Picture Hoaxes

I heard a radio announcer talking about Internet rumors. He said it used to be, "Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see." "Now," he says, "Believe NOTHING of what you see, either." It is true. Why do so many people fall for pictures and letter hoaxes? Because they seem so convincing. Believe nothing you get in e-mail. Nothing! (At least until it can be verified with Snopes.com or similar sites.) If some awful or unusual thing was really happening, it would appear in official news places -- the newspaper, TV ... somewhere else besides online.

Okay, with that in mind, here's a link to classic picture hoaxes -- very interesting images.

Happy Valentine's Day

Whether it be a mother, father, brother, sister, pet, spouse or friend, may you all have someone to shower love on today.

Ten Ways Dick Cheney Can Kill You

This is going around the Internet like wild fire -- and, if you have been watching the news, no wonder. I look forward to seeing what Jay Leno says about it.

Create Your Own City

This is adorable and even a bit intellectual - this site lets you create and save your own little city. You can choose from several types of cities, too. Here's one I created. I chose a snowy, normal-looking town. There are choices of types of cities, backgrounds, etc.

The Pink Panther - Movie Review

We just saw the new Pink Panther movie with Steve Martin. There was a laugh every minute. My husband loved it and never once looked at his watch. I was laughing, too. My favorite scene is near the end when the 2 inspectors dance -- too funny! I am sad that it got bad reviews -- we both thought it was very good. We loved Steve Martin in this. I guess it is either your type of humor or not.

My avatar has been a mermaid these days - of one color or another.

Breaking Down the World's Population

Thanks to Lil S. for this cute page explaining the world's population. For example, they say 67% of the world's population is nonChristian. I never knew it was that high. Only 5% of the world's population live in the U.S. or Canada. There are other comparisons here, too.

SpyCatcher vs McAfee

I had an unusual problem with McAfee and SpyCatcher. SpyCatcher claimed that McAfee had a key logger in its directory called ActMonCM. I thought this was just another clash and a mistaken read so I went to the sites from SpyCatcher, McAfee and Google for answers. I was surprised to find nobody else reporting this as a misread. Because of that, I felt that I had to take it seriously. I got rid of the keylogging program. Immediately, McAfee ceased to work. Alas, the McAfee website would not go past the first page unless I registered, etc., even though I am using a legal version of their program. They were fairly useless to anyone in a hurry - besides, if there's a keylogger on my computer, do I really want to register for a site? Why can't we just go in and check their virus explanations anymore?

Was McAfee compromised or was SpyCatcher mistaken? I didn't know. I *do*know that spyware authors love to disable and change McAfee - so I played it safe and removed McAfee all together and installed another virus checker. I've heard it said that lesser-known virus checkers are much safer because hackers love to disable and change more popular ones. If this is what happened, I never even noticed except that I never got update reports anymore.

Does Google still automatically search blogs? If not, then I might have missed my answer there, too.

Create a Face

Also known as Create Your Own Avatar, this cute and quick little flash program lets you design a face. It only took a few minutes to make this.

Design Your Own Tartan

Having a Scot line of genealogy, I found this site fun, from Interactive Weaver . You pick your own colors, etc., and they will make a tartan and have it delivered to your door. If nothing else, it is fun to play with this online and see the patterns that develop from favorite color choices. Here's one I made from picking mostly blue colors and giving high percentage to gray and light blue.