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Microsoft Security Issue

Carl Setzer2 Comments
woman in black hoodie holding a bank card

Over the past few days, I’ve been receiving multiple emails from Microsoft’s Account Team with single-use codes. At first, I assumed that my son or wife was trying to access the account. And the folks at Microsoft added the text “If you didn’t request this code, you can safely ignore this email. Someone else might have typed your email address by mistake.” But I started to get concerned as the number of these messages increased and no one said “hey dad, I can’t get in the Office”. Finally, I decided it was time to figure out what was going on.

So, I first logged into my Microsoft account (account.microsoft.com) and went to the security panel. From there I opened “View My Activity”.

What I saw alarmed me. There multiple attempts to log in from places like Vietnam and Guyana.

Now, I was pretty confident in my account’s security. I update my password regularly and use a strong password. And when I looked at the “session activity” it states that “incorrect password entered”. Which seems pretty solid. I’m pretty sure that an old password has been leaked from a data breach and is in some list available on the dark web.

But I think it’s not adequate. Exploring further, I realize that I had not yet enabled two-factor authentication, nor connected it to my authentication app. So, I fixed that promptly. I firmly believe everyone really should do these steps for all their account. Do you know where to do that? I thought I’d help out by adding the steps.

One enables that from the Advanced security panel.

I encourage all of you to make sure your security settings are using the most up-to-date protocols:

  • Multifactor authenication
  • Authentication Apps
  • Pass Keys

Also, I opted to sign out of EVERY app. Yeah, it’s a bit of a pain, but I don’t want to have my information compromised. I like that I can do that from the control panel.

Anyway, we really can’t be too safe on today’s internet, can’t we?

Have you seen a spike in Microsoft Single Use Code emails that are not from you? Let me know in the comments.

Some Photoshop Work

Carl Setzer

This week I needed to create a basic image based on a quote for a presentation. The team selected this one:

We can choose courage, or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.

Brené Brown 

I like and admire Brene Brown, so I this made me happy. Now, I have tons of options (ie: Canva and Adobe Express). I opted, in the end, for Photoshop. I haven’t used it in a few weeks, so this was a good way to keep my skills…it not “sharp”, at least “unrusty”. It took only a few minutes to whip this one up:

Then I thought “you know, it would be cool to post this to Instagram”. Always a good thing to make sure people know what I can do, right? Anyway, an Instagram post is square. As you might have noticed, this above is not. A benefit of doing this kind of work in Canva is their “Resize” tool (it is a Premium feature). Though not perfect, it does a create job of guesstimating. Tweaking the image then is pretty easy. Photoshop doesn’t have a slick little tool like that. Changing the canvas size is pretty straightforward, though. Then one needs to do a bit more tweaking than what would be needed with Canva’s tool. Re-sizing the image and text, mostly. And making sure you remember all the elements that are hidden by the new canvas size.

This was clear cut, so it was pretty easy to readjust the elements and create an Instagram styled image.

Yeah, I enjoy these sorts of projects, so it was fun.

Today’s Haiku Challenge: Waves

Carl Setzer 
sunset through the waves
sunlight sparkles upon the surf
fading into night

On Twitter, er, X, the user @Bleu_Owl posts a daily prompt “Haiku Challenge”. Today’s prompt is “wave”. The above is my contribution. I hope you enjoy it!

An Animated Haiku

Carl Setzer2 Comments

Today’s haiku video was created with Canva, a powerful freemium design tool. If you’re not familiar with it, I highly recommend it. The free version has plenty of functionality, and the premium versions are amazing without the high costs of Adobe.

Spam Job “Opportunity” of the Day

Carl Setzer1 Comment
young woman in front of the entrance to the building

Fandango, a fellow WordPress blogger I follow, regularly posts “Spam Comments of the Week” (his most recent as of this post is here). I was reminded of that by this job “offer”:

My first thought was “do people STILL do this”? Does any company want the liability considering how people have been shot going to the wrong house? I mean, look at this list (3 of 495,000,000 results from Google).

So, no…NO I’m not going door-knocking…even here in Seattle. Even forgoing the tales of violence, I’m an introvert. The thought of knocking on stranger’s doors is pretty close to my vision of the deepest pits of hell.

Stepping back a bit, I also wonder about the efficacy of this as a marketing strategy. What sort of conversion rate do you see with this work? I doubt it’s out of the single digits. Perhaps it’s not actually “sales” but political doorbelling (tis the season, after all). But that should be clearly disclosed.

Anyway, I’m lucky that all I need to do in this situation is spend a few minutes puzzling, then move along. I’m OPEN to new opportunities, but do not NEED a new job at the moment. And, with that, it’s time for me to move along.

FWOC: Maximum

Carl Setzer

A blogger I follow, WoollyMuses, posted his contribution to Fandango’s One Word Challenge: Maximum. So, I thought I’d add to that.

Manzanita Sunset
the grace of daylight 
sunlight moves across the sky
onwards to the west

The photo above is one I took in Manzanita, Oregon a few days ago. Shot with my Samsung S22.

Cougars on my Vacation

Carl Setzer
nature animal wilderness head

Ok, my headline here is a bit clickbaity, but stick with me. So, I just got back from a family trip to the delightful town of Manzanita on the Oregon coast. It was a lovely time, which I’ll try to explore more in depth shortly. But there was a recurring element that was…weird: Cougars. Not as in WSU grads, but in the American Mountain Lion kind.

When we got in to town, we started exploring things we wanted to do. One of them was hike Nehalem Bay State Park. When I Googled the park the first thing to come up was this news article:

Cougar sightings on the Oregon Coast prompt trail closure at Nehalem Bay State Park

It was mildly alarming, but the State Parks folks closed off a few trails, and we put off that endeavor for a few days to let our furry friend move on to other locales.

But this wasn’t the end of cougars. Another place we wanted to explore was the famous Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach. While there, Haystack Rock was blocked off by parks folks, the police, and emergency personnel. Turns out, yep, a cougar.

Cougar sighting closes Cannon Beach at Haystack Rock

Ok, cool enough. But it gets better still. Once I got home, I logged into Instagram. A photographer I follow had the following images at the TOP of my feed.

For me, what was particularly wild about Andy Woo’s post, beside the wild timing, was the synchronicity of us being that close, as Mr. Woo is a globally travelled photographer. Lastly, he did get some really cool photos of the cougar while there, though he was after puffins. But we take what we can get.
Fortunately for Mr. Woo, he was able to get some puffin shots after all. You can see why I enjoy his work.

So, that’s it for cougars at this point. Maybe there’s some greater, mystical significance. If so, I’ll need to discover it. Otherwise, it’s just a lot of fun coincidences.

Sidenote: the cougar in the “featured image” is a random photo from Pexels, not related to the Cannon Beach kitty.