Author: Russell

Someone Is Impersonating Me on Instagram

04/18/2014 /

I don’t have an instagram account.  If you go to www.instagram.com/russhollanderk you will see an account using my image and listing my website address.  I did not set this account up, and this is not me.  I am not this person.  I found out about it when friends of mine in the real world told me they were following me on instagram.

Instagram’s “help center” or whatever is being anything but helpful.  In addition to having no phone number or email address or whatever, their annoying form to dispute this account isn’t working.  And they’re demanding that I send them color photos of government issued IDs.  Well, I don’t like that, but I’m trying to do it.  And they won’t let me.

The impersonator doesn’t appear to really be doing anything.  I’m wondering if Facebook just decided to create this account for me.  If that’s the case, they need to let people know they’re doing that.  Instagram needs to make their support and help pages actually useful.

I’ll post another update whenever this situation resolves itself, if ever.

 

Update 10:42

I think I finally got the form to submit on the official instagram help page, so hopefully the ball is rolling.  I also tweeted @Instagram and @Instagram help to try to move things along.  I have a feeling I’ll get faster action that way hopefully.  I’m sure the Instagram app and website are dandy, but I don’t use that service, and don’t want anyone using my image, likeness, and name out there.  People that do use Instagram love it, and I’m sure their support is good, and the problem I was having submitting the dispute form was on my end.  Further updates to come.

 

Update 10:51

Got an email from the Instagram support after submitting the form finally worked.  I emailed them back with the exact same info I had submitted, just to be sure.  I’m sure they’ve got the ball rolling now.  Hopefully this will be done quickly.  Below is a screenshot of the imposter account, just for fun.

Imposter

 

Update 10:57

Just an observation, not really a development.  The Instagram dispute form wanted color copies of a government issued ID where they can clearly see my name and so forth.  Well, in addition to my driver’s license, I keep my passport in my work bag.  My girlfriend thought it was weird to have that on me.  Maybe that isn’t smart, but I always know where it is.  And it came in handy today.  I know I’m me, and I have two forms of gubmint ID to prove it, basically at all times.  I’ve got my social security card on me too, come to think of it.  Right behind my fishing license in my wallet.

Update 4:30 on 4/19
Overnight I got an email from Instagram saying the fallacious account was deleted. They didn’t elaborate on whether an individual was responsible, or if it was something created automatically, which is a theory that seems more and more likely. Also, I’m making this update from my phone. This is my first time using WordPress as an app on my phone. Seems pretty good so far.

2011 Review

12/31/2011 /

2011 was my first full year of post-college “real life.” In many ways this was a year of beginnings, and for me it was a very good year. I thought I would do a little summary write-up of some of the significant events in my life during 2011. Later I will do a post on some of my plans for 2012.

 

I began 2011 with a trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early January. I had never been to Las Vegas before, so that was quite an experience in itself. I stopped by the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop of Pawn Stars fame, drove out to the Grand Canyon, and saw many fascinating cutting edge technical gadgets. The weather was beautiful in Nevada, and I was not excited to return to 8 inches of snow covering my car at the Kansas City airport.

 

The defining element of 2011 for me was starting my first full-time job at Cerner Corporation in Kansas City. I was hired at the end of 2010, and started work in late January of 2011. After a period of training, I joined my AMS team in early April, where I have been working ever since. My team, organization, and the entire company have been growing rapidly this entire year. I’ve made many new friends and gained lots of valuable experience, and I’m looking forward to continuing my career in 2012.

 

Later in the year, I had an opportunity to get more involved with my church by helping facilitate a Financial Peace University course. Most of the concepts were not new to me thanks to my finance educational background, but Dave Ramsey’s course material is very well organized and simple to understand. After going through the course, I’ve made some important changes in my own saving, spending, and investing habits.

 

So, those were some of the more important things that happened to me in 2011. Keep your eyes peeled for my next post, which will detail some of my plans for 2012.

Flashdrive Linux Saves the Day

10/03/2011 /

As I have mentioned previously on this blog, I never go anywhere without a bootable Linux flashdrive. The fact that Linux is so portable is one of my favorite things about it. I have at various times kept Fedora, Linux Mint, and Puppy on my flashdrive, but for the last couple months, my mobile distro of choice has been Knoppix.

 

Before I switched to Knoppix, I had been using Puppy. I liked it, but I wanted to try something different. I started doing a little research, and decided to try either Puredyne or Knoppix. Puredyne has a focus on creative media, and looks very interesting, but I ultimately decided to go with Knoppix. Knoppix, like Puppy, Fedora, and some other distros, has encryption as part of the setup process, which is a big plus for a computer I’m carrying around in my pocket in case I lose it. It is also Debian-based, so it benefits from Debian’s vast software library and stability. I downloaded the ISO, and wrote it to my 8 gig flashdrive.

 

I’m not going to go into great details about how to set up and use Knoppix. I found it to be pretty intuitive, and I’m not a super-guru or anything. I just want to talk about some of the things I’ve done with it. These same things could be accomplished with other Linux distros, too.

 

One of my co-workers was having a virus problem on his personal laptop, so I booted his computer from my Knoppix flashdrive, ran a Clam antivirus scan, removed 3 viruses and he was then able to load and use Windows as normal. I’ve since used Clam on Knoppix to remove viruses from several other computers with the same level of success. Clam is available on many distros, so if you’re looking for a Linux antivirus that you can also use to rescue other systems, Clam is worth checking out.

 

The most recent example I have had of Linux on a flashdrive completely saving the day happened last weekend. My family are corvette enthusiasts, and every year they host the 4th Annual Corvette Meet and Greet at Ron Hulett Chevrolet at Lake of the Ozarks (Click here for pictures). I went down to my parents house that weekend to help out with the show and run the sound. We were expecting 90 cars to participate in the show, but over 100 ultimately showed up.

 

4th Annual Corvette Meet and Greet

My dad had a spreadsheets set up for participant registration and vote tabulation. My parents’ plan was to run the sound, registration, and voting off of their 4-5 year old Dell laptop running Windows XP, as they had done for the previous three years.

 

A couple hours into the show, the computer blue-screened and we couldn’t get Windows to boot. I wish I had taken time to pay attention to the blue screen messages, but time was of the essence, so I’m not sure exactly what went wrong. I booted the laptop off of my Knoppix drive, connected to the dealership’s wireless network, got a music playlist going on Grooveshark, and mounted the hard drive to get a copy of the registration and vote tabulation spreadsheets. Fortunately the drive mounted and I was able to save a copy of each to the flash drive and continue inputting data with LibreOffice Calc.

 

If I had not been carrying Linux on a flash drive, the corvette show would have been much more difficult to complete successfully. We would have had no music, and vote tabulation would have been a nightmare, with over 90 ballots, each with 16 classes to vote on. After the show was over, I ran a Clam scan and removed several viruses from the XP hard drive, and it was able to boot as normal after that, though I’m not sure if the viruses were the problem (though they couldn’t have been helping anything).

 

Next year, we’re running everything off of one of my Linux laptops. I think I’m going to make a database for registration and vote tabulation too, because I think it will be a better way to keep everything organized, even though the spreadsheet got the job done.

 

Do you carry around a Linux flashdrive everywhere you go? What distro do you use? Have you been able to save the day with Linux? Any cool stories? Share your story in the comments.

 

Update:  Thanks, LXer.com, TuxMachines.org, LinuxHomePage.com, and News.Ycombinator.com for linking to my blog post, I really appreciate it!

Upcoming Projects

04/26/2011 /

I’m Back

Hello friends. It’s been quite a long time since my last post. I’ve had a lot going on with my new job and moving to a new apartment, but I’m going to be getting back into regular posting. I wanted to write about my short- and long-term upcoming projects, just to give a preview of things to come.

 

Upcoming Projects

  • Short Term: Within the span of a week I will be running Slackware on my original laptop, which I brought back to KC from my parents house over Easter Weekend. This is part of an ongoing effort I am launching to free myself of the shackles of the graphical user interface.
  • Medium Term: Within a month, I will have an iPod running with Rockbox in place of the normal iPod firmware.
  • Medium Term: Between one and three months from now, I will build a home theatre PC. Does anybody have a suggestion for what Linux distro to run on it? I’m looking into XBMC, but I’m open to alternatives.
  • Long Term: Between six months and a year from now, I will build a new desktop PC. My current desktop was pretty close to top of the line 3 years ago. Now it’s just average. I don’t really need to build a new top of the line PC, but I do want to put something newer and better together. I want to run a quad core processor, 8 gigs of RAM, and a 64-big OS, despite the fact that I have no real need for that sort of power. Maybe over the next year I’ll come up with some excuse to use that sort of horsepower.
  • Other: at some point I’d like to build my own radio. I don’t really have any other details on this project idea right now, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.
  • Other: at some point I’d like to build a wort chiller.

 

I mentioned above that I want to learn Slackware. It’s the oldest Linux distribution out there.  I want to learn Slackware because it’s going to present challenges and opportunities for growth.  My plan is to run Slackware without a GUI, and still be able to do most (if not all) of the things I do now on a computer.  One important part of that GUI-free adventure is going to be browsing the internet.  I’ve already experimented with this on a limited basis using Lynx browser, which is 100% text-based.

 

Viewing Facebook Using Lynx Browser

So there you go.  These are a couple of the things I’m going to be working on over the next year.  If anybody has any suggestions for any other cool projects, let me know.  I’ll keep you all up to date on the progress.  Got any advice on how I should take on any of these projects?  Particularly Slackware?  I’ve been reading the Slackbook.  Have a good one.

February Site Statistics

03/06/2011 /

I had two posts this month: How to Avoid Looking Like a Clown and Can You Trust Google? Why Take a Chance?. The Google post was more popular, with 320 page views, but the Clown post generated more discussion. I was pretty busy in February starting my new job, so I didn’t post as much, and this resulted in a drop in traffic. Now that I’m pretty well settled in, I’m going to do better in March. What was exciting for me was the fact that I only promoted either of these pieces through my Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. Previously the only way I got any views was by submitting my work to Lxer, and then others posting it sites like Tux Machines. I’m very grateful for those traffic sources, but I’m glad that people are coming back to my new stuff even if I only promote it half-heartedly. Get excited, because I’ve got some good posts brewing for this month.

 

Have a good one.

Can You Trust Google? Why Take a Chance?

02/20/2011 /

Google is the dominant search engine in the world right now, as everyone on the Internet surely knows. Their offerings go well beyond search engines though. You could live your entire digital life using only google products, and basically suffer no loss of productivity. They have Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Goggles on Android (great app), and many more wonderful services/applications that I love to use. And their search engine results are typically very good. So good in fact that Bing copies Google’s search results.

I was not an early adopter of Google. In my early Internet days, I used Infoseek, because that’s the only search engine I was aware of, thanks to my dad telling me about it. Then during middle school I became aware of Yahoo, which most of my friends were using. I liked it, and stuck with Yahoo through my first year in college, even to the point of getting a Yahoo email address. I heard of Google in high school, but I didn’t start using it until later because if it ain’t broke, you don’t have to go fix it.

But Yahoo was sort of bloated. I liked Google’s clean interface. You go to Google.com, and you get an all-business search engine. Gradually over the years I’ve become Google-dependent. I used Gmail for all of my email correspondence until very recently. I’ve used Google Docs at school to work collaboratively with others. I use an Android phone, the great HTC Evo 4G. I love a lot of what Google does.

However, there are things I don’t love about Google. They’re very good at profiling you and targeting ads to you. Based on the contents of your Google searches and the contents of your emails, you receive targeted advertisements. I don’t like anyone knowing my habits and interests that well. I’m not saying someone is sitting around at Google reading through my Gmail, but it is obvious that they are matching key words or something.

Another thing to be aware of about Google: They have political opinions and objectives. This isn’t wrong, almost all corporations are influenced by or are influencers of government policies. I’m not going to get into what Google is all about politically, but they do have positions and take actions based on those positions.

Do you want a better, more secure, more private search engine? Give Duckduckgo a try. I’ve been using it almost exclusively for several months now. It’s great.  Also, their !Bang feature is awesome and extremely useful.

Click this link for a detailed explanation of why Duckduckgo is more private than Google.

Duckduckgo also has an official iPhone and iPad application and an official Android app is in the works. Until the official Android application arrives, there is an unofficial one that is pretty good.

I don’t think Google is evil or conspiratorial. I just don’t feel like being tracked that closely. I’m moving away from Gmail, and I use the superior (for my needs) Duckduckgo for my search engine. You should too.

Are you concerned about what Google knows about you? Well, they only know the information you give them. Thoughts? Questions? Comments? Let me know below.

January Site Statistics

02/02/2011 /

What do you do when it’s 2 degrees outside and the roads are impassable due to yesterday’s blizzard?  Drink some Earl Grey and post your blog stats.  This is my second post on site statistics, this time for the period between 1/1/2011 and 1/31/2011.  During this period I had 1,523 visits from 80 countries and territories.  I’m averaging about 30 visits per day now on days that I haven’t posted articles about Linux.

Once again, the post that received the most attention was one about Linux, this time my review of Saline Linux, which accounts for 1,029 of my visits this month.

Linux users account for 56.8% of my visitors, whereas Windows users account for 34.14% this month.  Firefox and Chrome are still dominant browser wise at 696 and 447 visitors respectively, with Internet Explorer limpint in at 118, and my favorite browser Opera in fourth place with 95 users.

I met my goal of beating the previous month’s visitor totals, although not by a wide margin.  Here is a table summarizing my site statistics for the last two months.

Site Statistics

So it looks like I need to keep writing about Linux.  And fortunately, I’ve got an idea about to come down the pike in another week or so which should draw some readership.  Still don’t have Google Adwords/Adsense/Adwhatever setup, but I’m not hugely worried about it.

Apparently social media is almost a non-factor in drawing people to my site.  I think on Facebook this is because I only have 4 fans on my fanpage.  It’s even worse on Twitter, where I can’t even average one click per day.  I’m going to have to work on this.

Fan me on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

Have a good one.

Saline Linux Review

01/21/2011 /

This is my first attempt at reviewing a Linux distribution. I’m excited, and I hope you’ll find it useful. I would definitely appreciate any feedback! I’m a user, not a developer, so I’ll be approaching this from a not-too-technical angle, focusing on asthetics and usability. Here goes.

I first became aware of Saline Linux when Anthony Nordquist posted a comment on one of my previous blog posts, Why I Use Linux. Toward the end of his comment he mentioned that he was working on a distribution of his own, and I said I would give it a try. I was excited to learn via Twitter that as of 1/16/2011, version 1.0 of Saline Linux is now available.

Saline Linux is built on Debian and features Xfce for its desktop environment. According to the About page on Saline’s website, “Saline OS includes many things that most people using a Debian GNU/Linux based system would most likely want or need, but are not included or not setup on a default Debian install for various reasons. This includes sgfxi for installing proprietary graphics drivers, Debian repositories that include software that does not conform to Debian’s strict free software guidelines, WINE repositories, Remastersys backup utility, binary firmware for common wireless network cards, the Debian backports repository and a script to install potentially patent encumbered multimedia codecs with one command.”

I torrented the iso file of the live dvd and set about to install it under Virtual Box. It booted up quickly, and I began the installation process. The installer was pretty straight forward and not atypical of many other Linux distributions. I did have an opportunity to stretch myself during the installaAtion though. Never before have I allocated any space to swap, but Saline required me to for installation. It wasn’t tough, but I’d never done it before, even though Fedora, or Ubuntu, or whatever always asks me to. That extremely minor challenge surmounted, the installation proceeded quickly.

Live DVD Desktop

Nautical Themed Login Screen

Neat Launcher Bar at the Bottom that Auto Hides Itself

Auto Update Command

Clean - Remove Browser History

User Manual

Automatic Update

The user manual, which is available on the desktop of both the live dvd and the installed system contains a lot of good information such as included software and an installation walkthrough.

Included in the manual is a script to add restricted multimedia codecs. This is extremely useful for someone who wants to use Linux as a Windows or Mac replacement. The codecs installed for me without any difficulties, allowing me to fully enjoy a wide variety of media formats.

Finally, the manual contains several pages of useful POSIX commands

I was pleased to see that Chromium is included as the default browser. I find that when I want a fast light system, especially for a netbook with limited screen space, that Chromium is the right browser for the job.

Another software choice was Gedit, rather than Mousepad which is what I’m used to seeing with Xfce installations. I like Gedit, so I was happy to see it among the software.

I find Saline Linux to be a very pleasant distribution to use, and I could definitely see it as my primary OS of choice. It is built on the rock solid Debian foundation, but includes some nice theme-ing that you won’t get with Debian Xfce. I think as its usership and community grow, Saline Linux has the potential to be every bit as wonderful and vibrant as Linux Mint, which is currently my distro of choice. For now I’m going to continue running it as a virtual machine and see how it continues to progress.

One thing I really enjoyed just on a personal level is that the desktop background by default seems to be some sort of large aquarium. This is a nice change of pace from the abstract shapes, random colors, and logos included as the default background in many other distributions.

Congratulations on a great release, Anthony. To my readers, I hope you found this review useful on some level, and I definitely encourage you to give Saline Linux a try if you’re in the mood for something new.

Quit Ruining the Internet

01/19/2011 /

I do a lot of website administration activities using my phone, the lovely Evo 4G from Sprint. A while back I took the advice of my friend Nick Altrup from 417 Marketing and stopped moderating my comments. This has opened my site up to potential spammers, but I’ve taken steps to prevent bots from spamming me. However, if a person chooses to spam me, they are now able to do so, and their worthless waste of Internet will now appear on my site for a few seconds until I get the email from WordPress, realize the comment is spam, and then list it as such from my phone. I’m not going to put up with spam on my site if I can avoid it, and I’ll go round and round with a spammer all day if I have to. Today I had to.

I was at Gladstone Dodge getting my car serviced this morning, and starting around 7:50 this morning, this punk started spamming my site. First he (could be a she, but I’m going to blame a man) posted about 4 links to something called soma. I didn’t know what that was, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t have anything to do with Why I Use Linux, which is the page this guy is assaulting. Over the next hour, this clown posted 25 spam comments that I have had to moderate from my phone because I couldn’t find a more permanent solution to keeping this trash off my site.  I don’t care about your soma, casinos, versace hand bags, cartier sunglasses, or herpes simplex 1 medications.  Keep that trash off of my site!

Once I got home, I started looking for a way to block this guy’s IP address, which is 89.248.168.40. If you’re someone that knows how to punish someone electronically based on their IP address, have at this guy, because he deserves it. I know that if I could, I would.

First I tried to look up on Google how to block an IP address from accessing my site. I saw a lot of stuff about editing the .htaccess file, but I couldn’t find a way to do that which I could understand. It looked as though there was no way to do this from within the confines of WordPress, and I couldn’t get anywhere on my Dreamhost administration page either. So I abandoned this track for now.

I decided to gather some intel on my foe. I looked up his IP address, and it says he’s from the Netherlands. Since my last name is Hollander, I get a lot of traffic from the Netherlands, at least I assume that’s the correlation. See below for a little geographical information. If you recognize those street names, and you happen to be in the Netherlands and might know this guy, feel free to drop in on him and ask him to stop his spamming ways. If his computer has become a spam bot and is somehow getting past my web countermeasures, erase his hard drive.

Maybe this guy is using XP Professional, Vista Business/Ultimate, or 7 Professional/Ultimate, I thought to myself. I decided to try to remote desktop into his computer and delete some files from the system folder or something. No luck using rdesktop, but I’ve had luck randomly attempting to rdesktop people before.

So I went back to WordPress, and the obvious solution presented itself. I just went to settings → Discussion → Comment Black List, and I added his IP address. This isn’t the perfect solution I would have hoped for, because this guy’s waste is still spilling into my spam comments section, but at least I don’t have to personally deal with it each time. He’s up to 29 comments now. In fact, he accounts for more than 25% of all the spam coming to my site since I created it, and I’m sure the percentage will rise. A new one shows up every 3-4 minutes. I guess this guy must be a bot, which is frustrating because I thought I had plugged the hole on spam bots, so I’ll have to revisit that issue.

Now to Jump on a Soapbox

The Internet is probably the greatest human achievement. Everything that ever has been is accessible from the Internet. What an amazing repository of knowledge. And some of you out there insist on filling it up with stupid crap. Something like 90% of emails are spam. There are hundreds of thousands of essentially fake websites posing as real websites to trick people into clicking on affiliate marketing and advertisement links. I have in the past considered setting up such websites, a la programs such as Niche Blitzkrieg. But I decided not to, because I love what the Internet stands for, and I don’t want to make my living by preying on the stupid, even if it is easy to do. Some senior citizen surfing the web using Internet Explorer 5.0 lands on a fake website, clicks up a bunch of advertisement links, and makes a purchase off of an affiliate link, and we all die a little more inside. Please leave the Internet pure.

I Would Rather Win the Nigerian Lottery…

…Than deal with all your spam comments on my site. Spam ruins a good website. I used to go to Maximum PC all the time, but then I realized that literally all of the comments were spam, and it turned me off. Spammers ruined my experience of that website, and poor site administration didn’t help.

Spammers are pathetic in their attempt to entice people, and yet it works or they wouldn’t keep doing it. Here is a sampling of some of the spam I’ve received in the last month and a half (by the way that dude from the Netherlands is up to 33 spam comments now).

"Rattling Fresh"?

You've been looking for KC/Springfield comparisons for hours? Really?

Icons? What are you talking about?

You "determined" my site? Don't try to sound like you know English.

You feel strongly about android tethering? Headway noesis?

What indeed

Flattery will get you everywhere...except my comments page

An exact copy? Say it ain't so!

Nice Excerpt

Try checking that oh-so-surreptitious link in your comment.

Yeah, I'm a real web Michelangelo when it comes to android tethering

Help Me Out

If you can explain to me how to access the .htaccess file, please let me know in the comments below. I’m not my own web server, I’m using Dreamhost to host my site. Do you have any other strategies for dealing with spammers? How can I let this guy know his computer has been taken over?  (The spammer is now up to 42 comments).

A Trip to the Grand Canyon

01/12/2011 /

On the fourth day I was in Las Vegas, I decided to make good use of my rental car and drive out to the Grand Canyon. I left about 6:30 AM, and Google Maps seemed to think it was going to take about 5 hours to get there. As luck would have it, about 40 miles past the Hoover Dam, I saw a sign for the Grand Canyon Sky Bridge which is located at Grand Canyon West. I turned off Highway 93 and headed for Grand Canyon West.

At some point I went through a depressing looking town called Dolan Springs. It seems like I went about 50 miles up the turn off road, and then another 20 or so down a mostly gravel road over to the entrance to the Grand Canyon West area.

The Hualapai Indian Tribe runs the entire area. I’m not sure if I was on a reservation, or if they converted some other land they owned into this canyon viewing park. I parked, walked into this inflatible gift shop/ticket sales building, purchased the $42 Hualapai Legacy pass (the minimum price and pachage that could be purchased), and boarded the bus to ride over to the canyon. I could have paid $75 to also get to walk on the Skywalk, but I figured the Canyon was pretty big, and I’d be able to get a pretty good view without paying an additional $33.

We bussed over to the canyon, jumped off the bus, and met a couple Hualapai that were hanging out near the first stop. There was no sort of railing or barrier, you could walk straight up to the edge of the canyon, and even jump off if you were so inclined, although that probably wouldn’t have ended well.

I’ll stop the narrative here, and just let you view the majestic splendor of the Grand Canyon, carved by the Hand of God.

A bit of snow on the canyon

The Skywalk

Me in Front of the Canyon

More Canyon Snow

My New Desktop Background

Joshua Trees

Joshua Tree