Old Blog

Austin's School Flashcards

2012-02-18T14:17:00.003-05:00

Here is a quick post with some links to help some of Austin's (my 3rd Grader) classmates get access to the flashcards that I create for him.

Apple portable device - iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad - This is the ideal method, because you will get access to some multimedia flashcards if I get ambitious and create them :) I use a program called Mental Case on my Mac, and with that I can export the "Study Archive", so that you can easily import it. For directions on this method click here *Note you can also use the method below with an iOS App that allows presentation of the information in additional formats such as matching etc.

Austin received a Kindle Fire for Christmas (which he really likes), so in addition to providing the Flashcards on his iPod which is really easy (with the Application I use) I also need to provide them on his Kindle. I use a site called Flashcard Exchange to provide the medium, and an Application from GABYSOFT to download and present the flashcards. They have apps for Apple, Nook, Android, and Amazon devices, so these should work for most people. Click here to read my instructions on how to download the flashcards I have created using these applications.

If you don't have any devices whatsoever, then feel free to view the flashcards themselves on the Web via Flashcard Exchange here. You should be able to bookmark this location for future flashcards as I get them created.

Extension Mobility Login/Logout

2012-02-15T06:00:00.005-05:00

Here is some information about what I did for Extension Mobility during an upgrade from 4.x to 7.x, and then a Python script I used for maintenance afterwards. I don't have a CUCM cluster to validate this all on, but this should get you started :)

As part of the upgrade it was indicated that the users should be logged out of EM before the upgrade, and then logged back in after the upgrade. I think I did a report from CUCM that included the logged in user's name, and MAC Address of the phone. I then used Excel and Notepad++ to manipulate the file until I had a file with the following format that I could run as a shell script:

#!/bin/sh

curl -v "http://CUCM/emapp/EMAppServlet?device=SEPDDDDCCCCAAAA&doLogout=true"
sleep .5
curl -v "http://CUCM/emapp/EMAppServlet?device=SEPBBBBCCCCDDDD&doLogout=true"
sleep .5

I then ran that as a shell script to logout the phones, and piped the results into a text file. It was a few years ago, so what I did from here looks a little sketchy, but it looks like I for some reason had run the logout script against all phones (maybe I couldn't get a report in 4.x that included logged in user) and then I worked through the output results to get the phones that had actually been logged into, and determined who's they were based on their description.

Here is the script I used to log them in to the phones in version 7.x - I made sure to set all the PINs to the same value.

#!/bin/sh

curl -v "http://CUCM/emapp/EMAppServlet?device=SEPDDDDCCCCAAAA&userid=jdoe&seq=12345"
sleep 5
curl -v "http://CUCM/emapp/EMAppServlet?device=SEPBBBBCCCCDDDD&userid=jsmith&seq=12345"
sleep 5

I then ran that shell script, and piped the results into an output file for review... Let me know if you have any problems, because I did this several years ago, and like I said I couldn't test it against a CUCM.

After the upgrade I knew there were times that I would need to swap a user's phone, and being able to log them out, and log them in without interaction was going to be useful, so I created these two Python scripts... You will need to modify the IP Address, and the PIN (set to 12345 in the example). Again, I pulled these out of my Dropbox and wrote them at my previous employer, so couldn't test them. BTW - I believe these were setup for Python version 2, but I will try to validate that...

emlogout.py

#! /usr/bin/env python
import urllib2

mac_addr = raw_input("Enter the Mac Address of the Phone: ")
print "You entered: ", mac_addr

emlogout_url = 'http://CUCM/emapp/EMAppServlet?device=SEP' + mac_addr + '&doLogout=true'

print emlogout_url

urllib2.urlopen(emlogout_url)

emlogin.py

#! /usr/bin/env python
import urllib2

mac_addr = raw_input("Enter the Mac Address of the Phone: ")
print "You entered: ", mac_addr
username = raw_input("Enter the User Name in all lowercase: ")
print "You entered: ", username

emlogin_url = 'http://CUCM/emapp/EMAppServlet?device=SEP' + mac_addr + '&userid=' + username + '&seq=12345'

print emlogin_url

urllib2.urlopen(emlogin_url)

Again, let me know if you have any problems, and I will do what I can to help :)

Cisco Live 2011 Schedule

2011-05-09T08:51:00.006-04:00

I haven't been to Cisco Live in a few years, but I am excited to be going again! Here is my current schedule...

Saturday - Fly to Vegas, Arrive around 7:30 PM

Sunday
1:00-5:00    LTRUCC-2150    Cisco Unified Communications SIP Trunking, Session Management, and Service Advertisement Framework
6:30-8:30    GENCOL-1002    Collaboration Welcome Reception

Monday
8:00-9:30    CUG-4663    IP Communications Product Direction
10:00-11:30    CUG-4665    Unified Communications and Messaging Product Direction
12:00-1:30    CUG-4662    Customer Contact Product Direction
1:45-3:45    Cisco Certification Test
4:00-5:00    CUG-4667    Cisco Collaboration User Group Open Forum

Tuesday
7:00-8:00    CUG-4720    Cisco Collaboration User Group Business Meeting
8:00-9:30    BRKUCC-2542    New Product update for Unified Communication - Commercial Segment
10:00-11:00    GENKEY-4700    Keynote and Welcome Address
11:00-12:30    TT-8035    Table Topics: Tuesday
12:30-2:30    BRKCCT-2012    Cisco Unified Contact Center Express: Advanced Reporting and Scripting
2:45-3:45    GENSSN-1005    Innovation and Accelerating Change: 10 in 10
4:00-6:00    BRKUCC-2301    Cisco Unified Communications at Branch Offices: Deployment Scenarios, Managem...

Wednesday
8:00-10:00    BRKUCC-3000    Advanced Dial Plan Design for Unified Communications Networks
10:30-11:30    GENKEY-4701    Cisco Technology Keynote
12:30-2:30    BRKUCC-1903    Migration and Co-Existence Strategy for Unified Communications (UC) or Collab...
2:45-3:45    GENSSN-1006    Cloud Computing and Virtualization: Getting Ahead of the Curve
4:00-6:00    BRKUCC-2501    Cisco UC Manager Security

Thursday
8:00-10:00    BRKUCC-2062    Enabling Mobile Workers with BlackBerry Mobile Voice System Integration to Ci...
10:30-11:30    GENCOL-4641    Town Hall: Collaboration
12:00-2:00    BRKCCT-2015    Troubleshooting Cisco Unified Contact Center Express
2:30-3:30    GENKEY-4702    Closing Keynote: William Shatner
4:00-5:30    BRKARC-2091    Branch and Head-end of Tomorrow: Deploying Cisco ISR G2 and ASR 1000 in the E...

Late at Night - Fly Home

iPhone or iPod Touch App List

2010-01-04T21:29:00.004-05:00

I don't want to go a whole year without writing a post, so here is a list of Apps that I recommend to anyone sporting a new iPhone, or iPod Touch (some are more specific to the iPhone) in 2010 :) I look forward to hearing your comments of Apps I missed... I am including them as iTunes Links to make it easier...

Business/Productivity
Evernote - A great note-taking app that allows you to sync between PC, Mac, and iPhone
WebEx - If you work in a place that uses WebEx this is a great app for joining a meeting via 3G or WiFi
Remember the Milk - This does require a $25 purchase at their site to go pro, but if you are looking for a great task manager that works well on the web, and on your iPhone/iPod Touch then I recommend this one.
Keynote Remote - If you have a Mac, and you have Keynote this is a great way to give a presentation. The iPhone connects via WiFi to the Mac, and creates a great presentation tool.
My Check Please! - If you need to calculate a tip, or split a bill with other people at a restaurant.
myWireless - Manage your ATT Account if you have an iPhone (or ATT Wireless Account).
Dropbox - My favorite place to store documents, and have them sync across my Work PC, Mac at Home, and now my iPhone. If you don't have an account, and need one, please click here to sign-up.
scanR Card - I like this app for taking a photo of a business card, and having it email me the contact information (always proofread it when adding the contact). BTW - the industry should standardize the type, and layout of the right-hand side of business cards.
Mark the Spot - ATT's newer App for reporting bad coverage areas. Let's hope they listen, because I mark my house very often.
Dictionary.com - I really only use this when defending a word that I created when playing Words With Friends :)
Dragon Dictation - I haven't used this a ton yet, but based on who created it I expect that it will be a fairly functional App for dictating notes.

Social Media
TweetDeck - The Twitter client that I use, because it will sync my "lists" between Computer and iPhone
Facebook - I think there are like 350 Million people on Facebook, so if you are then you should probably have the App.
Bump - The modern day way to "beam" your contact information to another user.
Mover - The App I use to share a photo with @xyzdawnmp when I get a good shot with my iPhone that she wants a copy of.
Over Here - We dropped @xyzdawnmp off at a store one day, and didn't have an easy way to tell her where we parked. After that I went out and got this little app that is easy to use when needing to convey your location.

Navigation-ish
Google Earth - A cool app for "flying around" virtually, and looking at satellite images
AccuWeather - I downloaded this when we were at Walt Disney World, and it saved us from getting stranded in a horrible storm several times.
Urbanspoon - For when you need a place to eat. I haven't done this App justice, but the few times I have used it were valuable.

Fun Stuff
CoinToss - I live in a "cash-less" world, so how else am I going to flip a coin :)
Postman - Probably better if you have an iPhone, because it allows you to make "postcards" of your photos, and input messages etc, and then email them off.
Tic Tac Toe Free - A great way to entertain the kids with a quick game of Tic Tac Toe.
Days Until - You have to know how long until that next exciting event (aka Disney World Vacation), and it even lets you associate a picture.
Shazam - A great App that will listen to a song playing on the radio, and give you the name & artist. It does require a microphone for the iPod Touch.
PI83 - I grew up when TI Calculators were just getting introduced into the mainstream, so being a geek I had to have a graphing calculator on my iPhone. I know everyone had the quadratic formula programmed in (until they just started including it).
Remote - Plug your computer into your stereo and use this App to control iTunes, so you can jam while cooking dinner, and control your playlist remotely.
Geocaching - The best way to Geocache if you are in to that at all :)
ESPN ScoreCenter - The App I use for keeping up on all my favorite teams.
Showtimes - How else will you know when the movie you want to see is playing at the closest movie theater.
Lightsaber - A Jedi always carries his weapon close.
Zippo - Conversation piece unless you are at a concert.
Words With Friends Free - A great game for playing "Scrabble" with friends who have an iPhone or iPod Touch.
R-U-Buzzed? BAC Calc - A quick way to make a better judgement as to whether or not you should be driving home or not after a few drinks.

BTW - This post was inspired by @jasmas who recently ordered an iPhone...

A Quick Post - Twitter

2009-03-20T20:48:00.002-04:00

I know you are all sick of me talking about Twitter, but I really do think it is awesome :) A few thoughts/examples on why I think it is cool...

- Kids Hockey Team - Some parents can't make it all the time to the games, so a nice parent (like me) tweets the goals, and then gives a score update after each period. The parents and grandparents that are at work or at home are able to keep up on how the games are going.

- Ashley's Birth - Many people were on the edge of their seats waiting for updates on the birth of our lovely daughter Ashley Marie, so I used Twitter to announce her birth to the world real-time. She was born at 8:22 AM, and I tweeted about 3 minutes later that it was a girl... I was able to continue with updates, and my followers were able to see pictures as soon as they were posted etc...

It is just a great way to share information in real-time, and people can "opt-in" to whether they care about what you have to share...

Ashley Marie

2009-03-13T11:38:00.002-04:00

Ashley Marie was born at 8:22 AM and weighed in at 8lbs 4.5ozs, and was 19.5 inches long... Everybody is doing great, and here are some pictures to get started :)

Thanks for all the prayers and well wishes...

Santa's List

2008-12-16T04:26:00.003-05:00

So, I thought I would check on the boys to see if there were on the Naughty or Nice List this year... It looks like both the boys made the nice list at this point...

http://family.go.com/santas-list/video/41850-jpapesh/

http://family.go.com/santas-list/video/41845-jpapesh/

--Joe

An update on the world around me...

2008-11-07T22:32:00.002-05:00

Again, I am behind on my blog, but you have probably come to expect it by now :)

Facebook - I have taken the plunge, and built out my Facebook profile, so if any of you are on there feel free to look me up :)

School Computer Lab - We had our 1st Technology Committee meeting, and are now in the process of ordering some new lab equipment, and making plans for a mid-year upgrade.

Hockey - Tommy's Hockey is going great, and we are all still having fun going to the games etc...

New Baby - We had an appointment on Monday, and everything went well... Dawn is really feeling the baby move, and I am getting excited for the new addition.

Austin - We are still doing learn-to-skate, and Austin seems to be getting better. From a school perspective he is doing great, and we are really happy with his progress.

CIPTUG - I am going to conference this week in Orlando, so I ordered a 2-day Park Ticket for myself, so hopefully I will have some fun while I am down there and get re-energized.

Work - We are preparing for a major phone system upgrade in the next few months, so things are going to get crazy busy again. We are also still trying to replace the person who was working with me on stuff, so that will help settle things down.

Well, that's it for now... Have a Great Day!

--Joe

Number Ten Scores Again!!!

2008-10-20T20:40:00.002-04:00

WHOO WHOO!!!

Tommy scored again during his game on Sunday as his team won 6 to 3. They lost on Saturday 8 to 0, but on Sunday they played well, and Tommy even scored a goal :) Here it is for your viewing pleasure...

Hockey Baby!!!

2008-10-14T05:11:00.003-04:00

I guess the title is backwards, because I am going to talk about baby first...

We are expecting a new addition to our family in March, and yesterday we had an appointment with the Fetal Medicine specialist... We know her pretty well, because she consulted on Austin's heartbeat issue, and was involved with Autumn's Turner's Syndrome. It was a little surreal walking in there after the last time when we received such terrible news, but this appointment was awesome. They did an ultrasound and checked everything, and by the looks of it we are growing a healthy jumping bean. It was a pretty big relief for Dawn and I, and hopefully Dawn will let herself get a little more excited now :)

Now, on to Hockey... We have been busy going to practice etc, and on Sunday we had two Exhibition Games in Port Huron. We won the first game 5 to 1, and tied the second game 3 to 3. The biggest excitement was that Tommy scored in the first game. I have a video of the goal below including the wave to Mom afterwards :) Great Job Tommy!!!

The McCain Team

2008-09-19T17:10:00.002-04:00

I joined The McCain Team, and added an icon to my blog as well... The most important thing is that everyone needs to exercise their right to vote, because we are truly blessed to live in a nation where every citizen has a voice...

Passwords again...

2008-09-18T21:20:00.002-04:00

I know it will seem like I am beating a dead horse here, but I think it is warranted based on the information in this article about how someone broke into Sarah Palin's yahoo email account...

So, again my post from July is worth reading again about how to create secure passwords, but I would like to add a little to it. You can add notes for yourself in the "comments or notes section" in KeePass, or Password Safe for the password reset questions that you setup.

Just looking out for my loyal readers :)

Google Chrome

2008-09-13T14:04:00.003-04:00

I just wanted to take a quick minute, and blog about Google Chrome. It is a new web browser that was built from the ground up by Google. All of the other major browsers in existence have been "upgrades" that have evolved over time. Here are some of the highlights...

- Individual Tabs as processes - We have all had a browser "lock-up" on us from time to time, but if this happens in Chrome it will only lock up 1 tab, because each of the tabs is its own browser running independent of the other windows.
- Task Manager - Yes, they built a task manager into the web browser.
- Tab Management - You can drag tabs fluidly, and pull them out as their own independent window, and then put them back into your main browser window. You can also setup a set of tabs as your homepage, so that all of your regular webpages open up when your browser opens.
- JavaScript - Fancy stuff on webpages has been re-programmed so that it can run extremely fast.
- User Interface (UI) - The UI is streamlined, and the goal for Google was for the browser to "disappear", so that you could use the application inside of the web browser without a problem.
- Independent Applications - You can turn any webpage into its own independent application that has its own icon on the desktop. It is really cool for Gmail, Google Calendar, and Remember the Milk.

Overall, the speed of Google Chrome is fast, and it really does change the browser experience... However, they haven't released the Mac or Linux versions yet, and there are still some web pages that don't work in it, but as with everything Google it is only a "beta" and they are working to correct those issues...

Check out Google Chrome by clicking here!

Big News!!!

2008-08-25T16:42:00.002-04:00

You might want to head over to Dawn's Blog for an important announcement :)

Dawn's Latest Post

Having a Great Time in Florida!!!

Disney Excitement!!!

2008-08-24T02:26:00.002-04:00

Well, I am up earlier than I need to be. *sigh* I couldn't fall asleep and the last I looked at the clock it was 10 PM, and then I was awake 2 AM. Well, I guess that is what happens when you are a Disney freak like me :) They boys were pretty pumped up last night, and Austin was really smiling from ear to ear, and super excited about going today when we tucked him in. It was cool to see him all "geeked up" for going.

I tried to check-in online with AirTran yesterday, but I couldn't so I called them to make sure our seats were assigned together. I think we have everything covered, and as long as we get some rain-free days we should be all set! Although, a friend at work made a good point that a wet day at Disney is always better than any day at work. I guess I agree with him :)

If you want to follow along I am going to try at Twitter as much as possible, or you can click this link to see a map or list of what we are doing... I have filtered it so it will only show updates from me.

Twisney for NetPappy

In other news the boys and I did a bunch of running around yesterday and we ended up getting Crocs. I couldn't believe how comfortable they were, and they should be nice for wet days at the parks. However, I don't like taking a new pair of shoes to WDW, because of the chance for blisters, so hopefully that won't happen.

Also, at church last night I spoke to Stan, and he is still interested in becoming Catholic. We had discussed it over a beer or two at a baseball tournament and I was shocked to learn that he wasn't Catholic. His two boys go to school with Tommy and Austin, and I know his wife is, so I guess I just assumed he was. Well, I guess we are good to go for RCIA classes, and I am looking forward to it, because it has been several years since I went through it, and I was a lot younger then. I was raised general Protestant, and at first Catholicism was weird, and I had heard so many "attitudes" towards it when I was young. I must say that I am really glad I converted, and that we have made church an important part of our family life. I also am really glad I joined the Knights of Columbus *shameless plug* because I enjoy hanging out with the guys, and doing the work we do for charity.

Well, I guess I should get going... Have a Great Week, and stay tuned to our blogs for continuing updates :)

WHOO WHOO Vacation!!!

2008-08-22T06:13:00.002-04:00

Today is my last day of work, and then it is Disney World Vacation for me :) We will be at the airport 48 hours from now, and we can't wait!!! Of course we have some running around, and all the packing to do yet, but the team is ready to roll, and it looks like Tropical Storm Fay is finally moving out.

Stay tuned for more details :)

Our Precious Angel...

2008-08-15T21:16:00.006-04:00

So, here is my second post for today, but this one is much more important...

We found out today that the marker was placed for our daughter Autumn Rose. Dawn was busy tonight, and had stopped by earlier today, so I decided to stop by with the boys this evening. I had stopped by last week, and saw that they had set the foundation, so I figured it would be soon, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to see it. There have been some flowers on her grave most of the year since December (thanks to our parents, and my brother), but it was primarily the rectangular cut-out of sod that brought back the memories and pain of that cold day in December for me.

Dawn and I had selected the marker, so I knew what to expect, but I also knew that staring back at me was going to be her name. This was the name we had spoken about for years if we ever had a girl, and in my own mind I probably had walked her down the aisle a dozen times, taken her to breakfast at Cinderella's Castle, watched her play sports, and been to a dance recital or two. We never found out what we were having for either of the boys, and these are the thoughts that you have when you are excited about being a dad.

So, I headed out there... The marker turned out really nice, and I am so happy that we decided to get it. It was hard to stand there and read her name, but it was easier than I thought it would be. (I just spent a few minutes reading my old posts from December... Whew, that was a hard ordeal...) So, now the world will know that in that little piece of ground is buried Our Precious Angel that in just several weeks touched our lives forever...

My blog & twitter timeline...

2008-08-15T20:59:00.002-04:00

I know I have been slacking on posting, but here you go... Hopefully not too techy...

Anyway, I received a link from my buddy Jason, but I have confidence that he won't blog about it, and I wanted to share it with everyone. The URL is http://www.dipity.com and what it does is allow you to create a time line and flip book that can include multiple feeds easily, so I added my blog, and my twitter RSS, and voila... You could also add your photos via their RSS feeds (photobucket, picasa, youtube, etc), and with all that stuff being date stamped you have an easy way to produce a chronological display of all those different sources. I can't help but think this would be awesome for a "baby-book" type application. Here is my timeline...

Poor Bird... A picture for Jill M...

2008-08-02T06:47:00.003-04:00

Jason, and I were walking out to lunch on Friday heading to A&W for some draft root beer, and some world class coney dogs... We walked past this vehicle in the parking lot at work, and I had to take a picture for Jill M, because she is the only person I know that takes pictures of puke and dead rabbits...

Good Luck Adam!!!

2008-07-11T23:08:00.005-04:00

So, today was the last day of work for a friend of mine, and I just wanted to take a second to wish him the best of luck... He is leaving a successful career in Cisco Routing and Switching to pursue his MBA from the University of Chicago. I have worked the closest with him over the last 3 years, and we have done several projects together including (but not limited to, because I am sure I will forget some)...

Initial Phone System Deployment
Remote Phone Testing and Deployment
Wireless - He did most of this, but I added my $.02 :)
VPN Implementation
New site integration - the one I am still working on
Video Conferencing Deployment
New Building Expansion

It has been a busy 3 years, and while there were challenges I would like to think that we had some fun along the way :)

I did have the pleasure of taking him to his first Disney experience last year at Disneyland when we went to the Cisco Networkers Conference :)

Good Luck, and God Bless...

Here are some pics I had handy...

Crazy Project, Voicemail, and Passwords...

2008-07-08T06:10:00.003-04:00

Good Morning Campers... It is 5:25 AM at the hotel I am staying at, and I woke up, because I went to bed at a little after 10 last night. Of course the internet is down, so I am typing this in TextEdit, and will paste to blogger later. I have been really busy with this project I am doing to setup a new site for the company we purchased last year. The good news is that I only have one more telco circuit to be turned-up, and I should be doing that today. The bad news is that every time I think about this project I get overwhelmed by the amount of work left to do... I swear I am losing hair, and going grey (or is it gray) over this one. You can read over at Dawn's blog about the great weekend we had over the 4th of July. It felt like we were trying to cram in all the family time we didn't have last week while I was traveling into the few days I had off, but nevertheless it was awesome.

I was reading my Google Reader last night, and there was a post on lifehacker about whether or not we should get rid of voicemail in the world... I am totally for the removal of voicemail, because I find that it is cumbersome to access, slows me down, and doesn't fit into "my workflow" (which is driven by email). We have people at our company that can utilize our voicemail system so rapidly that I can't keep up which is crazy because I am the phone guy. They know all the buttons, and are proud of the fact that they can speed through it. I, however, am just glad that we have Cisco Unified Messaging, so that my voicemail shows up in my email box. I can then have the phone system call me and play the message, or I can play it through my computer speakers. The only problem this causes me is that people tend to forget their passwords (because they don't use them), and when they go on vacation and try to leave an out-of-office message they need their passwords reset. On my cell phone I have switched to YouMail which I love, because I get a text message that a voicemail was left, and it tells me who called, the length of the message, and I can login to a webpage to hear the message instead of dealing with the cumbersome TUI (in telco speak that is Telephone User Interface). *stepping off soapbox about voicemail*

BTW - the internet just came up, but I am going to finish this post here, and then paste it in :)

The next topic is for my dear wife, and while some of you might think tech post, you might want to read this one... I spoke on January 3, 2008 briefly about passwords, and the application of the year for 2007 being Password Safe, however, a former boss of mine used to say something to the effect of, "I reserve the right to be smarter today than yesterday", so I am going to speak about another program here as well... This all started, because I was logging into our Credit Union website to balance the checkbook, and they prompted me that I needed to change the password. I tried my latest and greatest password that is "easy to remember", and it didn't meet the criteria, so I looked a little closer to the rules for their passwords, and it apparently didn't like the fact that I had the same letter back-to-back. So, I got frustrated opened my KeePass, and generated a password... KeePass and Password Safe are two programs that allow you to keep your passwords encrypted and secure, and is the only way to have super-secure passwords (unless you are super duper brilliant, and can remember 20 letters, numbers, and symbols jumbled together).

Let's talk about the types of passwords that you have these days, because I see them fall into two categories... The ones I need to remember, and the ones I don't... We all need one that we can remember which should be created by using the first letter of every word in a phrase (provided those letters don't form a word themselves), and also include a number or special character. An example would be taking the phrase "Joe is an excellent blogger and I enjoy reading his posts", and the password I would use for that is Jia3ba13rhp* (I substituted a 3 for the e's and a 1 for the I), and you can see that it is a pretty good password, but because I know the phrase it becomes easy for me to use. I would use this easy to remember password for logging into my computer every morning at work, my gmail account and/or securing my password database in KeePass, or Password Safe.

The other type of password is the one that you really don't need to be able to reference from memory, and therefore the more secure it is the safer you are. In fact, think about the number of websites you sign-up for with the same username, and password combination, and the fact that with a cool webpage I could get you to sign-up for my site with those same credentials, and now I can access your bank account, ebay, paypal, etc... I am slowly moving all my passwords to a password database to alleviate this problem. The password database is encrypted, local to you (I recommend backing it up to a USB Key regularly), and can generate super-secure passwords with the click of a button. So, next time you are at a web page ready to register with your old standby password, stop and think that now would be a good time to be smarter today than yesterday and get your password database going...

So, my wife needs to download one of them, and I recommend KeePass (versus Password Safe), because it has better "cross-platform" support, so someday when she gets a Mac she can just copy her database over. Once she gets that setup I can give her the cryptic, couldn't type it if she wanted to, password that is on our Credit Union account :)

If you are looking for a really techie post check out this post from Jason that I use to sync my password database from my work computer to my MacBook with ease...

Dawn at Today Show

2008-06-17T23:24:00.002-04:00

Dawn went to New York, and left me at home with the boys... I don't want to sound like a wimp, but let's just say it has been a rough go of it for me. Keep in mind that she went to DC just a few weeks ago, and my work has been extremely crazy lately (and it is going to get worse before it gets better).

Anyway, several years ago I went to New York on business, and on a cold November morning trudged several blocks to be at the Today Show. I had told Dawn to tape it, but she didn't, because she got up late. So, as she sat there eating her Cheerios, she saw me waving, and saying, "Hi Dawn, I Love You".

Of course, I had to work this morning, but I setup the DVR, and after watching the video below you will see that she decided to say hello to Julie... So, I guess that tells you where the boys and I rate these days... Anyway, here is her 1/2 second of fame (if you look close you might also see Jill, Lupe, and Amy)... I put this together pretty quickly (on the MacBook of course)...

Happy Birthday Dawn!!!

2008-06-11T16:56:00.001-04:00

Today is my wonderful wife Dawn's 30th Birthday. We have been married for 10+ years and I know that I would choose her again in an instant. She is my best friend and I can't imagine my life without her. We have been blessed with two wonderful boys and a happy home.

So happy birthday baby and here's to another 30 years of happiness and whatever god has instore for us.

We are driving down to the Tiger game, so let's hope they can win.

Summer Time...

2008-06-03T20:15:00.003-04:00

Summer Time is here...

The kids and wife are out of school. We won our first softball game on Sunday, and the weather is getting nicer here in Michigan.

Tommy is still playing Hockey, and we have the tournament in Toronto in a couple of weeks. He will then be done until August, so he will get a little break. He is also playing baseball, and seems to be enjoying it...

Austin is doing good, and seems to be really talking quite a bit, and with lots of clarity.

Dawn is still playing hockey, and it sounds like it is going to continue into the summer. She is also going to New York with a couple of friends right before we go to Toronto, and I think she is excited about it.

I am keeping busy at work with the integration of our new facility out east. It has caused me to miss going to Cisco Networkers in Orlando on June 22nd... I wish I was going, but I don't think they are going to change their mind, so hopefully the project will go well, and I can minimize the amount of traveling that I have to do.

Sorry for the short post, but not too much going on...

Softball Season...

2008-05-24T09:43:00.002-04:00

We had a practice and cook-out for our Co-Ed Softball Team last night... Dawn is the coach/coordinator, so we had a practice, and then had everyone came over to the ranch for a cook-out and potluck.

The turn-out for the practice was good, and we were able to field a full team. I would like to welcome Nate and Amy to the team... That meant we had a house full of people for the party afterwards... I grilled the brats, burgers, and hot-dogs. Doug (who is now to be called Woody) brought some wood from his renovations, so that we could have a fire on our deck in the fire pit. We drank a ton of brews, and everyone had a great time... Here are some pictures the morning after...

We drank lots of beer...

We set the table on fire... Yes, I had to run and get some water to put the fire on table out :) It was pretty crazy that there was a glow below the table for a little bit...