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Sunday, August 21, 2005
The first mass of Blessed John XXIII Catholic Parish
Blessed John XXIII Parish is a newly created Parish for the northwestern area of Wood County, Ohio. Earlier this year the Toledo Catholic Diocese spent a great deal of time reorganizing the area. Unfortunately, many parishes were closed or were setup to share a pastor between two parishes. For all the downsizing there was good news in the creation of several new parishes. Blessed John XXII (that’s 23 in roman numerals) Parish was one of those created to better serve the Perrysburg, Ohio area.
Technically, I don’t live within the parish’s area and my area already has a long standing parish. However, I’ve never really felt a part of that parish. It was the Church I went to but it wasn’t like it was “my” Church.
Blessed John XXIII being brand new and just starting really draws my interest and perhaps might be the parish for me to feel home at.
The thing I find funny is how I was drawn to this place. I’ve been rather lacking in the religion department for some time. It’s probably a mix of growing up and not finding religion to be important in a modern busy life and that I was rather burned out by the sexual abuse scandals. I still believed in God and was spiritual but just couldn’t stand the idea of organized religion for a while.
Maybe it’s me maturing or maybe it’s God working in mysterious ways but these last few weeks I’ve had a bit of a reawaking of sorts. I’ve been thinking a bit and actually talked with my Girlfriend about the need for religion. I hadn’t been keeping track of the going-ons of The Church but I just happen to read the newspaper Friday and in the religion section I saw the article about the first mass being held for the new Blessed John XXIII Parish.
So today was the first Mass they held. Mass will be held is the Perrysburg High School commons area at 9:30am every Sunday. This will be the scheduled location through May of 2006. They still need to find a location to build the new Church. Of course before you can do that you have to build the community and that’s what’s going on right now.
The opportunity to not only go to mass but get active in the community excites me. I’m hoping that perhaps I can offer my services in the technical areas. Perhaps help build a website for the parish, setup computers to manage office needs, etc. Since everything is new and need of people to help I know I can be of service in some small way.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Now that's a good idea... not!
Just scanning the news sites and came across an article on Yahoo News that They’re starting to do random bag searches in New York subways.
Oh goody!
I don’t know how they can be seriously trying to do that! It’s freaking nuts. Now I’ll admit I’m from Ohio and things are a bit different but I’ve spent a few weekends in the big apple. I rode the subways around and I’ve seen how massive the flow of people can be at certain stations and times of day. Trying to do random bag searches on people is just a waste of time.
It might be ok at first but people will get tired of it. It’s not like airports where people have plenty of time and no where to go. People on public transit usually are in a hurry because they have things to do.
I don’t know. I guess it just bothers me that this is probably just the start. I’m willing to bet someone is already thinking about how to put in metal detectors, use bomb sniffing dogs, etc at every station.
It’ll be nuts if they tried to pull that kind of crap.
Yesh
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
UPS looses Citigroup customer information
Well that isn’t good!
It’s been in the news today that UPS managed to loose a package containing computer tapes of some 3.9Millon Citigroup customers being shipped to Experian, a credit reporting company.
Not good at all! As an employee of UPS it pisses me off that someone managed to loose the darn thing. UPS is very good about tracking packages. They should have been able to track down exactly where the box was last seen and where it didn’t show up and then find it.
For a box to just vanish off the face of the earth is strange.
I feel sorry for all those people having to worry if some evil person is digging through those tapes and using their info. Of course I feel sorry for every employee of UPS too. Lord knows that we’re probably all going to hear about this at work all week. Supervisors and staff will probably go on and on about how we have to work hard and be the best package handler service in the world. How we need to treat each package with equal care and importance. Something tells me this week is going to suck…
OY!
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Are you folding yet?
Just a quick post to ask for all your help. I know you all have computers running that sit idle most of the time. Put that idle time to some good use and help out the folding@home project. Folding@home is a project that uses distributed computing to do protein folding simulations. These simulations can help researches in finding cures for Alzheimer’s, ALS, Parkinson’s, etc.
So please go download their special screen saver program that runs these simulations and help out the world. Oh and when the setup program asks for a team number enter in 11108. That’s the Maximum PC Magazine team. We’re currently 9 overall so we could use all the help we can to get to that number 1 spot!
Thanks!
on 05/26/2005 at 08:33 PM
Computers & Technology • General • (0) Comments • Permalink
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Watch out for those phishing emails!
I shouldn’t have to say it but since I’ve been getting many of these fake emails lately I figured It wouldn’t hurt to post a reminder.
Watch out for phony emails asking for user account or credit card info! The technique is called phishing. Phishing attacks are called that because the senders are “fishing” for people’s personal information. Common attacks target users of online banks, Paypal and eBay. The email will claim there is a problem and your account will be closed or whatnot if you don’t correct the problem. They nicely provide a link in the email message to the login page. Here’s the problem. That link, while it may seem to be a valid url to the company’s site, actually points to a fake webpage crafted to look legit.
Let me give an example that I actually received today!
quote:
Dear eBay member,
We at eBay are sorry to inform you that we are having problems with
The billing information of your account. We would appreciate it if you
Would visit our eBay Billing Center and fill out the proper
Information that we are needing to keep you as an eBay member.
If you don’t comply until the June 2005, your eBay membership may be suspended.Sign in Here https://signin.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll
As outlined in our User Agreement, eBay will periodically send you
Information about site changes and enhancements. Visit our Privacy
Policy and User Agreement if you have any questions.Thank you!
Sure sounds and looks legit doesn’t it! However, I’m not a moron and I know it’s fake. Here are the 3 things that show it’s a fake. Now these aren’t easy to spot so you have be a bit knowledgeable of these things.
1) The message was sent to an email account that isn’t in any way associated with my eBay account! Now if you only have one email account you won’t be able to catch this flaw but for people with multiple email accounts it will be. I know I registered my ebay account with account@this_domain.com but this message showed up in the inbox of account@some_other_domain.com.
2) The to address doesn’t match. The message arrived in the inbox of account@some_other_domain.com but in the header the to address is set to some hotmail.com user. Again, this should be a rather duh moment for people yet so many would never notice this. Why would this message show up in my inbox but be addressed to some random hotmail user? Probably because someone is using a spamming program that just spits out random too addresses when it sends out messages.
3) The link to the login page doesn’t go to an eBay url! Oh, sure it looks pretty legit when you see the page but it’s actually a different website. I won’t post the actual url/ip but suffice to say when you visit the page you are NOT anywhere close to an eBay server.
So what can you do to protect yourself? The easiest answer is this. Any time you get an email message from your bank, eBay, Paypal, etc that asks you to click on a link to log in because your account is going to be cancelled or whatever, DON’T CLICK THE LINK! Instead, open up your browser, type in your banks url manual and log in. That means clicking on the url bar at the top and typing each letter of H T T P : / / W W W . E B A Y . C O M and pressing the enter key. Phishing relies on one simple fact. Users are lazy and will follow the path of least resistance. That means just clicking a link and following it blindly.
Take the time and log in securely and keep your accounts safe everyone!
on 05/15/2005 at 03:36 PM
Computers & Technology • General • Tips & Tricks • (0) Comments • Permalink
Sunday, April 24, 2005
A little bit of computer BBS history
I just found one heck of a cool site. It’s called TextFiles.Com. Basically this guy has compiled text files from the old BBS days. Of course this was all before my time. Still, I like to think I’m an old school geek and I find these times facinating and wish I had been around to partake in it all.
BBS stands for Bulletin Board System. Back in the days before the Internet and Web people would connect to these systems and hang out. Leaving messages, chatting, etc. Think of it as sort of what message boards are today. Only you had to directly dial your computer to the BBS system to log in and there was no AIM, pictures, mp3s, etc.
The collection of files this guy has is downright impressive! Much of what took place on these boards is stored there so it’s worth taking a look at for historical reasons alone.
Jump on over to TextFiles.Com and browse for a while. What better do you have to do on a lazy Sunday?
on 04/24/2005 at 08:03 AM
Computers & Technology • General • (0) Comments • Permalink
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
We have a new Pope!
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected today as Pope Benedict XVI.
That was a very short conclave! There are mix reviews of the new Pope but I believe he was a very good choice. Ratzinger is a very staunch believer in classic Catholicism. He was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Basically, his job was to be the leader for the protection of the Church’s doctrine. For all the liberals that complain about the Churches refusal to “modernize” he’s the man behind the scenes keeping you from getting your way!
That’s why I think he was the right choice. Now more than ever Catholics need a strong Pope that will keep the faith and refuse to cave to American liberalisms push to change the Church. Religion is something you follow as is. It’s not a buffet where you can pick and choose what you like and skip what you don’t. It’s all or nothing here folks.
Anyways, we’re in a new era and it’s very exciting to see where we go from here.