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HAPPY 150th BIRTHDAY

(The Salina Journal web site on April 20 described a big event in Salina. Here is an abridged version.)

Salina had the kickoff of a yearlong celebration of its 150th birthday. It started in front of the Smoky Hill Museum [the old post office to you and me] around 11 a.m. Barricades blocked the street between Seventh and Eighth. The street was filled with chairs, tables and bleachers. And there was free food -- Cozy Burgers, hot dogs, chips and drinks. "There is nothing more Salinan than Cozy Burger hamburgers," said former mayor Alan Jilka during remarks he made at noon.

Later in the day, there was a walking tour of Gypsum Hill Cemetery.

[On Sunday April 20], Jim Geisendorf will talk about the city's early history at 3 p.m. in the lower level meeting room at Salina Presbyterian Manor, 2601 E. Crawford.

Credit for establishing Salina is largely accorded to William Addison Phillips, a 30-something Scottish adventurer who in 1855 was hired by the New York Tribune to report on the emerging strife in Kansas over slavery. Phillips decided to establish a town and in February 1858, along with four friends and family members, he founded what was then called Saliena.

When civil war broke out three years later, Phillips joined the Union Army, where he achieved the rank of colonel.

Steve Ryan, a member of the committee that organized the 150th celebration, told the audience Saturday that the priorities of the town's founders were religion, then education, then business.

[After the civil war, Phillips convinced a railroad to come to Salina a major step to stimulate further growth.] The town flourished, emerging as one of the nation's flour milling centers. Then during World War II the Air Force opened a base here [Smoky Hill], fueling some of the most rapid growth the county had seen.

By the time the city's centennial was celebrated, Salina was booming. "Wagons to Wings" was the theme. "We got our wings clipped 10 years later," Ryan told the audience. The Air Force closed Schilling Air Force Base in the mid-1960s and Salina started a long process of reinventing itself. The county's population has just reached the peak recorded during its heyday, but the city's economic base is far more diverse.

Susan Hawksworth, director of the Smoky Hill Museum, said this is the first major anniversary celebration since 1958. "We really wanted it to be a community event," she said, raising her voice to be heard over the sounds of The Soul Preachers. "You can't get any better than free food and music."

The celebration will resume this fall with a parade and street dance.

The "Dillons" Oldsmobile and Dangerous E-Mail

Last month a photo in a Dillons parking lot showed the front end of an Oldsmobile. I think the license plate said "1955" and after looking at some photos on the web I speculated that the Olds was a 1954. I asked for opinions.

The only response I got was an anonymous e-mail from "johndoe." The complete response was "The oldsmobile is a 1955. Probably an 88 and not a 98." I went back to the web and looked at photos of Oldsmobiles again, but came to no conclusion. In those days the external differences from one year's model to another are too subtle for me.

I didn't send a return e-mail to "johndoe" because it isn't safe to respond to e-mails that are from someone you don't know. (Read about "pfishing" on the web. http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Avoid-Getting-Hooked-By-Pfishing&id=5933) An e-mail from someone with an obviously false name makes me uneasy. Perhaps "johndoe" is someone I know quite well, but I don't like to gamble with the integrity of my computer. If "johndoe" wants to write again with an identity I can recognize, go right ahead.

If you want some standard advice about protecting your computer from real scumbags, see the end of this page. No one can guarantee complete protection, but you can fight back pretty hard.

I Did It!

I mulled it over and then took the plunge. I have now scanned in the 350 pages from our three high school annuals, the '55, '56, and '57 Trails. They all fit easily onto one CD and I can send them to anyone who'd like a copy. You view each page as a photograph using any of many computer programs to view photos (even Microsoft's Windows Explorer will do the job). Zoom in on a detail of interest, print a page, draw mustaches, have grandkids color them with crayons. Drop me a line at the e-mail address in the upper-right corner of this page if you are interested.

Another Trail Request

Norma Parker (Class of '58) is looking for actual Trails from 1956 and 1958. Can anyone help her get one or both? If so, write me and I'll get you in contact with her.

Computer Protection

The first step in protecting your computer is with a SUITE of protective programs: a firewall, an anti-virus, and an anti-spam program. Speaking from a painful personal experience, you can avoid a ton of trouble by buying a single suite that has all these programs combined -- three program from three different companies can be incompatible and real trouble that's hard to diagnose. Keep the programs and "virus definitions" current daily and they will automatically remove bad stuff disguised within e-mail and web sites. However, these programs can't do the whole job.

Your second line of defense are settings within your e-mail program that hinder the bad guys' attempts to send you their evil stuff. Here's a web site with some specific recommendations for the safer use of four popular e-mail programs, including what I assume is the most widely used, Outlook/Outlook Express: http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/a/emailsafety.htm . Surf the web for other sites that can help you; I searched on "safety tips e-mail" but try other phrases.

Your third defense is to think before you open an e-mail or any attachment. Is it from someone I know & trust? Does it seem so important I will open it anyway? I did open and read "johndoe's" e-mail and that was a risk. I use a program called Eudora to read e-mail and have it set to show a preview of an e-mail, which opens the e-mail. I could turn that feature off and all I would have seen is that there's a message from "johndoe." Not knowing anyone who uses that nickname, I might have taken the safest option of deleting it immediately and never reading it. As this web site's manager, I often get e-mails from classmates who write me for the first time ever using unrecognizable e-mail names and I'd hate to miss a person new to the web site. So I'm taking more risks than I might otherwise. It's a personal decision, like driving a car despite all the deaths and injuries cars cause. Now and then my anti-virus program says it has blocked a dangerous e-mail, so they do try to get in now and then.

But I'm unlikely to open an attachment from someone I don't know and don't open all the attachments from people I do know. Attachments are a common way the bad guys slip something bad into your computer. A good anti-virus or anti-spam program will identify a problem in an attachment and prevent it from going into operation. But just because you've received something doesn't mean you have to open it.

If your defenses fail and bad things happen to your computer, your fourth safety measure is to have made backups of files important to you: photos, letters, list of e-mail addresses, The Great American Novel, the template and data for a class web site, etc. I periodically copy such stuff to CDs or DVDs. Pros make backup copies every day. (There are companies that, for some bucks, will backup your hard drive to their huge memory system; if you have a problem, it can all be sent back to you and you don't have to reinstall stuff from scratch.) Evil viruses can erase your hard drive, but if the CD disks are safely away from the computer you won't lose precious materials forever. Lightning might burn up your computer, but the disks can be used to replace the important stuff onto your new computer.

You can't find this class web site via Google because it's not registered with the internet overlords. The information on this web site shouldn't be of use to anyone outside the class, its friends and relatives, so I don't want to make it too easy to find. Nevertheless, I know that the web site is found by strangers. Two or three times a year I get an offer to help me register this web site with the overlords, so there are people out there who search for unregistered web sites and try to make a little money. It's a legitimate business, but it's a demonstration that anything on the web can be accessed by those with enough savy and perseverance. (The disgusting spammers get e-mail addresses off the internet so many easier and faster ways, I doubt that they bother searching for unregistered web sites like this one. I could be wrong.)

If you have more or better safety recommendations, or personal experiences to share with the rest of us, do us a favor and please send it in. Use your real name on the e-mail, but I won't use your name on this web site if that's your preference.