Goodbye 2013

Well it is that time again. 2013 es terminado. Naturally, I guess, you see a lot of “The Year In Review”-type articles, as well as “What To Expect In The New Year”-type articles. (Have you started thing about your “resolutions” yet?)

I don’t feel much need to review the year: rather just bid it adieu. And my ‘prediction’ for 2014 is it will be much the same as this year was.

I think it a safe bet: the number of Americans who will have their identity stolen will remain measured by the 10′s of thousands: credit card fraud will continue to plague the financial and insurance industries. And thousands and thousands of you will fall for a “rogue antivirus” pop-open attack… even though the warnings have been published (weekly) since 2007, and there has been a “National Cyber Crime Awareness Month” for a decade.

The same miniscule percentage will actually read the owner’s manual.

Life will get busier and more complex.

~ ~ ~

I will keep my “resolutions” for this coming year personal, and I will wish you much success in yours. I thank you for visiting here this past year, and I hope to see you again in 2014. I offer you my sincere wishes for a healthy, happy, and prosperous new year!

Today’s quote: “Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Sunday Beauty #143

Here’s another interesting image for your Sunday.

Click on image to see more by this artist

“A New Start” by Rose Arisen, courtesy of Flickr Commons.

Today’s quote: “All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.” ~ Calvin Coolidge

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Internet Psychology

I often marvel at the thought processes I see displayed, and marvel further at the fact that such things as shown below actually produce the desired results.

Contact my lawyer in Cambodia …

What are people thinking? How does the human mind work? Why would someone send these emails? (Why did they use all caps?)

The answers lie in the fact that such frauds steal $105 BILLION USD’s annually (that’s what’s been reported.. but I suspect that’s just the tip of the iceberg). And it’s hard for me to remain positive, upbeat and optimistic about Man’s future when I know that people actually are going to contact Isar Aqilah’s ‘lawyer’ …

Have you heard the term “social engineering”? If not, click here and learn an important thing to know in our modern world. (If you do know, forward this on to friends/family who you suspect are clueless, please.) Because it seems everyone is doing it.
And this is a bigger threat to “national security” than anyone’s willing to face. (So let’s pretend it’s not there. Maybe it will go away.)

Today’s quote: “Every good act is charity. A man’s true wealth hereafter is the good that he does in this world to his fellows.” ~ Moliere

Fun video: It’s been a while since I put up one of these..

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Expidited Delivery Problem

Take a look at the image below, and tell me how many ‘red flags’ you can spot.

… she seems kind of proud of herself …

Yes, folks. Just because Christmas is over doesn’t mean we’ve left Threat Level Red cybercrime season.

Please be on the alert, and THINK before you click. On the Internet, curiosity CAN hurt you (yes, shouting). [note: when you “open”, or ‘download’, you’re bypassing your antivirus/firewall. So you better be sure it’s safe.]

Today’s quote: “We have the right as individuals to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.” ~ Davy Crockett

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

A Word From Frank (and me too)

Dear Reader, thank you for being here. I hope you will..

Today’s quote: “Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.” ~ Virginia Woolf

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories.
Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

How to Add Images and Color to Your Holiday Letters

Word Tricks Makes Letters Merrier (updated for ‘the Ribbon’)

It is the Holiday time of year. (Is it just me, or did 2013 pass-by rather quickly?) Each year at this time, I post this article which demonstrates a few tricks to make your Season’s Greetings letters more joyous, and your documents more visually interesting. Many of you already know the A-B-C basics of manipulating fonts and formatting, and so this will be review.. and loyal readers may remember this one..

Tip of the day: Add some festivity to your documents with fonts and color. MS Word has a lot of features and options built into it that allows for some very creative elements to be added to your correspondence, and is not at all limited to cold, “professional” documents. I’ll use Word for this demo, but you can do this in most text editors, and e-mail programs. Today I’m going to use a hypothetical holiday greeting letter to show how to add some fun. By default, Word sets the font to Calibri at 11 “points” in height. I have typed in my text, to get things started, and will demonstrate using this letter’s “opener”. As it is a header, I have “centered” the text. As you can see, this font and text does not quite convey the joy and cheer and “best wishes” I am hoping to express. In fact, this may as well say, “Memo from Giganti Corp.” Yawn! So first thing I’m going to do is ‘tweak’ the font style, and make some word bigger (louder), to express a less formal tone.  I “highlighted” Season’s Greetings, and used the Font drop-down arrow and selected a cursive font– Lucida Handwriting (explore Word’s various fonts, and find the one you like best). I set the point size to 36. I repeated the process on the second sentence, but set the type smaller.. only 18. I think you’ll agree, this is much more “friendly” than the default’s look. But this is just not Festive enough! Let’s use some color and improve things some more.  I have again “highlighted” season’s greetings to select this font, and then clicked the Font Color button on the Home tab. I then clicked on the little red box in the color-picker. Now season’s greetings is red. I want to alternate letters in green, so I hold down the Ctrl key and use my mouse to “select” every other letter. I didn’t really like the greens available on the color-picker, so I clicked on “More Colors”…. … and selected a green that contrasted nicely with the red– as the box in the lower right corner shows. This is the result of these steps. Much more jolly! But, something’s missing… Let’s add one more thing– a picture of a candy cane. I went on the Internet and found a Royalty-free graphic (though a piece of Clip Art would do just as nicely) and…  Voila! I could ‘go crazy’, and get carried away with adding things here… but I hope you will be able to see by this little demonstration — using only two of Word’s functions — that you are limited only by your own creativity, and that it’s easy to personalize and ’spice up’ your documents. (I should have matched the greens… but ran out of time.. sorry.)

*     *     *

Today’s quote: How ’bout some more Longfellow? “The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories. Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.

Into Each Life, A Little Rain Must Fall

That’s come to be a metaphor. Or simile. (Or one of those type thingies.) Meaning (kinda sorta) that *cruddy* stuff (that makes us sad) happens to all of us, sooner or later. But did you know it was from a poem? (Those of us with USA Public School educations probably didn’t..) I, as a rule, don’t like poetry.

“THE day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains,and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains,and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart, and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Which reminds me of the time a wisenheimer told me that we need misery so that we know what joy is. (No. I didn’t smite them.) If you are feeling a bit.. um, gray and/or dreary, you might wanna take a look at another of my old off-topic posts (here). And it won’t hurt to read this, either. If you aren’t.. yippee! Smile and spread that good fortune around a bit, won’t you? Maybe today’s the day for a random act of kindness, eh?

Unrelated to anything: I just finished reading Robert Fulghum’s Uh-Oh: Some Observations from Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door. What a delight. IMHO, you see something by him? Pick it up. It’ll cure what ails ‘ya.

Friday’s video:

Sorta Related:  How to make people like you: 6 science-based conversation hacks

“So you want to know how to make people like you? It’s easier than you think.” Read more..

Today’s quote: “Hope and faith must be active verbs.” ~ Robert Fulghum

Copyright 2007-2013 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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>> Folks, don’t miss an article! To get Tech – for Everyone articles delivered to your e-mail Inbox, click here, or to subscribe in your RSS reader, click here. <<

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All we really have, in the end, are our stories. Make yours great ones. Ones to be proud of.