sometimes science-fiction writer but not a fool, I said, “Prove it.”

Three little words….

I need to know….

Rich

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I just happen to produce a semi-monthly newsletter for Live Free USA. Live Free has been around for years, and I’ve been doing the newsletter for just over a year now, after taking over the reigns from Chris Nyerges.

Visit the website, and download a pdf version of the last two copies, and let me know what you think.

I’ve done many different kinds of newsletters over the years, from home computers, to postal employees, and more. I’m finishing up the final touches for my very own SurvivalRing Newsletter, which will be a full blown printed and mailed version, for paying subscribers. Yes, there will be digital copies available, including archives, and special deals on what I have to share (including freebies for members only).

Have fun reading and learning…