School's PTA Web site hit by scam 'phishing' for data

I think I know one of the guys that got quoted in this news article. I'm not sure, but I think he's related to me. :)

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/1%2C1249%2C660191694%2C00.html

School's PTA Web site hit by scam 'phishing' for data

Bank logo posted by hackers asked for personal information
By Laura Hancock
Deseret Morning News
EAGLE MOUNTAIN — A Web site formerly used by Pony Express Elementary's PTA became entangled in a phishing scam.
Sometime recently, hackers got access to software that parent Gerald Banks used for www.ponyexpresselementary.org. The hackers posted on the site the logo for Regions Bank, the nation's eighth largest, with offices in 16 states from Florida to Iowa but none in Utah.
"They were trying to get your name, your Social Security number, your Visa debit card number, just as much personal and financial information as they could," said Roger Douglass, another Pony Express parent who spotted the scheme because he works for Blue Coat Systems, a Web security company in Draper.
Douglass routinely looks for phishing schemes at work and found the scheme involving Pony Express Elementary on Wednesday when visiting phishtank.com, an online community where people voluntarily post Web sites they believe have been overtaken by phishers.

The scheme probably was posted on phishtank.com after a member of the Web community received a spam e-mail from people claiming to be bank officials, visited the Pony Express site and found what he perceived was a scam, Douglass said.
"And I recognized it because it's my daughter's elementary school," Douglass said. "So that's kind of what made me go, 'Whoa, wait a second ..."'
Douglass called Banks, who said by Wednesday afternoon he had already taken down www.ponyexpresselementary.org, after receiving notifications about the scheme from the Alpine School District and XMission, the Web site's host.
PTA leaders used the site last year to advertise events at the Eagle Mountain school. It has not been updated since then, Banks said.
"We monitor for these sites constantly, and whenever we see them we act as quickly as possible to contact our customers and even non-customers who might be fooled into entering personal information," said Rick Swagler, spokesman for Regions Bank.
Swagler said such schemes are typically reported to the federal government.
"The bank will never send you an e-mail asking you for personal information or asking you to update information," Swagler said.
The banking industry works together to try to curb phishers.
According to the American Bankers Association, 25,816 phishing Web sites were discovered in November, an increase from previous months.

New host

I really like Blogger.com/Blogspot.com but I have my own domain. When I figured out that my host supports PHP script and MySQL database I figured that it was probably time to start hosting my blog there since I'm paying for 5 gigs of space and only use about 100 Megs of it. I am also going to be working on an open source project that requires me to use PHP and MySQL and it might be a good time to start learning PHP and practicing up on MySQL. PHP seems pretty straight forward, it's a scripting language which means that it's not really a programming language but it can be used to make logical decisions and parse data that is fed to it from a data base or a user. Most likely what I will be using it for on my site is Web-based forms which allow a user to input their information. I will eventually have a Web-based storefront and start selling my kids online. I'M ONLY KIDDING, PLEASE QUIT CALLING DCFS ALREADY!

Happy 95th Birthday Grandpa!

My Grandpa Doc was born January 31, 1912, a little bit more than 3 month before the Titanic set sail and ran into an iceberg, five years before the USA entered World War I (not World War II). My grandfather lived through the Great Depression (the biggest oxymoron in our languge, there was nothing great about it.) My grandpa taught me how to golf and how to swear, for hellsakes. My grandpa also taught me the value of a dollar, of course he taught me the value of a 1942 dollar and not a 1982 dollar, but that's beside the point. My grandpa taught me to eat beans and love it. He never perfected them and I thought the only good beans were the kind you buy in a can (because they were soft) until I went to Brazil and discovered that the trick is to put them in a pressure cooker and season them with onions and bay leaves.

My grandpa passed away 6 years ago and Salt Lake City has been less colorful ever since. There's nobody left to tell ethnic jokes and lawyer jokes. He was the last politically incorrect person I knew. He'd go to a restaurant and call the waitress, "honey" or "sweetheart". He'd refer to women as gals. Yeah, that's sexist, and I wont repeat any of it. The ethnic jokes are better off dead too and I should have never laughed at them. But my grandpa was one funny sunuvabitch!

What if I were an ad executive?

It might go something like this:



I created this image using a photo of BooKoo and a freeware program called The Gimp version 2.2.13

Fast Food Franchise Owners

I used to work for a fast food franchise somewhere in a college town in Northern Utah. I really don't want to say what the company is or who the owner is because the people that read this blog on a regular basis will know who I'm talking about anyway.

One of the benefits (downsides) to having kids is that you get to watch lots of cartoons. Mr. G's (the son I named and older version of this blog after) favorite cartoon is "Spongebob Square Pants". Spongebob's boss is Mr. Eugene Krabs. Mr. Krabs favorite expressions are, "I like money." and "The money is always right." If Mr. Krabs were being shot at and his daughter was on one side of the room and a penny were on the other side of the room. He would risk his life to save the penny first and his daughter second. In the Spongebob movie, Mr. Krabs sees King Neptune coming to his restaurant and marks up his sandwiches to the $100 range.

The owner of the fast food franchise where I worked found out that another franchise for the same chain was charging more for their fries. Instead of using the opportunity to advertise that his price was lower, he used to opportunity to raise the price on his own fries. He required all of us to charge .10 cents for any extra items that didn't already come on the sandwich. For example, one sandwich didn't come with pickles, but a customer asked for pickles. I tried to charge the customer an extra 10 cents as I had been instructed and got into an argument with the customer. Instead of defending me, the owner told the customer what a S.O.B. I was and refunded his .10 cents. Part of the owner's franchise agreement with the chain was that his employees were required to give out two packets of free condiments with every sandwich sold. He found out how much this was costing him and told us only to give them out if the customers asked for them. How many times have you gone to a fast food place and forgot to ask for the ketchup? Some of these places are exactly the same, they don't give it out unless you ask. Customers get in the habit of the condiments being placed in the bag without having to ask. When a cheapskate owner decides that he's going to save money by cutting back on the condiments all it does is make customers angry and not want to come back.

Anyway, in honor of my former employer, I have used The Gimp to draw his likeness and post it on this blog and am declaring January 30 cheapskate franchise owner day. I used to also work in the hospitality industry and hotel franchise owners are a bunch of cheapskates too. (Okay, not all of them, just most.) Today is the day where you get to tell your kids that you're too cheap to buy a 10 pack of pencils but instead cut one pencil into 10 pieces for your kids to share. The kid that makes the most mistakes gets the eraser. Instead of throwing away that bottle of ketchup that has less than a teaspoon of ketchup left, put a little water in it and shake it up. You can do this 3 or 4 times before you have to throw the bottle away. Instead of buying a fancy gourmet pizza, go to the store and by a 91 cent Tostinos pizza and put your favorite vegetables on top of it; may I suggest the Danish blue cheese and frozen peas as toppings? It's out of this world. Instead of throwing away that bottle of maple syrup that the ants got into, tell your kids that there are two kinds of syrup in this world: creamy and crunchy. Instead of buying your kid his favorite comic book, buy him a ream of printer paper and a Bic fountain pen with the black, red, green, and blue ink and tell him to draw his own comics.

Yay, yay, yay, it's International Cheapskate Day. Sing it high, sing it loud, sing it low, sing it proud! It's International Cheapskate Day. We love you L.W.!!!

My prescription for a bad headache

Take one Rockstar and two Excedrin Tension Headache Geltabs and call me in the morning.

Peter Corroon really chaps my hide

Can I just say, I hate Peter Corroon more than any other politician in the world right now? That would include Kim Jong "mentally" Ill and that idiot in Iran. Here's a post about it from KSL's site:

"[Stadiums] are a revenue source for the community that surrounds them. The E-Center is used for events other than hockey and it brings a good amount of money into West Valley. That's why West Valley supports it. Art centers and planetariums encourage learning, learning encourages invention, invention encourages business, business encourages tax revenue. Everything is about economics. Why did you get married? Love? I don't think so. Because two people working is more economical than one and there's a tax break for married couples. Why are we fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? Because we were attacked by terrorists on 9-11-01? Yes. And how did that effect us financially as a nation? It was one of the worst times in our economic history since the 1930s. By controlling the regions where the terrorists come out of, we also control their ability to attack us and affect our economy.

People here seem to think that soccer wont bring in money because soccer has never been popular or because they don't like it. Soccer is growing and will continue to grow. David Beckham is more well known than Michael Jordan and he now plays in our 2nd largest city, Los Angeles. Ronaldo, who plays for Real Madrid and Brazil's national team has expressed interest in playing in New York for the Red Bulls. Did Michael Jordan sell tickets for the NBA and close TV deals and make advertising revenue? HELL YEAH! Will Beckham and Ronaldo do the same? Again, HELL YEAH!

One of my art teachers at UVSC, Perry Stewart said there are two ways of looking at something, you can either look directly at the object, or look past the object. It's when you learn to look past the object that your best art comes out. I think this analogy applies here, because people are focusing on what soccer has been, not what it will become. Look through the raindrops on your windshield and you will see the road ahead. Look past the money that is being used to fund the infrastructure and see the revenue that soccer Super-Stars and the world economy will bring to Utah.

Of course that's my opinion, I could be wrong."

South Pass and William Henry Ashley

I'm reading a book about the early exploration of the American West, before and after the Louisiana purchase. One of the most significant finds by explorers was South Pass, a pass that allowed relatively easy passage over the Rocky Mountains and the Continental Divide. I don't live too far away from South Pass but was never aware of its existence or importance until reading about it.

In 1822 Ashley and business partner Andrew Henry -- a bullet maker whom he met through his gunpowder business -- posted famous advertisements in St. Louis newspapers seeking one hundred "enterprising young men . . . to ascend the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years." The men who responded to this call became known as "Ashley's Hundred." Between 1822 and 1825, Ashley and Henry's Rocky Mountain Fur Company, did several large scale fur trapping expeditions in the mountain west. Ashley's men are officially credited with the American discovery of South Pass in the winter of 1824. Ashley devised the rendezvous system in which trappers, Indians and traders would meet annually in a predetermined location to exchange furs, goods and money. His innovations in the fur trade earned Ashley a great deal of money and recognition, and helped open the western part of the continent to American expansion. In 1828 he explored present-day northern Colorado, ascending the South Platte River to the base of the Front Range, then ascending the Cache la Poudre River to the Laramie Plains and onward to the Green River.