Category: Uncategorized

The epidemic of hacking or cloning or spoofing accounts on Facebook seems to be getting worse as time goes on. I know three of my own friends affected in the last week, so let’s try to beat it back a little. I think we need to start out with a little clarification of what those terms really mean.

When someone pretends to be you and sends new friend requests to people on your friend list, a lot of people think that means you’ve been hacked and you need to change your password. This is very seldom the case. If your account is actually hacked, someone can get into it and make posts or messages that look like they’re coming from you, or change or steal information in your profile, or change your photos, or do anything they want. That’s serious, but usually if someone makes a post that looks like it’s coming from you, it’s because you left your phone or computer logged in and somebody came across it and they’re playing with you. If you actually did get hacked, you need to change your password if the intruder hasn’t already done it and stolen your account from you. You also need to get ahold of FB customer service and work with them to fix it.

Like I said, that’s rare. What most people experience is that somebody who isn’t you is pretending to be you and sending friend requests to people on your list. Almost anybody can steal your profile picture and your cover photo and use them to open a new account using your name. This is called cloning, also known as spoofing.

Why do they do this? Many reasons. They may pretend to be in dire circumstances and request money. They may be able to get people to click on links they provide, which may lead to malware, or ransomware, or even just ads that they get paid to get people to click on. They may be able to glean a lot of information from people who reveal things to friends that aren’t available to the public, which can be used to steal their identities. Lots of bad people are out there doing bad things.

What you can do to help prevent this is restrict a lot of information in your security settings. But if it happens, whether it happens to you or if you get a suspicious request from somebody who’s already a friend, you need to report the offender to Facebook. This is how to do that.

The easiest way is to go to that fake page. Do this by typing your name (or your friend’s name) in the search window, and select the one that looks like you or your friend, but isn’t.

On the bottom right corner of the cover photo is a little square with 3 dots. That’s if you’re on my computer…if you’re on my smart phone, the 3 dots are in a little circle to the right under the profile picture, labeled “More.” Hopefully your computer and phone are close enough to mine and you’ll figure it out…I’ll cross my fingers.

Click on those 3 dots and you’ll get some choices…click on the one that says, “Give feedback or report this profile.” In the next window, click on “Pretending to be someone.” Then you’ll get a choice under that, and you can click on “Me” or “A Friend,” depending on which you’re reporting. After that, click “Send” at the bottom and follow any further prompts that might show up. When I’ve done “A Friend,” it’s given me a list of my friends to pick from so their troubleshooters can determine who’s fake and shut them down. If it’s your account and a friend reports it, you may get contacted by the FB folks to get it sorted out, or it might be obvious and they’ll just fix it. It’s usually pretty quick.

Just remember these tips and if it happens to you again or you get something suspicious from a friend, it’s easy peasy to shut ’em down.

Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.

— Mark Twain

This is what life is like for someone hated with great passion by Mother Nature, not to mention the Universe.

Three weeks ago, I had a tri-axle truckload of topsoil (?) delivered to fill in all the trenches in my front yard caused by the grass unwilling to grow in the shade of all the trees I’m not allowed to cut down, leading to no roots to hold the soil in place, leading to gobs of erosion over the years.  Lawn (?) repair was overdue.

I spent the intervening eternity spreading dirt as I picked out the giant rocks, tree roots, and tangles of rusty barbed wire that somehow appeared in my topsoil (?).

Then I lovingly sprinkled buckets of sun-and-shade-loving (?) grass willy nilly about the property, spread straw everywhere, and started watering because the frequently-promised rain refused to materialize.

The grass began growing.  Success!  Just a little while longer and I would maybe even have an actual lawn instead of a yard of dirt.

Then, today, the forecast was for 40% chance of scattered thunderstorms, with an anticipated accumulation of .02″.  This area has a long history of forecasting rain, pushing the forecast back and back and back, and finally just staying dry.  I jokingly (?) said I should turn on the sprinklers and that way it really would rain.

When it got over an inch of accumulation, I finally put on a poncho and my rubber boots and went out to turn off the sprinklers.  It’s almost stopped now, and so far, we’ve gotten 1.72″.  The rivers going through the yard are starting to drop, but they’ve been running high and very brown from all the topsoil they were carrying away.

Yes, I know.  My fault for making jokes with Mother Nature.

If you hear in the news about a giant sinkhole swallowing half of Tennessee. . .that was me.  Tell my story to the tabloids.

Seventeen years ago today, our nation was stunned by an attack so horrific it was almost incomprehensible that something like that could have happened on our soil. For a lot of people, that has turned into a place in the history books. For the kids who are going into their junior and senior years of high school, it’s something that happened before they were born, shrouded by the mists of time.

But most of us can remember exactly where we were and what we were doing. We can still hear and see and feel the explosions and screams of terror and the shock, whether we were actually there or experienced it through television or the internet. It’s a part of our lives and has had a lot to do with shaping how those lives have been lived since that day.

There was a shift in how we traveled, in how we went through security checkpoints, in how we packed our bags. There was a change in immigration procedures, and how we looked at people who might look or act a little different from us. We changed the way we sensed our surroundings, whether we were comfortable going to public places, and whether we trusted people we’d just met…and even people we’d known a long time.

A lot of what changed was how we banded together against those who wanted to harm us. We had a great feeling of patriotism and a common purpose in protecting our friends and families and our country.

I hope that’s not something that’s fading away in those mists of time…becoming another paragraph in the history books. It’s hard to watch the memorials that have been going on all day, on TV and across social media…but it’s something we really need to do. We need to have those memories to keep the awareness alive, to make sure we never lose the realization of how fragile our freedom and way of life are and how quickly they can be devastated.

I remember it like yesterday. I was deployed to Kuwait for Operation Southern Watch, and I was supposed to be part of the line of defense that protects our country from the forces of evil. But when we turned on the TV news in our little office trailer in the desert after the end of the “normal duty day” and saw smoke pouring out of the first tower, and watched the second plane hit the second tower live on CNN from 6,000 miles away, all we could do was sit and watch.

Everything had changed and we weren’t the ones fighting the enemy. The people confronting the forces of evil were airline passengers, firefighters, secretaries, clerks, stewardesses…all the people we were supposed to be protecting were right in the middle of it and we were powerless to stop it.

We have all of that…the surprise, the shock, the helpless rage…seared into our brains. We’ll never, ever forget it. But those kids in high school, who weren’t even born yet, didn’t feel that impact and don’t have those memories. They’ve seen it on TV, but they don’t feel it inside, like we do. We need to make sure we keep telling them, and showing them, and making sure they understand.

One day soon, they’ll be the ones who will have to confront the forces of evil. They need to understand how essential that feeling of patriotism and unity will be. They need to understand that the world can change in the blink of an eye, and our freedom and way of life might not survive if they don’t come together to protect them.

We need to make sure they understand.

In the blink of an eye, everything can change.  So forgive often and love with all your heart.  You may never know when you may not have that chance again.

Sometimes it’s important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it’s essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.

— Douglas Pagels

The internet: both blessing and curse.  You can find almost anything on it, given time and imagination, but it sucks your time into a black hole and it’s gone forever.

I’m okay with that.  I feel a calling to make order out of chaos and bring balance to the universe (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it), and the internet is my tool.  And it helps divert me from filling giant holes in the front lawn with tons of topsoil and spreading seed and mulching and watering and cleaning up broken branches and mowing and trimming and…oh…sorry…got carried away.

So anyway, back to making order out of chaos and wasting time.  I blame my brother for this recent one, because I can get away with it.  You see, he posted a thing on Facebook about ways to help you survive falls from great heights.  Because he was wasting time on the internet.  Well, part of that article mentioned James Bond jumping out of an airplane and taking another guy’s parachute away from him which, indeed, helped him survive a fall from a great height.  Not so much for the other guy.  Then there was conjecture about what might have happened to the other guy.

The movie sprang instantly to my mind: “Moonraker.”  I remembered that Jaws survived when his ripcord malfunctioned, and we got into a discussion about how.  Actually, he wasn’t the one who lost his ‘chute to Bond, but we were off and running, chasin’ rabbits, and that became unimportant.  I mistakenly recalled that Jaws landed in a haystack.  My brother mistakenly recalled that he went through the thatched roof of a cottage.  Then he cheated (just before I got around to cheating), got on the internet, and found a reference that said Jaws fell through the top of a circus tent and landed in the trapeze net.

Okay, fine.  Order from chaos achieved.  Universe back in balance.  Wasting time, check.  But now James Bond is in my brain when the Staples commercial comes on TV.  “What’s that tune??” my brain asked at the intro.  “That sounds like one of the Bond theme songs!   YOU MUST FIND IT!!”  And off I went.

This went in fits and spurts over a few days, at least.  The time-wasting was, therefore, at least not all in one chunk.  My first guess was that since this was a melodic and pretty intro tune, perhaps it was from Rita Coolidge singing “All Time High” from “Octopussy.”  Went and found it.  Nope, not the one.  But then the search went on hiatus as necessary chores intruded on my mission.

And being diverted by that gave me time to run across a goofy haiku to post on Facebook, since my main theme there is language and wordplay and humor, and a goofy haiku is hard to beat.

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator

And now haiku is in my brain.  And the compartment walls are weak, and James Bond leaked into haiku, and haiku is what’s behind the title of “You Only Live Twice,” and I scrambled for Google and the opening credit video of Nancy Sinatra singing the title song.  YES!!!  SUCCESS!!!

In the perfect blending of multiple accidental convergences of synaptic vertices, and dumb luck, order was formed out of chaos and all stood explained — my mission was complete.  There was balance in the universe again.

But wait…does this mean Staples stole music from James Bond?  I remember George Harrison losing a copyright infringement case because “My Sweet Lord” sounded like “He’s So Fine” by…who was that?  The Chiffons?  Better go check that out.  But wait…maybe Staples used it by permission…or maybe it’s a case of subconscious plagiarism…maybe I can get on The Google and find out…

NO!!  STOP!!

BUT I MUST!!!

(Somebody help me….)

But I’m not the only one who’s OCD enough to notice the background music on a Staples commercial and spend days in search of answers, right?

Right???

 

Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

— Adlai Stevenson