Off To Alberta with Ford for 48 Hours

They’ve heavily refreshed their classic pickup truck, the F150.

There will be dinosaurs!

I’ve been once before, it’s the largest and most significant concentration of fossils in the world. Another #1 for Canada <3

Pumped. Plus also nice, they invited KeriBlog not the paper.  I’ll be 2 hours behind you, home late Thursday night.

I’ve only been to Alberta once to visit my brother Brooks.

But I love pickup trucks, always have.

I’m sick, been fighting off a fever. Cross your fingers please the plane doesn’t make it worse.  I’m convinced I’m winning because of that time I didn’t take penicillin, and created MegaImmuneSystem.

Stood on my tiptoes with the rest of Canada last night. 4-1 gone in 15 minutes baffles me.  Least our astronaut Chris Hadfield got home safe, welcome home to him eh! His YouTube Channel was fantastic.

Came home this evening to a new Blackberry Q10, thanks TELUS!

I tested the Z10 (no keyboard), now this one.  I’m more excited for this model, because the QWERTY keyboard was what stopped me from switching to iPhone for so long.

I missed that and BBM… which interesting, Blackbery announced today that they’re going to give it away for both iPhone and Android this summer, BBM for all!  

My cell phone history.

Original post.

(you bet I wore the StarTac in that clip on my belt, like a boss)

Picked up a cupcake during errands, to celebrate a phone call.

5 years ago I set a goal / benchmark this one thing through my blog, and out of the blue today at 3pm my phone rang, and a gentleman said hello, then made it come true.

I can’t tell you what it is without sabotaging something, I’m sorry, not doing this to be mysterious, and mostly this is more for me than you (documenting), but ya, big blog win :)

Kay I have to finish packing, update my camera’s software, news sourced and written for Autonet, flight leaves at noon.

TTY from Alberta!

 

 

I Want Blackberry to Win This One – the Z10

One of Canada’s favourite companies just completed their launch of their new phone and OS –  introducing the Blackberry Z10. I followed the launch along from start to now, thanks to TELUS who invited me.

The launch party in Toronto.

Whomever was in charge of the party crushed the guest list; that was a quality crowd.

Got to see many old social media faces and friends, from the good ‘ole days 2009-11-ish.

See how the keyboard is predicting what I’m typing? Once you get the hang of it, ahhh the efficiency.

(see my cell phone history here)

It plays Flash! & HTML5

Parental controls, nice.

Security note – the default of NFC is “on”. Turn it off immediately #security

NFC – Near Field Communication. Pass files between phones without touching. (this blog post touches on it, here and start at the Charlie Miller part)

Then, it was off to TELUS HQ for a Z10 learning session.

I was pretty pumped for this event because, because at that time I was into researching how to move ‘contacts & calendar’ files among iPhone / BB / Android… BUT, move it withOUT using the cloud.

A – Nope.  Have to use the cloud.

However, TELUS has half the problem solved… it’s a cabled solution, available in each of their retail stores; port contacts from phone to phone, but not calendar.

(here’s the video)

Good luck, Blackberry! 
Your new phone is beautiful, you got this,
& Canada’s still behind you cheering you on xo 

 

A Christmas Extravaganza Update

Remember in December, when 2 people won the

2nd Annual Keri’s Christmas Extravaganza?

(warning: page is huge)

My favourite winner Glenn just sent me these pics of the prizes in action.

Here’s the Meduiar’s Headlight Restoration Kit.

Even a kid can use it.

That’s not a photo op; Glenn’s daughter really did buff a headlight. Good work, missy!

All photos were taken with a Samsung Galaxy. Thanks, TELUS!

I’ve known Glenn in real life forever, but until his ballot was drawn, I had zero clue he’s been reading my blog the whole time.

Thank you Glenn, the timing and sentiment of this was awesome. Might be typing this with misty eyes. If I wasn’t a ROBOT.

 

Blog Break’s Over, Here’s What You Missed

Me typing a lot of things.

How sweet my place looked going into the Chinese New Years.

Looks like a hotel, eh!  All white and crisp.

My place would look good on Pinterest.

Found this little guy when cleaning; when I was very young, he came everywhere with me.

Stayed in a fancy downtown hotel.

It’s weird staying in a hotel in your own city.

Went around looking good in my hat.

I’ll probably make one of these my new profile pic, which is due to be changed.

Replenished my jogging pants supply.

Busy busy week!  For auto journalists, this week is like the Olympics.

The Canadian Auto Show kicks off tomorrow, and we’re live-blogging it for the paper’s first time (ScribbleLive!), and I have lined up a first-look at something awesome for you to see.

I filmed my first ever TV segment this morning, talking about the auto show on Sun TV, should be available to embed tomorrow.

That’s all I got right now, I have to start preparing, update my gear and practice more with ScribbleLive. I also set-up my Galaxy to use tomorrow, the one TELUS gave me.  I wanted to use my new BlackBerry, but Scribble’s not yet available for BB.  I’ve got a post started to tell you about the phone, short answer: the OS is solid, the upside-down-L gesture is efficient, and business people you’re going to love it.

It IS time to upgrade my phone though, this old iPhone 4 is no longer cutting it.

Look how grainy, that’s not good.

Night, TTYT

 

 

Meet the Former Head of USA Cyber Security

Meet Melissa Hathaway, former Director of the Joint Interagency Cyber Task Force with the Obama and Bush administrations.

TELUS invited me to her keynote at their HQ on York Street. I loved it.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to document the love, because it was one of those times you don’t pull out your camera.  Which is why I created this beautiful collage.

She was an eloquent speaker, covered a wide variety of topics and verticals, and imagine how globally this lady thinks, neat.

And what I took away from this experience was: woah, I know more than I realize.  I kept up with 90% of her presentation, knew every case study cited, my black-market prices are correct, as are which tools and what attacks are en vogue.  I’m proud of this; remember, this cyber security stuff is a hobby, I don’t have a degree or formal training.

What I decided this means is: I’m on the right track, let’s kick things up. But not gonna lie, I’m a bit nervous to.

For example:

I show you how to defeat a popular spear-phishing attack, the post takes off, helps many people, and the attack is defeated.  However, the attackers are now all, “what is this blonde thing that is hurting our business, let’s teach her a lesson“.

But, this stuff in my head could help you, so might as well *. And I’ll take Charlie Miller’s advice; I asked him about this when we met at SecTor 2012.

Me: You shut down stuff and affect large changes, do you worry about repercussions like I do, how do you stay safe?
Charlie: I try to be really nice and friendly always
Me: kk ty

And besides, lock it down as much as you want, but one good ‘ole SQL injection into the search bar and it’s game over, so there’s that too.

You should see the videos in my head, like when I track someone using free, publicly available tools and information they posted online.  Or show you the price you’re really paying when you stream “free” TV from overseas.  I’m excited.

Thank you Melissa and TELUS, I needed this.

 

* – There’s a phone scam in Southern Ontario right now – no one will ever call you to say your computer, or your ISP, is being hacked. Don’t give them the number they ask for, nor accept files or click their links.