Party With the Dead

Rogue Turtle.com has opened a store at store at CafePress.com. Now you can get a wide range of clothing and gifts with you favorite Rogue Turtle logo proudly emblazoned.


Or, if you want to keep things private, you can get either of these.

Everywhere I go, I hear complaints about pop-ups. I have many thoughts on this and invite comments from others to add to this post if you have success stories to share.

First, we need to make sure we have some definitions straight so we can talk about this. There are essentially three categories of software that we need to address: viruses, spyware, and adware. Collectively they can all be called "malware" meaning software that is "bad."

• Viruses: This is an overused term for software that installs itself on your computer, then uses your regular activity, software, and internet connectivity to propagate itself. A virus may be benign (spreading some stupid message) or malicious (deleting or manipulating programs or documents). Most commercial virus software such as Norton or McAfee are very effective in detecting and removing viruses.
  
  
• SpyWare: Software that watches what you are doing. What keys do you type? What web sites do you visit?
  
  Not all spyware is necessarily bad. The Google toolbar is spyware. However, the statistics they collect (what are you searching for? and what pages do you visit?) are not used for targeting ads, but for improving Google's own measure of site relevance, popularity, and importance - as well as helping them find new sites that can be added to their search results (indexed).
  
  Other spyware (the more common kind) is watching where you surf. They use this information to profile and target you with the next category of malware.
  
  
• AdWare: Software that generates ads. This is where pop-ups get serious. It is one thing to visit a site that is "ad supported" and therefore *may* pop-up an ad. It is quite another to have software get installed on your computer that can generate ads at any time or in response to any action.
  
  
  
  • Basic adware can attach itself to your browser (as an add-on) and then show ads when you change pages.
    
  • Next, adware can look at the URL for the site you are visiting and try to show relevant ads.
    
  • Next, adware can reference the data stored by spyware to show ads based on your surfing habits.
    
  
  

Viruses (and spyware and adware) does have an unfortunate similarity to their biological namesake. Once you've got it, it is hard to get rid of it. Most malware is designed to be difficult to remove. If you try to uninstall this software like any other program, you will likely see the program reappears as soon as you restart your computer (possibly even before that). Several companies offer free and low-cost software that will check your computer for spyware and other unwanted software and help you remove it.

That said, please:

NEVER BUY ADWARE/SPYWARE REMOVAL SOFTWARE FROM A POPUP AD!

Think about it. You just got a pop-up that read something like "Your computer may be at risk..." or "Your computer is infected..." then goes on to tell you that you must install WinMegaFix version 5 to clean your computer.

Who wrote the ad? That's obvious - WinMegaFix, Inc. Who wrote the adware that showed you the ad? Yep, WinMegaFix, Inc. Will WinMegaFix version 5 remove the ad? Yep - for about 6 weeks. Then you will need PCSuperScrub version 2 (by WinMegaFix, d.b.a SuperScrubs) - digital bastards.

If you are going to click on an ad, look for the "Ads by Google" label. These are at least real businesses that are hosting ads at Google.


How Did This Happen to Me?

If you have basic virus protection (and most PCs do - make sure you get security updates), then the unfortunate answer is you probably did it to yourself. But this is not a dumb mistake or "net ignorance." Nope - you were tricked by "digital bastards."

There are a few ways that software gets installed on your computer - by you - without you realizing you did it. The first is opening e-mail that seems to be genuine but isn't. Everyone should know that you don't follow links to "verify your Paypal account" or help the "son of a deposed monarch move 12 million dollars (10 percent fee to you)" - and, of course, if you want Cialis or Viagra or bigger genitals, go see a doctor; the solution to bedroom problems is not at the other end of the mouse.

However, digital bastards can be very creative by impersonating people you do business with regularly. Could be a bank, catalog, magazine, sports team - anything. Clicking any link in e-mail (except when it comes from Rogue Turtle ) involves a certain amount of risk. E-mail software usually has good virus scanning protection for attached files. But a link is just text, and clicking on it moves you out of your e-mail reader and into your default browser (90% of the time it is Internet Explorer - and digital bastards know that).

The other common way to get malware is playing "free" internet games. Nothing is really free. You just aren't the one doing the paying. But there is big money for the game writers to shunt adware onto your PC with their game. You ask to run the game, you get a dialog that reads "Do you want to install Glomper II?" you click "YES" - you're cooked. You just were tricked into installing adware or worse onto your PC.

The game will work. If you had clicked "NO," the game would not work. (You should have clicked No, though)

When un-installing this type of software, I frequently see "You asked to install this software. The ads served by this software support free games that you play"

Look for games that are not "ad supported."

OK, What Can I Do Now?

I will jump to the wild assumption that you are running Windows and using Internet Explorer (IE). Everyone is (and that is part of what leaves you vulnerable).

1. Turn off unwanted IE add-ons.
   
   Lots of adware and spyware attach themselves to your browser as an add-on. Add-ons are a convenience that allows software to provided expanded functionality to the basic browser.
   
   Keep in mind that IE does not need any add-ons to work correctly, but some of them are very nice to have and provide features that you assume are inherent to IE.
   
   To turn off add-ons, in IE go to Tools | Manage Add-ons
   
   Look at the list. Look for things that are marked as "not verified" or where the add-on name mentions ads, watch, money (ads), marketing (spying) or anything that looks suspicious. Click on the add-on to select them, then click "disable."
   
   If you disable something that you will miss, you can always come back, select the item in the disabled list and re-enable it.
   
   This does not un-install the add-on, just blocks it.
   
   For a little more explanation of this process, start at Microsoft Security and look for the Managing Internet Exporer Add-ons (for advanced users) section.
   
   
2. Remove the adware/spyware.
   
   Since adware and spyware may not be regarded as a virus by your virus protector (it is just unwanted, not viral), you may need to remove this software in a couple steps.
   
   You can try to remove some of these by normal means. Check the main Start button. Look for program groups that are new or suspicious. A "friendly" ad generator my actually provide and "uninstall" link on your start menu. They frequently include an "exit interview" that asks a few questions about why you uninstalled the software. I have completed these surveys a few times, but I doubt that they enjoyed my feedback.
   
   Next, open the Control Panel (Start | Control Panel) then click on Add/Remove Programs. It will take a few seconds to build a list of installed software. Scroll around looking for suspicious names. When you find one (like MoneyMaker), click on it and see when it was installed and used.
   
   TIP: Remove as many suspicious programs as you can in one sitting. Some digital bastards give you multiple programs that each ensure the existence (thus re-installing) of each of the others. If you miss one, they all come back.
   
   Since I trust (not respect, but trust) Microsoft, I will recommend you visit Microsoft Security: Spyware for information and to get their adware/spyware killer called "Windows Defender"
   
   You can also learn more about adware at Microsoft Security: Adware
   
   
3. Ensure you are browsing safely.
   
   IE includes a security level setting that governs how militant you want to be about protecting yourself. Make sure you at least at "medium". Medium and above will ensure that you are prompted to confirm when a web site tries to install software on your computer.
   
   to get to this setting, select Tools | Options from the IE menu. Select the Security tab and make sure you are looking at the "Internet Zone" (the planet Earth icon).
   
   You can move the security slider up and down to get descriptions of the protections each level provides. If you try to go below "medium," you will get a message warning you that you are moving into an unsafe level.
   
   High security may seem like the ideal, but it is probably too restrictive and will make regular browsing kind of annoying.
   
   
4. Lastly, stop using IE.
   
   I use Firefox for almost all my browsing. Why "almost?" If I go to certain Microsoft pages, they require IE. Other than that, I recommend Firefox because it has much better pop-up protection and, since it is a smaller market share, most digital bastards target IE over other browsers.
   
   Get Firefox here: Mozilla Firefox
   
   

Hope that helps. I know there is more. But if nothing else, please do not click on anything that installs software on your computer that you don't expect and trust. Trust Microsoft, Netscape, Mozilla, Apple, and Rogue Turtle. You'll be in good shape.

 

The Boston Lohses traveled to Washington, DC, this week. Besides the usual sightseeing staples, we visited the International Spy Museum. Although it is not a free, government funded institution, this was the best place in DC. I couldn't get enough, and the kids had a great time, too.

The museum had loads of interactive computer simulations for decoding messages, reading satellite imagery, and testing our ability to remember the details of a selected alias.

There were short films (2-10 minutes) on bugging, lockpicking, infamous spies, movie spies, and much more.

Like any good museum, there were tons of interesting artifacts from the silly Max Smart shoe-phone to the many tools of surveillance, deception, and communication.

Plan on about 2 hours to get through the place (it's huge), but don't miss it!

Here are some excerpts from their site:

International Spy Museum Exhibits

The International Spy Museum is the only public museum in the world solely dedicated to the tradecraft, history, and contemporary role of espionage. The Museum's permanent exhibition presents the tradecraft of espionage through the stories of individuals and their missions, tools and techniques. Exhibits feature the largest collection of international espionage artifacts ever placed on public display -- many for the first time. These artifacts, combined with historic photographs, state-of-the-art audio visual programs, computer interactive displays and special effects, reveal the strategies and techniques of the men and women behind some of the most secret espionage missions in world history!

International Spy Museum's Mission:

The mission of the International Spy Museum is to educate the public about espionage in an engaging manner and to provide a dynamic context that fosters understanding of its important role in and impact on current and historic events. The Museum focuses on human intelligence and reveals the role spies have played in world events throughout history.

For the Spy-Kids:

Whether it's the challenge of deciphering top secret codes or the fine art of developing a disguise for cover, children and families will find an amazing array of public programs, workshops, demonstrations, and action-packed missions to hone their skills. Meet real "spies," learn how skills like observation, analysis, critical thinking, and being a team-player are all important to tradecraft and in real life. Workshops on disguise, gadgetry, spy science, codes and ciphers; Spy Magic performances; Operation Secret Slumber overnights; and Spy for a Day missions are offered on a monthly basis.

Awesome place.

Thousnds of visitors a day have been flocking to Paul's IVR Cheatsheet, a site that tells the secret methods to get through corporate phone system hell and right to a live person.

The site has now moved to the next level, at GetHuman.com. In addition to the tip sheets, Paul will be tracking the best and worst companies for phone support, and expanding the capabilities for users to recomend new "cheats", and hosting a blog that focuses on improving customer service.

Go check it out and help support the customer service revolution.

Laurie showed me this video from CNN. It shows a family, displaced by Katrina, living in a 800 square foot appartment, waiting for a FEMA trailer. The premise of the story is that there are very nice houses that could be rented for WAY less than the cost of a trailer. (Goverment spending unwisely, again).

But, wait. The untold story is in the background. This family without the means to move out to find their own place, waiting for the government to help them are holed up in this tiny room with all their worldly possessions. Including a huge BIG SCREEN TV and video games! I find it hard to muster sympathy for these poor unfortunates that have a better home theater than I can afford.

This reminds me of another story where folks were interviewed while standing in a welfare line... "Do you have a microwave? Yes. A TV? Yes. A car? Yes. Cable? Yep." I am not saying folks should not get aid. But I suggest that our standards for who needs help are either too high or the system that ensures the needy are...well, needy...needs review.

Here is the link the the video. Be sure to allow popups to watch the video.

Lynx is a text-based browser that, for my purposes, give a good estimate of what pages will look like to a search engine spider (like Googlebot). You can download and install a lynx browser, or use this great, free, convenient web tool: Delorie Lynx Viewer

You need to put a file called delorie.htm in your root of your domain (or at least in the same directory as the files to be scanned). This "proves" that you are a web admin for the page to be parsed (or at least you have enough access to put such a file there).

After a page s parsed, you can click on the links to parse the target of the link. Very cool.

I used this tool to discover that bots will NOT see links that are built using javascript include files. They will be found if using PHP includes (my work around). I typically like to centralize all the navigation links so if something changes I don't need to visit every page.

Try out the tool, I really like it.

This week's project has been a new Survivalist Newsletter. Rogue Turtle is a collabortive project that I have been thinking about for some time now. We will explore many topics such as survival preparation, camping, and self reliance. We will avoid any extreme political viewpoints and angry rhetoric.

Oh, yeah - IT'S GREEN! (see previous post)

Please check it out and tell a friend. Thanks.

I have been pretty busy with requests to re-tool web sites lately, so I have been watching with interest the recent migration of color usage from blue to orange. It was not very long ago that websites were pretty much all white and blues.

A typical site would use colors like these

More recently, we see sites using

The first example I notices was a couple years back with Ameritrade, then came Blogger. Both of these combined the blue and the orange. Great contrast and works really well with light colored text.

More recently, I see mobissimo using huge swathes of orange.

I am sure there is some trendy design rule that is pushing everything in the orange direction. I am reminded of the TV commercial... "Everything Brown! Brown is the new Black"

Hmmm, anybody want to start a new "green" movement. Be bold, create a great new green site and let me know about it.



Please visit my color page for more color ideas...

p.s. I changed RonLohse.com to the orange theme after I wrote this.

Full Circle HR and Payroll has a new web site. The company provides payroll processing, benefits administration, retirement plans, tax management, and other human resource services from their offices in Florida and Texas.

I have started compiling a list of the best hotels ever. I started with several of the hotels I have visited, but I am welcoming contributions from others. Contributions will be researched to ensure they meet the high standards to be considered one of the best hotels ever.

Check out the list to review my selections or add your own.

There is a great article in today's (1/1/2006) Sunday Boston Globe about both Sports Groupie and Tune Trips.

The article is here.

Enjoy.

Opening soon!

Thousands of Red Sox fans were stunned and dismayed to learn that Johnny Damon was going to The Evil Empire. While Red Sox Nation is saddened by the news, many are dreading the inevitable... Johnny meets the Yankee Barber. No beard - No long hair - (and probably no endorsement deals for an otherwise unrecognizable prominent browline). A real team fosters productivity and unity be letting the players be individuals with styles and personalities that combine to create something unique.

We will miss Johnny, but wish him well in the Red Sox Retirement Home, Yankee Stadium.

My newest site is KidLinkz.com is seeing a big jump in search engine hits. The site contains links to everything that parents are looking for: parenting tips, online resources, and especially gift ideas. With the holidays coming up, and demand for the hard-to-find Doodle Monster taking off, KidLinkz is getting hits because of the reviews and links to places that have the little beasts in stock (e-Bay). Who would have guessed.

At lunchtime today, where I live just south of Boston, it was in the mid 20's with a driving, white-out snow...accompanied by thunder and lightning. Wow, that was strange!

I did a minimal amount of research and found this:

When it comes to lightning and thunder, you probably think of spring and summer thunderstorms. You're not likely to envision lightning during a snowstorm but it can happen, although not very often. To get things started you need convection, which is the up and down movement of air. In every thunderstorm negative and positive charges need to be separated to build an electrical field that's strong enough to create lightning. The more violent the convection is, the greater the likelihood of lightning and thunder while it's snowing. While we have no hard scientific evidence there may be, at the very least, a link between thunder snow and extremely high snowfall accumulations.

This was the only time I can ever recall having a thunder snow storm. My wife and I were in the car returning from lunch when we saw the first flash. We both had trouble believing it was lightning. We looked for downed power lines or a blown street light (I looked for the paparazzi - cause those ruthless bastards are always trying to get candid shots of me :-). When we got inside, the lightning and really loud thunder started up in earnest. We got more snow that we expected, but maybe not much more than a typical New England storm.

Very creepy, but I like thunderstorms so it was kind of cool at the same time.

The Sox just announced that they traded away Doug Mirabelli for Padres second baseman Mark Loretta. I won't say anything negative, but I wish we could get more players that DON'T have lingering injuries from last season.

Here is a snippet:

Loretta was one of the most productive second basemen in the National League in 2004, hitting .335 with 108 runs, 208 hits, 47 doubles, two triples, 16 homers and 76 RBIs.

However, he suffered through an injury-plagued 2005, hitting .280 with three homers and 38 RBIs in 404 at-bats.

Loretta underwent surgery to repair a ligament on his left thumb on May 24.

Yep, it is that time again. Winter meetings have started, and Sox spring training tickets sold out in a heartbeat (again).

I read that Florida has a scalping law that allows scalping tickets, but limits them to $1 over the face value. I wonder if that is true, or do scalpers talk circles around that? I imagine a guy saying "I'm not a scalper, I'm a ticket broker and the ticket is $25, but there is a $5 acquisition fee and a $5 delivery charge and a $125 convenience charge, so that'll be $160... each." I think this is the more likely scenario than selling a $25 ticket for $26. I would be interested to find out if anyone has had experience with such folks in Florida.

More to come on the winter meetings as the news breaks. Let's keep fingers and toes crossed for Johnny Damon, though.

SportsGroupie.com has announced the addition of Major League Baseball spring training to its list of offerings. Diehard fans heading to Florida and Arizona next spring can save money by searching over 100 travel sites for the best deals to their destinations.

SportsGroupie also provides access to single game tickets via their online ticket affiliates.

The spring training schedule and search tools are available at the SportsGroupie Spring Training page.

Sports Groupie now has coverage for the major Bowl Championship Series games. The four main bowl games (Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta) will attract college football fans from all corners of the country. Sports Groupie helps these travelers find the best deals and secure those hard to find tickets.

My SportsGroupie.com was featured on tonight's (11/29/05) installment of "The Click" on Boston's ABC channel WCVB-5. It was great coverage and good instructions on using the site.

Watch the video or Read the story

Started another project. This one is called KidLinkz.com. The concept is to store links and reviews to everything kids want and parents need. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Family and friends wanted to see photos of Katie and Ethan from Halloween. Just click Katie and Ethan Halloween 2005. Enjoy.

It has been just a bit longer than forever since I last posted to this blog, so I will add a few items that I have been involved in lately. First off, most people know about my sick Halloween obsession. This year was no exception and the local Fox affiliate (WFTX 25 Boston) came by for about 30 minutes to shoot some video and interview me. I had a whole cast this year and we were psyched about making the news. Alas, Theo Epstein turned down the last offer from the Red Sox that day and took 20 minutes of the 10PM broadcast; so Ron Lohse's Halloween bash hit the cutting room floor.

Evidently there was a wedding at Lizzie Borden's house on Halloween and someone mentioned the goings on in Randolph to the news crew. They drove to Randolph and followed the sounds of screaming children to my house. Great fun!

I have been very actively trying to get a couple new websites off the ground. Sports Groupie is a travel and ticket search engine that focuses on getting fans to professional sporting events. I think it is a great idea and just need to do some jostling to get the site noticed by your average Joe Quarterback.

A similar site to Sports Groupie is the boutique I call Tune Trips. Same idea as Sports Groupie, but gets you to live music events (concerts and regular shows - pretty much any music event you can buy a ticket for). If you are reading this, please spread the word. Make reference in your own blogs or comment in others'. Seriously, thanks for any help getting these sites off the ground.

Speaking of getting sites off the ground, I want to plug LookyLooz.com. I am not involved in the site, but it is a cool idea. Basically it allows realtors to quickly product a website for a given property. Instead of searching through listings, each home can have a unique web address. Very small money for a very distinguishing feature. Check them out.

The last site I am going to plug is just getting cobbled together. Kid Safe Software is putting together a catalog of web sites, games, educational software, and anything else tekkie that is designed for use by kids. This will be a community that allows for easy contributions of products and reviews. Their registration stuff works, but most of the content is not ready for prime time. It is clearly inspired by del.icio.us, but really focuses on just the childrens market.

Take care everyone.