The first is a price war on flights to Florida. If you act quickly, you can grab an outstanding deal on a flight from Winnipeg (YWG) to Florida (numerous airports), to travel April through June.  Return tickets, with taxes included can be easily found for Orlando ($330), Fort Lauderdale ($348), Tampa ($389) or Fort Myers ($391). These prices are in Canadian funds, with searches completed by myself on March 30th. Airlines with the lowest prices are Delta and United. Air Canada and Westjet are in the mix, typically about 10% higher.  Use your favourite APP (like Kayak or OnTheFly) to find dates that work for you. Don't expect these prices to last long. Exceptional discounts like the will be snapped up faster than the hot pancakes at the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair kickoff breakfast!  Secondly, it looks like NewLeaf "airlines" is back in business. The Canadian Transportation Agency has ruled that they are A-OK to use Flair Airlines' license and brand themselves as a "reseller." However, they are not technically allowed to call themselves an airline.  Cbc.ca offers more on this story.  The reason this is big news is that they will spark some great competition for prices in Canada. The most important factor to know is that, their routes are limited as are the days of the week you can fly with them. So, in terms of convenience, Westjet and Air Canada are still your best options.  The best part of this story is that, if you pay close attention to NewLeaf.ca when they relaunch, you might be able to snag a real deal (on the identical route) from Westjet. I speak from first hand knowledge here. When NewLeaf launched originally in January, Westjet silently and without fanfare, beat the prices. My kids took advantage of Winnipeg to Kelowna flights at $176 (yes, TOTAL price and offered by Westjet) and booked a spring break ski vacation.  I originally talked about this in January.  One of the routes price matched was Winnipeg to Toronto. So consider this your official heads-up to great deals to Kelowna, Vancouver and Toronto when NewLeaf looks to relaunch in the coming weeks. 

The CryptoWall 3.0 virus has been circulating for a while now. I know it has affected a number of businesses in the Westman region. CryptoWall is spread primarily as an email attachment. Here's how the story went for one of my clients. My client received what looked like a very legitimate email from someone with an attached resume. The attachment was a zip file which when opened installed the CryptoWall 3.0 virus on the computer. Clicking on the attachment appeared like it didn't do anything as the expected resume did not appear. However, that's all it took to install the virus. CryptoWall 3.0 creates a private encryption key on the attacker's server and goes through all the folders of your computer encrypting them with that key. It also goes through the folders on any mapped network drives and encrypts them as well. Once the files have been encrypted, they are no longer useful to you. They can't be opened as the programs will now see them as invalid files. The only way to decrypt the files is with the public key the attacker has. In each of the folders with encrypted files, there are also a number of ransom notes named "HELP_DECRYPT". Those files give instructions about how to send the money to get the encryption key for your files. They have been asking for $500 USD if paid within 5 days or $1000 USD if paid after that. Fortunately for my client, they had our Off-Site Backup service for their server. So, we were able to restore copies of all the files on the server from just minutes before the virus encrypted them. However, we did not have backup service on the computer which opened the email attachment. So, all they had left on that computer were some files they had recently backed up to a USB stick. We could have paid the money to the attacker to decrypt the files from that computer, but in this case my client felt it wasn't worth it. I'm glad the attacker didn't get any money out of this situation. In each of the cases I have seen, this virus has arrived as an email attachment. Most of the time it has been an email claiming to have a resume attached. Take away notes: 1) Be careful what email attachments you open. - This one is so tricky because legitimate resumes often come from people we don't know and sometimes when we're not expecting them. The only thing that could have tipped this one off is that it was a zip file - which may be suspicious. The other thing is there was no other contact info such as a phone number, or introductory info in the body of the email. 2) Make sure you have a good backup plan in place. - If you have a regular backup of your critical files, the effects of an attack such as this are greatly minimized. Being able to go back to the way things were just before the attack can help you get back up and running quickly. 3) Make sure you have good AntiVirus software installed on your computers. - There is no perfect AntiVirus, and unfortunately the installed AntiVirus did not stop the attack in the example above. However, it did help with removing the virus. Of course this is not the only threat and a good AntiVirus will stop most of these attacks. The most recent Trend Micro Worry-Free Business Security has added features to help prevent this kind of attack. 4) Check your security policies. - This attack could have been minimized if the user who opened the attachment did not have Administrative privileges on their local computer. On a Windows computer, only a user with Administrative privileges can install software. In larger organizations, most users don't have admin privileges. However, in smaller businesses, it is very common for a user to have admin rights on their local computer so that they can install their own software and updates. Your network administrator can help with removing Admin rights for most if not all users. Here's some more interesting reading about CryptoWall 3.0: http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/cryptowall-3-0-ransomware-partners-with-fareit-spyware/ CryptoWall 3.0 is pretty scary stuff, but these tips should help minimize the potential risk to your business.

After 15 years and 29 sales at the Park Community Centre Don Burnett has decided to change venues for the popular Brandon event that consistently drew more people with each passing year. Just as the demand for vinyl has grown over the years, the popularity of the sale has grown as well. In fact it has gained so much momentum the sale was renamed “Brandon’s Biggest Record and Music Sale!” According to Burnett the timing was just right, “It  was  finally  time  as  the  years  went  on  more  vendors  came  on  board  and  some  wanted  a second  table. The  last  few  shows  I  had  vendors  in  the  coat  check  room   and  in  the  skating  room of the Park Community Centre so we literally out grew that venue.” Recent stats show vinyl sales are the highest they’ve been since 1988! Many people will remember the handful of albums they may have bought that year but fewer will still own those records as the CD became the dominant music format in the mid-eighties. More and more people are going back to the vinyl format so it’s nice to see things have come full circle (pun intended). What’s even stranger than the impressive stats of vinyl sales these days is the fact that the younger generation are consuming more classic rock than what is passing for music today. Although there are a handful of today’s artists who lead the charge with sales according to some recent eyebrow raising stats here in Canada. The top selling record was Adele’s ’25’, which sold 116,000 copies, followed by Taylor Swift’s ‘1989’, with 74,000. But overall Vinyl sales are up more than 26% than at this point last year. What’s more, bands and artists are making more from vinyl sales than at any time since 1988, with 17 million records sold last year in the US alone. With sales up 28% on 2014, they accounted for 6% of the overall retail music market, and one in five of all ‘physical’ sales. Those numbers are impressive and inspiring to Burnett who thinks they’ll translate into a busy day for the sale come next Sunday, “I  would  like  to  see  400  to  500  through  the doors. With the resurgence of vinyl it is possible.” Burnett says attendance figures at the Park Community Sales over the past few years reached upwards of 200 – 300 people per sale so hitting the 400 mark is doable. Burnett is quite happy about that his love of collecting has grown into a sale that has continued for so long, “I have been collecting for about 33 years. I started when I was 16, got a little more serious about it in 1990 when I met Wayne Russell who used to run the country music center on 10th street.” So how many albums does a collector amass who has been at it for over 30 years? Burnett offers a staggering ballpark figure, “I can't really put a number on it for sure but I would say 4500 to 5000. Keep meaning to count them one of these years I’ll get around to it.” Some of his more prized possessions are impressive batch of oddball titles as well as releases from more popular artists, “oh I have a Japanese pressing of Pink Floyd’s Obscured by Clouds, some colored vinyl and some picture discs of The Beatles, Marc Bolan and The Yarbirds.” Like many collectors do Burnett says he has a wish list of titles, “I am trying to get Rodreguez's albums Cold Facts and Coming back to Reality. Also looking for Porcupine Tree, the Black Angels, Gov't  Mule, Joe Bonnamassa, also Roky Erickson and any Psyche/Garage rock records.” As for what the common consumer is after these days Burnett says from his experience at his various sales, “most people want the standards like Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath but you also get people that want Lenny Breau and more obscure albums. However I would say David Bowie will be one of the more popular artists this year, possibly the Eagles and Jefferson Airplane, all because of the recent deaths and a renewed interest in their music.” Vinyl won’t be the only item available at the sale, Burnett says when it comes to music, the list of items will run the gamut, “There will be t-shirts hoodies, music books, CDs and Music DVDs. Maybe some stereos and Musical Instruments, all depends on what the vendors bring it is basically anything musically related as well as records.” The sale runs from 11am – 5pm and there is no admission but the Legion will be taking a silver collection at the door and there will be a non-perishable food item collection for the Samaritan House. The new location is The Royal Canadian Legion Branch # 3 (Banquet Room) at 560-13th Street EAST Brandon. The new venue allows for 40 tables to be set up. To inquire about table rentals call Don at 204-726-0703 tables are $35 each. As of this writing there were only 6 tables available. Sale runs from 11am – 5pm. So just how valuable can some vinyl be to some collectors?

Sean Paul will be performing live this Wednesday night at Houston's.  Without a doubt one of the larger entertainment names to play at this club. Being affiliated with huge names like Beyonce, Akon and Snoop Dogg to name a few Brandon will have their first chance to witness the platinum selling artist in person. Tickets are now available by clicking on this link.  VIP tickets also available. http://www.diyobo.com/events/sean-paul-live-in-brandon-brandon-mb-canada

Anyone who is immersed in technology on a daily basis knows how wild and wonderful it is all at the same time!  New gadgets, apps, and devices are being developed and introduced every minute of every day.  Along with this constant advancement comes a certain amount of responsibility in being smart and safe, particularly when it comes to your data. I'm not talking about personal information, but the other digital information we collect:  music, movies, books, documents, and in this case, your photos. What you are looking at is the equivalent of a year-and-a-half worth of professional photographing, editing, refining, and creative work that could potentially go right down the drain.  This 1.5TB (TerraBytes, which is 1500GigaBytes) came to a screeching halt recently after running continuously (24/7) for about 7 years.  This is just one of 8 hard drives in our fileserver that is full of our daily commercial and portrait work. If you look at parts of the top disc, you can see circular lines where the drive has simply “worn out”, which had a snowball effect and lead to the complete failure of this hard drive.  Of course, disaster was averted in this case because of the live backups we keep of all of our precious data in our active server.  For anyone who collects and stores massive amounts of critical data, whether for business or personal use, the practice of daily backups is essential.  After having several hard drives fail over the years, I can tell you that it’s an inevitability.  It’s a question of when, not if a hard drive will fail. The thought of the day: when it comes to your data, how are you protecting it?  Do you have a backup hard drive? When it comes to your photos, do you print the most important ones? When you stop and think about it, it's pretty clear that the most reliable, long-lived copy you can have of any image is a printed copy.  Most people will have prints or albums of their parents or grandparents that are decades old.  A print on a wall will last for decades.  A print in a box or an album (not exposed to daily UV light) will potentially last for centuries.  An image on a hard drive might last seven years, or at least until the hard drive fails completely.  Sure there are lots of different conditions and variables to consider like the make and model of the hard drive or storage device, or even the quality of the print itself (note: archival printing is engineered to last 100 years).  But at a glance, look at the necessity of having to store digital images and even maintain them by checking them every once in awhile, and buying a new backup device every so often because they simply wear out, all in an effort to preserve your images (or any other data for that matter).  Now compare that to an album or a box of photos that sits on a shelf somewhere, that only needs to be looked at and enjoyed from time to time.  Much more low-maintenance. The bottom line: if you want to preserve your images, the best method is to create physical copies of them, whether prints, albums, canvasses or the like.  They are not prone to hard drive failures, OS updates, power outages, or any other technology-induced issues.  And they can be viewed and enjoyed anytime, anywhere, and will potentially last hassle-free for several generations.  :)