Go Postal at Christmas

Christmas time! time for joy, cheer, family, friends, co-workers, people you just met, people you wanna avoid, gift giving, gift returning, suicide prevention, drunk driving, over-eating, the Yule Log on TV (is that still on?) and of course Postal stress.
This covers mostly everyone. I'm not gonna give you advice on any of these except one: Postal stress!
You won't have to wait online for what seems like hours.
You won't have to listen to the crazy old lady standing in line behind you complaining how she shouldn't have to wait this long. Oh by the way I apologize if you're reading this and you are that crazy old lady.
Just go to USPS.com... seriously. Right there on the first page it walks you through what you need to do. All you need is a non-maxed out credit card and some way to weigh a package, shaking it and thinking it feels like 2 pounds doesn't count. Oh yeah, you also need a printer. After you're done with all that, you can either get them to pick it up or if you're in a "I feel like annoying someone today" kinda mood, you can actually go to the post office and jump the line. YES you can jump the line because you did the hard work for the postal workers and they'll love you for it (the postal workers not the people waiting on line) I've gotten some of he best dirty looks for doing this. The hard part is holding in the evil laughter until I get outside.

Merry Christmas

Tipping tips

The other day I went to get a haircut, I go to these no frills Russian barbers. The reason I mentioned that they are Russian is, I don't understand them when they speak to each other. That's ok, I just want a haircut and for the last 10 years, they've cut my hair just the way my wife likes it. 

So I was sitting in the chair, the barber (it's always the same 60+ year old guy) was doing his thing and and then he started doing little extras, sometimes he'll make sure that I have no hair in my ears, other times he gives me a neck and head massage with one of those devices you strap to your hand (get you mind out of the gutter) while he was doing that I heard his boss raise his voice at him (in Russian) and my barber answered back (again in Russian) and the only word I understood was "Tip" his boss then looked at him and said "Oh, ok" and that was it. My barber came back and continued what he was doing, I paid him and I left him a tip. Most people don't tip, and some people that do. The norm is between 10% and 20%. My haircut is so cheap I tip 50% and it's still cheaper than any other place I can go to. I only tip that much because of the price and because he's been my barber for years.  

I've learned from talking to friends that have jobs as waiters, doormen, parking attendants or other "tipping allowed" jobs, That they treat the good tippers better than the non-tippers. Now that may seem unfair to some, I mean you're paying for a service, why should you tip? They are paid to do a job, and they do it. What the tip is for is, the extra attention that they give the customer. Something that most people think is part of their job and take for granted.  I also found out that come "Tax time", the IRS expects them to pay taxes on the tips, whether they made the money or not. The IRS puts this number at 20%. They don't take cheap customers into account either, they don't care, they just want their cut.

Ok go ahead and rant about the IRS. 

I'll wait. 

Done? 

good. 

As I was saying, Most people that work for tips sometimes make as little as minimum wage or close to it.  If you get good service, show your appreciation, tip them. Trust me they WILL remember you and give you even better service next time. 

I'm not gonna say what amount to tip and who should and shouldn't get it, but a little kindness goes along way in making 2 people happy, You and the person servicing you.

The 20th Century wasn't too bad

NO! I'm NOT getting the iPhone... uuhh at least not yet anyway. I'll wait awhile. Fixing other peoples Macs and helping them with their computer problems has taught me many lessons, and one of the most important is: I'm in no rush to get the latest toys. I'll try to stay in the 20th century just a little while longer. Yes I do have one of those teeny tiny little clip on ipods, I LOVE my X-box 360, and of course I have a cell phone, I also switched to VOIP phone service (saved me tons of money) and I even have a Palm Z22 Handheld. The problems with all these things are: they break down, you begin to depend on them more and more, and then there's learning how to figure out the device(s). I'm a guy, my first instinct is to NOT read the instructions. So I have just as much trouble as anyone else figuring this stuff out, but then I read the instructions... DUH!
for example: I have all my contacts backed up to my Palm which are a back up of my address book on my Mac G5, It's also backed up on my Powerbook and my wife's Mac (she allows me a little bit of space... just like the bedroom closet) which is also backed up on my desktop PC and my wife's laptop PC in Outlook, and I also keep a copy online somewhere, and they are also on every phone and cellphone in my home, and that's just my address book. I have one problem with all this... We had a blackout a few weeks ago and nothing worked!!! My main complaint is I don't want to depend on these things, but I have too, we all do. Oh and don't let me get started on Google! How did I live or work without them?
This has ruined my Survival Instincts. Yes I can find ANYTHING I need to find, I can get a map of where I'm going and alternate routes of how to get there, but when I go to the supermarket, I can't find the ketchup because there's no link to click, many times I've forgotten that if I can't find someone on the web, that they may still be in the Yellow or White Pages. I can't remember phone numbers any longer, I'm lucky if I can remember my own info. Oh and my handwriting, it's horrible! all those years in the fifth grade... oops, I mean in grade school, wasted!
Ok, on the upside I don't have pocketfuls of small pieces of paper with phone numbers and notes, that would find their way to my desk or my dresser (yeah, my wife really loved that). I also don't have a wallet that's 6 inches thick, filled with all sorts of business card, receipts and Lord knows what else. I don't miss those things at all.
I do have a few things that aren't high tech and I carry them everywhere I go. I carry a little notebook and a pen (why didn't I think of that before) and being that I travel on the subways and buses all over New York City I carry a little book titled NFT (http://www.notfortourists.com). It has a tiny fold out subway map, it has information and dozens of mini maps of the city and locations of important places like banks, coffeeshops, bus stops, restaurants you name it, it might be there. the only problem is, It's a BOOK, you have to turn PAGES, nothing to click. Boy it took me some effort to relearn how to use a plain book. I felt like Robert DeNiro when he played Frankenstein (if you didn't see it, don't worry, you didn't miss much). The Not For Tourist books are written for different cities, not just New York. You can find them at Amazon.com for a decent price.
I just feel that the more tech stuff I learn the dumber I'm becoming, I can't wait until I'm old and senile so I can forget it all and feel normal again.

How to avoid Phish Hooks

 I get quite a few questions thrown at me as a tech consultant/repair guy. Many have to do with the web, email, back-ups and a host of other cyber related issues that I may not have even heard of until that moment. 

Phishing is a major one. pronounced just like the activity "fishing". For a perfect definition go to "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing". This is so dangerous that everyone with an email is a potential or future victim. Our children, our parents, our grandparents, I don't know about you but I know some older people that click on everything and then wonder why they are getting so much junk mail. I'm sorry, that sounds harsh, but our elders come from a generation where it's impolite to ignore things like the phone and someone knocking on your door and even mail. They don't realize that it's ok  to ignore emails and it's ok to delete them too. Also some older people I've dealt with think all the email they get is personally aimed at them, they don't understand that they're NOT the target audience for breast implants and they take it personally.

Paypal and Ebay are 2 of the biggest targets for these "evil-doers". The worst part is that the emails look very legit. They have the logos, the return email address even the code behind the email looks real. So...

• How do you protect yourself? 
  
• How do you tell the difference between fake and real?
  
• How do you get them to stop? 
  

I'll try to answer what I can, most of these answers are what I told my clients and friends.

If it's too good to be true, then it IS too good to be true. You can tell all the email "newbies" because one of the first emails they send out to everyone on their mailing list is the "Bill Gates will give you money for forwarding this email" email (you know who you are). If this were true, there would be millionaires popping up all over the world and Bill Gates would be broke. 

Don't believe everything you read on the internet, for that matter don't believe everything you read in a book either, but at least publishing a book takes some serious effort so you hope that the author took responsibility in what was written. Emails on the other hand don't cost anything to write and send out. Some websites can be put up for free too. They don't see their victims so "out of sight, out of mind". It's not their fault if you happen upon their site and decide to go as far as to send them money (we're talking extremes here)

So how do you protect yourself? How do you tell the difference between fake and real?

There are a few ways: 

1- never click on any link on the email. if there is a "close window" link or button on the window or email... DON'T TRUST IT!! I cannot stress this enough. just because the link says "close window" does NOT mean that that's what it's going to do. There could be some nefarious code behind the link that we don't know of. Just close the window the safe way, the RED button on a Mac or the X on a PC. 

2- Something that has worked wonders for me and a few other people is, create other emails for yourself. I have one for my ebay and paypal, one for my business and 2-3 for just junk. I know for a fact that if I get any emails saying "your account is about to be closed if you don't act fast..." (I try not to laugh too loud.) I know that it's not true because my account is not with that email to begin with. So it's easier to ignore.

3- Todays browsers have the "auto-fill" feature, which I love, but I don't use it for the crucial websites. I use it for the forums I'm a member of and a few other things but never sites where money is involved. it's best to memorize your passwords or keep written down in a good old fashion notebook. how you protect THAT is your business.

4- If you feel the urge to check out the email to see if it's real, don't click on any link. Close the suspect email and then go to the website on your own.  Ebay and Paypal will NEVER  EVER send you an email of this kind. They only send out the holiday "see what's new at Ebay" kind of emails.  If they have an urgent message for you, they will post it on your account on their site and you can check it only when you sign in.

How do you get them to stop? 

1-one of the problems with email is the vast amounts of it. some of it may be your fault and the rest not. Most emails have an "unsubscribe" link. That's very helpful and it also happens to be the law now. I myself only click on those unsubscribe links if it was something I subscribed to in the first place. If it's something that you DIDN'T ask for, I suggest  that you don't click the unsubscribe link, many times it's a "phisher" looking for real email addresses out there. They send out thousands of these things not all of them are legit emails and many could have been canceled email names. They want you to click that unsubscribe link so they can hook you.

2- If you have a Mac and you think, "oh Macs don't get viruses, it's ok if I click this button to see what happens, I just won't type anything" Don't do it!!!!!! Viruses aren't the only things that can hurt a computer Mac or PC, it doesn't matter. there are a host of other baddies out there. 

3- Don't enter the "GET A FREE IPOD" contests or anything like it. They just want your information. This one is geared towards our teens and again it looks real, trust me I never heard of ANYONE ever getting a free ipod.

Finally, There are many other things you can do to protect yourself, WAY too many for this blog, Phishing will never end, no matter what laws are passed, they will always find a loophole. 

In the end it's up to you to protect yourself. I just threw a few ideas your way.