Tim Nichols

2011-01-14T10:18:00.000-08:00

Beware Internet Scams!

Have you read about those scams where someone tries to get you wire money or use your Paypal account to steal thousands of dollars? Maybe you know someone who has been hit by one of these scams, or maybe you yourself have suffered. I had the chance to intervene on one of these this morning. Here's the scoop:

I started my morning off early, planning to attend my local Rotary club meeting and settling back into some normalcy after the holidays. I sat down with a bagel and orange juice to check my mail, and I quickly got a comment from someone I know in the Phillipines. (I've been working some with folks in that area for outsourcable tasks. Kay (not her real name), has been helping me as a Virtual Assistant.)

This was around Midnight there, so I had a feeling something was wrong.

This is the message I got:

I dont know what to do with my other employer i have been crying for an hour now. [Their client] have emailed me and they says that I should call paypal but its international

I spent some time chatting with her, and found out that she had been tricked into a very dangerous scam. As a virtual assistant, she offers her time to help business people be more efficient. This particular person, had given her an email address, and phone number here in the United States. He claimed to be a financial advisor to a company call Cold Code Co. Cold Code Co, however turns out to be in Russia.

At this point, I could tell she needed help, and I decided to fore go my meeting in the hopes that I might be able to help her.

Here is what I learned about the scam:

They hired Kay as a virtual assistant, and had her do a handful of small tasks to establish a relationship with her.
They told her that as a Russian company they could not get a Paypal account, and that they would like her to accept payments for products they sold on her account.
They placed a product (In this case, a high value, minted coin) on ebay, and set the payment to go to her Paypal account.
When the payment was received, they told her to withdraw the funds from Paypal and send it to them via Western Union

Fortunately for the buyer, and for Kay, the buyer requested a shipment tracking number. When Kay could not provide it, the buyer opened a Paypal dispute, which froze the funds at Paypal before Kay withdrew them. They had also frozen Kay's Paypal account from any other transactions.

The amount was several thousand dollars. This is a lot of money here in the USA, but in the Phillipines, it's huge. And the buyer was threating all kinds of terrible things to get their money back.

If Kay had followed her employers instructions quickly, the buyer would have been out her money, and the only person she could have lashed out at was Kay.

At this point, Kay was scared, and confused about what had happened. She had never needed to use any of Paypal's dispute features, and she was completely intimidated by the website and their phone system. In fact, she had no way of calling paypal without incurring high long distance fees that she could not afford.

I decided to help her out. I worked with Kay to get all the details we would need to discuss it with Paypal. I then opened a three-way Skype to Paypal, and I acted as her advocate. After working through a couple layers of Paypal phone support, we managed to fully refund the Buyers money, and Paypal waived all related transaction fees so that Kay was not paying for them. They released the lock on her account, and explained that this is a twist on a common internet scam that they have seen before.

Kudos to Paypal

Paypal was great with all of this. They did the right thing freezing the funds. I believe they need to facilitate the resolution a little better. Kay tells me that she would not have been able to work through the process with help, and I believe her. The website was a bit confusing about the lockout, and we had to work through several layers of phone support to resolve the issue.

However, if they had not intervened, the scammer would have gotten away with a terrible crime, and an innocent person would have likely been blamed for the theft.

I'm glad I took a couple hours out of my day today to make a difference. I only wish there was some way to point the authorities to the scammer. I'm sure he's doing the same thing to many other people.

Watch out for these type of scams. Never, ever, handle funds for someone else's transactions online.

2010-10-21T14:02:00.000-07:00

I've posted before about joining Toastmasters and building my skills. I'm glad to announce that I'm launching a new website focused around public speaking.

I've learned a lot in the last couple of years. I'm still basically a newbie when it comes to this skill. But I can honestly say that I'm no longer scared to the point of inaction when it comes to standing in front of a crowd.

I've done some speaking outside of Toastmasters. Some at service clubs such as Rotary, where I do things like announce events and assignments, or introduce other speakers.

More importantly, I've been able to use my new skills to advocate for kids in my household. This has probably been one of the most rewarding things I've been able to do in my entire life.

I'm collecting what I've learned in to some public speaking articles. I've also transcribed, or recorded some of my speeches. I've posted those examples of public speaking on the site too.

I'm also teaching myself the art/science of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It's amazing how much effort goes into getting visibility to quality content. I hope that through these efforts, I can bring a large audience to the new website. Helping a few people to take that leap and become effective speakers.

Tim

2010-02-16T12:08:00.000-08:00

New Blog!

Wow! I haven't blogged since 2008! It has fallen victim to the precipice of priorities which determines what occupies my time.

Since I last blogged, I have changed jobs, added to my family, and grown significantly.

I'm now very busy working on a new business! I'm building a social networking website for people who use medical resources abroad. We are Traveling4Health.com, Inc. I'm having a lot of fun polishing my PHP skillz ( :) ) and wrapping my head around Drupal and all of it's inner working.

Also, I'm only a couple weeks away from losing my DHL benefits. That means that I need to find some medical insurance for my family. COBRA subsidies are extended until about a week before my benefits end. Blech!!!! Luckily, it looks like Washington State is actually pretty friendly to those of us who need to insure privately. Let me know if you have recommendations ....

2008-12-09T14:55:00.000-08:00

Foster Respite Care

Tonight I'm giving my second Toastmasters speech. It's all about foster parenting. Specifically it's about foster respite care. What is "respite care", you ask? That's a good question. Most people I talk to have not heard of foster respite care. When you take in someones children for a few hours or days to give them a break, that's respite care. You're giving the parents respite. Most parents find some sort of respite from their parenting duties. Taking time for yourself is an important part of being a good parent. It not only allows you time to refresh, but it also gives your children an example of how we should make time to take care of ourselves.

Foster parents are more limited than your average parent. They have to follow guidelines and laws set by the state when making decisions about the children in their care. This extends to their choice of caretakers. A foster child can't be left in the care of friend, neighbor, or even family member for long or regular periods of time. Instead they have to rely on other people who are foster licensed.

Have you ever heard this term: "It takes a village to raise a child." It means that parents rely on their social network to be successful. Short breaks and emotional support are a key part the village. Foster respite care providers are at the core of that village.

The state recommends that foster parents get about two days per month of respite care. Unfortunately, there aren't enough people in the system to provide that kind of support. We met a couple at a support group recently who had not been able to find any form of respite in over six months. We offered to take care of the kids for a day, and I believe we have made some very dear friends for doing so.

I believe many people see foster parenting as an on or off issue. Either you open your home to all types of kids, on a moments notice, for an indefinite time, or you don't get involved. But actually it's not like that at all. Some foster parents do open their homes that way. But, they can also offer as little as a few hours here and there. Having a foster license could just mean that you volunteer at your nearest DSHS foster care office. I was told last year that they are understaffed, but they can only accept volunteers who are licensed.

So tonight, I'm crusading for a cause. I'm hoping to open some eyes about getting involved with the foster care program. Perhaps I'll recruit someone new. Maybe I can help someone find a new way to make a difference.

2008-11-14T22:13:00.000-08:00

Join Toastmasters, release your inner Dr. Suess

Do you ever try to bring life to the stories you read to your children? Do you sing in the shower when no one is around to hear? Do you have a passionate and lively side of yourself that is just waiting to get out? Maybe you should try Toastmasters!

I am generally a quiet person in public. Most people who know me might not believe that I have a boisterous and rather wacky side. I recently had to speak in front of the sophomore class at our local high school. I only had a couple things to say. It only needed to be a couple minutes. I was terribly nervous. Honestly, I can't even remember what I said when I was up on stage or if I covered the points I meant to. No one threw anything at me, so I guess that's not bad for a high school audience. LOL.

After that experience I decided to expand my horizons a bit and join a local Toastmasters club.
The Little Norway Toastmasters Club is a small group of folks who really care about expanding their speaking skills, and in helping each other succeed. I went to a few meetings and got to know most of the members before I had to give my first speech, the "icebreaker".

I decided I needed to draw on some other parts of my life if I was ever going to get beyond my fear of speaking. Specifically I decided to draw on some aspects of being a dad. I learned early on that my kids respond much better to me when I exaggerate my emotions. I read stories to them. I also make some up, and we always have a lot of fun. My son asked me one time to tell him a story about me and a bottle. Now, I'm a WSU graduate, so I could go a lot of directions with that material! But since he's only 4 yrs old, I had to be creative. I spent weeks spinning new ridiculous yarns about the giant bottle that I could drive by running in it like a hamster. The point is that they loved it, and hoped to draw on that story-telling experience in my "icebreaker".

My first speech was titled "I am Sam". I started by reciting a few lines of Dr. Suess' "Green Eggs and Ham" in a similar way to how I might read it to my kids. I hoped that it would put me in a frame of mind that would carry my confidence through my speech. I sprinkled bit's of information about myself and my family into theme of why I am like the character Sam in Dr. Seuss' book.

My strategy paid off! I don't know if everyone in the room enjoyed the speech, but I can tell you that I did. The club really made me feel great about it, and I went home feeling actually elated about successfully conveying my message in front of a group of people.

So if you've ever considered building a skill in speaking, take this advice: go for it! Be bold, be creative, and find part of your life that really makes you feel good. Then draw on that as your foundation for successful speaking experience.

- Tim

.

2006-03-29T15:38:00.000-08:00

Advanced use -exec in the Unix find utility

I recently was tasked with writing a utility to parse through a large set of log files, and delete files based on some very specific, and relatively complex, rules. Basically I needed to delete files that contained any of a couple specific strings anywhere in the file, and also, deleted any file that contained some specific strings in the last few lines:

The file needed to be deleted if it was named *.log, and any of the following were true:

contains the string "Termination signal '15'" anywhere in file
contains the string "Begin Stack Backtrace" anywhere in the file
contains the string "fatal error terminated partition" in the last few lines
contains the string "shutting down partition as requested" in the last few lines

I didn't want to write something that would parse through every file for each string, and I wanted something that would be extensible if I was requested to search other things. I decided to use the Unix find command with a small shell script wrapper to improve readability.

# Delete all logs with the following anywhere in the log
fullregex="Termination signal \'15\'|Begin Stack Backtrace"

# Delete all logs with the following anywhere in the last few lines of the log
tailregex="fatal error terminated partition|Shutting down partition as requested"

find $FORTE_ROOT/log/ -name \*.log -type f \
$ \
-exec sh -c "tail \$0 | grep -qEi \"$tailregex\"" {} \; \
-o \
-exec grep -qiE "$fullregex" {} \; $ \
-exec rm {} \;

There are two main components at work here. The first is grep and regular expressions, and second is the extended logic and language of find itself.

Many people overlook the advanced -E option of grep. Regular expressions can be cryptic, and daunting. But their power is indisputable. The regular expressions (fullregex, and tailregex) are pretty simple. They each match one of two strings seperated by the regex or operator '|'. The grep -q option is very useful in scripting because it simply returns a Boolean 0 or 1 based if the pattern was matched.

The find command is another powerful tool that is often under-utilized. The real power find of is that it's options are themselves a mini programming language. In fact, the options of find are an implicit if statement as you might find in any other language. For each file in the directory it's searching, it interprets each option in the order until it gets a false result, or it runs out of options.

By using the -exec option, find becomes a very powerful tool for manipulating large sets of files based on arbitrary rules. You can execute any program you like with -exec and find will interpret it's exit code as a true or false value (0 is true, 1 is false), and continue or end processing based on it.

In my example, checking the last few lines of a file is much more efficient than scanning the entire file. The reason I point this out is that I want to keep my processing to a minimum. Because find stops processing as soon as it knows a result, I can use that to ensure that I do the minimum amount of work possible. Notice the use of parentheses and the -o. This is a logical grouping, and the -o represents an OR. All of the options of find are implicitly AND'ed unless you use the -o between them. In this case I want to remove the file if either grep succeeds. And because an OR always returns true if the first part (the first grep) is true, find does not need to process the second grep.

For clarity, here is what the above find command would do for each file if written as a standard shell script:

#find $FORTE_ROOT/log/ -name \*.log -type f
# Assume $filename is replaced by the current file
if [ $filename == *.log ]; then  # -name \*.log
if [ -f $filename ]; then # -type f
      # \(  \
         #  -exec sh -c "tail \$0 | grep -qEi \"$tailregex\"" {} \; \
           # -o \
         # -exec grep -qiE "$fullregex" {} \;     \)    #
      # For the sake of this example, I've broken the or'd
   # -exec's into an if-elif statement.
   if ( tail $filename | grep -qEi "$tailregex" ); then
        # -exec rm {} \;
        rm $filename
   # Note how if the first grep succeeds, the second
   # never occurs
   elif ( grep -qiE "$fullregex" $filename ); then
        # -exec rm {} \;
        rm $filename
   fi
fi
fi

The last thing to talk about is the the use of -exec. One thing I've found frustrating about -exec in the past was that I couldn't get command piping (|) to work. I realized that the reason for this is that -exec is not being processed by a shell. Once I realized that, the problem could be resolved by introducing a shell:

-exec sh -c "tail \$0 | grep -qEi \"$tailregex\"" {} \;

Note that you have to pass the filename ( {} ) as a parameter to the shell, rather than using it with the shells commands. You can then reference the filename with \$0.

The last bit of info, is how to terminate -exec. find needs a way to distinguish its own parameters from those of the -exec. Because that, you need to terminate the -exec option with \;.

In the end, find is a powerful tool in the arsenal of a Unix systems admin/engineer. It's a tool that, like grep, sed, awk, etc..., can solve a complicated task in relatively simple terms.

2006-03-08T21:27:00.000-08:00

Computer Systems Engineering

When asked what I do, my general response is that I am a Computer Systems Engineer. Unless I'm speaking to a fellow IT infrastructure type, this inevitably leads to blank stares or "Oh, I see" type responses. The conversation often goes back and forth a little bit before ending with a comment something like "so you work with computers". I have always found describing what I do a bit uncomfortable. Lately, I've been trying to connect with more people from my community. In the process of doing that I've had several of these conversations, and I've decided to try to solidify it.

Searching the web for the term Systems Engineer I found a few different definitions.

INCOSE description of Systems Engineer

I find this definition about as uncomfortable as my recent conversations. It's full of jargon. It describes a concept more that a real world role.

http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/occguide/ENGCOMP.HTM

The first paragraph of this description (under "The Job") is actually fairly concise with regard to one part of the job. But it completely misses the mark going forward.

Wikipedia

Ok, this is taken primarily from the INCOSE definition, but it reads a bit better. It's still too long winded and generic to really use to describe what you do.

In addition, these definitions are not really specific to the IT industry. In fact, they're really focused around an engineering methodology as applied to complex systems involving multiple technologies. I don't believe that Computer Systems Engineer was borne from this.

The term Computer Systems Engineer seems more likely to have evolved from the term Systems Administrator. In my experience, the terms are used interchangeably. The term System Administrator has acquired many bad connotations over the years. Changing the word to engineer is an attempt to overcome those connotations, and bring to light how the role has evolved in the modern IT world.

What's interesting is that the most successful Computer Systems Engineers that I've met are in practice Systems Engineers by the Wikipedia/INCOSE definition. They have learned, either by training or experience, to apply various levels of engineering methodologies to their work. Their success has put them in charge of increasingly complex systems and forced them to learn technologies beyond those expected of the Systems Admin. And their value in that role has brought others to them to help understand the interdisciplinary nuances of complex systems.

All of that is still very little help in telling my neighbor what I do for a living. So let's instead look at how other highly technical roles describe themselves. Most other types of engineers work in a much more physical world. Rather than describing what they actually do, they give examples of projects they've worked that their audience can relate to. "I helped design the Tacoma Narrows Bridge." "I ensured that new downtown apartment complex won't fall down in the next earthquake". Here is something that can be useful, given that you work on a project that your audience can relate to. I've explained to people in the past that I do engineering on the system that helps you track packages with DHL. That's probably the most appropriate answer in a social setting. But what if you're trying to establish a business relationship with someone?

In the end I think the goal is not necessarily to explain exactly what you do. Instead, it may be to provide a small insight, while opening an avenue for conversation. In that spirit, I plan to start offering tidbits of info that most people can relate to, and use to ask more detailed questions. Offering that I work on the computer systems that track packages and schedule pickups for DHL is a good example. Nearly everyone has shipped a package. If they know nothing of computers, they can discuss the shipping aspects. If they do know computer systems, they can ask for details about what they understand from it.

2006-03-08T12:16:00.000-08:00

The general who advances without coveting fame
and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only
thought is to protect his country and do good service
for his sovereign, is the jewel of the kingdom.
--The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Chapter X: Terrain