I've done it again. I've joined another blog community. I'm sure that I must be insane. I now have access to three different blogs under my name: this one on Blogger, one on WordPress (because I couldn't decided between the two when I first started out) and now one on a different site. Oh, I also have JimShue.com because my stinking ego didn't want some other guy with the same name to claim the domain just in case I become famous. :)
Blogger is my primary one. I've been using this one for over a year now and feel comfortable with the format and the functionality of it. I'm please that I can customize the look of it to make it my own without having to pay a webmaster (why does that sound slightly S & M to me?) to create something unique for me. I can change colors and the background image in the Masthead to make my blog somewhat unique to me.
WordPress I use to email thoughts from work - that is when I have free time. It sat dormant for about a year before I posted for the first time to it. I think it was a rant about idiot early a.m. drivers. From the one post that there is, you can probably discern that the free time from work thing hasn't happened yet. In fact, we've been on mandatory overtime off and on for three months now which doesn't give me any time to waste company time by sending emails to my blog.
The third one I started today just so that I could have access to a blog that is being kept private. I can't go into details bout it. If I did I'd have to kill you. Ha! Seriously, it's a friend who's new to this and just doesn't want to go public, but wants some encouragement from a few friends. I can respect that. It's a bit scary to put your thoughts down, hit enter and wait to see if anyone is reading and if they are, how their comments are going to go. Will they be nice? Or will they be like the ranters on newspaper forums who can't find a nice thing to say about anything?
But having three blogs (and a website) got me to doing some weird math problem. Counting work, I have three email accounts. The first email account I had was for work. I quickly discovered that there were free email accounts to be had and procured one from Hotmail using my name. I found that after a while of using it to make online purchases and registering for numerous websites or product warranties that the level of spam hitting it was daunting at times. I then created a Yahoo! account for personal emails. Having the two really works well as I don't have to check the Hotmail account as often for legitimate email that may have been caught in the spam filter. Conversely, I rarely received spam on the Yahoo! account.
Now for the tricky part and what is contributing to the feelings of insanity... passwords. Every account that is created requires a password. Experts say that to protect your information that you should create a unique password for each separate account. Um, right. I'll admit that I've duplicated some passwords and that the accounts that I haven't are the ones that when I'm prompted for a password are the ones that for the life of me I can't remember. National City has locked me out of their Points program because I can't remember the password. In order to reset my password I have to enter the PIN that was assigned to me when I signed on for the Points program. Hell, I can't even remember that a PIN was assigned!
So what's the answer? (What was the question?) Is there an easy way of remembering passwords that are hard enough to thwart hackers? Is this something I'm too paranoid about? I'd really like suggestions from any of you that have the same problem. Short of not doing anything online anymore, I'm stumped.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
Time Capsule: Part III
Tomorrow is Ground Hog Day. My point? None, actually. Other than it's a holiday and I had no other tie-in to the continuing archeology dig going on in our garage. Today's find was a stash of candy inside a purple cardboard heart. Valentine's Day could be your first assumption, but the actual holiday would be Easter. Inside the heart was as stash of Cadbury Creme Eggs, circa 2001. Yup, we're had almost nine year old creme filled chocolate eggs stashed away as if they were Faberge' Eggs handed to us by the Csar of Russia.
Curiosity got the best of me and I just had to find out what they looked like after all these years. Here is a picture of what I found inside. Turns out they aren't so creamy after all this time. But it wasn't as bad as finding a real Easter egg after a year or two hidden behind a forgotten piece of furniture. The most surprising part was the smell of chocolate wasn't rancid after sitting in "climate controlled" storage. Still, I wasn't tempted to try one out.
One final word on this. Either fresh or nine years old... Gross.
Curiosity got the best of me and I just had to find out what they looked like after all these years. Here is a picture of what I found inside. Turns out they aren't so creamy after all this time. But it wasn't as bad as finding a real Easter egg after a year or two hidden behind a forgotten piece of furniture. The most surprising part was the smell of chocolate wasn't rancid after sitting in "climate controlled" storage. Still, I wasn't tempted to try one out.
One final word on this. Either fresh or nine years old... Gross.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Time Capsule: Part II
We're down to having an old door and a dining chair left in storage. Yes, as of Thursday, it is stilled screwed to the wall. For the second time Robbie had to ask that the screw be removed so that we can clear out the storage room. If the screw isn't removed by tomorrow, I'll be taking matters into my own hands and cutting a small slit in the fabric advertisement covering the screw head.
The past week has been an archeological dig. Going through box after box of paper work. Layer upon layer of the detritus of thirty years piled in desk drawers and banker's boxes. The worst part (other than the threat of breathing in toxic mold) is that I don't know the person who squirreled away so much crap! I found a get well card signed by four people that for the life of me I can't recall. There are old pictures of people that I no longer keep in touch with and some are of people that I have no idea who the are. Maybe I should scan and post them to see if anyone reading this recognizes who they are.
There are notebooks from the beginnings of my college years/decades, along with grades from those classes. Transcripts, promissory notes, book receipts, syllabi from a several classes (would anyone care what my assignments were for psychology 101?) and just crap that I've held onto. Why? What in the world was I thinking in keeping all that stuff? Do I really need to know what doors to keep open in the ceramics lab while firing bisque? Especially since the art department moved to a new building almost ten years ago.
Some of the crap is just painful to go through. I've found letters from cousins from when I first started college. There are letters from my mother - always starting off with "you received this letter(s) a couple of weeks ago, but I keep putting off going to the post office". Several of them included notes from my youngest brother - the most poignant was the one that read "Mark had a 'hard-attack' last week and died." I couldn't figure out who Mark was and I panicked that I had forgotten some great detail of my life until I got to mother's letter and she told me that my brother's pet Finch Mork had died and she was glad to be rid of the mess that the bird made. I have unfinished letters never sent (Lord, I hope I never sent them) to old girlfriends - scathing, nasty ones in some cases. I reached the point that I started running everything through the shredder without reading the contents.
I've shredded old bank statements and the accompanying canceled checks - remember when banks did that? - from when I first went to work for Bank One back in '94. I really don't think I need to keep the checks I wrote to Target any longer even thought they should be happy that I've been such a consistent and loyal customer all this time. I even came across a receipt for a loan payment from 1980. Really? I kept that? All the paper I've shredded the past week has filled a large garbage can, and I'm not finished. It's good that trash pickup is only a couple of days away.
Am I shredding my past? Will I regret this years from now? I think the answer to both is no. I've not missed any of the crap for at least seven years which is a pretty good indicator that I can continue to live with out most of it. Pictures I'll keep. Some books I'll keep. Tax returns go without saying. Other things that still have a use may be kept, but more than likely they'll get donated. I'm tired of dragging this stuff around both physically and emotionally. I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again: nostalgia isn't for me. I think it's too easy to get caught up in the past and miss out on what is happening now. And honestly, they're just boxes full of the dried up old bones of the person I once was. Time to bury them for good.
The past week has been an archeological dig. Going through box after box of paper work. Layer upon layer of the detritus of thirty years piled in desk drawers and banker's boxes. The worst part (other than the threat of breathing in toxic mold) is that I don't know the person who squirreled away so much crap! I found a get well card signed by four people that for the life of me I can't recall. There are old pictures of people that I no longer keep in touch with and some are of people that I have no idea who the are. Maybe I should scan and post them to see if anyone reading this recognizes who they are.
There are notebooks from the beginnings of my college years/decades, along with grades from those classes. Transcripts, promissory notes, book receipts, syllabi from a several classes (would anyone care what my assignments were for psychology 101?) and just crap that I've held onto. Why? What in the world was I thinking in keeping all that stuff? Do I really need to know what doors to keep open in the ceramics lab while firing bisque? Especially since the art department moved to a new building almost ten years ago.
Some of the crap is just painful to go through. I've found letters from cousins from when I first started college. There are letters from my mother - always starting off with "you received this letter(s) a couple of weeks ago, but I keep putting off going to the post office". Several of them included notes from my youngest brother - the most poignant was the one that read "Mark had a 'hard-attack' last week and died." I couldn't figure out who Mark was and I panicked that I had forgotten some great detail of my life until I got to mother's letter and she told me that my brother's pet Finch Mork had died and she was glad to be rid of the mess that the bird made. I have unfinished letters never sent (Lord, I hope I never sent them) to old girlfriends - scathing, nasty ones in some cases. I reached the point that I started running everything through the shredder without reading the contents.
I've shredded old bank statements and the accompanying canceled checks - remember when banks did that? - from when I first went to work for Bank One back in '94. I really don't think I need to keep the checks I wrote to Target any longer even thought they should be happy that I've been such a consistent and loyal customer all this time. I even came across a receipt for a loan payment from 1980. Really? I kept that? All the paper I've shredded the past week has filled a large garbage can, and I'm not finished. It's good that trash pickup is only a couple of days away.
Am I shredding my past? Will I regret this years from now? I think the answer to both is no. I've not missed any of the crap for at least seven years which is a pretty good indicator that I can continue to live with out most of it. Pictures I'll keep. Some books I'll keep. Tax returns go without saying. Other things that still have a use may be kept, but more than likely they'll get donated. I'm tired of dragging this stuff around both physically and emotionally. I think I've said this before, but I'll say it again: nostalgia isn't for me. I think it's too easy to get caught up in the past and miss out on what is happening now. And honestly, they're just boxes full of the dried up old bones of the person I once was. Time to bury them for good.
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