Mom's Journal: Learning from your Children

I'm thankful to the primary teachers (Sister Orton and Sister Brown) of our small branch who's guiding my children. I was surprised to hear my children sing this nice piece better than me, it's becoming our family's favorite song (one of them, at least).

This song keeps our family gaily and help us be united more as we sing this all together. One child will start a phrase and it's amazing how it "contagious" it is as we're singing all together before we know it. In fact, I've learned the words of this song by singing along with my children.



This is just one of those lessons they learned. Every Sunday my children goes home with new knowledge, relaxed and with high spirit.

And the words of the song are not the only thing I've learned from this. Hearing this music makes me believe that I'm a Child of God, and I know we all are. Knowing this makes us confident to face our trials with optimism. We know that our Heavenly Father allows difficulties to discipline us so we will be better in the long run, just like our biological father did. We are certain that he is working in our lives, that he will not disown us.

I am sure that there is nothing better in the entire universe than being a child of God. That is the greatest blessing we could ever have. As His child, we inherit something; we become heirs to all the joy and blessings of the eternal kingdom that cannot be shaken.

Ohh, Man! They Hacked My Website!

My website has been hacked! Well it happens... The hackers (or crackers) are the mortal enemies of the webmasters. No matter how hard the webmaster try to protect their website and put multiple layers of securities, there's always something new or hole that hackers find to intrude. And there are lots of hackers out there, they have different styles too.

Now, I just don't understand why the hackers think they can make a big impact to the world if they upload something like "Blah-Blah Hacker was here!" What do hackers gain when they commit cybercrime?

Well, some people do their job to earn a living in fair game, some don't. Some people are just happy to destroy other's work out of envy. And for those who got hacked, you are not alone. In fact, it's becoming a common problem. If you're lost and don't know what to do here are some tips you might want to do:

Take your website off-line- is your first step. You don't want to play chess with your hacker. This is just temporary until your site is ready for public again.

Regain access to your website

• Figure out if you still have an access to your CPanel or FTP. You might need help from your webhost provider if you lost your access.
  
• Change your password immediately
• Change Admin email on your account.
• Change your credit card information in file.
  

Assess how big is the damage and poor thing, start working- this part is scary especially if you spend a lot of time to build your website, let's all hope that you all got minimum damage. Some hackers are just uploading files to tell you their presence, some doesn't have a heart.

• Determine what kind of attack was done? Hosting? Domain? Are the scripts infected?
  Hosting- there's a possibility that your files was backup up and your data will be restored easily.
  Domain-your attacker might have taken your domain name and gain access to and there's a possibility that you'll loose your domain name forever.
  Script infection- basic type of this attack are password theft, SQL injection, URL injection
  

• Determine what's the damage.
• If you still have an access to your FTP, browse the suspicious files on each directory and delete them.
• Update and apply any patches, upgrades, or updates that the 3rd party vendor or web developer of your scripts may have available.
• Check your scripts for any Header Injection attacks, Sql Injection attacks, Cross-Site Scripting attacks, etc.
  
  

Protect Your Website

• Once you've got your website back, learn from it. Make a regular backup of your data.
• Add security
• Fix any loose file permissions (this may be the most common exploit vulnerability)
• Delete all non-system Ftp Accounts that were created, or at the very least, change the passwords to the FTP Accounts.

Here are some resources you might want to look at:

• http://combustionwebhosting.com/products/secureplans/
• http://security-report.computer-concierge.com
• http://www.sans.org/top20/
• http://www.securenetsol.com/

Now, I'm signing off for now. I got job to do.

Mom's Journal: An Inspiration

Yesterday, I attended a Women's Relief Society meeting for the first time, I was briefed of what this organization is all about. I learned that this group is the largest and oldest women's group in the world, pretty impressive! From what I understand, this group helps each other, share their experiences and learn from each other to be a better Mom and a better wife. We introduced ourselves and shared what we love to do. These girls have amazing talents of their own, each one of them have skills that I wish I could inherit as I tag along with them and apply them into my daily life.


One of them is Sister Linda Terry, she loves to read and write, she gave me an inspiration to write this entry. She shared with us one of her greatest possession, it's a book. Her own book, telling a story of her children. It's amazing how she put her time to collate all those details with photos and find a publisher to make this wonderful book. A wonderful gift in fact you can give your family. I see this book will be passed from generation to generation. It will bring tears of joy while reminiscing the old days as they turn each pages.

As I end this entry, I'm thinking of starting my own "Mom's journal". Thinking it's not too late to start as I still have memories of my children's first cry, first walk, things they were attached to to make them sleep better. I'd like to use section of this blog for my journal and thinking of naming it "A View Through Mom's Eyes". It might change, we'll see. Hoping in the future, I'll have a gift to pass along my offspring.

Shoot and Go

I'm really liking this feature of blogspot; where I could write on my iPhone, shoot photos then send to my secret blogspot email. You have an option to save it as draft or publish away! Facebook's app for iPhone is cool as well, it has the shoot and go feature too. Great for travelers who likes documenting their trip.

Countdown begins...

Countdown begins...

Leaving XHIS is starting to sink in... The arrangements Kevin and I made to visit our new school in Beijing school has made me realize that we have 17 weeks left here in Xi'an.

I had a reflection of what my life in Xi'an like, now I'm realizing that I really have good things to be thankful about.We came here when my son was just 4 months old. He's now grown into a sweet, playful 4 year old boy.

I had good memories here in Xi'an. We gained friends who made us want to come back once in a while. A friend came to see me in my office, we talked about us leaving. We both realized how different it was when we first came here, we had full of energy, always looking to start new projects to make the school successful. We were helping each other and literally trying to survive with all the resources we've had. We had smile on our face all the time, happy with our accomplishments, contented. "Where is this woman with all the smile in her face? Where is this person who were once referred to 'a darling of the school' by previous co-workers?", she asked. "She's gone long time ago when people around her started to take the smile away from her", was my reply.

One thing that I'm really thankful about is now, I'm slowly getting my smile back. It's not that I care less because we're leaving but there is someone out there looking after us. A situation where when we're becoming a person we don't want to be, opportunity will come along to have a fresh start.

I'm moving on, we're moving on and now I'm starting my count down.

Chelly

~Sent by iPhone software

Test Run

I need to test a blog for our company and decided to make my own just to test the settings. If a decision came and made me think to continue this blog, we'll see. Right now, I'm undecided.