Passwords, personal stuff, and protection

February 4th, 2012

It has happened again. It’s happened several times already to others.

It Can Happen To You.

Really.

It has happened to me, too. Not too long ago, someone got my gmail password. Not easy to do. I was lucky though. I caught it quickly, and fixed it, but it was scary, and embarrassing, and it made me angry.

Your Twitter, Facebook, email password can be stolen. With that information people can contact all of your friends, pretending to be you.

That’s bad. That’s not the worst part though.

Why are they contacting them?

To get them to visit sites that help them earn money, deliver viruses, or worse, steal your friends’ personal information.

Please take your password security seriously.

Quick tips:

  1. Make it at least 8 characters long.
  2. Use letters, numbers, some capital letters, some lower case, or special characters if possible. Something like 8FiU4#29P
  3. Don’t use words of any kind, not English, not Japanese, not any thing that is actually a word.
  4. Don’t use personal information – birthday, student number etc – yours or other family members, friends etc
  5. Change it regularly.

Try putting together a sentence to help you to remember your password.

IHb2TKDc9Xs

I Have been 2 ToKyo Disney c 9 Xs

If you have problems with your password, or accounts, always be sure to check that your contact email address is still set to your address. (hackers/thieves often change that address so they can just click the Lost Password button after you change it and they (not you) get sent the new password, and your are locked out again)

It can happen to you.

I said that already.

But, it’s important. It’s inconvenient, yes, but not as inconvenient as having your account broken into…

Do it now, okay?

Have questions? Just ask. I’m happy to help if I can.

Here’s my New Look for 2012

January 25th, 2012

Bynn and Ahn made these masks at their art school this week. Of course, serious person that I am, I could not resist trying them on and taking pictures of them 😉

Since I know not everyone cares about or wants to see photos of me, I included more of the boys modeling their creations.

Maybe I mentioned this before, but they’ve been attending an art school for maybe 6 years, or more. They’re not learning to be Da Vinci, but they enjoy it and the teacher is really wonderful. He’s kept them interested and happy and eager to go each week since they were in daycare, so he must be doing something right.

Remember that when you start learning anything, it’s really more important how fun and interesting the teacher makes things than how much you’re learning.

Each week they do different things. Sometimes they do projects that take multiple classes to complete, and they usually do some seasonal, holiday related stuff, but it’s not the same every year or for the same holiday each year. He’s a very good teacher and very prepared as well.

Anyway, here are some fun pictures of the masks they painted:

Bynn turns 12 – chocolate cake chocolate icing and Legos

January 25th, 2012

January is a big birthday month at our house since 3 of our 4 members have birthdays then. We just celebrated Bynn’s 12th birthday.

It’s hard for me to believe he’s already 12, soon to be a teenager, already in many ways a very ‘big’ guy.

Not too big to enjoy a birthday cake, and Legos as a present though 😉

I’ve mentioned before that we celebrate birthdays a little differently at our house, at least for the boys, partly because my birthday and Sulseob’s are the same day, and partly because 1 remote control car is not fun when 2 really is, and partly because I love how much both of our sons enjoy and look forward to everyone’s birthdays at our house, there are presents for each of them, no matter who is celebrating the birthday.

It seems to be working still. Yesterday morning when I woke them to get ready for school went something like this:

Me: Hey, guys. Good morning. Let’s get going.

Ahn: Happy Birthday, Bynn.

🙂

Anyway, here are a few pictures. Chocolate cake with chocolate icing, the writing is just plain white whipped cream. You kind of have to hurry with that because it tends to melt fast.

They’re both big Lego fans, so that’s what they got for a birthday present this time.

Happy Birthday to me and my wife for 2012

January 19th, 2012

Well, they come every year, if you’re lucky, and so far I’ve been pretty lucky. For a lot of years I have been very, very lucky.

So, another year and another birthday survived. Quite an accomplishment for me this time.

As usual we celebrated our birthday together (it is the same day after all ;-))

This time around I decided to try something a little different for the cake. Sulseob has been trying out making square cakes, and I decided to throw in a little extra on the decorations this time.

I claimed that there wasn’t enough space on the cake for both our names like I usually write on the cake, but really I just thought it would be nice for Sulseob to have her own cake for once. (I’ve not had my own for some time, nor one I haven’t made for myself, but I’ve had cake and a celebration with some of my students – thanks guys!! – so thought I’d do it this way this time).

This was waiting to greet me on Tuesday when I entered class:

A very, very large Birthday card for me

A very, very large Birthday card for me

Here are a few photos of the cake and such from our little celebration at home:

Heiwa Koen Walking Course Path in Nagoya

January 19th, 2012

These days I am trying hard to stay fit, and active, and of course, have fun while I’m doing it.

One of the things we’ve been doing as a family has been going for walks at the park near our home. It’s not all flat walking, but it’s not exactly mountain climbing either since you don’t have to use your hands anywhere along the way, but some of the paths do have their physical challenges, steps, rocks to step over, up, that sort of thing.

We’ve been going a couple of days each week, early in the morning. It’s cold now, but walking early is a great feeling. It’s also nice to see the other people who are out walking and yet not be crowded.

It sure beats walking on a treadmill. That is of course if you have the time to get out of the house or office.

Here are some pictures I took a few days ag0.