Seems like an awful waste and a good way to keep label refill sales going strong.

Update: July 27, 2010 – I added an image showing how a label comes out of the PT-1000 with the smallest (1/6″) margin set and corrected an error in the above text.

It’s pretty comical actually:

I almost feel some sympathy for James Van Praagh – his “readings” don’t seem to be going very well and he’s visibly distressed about it.

I said almost because James Van Praagh and others like him (yes I’m pointing at you Sylvia Brown and John Edward) dupe millions of often grieve-stricken, hurting people into believing their complete and utter bull-shit for one single reason: profit. It’s despicable.

You do not need a $250 HDMI cable, you don’t need a $50 HDMI cable: check out firefold.com or monoprice.com. I’ve personally bought from both and my TV has not blown up from the use of $6 cables.

And if your friends start harassing you for not buying into Monster’s bullshit show them this info graphic [via MintLife Blog]:

So, just before Halloween Sandi and I took our boys to a local pumpkin patch where they had a pumpkin cannon. While Sandi and I waited for our boy’s turn at the Pumpkin Popper I started to take a bunch of pictures of the cannon, in an attempt to try to get the timing right to catch a pumpkin leaving the barrel.

The picture above was the first one I took, just a quick shot to check settings, and even though it goes against my SOP I thought the little boy trying to get his pumpkin in the cannon was cute. It isn’t a very good picture, at least not of the boy in particular, his face is blown out and it’s a wide shot… it’s the only picture I took of any kid besides our boys.

As a rule I avoid taking pictures of kids I don’t know unless asked to. I understand having a stranger taking pictures of one’s children can make one uncomfortable.

We had to wait about 15-20 minutes before our boys were up, and while we waited I continued to take pictures of the pumpkin popper in action. Kids (and adults) would go up, load their pumpkin, and walk back to launch it. When I was taking pictures there was no one, kid or adult, near the Pumpkin Popper.

To anyone not stifled by utter stupidity it was clear that I was taking pictures of the cannon and nothing else.

As we were waiting for another pumpkin to be loaded I called out to Jay, our son, who was waiting in line to launch his pumpkin and snapped this pic:

The other two kids visible in the picture are Zane and Gavin, who along with Jay make up the lot of our kids. What’s important here is that I called out to a child by name, several times, and so did Sandi (kids and their selective hearing) who was standing next to me. Clearly, I knew at least one of the kids present, and clearly the women standing next to me (Sandi) knew the same kid and even helped me get his attention for a picture.

Camera Owner = Criminal

About 5 minutes after taking that picture of Jay, I was back to trying to get my timing right to capture a pumpkin leaving the barrel of the cannon, when a lady walked up to me and asked: “What are you taking pictures of?!”

It wasn’t her question that jostled me, it was her inflection, her tone and mannerisms. She was up in my face, staring me down (well staring me up… as she was shorter than me), clearly something was wrong. I was worried that I missed a sign somewhere stating that photography of the Pumpkin Popper was prohibited. I certainly didn’t want to get into a confrontation, or get us kicked out, at least not before our boys got the chance to launch their pumpkins.

I stammered out something like “I’m just taking pictures of the cannon…” Unless I’m prepared for it, or have time to warm-up, I just don’t do well when suddenly confronted like that. Thankfully, Sandi, who does much better in public than me, was near enough to hear what was going on and came over.

The lady started in on how she wanted to make sure I wasn’t taking pictures of any kids because they had some “creepy” guy in her neighborhood last Halloween taking pictures of kids. She explained that her and her neighbors “had to call the police on him.” She went on about how she was “on high alert” this time of year.

Despite the fact that, at this point, this lady had it coming to her, Sandi was very nice and explained to her that I was not a creep; that she was my wife, I was taking pictures of the cannon, and our kids were waiting in line.

She muttered an “I’m sorry” and happily walked away, apparently feeling pretty good about herself. I guess it was no big deal to her that she walked up to a complete stranger, and accused him of being the worst kind of criminal, based solely off the fact that he had a camera.

Not The First Time

This has happened to me before – at a soccer game where a man douche bag thought I was taking his picture and didn’t like it. I was actually taking a picture of Sandi and I told him that. I also explained to him that, as were in a public place, I could take his picture if I wanted to (I was feeling a bit more snarky that day).

It’s absolutely ridiculous. I have every right to take pictures at a pumpkin patch, soccer filed, or any public place without having someone get in my face and accuse me of being a criminal.

Despite the assumption of idiots like the lady from the pumpkin patch, if your in a public place (including private property open to the public) where you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy, anyone who wants to can take your picture, your kids picture, and even your dog’s picture.

I generally try to avoid being a jerk, and don’t like confrontation, and I don’t set out to make people uncomfortable. So, it’s my general rule not to take pictures of people (especially kids) unless I get an ok, they ask me, or the situation warrants it. I think it’s a good rule to go by. But while I’m making it a point to not make people uncomfortable, this dipwad decided it was ok to accuse me of being a criminal simply because I have a camera. Ridiculous.

So, it’s time to print off copies of The Photographer’s Right and put them in my camera bag so if something like this happens again, I can simply pull out a copy and give it to them. While I’m at it I’ll probably print off some I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist Bust Cards.

Oh, and I did finally get the picture I wanted:

Now, I’m not going to get into the fact that there is zero scientific evidence that Earth has been visited by aliens, other than to say that while it’s cool to think about, entertaining and makes for good TV and movies – UFOs are bunk.

But it got me thinking…

So, what if the president admitted to UFO conspiracy theorists that the US Government is engaging in an active cover-up to hide evidence that we have been visited by aliens? Would they believe him? Could they? After all, they believe that the president is a part of the conspiracy to begin with. So, even if the president did admit something, even showed them evidence how could they believe him? He’s a part of the conspiracy after all.

The people that believe this sort of thing, UFO conspiracy theories, will never be able to accept truth; even if it’s the truth they wanted to hear. So, even if the president did confirm a UFO conspiracy theory, UFO conspiracy theorists would just turn around and claim that his admission is a part of a larger, more elaborate conspiracy to cover up another even more elaborate conspiracy, so on and so on.

Seems as though FedEx got there hands on a Blendtec Blender and decided to do their own “Will It Blend?” test on my order from Adafruit Industries.

Fortunately, Adafruit is sending out a replacement overnight (at no cost to me), which is really above and beyond considering that this was a FedEx FAIL and I was a bit of an ass to Adafruit about the issue initially blaming them rather than FedEx.

It's obvious that FedEx put the package in a plastic bag to hide the damage.

What FedEx didn't want me to see (the reason it was wrapped it in a plastic bag).

Fisher Communications, inc. forces DISH Network to Remove its ABC lineup

KATU no longer available to DISH Network Subscribers

Case in point:

All that “This site is monitored daily” business makes me want to copy something off their site just to see what happens. And I love the “Share on Facebook” link right under the ominous do not copy anything off this site warning. Also, I’m lost on how monitoring their own site is going to protect their content; seems to me they’d want to monitor the internet for copies of their content and not their own site.

Again, it’s important to let visitors to your site know what is and isn’t OK when it comes to the use of your content. But a simple copyright notice or link to your usage terms is all that is necessary. Warnings and threats like this only serve to make you look like an ass; not something you want if you’re trying to run a business. Save the bitchiness for the person that missuses your content, not the innocent visitor to your site.

Bitchy copyright notice – merrickmgt.com

But what are these JPEGs attached to the e-mail? They look like scans of a JOB APPLICATION:

Important note that this is not Mr. Weiss’ Job application; it’s that of a third party.

I wrote Mr. Weiss back to let him know what had happened; his reply:

Adam- Sorry for sending that to you. I did indeed make a mistake and typed a wrong address. Please honor the confidentiality of those documents. Sorry again for the inconvenience. Thank you for alerting me to this!

Wrong person to apologize to Mr. Weiss, your lack of respect for people’s personal data could cause someone quite a bit of trouble. This data breach is inexcusable, and your excuse “typed a wrong address” is a bit of a fallacy.

First, e-mail is woefully insecure – unless encrypted, the contents of e-mail (text and attachments) are sent “in the clear.” What this means is that anyone, be that someone sniffing the wire, or an unintended recipient can read the e-mail with zero effort. So, to say the least sending out private data, such as that in a job application, via e-mail as JPEG images is a bit… foolish. At the very least Mr. Weiss should have put the scans in a password protected/encrypted PDF or ZIP file. Even better (but requiring a bit more leg work) would be to put the files in an encrypted PGP ZIP file.

Second, Mr. Weiss first sent the e-mail to an invalid address – adamtbyers [at ] gmail.com so his first e-mail got bounced back to him. After the bounce back he then forwarded the e-mail to adambyers [at] gmail.com, apparently thinking that the t was causing the problem. If you are going to send out private data, unencrypted via e-mail at LEAST make sure that you have the recipient’s correct address.

At the VERY least Mr. Weiss should have made sure that he was sending the e-mail to the correct address. This is what bothers me most about this; Mr. Weiss sent an e-mail, containing the personal information of a third party blindly out on the internet. The first e-mail bouncing back should have sent up an immediate red flag – verify the intended recipient’s address – but rather than do that Mr. Weiss decided to blindly send it to a random address. This type of action, when dealing with personal information is grossly irresponsible and inexcusable.

Shame on you Greg Weiss.

After my initial e-mail warning Mr. Weiss of his error I sent several more e-mails to him and Northland Church “management” informing them I would be making this post and requesting comments on the issue. All e-mails went unanswered.

Related: “Dear Curves: respect your client and employee data“

After speaking with the owner I believe that the Curves in question takes this matter (data security) very seriously and that a similar situation will likely not take place. I believe that this was an isolated oversight and that the owners have learned a valuable lesson (i.e. they were scared shit-less and will probably be more careful).

I should clear some things up:

• Beyond the phone numbers and addresses contained in the letters (WordPerfect docs) there was no other data found on the system.
• The Curves database was encrypted and NO EFFORT was made to circumvent this encryption; no billing information (if any existed) was exposed.
• I was slightly misquoted on The Consumerist – no credit card information was found. My original post pointed out the potential for billing information to be found based off information I read on the iGo software.
• The hard drive was wiped (by me) using DBAN and no copies of the original data exist.
• Upon request demand of the owner the computer (and hard drive) were returned to them.

For future reference appropriate means of contacting me regarding posts on this blog are:

• Via the comments form that is shown below every post.
• Via my e-mail address adam [at] awaitinginspiration.com which is posted on the CONTACT page.

Inappropriate means of contacting me regarding posts on this blog:

• Coming to my house.

update: someone (TroyM27) calming to represent the owner of the Curves in question posted a comment on The Consumerist.

update: mranderson2008 makes some very good points.

update: Tyler Reguly posted about this on his blog.

Original post:

About two weeks ago now a relative found a Dell Inspiron 4500 sitting in the trash at the complex where he works. As the computer looked perfectly fine and it was obviously thrown out, he grabbed it to take a look at it. When he got it home and booted the system he found that the hard drive was still intact and other than running very slow the system seemed fine. He chalked it up to possibly having an infection, spyware or virus and determined that the folks who threw it out didn’t know any better than to just throw it away. It was later determined that the problem was a misconfiguration in the BIOS, the CPU was set to “compatibility mode” rather than “normal mode.” Once the BIOS was configured correctly the system ran perfect. Additionally, it was determined that the computer came from the Curves that resides in the complex.

Now I can cut Curves a small break for being idiots and throwing away a perfectly good computer, I mean the whole “compatibility mode” thing almost got me. However, what is completely inexcusable is the fact that they left the data on the hard drive intact; both customer and employee data.

I was able to find several documents (Word Perfect) that contained mostly trivial data, while still others contained phone numbers and addresses of both employees and clients. Even more disturbing the system still contained the Curves database “iGo Figure” which is really just an Access database. By looking at the features of the “iGo Figure” software you can see that the database potentially contains extremely personal information (i.e. credit card information). The database is password protected and while I didn’t; extracting the information from the database would likely be trivial.

I contacted Curves corporate office and was told by Pete that (I’m paraphrasing): Each Curves is responsible for their own systems, maintenance, etc. but he felt that this was inexcusable and he would contact the manager of the offending Curves to discuss the matter with them. He also asked me to wipe the hard drive.

No matter who you are or what your knowledge is if you run a business it is your responsibility to educate yourself (or pay someone) on how to handle technological issues like proper data disposal. There is simply no excuse for a scenario like this to occur.

The Access database:

Notice the ironic warning about giving out phone numbers to clients:

There were a few letters to clients, some contained full addresses:

After taking these screen shots the hard drive was wiped using DBAN. After editing all original versions of the images (to hide full names, addresses and phone numbers) the originals were securely deleted off my system.

The offending Curves is located at:

1313 NE 134th Street, Suite. 110 Vancouver, WA 98685 (360) 566-8333

Related: “Greg Weiss of Northland Church: Respect People’s Data”