While most people whine and complain about the cold weather, I look forward to it for many reasons. I don’t dig the heat, or the humidity at all, which is really funny because have opted to live in the South!
What’s to look forward to? Snow, ice, seeing your breath, doing donuts in your car in the snow (uhmmm or so I’ve heard), etc. Of course there are the negative sides, such as scraping ice if you don’t have a garage, and worrying about your teenage children driving in the slick stuff.
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the ability to use the cold in the car to instantly turn a liquid into a solid. In this case, a bottle of water I leave in my car for entertainment purposes. Every cold morning when I get in the car, I perform the following, all in the name of science:
I know, your 5th grader does this too, but hey, at least I am never bored!
Have fun with this, and I will get back to doing that thing we do – computer, server and network service, support and sales here in chilly Greenville, SC…
Poison Tap Water is trending on Google… And I am doing everything I can to see if I can get some of that. hahaha
Please ignore this….
In case you ever wondered – here’s how that copier works in your office… I’m taking our’s apart tomorrow to make sure this is factual…. =)
Homeland Secure IT has more fun giveaways coming! We are going to be giving some silly stuff and some spiffy stuff away to those who are on our mailing lists…
You have to play the game to win… To play, you need only sign up for our mailing lists and/or subscribe to this blog. While everyone in the USA is eligible (except where prohibited by law) our mailing lists are primarily of interest to computer and technology enthusiasts, business owners, entrepreneurs, our clients & future clients of course, friends, family and individuals, mostly in and around the Greenville and Upstate South Carolina area. If you live outside of the local area and cannot pick up the cool stuff you win from our office, then you will be responsible for the shipping and handling costs.
WHAT CAN YOU WIN? Just what are we planning to give away to those who subscribe? In no particular order: A wireless network / IP surveillance camera complete with night vision, Trend Micro Anti-Virus, APC & Eaton UPS, free computer service & support, gift cards to various places around the Upstate and more! (Who knows, maybe a cool Android device, or netbook, etc)
We will announce the giveaways as we start them. The next one will be for July 2010.
WHY ARE WE DOING THIS? Because we want to increase awareness of our products and services, but we also want to have fun and to give something back to those who support us!
HOW TO ENTER: On our blog simply enter your email address & click on the subscribe button on the right-hand side where it says “Follow Me” to subscribe to this blog, which will be emailed to you each day there is new content, or you can sign up for either one or all of our mailing lists. There are currently two mailing lists, the “NewsBytes” ML which has minimal traffic, no more than once per week, and the “Secure IT Alerts” mailing list, which has only postings that regard to security, such as vulnerabilities and patches – traffic varies on that list. (There is a form below)
HOW WE SELECT A WINNER: At the time of the drawings, ALL lists are combined together and a name is selected randomly using a random number generator to get a number that corresponds to a name on that list.
LOOPHOLE ALERT: There is one flaw that can be used in your favor… If you are on multiple lists and subscribed to the blog, your name is going to be in the list multiple times, increasing your chances of winning.
Sign up now using this form:
This is just too slick…. This weekend brings IPSC 2010, the Internet Problem Solving Contest 2010. What is it? Teams of up to 3 people will compete on the 6th of June to win cash prizes by working together to solve a series of problems. Go here for the information http://ipsc.ksp.sk/
If you are competing, let me know how you do!
The FCC wants you to signup to shape the future of broadband in America
The FCC is looking for about 10,000 good men and women to help test their broadband connections in certain markets and from certain providers by installing a piece of equipment to meter the throughput at their home.
If you are interested in participating, you can go to https://www.testmyisp.com/ and fill out the application. You must meet certain requirements, such as having a high speed / broadband connection like cable or DSL from prividers such as Charter, AT&T, Cable One, Cablevision, CenturyLink, Cincinnati Bell, Clearwire, Comcast, Cox, Fairpoint, Frontier, Hughes, Insight, Mediacom, Qwest, RCN, Time Warner Cable (Roadrunner), Verizon, WildBlue/ViaSat, Windstream, or “other”, which will allow you to write in your broadband provider.
Apparently, they will place a simple device onto your LAN, and you must agree to the terms of usage, such as leaving it on 24/7, not trying to reverse engineer the device, etc.
Conspiracy theories are already out there that this device will be doing more than watching your throughput, such as watching your browsing habits. Possible, but unlikely. The company that has partnered with the FCC would probably not want to get that kind of bad press if this were found to be true.
I signed up our home and will let you know if we are selected…
And the Winner of the Cisco Flip MinoHD camcorder is
Now for the moment you have been waiting for… Drum roll please…..
Well first I will explain what we were doing for those who don’t have a clue.
A few months ago, Homeland Secure IT entered a contest on Brickfish.com that was put on by Cisco… It was called “Heros of the Human Network”, which had businesses and organizations put up a reason why they should win something from Cisco. We entered, and then posted that we had entered on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, and a few websites… We asked that everyone go vote for us, and they did. Not only did they vote, they reposted our request, and though we didn’t win the 5 thousand dollars from Cisco, we won a Cisco Flip MinoHD camcorder!!!!
We decided that since we already have a Flip, we would give it away to the same people who had supported us and helped us win it!
These are cool little cameras. Full 720p digital camcorder that you can slip in your pocket with built-in software to allow you to make quick edits and upload to your favorite site like YouTube.com. I have a lot of fun with mine, and the winner will also have fun with theirs I am sure!
To determine a winner, I took the list of people who are on our mailing list, and those who subscribe to this blog, and ran a random number generator to pick a number that corresponded to the list of subscribers. 15 was the lucky number!
Andrea Bennett was lucky number 15 and she has been notified via email. Should Andrea not respond, we will just give it to someone else, but my money is on a quick response from her!
Thank you to everyone for playing along in our little game! Who knows, maybe we can do it again sometime soon!!!! Have a great week…
I haven’t been well due to that car accident on the 7th, in fact, today is the first day I could really do much in the way of work, so I am pretty happy. This trend should continue until I am hopefully back to normal (some of you will not believe it, but I am kinda normal)…
Brett has a high school project that is due soon which must incorperate several things such as levers, incline, etc, in a silly manner and the end result is to knock over a marker. Of course, this has my little mind going 90 to nothing due to the fact that I kind of think in abstract ways anyway.
This has nothing to do with Homeland Secure IT, computer service, computer repair or anything at all to do with computers, or business, but I do think that is a neat thing to do in school. I will post more information as it the project nears completion.
Until then, thank you for your patience while I recover, and to those who sent cards, emails, direct messages, facebook messages, and phone calls… Thank you very much!
I’m still feeling horrible after the accident on Friday so I am at home. Better to hurt at home than to go in to work and not get anything done, be more uncomfortable, feel more depressed and make everyone at the office as sick of hearing me whine about it as my family and even myself… It hurts to type, so you get an embedded video today for your visit. Stay tuned because I am going to be listing the rules of our free camera give away as soon as I feel better, we have the new Flip Mino HD in our posession and we are ready to give it to some lucky person!
Greenville is Feeling Lucky for Google Fiber
You would have to be living under a rock to still be in the dark about Google On Main / LuckyGVL (Just Google for #GoogleOnMain, #LuckyGVL, We Are Feeling Lucky, Greenville Google Fiber, etc). You probably already know that a couple thousand people in Greenville SC heard from various means, such as Twitter, Facebook, email, txt message or analog social networking like a phone call or a face-to-face meeting (people still do that?) that Greenvillians were being organized to meet at Falls Park on a beautiful Saturday night, wearing dark clothing, and that they would be taking part in something historic.
And historic it was! It has made local, regional, national and international news! Aaron Von Frank should be quite proud of himself and his band of merry men who orchestrated the endevour which involved so many people pouring into the downtown area, spelling out “Google” and having a great time!
Time Magazine has an article about Greenville’s GoogleOnMain this week, which has gotten even more people excited. Earlier in the week (over a week after the big event), people were meeting at another “Celebration” where the volunteers, sponsors and organizers were thanked and they discused how to harness this energy and take it to the next level.
There’s no end in site for Greenville’s Google On Main! I believe we are just getting started! Check out www.wearefeelinglucky.com for more information!
Here’s my daughter Megan in a video clip from the other day… She believes Google Fiber would help the education system in Greenville!
