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2022 Adult Advent Calendars

2022 Adult Advent CalendarsThere is a sleigh full of adult advent calendars available for the 2022 holiday season. The adult version of these kiddie holiday tradition, include wines and spirits. They variety of spirits from around the world. Here are the best wine and spirits advent calendars that can help you get in the holiday spirit according to the Thillist. Be sure to purchase early, because the best boozy advent calendars sell out quickly.

Namazake Paul 2022 Sake Advent Calendar

Portland, OR online retailer Namazake Paul is offering sake advent calendars. Sake is the national drink of Japan. It is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting rice.

What’s inside: What is billed as the “only” sake Namazake Paul’s 2022 Sake Advent Calendaradvent calendar carries 23 180ml cups of sake. There is also a full-size bottle to open on Christmas Eve. The package also contains a handbook written by Namazake Paul to get the background on each sake. It also contains a place to add your own tasting notes. The sake advent calendar promises a cup for each day “representing every major style of sake,” including Futsu-shu, Honjozo, Junmai, Ginjo, Daiginjo, Namachozo, Yamahai, Kimoto and Nigori.

Packaging: Each cup is glass with painted art on it. So you’re getting reusable glasses. The outer package is cardboard with wintry designs. Price: $300.

Flaviar’s Whiskies Advent Calendar

NYC- based Flavair, a self-described band of spirits enthusiasts, made the list in 2021. The box includes rare and hard-to-find whiskies from all across the world.

Flaviar’s Whiskies Advent CalendarWhat’s inside: Flaviar’s whiskey advent calendar is one of the most sought-after boxes annually. It usually sells out before it starts shipping. The advent calendar includes rare and hard-to-find whiskies from all across the world. It also includes a tasting guide. Flaviar’s doesn’t reveal where the whiskies are coming from before you crack open the box. It does, however, promise that it includes Scotch, bourbon, and rye varieties, as well as at least one each from Rieger’s Kansas City Whiskey, Keeper’s Heart Irish + American Whiskey, and Akashi Blended Malt.

Packaging: The packaging from Flaviar is annually among the best you’ll find. The box comes with a well-designed tasting guide, a concrete coaster, and a Glencairn tasting glass. Price: $260.

Give Them Beer’s Whiskey Advent Calendar

Beer gift basket website Give Them Beer is offering a whiskey holiday treat. Their advent calendar does not offer the rare whiskey’s available elsewhere, but still seems enjoyable.

Give Them Beer’s Whiskey Advent CalendarWhat’s inside: You’ll get good but not rare drams in tiny bottles here. This advent calendar includes releases from big distilleries like Jameson and Four Roses.

Packaging: Some of the bottles are plastic, some are glass. All are tucked inside a cardboard box with a faux-wood grain design sporting perforated doors on the top. But it’s not out of line with other calendars in this price range or what you get in most beer advent calendars. Price: $140.

Vinebox’s 12 Nights of Wine

If whiskey is not your thing, San Francisco based online monthly subscription service Vinebox offers a red or white wine advent calendar to help ring in the holidays.

Vinebox’s 12 Nights of WineWhat’s inside: Vinebox’s 12 Nights of Wine is a collection of wine samples in thin glass drams. It promises “crisp, bright, and vibrant wines” in its Holi-DAY box, while the ‘Twas the Night box contains “bold, silky, and rich selections.” Each year, Vinebox’s calendar is one of the most stylish options for wine lovers.

Packaging: It’s a beautifully designed box with thin glass bottles with screw-on caps. It has an elevated design that makes it a great gift. If you get it for yourself, you won’t mind having it out on display. Price: $129 for 12, $199 for 24.

 

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedInFacebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Bad Passwords 2022

Bad Passwords 2022Password manager proprietor NordPass has released it’s third annual list of most common passwords. The firm worked with security experts to cull the top compromised passwords for 2022 from 3TB of stolen password data found on the dark web. What they found is like déjà vu, all over again. 

NordPass2022’s most commonly found password “password” has been in the top 5 since 2019. “Password” was found nearly 5 million times in the NordPass list from the dark web. Eight variants of “password” are included in the list.

RankPasswordCount
1password4,929,113
34pass@1233,9046
56password125,113
139Password12,029
173password1239,889
188Pass@1239,359
189passw0rd9,349
192Password19,220

The second most popular password “123456” had held the number 1 spot in 2020 and 2021.

C-level passwords

NordPass also looked at leaked C-level passwords. The big bosses are not better than their staff. C-level staff use the same top ten bad passwords.

  1. 123456
  2. password
  3. 12345
  4. 123456789
  5. qwerty
  6. 1234
  7. qwerty123
  8. 1q2w3e
  9. 111111
  10. 12345678

Other password facts

For the first time the Nordpass results were broken out by gender. Both men and women favored the same top bad passwords.

Password

Movies on the list:

#125 “superman” was used 12,100 times.

#171 “matrix” was used 10,122  times.

#185 “batman” was used 9,407 times.

#196 “starwars”  was used 9,091 times.

Hockey teams are popular for bad passwords. “Detroit Red Wings” and “Columbus Blue Jackets” were among the most popular sports themed bad passwords.

On the music front, “U2”, “Prince” and “Metallica” were popular hacked passwords.

Small cars are popular for lazy passwords. “mini”, “kia”, and “vw” were frequently used.

2022’s worst passwords

RankPasswordChange
from 2021
1password+4
2123456+1
3123456789-1
4guestNew
5qwerty-1
6123456780
71111110
812345-5
9col123456New
10123123-2
111234567-1
121234+5
131234567890-4
14000000-2
15555555New
16666666+8
17123321+2
18654321+5
197777777New
20123New
21d1lakissNew
2277777New
23110110jpNew
241111New
259876543210

rb-

It is worth pointing out again, and again again.

  1. how can you keep your online personal information safe?Make sure none of your passwords are on this (or any other list). If they are log on and change them immediately.
  2. Use two-factor authentication, whenever possible. Even if a hacker has your password, they won’t have that random code and therefore won’t be able to get into your account. Not sure if your favorite website supports two-factor authentication, search the Two Factor Auth List to find out.
  3. Consider a password manager. Your brain is no longer an adequate password manager.

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedInFacebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Ozzfest Flops in the Metaverse

Ozzy Flops in the MetaverseThe reviews are in for the recent Decentraland MetaverseMetaverse Music Festival 2022,” by Ozzy Osbourne. They are not good. The legendary IRL hard-rocking concert series Ozzfest looked like “a slideshow running on a PlayStation 2,” in the digital space according to one review

Ozzy Osbourne in the metaverseThe Metalverse show featured “performances” by metal legends Skid Row, Megadeth, Motorhead, and Ozzy Osbourne. The Prince of Darkness performance turned out to be digital facsimiles of Ozzy stiffly “performing” on stage. No backing band, just the legendary performer’s virtual avatar looking “stiff as hell” in one review.

Metaverse mosh pit

There was a sparse crowd of player avatars just kind of standing there and maybe shuffling their feet in a goofy, lifeless dance. One review called the concertgoers “a phantasmagorical array of avatars.” (rb- I don’t know what that means – but I’m sure its not good) Not exactly the sweaty, blood-pounding experience of the Ozzfest mosh pit of my youth.

Metaverse Music Festival 2022

As you can see in the video, the visuals were bad. They were described as having the “set design and visual appeal that would fit better in Guitar Hero.” There were hokey banners shouting things like “Welcome to the Metalverse” and “rock your fucking heads.”  The show backdrop featured an advert for NFTs. It sounds like the “corporate capitalist hellscape” that we have come to expect from social media not a show from the Black Sabbath frontman.

What is the metaverse

metaverseIn plain language, the metaverse is an interactive, 3D version of today’s internet. The pipe dream is for people to travel through virtual spaces.  We’ve (kind of ) seen this fad before. Second Life was the virtual world du jour in the early 2000s.

Launched in 2020, Decentraland is described as a virtual social world powered by the Ethereum blockchain. It claims to be the first decentralized metaverse. Within the Decentraland platform, users can create, experience, and monetize content and applications as well as socialize and attend events like Ozzfest. 

Not many visitors

The Decentraland Metaverse isn’t exactly teeming with people. Despite a metaverse valuation of over $6.5 billion dollars, users just don’t care. There are reports that Decentraland only had 38 “active users” over a period of 24 hours. This a very low number, especially considering the company has a market cap of a $1.2 billion. These numbers really amount too much, given the amount of money being poured into metaverse platforms like Decentraland. One expert said,

Anyone telling you that there’s a metaverse today that has worked is lying through their teeth

rb-

A cow wearing VR gogglesI get it – the metaverse is a new crypto-enabled sales channel. It is being used to promote new music, drive NFT sales, or perform in the metaverse with new audiences.But I am highly skeptical of any of these projects by the techbros to upload everything into the new-agey singularity metaverse.

I sure hope this is not the future. Where some unknown person on the intertubes can exploit and make even more money off of dead musicians and bands that no longer exist. Can you imagine a Kiss farewell 2040 show made up of deep-fake technology viewable only with a virtual reality headset rig?

I don’t want to go to a pretend concert in a pretend location.

I would rather be on the hill at Pine Knob during a June evening hearing real sounds, real sights, real smells, and real emotions, from real musicians with real fans.

Pine Knob

 

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedInFacebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Happy Thanksgiving 2022

What does a one-legged thanksgiving turkey say? …

… Wobble wobble!  

Enjoy this festive pilgrim hat

Happy Thanksgiving


…during Turkey Day 2022.

 

How you can help Ukraine!

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedInFacebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.

Clippy Christmas Sweater from Microsoft

Clippy Christmas Sweater from MicrosoftRemember Clippy? Well the annoying animated Microsoft Office virtual assistant is back for the holidays! The paperclip would pop-up at just the wrong time to offer suggestions that were only slightly useful. Microsoft has brought back Clippy in a an ugly Christmas sweater available from the X-Box store for $74.99.

The sweater includes the annoying dialog boxes that would interrupt your work that “helpfully” assisted users if they were typing up a Word document, making a PowerPoint, or working on an Excel Spreadsheet seemingly the exact second you were working on something important.

Windows Ugly Sweater: Clippy Edition

According to The Verge, Clippy first popped into Word document in  offered its assistance from 1997 until 2001. Those were the Windows XP days over 20 years ago. More recently, Clippy has shown up in Microsoft Teams. Clippy has also returned to replace the standard paperclip emoji in Windows 11.

How you can help Ukraine!

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Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedInFacebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.