Travel and Photo Bloggers and All My Friends BEWARE: SECURITY TOOL

There's a vicious little devil that took over one of my laptops this week. It almost ruined my, normally cheerful personality. It definitely set me back a few months in production when I'd prefer to only stay a few weeks behind. Security Tool, be on the lookout for SECURITY TOOL. It will ruin your day!

This is not a joke and this is not gonna be a humorous post. This worm, virus, malware or whatever you want to call it has me enraged enough to pack my bags and hunt it's inventor down like the rabid vermin he or she is.

The PC it infected is still alive but, it's not well, yet. I don't know if this program can get into a Mac.

Anyway, here's how it started. One morning about a week ago this Security Tool warning popped up. It looks sort of like some Windows Alert because it uses the red, white and blue Bill Gates sorta-lookin' theme.

It tells you some spyware, virus or worm has infected your computer and it is attempting to obtain your credit card numbers, passwords and all kinds of stuff.

Then, it offers to remove everything for $79.99.  I suppose it would ask you to pay by CREDIT CARD if you fell for the scam. I don't know for sure because I'm not old enough to have a credit card, yet (HAH).

Well, after you ignore the warning a few times, it starts popping up more frequently and giving you all kinds of alerts. Pretty soon it was telling me I had something like 42 viruses and worms trying to take my life savings, passwords, PIN numbers and anything else you can imagine that has to do with money.

Before long, you can't do anything with your PC. The pop ups won't go away. Maybe, if you give them the $79.99 they'll go away for awhile. I wasn't buying it. I Googled "SECURITY TOOL".

My Google Search confirmed it was a scam and people around the world were having problems removing the worm. Then, I started looking at all the instructions at different sites telling you how to remove it.

That's where I got the idea to use my Smily Face Photo above for this post. You'd need a degree in computer programming with a minor in geek-speak to perform the operation on your computer if you follow the instructions the Security Tool Removal sites give out.

Somehow I came across my old buddies at CNET.  They have a download that gobbles up the problem.
It has about a three and a half star rating but, it gets rid of SECURITY TOOL for you, pronto. It got rid of a few other gadgets that I use, too!  So, I have to reinstall some spyworks and Japanese translator tools I use in my line of business but, that probably wouldn't effect the average travel/photo writer or blogger.

The tool that gets rid of SECURITY TOOL is a free download called STOPZILLA and it worked for me. But, I uninstalled it, too. It works a little bit too well for me.  My recommendation: Bookmark this.

UPDATE: AN ALERT READER FROM STUMBLEUPON NAMED Sjonie SENT ME THIS LINK. GO THERE AND FIND AVAST! FREE AND NEVER HAVE THE PROBLEM!

Ryukyu King, Queen and Royalty: How I Spent My Day

You don't just jump into these sorta things. I learned about it the hard way in previous excursions to the big city. So, today when I went to the King and Queen's Coronation Ceremony in Naha Okinawa I hob-knobbed with the Royalty a little bit before I tried to get close to the big shots.

The guy with no socks and a real beard would be me. I got another cameraman to press the shutter release on my camera. Only he didn't wait for me to fix my hair or anything else.

Once all the dignitaries got used to me hanging around it was fairly easy to sneak through the crowds and capture this photo of the King.

It's actually a Reenactment Coronation Ceremony and the King and Queen are college students playing the roles.

My favorite part of the whole day was snapping the shutter when the Queen had her eyes just where I like them.

Even when rude people popped into my frame with their toy cameras, I didn't mind too much. 

I just hollered "Son of a samwich" a couple of times and people backed away from me.

The inconsiderate individuals could be PhotoShopped out if I was willing to pay someone. Then we could rent the space for advertising, I guess.

I'm going back Sunday to let the King and Queen choose their favorite photo and I'll give them each one for free. I bet, being Royalty, they probably aren't interested in any advertising money.

Really, it wasn't a bad day. How was your Wednesday, any better?

Guinness Tug-O-War Rope: Editor's Pick-Twice!

Published by Apogee Photo Magazine FESTIVAL PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS.

Editor's Pick at Better Photo in Category TRAVEL AND PLACES.

I'm going back down to the big city, Naha, today to see if I can NAIL THE QUEEN.

MORE LATER.....

BUZZARD EAGLE IN THE PINES

The Grey-faced Buzzard Eagle (Butastur indicus) is a visitor to Okinawa from November to March every year. They come from Eastern China, Eastern Russia and Mainland Japan.

They are raptors and feed on snakes, frogs and rodents.

To me, they are a sign of cooling weather.

To my Huskies they mean long walks.

To my wife they mean I'm busy. SO, SOMEBODY ELSE HAS TO WEED THE GARDEN !

More about Grey-faced Buzzard Eagles HERE.

Dancing Ladies and Dancing Lion-Dogs: My Halloween in Photos

Halloween isn't really observed where I live, in Okinawa, Japan but I was pretty busy from morning until late at night watching people in costumes. Here are a few of the several hundred photos I took at the two Festivals I attended yesterday. It was a full twenty hour day of shooting Dancing Ladies and Dancing Lion-dogs.

The day started with a parade on the International Avenue (Kokusaidori) in Naha Okinawa, Japan.
Here's a frazallion  (Isn't that a number?) ladies in red coming down the street.

They danced in the street and waved their fans. The fans are silver on one side.....

.....and gold on the other.

After I captured enough photos of Dancing Ladies in the streets of the big city to last me a week, I headed back to the northern part of the island to get ready for my night shoot. I downloaded the camera and recharged for a country festival in a town close to home, Yaka Okinawa. I enjoy these festivals much more than those in big cities, mostly because they don't have frazallions of people hanging around and popping up into the frame of your picture everytime you think you're ready to shoot.

There's a few hundred more various Dancing Lady and Lion-Dog photos I'll be cooking for awhile but, for now, these are two of my favorites I'm putting on display.

In the above photo, the gal on the right has a pine tree in her hair, the gal on the left has bamboo (not a pineapple plant) decorating her brain, and the gal with the big sombrero-lookin' thing, well that's a plum flower.

I hope I got it right, this time, because my Okinawa Dance Sensei will put me on detention if I get caught lying again.

Now, the Shishimai (Dancing Lion-Dog) has to be the highlight of my whole day. I'll do an entire article on these characters one of these days. They are really something to see in action and it's pretty unusual to catch a shot like this where the critter holds still for a tenth of a second so you can snap a shot in low lighting.

So, in a nutshell, that's how I spent my Halloween, shooting Dancing Ladies and Lion-Dogs.  How was your Halloween, any better?