Beware of The Chair

It’s been a busy week with doctor appointments and all including my semiannual visit to Cleveland Clinic on Tuesday. When I schedule my May visit David and I always check the area baseball schedules so we can plan our day. For this year’s first trip we’d checked the Indians schedule while we were at the Mellen Center in November and upon realizing the Tigers were in town about 6 months later, we made a point of scheduling my appointment for one of the days in the series.

As it ended up we saw the middle game of the Indians sweeping the Tigers but as I always say “A bad day at the ballpark is better than a good day somewhere else!” It was a fun evening and the seats I picked on the computer were as great as they looked like they should be!

I had no problems at the game or with Indians fans as I proudly sported my Tigers logo on my chest. My problem was getting in the park and security. Progressive Field has metal detectors at the gates. All bags, purses etcetera are checked before entering and fans must walk through the metal detectors. It was the first time I’ve seen that much protection to enter a baseball game since the Olympics in 1996. Of course a wheelchair would set off the metal detector so I didn’t have to go through it. In fact, I didn’t have to go through anything. They opened up the area between the metal detectors and I wheeled through onto the stadium’s concourse. They didn’t search me, they didn’t even look in my tote bag that hung on the back of my chair; nothing. And for all the security, no one even asked me to try to stand up thus proving I actually am a “harmless chick in a wheelchair.”

That’s one problem. As someone who uses a wheelchair I am neither harmless nor helpless. Okay, with the manual chair, which we use for out of town trips I need a little more help because my arms, while stronger than my legs, get tired of wheeling the manual chair. It’s not like they get a break at home when I use the power chair, they’re still important for lifting myself and moving when I’m standing so there is a fatigue limit when I’m using the manual chair, but I’m not the only person who goes to baseball games in a wheelchair. There are plenty of people who have increased upper body strength as a result of using the chair. It’s a little offensive to lump us all into a “harmless cripple” category. A disability doesn’t make someone any less of a human being and as the old adage say: where there’s a will, there's a way. Like anyone else, a disabled person isn’t a security risk because that person chooses not to be.

But the insinuation that I pose no danger because of my disability is not my biggest issue. Check out 1800WHEELCHAIR.com . Go ahead, the link opens in a new window. Look at all the chairs for sale! That’s just the easy one to remember; there are tons of sites that sell chairs, even power chairs and scooters. They all do wonderful things for those of us that need them and they have pockets, baskets and different accessories for carrying things. Manual chairs even have under the seat storage pouches available and I always have a tote bag on the handles behind me. You can find all those things online and you know what? A doctors’ prescription is NOT necessary to purchase them. No one cares if you actually need mobility assistance, if you pay the advertised price, they’ll even deliver it to you for free! If you want to commit an act of terror at a crowded event buy a wheelchair and put your contraband materials in one of those handy pockets. Easy peasy.

So don’t automatically treat a person using a mobility assistive device like they couldn’t possibly be a risk. A person in a wheelchair is just that; a person. They should be trusted no more and no less than someone who walks in to an event on their own legs. I would have felt safer if they’d swiped the front of me with the wand and looked in my bag before they let me roll on in.

Computer Hacking for an Honest Buck?

As I’m moving forward in my quest towards certified geekdom, I’m learning more every day about all of the possibilities for someone, anyone, in the IT field. EC-Council trains people in important IT areas. Network Security is something I’ve considered for a “next step” in my career after I get my certification for network administration and EC Council offers security classes including Ethical Hacking.

Hacking? Ethical? Huh?

You hear me, ethical hacking! You can learn what you need to be a Certified Ethical Hacker. Hey, it’s knowing your enemy. The best way to keep up with hackers is to be that one step ahead and catch them before they can do serious damage!

Ethical hacking is one of the more fascinating parts of IT Security. It’s testing the limits of the security in place. That’s kind of being a teenager forever! You can take classes online, so that’s convenient and flexible too.

IT is one of the few career fields that is still growing in this depressed economy and job market. In a hands-on project in the very beginning of my week one homework, we were sent to monster.com to do a basic search for “network technician.” My search popped up 1001 jobs in the US! I tried “network security.” There were over 5000 matches! Network security is even more important as so many breaches are reported all the time. Taking an online class can lead to so many possibilities. It’s certainly worth taking a look!

Nani, Nani, Nani

My new electric best bud!

I actually was going to do one of my potpourri entries yesterday with a few briefs, but the first one ended up so long! I’m just very pleased with the progress of Wife 1500 so far. If it’s working for me, you might find a kernel or two that works for you too. Yes, a pun with the kernel comment there. hehe


Now to finish what I started yesterday!

First off It’s another Crazy Thursday at Scrap Bird! This week you can pick up my Project 365 template sets for half off. That’s only a buck! Four templates in each set, that’s 2 months of Project 365 layouts with your choice of paper and elements but done the easy way! Just place the paper above the layer, create a clipping mask and you’re good to go! You can see many samples of those layouts by clicking “365” for the posts with that label.

365

One Step At A Time Layout


I got the first layout with One Step at a Time from my CT! This one was done by Jana, one step at a time is baby’s first steps! I kind thought in the back of my mind that this kit would be good for this kind of layout and Jana definitely proved that thought right! She did just a great job!



Sweet Thanks

I got this very nice thank you from Linda, Tirza’s Treasures!

It’s presented as a sincere thank you for awards and nice comments. It doesn’t have to be passed on today or ever, but it can be. Very cool sentiment!

I get many awards for which I am so grateful. I do, sometimes a little while after receiving it and sometimes right after, acknowledge all of them, but I don’t always pass them on. It’s not that I want to spoil the fun, but I sometimes just don’t have the necessary time to do it. But I do appreciate them all just the same.

Now, I’d like to pass the sincere thank you to everyone who reads this. Thank you for taking a few moments from your day to stop in at my cyber-coffee shop and read a little! Thank you for thinking of The Chronicles of Nani!



FINALLY!

More mundane but, to me, exciting news! In the wake of the feel-good donation to Locks of Love, and finally moving my hair care to Ohio with the rest of me, I’m going to savor the fruits of wedded bliss! I’m getting my teeth cleaned! That’s not nearly as corny as it sounds. My teeth badly need cleaning. I’ve been near-broke and uninsured for a few years! With “I do” comes “add my wife to the policy!”

I am almost militant about brushing and I am what my old oral hygienist thought to be rare, I floss every day! I’ve been told my smile is one of my better physical traits and right now my teeth could really stand a face lift! So next week will be my first visit to my Toledo dentist. They’ll do X-rays and the initial consultation to decide what the cleaning and caring plan of action will be to get me back to smiling confident that my smile is my best best-feature it can be!

A week later will be sorta bittersweet. I’ve had the same optometrist since eight grade. It was reading glasses then, but he is also the one who recognized my dyslexia and helped me with eye exercises to overcome it and make reading easier for me. He taught me how to put contacts in. He gave me an explanation that a young me could comprehend about exactly what astigmatism is. (He used the baseball-football analogy)

But Dr. Levin is in Northville, 70 miles away now. If I need a new prescription, that’s a long way to drive with unreliable vision! So, in two weeks will be my first visit to an optometrist who isn't Dr. Levin or one of his partners. I think this is even scarier than a new person cutting my hair!



Opposing Views and Paid Posts

I wanted to mention this just to let you know what I do behind the scenes! Anyone who has ever left a comment here knows that I only publish approved comments. This does a few things. The number one thing it does is gets rid of any need to enter a confusing set of letters before the comment posts. When I read it, I’ll figure out if you were a real person or a machine. I’m an accomplished hunt and peck typist. That means I’m pretty quick and even accurate if I put my mind to it, as long as what I’m typing are words as I know them. When I have to type in those security combinations, I usually have to do them 2 or 3 times. A machine would probably do a better job of faking being a human than me! I understand how it works as a security measure, but since I read them all before they appear, I don’t care if I’m deleting gibberish from a bot. I don't like the security codes and I don't think I need to put anyone else through it here.

The other more important thing comment approval does, is it let’s control-freak me have...control - over the content of my blog. This is important because I don’t allow comments that hurt or slander me, my readers or my sponsors. Yes, I’m protecting the generous sponsors who support my caffeine habit by letting me do a little promotion for them through compensated posts. As I say in my disclaimer on the bulletin board, I choose opportunities to promote products and services that I think are a good idea or in the case where I’ve used it , a good product. A good clue is that if there is a link in the text for a non-scrapbook post, it’s a compensated post. When I am recommending a product or service on my own without compensation, the links will here on out be after the post. For the most part they usually have been anyway, but I'm going to do it that way from now on so you know if it's a sponsored post or my personal testimonial. I'll never say I've tried a product unless I have, sponsored or not. If you disagree with a product that is a sponsor, please feel free to leave a comment, even leave an email address and we can trade emails about anything you think would be a better product. I do read every comment and I always check out links you share. However, if the comment is on a compensated post and especially if it recommends a competitor, I won’t publish it. That’s contrary to the contractual agreement with my sponsor and my own personal business ethics. But if you want to chat about it “off-blog” leave me contact info and we can chat over the coffee I can afford after doing the post!

Well, there are my little bits and bits for this week. Exciting weekend scheduled!!

Phone Safety!

I got a call a while back from a California number that I didn’t recognize. I answered the call and heard a very accented voice ask for the name of the former owner of my phone number. I know it was the former owner because when I first got my number I had received several calls for that person. The call ended after I explained that it was the former owner of the number and they have a old number.

I just “had a feeling” and I did an Internet search for the number. There were many hits, lots of lists of numbers, phone book type sites, then I finally got into the more specific sites. I saw the number had been repeatedly reported as a fraudulent number. I clicked one of those sites. The calls were actually Middle Eastern in origin, fed through a California number and they were usually threats demanding money owed to a company with which the receiver of the call had formerly done business. I was instructed to call homeland security and I did.

Homeland security was very polite in taking my information and asking the necessary questions. The officer I spoke with told me that it was a group looking to use fear to extort money from former customers of a payday type loan company. They aren’t sure where they got the lists of people. After getting my contact information in case they needed to follow up, he thanked me for reporting it and the call was done.

That’s creepy. Someone from outside of our country has a list of people who’ve used a legal loan service here. I mean that can happen anywhere, any service, ya know? So my message is PLEASE be careful when answering a call from a number you don’t recognize! Don’t ever give out personal information or credit card/bank information to someone on the phone unless YOU initiate the call and report any and all threats to the proper authorities!

Destiny

There was a little bit of stress in all this,
but I'll share what's left of the cake!
;) Remember, it's the cyber JELLO that makes your avatar fat!

Today’s blog is all about destiny. Destiny is as much something we make as it is something that happens to us. Whether or not you believe, if you’re told your future by a soothe sayer, that future is guaranteed if you stay on your current course in life. You can change that future by changing your present. That also covers the fortune teller if they are totally wrong. You can’t sue them for your ten bucks back because you changed your present, that voided your forecast! Also, if you “know” your future, you’ll subconsciously make changes anyway, so it’s just as well not to be told.

I have a couple items of destiny coloring my world this week. One bad but filled with possibilities and one really great!

The really great one is a hope... I applied for a couple of jobs with a local corporation yesterday. One looked to be a solid job with which I could learn, grow, enjoy and possibly even support myself. The other one was a clerical position that I thought I’d enjoy and would at least pay my personal bills. I applied through their website for both positions. Today I got an email from their recruiting team. They think I might be a match for the first job and invited me to apply! My interest and theirs crossed in cyber space! Golly, I’m hoping that is today’s rainbow on a rainy afternoon after a sunny morning!

Of course timing is everything. I put my resume in their database when I applied yesterday, but the fact that my job search agent and their candidate search agents matched us up is a good thing! It’s like career dating and I want “us” to be one of those couples on TV!

The not so great bit of destiny - passwords! If you browse through The Chronicles of Nani, you’ll notice that there are passwords for all the past freebies now. There will also be passwords for all freebies moving forward. (Big thanks to Vicki at Bubbles Babbles for her help in setting up my passwords) Mine wasn’t a decision to counter the lack of polite in polite society. I love everyone’s comments! I’m always disappointed if I go to do maintenance on my 4-shared account and see comments there, it gives me the impression that people have downloaded without reading the blog. But, even if they ignored what I wrote, they were still polite in leaving a note of thanks at 4-shared. My decision to add passwords was in response to piracy!

I wonder, is piracy part of the destiny of one who offers products for sharing on the internet? Have I created an atmosphere for it by offering my creative efforts, my intellectual property, for free? Will a password system change my present enough to spare me victimization in the future or, at least, has my response to it protected others and given me good karma to take into the future with me?

As I’ve said before, I study all my stats. I read comments left here, check the download counts at 4-shared, inspect the referral, locations and out clicks on my stat meter. Last week found a referring page that was new. It wasn’t an ad I’d placed or any or the referring pages I’d seen before, so I clicked it. I’m a total believer in link swapping. If you have The Chronicles of Nani linked on you blog, chances are I want to be sure to at least add your blog to my list in the left column! But this site wasn’t a blog. It was a private freebies group. I appreciate the extra promotion for The Chronicles of Nani, but I wanted to see how the group worked and I couldn’t read any of it without a membership. I wrote the group owner and joined the group.

I was troubled by the fact that there was a “download” link for every freebie listed! I clicked on the download link to my own Birthday kit and it went directly to the download, no stop at The Chronicles of Nani, not even a passing glance at the 4-shared page! I very much agree with Vicki that the freebies are a blog-gift. People read the blog, and every now and then, there’s a gift to download. Direct download links are worse than grabbing the spray can cheese on a cracker and not smiling at the person spaying the cheese or picking up a box of the crackers or a can of the cheese, It’s taking the cheese and crackers without ever LOOKING at the person spaying the cheese,the box or the can. It’s just eating and not caring how it got to be in your hands.

“OH NO SHE DI-INT!” said me!

I wrote back to the site owner. I complained about the direct linking, that it violates most digi-scrap TOUs and it was considered a form of piracy. I got a terse email back telling me that she was a ten-year veteran (I think I've met the grandmother of digi-scrapping) and knew what piracy was and nothing was direct linked. Sorry, I clicked on a few kits. I could have downloaded them with no idea who the designer was. They were ALL direct linked.

Now the good news out of this conflict is that when I returned to the site after receiving the email denying everything, the direct links had all been removed. So, of course now, I don’t know what my lying mouse was telling me before I got the reply. But maybe I spared some other designers, amateur and pro, from a few direct link clicks that they get no recognition for. I can’t imagine if I was selling my kits and someone was downloading samples without even seeing the full kit in my store. It’s an injustice to everyone.

So now, to control that, a little anyway, everything has a password. If someone clicks a direct link, they’ll be asked for a password they don’t have because they didn’t stop here and at least say “oh wow” at the logo before scanning for the password. I’m a trusting person and I hate that a stranger violated that trust. I know most people sharing their lives through their layouts are honest and I feel a little guilty that you all have to go through the password thing too. But I’m not offering a freebie today, so if you still stopped by to read, please accept my apology for the new security measures on my freebies and know it’s not because of you! You read the blog anyway!

Oh, and in case you wondered, I did NOT download anything I clicked on to see if they were indeed direct links. To me, that would be like buying one of the watches in the guy’s trench coat downtown. If I know it’s stolen, I’m not making myself an accessory to the crime!