OUYI Electronic Commerce Chinese Scammers – Paypal to the Rescue

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I was recently presented an ad offering me an early access deal to a portable laser engraver for the super low price of $19.99.  That in itself should have been the clue that this was one of those offers that was too good to be true.  But already having a larger non-portable laser engraver, I thought $20 was  cheap enough that if it wasn’t a great laser system, I would not be out that much money.  So, I placed my order which totaled $29.98 after the $9.99 shipping fee was tacked on.  Here is the ad for the item from Continue reading OUYI Electronic Commerce Chinese Scammers – Paypal to the Rescue→

My Path into Information Security

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Let me be the first to say that I appreciate the path I took to get into the Information Security field.  Today, the more common name for the field is Cybersecurity, which I will short hand as cyber for the rest of this post.  I know there are purists that totally hate the short form, but they are not typing this, I am.  A recent effort by my nephew to consider a career change to move from a sales rep into cyber got me thinking about my path into the field. First, I was on the  leading edge of the Continue reading My Path into Information Security→

Indoor Cycling

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For many years I have owned a Cyclops fluid trainer that was a complete failure on my part.  I could not get into riding indoors by myself, but found spin classes were fun even though I had a problem when the class instructors would tell me this would help me on the road when they did not even ride road or mountain.  Fast forward and, like cell phones 15 years ago, indoor trainers are now “Smart”.  While I did a little research and was torn between this Tacx model and another one from Saris, I ended up finding a Tacx Continue reading Indoor Cycling→

Chinese Laser Engraving System Stand

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I recently purchased a Neje Master 2 20W engraving laser from Neje through their AliExpress store.  The unit shipped from a U.S. based warehouse and arrived in about a week.  I later found out, after joining a great Facebook group about the laser ran by Nancy McEntire, that I could have purchased the laser through her store at: https://nmclasers.com/  She also has supplies for engraving as well.  The FB group is full of helpful folks and various image files get posted almost daily for ideas to satisfy your need to smell the scent of burning wood or other substances. Before Continue reading Chinese Laser Engraving System Stand→

A Seller’s Market for Bicycles

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So, don’t hold on to your bikes if you are not going to ride them. The local bike shops can’t keep inventory and if they have something, it may be really high end as my VP found out when trying to find some mountain bikes for he and his kids and their vacation trip to Colorado. If I was 15, I would have said, wait a year and put the money into a car, but that’s me. I have one more bike I am tuning up and will most likely keep. That’s my Mongoose Pro 2007 Otero MTB. I have Continue reading A Seller’s Market for Bicycles→

Dell XPS 8930 Woes

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Update 2021-05-03:With the latest woe being a blue screen of death when running the Dell SupportAssist (runs to 91% then BSOD), I am throwing in the towel on my Dell experience.  While I did nothing to any drivers or other changes, the last time I ran the scan it completed.  The Stop code was generic so it was no help in locating the issue.  The only reason I think I can make this decision is the current market on video cards and ram.  Given a mediocre graphics card like the Nvidia Geforce 1660ti 6GB is current going for around $700+ Continue reading Dell XPS 8930 Woes→

GiiNii Photo Frames & Memory Cards

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Many years ago I bought a GiiNii GN-7002W 7″ digital photo frame from the local TigerDirect store here in Raleigh. Since that time, many things have changed including the size of memory cards and SD card formatting along with disk boot records. My wife has a little Realistic (RIP Radio Shack) frame that works with a 2GB SD card, but this GiiNii 7″ refused to load any photos off of a 4GB SD card, but would load the images off of the 2GB card. I tried several reformats and making the 4GB SD card into a 2GB through partitioning before Continue reading GiiNii Photo Frames & Memory Cards→

PC Hardware Updates – Dell 8930 XPS PC & Lenovo Flex 5

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Buying a new computer always seems to be a daunting task, but two experiences with relatives and friends made it somewhat easier. First there was a need for a new system at the bike shop and I went down there one afternoon and offered some suggestions to replace the very old all-in-one HP. Little did I expect the owner to go with the first option I showed her which was the current best seller on Amazon for a desktop with decent specifications that shouldn’t need to be updated for a few years. I also had to consider their POS needs Continue reading PC Hardware Updates – Dell 8930 XPS PC & Lenovo Flex 5→

Craigslist Service Providers Beware @interviewsessions on Telegram

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I recently worked an incident where a an executive’s persona was impersonated through the use of gmail account to respond to service offerings posted on Craigslist for graphic artists offering up interviews for corporate positions. Once the person who posted the service offering got the e-mail from the executive, the scammer tried to move the interview process to Telegram. This is not much different from the Job Groups people create for metro areas on Facebook and scammers try to move the interview to Google Hangouts for jobs that don’t exist. In the case of Telegram, we were provided the User Continue reading Craigslist Service Providers Beware @interviewsessions on Telegram→

Taking a Break

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For the last 10 years or more I have held a part-time job that I refer to as my weekly diversion from the rest of life. I am a DJ a local roller rink for their weekly Wayback Wednesday. I usually post the playlist at the end of the night on another social media platform and used to get some comments, but that platform seems to have lost popularity of late so I am looking at another means to post the playlist where there are links to the songs. I used to do this through this blog and a perl Continue reading Taking a Break→