YronBay.com

Saw a link on a friend's page of the damage in Bowling Green. Did some interesting side-by-side comparisons via google street view. Most of these are all along 31W which runs just south of the city & WKU. Lots & lots of damage there!
Link to the original post & photos is in the comments.

Over the past couple of months I have had several clients ask me about an email they received. The attached picture is an example of what I have been seeing a lot of recently. These are totally bogus. One way I know that is that I have been receiving these on many non-existent email accounts that I use. One of my domains is set to accept email sent to anything@ and it all just gets lumped into a generic mailbox. What that means is that the initial text of this scam is already totally bogus - they could not have 'hacked' my account because such accounts do not exist! People get scared when they receive this note on their main id because they think it is possible they really got hacked, & they ask me how I can be so sure they didn't - this is a key reason why - because I get these same things on my 'fake' accounts so I know them to be bogus. Another interesting thing about this particular one is that none of this was actually text - the entire thing you see attached was simply an image embedded in the email (thus you couldn't copy/paste any of the text, even though that is exactly what it tells you to do! duh!).
You now have 48 hours to send me $1,000 to my bitcoin address. Please do not fail to comply.

PSA -

Windows 7 reaches its End of Life phase on January 14, 2020. Microsoft will stop releasing updates and patches for the operating system at that time. As with Windows XP, once they stop releasing patches (think security exposures) it will become increasingly risky to continue using a Win7 machine connected to the internet.

I believe that most of my clients are in good shape and have already moved to windows 10, but on the chance that any of you are out there still using Windows 7, it is probably time to start making plans to upgrade. If your machine is potent enough, we may be able to simply obtain a license for Windows 10 (usually around $100) and rebuild your existing hardware with Win10. However, given that any machine still running Win7 is likely pretty aged at this point, it may be a better option to use the $$ that you would spend to upgrade it to move up to a newer/better machine.

If you are still using Win7 and would like to discuss options & make a plan, email or message me and we'll get started.

Finally, a client story with a happier ending. If you don't have your data backed up, go back it up - NOW. If you THINK you have your data backed up, go verify that the backup is really working and you have current data backed up.

Had a call a few days ago from a client who had been out of town for over a week so they had turned off their machine before they left. Upon returning home, the machine wouldn't boot. This is very common - hard drives which tend to spin 24/7 for months at a time don't always like being turned off & not spinning for several days. They get cranky when someone wants them to start spinning again.

I was able to rescue the desktop by replacing the dead drive with a new solid state drive, but the most pleasant part of this experience was that the user had all of their data backed up online (in this case, using something called 'backblaze'). Upon bringing their desktop back to life, it was a fairly simple process to restore all of their data. Happy client. Happy me.

YronBay's words of wisdom, item #248: "A backup isn't a backup if the data exists in only one place!"

The scenario is always the same. Someone purchases an external hard drive because their main data is becoming too large to fit on their laptop/desktop/whatever. So they begin the process of moving all of their pictures, music, video over to the new external hard drive thus creating their new 'backup' drive. However, they then proceed to erase all of the data which they just copied from its primary location. What does this leave? It leaves all of that data now located ONLY on the external drive. This is NOT a backup, this is now the ONLY copy! Everyone has this mistaken belief that external hard drives never fail. Well I can tell you that quite often they are more likely to fail than the drives in your machine. If you wish to do something similar, ALWAYS get at least 2 external drives and keep them in sync as copies of one another. Or if you have a fast internet connection, use an online service such as iDrive or Carbonite (IN ADDITION TO the local/external drive), or do both. You can never have too many backups.

I always hate it when a client comes to me with this situation & I have to explain that they did not in fact have a backup of their data, they had a single copy of their data which is now gone.

Southern Indiana folks - this is an old pic of the concrete turtles which were originally at 'The Mall' (as it was known then) on Shelbyville Rd in Louisville. The turtles eventually left that location and were transported to Green Tree Mall where they stayed around for several more years. I understand many folks who grew up here in Indiana remember playing on these at Green Tree. A while back, I somehow stumbled onto a discussion thread somewhere in the vastness of the internet where people were talking about these, and someone even posted a picture of the turtles distributed around someone's lake/pond on their farm, with the comment about how their relative wound up with them or bought them once Green Tree decided they were done with them. I'm trying to trace this story again but now, of course, can't find anything searching the web.

update:
a while back, I found a page dedicated to one of the turtle's 'cousins' in Bowie, MD. There is a pinned post that is a map showing the locations of these turtle clones all over the usa!
https://www.facebook.com/bowieturtle/

1954 Indianapolis 500
see video here showing many of these vehicles:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_k39rO4AAo

one more time - repeat after me:
microsoft does NOT care anything about my pc.
microsoft will NEVER ask me to call them because I have serious infections/viruses on my pc.
microsoft will NEVER call me unsolicited and inform me that I have a virus on my pc that they can fix if i let them on remotely.
microsoft will NEVER tell me they can resolve all my issues if i give them remote access to my pc and pay them a large fee.
repeat the above 4 lines replacing 'microsoft' with 'McAfee'.
repeat the above 4 lines replacing 'microsoft' with 'symantec'.
repeat the above 4 lines replacing 'microsoft' with any other anti-virus tool you've ever heard of.
NEVER call any number that pops up on your screen telling you your computer is infected. Instead, simply pull the plug on your machine immediately, or hold the power button several seconds until it shuts off. These are SCAMS. They are primarily after your credit card info but they will also ask you to let them on remotely so they can 'fix' your problems.
NEVER let anyone on your machine remotely (except me of course). NEVER give anyone like this a credit card if they tell you they can solve your problems for a fee. These last 2 sentences can be avoided if you simply follow the first rule - NEVER call any number that pops up on your screen telling you your computer is infected. I don't care if warnings are blaring and bells are whistling and red lights are flashing. DON'T CLICK ON ANYTHING - JUST PULL THE PLUG! (or on a laptop hold down on the power button 5-10 seconds until it does a hard power off.

ok people, repeat after me:
microsoft does NOT care anything about my pc.
microsoft will NEVER ask me to call them because I have serious infections/viruses on my pc.
microsoft will NEVER call me unsolicited and inform me that I have a virus on my pc that they can fix if i let them on remotely.
microsoft will NEVER tell me they can resolve all my issues if i give them remote access to my pc and pay them a large fee.
repeat the above 4 lines replacing 'microsoft' with 'McAfee'.
repeat the above 4 lines replacing 'microsoft' with 'symantec'.
repeat the above 4 lines replacing 'microsoft' with any other anti-virus tool you've ever heard of.
NEVER call any number that pops up on your screen telling you your computer is infected. Instead, simply pull the plug on your machine immediately, or hold the power button several seconds until it shuts off.