WHEN A SHOOTER TARGETS YOUR GROUP: RUN, HIDE OR FIGHT?

What if you were in the target zone of this shooter?

The headlines have become all too numbingly familiar: mass killings at schools, airports, churches, offices, restaurants, arenas and public streets.

What if fight or flight aren’t your only solutions?

What if you could prepare yourself to spot dangerous behaviors, strategize how you’d narrow the chances of being caught unawares, and might save both yourself and others during unexpected, volatile, life-threatening scenarios?

It’s about understanding behavior patterns and looking at anomalous behavior outside of the normal baseline. It’s about profiling behavior, not people and identifying behavioral indicators consistent to a potential threatening environment.

All of the above are possible according to two experienced lawmen who addressed the Greater Orlando (FL) chapter of Meeting Professionals International (MPI) luncheon held at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cypress.

Director of Education & Life Safety for the International Association of Venue Managers (IAVM) Mark Herrera’s keynote presentation was aimed at mitigating threats to employees or meeting groups, but the practical information would be as applicable to individuals.

THE EMAIL THREATS JUST KEEP COMING

I was threatened today by email. Third time this particular threat has arrived in the past few weeks. Each time the message is roughly the same: send me bitcoins or I will expose you to your friends, family, and all email contacts.
The return addresses are always different. Sometimes the threat is that they have one of my passwords and in good faith, they reveal it. I immediately called my computer guru, Joseph Boy of Your Computer Solutions, who said he gets these messages also. Just delete them. He explained how the hacking trolls obtained that one password, but they haven’t actually wormed their way into my system.
Today’s email heading actually bore one of my own email address, which I didn’t notice until after I began reading the threatening email. That is part of the scare tactic: I can spoof your email and everyone will open this insidious note because they will think I am sending it. I’ve gotten many phone calls that spoofed a business name and even twice our home number said it was us calling, but this email got right to the point of trying to instill fear instead of just scamming me into buying their services.
This troll alleged he had remoted into my webcam and caught me watching porn. Send a $1000 in bitcoin or the world would see my scandalous activities. It was a much more detailed, longer message than ones I’ve gotten before, but still cautioning me against calling the police or trying to track the extortionist.
Sad news for them. I don’t watch porn and I don’t have a webcam.
I haven’t gotten the phone calls about family members in dire straits (send $$ immediately) or that the IRS was after me for not paying taxes and I needed to contact this number immediately or I’d go to jail. I haven’t gotten those calls, but I do personally know people who have.
The scare tactics work on many people. They are more unsettling than some Nigerian Prince has a fortune to leave me, or XYZ company in (usually) China is looking for a representative and even though I do not have any experience with what they’re seeking, I am the chosen recipient of what promises to be great business wealth.
I’m likely older than many of you reading this. I remember when this insistent pursuit of money at the expense of anxious victims-to-be didn’t initiate on the telephone or internet, or on unsuspecting innocents.
I want it to stop.
No one I’ve asked has answers except to delete the messages, hang up the phone, or just don’t answer calls from numbers you don’t recognize. The latter works with our home phone but not my business number because I don’t know from where my next client will emerge.
I don’t get the greed, animosity, mind games, and scare tactics. A couple days ago I discovered a troll had given me a nasty review that appeared on a search site next to my website name (www.ThePsychicLady.com). I’ve never heard of this person, let alone read him. I have other business friends who have had this occur and the unwarranted negative comments nearly ruined their respective businesses. I’ve read that people are paid to write, stalk or troll businesses by a competitor who must not otherwise be able to obtain a steady clientele on their own merits.
I don’t have answers. Just questions on why people go out of their way to do harm. I don’t want to believe this is the new normal, so maybe they are just people with morally-bankrupt souls. Either way. I want it to stop.
We all must want this to stop.
Thoughts?
Karen Kuzsel is a writer-editor based in the Orlando area who specializes in the hospitality, entertainment, meetings & events industries.  She is an active member of ILEA and MPI and is now serving on the 2016 – 2020 MPI Global Advisory Board for The Meeting Professional Magazine for the third consecutive year. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. Karen writes about food & wine, spas, destinations, venues, meetings & events. A career journalist, she has owned magazines, written for newspapers, trade publications, radio and TV. As her alter-ego, Natasha, The Psychic Lady, she is a featured entertainer for corporate and social events. karenkuzsel@earthlink.net; www.ThePsychicLady.com; @karenkuzsel; @thepsychiclady.

LIKE MAGIC, EVEN SWEATY FEET DON'T STINK IN THESE SOCKS

Sports socks kept my feet fresh smelling.


My feet don’t stink and I don’t think I have ever worn a pair of socks a second day after working out in them the day before, but I was willing to test MP Magic Socks’ latest innovation, the sports sock.
Full disclosure. I do not work for MP Socks, nor was I paid to write this review. In September 2017, the then new company sent me socks and asked if I would review them. The premise of what made these socks “stink-less” was intriguing, so I agreed.
In that article, https://karenkuzsel.wordpress.com/2017/09/24/stinky-sweaty-feet-new-solution-for-old-musty-problem, I let my husband and a teenage boy wear two of the three pairs sent and I wore a pair of anklets to my exercise class. Surprisingly, even the pairs worn by the men remained odor-free. One wore them to football practice. The other for gardening and walking.
Like the aforementioned socks, this new pair is infused with three metals: silver, copper and zinc. The combination of these materials, along with some other undisclosed ingredients, are to make the socks antibacterial, durable, and the mesh structure is supposed to enhance air flow and permeable. Unlike the anklets I tested the first time, this pair of socks extends three inches above my ankle bone.
While I thought this pair more stylish in design, with sporty red and white pinstripes running the length of the black socks, what I absolutely enjoyed has been the sheer comfort. My feet felt padded without the socks being thick and my feet didn’t get sweaty or hot as I went through three strong workout classes over two days and then wore them with a different pair of sneakers to run errands for many more hours.
Best of all, after two full days of wearing these socks, they remain as fresh smelling as when I first donned them.
https://mpmagicsocks.com
Karen Kuzsel is a writer-editor based in the Orlando area who specializes in the hospitality, entertainment, meetings & events industries.  She is an active member of ILEA and MPI and is now serving on the 2018 – 2019 MPI Global Advisory Board for The Meeting Professional Magazine for the third consecutive year. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. Karen writes about food & wine, spas, destinations, venues, meetings & events. A career journalist, she has owned magazines, written for newspapers, trade publications, radio and TV. As her alter-ego, Natasha, The Psychic Lady, she is a featured entertainer for corporate and social events. karenkuzsel@earthlink.net; www.ThePsychicLady.com; @karenkuzsel; @thepsychiclady.
 

GO AHEAD: TAKE A FLYING LEAP

Jump into the foam ball pit at Planet Obstacle


What’s a nice safety-obsessive girl who doesn’t like heights and is a natural klutz doing in a place like Planet Obstacle, Lake Mary, Florida’s ode to extreme indoor sports?
Mostly just trying not to let my jaw keep dropping open as I gape at hundreds of kids flying through the air like ninja warriors, or playing dodgeball in a brightly-lit padded court, or bouncing about in a foam ball-filled pit. Above me, a ropes course had human monkeys disguised Read more

ENERGIZE ATTENDEES: GAMEIFY YOUR INCENTIVES

Looking for fun ways to incentivize your attendees?


Clue. Candyland. Sorry. Battleship. Monopoly. Trivia Pursuit. The games people play while sitting around a board with one’s friends and family. Games can be competitive or just the catalyst for casual conversation, but they have always been a source for fun social interactions… at least before electronics fit in our pockets and playing an opponent didn’t Read more

FLORIDA ADVENTURES: HOOF IT TO SAFARI WILDERNESS

Lisa Jennings (L) and I feeding grapes to ring-tailed lemurs.


Ring-tailed lemurs hop from branch to branch before perching on a wooden railing, greedily grabbing the grapes from our hands with their soft paws and plopping the juicy morsels into their eager mouths. The water buffalo who rubbed up against the sides of our open-air canopied safari bus were nearly as gentle, even as their long, wet tongues curled around the offered tootsie roll-shaped treats.
Lemurs and water buffalo are just some of the 450 animals representing 55 species of mostly African and Asian hoof stock that roams the 260 acres of Safari Wilderness Ranch, Read more

STINKY, SWEATY FEET? NEW SOLUTION FOR OLD MUSTY PROBLEM

My husband Russ and a 15-year-old male relative (whose name I will not use to save him unmitigated embarrassment) have something in common: they both sweat easily and profusely, especially on their feet. The result is that no one wants to be near them when their socks are first removed.
Enter them being my guinea pig subjects for new socks on the market that claim to be the world’s best odorless socks. Full Read more

YOUR CHOICE FOR WORST AIRPORT AND AIRLINE?

My vote for worst aiport goes unhesitatingly to KEFLAVÍK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, the largest airport in Iceland, and for worst airline, ICELANDAIR, for its overall poor management and unsocial (or is it untrained, or just incompetent?) gate crew.
I’ll give you my reasons. Please share yours.
Two years ago, my husband Russ and I flew roundtrip to Copenhagen, Denmark on Icelandair, departing and returning to Orlando International Airport in Florida. After the mind-boggling chaos of Keflavík International Airport and the startlingly disorganized manner Read more

Glovax Gloves – a multipurpose, sturdy but flexible utility glove

Glovax Gloves, a new glove on the global market designed to be lightweight, flexible for multipurpose usages.


I rarely review products, but this was sent to me for an unbiased review, and because it is an item I envision myself using, I agreed to check out Glovax Gloves, a brand new product just entered into the global marketplace.
First: what the gloves are purported to do. They are designed for usage indoors and out, from weeding the garden to playing sports where a tight grip would come in handy. They are promoted as being revolutionary because of the multiple ways in which they are useful.
They are to be flexible enough to grasp machinery or even kitchen tools. I cook and bake as well as work in my garden, so having gloves that are light weight and are also supposed to be water proof (the outside coating) would be valuable to me.
What could be better: I don’t know if the company offers a variety of sizes or even other colors, but my neon orange gloves, with a pebbled palm surface to maximize the grip, were a bit large for my hands. I easily had an extra inch of finger space, but the gloves do pull on easily. Although the gloves surfaces are coated and meant to be water proof, after I put the gloves through my gardening test, I rinsed them off with soap and water. The insides were damp, but the dirt slid off easily.

Wish they were longer on my arm, but working in the garden was easy with their lightweight flexibility to deadhead flowers or replant.


I also would love it if the gloves came in different lengths. I am allergic to more items than I could list. Working in the garden is always challenging. If certain plants touch my lower arms, I break out in a rash. In this test, right above my wrists, where the gloves ended, I indeed broke out. I purposely touched a thorny plant stem to see how easily the thorns might penetrate. They did, but not with the full force the thorns might have otherwise done.
What I really like: obviously the fact that the gloves are flexible and wash off easily. I was able to use a trowel, deadhead flowers, and snap off some dead leaves on my herbs, tasks I’ve had difficulty doing with some other gardening or utility gloves. These are light weight, so if it wasn’t for the pebbly rubbery texture, you might not otherwise feel them.
I did a quick test with using a cleaver and had no problem grasping the hilt.
The campaign to market the gloves just launched. Check them out for yourself.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/glovax-a-revolutionary-adventure-glove/x/16458430#/
Karen Kuzsel is a writer-editor based in the Orlando area who specializes in the hospitality, entertainment, meetings & events industries. She is an active member of ILEA and MPI and is now serving on the 2016 – 2017 MPI Global Advisory Board for The Meeting Professional Magazine for the second consecutive year. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. Karen writes about food & wine, spas, destinations, venues, meetings & events. A career journalist, she has owned magazines, written for newspapers, trade publications, radio and TV. As her alter-ego, Natasha, The Psychic Lady, she is a featured entertainer for corporate and social events. karenkuzsel@earthlink.net; www.ThePsychicLady.com; @karenkuzsel; @thepsychiclady.