akaQA blog

How to make a strong password?

akaQA Support — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:20:45 +0000

Hello world!

We’ve received a few questions lately about how to make a strong password for akaQA, or for any other website for that matter. Although the Internet security on akaQA is very strong, a weak password is easy to hack even if the hacker is a beginner. Therefore, we decided to post a short tutorial, that will teach you how to make a strong password!

1. First of all, never ever choose birth dates or addresses as passwords. They may be easy to remember, but also very easy to guess. Choose random numbers\letters\signs.

2. The longer the password, the more difficult it is to guess. Make sure your password contains at least 7 characters.

3. Always make sure your password contains both numbers and letters. The strongest passwords contain not only numbers and letters, but also signs (@%^&$%^*).

4. Once you’ve picked up a strong password, write your password on a piece of paper and keep it hidden somewhere you’ll remember in your home. Don’t throw the peace of paper until you’re 100% sure you remember your password by heart.

That’s it! if you’ve followed these 4 simple rules, your strong password is ready!

If you have further questions about how to make a strong password, feel free to contact us through the “contact” button on akaQA.com.

The akaQA team.

Storytellers – Chiangmai

akaQA Support — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 13:12:03 +0000

Who is Chiangmai?

Born and raised in Bangkok, Thailand, I attended Christian schools in Bangkok and Singapore and college in Indiana. English was the fourth language that I learned, behind Chinese, Thai, and Laotian. I consider Chinese and Thai my mother tongues, and Laotian was a language I loosely acquired by being around our helpers at home. I tried learning English and Japanese around the same time. When I could not ask a taxi driver in Osaka to take my dad and me to the railway station, my dad began to have second thoughts about sending me to school in Japan. Meanwhile, I took the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), and scored 99th percentile, a rare feat for a student from Thailand. It became quite apparent where I would be going to college after secondary school, and it wasn’t going to be my first choice, Japan.

Shortly after college, my wife and I relocated to Hawaii, where I became a commercial real estate broker and subsequently worked as a Portfolio Manager for a major investment company. I retired last year after my company went through countless number of mergers and acquisitions.

We have two twin girls and a boy. From a personal side, I am most proud to have achieved goals such as providing a good education for our children.

Living in Singapore gave me the opportunity to learn other Chinese dialects as well as the understanding of various cultures and religions. I generally view things differently from most people because I have lived in many places around the world.

Finally, I became a proud and happy grandfather this evening. This 7 lbs. 12 oz. baby girl was born on March 30, 2012. What makes this event most special to me is that the my daughter was given up for adoption while I was attending graduate school and I truly never expected to see her again. After 30 agonizing years, we were reunited this past Christmas. I am so grateful she gave me a granddaughter tonight.

With Aloha!

Storytellers – Fishlet.

akaQA Support — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:09:40 +0000

“Are you doing that Art Stuff Again?”

Said my four year old daughter as she hung in the door frame of my art studio.

I was nine years old when I decided that I was going to become an artist. It was an epiphany and I believe my true calling…

The true and not embellished (what so ever!) story, goes like this …

Grade four was turning out to be the most horrific year of my life. True pain and educational torture was my every day experience. My teacher looked perfect and beautiful in her matching sweater sets and precision hair cut but inside that woman was pure evil. Mrs . “W”.

Our classroom was divided into three groups. “A” group was for the very best students. The big brains. These brilliant students sat at the front of the class in a straight line of desks so not to miss one single spit of valuable information. “B” group was off to the left hand side, angled slightly so that our necks understood discomfort but not enough awkwardness to cut off the circulation to our pea size brains. “C” group filled the bulk of the classroom space.

The trick in “C” group was not to let your desk travel too close to the classroom door. The closer your desk was to that big wooden door the closer the looming disgrace of “REMEDIAL CLASS” was the reality. The shame of ”REMEDIAL CLASS” was too much for any skinny little kid to bear and the experience did in fact ruin one of my good friend’s educational career for life… That poor girl was in and out of remedial class so many times that year we all lost count. It became a joke that was not very funny.

Every once in a while my desk would find it’s self in “A” group only to be placed back into “B” group within a few days. I liked “A” group. The children were nice. I didn’t like “B” group as the children were future criminals with the exception of S.K., the tall paper thin boy from China.

I was the only girl in “B” group and because of this, “B” group was a living hell. Boys are cruel at the age of nine and they truly don’t care if they make you cry. My only defence was to doodle. This took me to a place where I could ignore W.B. (Who’s mother gave out paper bags of spaghetti on Halloween. Cooked spaghetti and tomato sauce in little soggy brown paper bags. We only went to that house once.), J.S. (The instigator), W.S (Who later went on to beat me up for a ”Sanitation for the Nation” remark in grade six), M.K. (Who grew up to be famous for fifteen minutes), C.M. (Who grew up to be a criminal… seriously) and “THE PIMPLE”, who was the brother of my best friend.

M.K. sat behind me… poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke all day long with a pencil right above the chair in the center of my back. On the occasions when I reacted Mrs. W would blow and I would find myself outside in the hallway for 15 minutes. I soon became a target for Mrs. W as I was nine and I was provoked… every day… What!?. There was no explaining my plight as Mrs W was right and I was wrong. This was a nightmare.

I truly needed help. S.K. wasn’t going to help me. I was alone in a sea of nasty. I began talking to God. A lot. God occupied my thoughts during this point in my life. School, I was convinced, was the devil’s playground. It just had to be. I spoke to God as I ate my breakfast. I spoke to God as I walked to school. I spoke to God during lunch time so much so that the Flintstones became a thing of very little interest to me. The only time I didn’t speak to God was when we played Hockey Night In Canada street hockey because street hockey at the age of nine in Canada is almost as important as God. At least it was back then. Bobby Orr was my hero.

On a lovely Autumn day during an English class Mrs. W was doing her teacherly thing… poke poke poke times infinity… I doodled happily away when all of a sudden the sky darkened and there stood Mrs.W, the looming back cloud, above me. She ripped the paper out of my binder and screamed, “What did I just say?” (She really didn’t like me at all. Actually, she really didn’t seem to like anyone at all.) I looked up at her and repeated verbatim what she had just said. Now, anyone would have thought this to be a good thing. No, it was not. The teacher blew! I sat outside the classroom door for my allotted fifteen minutes after my complete humiliation and when I came back in, sat down inside the pit of snickering boys, I asked God what I was supposed to do with my life. I was nine and I believed at this point, I was doomed. There was no hope.

Poke poke poke poke poke … times infinity…

A sunbeam crossed my desk and as my fingers touched the desk where the sunbeam lay, I heard in my heart, “An Artist”. This changed everything for me. I knew I had my work cut out for me as art class was an option in my school and because of this we only had art class twice a year. It didn’t matter. I had my calling. I was on a mission.

That very evening over the dinner table I announced to my parents that I was going to become an artist. My father then said, “No you are not. An artist is as useless as an Olympian. You will become a lab technician.”.

A quick walk through the science lab:

Happy Birthday akaQA!

akaQA Support — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:42:34 +0000

It’s been an amazing year, and it couldn’t be amazing without your contribution. Yes you, akaQA members. It’s your love to akaQA and your never ending desire for helping people who seek answers to their questions that made akaQA the great place it is today.

Here is a special video created by Colleen, with the help of other akaQA members, where they explain what akaQA means to them:

Happy birthday akaQA

Thank you for this amaizing gift, from all of the akaQA team!

Storytellers: Flip

akaQA Support — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:27:23 +0000

I am “Flip”, a nickname given to me as an infant by an aunt that stayed to help my mother after my “at home” birth. My given name Phillip when said very fast sounds like Flip. Upon graduation of high school and entering the army, the nickname went away and I am now known mostly as Phil. I grew up in a poor country family of eight with high family values. The family garden, cow and wild game provided food for the table, and “hand me downs” clothes on our backs. My shyness and lack of self worth made my school time difficult, and graduation was greeted with the utmost of glee. My tour of duty in the army and being on my own proved to be a time of growing up and gaining self confidence.

My working career was just short of 43 years as a service technician in the printing and copying field. It began with small wet process single copy photo copiers and the purple printed “ditto” copies, to full color high speed photo copiers and multi color printing presses. My department moved to another state in November of 2006, so I decided to retire. I now run a small shipping business that specializes in shipping large boxes to the Philippines. I also help my wife with some of her many side jobs (house/office cleaning etc.). Marriage about a year after leaving the army, produced a daughter and son, and 29 years of a rather “rocky” relationship, ended in divorce after the children had left home. Second marriage was nearly 9 years of bliss, and introduced me to the customs of the Philippines, her home country. Her daughter decided I would be called “Dad”, but now it’s mostly “Padre”. Our marriage came to an abrupt end with her untimely death at the age of 49. My present wife, also a Filipino, has been with me for the past seven years. She has a married son and three grandchildren in the Philippines. She continues to work so as to support her son and his family as well as her mother. Our attempts to immigrate them to this country has been hindered with red tape and very long waiting lists.

My health is rather good though I suffer the aches and pains that come with age. I am a cancer survivor, thanks to finding it in it’s very early stages. I had cataract surgery a year ago so I can see better than in years, but that doesn’t solve the “Face Blindness” that has plagued me my whole life (and I thank Witchway for telling me what it is called).

I joined this site in March of 2011 and have been here ever since. I am rather non-confrontational, so I usually by-pass the “issues” that arise ever so often, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion. If there is a subject that doesn’t appeal to me, I just pass it by. I have probably typed out and then deleted (before posting) 10% of my answers. I find it nice to get a TU, but I would just as soon see the total Karma points done away with. I only give a TU to the answers I feel are the best, and TU the question if it has generated much interest. The computer and its “wonders” have fascinated me for years. I remember the first mapping program I had, and couldn’t believe the info and detail it contained. Data and data processing has intrigued me to the extent that years ago I put our local phone book into a data base where, if I knew someone’s phone number, I could determine who they were. I have also made a data base of the members of akaQA which lists their name, location and birth date. To all, I wish you health and happiness, but most of all I wish you peace……

Flip.

Meet Jenn.

akaQA Support — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:46:02 +0000

“Just a girl, two kids, one man. That is what is says in my information section on akaQA. I live in the present. Knowing that my past has made me the person I am today. Every hurtful word every scar or bruise has open my eyes to the kindness of strangers. Make-up and and a smile hid the pain. Those who chose to look deeper could see the stain of tears on my soul. I was raised in New England US. I grew up hard. Never knowing what it meant to be carefree. Learning that trust had to be earned and forgiveness is for myself not the world around me. Understanding that there would be a day that I would control my own fate. “You teach people how to treat you.” I don’t share my childhood memories with people. I believe that is changes ones perception of me. I have known kindness and compassion and try to emulate those inspiring traits in my comments to aka members. I feel the words that are kind and up lifting are words of wisdom. In turn I receive understanding and support from the forum. “If you are waiting for a sign that God wants you to go to Church… this is it.” I never met my biological father. All of my life I spoke to God as if he were sitting next to me (my heavenly father). Never knowing the bible or the stories in it. At age 21 I drove passed a sign on the highway that read… “If you are waiting on a sign that God wants you in Church… this is it.” That Sunday I was in the third pew from the back. That church taught of forgiveness and love for sinners and saints (we are all sinners). Although I may not be in church right now I KNOW that my Christian duty is to love and accept people as they are. My job is not to judge or condemn, but to comfort and care. I don’t wave a banner of faith on the akaqa forum. I am the only bible that some may read. I want my words to fall on open hearts. Hoping that one day someone will ask where I find such peace. “My heart, my soul, my everything.” My husband. He is my warm safe place. Together we have built not only a marriage but a friendship. We have been married 17 years this summer. I still cant help but smile when he walks into a room. I see my children grow happy and confidant, knowing that their parents will move heaven and Earth to make their future as bright as the stars. My family fills me with laughter and pride. I am just a girl, two kids: one man. I have found peace, love, and the childhood I never knew. I am carefree and undefined. I am Jenn.”

If you’d like to share your life story on the akaQA blog as well, please write something and send it to us through the “contact” button on akaQA.com. This blog is also the place to share your thoughts on interesting posts and discussions you came across on akaQA.

The End of Printed Media?

akaQA Support — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 14:05:54 +0000

Times are changing. There is no escape from that. Flat screen televisions, palm computers, cars that run on rechargeable batteries, smart-phones that have similar processing abilities to those of NASA’s computers from 1969, when they sent a man to the moon.

Remember the days when “getting the morning paper” was a standard morning ritual for every man or woman that wanted to stay updated on current events?
Well, these times have definitely changed. Now days, all you need is a computer with an internet access and nothing more. Not only all the major newspapers and news channels these days have websites, but there are also many news providers that are work exclusively over the internet. There are also many bloggers that work as journalists and their blog posts attract millions of people, but what made the biggest impact on the media, are the social networks.

Imagine a protester in Syria, a country where freedom of journalism and freedom of speech is merely a dream for the common people, in the middle of a large protest against the government. No foreign press is allowed to enter the country, the government is using tanks, snipers and special forces in order to terminate the protest and hundreds of people are dying almost every day. The internet access is limited, as well as the access to to social networks and only a few people are capable of breaching the governments internet security networks. Our protester, who is one of those few people, is filming the protest using his smart-phone while the military is firing live ammunition on the protesters. He then uploads the video on Youtube, from Youtube he shares the video on Facebook and on Twitter and then there is no way of stopping the snow ball that he created. The whole world will see what’s really going on in Syria and it’s all because of the huge part that the internet and social networks take in our life. Even the pictures from those protests that are shown on newspapers are taken from sites like Twitter, Facebook and from blogs that are written by some of the protesters.

Our generation can’t be kept in the dark anymore, whether governments want to keep us there or not. We are no longer limited to the information that is given to us by newspapers that some of them belong to billionaires with political agenda. Printed media Is destined to stay in the past but not only for the above-mentioned reasons. Just like the case with electric cars, it benefits our planet tremendously as well. Thousands of forests worldwide were destroyed over the course of history because of our need for newspapers and books. Less printed media means less tree mining and advancing technologically while paying attention to our planet means a brighter future for us all.

Got any idea on how to improve akaQA? share it with us!

akaQA Support — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:14:15 +0000

akaQA.com is growing bigger and bigger every day and in a few months we will celebrate its first birthday on Feb 11, 2012. As a site with many registered members, we are constantly working on improving akaQA in order to make it as comfortable and accessible as possible for everyone. There are many things we can add to the site to make it better, and that’s where you come in!

If you have any ideas for how to improve akaQA, please share your thoughts with us. The more ideas, the better. We know that many of you have great ideas and some of you send them to us, but now we want everyone to know that these ideas are more than welcomed.

If you have an idea on how to improve akaQA, feel free to send it to us through the “contact” button on akaQA.com.

Meet Randy Palmer.

akaQA Support — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:11:48 +0000

Following Colleen’s footsteps, another top member of akaQA.com has decided to share his life story with us. If you want to share with us your life story or just an interesting experience you’ve had, feel free to contact us through the “Contact” button on akaQA.com.

This is Randy Palmer:

“akaQA gives me good down time. I’m retired and when I first joined I got hooked and was on 10-12 Hr. a day for awhile but then got behind on other things. It’s a great place to share the things you have learned through living and helping others with your knowledge. My experiences have been in a door factory, Harley-Davidson dealer, oil field, plumbing, electrical wiring, Ins. & mutual funds. I’m a christian and love to talk to others about Jesus, GOD and the Holy Spirit.”

I wanted to share some life experiences I’ve had.
I had going through some bad times, I went through a divorce, my youngest daughter had become diabetic at age five. I was working three jobs and raising 4 kids alone, along with having some health problems of my own, complications from diabetes.
I was at my shop and working by myself on a motorcycle, it was about noon. As a diabetic I knew I needed to eat, but I wanted to finish what I was doing. I would keep working on the motorcycle.
It was about two p.m. when I realized that my sugar was getting low, as I haven’t made any progress on what I was doing for several minutes. I had a Snickers bar in the refrigerator and got it out to eat and bring my sugar back up so I could finish the job.
I started praying to myself as I ate the bar, feeling sorry for myself, asking God why people had to suffer, why do people need to go through hard times and why do bad things happen to good people. Divorce, death of loved ones, sickness especially with children.
As I prayed my sugar was so low that I slipped into a diabetic coma, then something happened that I not sure that I can fully explain, I got an answer from God, all of the sudden I knew the answers, I knew why good people go through bad times, I knew why all things good and bad happen. It was like I was seeing through Gods eyes, everything was so clear. I wanted to tell everyone what I had found out.
Then I realized, I was sitting on a stool eating a Snickers bar, my sugar had come back to a level that I had come back to my right mind or should I say my human mind. As I couldn’t remember what had just seemed so clear a few seconds earlier. I remembered the experience but not the details.
However, now I didn’t feel sorry for myself anymore, I felt blessed. As I look back I don’t think my human mind could retain what God had reviled to me. However in my diabetic coma, I could stand to see a glimpse.
I know God is in control and all will work out for the best. I still don’t understand sometimes how things will work out, but I know God knows and that’s all that’s important.
I’ve had a lot of bad experiences since that day but I know they have all been for the good. I still don’t know why each and every experience has happened or what good can come from them. Only God knows that and who’s life can be effected by us when we are living as he wants us to. That means not only when things are good but even more when things are uncomfortable, painful and scary. That’s when our faith in God shows.
Who knows who’s looking?
GOD.”

The “Bump” button is here.

akaQA Support — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 10:46:56 +0000

As a part of our Continuous work on improving akaQA.com, we added the new “bump” button for you.

Don’t you hate it when you are posting a question but no one answers it? well now you have another opportunity of getting an answer to that question. If your post is unanswered, you’ll notice the new “bump” button under the post, next to the “Answer this” and the “Follow this” buttons:

Pressing the Bump button will automatically place your unanswered question at the top of the unanswered questions list just like a new question. It can be used up to 5 times per question and only once a day, so choose the right time to use it carefully.

We hope that this new feature will help more people to get answers to their questions.

We will be extremely happy to hear your thoughts about the new “bump” button…