Author: Jere

First Grade

Today our little baby started the 1st grade. I guess it’s kind of hard to call him our “little” baby as he certainly acts and often says things that make him seem older than six. It seemed summer just flew by and that it was only last week we were picking him up and walking home from Kindergarten. There are a couple of friends who were assigned to the other class, but luckily there are plenty of familiar faces from his class last year to make him feel comfortable. He even gets to sit next to one of them this year. We’re sure he was thinking that Mom and Dad may have been playing things up too much. As we left he was enjoying chatting with his friend. When I got home and asked him how his first day of school went, he said, “Perfect!” I’ll have to remember that and remind him when he gets to jr. high or high school how much he looked forward to the first day of school.


The convoy heads up the road towards the school. Ashlee showing her support and excitement for Nick by wearing her own backpack. She’ll be starting her 4’s class at preschool next week.


The Man enjoying being back at school.


Mom and the Little Guy scoping out some new books at his desk.

Gratis gaming

Here’s a cool article on 10 games you can download and play for free. Four of them are even for Mac. Check it out, and if you don’t have a fast internet connection, get someone to download some for you and burn them to a CD.

Gratis gaming: 10 real PC games you can download for free

Marathon is a good one (both Mac and PC) and so is Starsiege: Tribes, one I wish was available for Mac.

Oh, and in case you are wondering about the 4th Mac and 10th PC game on the list having it’s link removed from the article, a little birdie told me to check the comments below.

PayPal phishing

What’s a phish? Basically, it’s where someone will send an email from what appears to be a legitimate source (eBay, Paypal, various banks are the most common). The email usually contains something along the lines of a change in the privacy policy or user agreement, a change in your account status, or a security concern. It also contains some “click here” link offering you to take care of the matter. Clicking that link will take you to a site that is made to look exactly like the site it’s claiming to be. So you enter all your info, they retrieve your info, they use/sell your info. Pretty scary.

Anyway, here’s an excellent shockwave video demonstrating a common phishing scam.

Want to see an actual PayPal Identity Theft? PayPal phishing site?

Here’s a list of things to help you avoid this. Please note that individually, these things don’t guarantee you’ve recongnized a phishing scam. But if you look for them all, it will keep you more aware of where you’re being sent to when you click a link.

  • 1. Don’t click links found in emails. The safest thing to do is to go to the site by directly typing in it’s address yourself. If an email claiming to be from Paypal sends you a link, don’t click it. Go to your browser, type www.paypal.com, and log in that way.
  • 2. If the email doesn’t address you by name instead of “Dear eBay member”, or “Dear Customer”, it’s probably a scam.
  • 3. When entering information on the web, make sure the address is secure, as in it starts with “https://…” instead of just “http://…”
  • 4. Along the same lines as https, most browsers have a secure icon they will display when you’re on a secure site. The icon is usually a lock, and it’s usually located near one of the corners either by the address/location bar or in the status bar along the bottom. Look for that icon when entering info on the web.
  • 5. Look for a correct address in the address bar (although this can also be hacked). If you’re supposed to be on an eBay page, make sure that ebay.com appears last in the first part of the address (I’m talking about the part either right after the “http://” or right after the “http://www” and right before the first “/” in the address). For example:
    https://secure.ebay.com/purchase is legit.
    https://ebay.secure.com/purchase is NOT legit.

    • As mentioned, not one individual thing listed is good enough by itself to guarantee your online safety. But looking out for all of these things will help you recognize a scam before you give the scammers your information.

    Have you met ASIMO?

    I’ve seen this eerie but very cool, fluid, smooth robot of Honda’s creation several times the past couple of months on TV. I say eerie because his/her/it’s movements are eerily human like. So in case you have yet to see ASIMO in action, or even if you have, here is Honda’s latest commercial featuring him/her/it.

    Honda Worldwide | run/

    (Man with all the he/she/it references, I’m starting to feel like Will Smith in I, Robot)