Best $23 spent in a long time!

I am really glad to see “season 1 Rick” again – the optimistic yet realistic hero is what we need to see as a sharp contrast to both the general background as well as Carl (the homicidal maniac).

Yeah I’m not a believer in Carl’s speech about “kill or be killed” but introducing that conflict with his father is really great for the story arch. Should be interesting to see what happens in season 4.

And we are big fans of Talking Dead. Who would have imagined that you could make an hour long show about an hour long show? Its really entertaining and very well done. Tip of the hat to Chris Hardwick for putting together a really enjoyable program.

Its very common for malware to do a bit of social engineering, trying to convince users to download a plugin or application to view special content (especially videos). Its a really bad idea. The most dangerous malware you might face will record every keystroke you make (including your passwords) and send those keystrokes off to someone ready to hijack your accounts. Another type of malicious software will encrypt your computer files and demand payment to release them. Ransomware. This stuff is tough to detect and tougher to get rid of.

Oh yeah, in case you forgot, I work for a company that is very interested in computer security.

Digging into the web page code it appears to be an ad generated from The Rubicon Project, an online advertising platform. Might be legit, but certainly doesn’t look like it, especially the gobs of script code that is attached to the iframe.

This was seen on a Cheezburger site (can’t remember which one). No sane person should ever click on that. Never, ever.

The best advice I can give is to keep your OS and applications up to date, disable Java applets in your browser, and never download programs or plugins from sites you didn’t explicitly visit. And of course never open those files sent to you in email even if it appears to be from a close friend or family member. Spoofing email accounts is a common social engineering trick.

Lastly if you use Windows, upgrade to Windows 7 or 8. If you us Mac OS X, upgrade to 10.7 or 10.8. Really.

This is a fantastic picture of Cairo, taken at the Rex Hotel during his stay last weekend.

We visited the Seattle Art Museum to see their show European Masters: Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough. Amazing works to see, its a great collection of classics from that period. This collection is from Kenwood House in London, originally the collection of Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh. After making a huge fortune from the Guinness brewery he spent a significant portion on paintings. These painters were very prolific, some painting hundreds of works in their lifetime. Rembrandt is considered the master of the masters, and the collection has some very good examples of his work, including his iconic self-portrait included here.

We also stopped into the Library Bistro & Bookstore Bar, our favorite place for cocktails. There we met Geerbox and Mongo, two Navy guys who flew P-3 reconnaissance flights together but now have separate duties on the USS Ronald Reagan. Great guys to talk to, and it turns out Geerbox knows everyone. We wanted to go to the Pink Door for dinner but couldn’t get reservations. One phone call later by Geerbox to his friend Joan and we were in. The Pink Door is incredibly busy and very energetic, a great atmosphere and dinner was extremely good. We didn’t have the “Geerbox Manhattan” (supposedly named for our new friend) but we’ll drop in again to try it out sometime.

We always have a great time in Seattle and makes us want to visit again soon.

I just finished my first week of class. The sessions were good, the video quality was outstanding, and the material was interesting. The format of this particular course is set up to be a series of short videos (6-10 minutes each) plus a teaching assistant video (called a “glue lecture”) that is intended to help with the weekly quiz. There is also a forum for information exchange and Q & A.

I really enjoyed the lectures, very interesting material and the content is easy to follow. I did find the “glue lecture” was very different than the regular lectures, in as much as it was very focused on math especially differential equations. I’m really glad that I also checked out the forum before starting the quiz. There was a little bit of feedback like “wow this requires more math than expected” and “where to get enough background in differential equations to understand this course?” so I knew I needed to brush up. Fortunately Google is full of useful information. Another hour or so doing some background reading and playing with some graphing tools (like Wolfram Alpha and Excel) I was feeling more confident.

After re-watching the “glue lecture” a few times, and working out some of the examples on paper, I decided to take the quiz. I was well prepared because it was definitely focused on the math. The questions were good, easy to understand, and (for a multiple-choice test) it was well designed to insure guessing was not going to get a passing grade.

Week one is now “in the books” and I got 100% on the quiz. Yay me!

I’m impressed with Coursera so far, and would recommend it if interested in giving yourself a bit of a mental challenge with a structured educational experience.

This time it was our turn.

Cory Schneider gets another shutout tonight, with a game that likely humiliated the Ducks at home. Corey Perry showed he is really “the worst sore loser in the league” (as said in the SportsNet telecast). Yeah, that guy is an idiot.

Canucks were the NHL’s best team on the road last year, and this year they are one for one. Good start!