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Ellie turned four months old today and in honor of this joyous occasion I created a slideshow summarizes her life so far.  Enjoy.

Music:

"Here comes the sun" by The Beatles
"Strawberry Swing" by Coldplay
"The Happiest Day" by David Mead
"Bubbily Toes" by Jack Johnson 

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The past twenty-four hours have been themed around dates. Last night my beautiful wife and I were able to embark on our anniversary date (only 21 days over due) while my gracious mother watched the girls for us. We enjoyed a lovely dinner on the patio of Stomping Grounds amidst the most beautiful weather this time of year has seen. We followed that up with our first movie-theater-movie in about nine months: "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2" (coincidentally our last movie-theater-movie nine months ago was "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1").

Then today I took the day off and took Nora alone to the Zoo (thanks to a year long pass from Anna's patents) and a picnic lunch at Gray's Lake. It was a great time.

I am blessed.

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I'm making the mistake of watching "Children of 9/11".  Its a mistake because it's making me sad and emotional.  These children lost their mothers and fathers at an early age and some of them have only faint memories of their lost parents.  I don't want to leave my girls and I don't want them to grow up without a mother or father.  The reality is that my life could end at almost any moment and I'm powerless to do anything about it.  I want to make the most of every moment with my children in case I do leave this world early.  So, I decided to make a list of things I want my girls to know because I love them so very much:

• I love Jesus.  I believe that without Jesus Christ I am condemned.  I constantly fail; I'm selfish; I give into my anger; I lack faith; I sin.  Yet, by God's underserving Love He has paid the price for my sin by giving His Son as a propitiation for not only my sin but all who call on His Name and believe in His saving grace.  And I believe that all will be made right through Him.  I believe He was propehsied by the Old Testament prophets, lived, taught, and performed many miracles, died on the cross, rose on the third day and appeared to many, passed on His work to this Apostles, rose to the right hand of God the Father, and will one day return to judge all the living and the dead.
• I love Christ's Church.  I believe that God's plan to reconcile all human kind to himself is, and always has been, to be completed through His Church (Ephesians 3:1-12).
• I love your mother.  Your mother means more to me than any human on this earth.  She has taught me what it means to love and more things about myself and the life we have to live than anyone.  I love the way she nutures and cares for you.  She spends each and everyday doing everything that she does for you.  From the moment you were born she has thought about you every moment of your life.  There are none who care for you more than she.  We are kids when we're together.  You are going to be embarrased of us when you're older, but I'm sure inside you'll enjoy it.  God has blessed me with her.  She has a beautiful heart and I don't deserve her.
• I love you.  I write this when Nora is 2 1/2 and Ellie is only 3 months old.  I love you both so very much.  You instantly bring joy to my heart.  I love you hold you, to snuggle with you, and to play silly games with you.  I love to take you on dates: be them either a short trip to the store or a dinner and ice cream.  It is my prayer that you both grow to be godly women and have the same love for God that I have.  I take this quote from your Uncle Luke (modified a bit, of course): "We're not raising girls, we're raising women."
• I love my family (including in-laws).  I love my parents, my brothers, my grand-parents, my sister in laws, my nieces, my nephews, my aunts, my uncles, and my cousins.  Even though some of our family we don't get to see very often, I love them.  Even though we sometimes have to miss things because of other prirorites, our families mean the world to me.  I want a big family.  I hope we can have many more kids and have large family gatherings.  Basically I'm Clark Griswald when it comes to family gatherings and holidays.  If you don't know who Clark Griswald is, ask somebody born in the 20th century.
• I love my friends.  I love people.  A great vacation to me is going somewhere new, meeting new people, and sitting down to a coffee or a beer and talking.  Some of my fondest memeories are of doing things or going places with people.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being alone and having time to ponder life's great mysteries, but people all have different stories and experiences and I love to hear about them.  I feel bad when I can't spend more times with friends, but I know the time I'm putting towards other things is just as valuable.
• I love working with my hands.  I spend about 40 hours a week behind a desk solving the computer and technological problems of a great academic instituion.  But that is only one side of me.  I love to dig.  I kinda think I should have been a farmer sometimes.  And not just any old farmer, but a farmer living about 200 years ago.  If I had a time machine big enough to old all those people above and some medicine, I'd take us back there.  Just think about it: We would have a small house on the priarie, I would farm, your mother would garden, your Papa and Uncles would hunt some game, and you girls would do what you do now anyway: get filthy and eat dirt.  I also want to know how to do just about everything, and do it from scratch.  I was just telling your mother that I have this fear that we're going to lose all of our technology and I'm not going to know how to do anything.  Yes, people CAN survive without a microwave...I just don't know how.
• I love my life.  I have been blessed beyond means.  I have a wonderful life and I don't deserve it.  I pray that I may live this life humbly and pleasing to our Creator.  When I fall before Him one day may I not regret the time that He gave me on this earth.

Well, it's late now, so I best be heading off to bed.  I love you girls. 

Oh, look what you did.  I decided to find a picture of you both to post with this and you made me cry.  Wait until I see you tomorrow and I'll give you a snuggle you won't soon forget.

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Several days ago Nora came up with the idea that she wanted to "meet my friends for breakfast".  She had just heard her grandma say she was going to meet a friend for lunch and thought that was a brilliant idea.  When I got home that evening she informed me of her plan and that she wanted Daddy to come too.  So we got the ball rolling and just a few days later set the plan into action.

Nora, two sister-friends, and the Daddys all headed out for a fun-filled supper and dessert.  We started with some burgers, grilled cheese, cheese balls, french fries, and apple sauces.  Some of us wanted to share our apple sauce while others weren't too keen on the idea.

All joking aside, it really is a fun place and the girls, and Dadddys, really enjoyed themselves.

Lastly, we swung by and picked up the Moms and babies and headed to the movie theater for Nora (and Ellie)'s first movie theater experience.  We watched Winnie the Pooh which really was entertaining and was enjoyed by all.

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Saturday morning we met some friends at the Downtown Farmers' Market and checked out the different stands which included fresh local veggies, homemade ice cream, several local restaurants, a couple local wineries, and some local musicians.  They also had a small pony there for free pony rides and Nora rode her first pony!

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Ellie spent most of the farmers' market either sleeping or snuggling with Mommy.  She did ham it up for the camera later on though:

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After nap time Nora helped Mama in the garden weeding and checking out the zucchinis.  And in the evening we headed to the home of a friend of Anna's from high school for a party.  The family's land backed up to a horse pasture.  Nora loved the horses and was sad when they were put back in the barn.

They also had an inflatable bounce house at the party, which was a big hit with the kids.

Before bed I was asking Nora what her favorite part of the day was, and she answered "Zucchinis".  Now that's a girl who enjoys the simple pleasures in life.....that and her Mommy.

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Yesterday was my 30th birthday, and it was a very good birthday.  My frist memory of being 30, was in the wee hours of the morning, Nora decided she needed to snuggle in bed with daddy after having a possible bad dream.  After about 30 minutes of snuggling I put her back in her bed.  I then had a cup of coffee with a good friend, and had a normal day at work.  In the evening Anna's parents took us out for dinner where I ate too much and followed it up with ice cream.  Then last night a few friends took me out for a couple of drinks.

It was all great fun and highly enjoyable.  Below is my favorite gift: a card from my three girls: Anna, Nora, and Ellie.

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Today was a toasty, humid day, peaking in the high 90s with a 100+ degree heat index.  So, naturally we setup the inflatable pool in the backyard and Nora had a great time taking a refreshing dip. 

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Hi.  My name is Mark and I'm an addict.  A soda addict to be specific.  Soda is the one substance I feel I'm addicted to.  That, and occasionally coffee, but that's only because of the head aches that follow.  So I've switched mostly to decaf....although now with the new baby I'm drinking more regular coffee.....where were we? Oh yea, soda.  

I freely admit that I'm addicted to soda.  It's not that I consume mass quantities of soda.  I average about one can or bottle per day.  The disturbing part is that I feel like I have to have one sometimes.  The only thing that will satisfy the craving is an ice cold Coke, or sometimes a Dr. Pepper gets me my fix.  I don't like feeling like I have to have something that is itself superfluous.  My body is addicted to water and oxygen, but those are needed for surival.  Soda, while the bottling companies wish it weren't so, is not needed for survival.

Now to the challenge.  Today at lunch my loving wife and I were chatting about soda and my addiction when I became inspired.  I'm someone who responds well to challenges.  I enjoy being presented with a challenge, especially ones that seem impossible, then rising up and completing the goal.  I knew the only way I was going to free myself from my addiction was if I was challenged, and who better to challenge me than my best friend.  I turned to my wife and said, "Challenge me."  I admit I originally thought she would say a week or two, but her response was three months.  Three months.  I can't recall specifically, but I'm not sure if I've gone three months without a soda since I was a kid.  To some of you non-soda drinkers out there you may be scoffing at my challenge of a measily three months, but to some one who feels like they're addicted its a real challenge.  

So, today at 1pm central stand time after finishing the last few swallows of a watered down Subway Dr. Pepper, the Great Summer 2011 Challenge commenced.

It has now been just over 35 minutes and I'm feeling thirsty.  We'll see how the next 90 days go.

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A few days ago Anna gave birth to our second daughter, Ellie Violet!  Anna did an amazing job and I'm so very proud of her.  Nora LOVES being a big sister and often asks what her "baby sisa" is doing if she's not in the room.  We are so glad to have another girl and look forward to many fun times as a family and pray that God blesses us with wisdom, knowledge, love, patience, and perseverence so that both of our girls will grow to be god-fearing women serving Christ all of their days.

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Note: This is a sort of rough draft on online protection and might change over time.  Also,  my primary role in IT is not in security so this is in no way an exhaustive plan for protecting yourself online. If you have any ideas that could be added feel free to send them to me or add it in the comments.

It's just going to get worse 

We’ve entered a time in our technological evolution where viruses are getting more and more advanced, sneaky, and malicious.  The people behind these malevolent viruses are getting more adept because they are funding their efforts through unsuspecting computer users’ personal information and bank accounts.  While anti-virus companies are hardly able to keep up with the rate at which these viruses are being released and modified, they are still useful and necessary, but they must be kept up to date and are only one part of your protection strategy. It is possible to have a PC without anti-virus software, however, I don't recommend it for most users. Microsoft now has a free anti-virus application called Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free and and I use it at home. 

There are many security programs you can install on your computer to protect you, however, the best protection is knowledge and exercising caution when surfing the net or using any kind of Internet connected device.

Types of Information to Protect

Bank Account Information

Your bank account information should be your primary concern.  If someone gets into your bank account they can either completely drain your bank account or slowly make small transactions over time.  If you’re interested, this article describes the consumer’s liability when an unauthorized transfer occurs:http://www.bankersonline.com/regs/205/205-6.html.  

The best way to protect your bank account is to not use online banking.  This of course is the most extreme solution, but as they taught us in school: abstinence is the best protection.  A more balanced approach would be to follow these guidelines:

• Never connect to your online bank account on a computer you do not trust or a computer you suspect may be compromised or acting “funny”.
• If you receive an email from your bank asking you to log in or do anything on your account, do not click the link in the email, instead open a new Internet Browser window and manually navigate to your banking website by typing in the address.  It may also be advised to contact your bank via the old fashioned telephone and verify that they contacted you.
• Create your online bank account information with a password of at least 15 characters using uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters.  See Password Creation below for more information about creating passwords.

Personal Files (Documents, Music, Photos etc.)  

Files local to your computer can include personal documents, tax documents, personal photos, music, and videos.  If someone gains access to these personal files they can obtain personal information that could be used to gain access to other personal information including bank accounts or delete or destroy your personal information.  They can also install a key-logger on your computer to capture your other account user-names and passwords.  See Key Loggers below for more information.

E-mail

If someone gains access to your email they can find other personal information contained in your email, personal information about others, or through your account place others in susceptible positions to attack by posing as you and/or convincing your friends and family to click on links that compromise their information.

Personal Information

The last category of information you need to protect is general personal information about your self.  Whether it be information about yourself on social media sites or information that could show someone where you live or information about your family.  Example: if someone hacked your computer and saw in your personal photos pictures of your house and all the wonderful nick-knacks you possess they may be able to find out your exact address and know all the wonderful things they could steal.

Ways your data can be compromised and how to protect yourself

Phishing e-mails and scams  

As a general rule, if something seems too good to be true, it is.  An unknown member of an unknown royal family is not going to stumble upon your e-mail address and want to give you a lot of money.

Hackers will often pose as known banks and services (such as US Bank or PayPal).  They say something to the effect of “we need to confirm your account” and provide you with a link.  The link leads to a site that looks very similar (or even exactly like) your service web page.  However, this page is not from the intended institution, but instead lives on a web site owned by the hacker.  You enter your account information and the hacker now owns your log-in information and your data has been compromised.

Basically, only open an email if you know the sender.  Don’t click on links in emails or verify the link is actually pointing to where it says (an email link could say usbank.com but the actual like is pointing to myhackerwebsite.com), but instead manually type the intended address into your Internet Browser.  Also, it is good to contact your service provider through other means, such as the telephone, to verify they are meaning to contact you and that your account has actually expired.

Insecure log-in information

Another way that a hacker would gain access to your account is through insecure log-in information.  Either your password could be too short and they could crack your password using something called “brute force attack” where they try thousands of different passwords in a matter of minutes until they find yours, or your password is something obvious like ‘password’ or your name.  See Password Creation below for more information regarding password creation and how to best protect yourself.

Key loggers

Key loggers are a program that can be installed on almost any computer that logs all key strokes on the computer.  So when you log-in to your account or the computer itself they capture the keys you press to log-in. They then have control over your account.  For more information seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystroke_logging.

The best way to protect yourself from key loggers is the following:

• Keep your computer secure by arming yourself with knowledge
• Never connect to any of your accounts on an unknown computer.  This goes for computers in waiting rooms, hotels, airports Internet Cafe’s etc.  You never know what could be installed on an unknown computer, so you shouldn’t trust it.  Think of it this way, if sitting next to the computer in the hotel was a uncovered glass of water would you drink from it?  Then don’t trust the computer next to it with your user-names and passwords.

Operating system vulnerabilities

Computers and computer programs aren’t perfect.  Because of a plethora of reasons programs have security holes in them.  Software manufacturers are continuously updating their software to fix these holes.  If your computer is not updated a hacker can scan for these vulnerabilities on your computer and gain access to your computer and therefore your personal data.

Keep your computer up to date by configuring your computer to automatically update.  Reference the following for more information:

• Windows computers
• Mac OS X

Other applications on your computer can contain vunlerabilities as well and should stay up to date.  For windows computers you can install Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) which is a free utility for keeping many other programs up to date.  You should also check with your application vendor for more information regarding updates for their products.

You should also keep your personal computer secure by configuring the firewall to keep unknown connections from connecting to your computer.  For more information see:

• Windows XP
• Windnows Vista
• Windows 7
• Mac OS X

Drive by viruses

Whenever you visit a website your computer downloads information from the website and then runs the information in a program.  If a hacker gains control of a website they can put malicious code into the website so anyone who visits the website will then have their computer compromised.  These attacks are known as Drive By Installations and have become very popular among virus writers recently and have led to most of the infections I’ve been aware of.  

Drive-By virus installs occur by taking advantage of a vulnerability in an application that allows the hacker to install a program on your computer that grants them access to your computer allowing them to do what ever they please. Recently there were several of these viruses that piggy backed on well known websites that had ads that had been hacked. When someone visited the website the virus installed itself even if the user didn't have administrative privileges on their computer.

You can protect yourself from Drive-By viruses by keeping all of your applications up-to-date (see Operating System Vulnerabilities above) and also by disabling scripts from automatically running on your computer (see below)

I personally protect myself from Drive By Viruses through the following:

• I installed Google Chrome as my Internet Browser and set it as my default browser
  • I also recommend Firefox
• I also installed AdBlock.  After you have installed AdBlock you can disable AdBlock on a site by site basis.  You would then disable AdBlock on sites you trust (i.e. Netflix, Hulu etc.)  For more information see the following links:
  • AdBlock for Chrome
  • AdBlock for Firefox
• And lastly I disabled scripts from running automatically.  Scripts allows websites to run additional functions and applications such as Adobe Flash, Java, and JavaScript.  Websites such as Gmail and Facebook rely heavily on scripts and won’t function without them.  After disabling scripts you can then enable scripts to run on a site by site basis.  For more information see the following links:
  • Script blocking for Chrome
  • Script blocking for Firefox

Fake Anti-Virus Programs

Another way people have been getting viruses installed is through something called Fake AV or Fake Anti-Virus applications.  What will happen is that you'll be surfing the web and you'll suddenly get a pop-up that says something along the lines of "Your computer is infected.  Click here to clean your machine!".  The unsavvy web surfer then thinks, "oh no, thanks for helping me friendly pop-up" and innocently clicks on the pop-up.  Next the pop-up installs a virus and the previous warning becomes true, your computer is now infected.

The best way to protect yourself from this is to know your anti-virus software and to keep it up to date.  If you get a pop-up that you think may be ligitimate:

1. Completely close your Internet Browser if open
2. If the security message is still up, find your anti-virus program in the system tray (bar along the bottom right of your Windows screen) and open your program and see if it has caught the virus
3. Do a full system scan using your anti-virus program
4. Never click on the pop-up.  Fake Anti-Virus pop-ups can look extermely legitimate.  Again exercise caution.

Password Creation

A few years ago a coworker of mine went to a security conference where they discussed password security as one of the topics.  He brought back a chart that displayed the approximate amount of time it takes to have a computer program guess a password based on its length.  The recommendation of the chart was to create passwords of at least 15 characters in length.  Here is a page with a similar chart; the main thing to glean from this page is that a 15 character password of just letters would take a grid of computers approximately more than 35,000 years, and a password of 12 characters would take only 3 years.

Changing your password regularly is also recommended.  To put it in perspective: if you changed your password every day it would give a hacker only 24 hours to try your password if they obtained it through a key-logger or similar means.  Never changing your password would allow the hacker to access your account at their leisure.  If you’re able to customize the expiration of your password try something like 30 days, especially for your more important accounts.

Backup your computer

Recently a new kind of virus has emerged; Ransom-ware.  Ransom-ware essentially is a virus that holds the data on your computer ransom.  The virus encrypts a section of data on your computer rendering it unreadable.  The virus usually leaves a file on your computer giving you instructions on how to recover your data by sending a message to an address along with a way to pay them money.  They would then reply with a way to help you recover your data.  I am unaware of anyone who has actually paid the ransom and whether or not they actually regained access to their data.

The best way to protect yourself from this kind of threat is to frequently backup your computer.  this will also protect you in case your hard drive dies (note: hard drives can last from 1 second to about 5 years before they die, so your data could be lost at any time and should be backed up).  You can backup your computer to an external drive, however with an external drive you have to remember to plug in the drive and sync your data.  You can also use a service like Carbonite Online Backup which will automatically sync data on your computer to their secure Internet servers.  This service is only $60/year for unlimited data backup, which is a very good deal.  Having your data on secure Internet servers instead of an external drive would protect your personal data from disasters like fires where your external drive might be in the same location as your computer.

Conclusion

At this point I personally believe the safest way to protect yourself is by purchasing a Mac.  There are just fewer security threats on Macs and I personally haven’t known anyone who has gotten a virus on their Mac, although its not impossible.  With that being said, you can definitely use PCs and be protected, we actually don’t own a Mac at home but instead own two PCs, so that should show you how closely I follow my own advice.  I have also switched to using Google Chrome for my Internet Browsing as well as installing AdBlock and blocking automatic execution of scripts. I'm sure there are many more ways to protect yourself, but this is at least a starting point.

Again, my primary role in IT is not in security so this was not an exhaustive or even the most thorough explanation on how to protect yourself on the Internet, so if you have any other points feel free to send them to me or add them to the comments below.

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Nora had some fun times in the "simmin" pool this evening enjoying the warm weather.

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"Through technology the whole world has now become the media's parish, talk-show hosts the prophets, actors and musicians the priests, and any script will do for the Scriptures as long as moral constraints are removed. Sitting before a well-lit box is all the cultic performance needs, and each person can enthrone his or her own self as divine. Truth has been relegated to subjectivity; beauty has been subjugated to the beholder; and as millions are idiotized night after night, a global commune has been constructed with the arts enjoying a totalitarian rule."

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