At least one vaguely satisfied reader.
Back in the very old days of the Pyramid BBS in Schaumburg, Illinois I used to go by the handle R. Daneel Olivaw, HLTRE. People used to ask me what the HLTRE stood for and I would puff up my 12 year old self and tell them that it stood for "Human Looking Telepathic Robot Extraordinare" of course.
I went to the Constitution Center in Center City, Philadelphia today. I had my 4th Amendment rights violated on the way in, just as I did when visiting the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall with Bob and Denise a few months ago. I just love a good searching before learning about how free I am.
Let's see if my greasemonkey edits have worked this time. The code was simpler than I thought it would be. I might have to have a go at this myself.
I've got a greasemonkey firefox plugin that lets me add del.icio.us and technorati tags. I'm not really sure how it works though. This is me giving it a try.
The 4400 was driving me crazy today until I figured out that I had seen Garret Dillahunt was the evil razor blade man in Deadwood. It didn't feel right that no one called him a cocksucker. (thanks John)
Neelix was really good in The Island. Scarlett and young Obi Wan were ok.
I've started geotagging my photos on flickr. And I get a real buzz out of the people who comment on my photos. My goodness to I have a fragile and easily inflated ego. (surprise, surprise)
Oooh, one more post and all of my pre-Tiger posts roll off the front page. Yes, I am a sad geek.
Mae is mostly on the money with her review of Madagascar. Though I didn't find the animation to be all that spectacular. I don't feel it pushed the boat out the way each new Pixar film does.
Well it looks as if I have finally found a reality show that sucks me in. After years of resisting I have given in to Morgan Spurlock's (of Super Size Me fame) 30 days.
A work colleague was taken in by a credit card scam. Here is her story and how to avoid having the same happen to you.
I was a victim of a credit card scam the other day. I'll tell you the scam, but more importantly, how to never have this happen to you. I suggest that you tell everyone you know this story.
Scam - short version: Nice lady calls to inform me that uncharacteristic charges appeared on my account today and she is just verifying that I made the charges. Of course I had not. And, having had experiences like this before, I knew how this worked so I was not shocked or suspicious. She cancelled my card for me, gave me the new card number and exp date, took off the charges, and was going to send me the new cards and a fraud affidavit...she had my address (probably from the internet)...and was sending it UPS for a signature...so I (being so smart) said no one would be home to sign so please send to my work address (so she now had that)...and lastly just verify my mother's maiden name (the thing she was really after)...which I did. I should have the mail by 12 on Thursday and she would call me at 1 to ensure everything was in order. She actually had an 800 number for me to call (which I've been told the sophisticated scammers have), so that if you call, you get the scammer answering as the bank. Within the next half hour, she added her name to my account and bought a wire transfer.
What I should have done: If a bank, credit card company, or insurance company ever calls YOU (not you call them)...the correct response is to say thank you...I am going to hang up and call the company (always usingthe number on your card, statement, etc., not the phone number given to you by the caller).
I always knew that if someone in authority unexpectedly comes to my door and wants in, even a policemen, I say, let me call the company first...not using the number given by them, but the one in the phone book. I always knew that if a policeman tries to stop me on a deserted road, I was to drive very slowly to a well lit area. But, I never, ever, heard that I should always call the number on the stmt or
card...even when they call me and leave the number on my machine (itcould be a scammed number).
Thanks to Apple I have emacs running again. I can't get the version in cvs working at the moment. I can get it to compile, but when I drop the Emacs.app in my Applications it just doesn't start up and I haven't found a way, yet, to get it to give me some debugging output as it fails. I'll keep trying, but I've more Common Lisp to learn at the moment via Practical Common Lisp.
Today, boys and girls, we learned that the 252 million years ago 95% of life on the planet was killed by the earth letting rip with a massive fart. Either that or an exploding star or two.
