SteveMart.in

It’s that time of year again. Santa Claus is getting presents ready for all the good girls and boys. He sure has a lot to do. Can you imagine trying to make toys for every single child in the entire world? And, he has to deliver them all in a single night. He’s so busy that he has helpers visit all of the malls and shopping centers to allow children to tell him what they want for Christmas. The helpers must report to him daily or something and they must have an amazing memory because I never see them write anything down.

Anyway, our children are deathly afraid of Santa (and his helpers). Oh, they love him and love the fact that he brings them presents every year on Christmas, but to sit on his lap would scare them to death. They are more than happy to watch other children sit on his lap in the malls but no, they do not want to get in line to sit on his lap themselves.

So, we choose to call Santa and leave him a message. I actually have a direct line to him (801) 738-0668. This number goes directly to his voicemail. When a child calls him, they simply tell him their name and age and what they want for Christmas. Santa is then notified via e-mail and can listen to the message via an attached audio file. It saves Santa a lot of precious time. Sometimes parents want to hear the message that Santa receives. Santa is happy to forward the message to their e-mail address. They simply need to let him know via e-mail the approximate time (with timezone) their child left a message and their child’s name and age. He can then find the message and forward it to them. Santa’s e-mail address is santa@claus.fami.ly.

Hopefully your kids are not as afraid of Jolly Old St. Nick as my kids, but if they are, now you have a way for them to tell Santa what they want for Christmas. Have a very Merry Christmas!!!

Posted in Family | 3 Comments »

If you are anything like me, you have dozens of different web sites that you are required to log into in order to access information. These may include your e-mail accounts, shopping web sites, banking web sites, credit card web sites, school sites, even blogging requires a password to get in and write new posts. These sites require passwords for good reason. You wouldn’t want someone jumping into your Amazon account and buying lots of stuff on your card would you? Or, think about the headaches of someone getting into your banking account. I know some people personally that have had people get into their ebay account and change pricing on their listed auctions.

You may have noticed my post (two before this one) called “Protected: Highly Confidential (Password Protected Post)“. Well, I guess I have some pretty curious siblings because two of them decided they were going to “hack” into that post (and they were successful). I don’t really care who gets into that post which is why I gave it a VERY simple “password”. But, it brings about the question of how important secure passwords are. Think about the password (s) you use for the various sites you visit. Are they just a single word? Not good as any dictionary tool could crack it. Are any of your passwords just a important date? Not good as anyone that knows you probably knows any important dates in your life or could easily find them out. Does your password contain letters AND numbers? Better. At a minimum, I would suggest using letters and numbers. You may want to throw in some unusual characters like % or & or #. Make your passwords at least 8 characters in length. The idea is to make it VERY difficult for anyone to guess.

So, if you have easy to guess passwords, I would suggest you start changing them to something a bit more difficult to guess…..because my siblings are on the loose and may hack in at any time.

Posted in Computer Networking | 2 Comments »