Social Networking...a little something everyone should know.

My job blesses me with a wealth of folks who are in every profession known to man - just about. I have access to lawyers, bankers, writers, programmers, doctors, nurses, various members of the law enforcement community, teachers, professors, psychologists, accountants...you name it, I probably have access to one thru my job.  This bit of info was passed along by one of my law enforcement officers and I included it in my last office newsletter - if it's good enough for work, it must be good enough to share on my blog. Parents - might want to go over these things with the kiddos!

SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES (SNS), like Facebook® and Twitter®, are software applications that connect people and information in spontaneous, interactive ways. While SNS can be useful and fun, they can provide adversaries, such as terrorists, spies, and criminals, with critical information needed to harm you or disrupt your mission. Practicing operations security (OPSEC) will help you to recognize your critical information and protect it from an adversary. Here are a few safety tips to get you started.

THINK BEFORE YOU POST! Remember, your information could become public at any time due to hacking, configuration errors, social engineering, or the business practice of selling or sharing user data.

OPSEC AND SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES SAFETY CHECKLIST
Think. Protect. OPSEC.

www.ioss.gov

Personal Information
Do you:

• Keep sensitive, work-related information OFF your profile?
• Keep your plans, schedules and location data to yourself?
• Protect the names and information of coworkers, friends, and family members?
• Tell friends to be careful when posting photos and information about you and your family?

Posted Data
Before posting did you:

• Check all photos for indicators in the background or reflective surfaces? (bet you didn't think of that one 'eh?)
• Check filenames and file tags for sensitive data (your name, organization or other details)

Passwords
Are they:

• Unique from your other online passwords?
• Sufficiently hard to guess?
• Adequately protected (not shared or given away)?

Settings and Privacy
Did you:

• Carefully look for and set all your privacy and security options?
• Determine both your profile AND search visibility?
• Sort “friends” into groups and networks, and set access permissions accordingly?
• Verify thorough other channels that a “friend” request was actually from your friend?
• Add untrusted people to the group with the lowest permissions and access?

Security
Remember to:

• Keep your anti-virus software updated.
• Beware of links, downloads, and attachments just as you would in e-mails.
• Beware of “apps” or plugins, which are often written by unknown third parties who might use them to access your data and friends.
• Look for HTTPS and the lock icon that indicate active transmission security before logging in or entering sensitive data (especially when using wi-fi hotspots).

Fabulous - it's a Goodwill score!

I haven't had much time to stalk my local Goodwill lately, but I made time last night (knowing that I had a million things to do before getting up ridiculously early on a Saturday to cart my happy butt to Silver Springs for a car show.

I saw a fake LV handbag - no thanks...

I saw this cool mid-century lamp

Which I totally don't need and don't have a place for, so I left it for someone else to get super excited about...

And then I saw this....and I whipped out my cell phone and quickly texted a picture to my mom. My text said "If this ur china...its poinsettias & ribbons..."

Umm yeah - obviously, I wasn't watching what was coming up on the screen as I was Swyping (if you don't know about Swype - look here - I use it on my Samsung Captivate Smartphone running Android)

After 30 seconds or so I called her. She doesn't text back fast enough and as I said, I had things to do so...here's the conversation in Goodwill.

Her: Yes that's it. 

Me: Ummm ok, well, do you want it? 

Her: Well I have service for 8...

Me: Ok...

Her: How much is it?

Me: Ummm $.99 each piece. 3 coffee cups, 3 dinner plates, 4 saucers, 4 salad plates.

Her: That's a really good price.

Me: Ummm ok...

Her: Yeah, go ahead and get it.

Me: Ok bye

So I carefully stack the plates one by one checking for chips, and missing gold. They were a little gross...some of them looked like they were used for Christmas dinner last week and donated without being washed. Lovely. Then hooked a dainty coffee cup handle over 3 fingers and made my way from the far back corner of the store to the register up front. Half a set of china doesn't take long to get heavy. I often wonder why I don't just grab a cart when I walk in the door...just in case. Alas, I made it up front without incident. The one woman working was a manager and she checked all the price tags and wrapped each piece in newspaper and what seemed like an eternity later said "i'll give you the whole set for $2.99" Say what? So I say "really? You're my favorite person of the day!" and she lit up like a Christmas tree and said "thank you very much - are you 55 or older?" Say WHAT?! Ok, yeah, I need to get my hair colored, but geeze, it's just a FEW grays. So I say "ummm no." while thinking "you are SOOO NOT my favorite person of the day...seriously...do I LOOK like I qualify for the Senior Discount? What the hell..." Anywho...so I pay my $3.19 and haul it out to the car and promptly end up waiting on the ding dong who decides to make a left across 4 lanes of traffic from the right hand turn lane. Moron. 

So I get home and think "i'll be nice and hand wash this lovely china rather than give it to my mom covered in schmootz" which I do and voila - cleaned up like a peach! Always nice to have some "extra" piece in case someone drops something and since they don't make this pattern anymore...

 

So if you read my blog and read one of the last posts about Christmas Traditions - then you can picture my family gathered around the dining room table at my parents' home on Christmas morning having the traditional Honey Puff pancake on this very same china...

 

That would be the infamous Honey Puff fresh from the oven.

Everyone say "Hi mom!"

I caved...

I admit it. I caved. I gave in to the house number craze.

I kept seeing it every where. Porches. Front doors. Blogs. Pillows. Pots. Crocks. Rocks. Curbs. Signs. Old windows. It was all so overwhelming that I couldn't take it anymore and just had to do it myself.

So that was my "big" project on this last trip to Robin's Nest.

I say "big" because let me tell you what a joy it was to cut my own stencils...and just how long that took. Nevermind, i'd rather stick a perfectly polished silver plated butter knife in my eye than relive that process.

Feel free to tell me that I should have just bought a Cricut.

Alas...I chose my fonts and printed what I wanted on a couple of transparencies with my trusty old laser printer. Then I taped those to a piece of corrugated cardboard and painstakingly cut them by hand with a craft knife that could stand to be the recipient of a new blade. Did I mention it took like 3 days? Thank you fancy mixture of fonts...

I picked up this vintage milk can at a local Goodwill for $13.99. It's not perfect by any means. It has some dings and dents (don't we all) and it had been painted several times. When I rescued it, it was a lovely shade of baby blue, speckled with rust and chips of missing paint.

 

So I gave it a quick once over with a sanding sponge, then hosed it off and let it dry before giving it a less than stellar coat of primer (looks better already).

 Mr. Paisley wasn't thrilled that I primed it on the deck railing (note the overspray). That's called character honey and it's my cabin, i'll do with it as I please (he keeps saying "I bought you a cabin" whenever he doesn't get me a gift for something - like say our 10th wedding anniversary that was November 24...).

So once the primer was dry I whipped out my new love...flat black Valspar spray paint and went to town. Once that was dry (yep, forgot to take a photo) I taped my lovingly hand cut stencils to the can with painters tape. It didn't stick very well. I made due...as it was what I had on hand there. 

Here are my stencils...after the fact. Yep - once again I forgot to take a picture while "in process". 

I had packed cream acrylic paint and a few sponge brushes of various sizes knowing I was going to do this project. I ended up using a LARGE sponge brush for the numbers and a regular 1" for the rest. I put as little paint on the brush as possible and basically stippled to try to keep it from bleeding under the stencil that was precariously taped to the can. That actually worked pretty well AND gave it a bonus worn look. Perfect.

So after much adieu and several coats of stippling, plus a quickie "clean up" of some edges with my handy black Sharpie (followed by a coat or 10 of crystal clear...which further enhanced the worn look as I watched the acrylic paint disappear as the drops of clear hit it)...I present my house number milk can for your viewing pleasure.

Oooooooh.....Ahhhhhh....Seriously...how much BETTER does that can look in flat black?!

 And here it sits...mostly because that's where Mr. Paisley set it when he hauled the wheat straw bales down to the basement.

I'm still kind of questioning my font choice for the house numbers. It's one font. One size. It looks like I couldn't line up my stencils...alas, it was a 1 piece stencil...tis how it comes out printed in this particular font.

Joining some parties up in here!

Are we there yet?

It's the day after Christmas and Mr. Paisley and I have been in the truck all.day.long. In fact I am blogging this from my heated seat.

We got a late start this morning...seems Mr. P. Has picked up some kind of crud that is going around. Great! Amazingly traffic has been fine. It just started snowing again. Big chunky flakes!

We did take a break around 1:00. We stopped at Cracker Barrel for lunch...along with everyone else. 25 minute wait for two people! Crazy...

They had their Christmas stuff 50% off. Would have thought it would be more...didn't buy anything other than lunch. I had that yummy grilled chicken orchard salad.

We are currently about 30 minutes outside of Knoxville and the snow is coming down nicely. The digital display in the truck says it's 29°. I think it's colder...I'm pretty sure the heat from the engine throws it off a little.

My awesome brother just called from the Paisley Cottage - he went to cover my plants since it's dropping below freezing tonight in Orlando. Super glad he did because he said the hot tub was uncovered. Well half open. Wonder which neighbor kid did that...I know it was covered this morning when I did the last load of laundry. Time to put the locking clips on it I guess.

Just wanted to do a quick post since I downloaded Blogger-droid. Figured I should try it out. All I can say is thank God for SWYPE. Never could have thumb typed this post on this bumpy road.

Hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas!!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Fall in Florida? What?

Yes...it seems that we are actually having a FALL here in Central Florida this year. Granted it's the end of December, going into January, but holy crap the trees have all up and gone red, orange and gold on us! It's crazy - and gorgeous! I mean, sure, there is still way more green than anything else, but we never get fall color like this.

Here are a few shots I've taken over the past week...pardon the less than fantastic photos. Most were taken from my car with a point and shoot camera that only has a 3x zoom and I snapped them while I was waiting at red lights and whatnot so there was ZERO planning involved to try and remove things like red lights and sign posts, other drivers, etc. Tree + red light = opportunity LOL.

 Outside the courthouse downtown Orlando on 12/16

 I-4 and Lee Road in Winter Park  on 12/23

 The oak trees turning gold - parking lot at my office in Maitland

 Cypress trees turning orange - pardon my elbow - these are in the office park where I work in Maitland

 The office park across the road

 The lake in the office park - around 3:30 in the afternoon on 12/23

 Same lake at the office park... 12/23

 Same lake at the office park - this was around 5pm on 12:23 - setting sun was lighting up the orange trees for sure!

 Same lake...5:00pm

And again at 5:00pm

Gorgeous...add the real fall color to this chilly weather we're having and I think it's safe to say that Fall has arrived in Florida. Better late than never!

Season's Greetings

MIA...yes I am.

Let me just say...I am NOT ready for Christmas this year. I'm ALWAYS done shopping in November and have everything wrapped and ready to go within the first week of December. I like to have my trees up and all the packages underneath so that I can sit in the living room with my cup of hot cocoa in the evenings and admire all the prettiness...not this year. 

One tree. It's not even decorated the way I wanted it. I wasn't in the mood...the first ornament case I opened was my Florida Gator box...so yes indeed, our Christmas tree is decked out in blue, orange and green ornaments, filled in here and there with different sizes of shiny royal blue and copper Christmas balls and white ribbon running thru the tree with a giant fluffy white bow on top.

Here's the tree  in all it's glory. Actually, it looks like this was before I put the other ribbons on it. Such is life...that seems to be the way things are going this time of year at the Paisley Cottage!

 I used to get these handmade clay ornaments at a local Fall Craft Festival, but I haven't been there in years...this little gator is under his favorite palm tree on his Florida Gator beach towel.

 One of two gorgeous stained glass pieces...

 One of this year's additions from Danbury Mint.

 Last year's Danbury ornament - it has a multi-color LED light in it (it's blue in this shot - look in the "holes") at the top left of the ornament)

 One of my favorites - a gift from my mom many years ago. Old school Albert! He's 24k gold plated.

 Another from the craft fair lady - baby gator in a wreath.

 Picked this one up on our trip to the cabin in November. I bought it at Christmas Place (which is amazing if you've never been)

 Hand painted...not by me.

 From Gatorland in Kissimmee, FL...

 Gators on the move...

 Simple little wood Gator with a blue and orange holly necklace of sorts...

 What Gator tree would be complete without Gator candy canes?

 What can I say...it's blurry.

 This is one of the few oblong shaped ones...they're hard to find. Almost always round.

Gators cheer bear! This was from the series Cracker Barrel used to carry (I think I have 4 or 5 from the series)

 The 2nd Danbury ornament this year - they cheaped out (shocking) and just made a hole in the bottom of the ornaments this year - you have to hang them where you can stick one of the tree lights into it.

 Stained glass #2!

Albert flying high in his Gator plane...

These are not all of my Gator ornaments, just a few I snapped some quick shots of...there are plenty more. Enough to cover a 6.5" tree anyway!