October 5, 2004 in Personal If I was ever an influential person who possessed even the tiniest grain of power, let it be today.
We are only strong in numbers. You all know better than to sit back and let your futures be decided for you.
Register now, vote November 2nd, and hold your head high.
Many state deadlines to register are THIS WEEK!
It's so easy. Do me proud!
September 28, 2004 in Personal I'm really at a loss at how to thank all of you for the incredible outpouring of support you've given me over the past week. From the kind emails and letters to the donations, the flowers and candy to the incredibly personal stories that were shared with me in effort to remind me I was not alone... I'm truly floored. Never have I felt so supported and loved by so many. You all know who you are. I'm a very lucky girl.
We now return to our regularly scheduled blog.
September 20, 2004 in Personal 
Always did, and always will watch over his little girl.
With all my heart... I love you, Dad.
September 20, 2004 in Web/Tech Looking for a free, cross-platform streaming media solution? Then I recommend the VideoLAN project.
Whether you need a server to stream MPEG-1/2/4 files, DivX files, DVDs, or live video on the network, or a client to receive and decode MPEG streams under multiple operating systems, VideoLAN's VLC player will do the trick.
Check out this diagram for a nice illustration of your options.
I've been using VLC mostly to playback bittorrents of TSS that I'm streaming from my laptop to another computer on my home network. I'd love to hear how it helps the rest of you!
September 13, 2004 in Lists I Made, Web/Tech 1. Secure Instant Messaging
If you use AIM, have you ever noticed how some of your buddies have little lock icons to the left of their screenname? That means they've installed a free encryption certificate through AIMEncrypt. Once both parties have it, the conversation will be totally encrypted.
If you're not an AIM user, try Trillian Pro (128-bit encryption) or Hush Messenger (a whopping 2,048-bit encryption) for safe chatting.
2. Secure FTP transfer
If your server supports secure FTP transfer (make sure you check because some don't), then consider arming yourself with an FTP client called SecureFTP. I know you wouldn't upload or download anything embarrassing or anything, but still.
3. Text-Only Outlook
Unless you like spam, it's important that you make sure you set Outlook to display messages as text-only. When Outlook downloads an HTML message with embedded images, it often needs to send a request to grab the image data from the originating server. So even if you delete a message right away, you've let the sender know there's a real person on the end of your address.
In Outlook 2003- Tools/Options/Email Options Tab/check "read all standard mail in plain-text"
In Outlook Express- Tools/Options/Read tab/check "read all messages in plain-text"
4. Secure Email Clients
Pocomail- free trial, $35 to buy - comprehensive virus protection, spam filtering, and organization options
Cryptomail- open source encrypted email software- free, but accepting donations
Hushmail- encrypted web-based email (also a new plugin for Outlook) free, $30 for premium edition
5. Password-protect MS Office files
Keep all the snoops around your home or office out of your MS Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.
From within Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, click on the Tools menu and select Options.
Click on the Security tab.
Under "File encryption options for this document," type in a password.
Click OK.
When you try to open the document, you get a password.
Easy stuff folks! Hope you're feeling just a little bit safer now. Unless of course you already knew about everything I just mentioned, in which case you are very, very cool and deserve a treat.
