I had another Dr. visit today. Just a 3-month checkup. I lost another 6 pounds. I was pretty happy with this news, but my doctor didn’t see it that way. He wants me to do MORE exercise. I assured him I’m walking every day, and even twice some days, because when I walk at lunch, 30 minutes just doesn’t give me enough time to get a lot of exercise in. So I guess I’m not losing the weight fast enough. As Emeril says, “Time to kick it up a notch!” Speaking of Emeril, I’ve got to keep my distance from HIS dishes too I guess…
Kevin’s haircut
Kevin just had to get a Mohawk this summer. He kept asking for one, so we figured we might as well let him do it now, so it can grow back in by the time school starts. Kids…
New Kenosha Art
I added 8 new photos to the Kenosha Art set today. These were all taken during my Pennoyer Park walk yesterday. They’re the first 8 photos in this set – 2 new park signs, 4 black-on-blue themed music murals that were ocated around the restrooms at the bandshell, and 2 new tile art images, located on either side of the bandshell itself. Enjoy!
Animating Tyler
Facebook refuses to animate GIFs, so I guess I have to do it here. This is for Tyler:
Soggy Spirals
We spent a great day at Woody’s swimming today, then had a great meal of bombers from the Mt. Carmel festival. I took a ton of photos using the burst mode on my phone, just trying it out to see if I could capture some interesting shots of Ty diving into the pool, and catching one of the splash bombs as Ty spins it in the air. It makes a really neat water spiral, so I wanted to see if I could capture it. Wow, did I ever! I think these turned out pretty neat! Rosemary, print out a couple of your favorites on your new photo printer–Let’s see how they look! Check them out, they’re the first 21 photos in this set.
The Outer Wall of Inner Child
Because my lunch walk was rained out today, I walked this evening with Socks, Kevin and Ty. We walked downtown, and when we got to Inner Child Collectibles & Comics I noticed they now have huge murals of comic and game characters on their outside wall! It was almost too dark, but I managed to snap a few photos of Captain America, his arm, Ty–waiting for the hammer to drop on his head, Spider-Man, and Mario, Luigi and Boba Fett (together at last!). This was neat to see.
No relation (that I know of), but wow, what a job!
Check out this article that came up from one of my vanity google alerts for “Trottier”. I don’t think we’re related though (darn it).
Amazing Alex! – a mini review
Amazing Alex, Rovio’s new game, just came out this morning! For those who don’t know Rovio, they’re the company who created the wildly successful Angry Birds game and all of its incarnations. Amazing Alex is their first non-Angry Birds game. I played several levels of it this morning to check it out. Do you remember the board game Mousetrap? Or the old “Incredible Machine” game for the PC? It’s just like that! It’s a physics game where you have to setup a chain reaction to accomplish a goal–like getting a basketball to drop into a basket. I thought they went a bit too far in giving you the answers to many of the early levels just to teach you how to play though. The entire first section is VERY easy, and it seemed like only the last few levels of it I actually had to think a little on my own to complete. That’s as far as I went so far though. I’m guessing (hoping) there are tons more levels to come, each one more complex than the last. There was also a hint that there’s a level creator in it too, though I haven’t even looked for it yet. Hopefully they’ve thought of everything and created a whole community sharing element so everyone can share their creations with their friends. It sounds like it’s the start of another awesome game! The ad-free version is 99 cents, and worth every penny!
Woman’s body found in Nedweski Park
Kevin and I have walked through this park many times. So sad. http://fox6now.com/2012/07/09/kenosha-officials-discover-female-body-in-nedweski-park/ Officials have not yet released the name or age of the victim. There is no word at this time as to whether foul play may be a factor in the woman’s death. Monday afternoon, Jim Sweet was walking his dog, Jack, in the park when their walk was cut short by police tape. “Very shocking. I don’t see a lot of trouble around this area,” Sweet said. Sweet says he has seen grass fires in the park as a result of the recent dry spell and says he hopes the fire and body found were just unfortunate accidents. If not, Sweet says: “I hope they find the person who did that — it’s messed up.” At least four families approached officers at the scene regarding missing family members they fear may be the person who’s body was found at the park. Anyone with any information into this incident is asked to contact Crime Stoppers at (262) 656-7333.
Crews responded to a brush fire in Kenosha and discover a woman’s body. Clem Smith has lived across the street from Kenosha’s Nedweski Park for four years. “When I heard it this morning I couldn’t believe it,” said Smith. “It’s just unreal, I mean I let my grandkids go over there and play and everything but now I’m going to have to watch them.” A young woman’s body was found around 10:30 Monday morning in the middle of burned brush near a playground. As word of what happened hit the neighborhood, people like Wendy Wakefield showed up — trying to get more information. “We know all of the little kids in the neighborhood and we’re just worried about what’s going on,” said Wakefield. Wakefield says she’s been worried about the park for a while. “Honestly I tell my kids all the time never to walk through there,” said Wakefield. “There are so many entrances and exits, it’s ridiculous.” Several families of missing girls arrived at the scene, desperate for any word on whether the body found could be their loved one. “My cousin has been missing since the 4th of July, we haven’t heard from her,” said Taqueisha Terrell. A neighbor who didn’t want his name released out of concern for his safety, said that he filed a police report after he saw a man in the area right before the fire started. But as questions linger, so does a community’s concern. “I was just surprised really, because nothing like this has happened before,” said Clem Smith. Members of the gang unit were also on scene, but there’s no word on whether police think the incident was gang-related. http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/161873045.html
Update: 7/13/2012: Police in Kenosha believe a body found in a local park is that of a 20-year-old woman. The case is still under investigation, but authorities say based on evidence collected so far, the deceased appears to be Lashe Zalar of Kenosha. Officers have met with her family, but DNA testing is needed to make a final confirmation on identity. WISN-TV reports Zalar has been missing since she went for a walk early Monday. Firefighters discovered the woman’s body later Monday in Nedweski Park while extinguishing a brush fire.
PC Support Scam hits close to home
A good friend of mine was scammed yesterday. Fortunately, she didn’t allow it to go far enough to give them any money, but they did have some access to her computer. Someone cold-called her and explained that he is calling everyone using Windows, and said her computer may be infected with viruses. She asked several more questions, thinking it was someone from Microsoft Windows at first, then eventually found out it was a company called “PC MARV”, a computer support company. The person identified himself as “Kevin” , and they offered to help her by walking her through executing a few commands which would show her that she has infections, then, as a further step, he gave her a code and had her go to a website, which turned out to be a LogMeIn remote support site, where they took control of her computer to “assist” her in fixing her “problems”. She was reluctant, but did feel her computer might be infected with something, since it’s been slow lately, and acting erratic, with some things not working right, so she let them look at it after realizing they had taken control of her computer. (YIKES! ** red flag **)
“Kevin” did several things on her computer to show her the infections. He brought up dozens of “WARNING!” messages from Windows 7’s event viewer (this is actually nothing unusual, and these occur all the time in the logs–you’ll get them even for even the slightest things, like a website that isn’t accessible) and told her these were all infections that needed to be cleaned up and removed. He ended up scaring her quite a bit about this, which, I’m sure, was his intention. The last thing he did was bring up a Command Prompt, enter a command to display hundreds of processes running on her computer, and then he scrolled to the bottom of the page and show her this:
She said it was at the bottom of the page instantly and didn’t appear letter-by-letter as if typed. I explained to her that the C:\> prompt is just that–a PROMPT. After that is typed text, and the message “software protection expired..” was pasted into the line by the tech. He probably copied it from his computer and just pasted it into the command line window. I explained to her that this text didn’t come from any application or system alert, they just typed the text in to convince her she was infected. ** another red flag **
She said her neighbor, who is very knowledgeable avbout computers, came over at that point, and she gave the phone to him. He talked to them, or listened to them a little, then explained that he doesn’t know who they are, and he’s hanging up, then hung up the phone.
I gathered as much information from her as I could at that point. The person she talked to was “Kevin”, and the tech who remoted to her was “Donnie Adams”, she said. The company was “PC MARV”, and they gave her their phone number. “Kevin” had a foreign accent, probably Indian. I googled “PC MARV” and there definitely is a website which advertises the phone # she had for them. Based on the details on the site, it sounded like a real PC Tech company that does remote support. It was well after normal business hours, but I figured I’d call them anyway, and see what happens. I called and immediately got a live human ( ** yet another red flag **)!
I asked if they had called a friend of mine, <first name omitted>, today, and remoted to her computer to help her. They said they were having a hard time understanding me every time I asked them a direct question, like “Does your company make it a habit of cold calling people to tell them their computer is infected?” or “How did you get her phone number?” They asked who we spoke to earlier today when they called. I said “His name was Kevin”, and the guy said, “ah, yes, Kevin Smith, I’ll get him…” and there’s some muffled rustling and background talking, then “Kevin Smith” comes on the line and explains that they “remoted to our computer, because we are infected with viruses and they need to be cleaned out and removed.” I asked again, “But how did you get her phone number?” Then, suddenly he was having a hard time understanding me again. Go figure.
After being handed back to the guy who answered my call, he asked who remoted to my computer. I said it was “Donnie Adams”. So there’s more muffled noise, then I’m talking to Donnie Adams, who basically repeats the same things the other two guys said about her having a virus and they need to clean up her computer. I told him “Don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of it from here, DON’T CALL HER AGAIN.” He started arguing again about not understanding (of course) and I hung up on him at that point.
So, it seems this company, which has a full website for their PC tech services, is most likely India-based, or from somewhere outside the US, I’m sure, and routinely calls people, scamming and scaring them into support contracts or supposed one-time fees for their PC cleanup services. I’m sure they are able to make a lot of money off of people using these techniques. Pretty much every Windows computer is always going to have “infections” and “vulnerabilities” at any given point in time, that’s just the nature of the beast. Whether it’s just a bad link that redirects you to an infected website, or a piece of spyware that gathers your browsing preferences, they’re all considered “infections” and “vulnerabilities”. Her antivirus is always up-to-date, and she scans for malware regularly. She’s fine. But I guess, since “technically”, she is “infected”, they can get away with claiming that, but they should absolutely NOT be allowed to continue preying on innocent people like this, with these totally deceptive scare tactics! What if they had frightened her to the point of having a heart attack?? They don’t know the state of health of the people they’re calling! Something should definitely be done about them, this just isn’t right.
A quick check of the domain showed the small block of details in this posting (click on it to see it full-sized). 
My hunch was correct, it’s based in India… She should have asked if they provide any ON-SITE support!
My hunch was correct, it’s based in India… She should have asked if they provide any ON-SITE support!The big block of details at the end of this posting are the supposed paid services they provide, as listed on their website… Wow, for $50 they’ll basically do nothing for you… How nice of them. The other big text image shown in this article is the domain registration information for pcmarv.com, found in the public WHOIS database… if it’s even accurate.
Finally, here’s a posting on Microsoft Answers regarding someone else’s experience with the same scammers. And then there’s this YouTube video from Symantec, when they actually had someone pose as an unsuspecting user who called the scammers for help with her computer.
As a final side note, I’m sure the names they used were fake… Kevin Smith is an American screenwriter, actor, film producer, and director, as well as a popular comic book writer, author, comedian/raconteur, and internet radio personality best recognized by viewers as Silent Bob–though the first and last name is very popular…in the US. “Donnie Adams” aka Don Adams was an American actor, comedian and director famous for his sitcom “Get Smart” in the late 60’s. –but, again, another popular first and last name in our country… But, then again, if they had identified themselves as “Apu”, “Amir” or “Ahmad”, I’m sure it would raise another red flag more quickly. I also think, just maybe, as I supposedly spoke to three different people at “PC Marv” who sounded very much alike, maybe I was talking to the same person all three times… I know it sounds a bit far-fetched, but now I’m wondering… If I called them back and asked to speak to “Kevin Johnson” , who remoted to my PC today, would they put Kevin Johnson on the phone? Since this never happened, and Kevin Johnson is a name I made up, what are the odds that he magically works at PC Marv??
What’s wrong with this picture?
Arizona weather has moved Northeast! Now there’s no need for us to move Southwest!! Check out the two weather widgets in this screenshot from my tablet’s home screen… Kenosha and Avondale have swapped weather today! Actually, now Kenosha is up to 101F and it’s STILL 77F in Avondale! What is this world coming to?!?! And what that?!?! It’s showing rain & lightning…in AVONDALE?!?! Gotta be the end of the world! Hey, Jay–How’s our weather?? We’re melting in yours…and our lawn looks like yours too!
Exercise Stats
Here’s my current exercise stats, just for the record, as of today: I started using Cardiotrainer on December 13th, 2010. That’s about 18 months. I have traveled 323.48 miles in 290 workouts, and have worked out for 172 hrs and 49 min, burning 65,890 calories. My data has been through two Android phones, and will be moved to a third one in a week or two. Unfortunately, I haven’t recorded my weight along with this data to show its overall decrease, but since 12/13/10 when I started, it has definitely been going down, slowly. I’m still way too heavy (303 lbs on the Rec-Plex scale last weekend), but much better than my last weigh-in at my doctor’s office. I’ll find out the exact change from last time when I see my doctor again in a couple weeks and I’ll be sure to post the results here. I’m really anxious to get below 300 lbs permanently! Maybe even by the time I see my doctor again…that’d be awesome!
Weekend wrap-up
Getting ready to go to bed after a busy three-day weekend. We swam every day, which was great. Today Kevin and I took Socks for a walk just before the parade kicked off, and I decided we’d walk to Library Park, since the parade route goes around the park. I figured it would give us the most exposure to the sirens so Socks could sing like he always does when he hears sirens. As it turned out, we ran into Brittany and her family, and tried sitting next to them in a good spot to watch the parade, but Socks wasn’t having any of it. He was way over-heated as it was, and just couldn’t sit still, panting and pacing constantly. I was a little concerned he might collapse again, like he did the other day, and the spot we picked, in the bright sunlight on fully browned, hot grass, certainly didn’t help. Brittany was nice enough to give us juice boxes and chips, but we just couldn’t stay there–Socks needed some kind of relief. So we walked around the park, and Socks stopped several times in shady areas to rest. That helped a lot, and he managed to make it the rest of the way without issue.
Once the rescue vehicles came around, marking the official start of the parade, we were very disappointed to find that they weren’t doing their constant blaring sirens we always get a thrill from. That was the main reason we went down there–so watch Socks sing. After they all went quietly by with only lights flashing, we left, very disappointed, and didn’t even want to stay and watch the parade. We beat the crowds, walked home straight away, and then Kevin, Tyler, and I went swimming at Rec-Plex for the rest of the afternoon. I figured, with everyone at the parade, it shouldn’t be very busy at Rec-Plex, and I was right–Hardly anyone was there, so we had a very nice swim. I did another 10 reverse laps in the current channel, then some hot tub, and then we played in the swim lanes for awhile.
After swimming we picked up Matt and went to George’s for a nice chicken supper that Sandy prepared. Overall, it was a very nice weekend, except that Sandy couldn’t enjoy it with us–she was at George’s all weekend while Rick is up North camping.
Oh–and I removed the “wood paneling” from my website temporarily, and replaced it with a swimming collage instead…I figured with the local ban on all open fires in all public places in Kenosha because of the heat wave, I’d do my part to protect my own website from disaster… HA! You see what I did right there?
Doggie down!
Ty, Kevin, Socks and I walked around the lakefront this morning. It was close to 3 miles, but I missed the first chunk of it on my map, because I didn’t realize my GPS was turned off at first. We got close to where the 2-mile marker is on my map, when socks walked up to a tree and collapsed! He just flopped over onto his side, panting heavily. Ty tried to pick him up to carry him the rest of the way, but he got angry and started snapping. So we waited for a few minutes and then he got up and was ok for the rest of the walk. Poor dog just walked himself out. He’s getting old though, we’ll have to ease up on him a bit, especially in the heat we’ve had lately. He’d never survive in Arizona!
Flickr Backup
This morning I decided I wanted a create a few photo collages for my website’s header using all of the photos from a specific photo set I have in Flickr–“Swimming at Rosemary’s”. Since all of these photos were taken on all different dates and years, I didn’t have a single “local” copy of them all in one place, like they are on Flickr–all of my local photos are organized by date taken, and also include all of my “garbage” photos (bad takes, out of focus, etc.)–which are kept for use in photo mosaics when I need them (they make great fillers). So I set out to find a way to download an entire set of photos from Flickr. Flickr itself has a lot of options, but this isn’t one of them.
Most utilities of this sort that I found are apps–they’re for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone. After some searching, I found what I was looking for: FlickrEdit for the PC. I downloaded it, and it’s not even an installer, just an exe that runs immediately. It’s very straightfoward and easy to use. It even connected directly to my Flickr account, only asking for Authorization from Flickr to access my account, which I was already logged into. Once I accepted, it started loading my thumbnails. It displays 50 photos per page, so you don’t have to wait for entire sets to load, if you have more than 50 photos in a set. You can simply select the photos you want to download, or select an entire set, then download it to a specific folder. It’s pretty quick too–it downloaded my entire “Swimming at Rosemary’s” set (302 photos) all at their original sizes, in about 20 minutes.
FlickrEdit is a really nice app, and it’s a relief to know I now have it available for those times when I need a complete set of photos from my Flickr account, and just knowing there’s a simple method available if I need some disaster recovery of all of my photos some day. I added a couple new photo collages to my website header, so you’ll probably see them up there once in awhile. For a few days though, while it’s still super-hot and dry around here, I’m going to leave it on one of them as a static header, just to chill.
More swimming
I wasn’t sure we’d get any swimming in at all today. The storm heading toward us was huge, and the sky looked pretty threatening, but it must have all went around us, or dissipated, because we ended up not seeing a drop of rain, and all the lawns remain brown. Kinda looks like Arizona around here now, except for a few neighbors that water their lawns daily. We even have a burning ban in effect now, and can’t even use grills in the parks “until further notice”. Even our own firepit is loaded with brush and kindling, but we can’t have a fire because it’s just too dangerous with everything so dry.
Tyler was also much later than we expected, so it was pretty late, but we managed to get a couple hours of swimming in at Woody’s after all. This time it was Kevin, Tyler and I, and the squishy ball fights were in full force! I think we all took several pretty solid smacks to the face before all was said and done. Rosemary took a few photos, and they turned out pretty funny. It took 3 takes to get a good group shot with everyone smiling, but she got it done! Take a look.
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Early start to the weekend
This morning I shared the link to my Achmed and Walter photo album from our spring break vacation with Jeff Dunham’s Facebook page this morning. His site asked for the best road trip photos, and the winner with the best photo will be named Dunham Maniac of the Week and will be featured on his Facebook page. We’ll see what happens. Keep an eye on his page and let me know if you see one of my pics!
I’m off work today, and not on call this week! A double bonus! Ty is coming this afternoon and we’ll probably start digging into StarHawk for the PS3. After checking the ratings and reviews, I couldn’t resist. I just picked it up. We’re also going swimming again today (maybe even walking there again) and the Civic Veteran’s Parade is this Sunday, so we might attend that as well.
Kevin is hard at work on Lego Batman 2: DC Comic Heroes – the latest Lego game for PS3. It’s much better than all the others–they finally added voices to the game instead of just grunts and looks like all the previous ones! It makes a huge difference. There’s also a preview in it for another Lego game “Coming Soon”: Lego Lord of The Rings! Looks like another epic we’ll have to get.
Don’t eat before bed
I usually have a snack while I watch a little TV in the evening, and a lot of the time I’ll wake up the next morning dragging like I got very little sleep, even though I got my usual 6-7 hours. Sometimes, however–like this morning–I’ll get up, fully awake, and feel great. I’ve been trying to figure out what is causing this difference. I’d like to feel this way every day when I get up, if possible! Everyone’s always giving the advice of “don’t eat before bed”, but they all specify different times– 1 hr, 2 hrs, 3 hrs before bed… so I question the thoeries.
Last night I stopped eating about 2 hours before bed (not on purpose, I was busy with something). Eating is something I enjoy WAY too much, I know. That’s probably one of the biggest parts of my weight problem. But knowing I can wake up feeling this good–good enough to even write a blog entry before going to work–could help a lot! There’s definitely something to it. I found a pretty good article that explains it all. So this is a reminder for me–and anyone else asking themselves the same question. Looks like it’s good advice after all! http://www.illpumpyouup.com/articles/eating-before-bed.htm. I added this one to my link list (on the bottom of the sidebar).
My next problem is related to this one too: I’m getting old… Sometimes, after a busy day, I’ll pass out watching TV… how do I make sure I don’t eat long enough before THIS happens??? Hmmm. Or maybe this doesn’t count… I do, eventually, get up and go to bed for reals.
Sweat n swim
Over the weekend, Kevin, Socks and I walked from home to Woody’s. It was a good hike, and it was very refreshing to dive into her awesome pool after such a long walk! It was Socks’ first time there, so he was pretty nervous at first, but he calmed down eventually and relaxed, watching us swim from under the picnic table most of the time.
New theme might be a keeper!
Wow, I found this theme this morning–“Adventure Journal”, and I really like it! It displays my collages prominently, and has really cool effects using wood textures, shadows and paper strip effects that I like. Please excuse the detailed description, I’m just elaborating more because I’m thinking further into the future–when I might change themes again, and people might be confused (including myself) seeing a completely different theme & layout than what I am talking about right now. I might also want to revisit this theme later, and I tend to forget things easily, what with my “CRS” and all, so this will remind me.
I added 10 different photo collages to the header so far, all but one of them are from our Arizona vacation we took this year. A random collage is displayed every time you load the webpage.
JimTrottier.com 