Identity Theft is No Joke, Jim.

How I woke up to my website being hijacked, and tips to make sure it never happens to you.

WOW! It has been one hell of a morning for me. While I woke up early this morning excited for studying I was instead woke up to a cute email from WordPress telling me my verification email had been changed. So naturally I tried to do what I always do if something is up and change my password. Well not only was my verification email changed, but my account email was changed. Oh, and my password was changed. Oh, and my website (joshuaglaab.com) now only featured articles written by one, Aditya Sarkar. Well, that’s interesting. So I spent most of the morning with the fine people at word press and they sorted me right out so that I could get my website back.

How Did This Happen?

I have a few theories about how our good friend Mr. Sarkar got a hold of my information. Consulting with Firefox it appears my data had been breached not once, but FOUR TIMES! All regarding websites I had used in the past. Not a bad culprit, but there could be other possibilities as well. My frequent use of public open wifi left me at a high risk for a long time. All that needed to happen was one enterprising individual to open a wifi sniffer at a starbucks and just wait for me to input an email/password combo.

How Can I Prevent This?

I will describe the steps I now take to protect my information.

1. Randomly generate strong passwords for all websites
   • This makes it much harder for a person to get into any account, and by randomly generating all passwords, if one gets lost in a breach the others will be safe.
2. Organize Passwords in a secure location
   • Since the passwords are WAY to big to memorize I have organized all of mine in a secure account, which is also protected by a monster password and two factor authentication.
3. Two Factor Authentication
   • This might be the most important point on this list. By requiring your phone to log into accounts it makes it impossible for someone to break in without access to your phone. Even if they get the password they wont gain access to your account, giving you time to lock them out again. Almost every website has an option for you to enable this. I personally set up texting and an authentication app for many of my accounts.
4. Install a VPN
   • This is your armor for sketchy wifi. Even if someone sniffs your data on the public wifi the VPN encrypts everything you send so the would be hacker only gets a string of gibberish.

Anyway

This has been my story of getting my website hijacked. Make sure you take steps to protect yourself on the internet! Its a mad mad mad mad world out there, so do yourself a favor and put up some defenses.

Godspeed

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Don’t block the buses, you’re not that important

Walking around campus yields a menagerie of sights, sounds, and experiences. One of the more mundane experiences for walkers, and more infuriating experiences for anyone in a motor vehicle is pedestrians strolling through a crosswalk. This behavior isn’t bad, in fact its very necessary to allow for a walk-able campus. However the pedestrians often find it easy to ignore people in cars as they are legally required to yield. That combined with the popular mantra of, “Please pay my tuition”. This leads to pattern lack of empathy from those pedestrians. I would like to put forward a few reasons that you should consider taking five seconds to let a bus or car go.

            The first of my reasons deals specifically with buses. On a bus could be anywhere from 10 to 40 people. With each one of them trying to get somewhere. The cost to let a bus go is maybe five seconds for a pedestrian. We will consider the oversimplified scenario where a bus would only be inconvenienced by five seconds if you walked in front of it. This is almost never the case as it will usually take up to a minute for the bus to get another window as other pedestrians follow your example and walk too. In the given scenario a five second delay for a bus becomes a societal delay of 10 x 5 = 50 seconds if the bus only has 10 people in it or 40 x 5 = 200 seconds if the bus is closer to capacity. Your 5 seconds is not worth inconveniencing 200 seconds from society.

            The second of my reasons is the subjective value of time. The average walking speed for a pedestrian is 1.4 meters per second or 3.1 miles per hour. In five seconds a pedestrian can get 5 x 1.4 = 7 meters or 23 feet. Almost the length of a semi-truck or small bus. In five seconds of travel at the campus speed limit (25 mph) a bus can get 132 meters or 436 feet. A single second for a bus is worth 7.8 times what your time is worth in distance terms. Not only are you inconveniencing society in time, but you are physically blocking forward progress.

            This was a bit of a rant but as a pedestrian myself I get frustrated at my fellow Americans lack of empathy and situational awareness. This week, just consider those vehicles waiting at crosswalks. Take five seconds and allow society to progress, don’t be a burden to it.

New Semester, New Workout

So last semester/over the summer I was doing a completely different routine than I am doing now. Last semester I had a ton of time to workout. By a ton I mean an hour+. This semester the only real time I have to workout is from 8-8:30 am. Tight window I know, but I’ve found a routine that kinda works. I open the Apartment Gym at 8am sharp. For 15 minutes I used the crossover machine doing workouts for upper body, biceps, back. During these 15 minutes I will mix in pull-ups and push ups/planks when I can. After 15 minutes of pure exhaustion I leave the gym and run the long way back to my apartment. This mixes in about a half mile run every mon/wed/fri. Honestly it seems to work pretty well for me, I just need to get back into the swing of things after this past fall break.

Fox Hill 5k

Good Morning!

This past week I went home to visit with my family before my summer classes started, and had the pleasure of running in the Fox Hill Community 5k. I’ve ran every one for the past five or so years, and they’re always a good time! My time was like 40ish minutes when I started out, and at this past 5k I got a time of 30:43! I’m hoping that the next 5k I run puts me around 25 or so minutes since I’m actively training at this point. I took first in my age group (14-19) which was very exciting. I won a hand painted Fox Hill garden pot, and I won a door prize of cupcakes and a photography minisession! Can’t wait to post those photos up here when it happens. It probably won’t happen though until after my summer classes conclude in late June. Here are some pictures, from the run! Have a great day!

Workout!

So recently I have been looking around instagram (bad idea) and I have been inspired to obtain the body of my dreams.

Workout Routine:

• Push-ups – I’m currently doing them on my knees because I can’t maintain proper form on my toes. I do as many of these as I can, which usually means like 10 so far.
• Crunches – Just like with push-ups, I’m focusing on form instead of rep numbers here. So far I’ve been doing two sets of 20.
• Pull-ups – I used to not be able to do any of these, but I’m up to four traditional style with good form. I also try some with the side handles of the pull-up bar, and some flexed arm hang with the forward grip. I can’t currently do much of the variation style, but we’re making progress.
• Handstand – These are very nice for arms. Its like a push-up, but reversed and you’re in the air. It gets rather difficult to hold yourself up for any true extended length of time. I usually last about 10 seconds. I started doing handstands against a wall to get the balance down.
• Russian Twists – When done correctly and slowly these are killer.

Run

_____I’ve been trying to do my workout every day, and a run every other day. Usually on the run I just go until I can’t anymore. This usually happens around the two mile mark. Hoping to bump this up to a 5k.

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That concludes my thoughts on my workouts. I’ve been taking progress pictures, so when I have some good progress I’ll share those on my instagram @TheGlaab. Also I hope ot use some of my own photos on possible fitness updates in the future. Until next time, have a great day!

Photo by Victor Freitas on Pexels.com