Sad day for me and other geeks. Bob Anderson, the man responsible for the sword choreography in Lord of the Rings and light sabre work in Star Wars (yes, swords and light sabres are different things Rebecca) has died. The really interesting thing to me is that George Lucas was so adamant about not including him in the credits. Thankfully Mark Hamil stood up to Lucas. Here’s a link to the original story at Geek.com.
Tim works really close to where I live (Eastside W00t!) so we met at Set ‘em Up Jacks. It was like, so cute. We like ordered the EXACT SAME SALAD and stuff, and it was like we were the SAME PERSON. Lol.
It was a really fun talk. We talked about our Leadership Lawrence and KLC Summit experiences. We talked some modern American politics. We talked about our young families a little, and as I said in the first paragraph, we seemed to have a lot in common.
The great thing about meeting someone that is so much like yourself is the reassurance that you’re not in it alone. That’s kind of how I felt with Tim. It was nice getting to know someone that saw things the way I do. You know, the RIGHT way. 
Things in the world go in circles. I think this is well understood and accepted. The tech world is no different. The circle I seem to be going in right now is about the (IMHO absurd) policy concerning mobile data. I have had a number of clients, friends, and family ask me why they keep going over their data limit. And they’re not the only ones. Sprint has figured out this chink in the armor of Verizon and AT&T, and its only a matter of time until the rest of America does too. Only offering 2 GBs a month in this digital world? Is that a joke? Oh no. Its a way to charge overage fees. That’s right.
Luckily there are some great ways of saving data (and therefore money) and here are a few of them from Popular Science.
So go get the Opera Mini app for your smartphone, and ask me how to configure your phone settings to save some megabytes. I’ll always try to save you a couple of bucks.
The Raspberry Pi computer should finally be available next year. I have been reading about it since my early Linux days and I am very excited. The most recent improvements have been a new(ish) ARM 700Mhz Processor. I can’t wait to test drive one of these cherries. Um,…wait.
Here’s a picture:
You can learn more by clicking on the picture.
I got a very warm welcome the morning I met Phil at his office for coffee. He picked his office because he has the best coffee, or so I was told. And I wasn’t misinformed; it was damn good coffee. He has been importing it from Costa Rica for years.
I was lucky enough to get a little over an hour of Phil’s time. He’s a busy guy so I savored as much as I could. We discussed a connection we had under the Big Sky country (Montana), and current events such as politics and education. It’s no wonder Phil has been so successful in almost 20 years in business; he is very intelligent, and VERY highly motivated.
So the lesson for the day is: if you have a need or a chance to meet with Phil Rademacher, meet at his place and enjoy your time and his coffee. I know I did.
In my opinion the word that best describes Blair Sutton is: courageous. Don’t get me wrong, Blair is a brilliant guy that is funny and super nice, but his outward courage is something to be reckoned with.
It was great going to lunch with Blair. I found out that he is from the area, moved to Chicagoland with his parents to finish school, then up and moved to Delaware to go to college. When I asked him why he told so he could try something new. There’s that courage again. I found out that he is also an incredibly sweet guy (FYI ladies); he still visits his parents regularly since they’ve moved back to the area, and he takes one of his mom’s yoga classes. The trend of really great people in this years Leadership Lawrence class continues as Blair really educated me in an hour about what leadership is.
Oh, yeah. The second word to describe Blair is: tacos. The man certainly knows his Mexican cuisine.
Another bowl of Chicken Noodle today except this time with Mr. Gary Rexroad of Microsoft. He had one too since he was a little hoarse. Gary is one of the most thoughtful, polite and gentlemanly gentlemen that I have had the pleasure of meeting in Leadership Lawrence so far. As anyone who knows Gary would expect, he started the conversation by asking me about me first and we quickly found that we have similarly blended families. We moved on to business and he told me a little more about his life at MS. We talked a little about our LL2012 classes so far and Gary blew me away with observations that I would have never picked up on. Brilliant guy.
So I think I could have lunch with Gary once or twice a week and never be satisfied; always wanting to talk with him more. He is a eye opener with great ideas and he articulates them SO well. He is a real pleasure to know. A class guy and hopefully some of it rubbed of on me. Thanx Gary!
Today I had the pleasure of going to Noodles & Co. with Sgt. Max Miller from the Lawrence Police Department. This soon-to-be 21 year veteran of the force gave me some great insight about some of the inner workings of the department, and was more than helpful in satisfying my every question. We got some coffee (which he bought – thanx Max!) afterward and continued our great conversation. Max is hilarious even though he doesn’t even have to try to be, and this was one lunch that I look forward to doing again. Except after 5pm. And substitute beer for lunch. Thanx Max! I had a great time!
What xkcd is trying to point out here is that having a password that doesn’t make any sense to you is pointless. For example, the password D0g#ou5e fit the profile of complexity that most websites require. If you look carefully, the password is the word “doghouse” spelled out in the hacker alphabet “l33t” or “Leet.” Although you can get used to using this password, it would take some time.
One of my favorite online utilities is howsecureismypassword.net. As you would think, this website lets you input a password, and it tells you how long it would take a desktop computer to crack your password. When we tested the example password above, the results were that it would take about 57 day to crack that password. That’s less than the 90 days most IT guys recommend you change your password in! Obviously D0g#ou5e is not a very secure password, even if it looks like it should be.
Now lets try a much easier to remember password. A similar example to the one above is Doghouse!!!!!!!!!!!!. Notice that I picked one of my favorite numbers (12) and embedded it into the password in the number of exclamation points, or bangs as geeks call them. It’s an easy to remember password. Just the word doghouse, capitalized, with 12 exclamation points. When I tried this password on howsecureismypassword.net it said it would take about 421 quintillion years! That is 421,000,000,000,000,000,000 years! A little longer than 57 days.And it’s easier to remember
For one more example similar to the xkcd one lets try one that has a little more personal meaning. I’ll try wife+cat+birthday+3, my other favorite number. That would make my password RebeccaMolly32081***. Pretty easy to remember. howsecureismypassword.net says it would take about 6 sextillion years. That’s a 6 with 21 zeros behind it. In years. I think that’s long enough for me. And all I have to remember is wife+cat+birthday+3.
So, as usual, if you have any questions, please let me know. I still recommend changing your password every six months or so. I usually use the same password for everything if I can. I keep a list of websites than I use and spend an hour ever six months going around changing the password on all of them. Its worth it for secure peace of mind.
Just a reminder to all the iPhone & iPad users out there to update your devices now that the new operating system is out there. Soon enough your apps won’t be compatible with your device and you’ll be angry and call me. And do you know what I’ll say?
If you need help finding out what version of iOS you’re on now, or if you have any questions, let us know.
To learn more go here.
