ExecutiveMom's Safety and Self Defense Blog

Do you think online "talk" has become too negative?

I have been lucky I guess, I have only met and interacted with many wonderful people online.  But as I've participated in groups and blogs like a local Fox network, I've noticed personal bashing, negative attitudes and people leaving due to harrassment.  I'm also a very nosy Aunt who keeps up with her nieces and Godchildren through Facebook and notice a lot of negative "snipes" and some teen harrassment there. Anyone who spends time on the Internet has seen some major negativity from vulgar comments to angry blog posts, and all that nastiness can affect one deeply.  I think this is sad.

With the crummy economy, crooked companies, and wars on two fronts, do we really need to add to all the pessimism in the world?  Maybe we should use our little corners of the Web to spread sunshine and happiness? My blogs carry this disclaimer:

I really enjoy reading your stories and responses to what has been written, but if       you feel that you must send me something hateful…please remember this is a personal blog and while I understand you may disagree with me on many topics, there is an obvious difference between disagreement and hate. If you are having feelings that you want to cause me harm, please take a step away from your computer and take your pills. I take mine! Have a great day and enjoy!

The anonymity of the Internet leads some people to say things they'd never say in real life (IRL).  Do you think this leads to people being too mean online?  Yet, you know the old saying, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me."  Turns out, that's not quite true.

Do you think it's the responsiblity of the blogging and social networking communities to not "go negative?"  How do you keep optimistic in the face of all the hostility found on the Internet?  And do you think people are too mean online? Is there a better more positive way to debate an issue or are there just too many personalities that would make this not possible in your point of view?

I hope I keep getting lucky....Thanks "friends"!

 

I'm joining Procrastinators Anonymous

"Telephones, Newspapers, and a Cup of Joe: How we wasted time before computers."

For Years - high school, college, 19 years of work in sales, I have been a very organized, "ahead of schedule", reliable individual.  Now that I stay at home working - running company things and writing - I am truly on my own. Even though I've always worked out of my house, I've also had "big Corporate" making demands and setting deadlines on my time.  That's gone.  It's all mine now - and my childrens...(boy do they have a ton of demands on my evening and weekend hours).

Due to my new found "Freedom", I have become a 100% true procrasinator...always putting off things like grocery shopping, laundry, bills... as long as I possibly can...(kids will be running around naked quite soon at the rate I'm going too :)

There is no gene for idling—it's a learned behavior, I'm told.   I agree, I went from a person living by stick-it-notes and lists, to a procrastinator keeping people waiting, pulling all-nighters, paying late fees. This past weekend, so excited about my upcoming vacation, I started packing at 10 p.m. the night before I was to get on a 6 am plane.

It seems ironic to start looking for help to reorganize my life with that Swiss army knife of procrastination tools, the Internet. I began with a visit to a pair of Web sites set up a few years ago: Procrastinators Anonymous and Procrastination Support. Either they would cure me, or I could bookmark them as new places where I could waste time.

Scrolling around, I found it hard to see the benefits of interacting with other people who, like me, spend much of the day on activities like brewing tea and squeezing blackheads. People wrote of their hopes that they could buckle down and achieve goals like flossing and brushing. Other posts were cries of despair: "Of the past 27 hours of work time, I have actually worked for only a few minutes. … When my boss asks me what I have done, I don't know what I am going to say."

Procrastinators Anonymous had an announcement about its weekly phone-in meeting that came with this disclaimer: "This meeting was originally scheduled for every Wednesday, 9 a.m. ET. But people have not been showing up at this time." I called in anyway and listened to the sound of Kenny G-style sax and my own breathing for 15 minutes before giving up.

Finding no solution online, I decided to move to self-help books. I ordered The Complete Idiot's Guide To Overcoming Procrastination by Michelle Tullier.  Nothing seemed to motivate me to return to my old behaviors.

Seeing my desperation, my 15-year-old daughter offered me some personal coaching. First there was a critique, all true: "Mom, you sit down to go to work and write, then you go to the bathroom, then you walk the Boo (our Newfy) and play with the puppies, then you say you're checking one last e-mail. You take a lot of breaks. You say you don't get any work done after I get home from school, but I'm 15, and I don't bother you anymore. Then you'll have so much work, you work 15 hours a day and you don't even come down to dinner. You've got to balance it out."

She had a point...

There it was—she didn't need online support or books for Dummies. She figured it out in kindergarten: Save the BEST for last. Which reminds me that I'm kind of hungry, and it's time for a break...

Guess the new behavior is going to be harder to break than I thought?  Any good ideas?

Major changes being considered for the way you learn about medications

As an experienced, career pharmaceutical representative, I witnessed multiple changes in the industry.  One of the changes that things that has disturbed me for years (as well as disturbing physicians) is direct to consumer advertising.  We are one of the only countries that allows this behavior from the Pharmaceutical companies right now.  We are also a very consumer driven society - always wanting that "New" and best thing...

The problem is just because a drug is "new" doesn't mean First: that it's not just a reformulation of an old molecule or Second: that it's any better than what is already available on the market.  Yet, Big Pharma spends millions on advertising trying to get YOU to go to your physician's office and ask for this product.

Instead of letting the physicians make the determination for you, they are hoping you will pressure the doctor into writing the product that you saw in that shiny new TV or magazine ad. And, unfortunately, as with most advertising, drug ads can be misleading, and studies have shown most patients get the prescription they requested by their doctor after seeing an ad on tv. Maybe it is a drug for them, and maybe it is not. Part of the problem is the limited time patients actually see their doctors due to time constraints imposed by different health insurance companies, but that is a whole other discussion.(read Escape From the Pharma Drug Cartel for more information on the industry and health care)

It is one thing to educate the consumer about different medications and options, but it should start with the patient's physician assessing the patient's risk, etc.. and not a drug companies sometimes misleading ads.

In addition, you have to consider the incredible cost of unnecessary prescriptions, particularly the brand name ones advertised. Our health care system has numerous flaws, and while drug advertising has increased the revenue for drug companies, it has also increased the cost of health insurance for everyone, as unnecessary prescriptions are requested more than ever.
This "drug fact box" will help educate the uninformed consumer who believes anything they read, and give them an unbiased assessment of the drugs benefits, risks, and whether it is even necessary for your age, sex, etc.

Sadly, after working over 18 years "on the inside", I know that Big Pharma isn't looking out for YOU the patient, they are looking out for themselves and how they look to their Shareholders. Every sales meeting we had, focused on how our company was perceived on the stock market at that point in time.

Following this line of discussion, I found a very interesting article on Boston.com: The FDA is considering major changes in the way consumers learn about medications.

For years, consumers have been bombarded with overhyped advertising for prescription drugs. On average, Americans spend more time - 16 hours a year - watching drug ads on TV than talking with their primary care doctors.

The ads are often misleading. By "ambiguously defining" who might need or benefit from the products advertised, they focus "on convincing people that they may be at risk for a wide array of health conditions" rather than genuinely educating consumers, concluded a 2007 study in the Annals of Family Medicine.

In an ad for the cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor, for example, a man says, "I never thought it could happen to me. A heart attack at 53. . . . Now I trust my heart to Lipitor." While research shows Lipitor can indeed help prevent heart attacks, someone viewing the ad might well conclude that the risk of heart attack for that age group is greater than it really is.

"The risks are often buried in a sea of unintelligible tiny print and benefits are often overstated, so it's hard for both doctors and patients to make informed risk assessments," says Dr. Jerry Avorn, chief pharmacoepidemiology division at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

But better ads and labeling may be on the way.

That would be nice to see since we are one of the only countries in the world that allows Pharma to advertise the way it does.  What do you think?  Have you ever been influenced by a drug ad and asked your physician to take a certain medication?

I don't see the harm in asking the physician's opinion but I pay them to do their job with my best interest in mind...I'm hoping he's looking out for me more than Big Pharma is...

 

Choosing a Strong, Safe Password

I spend a lot of time speaking to people about Online Safety. When I read this article from the  TweetLater Newsletter, I really found a lot of helpful information on developing a strong password for Online purposes.  I have so many online sites, bank accounts, passwords, etc. that I have a hard time coming up with good, effective passwords - especially ones I will remember!!

I thought I would share - I'm going to give it a try:

How To Choose Very Strong Passwords That Are Easy To Remember

What makes a password strong is the combination of different alphanumeric, special characters, and capitalization that you use, and of course the length of the password.

I don't know about you, but I don't want to remember and type an epistle when I fill out a password field. And, ideally, I don't want to use the same password on many sites, because if one is compromised then my entire life is unlocked.

I want to show you here how to choose very strong passwords for every website that you use, that are different for each website, and are each only 9 characters in length max.

A study found that an 8-character password that's constructed in the manner I'm going to show you has 7.2 quadrillion different combinations, and will take 83.5 days to crack if the hacker can try 1 billion different passwords per second.

Step 1: Pick 2 Starting Characters

To make it easy to remember, all your passwords are going to start with the same characters. But these are not just any characters. Pick 2 characters from the list of special characters that you see above the numbers on your keyboard and to the left of the Enter key.

These characters are: ~`!@#$%^&*()_-+={}[]:;"'<>?/|

Pick any two of them as your password starting characters. To show you an example as you read through the steps, let's pick $ and % (pick your own two).

In my example, all my passwords are going to start with $%.

Step 2: Pick 2 Ending Characters

In exactly the same way as above, pick two different special characters that will be at the end of your passwords. Don't pick the same characters as your starting characters.

For the purposes of my example, let's pick * and ^. Hence, all my passwords are going to end with *^.

Step 3: Construct The Middle Part Using The Website Name

This is the fun part. Take the first 6 characters of the website domain name where you want to use the password. If the domain name is shorter than 6 characters, then use the full domain name.

In my example, let's create a password www.microsoft.com.

The first 6 characters of the domain name is "micros".

Now we're going to substitute some characters and capitalize others.

Substitute the following characters: a becomes @, e becomes 3, i becomes 1, o becomes 0, and u becomes ^.

Now we have "m1cr0s".

Now, decide on a standard for yourself regarding which character(s) you're going to capitalize.

For this example, let's say we're always going to capitalize the 3rd consonant.

So now we have "m1cR0s".

The next step is to drop the last character ("s" in our case), and append the Ending Characters (*^) that you picked in Step 2.

Our password is now "m1cR0*^".

The last step is to add the Starting Characters (Step 1) to the beginning of the password.

The final password is "$%m1cR0*^".

A Few More Examples

Domain: www.twitter.com, Password: "$%tw1Tt*^".
Domain: www.tweetlater.com, Password: "$%tw33T*^".
Domain: www.facebook.com, Password: "$%f@c3B*^".
Domain: www.ebay.com: Password: "$%3b@*^"

Remember

Pick your own 2 starting characters and your own 2 ending characters, don't just use the same ones I used in the example.

In addition, make your own capitalization rule (you can capitalize more than 1 character if you want to.

You can also use more than the first 6 characters of the domain name if you want to. It just means your passwords will be slightly longer.

Is This Password Strong?

Yes, it is very strong. With this method you're potentially using any of 30 special characters, 10 numerals, and 26 lower case and 26 uppercase characters.

Unless a hacker happens to have a water-cooled supercomputer in his briefcase, he will not be able to crack your password.

Making It Even Stronger

If you're concerned that some hackers might know about this password construction method, simply pick 3 starting characters and/or 3 ending characters, or as many as you like. Any slight variation of the method makes your passwords even more secure.

Credits

This password construction method was designed by Sammie, a person with a brilliant technical mind.