CarltonFoster.com

Howdy Foster Family and Friends! It’s baking day!  There are baking ingredients all over the kitchen today. Chocolate chips, sugar, butter eggs, marshmallows and other assorted ingredients are on the counters and table. The pool table is covered with a tablecloth so it can serve as a cooling rack.

So far there are peanut butter cookies cooling on the table and english toffee that is setting up on the kitchen table. Soon there will be chocolate chip cookies joining hte peanut butter cookies. The cherries for the chocolate mice are sitting on a cooling rack to dry before getting dipped in chocolate. Some of the peanut butter cookies will get dipped in chocolate after I make the mice. I have sugar cookie dough in the fridge waiting to be rolled out. Those will get iced tomorrow. I also plan to make some maple syrup fudge.

“Hey, did you hear there’s a new voice mail from Tiger Woods?”

“What was that recipe for coconut cake?”

“My video isn’t playing properly, do I need new codecs?”

Simple, innocent questions like these can lead to not so innocent results… but why? There’s a term in search technology called Search Engine Optimization or SEO for those with lazy fingers. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results… like Google’s search algorithm, PageRank.

Here’s a quick peek at PageRank:

For a more detailed and explained breakdown:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

But I digress… how does all this turn into a user getting infected?

In recent years, hacker SEO tactics, also called spamdexing, attempt to redirect search results to particular target pages in a fashion that is against the search engines’ terms of service. Some of the tactics include: keyword stuffing, hidden text and links, doorway and cloaked pages, link farming and blog comment spam.

Criminals are using tools such as Google Trends to identify the most popular and current Internet search terms. The same criminals then use new blogs on free hosting sites, such as Windows Live Spaces, Blogspot, and AOL Journals, featuring the same search terms. When an Internet user then makes a search using those popular terms they get multiple links to these hosted blog sites in their search results.

If the user then clicks on the link, thinking it is relevant to their desired search, they are taken to a blog site with an apparent embedded video player. If the user clicks on the video player, they are prompted to load a ‘codec’, which surreptitiously loads malware, including fake anti-virus software that promises to clean non existent viruses from the computer in return for their credit card details.

Our advice is to not blindly trust results from Google searches, and be wary of these kinds of links to hosted blog sites. One simple way to assist in identifying possible bad sites is using the Firefox add-on Web Of Trust. While their primary source of knowledge is ratings from other users, they also take advantage of nearly a hundred carefully chosen trusted sources, such as listings of phishing sites. This provides WOT with a fast, automated and reliable means of protecting their users from new, rapidly spreading online threats.

You can find it here:
http://www.mywot.com/en/download/ff

And as always, if you find yourself the victim of such nefarious techniques, please call IT Security at x44200

Happy Thanksgiving Foster Family and Friends!

today is the boy’s birthday. i asked him a couple of days ago what kind of cake would he like for his birthday. he told me a vanilla cake with blue icing. when i asked what shape he wanted, he said he didn’t care. i offered a computer shaped cake, or round, or square, and he said he didn’t care what shape. so this is what he got.

it’s been awhile since i put in the fall garden and so far it has gone well. i have picked some of the romaine and butter crisp lettuce. both of them were tasty. the spinach is good as well. a couple of the carrots got fat enough to be picked and were good in a taco salad. i have given away some of the lettuce and still have plenty so i think that was a successful crop. i will leave the rest of the carrots to get bigger. i planted the tulip bulbs today. those will bloom in the spring. the broccoli hasn’t produced anything other than leaves so far, but they have grown better than i thought they would.

So we spent most of this past weekend building and filling 4′x8′ planters. Thank you Carl! Today, I got some plants to put in for the fall. I have romaine lettuce, another lettuce, spinach, broccoli, rosemary, and just for some color, some mums.

Hopefully in a few weeks the lettuce and spinach will have grown enough to have salads and the broccoli shouldn’t be too far behind them.

In my profile, I mentioned that I am a Tupperware consultant. At the end of the month, there is a new catalog coming out for the holidays that will have some limited time offerings, and some neat new items. And starting this Saturday are the new monthly specials. This month is focusing on the microwave cookware line, Vent ‘N Serve. If you are interested in the Vent ‘N Serve line, August is the time to get it as there are some great deals available on it.  For those of you out of town where i can’t hand you a catalog, you can shop on my website at www.my2.tupperware.com/janiefoster

Happy Sunday!

This is for the guy in the dark grey Dodge truck. I really hope karma catches up to you without harming any innocent by standers.

How important you must be that you can’t wait 30 more seconds for a light to turn green so you can turn left into Target! And since you did it, it must be ok and the little old bat in the car in front of me ran the light too. It took more time for you to make the right in front of chick fila than it did for the light to change.

Oh and how special you are that you can run yet another red light leaving the Target parking lot AND try to make a right turn from the center lane that is supposed to go straight or left.  You actually pulled out to try to block my view of oncoming traffic and pull out in front of me. Did you really think that was going to work?  No i didn’t make it easy for you to get out. And oh my! you actually had to wait for me to make a right on red from the correct lane.

Sorry, but i’m not afraid of your big Dodge truck. I sit high enough in the van to see your stupid face. I also got the first part of your license plate. KLU- sorry i missed the numbers on your Virginia plate. But don’t worry. If I hear about any accidents today involving a big grey Dodge truck, I’ll be happy to contact the police and let them know how you’ve been driving today.

And for all that effort to get out of the parking lot, you sit at the green light in front of the mall! Thankfully Jefferson wasn’t that busy yet, because you couldn’t drive straight either. As slow as you were going at that time, you should have managed to go in a straight line even with your hands off the wheel. You should probably get that looked at.

and a little side note to the cashier at the market today: hey vera, it’s great that you are friendly and all that, but if you paid more attention to ringing up items instead of talking to EVERYBODY around you, 3 other cashiers might not have had to come up and take care of the line that was forming. You also might have noticed that i was done signing the slip and waiting for you to take it if you weren’t turned around talking to a customer in another lane.

YAY!! Today the stitches came out and I got to take a real shower.   Until they came out, I could not get them wet, so that meant no showers. I had to carefully take a bath or wash up in the sink, neither of which really make ya feel clean. And since there were no showers, that meant i couldn’t wash my hair either. at least not on my own.  Sunday, before the rehearsal for Lynn’s wedding, I had to lay down on the kitchen counter while Carl washed my hair. To make sure the stitches stayed dry, I taped gauze over the stitches and then held wash cloths over that in case Carl got a little crazy with the sprayer hose.  Yay, clean hair.

Today after spending 2 hours in traffic because people here are morons, I got to take a real shower and wash my hair. YAY! All clean!

Yesterday, Carl’s sister Lynn got married to Adam. So Congratulations to the newlyweds!  They are going camping for their honeymoon. I hope you guys managed to get the tent put up without too much trouble.  See ya when you get back.