I will be traveling south again today. Will be back up and running by Monday.

Most of the stories I’ve heard about the standard mainstream outlets losing ad revenue to the Internet seem to be focused on newspapers. An article in the Boston Globe this morning would indicate that television stations, even beloved and trusted stations, are losing out to the Internet as well.
To most Boston sports fans, the name Bob Lobel strikes a cord. I haven’t watched Boston news frequently over the past couple of years, but I can still hear Lobel’s voice in the back of my head, either doing to pre/post game for the Pats or Sox. Today’s Globe article announces that Lobel, who has been with arguably the most popular and well-known television station in Boston (WBZ TV 4), will be leaving as a result of a “workforce reduction.”
According to the article in the Boston Globe:

“The station, like other media outlets across the country, is facing increasing pressure to cut costs as it grapples with declining ad revenues and viewership. On Monday, the station announced plans to reduce its overall workforce of 220 by 10 percent.“

While I am sure Lobel will be scooped up by another local network because of his well-liked persona, his leaving WBZ shows that newspapers aren’t the only media outlet affected by the dominance of the Internet.

Most people immediately delete spoofed phishing emails that make it through their spam filters. These emails appear to come from places like Paypal, Ebay, banks…etc, and the senders are attempting to get you to enter your account/financial details, or click on a link to install malicious code on your computer. A spoofed email looks like the real deal, but if you examine the headers, you can tell it isn’t from that company.
More often than not, the email originates from a domain name that was recently registered, most likely for the phishing attempt. The Whois information is usually private, forged or based in another company. While most people’s immediate response is to delete the email once a phishing attempt is detected, I would recommend reporting the email to the company that purportedly sent it. This will allow them to make an effort to shut the website down and possibly determine who is behind the scheme.
Each company has its own specific place to report suspicious emails, but for Paypal, you may use “spoof@paypal.com.” Additionally, for emails of a spamming nature, you can forward your complaint to the US government by forwarding the email to “spam@uce.gov.” I don’t know how these companies investigate the phising attempts, but phishing hurts us all.

I was installing a couple of Apple updates yesterday, and my MacBook froze up on me, and I was unable to do type or use the mouse pad. Everything completely froze up, and I had to hold down the power button until my computer powered down. No big deal – right? I’ve had this issue happen a couple of times before on other computers, and the computer starts back up without fail…
Well… unfortunately for me, when my computer turned back on, I was prompted to reinstall my operating system. I panicked as I have a ton of information saved on my hard drive, and I infrequently back it up – maybe once every other week or so. I powered down my computer and tried again, but had the same problem. I immediately

What a perfect idea for Valentine’s Day! Share your relationships gone bad at RelationshipObituary.com. Go ahead, it will make you feel better!
Happy Valentine’s Day!