It’s been a while since I wrote here on the Blog. I was doing a little surfing, thinking about my Indian heritage and came across a site i’m sure my Dad has already seen, but if not, here ya go Dad Thought this was really neat and it shows you how to spell out your name in Cherokee. You take the chart below (The Cherokee Syllabary) and basically sound it out. Try it out. It’s pretty fun. Mine is broken down into: mi-ka  so the symbals are basically a capital H O

I’m just a HO LOL.  What’s your name?

Native Languages Org Cherokee

I haven’t written for quite a while, i’ve been a naughty Blogger lol. I still blame it on Facebook. But with all the media coverage and hoopla going on about the “Swine Flu” I was speaking with friends and perusing the internet and came across this from one of my good friends. So I pass this on to you, in the hopes that you will be very careful.

This is the #1 Tip in avoiding the Swine Flu……….children are precious

My daughter comes running into the computer room and says “Dad! Have you checked your email?” I say no. Which usually sends her off, however this time she stands there, staring at me. I look back at her and ask “Would you like me to check it now?” She prompts a yes so I check my email and find a note from her. Sometimes we get a glimpse into the minds of our children. I thought this was funny enough to share. I hope you enjoy it.

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YouTube Direkt

I’ll tell you where they’ve gone…Facebook! Hehe. I know it’s not just me, but I feel like there’s been a BIG wave of writer’s block or something going around. Simply not feeling the motivation to get on the ol’ Blog and type out a little diddy for everyone. Facebook is so quick to just hop on, change your status to something funny, check a few of the little built in games and then get off. I suppose you could do the same on your Blog Lol. I’ll hop on my Blog tomorrow and give everyone a one line update We’re leaders and innovators here! Let’s rock the Blog revolution.

We’ve had a few things happening. Last weekend we left early Friday morning to take the trailer and quads out to the desert. Friday was a cloudy, cold blustery day. We bundled up and still had a great time riding around the desert. What made the weekend rock was on Saturday morning the sun came out, the clouds disappated and there was not a stitch of wind to be found. It was beatiful! We rode around some more. We even broke out some .22 rifles and has some family “soda can shootout” competitions up the hill which was exciting. It really shaped up to be a great weekend and we returned home about 2pm on Sunday to unpack and merge back in to our regular lives.

There is a nasty ’strep’ like crud going around town right now. Lots of folks have it and are jam packing the doctors offices. I know only because BOTH my sweet children managed to catch it on the tail end of our weekend in the desert. By monday, Ashley’s throat felt so bad and was so raw that when she’d cough sometimes little bits of blood could be seen on her tissues. Bad scene. So I grabbed both the girls and headed to Urgent Care to see Pam (PA and long time friend). We waited for about an hour and a half to be seen, but finally got in. They did a quick strep test and thankfully no strep, but we got cough medicine and antibiotics for both the girls. They have a few days of antibiotics in their systems now so they are getting better, but still have a cough and getting the junk out of their lungs.

Hopefully we’ll all be health for Spring Break! What’s everyone doing? Any big Spring Break plans out there??

Identity theft has become one of those buzz words you hear at work, around the water cooler, on the news and probably from your friends. People talk about it a lot now. Do you know what it is? Simply put Identity Theft is when your personal information is stolen and used without your knowledge to commit fraud or other crimes. Someone opening lines of credit in your name is probably the most common form of these crimes.

All of us probably even know someone who has suffered the aftermath of Identity Theft. I know of several myself. But you’re probably asking yourself “Why should I care? It will never happen to me right”? And that’s where you are dead WRONG. Identity theft has become such a prevalent crime that it’s not a matter of if it will happen to you, but when.

Reading this article means you know one more person who has been affected by Identity Theft. Yea, that’s right someone finally got me. And I am writing this to help folks understand a little more about it, and what you can do.

Let’s start from the beginning. What happened? Well as far as identity theft goes, I feel I got off light. On February 25th at around 6:30 pm pacific time, someone managed to hijack my Paypal account and started buying things to the tune of over $1000 dollars. The good news is both Paypal and my bank’s automated Fraud Watch systems both kicked in. This was obviously “Not the norm” for my account and they shut the account down. Being a savy computer guy and always on top of my finances I also have email alerts set on all my accounts. So I immediately started receiving emails notifying me of what was happening.

What do you do? First of all DONT PANIC! Really that will just make it worse. I won’t lie, I had a powerful knot in my stomach from the simple fact that it happened, but I knew there were several things that I needed to do immediately to stem the tide. First, call your bank as soon as you know. If it’s after hours, sometimes there is an emergency services telephone number you can call. If not, leave a message, send an email and be prepared to wake up first thing the next morning at the opening of business for that financial institution. This is what I had to do. I was able to get into my Paypal account and verify it was shutdown so at least no more transactions would occur.

The next morning I contacted the big three credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax & TransUnion) to set up a “Fraud Watch” on my account. Then to also have each one of them put a “Security Freeze” on my accounts as well. This means that no one can open up new credit in my name or even do a credit check. The good news is that anyone that already has a loan for you (Car, Mortgage, etc.) can still look if necessary.

We headed down to the Bank as soon as the doors opened. They were great. We explained what happened and showed them some print outs from Paypal showing what happened. They immediately cancelled our VISA and Debit card and also put a “Fraud Watch” on our Savings and Checking accounts. We filled out a “Written Statement under Penalty of Purgery” form. The police call it an “Affadavit of Forgery” but they are the same thing. This is important because after we finished over at the bank, we headed to the Police Department. We then took that bank form and had the Police open a formal Case number. Make sure you do this because with an official case number, you can fax that to the credit bureaus and financial institutions and they will do a lot of the security freezes, etc. at no charge because you are now officially classified as a victim of identity theft.

With all that taken care of it was time to give all my computers at home the twice over. I scanned from top to bottom. I have several programs (Symantec endpoint security, McAfee VirusScan Enterprise, Spybot Search & Destroy) all were functioning properly, definitions were up to date. So how’d they get in? I found no trojans, no keyloggers, no malware cookies. The answer is I might never know. But i’ll admit that my Paypal password probably wasn’t as strong as it could have been. That of course has now been remedied.  I changed all the passwords to everything to strong passwords. The bank will be issuing me a new account number. New VISA and debit cards are on the way. After just four days the bank reversed all the charges and deposited the money back into my account. Life goes on.

Is Paypal Bad? No. Is online shopping bad? No. Am I going to stop using any of these services? No. There will always be criminals who break the law.

What can you do?

Secure your computers with the appropriate security software and keep them Up To Date.

Set up email alerts for ALL your accounts no matter how small.

Check your accounts often to look for fraudulent activity.

Get your FREE credit report every year and look it over.

Educate yourself. Even if just to Google the term “Identity Theft”. There is an abundance of information out there….USE IT

Here is the recipe for the “Purple Fluff” we had for Micah’s birthday. Some of you may already have it or some variation of already, but for the rest of you who don’t:

1 small package of any flavor Jello
1 container cottage cheese
1 can fruit, drained (optional)
1 tub Cool Whip

Put the cottage cheese into a bowl. Add in the Jello mix straight from the box. Mix until the Jello is mostly dissolved. Mix in drained fruit if desired. Gently, fold in Cool Whip. Cover bowl and chill for at least an hour. This is especially good on the hot summer days we have here in the desert.

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Note* I really like the grape jello and have NO fruit. The fruit usually has extra liquid so it turns the fluff into soup (which is still tasty) but I like the firm fluffy version best ~Micah

Yes i know it’s hard to believe that you can have adventures at Wal-Mart, but really it’s true

We were all sitting around the house last night with that “Cabin Fever” itch that you get from time to time. We wanted to do something, but weren’t sure what. So we pondered our options. It is Ridgecrest so our choices are limited. We can’t go “Hang out at the Mall” tho we could drive about an hour south and do that if we wanted. But it was already evening and a school night. So the closest thing to that is to go hang out at Wal-Mart.

We jumped in the truck and headed down. We hit some of our favorite areas, looked at books, fabrics, furniture, arts & crafts and of course electronics. We needed some ink for the printer at home so we grabed that. We looked at the “throw away” cell phones and plans there, because I refuse to get shackled in to the cell phone regime again (i’ve had some really bad experiences with several of the big carriers).

After wandering around for about an hour, I let the kids pick out a treat and we headed to the checkout. We had a good time. As I was heading out to the parking lot, we saw this strange Red Movie center. Maybe you’ve heard of it? RedBoxDVD.NET I had heard of them before thanks to Spencer & Megs. The had given it good reviews, so I decided to check it out. First Impression was very good. Here’s a company that’s really taking advantage of modern technology for something we all probably use from time to time (renting movies). It was easy to use, the kids thought it was cool to see it “spit out” the DVDs and it even sends an email with a transaction receipt if you wish. We rented two movies and headed home. The email was waiting for me. Very cool. I think the only gripe I had was that it forced you to use a credit or debit card. I did not see a “Cash” slot anywhere. Did I miss it Megs? Other than that, very neat.

So if your out and about, feel like renting a movie, check it out